New Microsoft Trainsimulator

Paul,

MSTS-2 is certainly very much alive if they have been planning this for the past year as the Blog states. Anyway it will be exciting to see what reaction KUJU and Auran take because of the Microsoft re-entry into the Train Simulator arena. The FSX base contains a much better world mapping system than MSTS-1 did and will probably work better than the Auran world. It remains to be seen how ground-based FSX scenery will play against the others though in terms of CPU and GPU loading. The graphics capability is potentially more capable looking judging from what’s been posted for FSX already. Also the FSX system file formats and programmability are open and very usable for developers.

Charles OHearn

Richard,

just curious, do you intend to support the new MSTS, too? You mentioned in some recent posting that 3DC would be developing more and more into a trainsim modeller.

3DC will continue to be a general purpose modeler, but it will have support for all train simulators where possible. I can’t guarantee that I can support all of them. Sometimes it isn’t possible without the support of the maker of the train simulator. Some are not particularly cooperative.

My own guess, and don’t take this as truth even though I have known about the project for some time, is that MS will use the same file format as FSX.
(Which is why I was experimenting with FS2004 last year
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)

The general principle is to create .X files (which 3DC does best) and convert them to .mdl files.

With the improvements to materials in 3DC we should be able to add the material naming system that is required by the converter without too much trouble.
For FS2004 I needed to edit the X file to put in the right names.