posted 10-25- 07:03 PM               

To start with I'm concentrating on things that OPS1 either didn't do, or didn't do well, like mesh editing to vert and poly level, better property handling, and hopefully a DOF mode that both works properly and does the movement thing to see if the timings are right.

It will also load multiple files, and multiple views per file, as well as supporting the elusive Ortho mode for easier movement of stuff.

posted 10-25- 07:26 PM               

Well Bryan ... if it does "half" of what it appears to be doing... Well, let's just say "I've got a chubby with your name on it"...

posted 10-25- 08:12 PM               

LOL! ... I've already got his name filled out on a check if he does!

posted 10-25- 08:40 PM               

Good luck with its development mate.

Cheers,

AGAS 5

posted 10-25- 09:38 PM               

This OPS is part of another project I'm involved in so while it probably won't be sold as such, It does make up some of the value in the other project so need to think about how to distribute it without effecting that.

I will be spitting out a few betas from time to time though.

Some other things it will have/ has are:

* Vertex snap part placement, i.e. align a vert from one model to another.

* Polygon level property editing

* Smoothing utils, i.e. similar to MAX probably, but stuff that actually gets into the SM file, and probably some 'drag around' vert normals to get the look just right.

* Currently has a OpenGL rendering engine, and will probably do D3D as well, if I get around to it. Apart from being more flexible (which also means more work!) than the thing I used in OPS1, OpenGL also means you can run it on WINNT 4.0 machines if you find a need.

* Adjustable lighting conditions so you can see how your smoothing stacks up. Not too useful for SDOE, but you can have fun with some pretty coloured lights.

* Loads from ParFiles transparently, currently only the textures and filerefs.

* "File|New" from a template. i.e. like Word when you select the fax template. For example you might select the twin engined fighter template and start your model from there. The appropriatte files are copied renamed etc etc as you select the template.

There are a few more, but they can be a surprise

Bryan

posted 10-25- 11:16 PM               

The problems with OPS where (IMO) due to three things: The UI Framework I used was full of holes (there is a very good version of it now I believe), the dumb arse 'archetecture' I hobbled together to link the properties, graphical bits and the selection bit was so convuluted and meant that any changes were prone to errors (+the property parsing system was crap incase you didn't notice), and lastly I used D3DRM, which is a high level scene manager for D3D. Its good for what its good for, but not really flexible enough, but I hooked into it to much,and it was hard to let it go without a rewrite.

I'm now using a very good UI frame work from here, http://welcome.to/BCGsoft . If anyone is doing any MFC work and needs a really good GUI, look no further.

I've really thought about the associations between stuff now and think that I have a much better platform to add stuff , easily and safely,

and lastly, I wrote my own renderer, which was something I had to do anyway. Its much easier to work with and I can do pretty much what I want. Also, most of the crashes that said something like OPS cause a fault in <unknown> were buried so deep in D3D, I had a extremely hard time figuring out what I did wrong.

posted 10-25- 11:50 PM               

Testing dofs on OPS would be such a time saver......

You da man!

posted 10-26- 06:40 AM               

This is REAL GREAT news!!!!!! That sounds a HECK of alot bug free and tons more of a stable program. I love the in program DOF movement idea. My gosh this will save buttloads of time! Thank you sooo much for your coninuted support Bryan!

posted 10-26- 07:04 AM               

------------------
-Sv =FC=

WWI in SDOE!

posted 10-26- 02:58 PM               

You´re doing doing a great work, hope you know that!

posted 10-26- 05:39 PM               

Keep us posted on the progress.

charm

posted 12-27- 04:40 PM               

Are you incontact with boys at crosswindsims? This would be a great tool to assist with the development of Stormbirds.

As for the other comments- why wait for SDOE2. Can this be used to create planes for the RC simulator? I'm sure Hawk would like to use it to create some new planes for that sim.

posted 01-08- 04:03 PM               

Any news you can share with us OPS'ers?

Thanks Brian

posted 01-08- 08:41 PM               

The one thing is that I have changed the plans for the architecture a little, so that it will almost totally be run by plugins rather than having the functionality locking in the main exe. The main exe will really just be for loading the plugins and handling UI bits.

This means that if you don't like the way I made it handle DOF's, someone can theoretically write another DOF handling plugin.

Of course this is just hypothetical because we all know that everyone thinks the DOF editing works great!

Also, I plan to implement source control mechanisms and distribution control via plugins. For example you could manage different versions of your aircraft etc through OPS2000 and have it create a zip file, or install package from the source files.

So at the moment I have a list of classes of plugins that will perform different tasks. They are now:

* file loaders/savers
* image format
* mesh format (similar to the current import stuff)
* object handlers (i.e. parts, groups, dofs etc)
* source control
* distribution
* utilities (for example the gun convergence function might fit here)

Any other ideas for useful plugin classes just let me know.

posted 01-08- 08:44 PM               

Your update is greatly appreciated.
Good luck and best wishes for a speedy completion date.

------------------
Condor out

posted 01-09- 08:20 AM               

Modularity- Real3D works this way. You may get farther faster if you get the hooks for the plugins worked out in the kernel, then release an SDK explaining how to write the plug-ins. Someone may take some of the work off your shoulders by developing one of the modules for you.

Just a thought.