Can We Salvage Our Legacy Planes?

[K5083]

SU5 broke basically all of the ported-over legacy planes that some of us did hundreds of, and that were a main source of enjoyment of the sim.

I would like to explore whether we can resurrect at least some of these. I would like for this thread to be about brainstorming how we might do it.

I will start.

Troubleshooting a problem starts with describing the symptoms precisely. Legacy planes in MSFS generally render fine in the Hangar view and the preflight animations, but they crash straight to desktop when running in the active simulator. Sometimes they crash almost immediately after you click "FLY," sometimes it takes longer, and they seem to crash only when you look around the cockpit. A couple of us have found that at least one port-over, the Vertigo Stearman, can get through an entire flight and function perfectly fine, but you may have to be careful not to look in certain directions in the cockpit, or it will CTD just like all the others.

The following is my current hypothesis. From comments by developer types here and on other forums, I gather that SU5 "cleaned up" (removed) a lot of old FSX legacy sim variables. Maybe the legacy planes crash when they try to read a variable that is now gone. They may not do that until you look at or try to manipulate something, thus the variability in when the plane CTDs. If we could get some documentation of which legacy variables were removed, perhaps we could use the MDL editor to change or remove the dependencies on those variables. At the cost of some gauges or controls becoming inoperable, we might be able to save some of the planes. DOES ANYONE KNOW OF SUCH DOCUMENTATION? Maybe provided to developers or as some part of the SDK warnng them to stop using old legacy FSX variables?

Another hypothesis, that I have seen on the Curtiss Robin thread, is that it has to do with mouse interactions in the cockpit, and that you could fix the planes by removing cockpit mouse interactions with the MDL editor. That certainly seems easy enough to try.

Anyone who is interested, please feel free to take shots at these hypotheses or advance your own. I don't know how many of us care about the old legacy planes any more, but there are definitely some that I would like to resurrect.

August

[jmig]

I know there are quite a few lovers of Legacy aircraft. And, while there are P3D aircraft I would love to see in MSFS, I am not into dragging legacy aircraft into the new sim. That, to me, would be like buying a new fancy home and dragging in your old apartment furniture, dog hairs and all. While it would function, it would not show the new house at it best.

Early on when there were few 3rd party aircraft available, I converted a few FSX/P3D aircraft. I wasn't satisfied with any of them. While you do want to save the legacy aircraft, I question if it is worth it. The only usefulness I see for legacy aircraft is as AI or parked aircraft populating the apron.

Sorry to start on such a downer note, but this is my opinion on legacy aircraft. I am sure you will get many more positive posts.

[keithb77]

I'm only flying the DC6 right now so not too worried about my old legacy imports, but that might change.
There are very few of the available MSFS planes that float my ageing boat...

From the MSFS SDK Discord
"go into MCX ,import the interior mdl, go to the hierarchy editor, each model part has a "mouse rectangle" setting, change it to none, and re-export the mdl"
https://discord.com/channels/7465178...31930212581479

[Tom Clayton]

Well said John! While I respect others' wishes to bring in the legacy planes, I bought this new sim for the new functionality. The detail included in the default aircraft makes what was in the box with FS9 look like Lego projects. I'm completely spoiled now.

[K5083]

Keith,

Thank you for that. I tried that on a couple of legacy planes, and it does seem to work. It's good to know that the fix is that simple.

Legacy planes from FSX/P3D fill important gaps in many of our hangars, and quite a few of them are superior in appearance and detail to most payware MSFS products - at least so far. So, some of us are going to ride the legacy bus for a while yet.

August

[Snurdley]

Ditto on the thanks Keith! Didn't think this was really a poll on the merits of porting, but more of a request for help. Like August, I too am enjoying the porting process for some of the better aircraft. They may not fly perfectly, but what does in this sim? How long before we get a native SBD or TBM? I have them now. They really do look better than ever with the new shaders, and am in agreement that some are superior to what's been offered so far. Some, not all. But am very glad to see this new fix. It will keep us going until the next update. LOL.

[Priller]

Well said John! While I respect others' wishes to bring in the legacy planes, I bought this new sim for the new functionality. The detail included in the default aircraft makes what was in the box with FS9 look like Lego projects. I'm completely spoiled now.

I concur with Tom and John. When the sim just came out, I did/flew a couple of ports, but in the meantime, I've deleted them all. I have P3Dv5 on my rig as well, but hardly fly that one as every flight is a disappointment. Legacy sims just seem cartoonish now.

Cheers,

Priller

[K5083]

Everyone gets something different out of the sim, and I have no problem with people who have no use for port-overs. I actually thought, when I bought this game for myself last Xmas, that by this time, I would be able to abandon port-overs also, as there would be a representative set of good, made-for-MSFS planes that I could stick to.

Kind of like the demise of COVID, that didn't exactly happen as I expected.

For example, right now there are just three WWII fighters available as payware for MSFS. Two of them are just port-overs by the original devs. They are okay, but not much better than an amateur port-over of the same type. The third is best not spoken of. I have about 20 WWII fighters ported over to MSFS that are better than any current payware, with my tweaks to the flight model. With a lot of great skins, some of them my own. If I'm in a warbird mood, one of those is what I'll fly. And that's not to mention the golden age antiques, WWI types, etc.

So I'm glad the solution to making port-overs work after SU5 got aired in this thread and is available to future viewers. I feel like it'll be valued by some. Since I'm not on discord, I definitely appreciated having the fix re-posted here.

August

[keithb77]

thanks Keith!

My pleasure
Glad it works (can't try it myself as 2 out of my 3 PCs won't run MCX and the one that would currently won't boot).
So I will stick to the DC-6 and Stearman and Bell-47, but I would like to get the Catalina, Liberator and Halifax working again, sitting inside these planes in VR is just something amazing, to which all the modern glass-screened piffle just don't compare...

[Bookman1960]

I am out of touch with new things I guess, I am unable to access that link.

How does one access Discord links like that please?

KevinB

I'm only flying the DC6 right now so not too worried about my old legacy imports, but that might change.
There are very few of the available MSFS planes that float my ageing boat...

From the MSFS SDK Discord
"go into MCX ,import the interior mdl, go to the hierarchy editor, each model part has a "mouse rectangle" setting, change it to none, and re-export the mdl"
https://discord.com/channels/7465178...31930212581479

[keithb77]

You probably need to be accepted onto the channel? Try searching for the MSFS SDK server and request access?

[Bookman1960]

Thank you. Will do that.

[Snurdley]

My pleasure
Glad it works (can't try it myself as 2 out of my 3 PCs won't run MCX and the one that would currently won't boot).
So I will stick to the DC-6 and Stearman and Bell-47, but I would like to get the Catalina, Liberator and Halifax working again, sitting inside these planes in VR is just something amazing, to which all the modern glass-screened piffle just don't compare...

I can say that the Catalina ports very well, except of course no clicky stuff in the cockpit. The glass needs a little work (think I darkened the alpha) but otherwise is great. Make sure to fly it with the legacy flight model. Anything by Flight Replicas and Vertigo does well too.

[keithb77]

Yes, I had them all working previously
But even with using MCX to remove clickspots for SU5 apparently imports will no longer work in VR, even with the old single MDL trick.
So no point

[Bookman1960]

Keith,Your comment "...old single MDL trick...." intrigues me. Is it then possible to import a model w/o a virtual cockpit mdl as well? If so, could you explain or send to me to helpful source of details?Thank youKB

Yes, I had them all working previously But even with using MCX to remove clickspots for SU5 apparently imports will no longer work in VR, even with the old single MDL trick.So no point

[keithb77]

Keith,Your comment "...old single MDL trick...." intrigues me. Is it then possible to import a model w/o a virtual cockpit mdl as well? If so, could you explain or send to me to helpful source of details?Thank youKB

What you did pre-SU5 for VR was to use the VC MDL as the normal, so just a single line in the model.cfg.
The aircraft usually had lots missing if you used an external view, but the whole point of VR is 'being there', not floating around outside...

I think this is the opposite of what you were hoping for?
---
Anyone using MCX to get rid of all the mouse rectangles - apparently you don't need to tediously find and remove every one, just shift-select the whole thing in hierarchy editor and clear all rectangles in one go

[K5083]

Yes, that is true about the select-all trick. I figured it out pretty quickly and each plane takes only a few seconds to fix now.

When you select all parts, the mouse rectangle value in the right-hand panel will already show "none", which will make you think that all of them are already set to "none," but that is a lie. Select "none" from the drop down even though it's already there, and let it change them all. Then export.

August

[StormILM]

I see the FBW Airbus A320 NEO was rendered useless by the update. Neither the Stable or Development versions will run, they CTD on loadup. I hate that as that was my go-to tubeliner. Haven't read any news on it post update. I am thinking it's full of XML coding and remember reading Asobo was going to phase out XML.

[Dangerous Beans]

Oh wow, I totally missed the select all trick, I've been doing them the long and tedious way all this time

Not that it matters anymore. I've temporarily removed all my portovers until/if someone figures out a way to get them working in VR again.