Looking for John Stinstrom

[falcon409]

Does anyone have a good email addy for John? I'm converting one of his Air Bases to FSX and want to contact him about that and I have a few questions to run by him.

Thanks

[MrZippy]

These not working?

johnstinstrom@aceweb.com

John.stinstrom2013@verizon.net

[falcon409]

These not working?

johnstinstrom@aceweb.com

John.stinstrom2013@verizon.net

The verizon dot net is the one I had and that immediately came back undeliverable. I'll give the other one a try, thanks!

[falcon409]

Nope the aceweb addy get's kicked back as well.

[Deathwind]

Look for a Facebook account or other social media sites. We don’t live in the days we had to holler from one mountain to the next now you can talk to Japanese women in Tokyo while your in Alaska. Ain’t dat something pilgrims.

[falcon409]

Nothing in FB nor FSDeveloper, as a matter of fact he hasn't been on FSDev since 2008. When I converted his Randolph AFB scenery several years ago I had some conversations with him then but I can't find any record of it in my past emails.

I'm just going to shelve it for now. He does his military sceneries as object "groups" which doesn't always match up when I add a photoreal ground texture and since each group might have as many as 6-10 buildings there's no way to adjust each one to make it work.

[ian elliot]

I dont know if your handy with ModelconverterX, but you can open up the scenery Bgl where the multiple objects reside, and save as individual scenery objects. you can then use individual objects or make up your own library. This doesn't solve your original problem as you'd need his permission for a general release,but doable for personal use.

John contributed a lot to MAIW project's so maybe try over there, i was in contact with him myself many years back, he seemed a very helpful guy, but i think he retired from the sim world

[falcon409]

I don't know if your handy with ModelconverterX, but you can open up the scenery Bgl where the multiple objects reside, and save as individual scenery objects. you can then use individual objects or make up your own library. This doesn't solve your original problem as you'd need his permission for a general release, but doable for personal use.

That's exactly what I was hoping to be able to do. I just wasn't sure how to break the groups apart to be able to save them as individual (each building in a 6 building set) objects

John contributed a lot to MAIW project's so maybe try over there, I was in contact with him myself many years back, he seemed a very helpful guy, but i think he retired from the sim world

Yes, when I asked him about converting his Randolph scenery he was very receptive to helping in any way he could.

[falcon409]

As I kinda expected, there is no way to separate the groups of buildings into individual objects. That according to Arno. So unless I can get with John I'm going to pass on this scenery.

[Jorge]

Not sure if this helps, but this is how I would do it:

1. Load into MCX.
2. Export "clump" to something that can be read by your 3D program. If GMAX, then 3DS. Not sure about what can get imported into Sketchup. In 3DS format, however, the textures are kept and the mapping is preserved.
-- I'm proceding as if you were using GMAX since this is a mix of Allen's tutorial and Milton Schuppe's (sp?) videos. I'm guessing Sketchup is similar, but the wording may be different for the procedures I'm describing.
3. Load the 3DS object into your design program. You should have the entire "scene" with all the buildings showing.
4. Select the building you want. I'm guessing it's the planars/polygons which then have to be selected then "separated" into another object. Name it what you would like.
5. Delete the other, larger "clump" object so that all you have left is the building you just created with the "separated" polys.
6. Center axis to the new object, then lower to the "ground" level (ususally '0').
7. Exit the axis edit mode then change the X,Y,Z to '0,0,0' so that the object is now at the center/origin of the program. Rotate to match the different "scene" or "world" axis if needed as well at this point.
-- NOTE: The textures should still be mapped as they should be.
8. Export as "mdl" to a working folder. FSX doesn't care since I believe it's just one type of mdl with it, but in FS9 it's either scenery or aircraft. If for FS9, make sure you have the correct version (scenery).
9. Repeat with all the buildings/objects in the "clump" you wish to break up, remembering to center the axis and then center the object to the origin before saving as another "project" file then exporting to "mdl" format.
10. Once done, use Arno's Library Creator to load all the mdl's and make a library for the project. You can also make a "txt" file with all the mdl names using this neat program so you're not searching to see what building is what GUID.
11. You can then use the library to place the objects wherever it is you would like with IS3, EZScenery, etc. You can even use direct XML placing if using the SDK stuff with "bglcomp.exe" as a "drag-and-drop" or bat file.

I haven't had a chance to try this method of MCX-Design Program all the way through, but it seems like that method should work in theory based on Allen's tutorial for aircraft and some of the tutorials I've seen online (like Milton's) for working with GMAX (or any other program, I would think).

Per Allen's tutorial, you just remove or delete what you don't need from a scene. In the aircraft's version, you're working on a TBD from CFS2. When done, you then merge things back together after you work on them.

There's no reason why something similar couldn't be used for scenery creation, but with the obvious changes I mentioned above.

Just a guess, though.

Oh, and it just may take some time, too.

Regards,

Jorge
Miami, FL

PS: Are there any other e-mails or communication methods you know of other than MAIW? Maybe Jon retired from FS?

[falcon409]

Thanks Jorge, That sounded promising except that I have only Sketchup. I am hoping to someday learn enough of Blender to do something creative however that's a long way off. Of course I can export out of MCX for any 3D program I wish but in this case the Object Library I'm wanting to break up into individual objects contains approx. 10 different "clumps" of buildings, each clump is made up of as many as 7 buildings, so the library bgl actually contains at least 70 to 80 individual objects.

This is the reason for trying to contact John, basically in the hopes that somewhere he might have those buildings saved as separate objects before he put the scenery "clumps" together. Honestly though his scenery as it was was terrific, I simply wanted to add a photoreal background to update it. It has turned out to be more than I cared to get into, so I think I'll just stay with his original.

[SgtT]

I was looking on Flight Sim.com and somebody else was trying to contact him back in 2016 with no luck.

Rob

[p14u2nv]

I believe I saw the same post too SgtT