Knowledge Base
Using the OpenFlight Plugin
- Details
- Category: User Guides
- Published: 30 August 2012
- Written by Paul Martz
- Hits: 27136
The OpenFlight format is an defacto industry standard format in the visual simulation industry, developed by Multigen Paradigm Inc. (MPI)
and currently maintained by Presagis. The OpenFlight file format specification is available for download.
The OSG OpenFlight plugin exists as a library named osgdb_openflight.<ext>, and it supports iimporting and exporting files with the .flt extension. As with any OSG plugin, documentation is available from the command line using osgconv as follows:
osgconv --format flt
Import Option Strings
| billboardCenter | Set billboard rotation point to center of face. |
| dofAnimation | Enable animation on DOF nodes. |
| readObjectRecordData | Read object records and store as osgSim::ObjectRecordData. |
| Texture: | |
| clampToEdge | Use texture wrap mode CLAMP_TO_EDGE where CLAMP is specified. |
| noTextureAlphaForTransparancyBinning | Do not enable alpha blending based on image translucency. |
| Structure: | |
| preserveFace | Preserve Face information like name and comment by translating each face record into an osg::Geode. |
| preserveObject | Preserve Object information. |
| Externals: | |
| keepExternalReferences | Externals will be left as ProxyNodes. |
| cloneExternalReferences | Externals are cloned. |
| Units conversion: | |
| convertToFeet | Convert units to feet. |
| convertToInches | Convert units to inches. |
| convertToMeters | Convert units to meters. |
| convertToKilometers | Convert units to kilometers. |
| convertToNauticalMiles | Convert units to miles. |
| noUnitsConversion | Disable units conversion. |
Export Option Strings
| version=<ver> | Specifies the version of the output FLT file. Supported values include 15.7, 15.8, and 16.1. Default is 16.1. Example: "version=15.8". |
| units=<units> | Specifies the contents of the \c Units field of the FLT header record. Valid values include INCHES, FEET, METERS, KILOMETERS, and NATICAL_MILES. Default is METERS. Example: "units=METERS". |
| validate | If present in the Options string, the plugin does not write a FLT file. Instead, it returns an indication of the scene graph's suitability for FLT export. |
| tempDir=<path> | Specifies the directory to use for creation of temporary files. If not specified, the directory is taken from the file name. If the file doesn't contain a path, the current working directory is used. Applications should set this to the name of their app-specific temp directory. If the path contains spaces, use double quotes to ensure correct parsing. Examples: "tempDir=/tmp"; "tempDir=\"C:\\My Temp Dir\"". |
| lighting=<value> | Specifies a default enable/disable state for lighting. By default, the exporter assumes lighting is enabled (GL_LIGHTING ON). Set this to either ON or OFF. Example: "lighting=OFF". |
| stripTextureFilePath | If present in the Options string, the exporter strips the path from texture file names, and writes only the texure file name to the FLT Texture Palette. By default, the exporter doesn't strip the path, and the name written to the Texture Palette is taken directly from the osg::Image object referenced by the osg::Texture2D StateAttribute. |
If you encounter any issues with the exporter, please post to osg-users and include the following info:
- .osg file for scene graph you are exporting
- OSG_NOTIFY_LEVEL=INFO output
- If a crash, include a stack trace
A regression test suite is available to test FLT export in OSG. Please checkout and run it to verify your build. Contributions to the test suite are welcome, please see the top-level readme.txt for contact information.
MultiGen, OpenFlight, and Flight Format are registered trademarks of MultiGen Inc.