As some of you may know Microsoft have brought out a new flight simulator. There is a business opportunity for anyone who can design a programme to create models straight from Sketchup to place into the flight simulator. There are very many people out there evem now only three weeks after launch that would pay good money for a programme. Plus many more people I think would use Sketchup in preference to blender. There is a conversion available for blender but it’s messy to use and personally I much prefer to use Sketchup to create models, but if you have never used blender it is a much steeper learning curve than sketchup.
If anyone wants to contact me my e-mail is neil.birch@ntlworld.com
What has changed in the new version? I don’t know anything about the application but I know from these forums that in previous versions people have been successful in converting SketchUp models fore use in it.
I have used Sketchup to design my models in the past and want to continue to do so (which I find much easier to use than say Gmax or Blender), I then exported them as .dae files, then imported them into a program call Model Convertor by written by a man called Arno on the website FSDeveloper. Which then converted all the textures to a power of 4 and .dds finally converting the .dae into a .mdl file which is recognised by Microsoft FSX (the earlier version) using instant scenery (a placement tool by Flight1) you added the models to a bgl library and the finished model can be placed using other programs . MSFS2020 itsled has a great inbuilt placement tool (very similar to uses as Instant Scenery) which allows you to place your models in your scenery and does so remarkably well. 2020 has a totally different folder structure to FSX , the folder structure for a created model is- (roughly) model name folder inside of which is a scenery folder and 3 .json files inside the scenery folder are 2 more folders \Global\Scenery\ the .bgl file and the Texture folder. In the World Folder we have the relevant .bgl’s. Sounds complicated but anyone in the know it would be remarkably easy and could make a good marketable product which people would fall over themselves to purchase. All someone needs to do is create the models MSFS2020 does the rest. Neil
I think it will be a tough sell as you can (with less than one hours practice) just open the SketchUp file in Blender (which is free) and export using the add on to glTF2.0.
Since this method is free and easy to learn, it may be difficult to create a paid for SketchUp plugin with a viable market, but of course it should be possible for one of the plugin makers very easily 
Okay thanks for the reply anyway. Neil
Things are developing quite slowly on the design front The blender way is very time consuming and I still think there would be a market for a quicker way.
I’ve only done a few minutes worth of looking into this, but from what I can tell all of the assets in MSFS are glTF 2.0 files, with custom schemas. I wonder what happens if you export a .glb from SketchUp and try it without the customer schemas?
If that doesn’t quite work, what if you open the .glb in Microsoft Paint 3D, do any changes you want to the textures, and save that as a new .glb?
I tried those steps, and what comes back into SketchUp look correct, but is strange in someways. For example, it has no edges, and selecting one face of a box selects all faces.
But, that might not matter to MSFS. I might try to get the SDK going so I can try for myself, though I’m not sure how well it will work in Parallels, or even Bootcamp!
Oh, btw, I used this extension to export .glb:
https://extensions.sketchup.com/extension/052071e5-6c19-4f02-a7e8-fcfcc28a2fd8/gl-tf-export
Hi Colin, I’m sure someone like you can work it out, after all someone did it for X Plane. It’s all a matter of understanding how the SDK works. In a nutshell all (I say all!) you have to export the .skp file or a file it recognises better into the bgl compiler of the SDK and export it into a scenery object. Sounds simple doesn’t it? But I’m sure it ain’t that easy. MSMF2020 is growing at an enormous rate as I predicted when I was using the Beta way back, so I’m sure there would be a market for it and Sketchup is a ■■■■ sight easier to use the Blender.
thanks. Neil
I wasn’t thinking about export whole SketchUp models as scenes, though that would be interesting. But to just export assets, they need .glb files, and I can make those directly from SketchUp, or via Paint 3D in the hope of getting the schemas right.
First challenge will be getting the simulator working in Bootcamp.
Has anybody figured out a way to use Sketchup for modifying liveries for MSFS 2020 while minimizing the number of file conversions to and from? Thanks.