Guille592, on 09 April 2017 - 03:26 AM, said:
Someone said that you could make high detailed trains in the actual .S format, which is true, but then you have to separate the train in at least, 2 .S files if you're going through Gmax... So if ORTS would work with a new format + support the .S file for users creating with old tools, is here when I ask for a export plugin from 3DsMax and to ORTS.
Plus unfortunately, with the .S file format you can do reverse engineering, and sadly in the Spanish community, we've had other communities doing this and publishing content not fully developed by them as if they were the original authors, so yeah...
There are good reasons to extend or replace the .S file. For example, its data storage format is not all that DirectX friendly - most data has to be heavily processed before handoff to the GPU. And some aspects of its architecture inhibit efficient instancing within a model. For example every freight car has mesh data duplicated four times to represent the wheels, when really of course there should only be one copy instanced across the four wheel locations. And there are others. But the .s file is not all that easily replaced, few other 'common' open formats do a better job while still supporting essential features like LODs and Animation.
However even if we switch to a new format, your objectives are not likely to be met. We have already discussed the issues with supporting an expensive, closed commercial program like 3DsMax. The most you might hope for is that someone builds an importer for something 3DsMax can generate, Collada for example, to convert to something OR can read - .S or its future replacement.
And your second objective of securing your work from theft is technically impossible to accomplish with an open format and open source software. Open Rails has to have the decryption key. And if OR has the key, so does everyone else.