Well, I've been fooling around with this for, well, years by now, so I guess I'm going to ask you to help me out directly, for I guess I'm out of luck.

I've been looking for a way to get planetary surfaces into FL in an actually working manner. Visibility problems can mostly be solved by adjusting some values in the EXE, but I've mostly been out of luck with the surface file. I've been looking for a somewhat reliable automation for planetary surface creation, so it might not be 100% form fitting, but getting it to work would be a good start.

If any of you can get this working for me, and tell me how they did it, I guess I'd owe you all a cake or two.

And just so that I'll give something in return as well:
An excellent toy to play with - Hierarchical Approximate Convex Decomposition.
https://code.google.com/p/hacd/
Go to source and do an svn checkout on the address provided (using for example TortoiseSVN). You will get a working application.

Well, here is the topic of my years-long despair:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34513151/Terr.zip
Any help appreciated

Thanks for the info, I'll search the forums and see if I can find it.

Also, I've been making a test run - as it usually happens with sur files, I got unlucky in the end. Here's what happened:

I have a complex 3d model (about 70 separate groups in MilkShape). I thought it'd be a good testing model.

1)
Exported as single-component 3db
Ran ConvexTool, done everything according to the tutorial, except that I named every object "Root"
Exported as OBJ, ran OBJ-SUR converter
Checked the 3db option (assign to None), checked Static for every group
Sur file created.
Test: Everything is fine, except absolutely no collission detection.

2)
Exported model as CMP, added HpMount manually using HardCMP (without HpMount, the model won't appear in-game)
Re-built SUR file, this time without the 3db switch. All objects are assigned to Root and all are Static.
Sur file created.
Test: I do get collission detection on -most- parts, but not all of them. In HardCMP, every sur part shows nicely.

What could it be? The mesh contains some identical parts (cylinders), and on most of them, collission detection works fine, but on others, it just won't. Could it be ConvexTool making an error somewhere?

I do admit this is a complex model, but I wanted to see if it's worth toying around with odd models for scenery. Note that I don't want docking, animation, only a complex scenery object with collission detection.

Akkor még a Type-ot fusd át, hogy az is megegyezik-e. (Asszem Type-nak hívták).
Ott ellenőrizd le, hogy milyen módon van kezelve az üveg. Egy normális áttetsző textúra DcDtOcOt-t kell, hogy kapjon, de mivel az üveg nem textúrázott, csak egy szín és egy átlátszóság, ha jól emlékszem, DcOc volt a Type-ja, de ezt ellenőrizd az eredetiből.

Ha jól emlékszem, bár ezzel a részterületével az FL-nek nem foglalkoztam, a kurzor maga egy 3D-s modell, amit te látsz, az a textúra, ami rákerül (és végső soron csak a színét, nem a formáját adja).
Gondolom én: a "hagyományos kurzor" egy világoskék részletet kap, annak saját modellje van. A "célzó" kapja a piros részt vagy a zöld részletet, a fekete-fehér alpha channellel (sztem az a kurzor csak egy sima négyzet-modellre vetített alphás textúra, azt közvetlenül is tudod itt módosítani).

Ezen a ponton viszont tévedhetek, mert ezzel a résszel kivételesen tényleg nem foglalkoztam.

Nézőpont kérdése, a DDS-nek is megvannak a maga korlátai. Persze, textúrázásra nagyon jó formátum - hiszen arra találták ki.

Hooray
I believe many people have been enlightened by your post, even those that don't really give much feedback, like me. Thanks for the update!

That's odd. Legal issues?