I've been working on a flash project for a UK charity for the last few days, and one of the more random issues that the flash files have thrown up is being unable to load Papervision 3D resource files.

If your flash applications have issues loading .dae files, or you are seeing "HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found" error messages then this blog entry is for you.

The problem with loading .dae files is that IIS web server does not understand the file Mime type for the .dae extension.

There are two potential fixes for this issue. The first is to add the .dae file type to your server Mime types extension list.

To define a MIME type for a specific extension (.dae in this case), follow these steps:

• Open the IIS Microsoft Management Console (MMC), right-click the local computer name, and then click Properties.
• Click MIME Types.
• Click New.
• In the Extension box, type the file name extension that you want (in your case .dae).
• In the MIME Type box, type application/octet-stream.
• Apply the new settings.

Note: you must restart the World Wide Web Publishing Service for the changes to take effect.

The second and potentially much easier fix is to just rename your files from .dae to .xml files. Everything will still work as the .dae content is just XML anyway, and your server already understands the xml Mime type.