Aircraft development - TMD file help needed

  • Hello,

    I have copied the pilot section from another aircraft to my TMD file for the aircraft I am building.

    I managed to place correctly the pilot's body and head but I have problems to place the arms and legs.

    I moved the position by changing the RO values but how do I calculate the XO, YO and ZO values to keep a correct proprtion ?

    I'm lost, please some help.

    Best, Sylvain

  • Thank you Jan,

    So far I have managed to move her inside the aircraft by tweaking the RO positions. At first attempt her legs were hanging in the air and her elbow was poking through the door.

    I have disabled the pilot in the cockpit views. Anyway, it always scared me a little to see the pilot from the right seat.

    Best, Sylvain

  • legs were hanging in the air and her elbow was poking through the door ?????

    Not sure what you had planned =O, was it legal ^^

    My guess is you will need Max to make any mods without a lot of trial and error as moving one axis will move all the others in the chain to places you will not expect, hence, some questionable poses

    Steve

  • My guess is you will need Max to make any mods without a lot of trial and error as moving one axis will move all the others in the chain to places you will not expect, hence, some questionable poses

    Steve

    Yes, you need the biped to pose it in Max. Then you export it and you will find all you need in the tm.log. The whole package goes into the second part in the TMD. Then you have still to say what the hands and feet should do. That's all.

    Theoretically it's possible to "pose" it in the TMD, practically I would say it's impossible. That's why I created for the Bücker my own pilot.

    Kai

  • No 3DS max here. Not affordable for freeware.

    I use Sketchup for my aircraft model. Exported as .dae and then imported in AC3D for some extra placement and resizing work before exporting as .tgi.

    I did not model the pilot. It's the default AFS2 pilot_pamela I copied from the C172.

    She is almost in place now and acceptable from the outside view. In cockpit view her arms are 2 meters long =O. That's why I disabled her in the cockpit view.

    Best, Sylvain

  • Hello,

    I have display problem with my aircraft.

    I re-use the DR400 GPS and radio/transponder. I copied all the code from the dr400.tmd and I have the 3 display objects in my model.

    The problem is: they remain definitely gray; no map displayed, no frequencies, nothing.

    I suspect AC3D to be the cause: I could not find a way to setup the light map in the material settings.

    All other materials are exported (illumination, self_illumination...) but the TGI exporter keeps reporting "display_color is not used in any geometry".

    Any help would be greately appreciated.

    Best, Sylvain

  • Sylvain, did you ensure you grabbed all the code. I always forget about the bit below.

  • All the code is there.

    I also suspect I have a problem with my panel lightning and instruments lightning. I believe those are linked to the renderToTexture function and none of them works.

    Maybe Jan Jet-Pack (IPACS) pack could have a look at this? I'm ready to provide a development version if you want to try it.

    Best, Sylvain

    • Official Post

    First you need to make sure you are rendering to the correct texture, so if your display is actually giving off light light an monitor screen or CRT then you should use the lightmap. But if you just have a back-lit LCD then you should render to the color map. The Cessna LCD clocks or the ASG29 display are rendered to the color map for example.

    Main difference here:

    - At night an LCD blocks the background light, the text itself stays dark.

    - Stuff rendered to the light map however can glow in the dark (like the cessna radio stack).

    Key is: you need to provide a valid InputLuminance to your display objects so that they glow enough to be able to see the text. This might be missing in your code. The light input has to be provided to the Geometry itself, not the render list.

    Secondly you should do a "light-test", set the texture_animation property "ClearColor" to sth like 1.0 0.0 0.0 - pure red. If your objects don't appear red you are either rendering to the wrong texture or the texture isn't actually assigned.

    And last but not least it helps to have a 1x1 meter square or cube for testing, where you assign the exact same texture and scale the UV to fix exactly on the front side. Then you can see if you're rendering at all and weather you're just rendering to the wrong position on the texture.

  • May I hijack it and say thank you Sylvain for asking and Jan for answering?

    I lost the whole day with trying to get the clock on the yoke lightning up at night. Without success. At last I gave up and browsed the forum to come down. ..and found the answer. What a nice coincidence :)

    Kai

  • The one called display_source_light?

    And the code is

    I used the same textures as the DR400, the radios and GPS are the same, so I did not change any TargetPosition or TargetSize

    Best, Sylvain

  • Commented out, no change.

    I have this in the dynamics section

    And this in the Graphics section

    All the code is the same as the DR400

    Best, Sylvain

  • Hi Sylvain

    First off and I may be wrong, in fact I'm often wrong with this TMD stuff as I'm a learner myself.

    Do you have an electrical system in your TMD ? Your RadioPanel1OnOutput needs a voltage from the MainBus. Your frequency displays use RadioPanel1On.Output to enable their displays, so no volts no display

    Remember FS2 simulates pretty much everything so its more involved and you quite often need to go deeper than you first thought

    Steve