Posts by Jet-Pack (IPACS)

    Hi, so Steve got a little further with the 3D model and I just finished setting up the most basic things of the aircraft: rigidbodies, joints, aerodynamics, added a jet-engine, some sound, got the gear retraction working and made the first few landings. Obviously the aircraft is not finished yet but it made good progress today. And yes it does fly Mach 2 in Aerofly :D Faster than anything before it.

    OK, there is a switch labeled A/THR which illuminates a green light next to it when it's in the up position. Do you see that switch and is that light on?
    When the switch is up the autothrottle is at least armed and could engage but you have to push the speed button for that. Then the speed button will be illuminated, too and the autothrottle should then work correctly.

    When you change the vertical mode of the autopilot, e.g. by pressing "FLC" or "FMS" the autothrottle will no longer maintain speed, it will just give full thrust and expects you or the autopilot to pitch up to maintain the speed. To avoid this always use the vertical speed function, press the "VS" button and select a vertical speed to force the autothrottle into speed mode. You can also press the altitude button to maintain the altitude, then the autothrottle will also go to the speed mode and the green light on the speed button will illuminate.

    Maybe you can show me a screenshot if this didn't already solve the issue?

    Hi, well that was easy... remove that second line <[telemetry][Telemetry][] it doesn't belong there. The rest of the file got currupted by this

    (just) wrong:

    Code
                <[telemetry][Telemetry][]
                    <[telemetry][Telemetry][]
                    <[string8][Body][Fuselage]>
                >

    corrected:

    Code
                <[telemetry][Telemetry][]
                    <[string8][Body][Fuselage]>
                >

    To be honest, it doesn't tell me anything. Could someone please bring a bit light into it?

    Does you're 3D model even contain a "Fuselage", "LeftWing" and "RightWing" object? If not then you should use the names of your 3D model parts instead in the geometry list.

    Any geometry list is always looking inside your 3D model and if it doesn't find the part in your model it writes an error.

    Can you attach the tm.log from the exporter and the tm.log from the converter for me please? (Save them somewhere else after exporting)

    The rigidbodies in Aerofly are box-shaped with a mass and a certain dimension, the InertiaLength. That length is used to calculate the inertia of the rigidbody. The higher the values the more torque required to rotate the object (principle of angular momentum).

    We use a solid cuboid to easily modify the inertia around the each of the three main axes of inertia:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_moments_of_inertia

    We get these values either from bounding box dimensions from the modelling tools or by estimation. The precise value is not that important, I wouldn't be able to tell a difference in behavior even if its 5% increased or decreased.

    For a landing gear: just estimate the physical size (e.g. 0.4m long, 1.1m wide and only 0.2m thick... that would give you: 0.4 1.1 0.2

    Make sure all values are positive though... I see you set a negative value (or found one, where??? :D) that would be like dealing with negative masses.

    Note: the inertia length represents the dimensions of the object in the local coordinate system. So if you rotate the rigidbody with the B0 matrix the inertia axes rotate with it, so you need to work out at which angle the gear is attached to the fuselage, say 30 degrees, then just plug that into my handy rotation matrix generator: https://www.aerofly-sim.de/download/downl…atrix-generator

    and out you get the B0 matrix for your gear: (I hand drew it in)


    I can offer to set up the landing gear for you. That is the most tricky thing you need to do in Aerofly.

    If you send me your converted aircraft files (your starfighter aircraft folder) together with the tgi.txt file (needs to be enabled in the plugin before exporting I think...) then I can view your aircraft in my editor and set up all the annoying physic objects.

    We know that it is a bit overwhelming to set this up without any help and we don't want the user projects to fail just because of this, so we're here to help you with your first aircraft(s).

    Der Autopilot sollte den Flieger permanent austrimmen, ja. Aber er trimmt normalerweise nur Höhenruder, nicht Quer- oder Seitenruder. Er kann sogar das Seitenruder überhaupt nicht ansteuern, wie in der echten Maschine.

    Wie stellen sich denn die Ruder, wenn du den AP deaktivierst? Sieht man die Ruder oder das Steuerhorn sich sofort bewegen wenn der autopilot raus geht?

    Sind vielleicht die Querruder noch von einem anderen Gerät belegt?
    Einfach mal den thrustmaster abstecken und dann schauen, ob zb. die pedale zufällig noch querruder mit steuern. Dann die pedale abziehen und schauen, ob der stick vielleicht seitenruder mit steuert? Ggf. diese Zuordnungen löschen....

    Auch sicherstellen, dass nicht dieselben tasten fürs umsehen und für die querruder/seitenruder trimmung benutzt werden!

    Hi Steve,

    yes you need a copy of the tmd and tmc files in the intermediate directory, together with the exported model in form of a tgi file and all of the textures as bitmaps. On that folder you can launch the converter which will copy the tmd, tmc over to the aircraft directory, convert all textures, 3d model and sounds.

    The tmd that you have in the intermediate folder has to be a tmd that could be loaded by aerofly, at least for the preview image rendering.

    DId you find the aircraft tutorial in the wiki and does the converter work for that aircraft? That would be a good check if your tools are installed correctly, the rest is probably just caused by some mistakes in your tmd file and not actually an issue of installation. Do you have skype? Write my a PM if you do, I'd like to explain the tmd in a screen-sharing session, maybe together we can find the mistake(s).

    Maybe you could upload your tmd file here (or via pm) and I'll go over it, maybe I can find an error.


    [off topic]

    nickhod Please don't spend too much time with trying to make aircraft tools, I already have a decent aircraft editor which works in 3D and has become totally OP in the last couple of months. This tool is not yet available to the public, there are things I need to iron out... needs an undo/redo function for example.

    It can load a tgi.txt file (from the exporter) to show the geometry, select parts and extract pivots from the export or manually pick vertices, It shows the physics geometry (e.g. wing and fuselage, position of masses, etc.), and it has a very handy debugger, instant refresh when a file is saved externally, functions like move, rotate, mirror or physics objects and control clickspots (with multi-select) and a lot more. And last but not least: it preserves the comments and indentation when you edit the file and then save it.

    This is the perfect tool to assist in making an aircraft or will be when I eventually get to publish it. Personally for editing the files I use Visual Studio 17. Its text editor is pretty good, allows multi-row block edit and offers other useful tools and allows me to split the text editor view into pretty much any configuration I can think of (left/right, all four corners, 3 columns, 4 columns, top/bottom,...)

    There are so many great add ons for x-plane and the mfs based sims, would be a shame to miss out on those. I think it shouldn't be "I only use this simulator", each simulator has its strengths and weaknesses and the more simulators you own the better you fill in the gaps and eventually if you can say I can land a Cessna in each of the simulators in each wind condition I think you are better prepared for the real world than if you had been using only one. We're all in here for the hobby (as Jeff said) and to become better pilots.