Posts by Spit40

Quote from perestain

Yea, I agree, I felt the same. I put it on the list.

This looks pretty interesting. TBH I have no idea how hard it is to do it in java. But I'll give it a try for sure when I make a new upgrade, this would be a cool QoL addition. I hope there is no coypright or other problem to alter original FS2 files. So far I found it nice to not interfere at all. But preparing the weather manually gets boring rather quick.

Regarding the autosave, I made it only after flights and not all the time to have a better safety net of old files incase the current game gets somehow corrupted. But autosaving after writing in the journal is probably not a problem, because it doesn't happen automatically all the time. I added it to my list.

You're right, Wangen-Lachen airport is not in FS2. Ooops, my bad.

I initially took all the Switzerland airports from the list in this thread, thats also when the whole project started:

Switzerland DLC - Airport ID - Sorted by City Name

I found out a lot later that it isn't 100% the same airports as the Switzerland DLC and corrected a few, but I guess I have overlooked Wangen-Lachen, probably because by then it already sounded really familiar after all the testing. I'll take it out of the game in the next update, so this doesn't happen to other people. An easy workaround would be to just take a bus to another airport until then.

I wasn't really aware about the existence of fscloudport when I started. Maybe there should be a way for people to freely add their own airports at some point. The mission generator should be robust enough to handle it. The scorekeeping would need some overhaul though.

I can't explain why your location suddenly changed to KSEZ though. It must be a coincidence that of all airports it happened with the one that is not in FS2. Nevertheless a location change like this shouldn't happen at all, except when the airport database changes. It might be a bug though. Are you sure you have loaded the right savegame?

BTW the online web or multiplayer port is not gonna happen, I'm afraid. I have no clue about that stuff and rather little motivation to learn it from scratch. I have had enough with java for now, I guess :). The other problem is that it is extremely easy to cheat scores. In terms of validity, a forum thread where people just post their score would probably archieve the same thing. To make a actual meaningful ranking of it it would require lots of work and probably a completely different approach. And i must admit I even like it a little bit that it is offline and single player. It somewhat feels like playing in the 80s. When computer games were for lonely nerds and maybe their friends who came over, and nobody else knew about it.

Display More

Hi. Great response thanks. Updating main.mcf is no big deal. It gets modified every time FS2 is launched. Sometimes IAPCS tell us things tbat can be modified in it to tweak stuff, like audio volume. The main thing i'd suggest is to auto generate a backup, give a warning or have people tick once if they are happy to write to it due to the possibility of corrupting something. I'm fairly sure the worst case corruption scenario though is that you then need to delete main.mcf and FS2 will auto gen a new one and you then have to redo some settings like graphics quality config.

Regarding autosave, how about you treat auto save like the other slots 1,2,3 ? Call it slot 0 allow it to be loaded and saved manually but also it autosaves everything on closedown. Another thought is to put all those autosave files in a subfolder. My desktop is getting busy.

One thing that's going great with PJ for me is that i've started preparing simple flight plans in TXT files to go with each journey and storing these with the PJ files. I convert the TXT to PDF then use a lightweight PDF viewer to open them in a window and pin them into VR using the new Oculus Rift home features. I just store basics like

- VOR frequencies and headings

- flight level

- runway to land on

- expected journey time

Regarding the sudden switch to KSEZ that's no mystery/bug. Wangen was the airport offered on my very first launch of PJ. I close the app and reopen. No flight taken so no autosaves and it randomly picks a new one to start from.

Quote from Jet-Pack

No it can't be edited from the outside since it has to do with which parts of the sim are loaded. Not all world wide nav aids are loaded at once which would decrease performance.

So the station might just not be loaded at all at 60NM distance, so we would need to change this first and then make sure it is not affecting the performance when the range of loaded nav-aids is higher. This is also affected by the square of the range increase, so twice the distance means 4x as much area and potentially 4x as many stations that need to be simulated.

Should we work on the basis that any VOR more than around 50nm away will not register whatever the terrain? I also like to do my own navigation and I just encountered this problem midflight. There was another VOR closer but less convenient to use so if 50nm is the limit that's easy info to get from skyvector and I'll plan flights accordingly.

Hi perestain - I'm really enjoying your app. I'm much happier having a "purpose" to make a flight. I'm flying to airports I wouldn't have and switching the weather/conditions when I wouldn't have bothered.

I'm now wondering about better integration - how hard would it be to get PJ to write the conditions directly into main.mcf so they're ready before you launch FS2?

The lines in main.MCF are quite obvious:

<[tm_time_utc][time_utc][]

<[int32][time_year][2016]>

<[int32][time_month][5]>

<[int32][time_day][20]>

<[float64][time_hours][17.7311527331768]>

>

<[float64][visibility][0.415914326906204]>

<[tmsettings_wind][wind][]

<[float64][strength][0.504552125930786]>

<[float64][direction_in_degree][261.821612119675]>

<[float64][turbulence][0.174997881054878]>

<[float64][thermal_activity][0.743172764778137]>

>

<[tmsettings_clouds][clouds][]

<[float64][cumulus_density][0.268179297447205]>

<[float64][cumulus_height][0.272736132144928]>

<[float64][cumulus_mediocris_density][0.15]>

<[float64][cumulus_mediocris_height][0.6]>

<[float64][cirrus_height][0.663636028766632]>

<[float64][cirrus_density][0.406822592020035]>

>

Location & aircraft type are trickier to write the correct values to but they're easier to set in the game so less worth the trouble.

Also is there a way to make journal edits save to the normal autosave location so that when PJ is launched they open by default? I've just written some notes in the journal about my last flight but unless I remember to load them next time I might do a flight and get out of sync with them.

I read that the first wave of Pimax backers are now receiving their headsets. Any more FS2 fans among them?

Sounds great. It might actually be worth me running my Rift under SteamVR for this. I'll see how Kloot gets on with this solution as i know he was keen to get it working.

Quote from ftp2leta

It's funny, I come here twice a day to see if it's out

You only check twice a day? Actually I'm not too bothered about the R22 but I'd love ATC and the virtual pad to bring approach plates and other documentation into the cockpit.

Quote from kenventions

Definitely needs to work with a physical yoke/joystick that is more immersive than a virtual one because they provide resistance that reminds you to trim the aircraft. They also provide a place for you to rest your hand (versus constantly holding your hand in the air).

For about 18 months I've been watching "progress" in haptic gloves for these very reasons and they have had a dismal kickstarter track record. VR Free and Plexus VR look to be on a more solid footing. Getting the input to the sim is only the start though. We're going to need some innovative approaches to merging the physical and virtual unless each yoke comes with a replaceable handle that exactly mirrors that of the aircraft being flown - combined with an alignment process so your hands shown in the right place.

Probably easiest is a stripped down generic VR yoke handle with no buttons at all, so that any button pressing is virtual and only the pitch/roll is applied physically. There also needs to be a size scaling fiddle so that the hands land on the virtual yoke in the right place even though the virtual yoke may be bigger/smaller than the physical one.

Quote from TomB

LSPV is Wangen-Lachen, located at lake zurich, hence swiss dlc.

I'm not sure what happened to my keyboard. I agree with you that LSPV is Wangen Lachen but i don't see it in my Swiss DLC.

When I opened PJ it placed me at Wanachen LSPV. That doesn't seem to be in FS2 or any DLC?

I could have made it with fsCloudPort, but instead closed the app and relaunched to find I was at KSEZ which fortunately is in the sim.

Any way I've done my first flight now and I'm a fan. Two thoughts:

1) Wouldn't it be great if it was web based - all scores online, user community input of new ideas even

2) Also great if FS2 had an "import" button that would pull all conditions info from the app (or a URL)

Love it!

Quote from HiFlyer

I've pretty much tried all of the available VR lenses for the Oculus at this point, and can only recommend two of them.

1) https://widmovr.com/

1) https://vroptician.com/

Both of them attach firmly into the oculus and are designed like actual glasses, which curve away from the eye, eliminating barrel distortion. I place the WidmoVR's first because they attach so firmly I suspect even dropping the Rift would not dislodge them, whereas my niece always manages to knock loose the Vroptician ones, apparently by magic, since they click in quite firmly, and I've never managed the feat of accidently knocking them loose.

I went with VR lens lab as soon as they came out 2 years ago now, but have been frustrated how easily they fall out. I don't feel I can justify replacing just to solve this... especially with the hope of a better HMD in the next 6ish months, but if widmovr are optically better too then I'd be very interested. Any comments on this aspect of them?

This looks very interesting. I'm aware of tools like FSEconomy but have never used them. I don't suppose you or someone else would be happy to make a video showing a few examples?

Quote from Jay 737

Of course, you'll need "few" lines of code to decide what kind of effect, direction and strength is to be send to your motors. This should be done with some kind of control board, H-bridge and PWM. I still don't understand half of what's needed to achieve this but there are some clever people willing to help though;)

I'll have a closer look to the SimTools. Perhaps this might be an option.

I have a new idea for adding force feedback to my yoke. I have 2x 24 volt strong robot servos (bought them to make a G-Seat before upgrading them). Positional control is very easy using arduino with a +ve,-ve,signal input and I have the code for that. That's the feedback side taken care of. What I need also is to control the power of the servo in order to control its resistance. Yes, as you say its all about PWM but that involves abandoning the servo, working with a standard motors and building the pot. coupling etc. It would be easier and more compact if I could just vary the power of the servo.

The servo control board doesn't have this option but I can see lots of stuff on the web for how to use arduino to make a buck step down converter, so I'm going to look into that approach for stepping down the 24v input in inverse proportion to the resistance I want to feel.

Quote from HiFlyer

How unfortunate! After Lionheart halted his efforts, I was hoping you would be the first to get a quality plane into Aerofly. I'm sure we will enjoy this, but it's a shame you were not able to take the project to completion.

Maybe Jetpack can take a look at it and catalog what needs to be done.

same thoughts here. I was disappointed too when Lionheart drew a line under his project. Are FS2 planes a lot more complicated or is it just the fact its a new learning curve and the market for payware FS2 planes is still small?

Is kickstarter a viable alternative approach? Perhaps those who have experienced FS2 would dig a little deeper than most to support investment in addons.

Quote from kenventions

Spit, have you thought about adding a POI (point-of-interest) object icon to your list of 3D objects that can be placed around an airport?

Ideally, users can submit new 3D objects to be added to the POI folder. Water towers would be a starting point as they are common in cities & towns and would add some variety to the generic buildings and houses we get from ScenProc cultivation.

i would like to improve the objects available. Some recoding is overdue as IPACS have already provided a new more optimised way of incorporating their object library. Then i need to fill it out with a more complete range of objects available and then yes some POI objects would be nice.

Quote from whitav8

frui,

I'm a little confused about your poor Pimax 5k+/8K performance since others are reporting much better performance with DCS which we all know to be much slower than AFS2. This video discusses at length - particularly at 6:50 or so:

Also, it appears that the equivalent of Rift ASW is not available for Pimax yet? We will need it.

Tom's hardware posted a review of the 8k which was very unsettling, however a lot of people have been critical of the quality of the review. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pimax-…-vr,5818-2.html

JvE is right

I vote nickhod for the New Years Honours List.

A CBE at least.

With my Ac3D approach i make a mesh that's rectangular and big enough for all polys. The AC3D trick is to call it something__airport_outside (hmm i think, i'm away from my pc) and then it gets a one level of smoothing. Cut out of that mesh using boolean knife and cut away are the runways with a stronger level of smoothing as these have __airport_runway (again, i think)

I think i could save one of my airports in some sort of 3dsmax format for you to look at.

Fantastic. I know that brain aching feeling.