Posts by ussiowa

  • So I wanna build an airport

    Quote from larrylynx

    Hi

    To the developers and wizards

    Any Idea what the strange textures are here. All I have done is extrude an edge from the taxiway you can see and I have then extruded out a shape for the apron using the edges I formed. This is how I made the taxiway and that works fine mostly, I do have this pattern at one highspeed taxi. They all share the same material.

    Thanks

    Ah that's a SCIF, since it's a "civilian" sim, they appear like this automatically, you're not supposed to know or see what's there really8o

    (of course I'm joking, I really have no idea. I haven't tackled airport making yet.)

    Michael

  • Planes wishlist

    Yes Concorde, how could I forget:huh: There is already one in NY, but it's not flying.

    A few seaplanes have been mentioned (Seiran, pby Catalina, G21 goose) and we already have one: Airbus A320 (it needs UA 1549 livery though)

  • Planes wishlist

    Well anything really, but if I had to get a wish list:

    Any military jets, any country (F18E, F14, F16, F86, F4, F35(A,B,C), F22, F20 (F5), A10, Typhoon, Rafale, Mirage III, Mirage F1, Viggen, Gripen, Sukhois (27, 33, 34, 35, 47), Migs (15, 17, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29), SR71, F117, B1, B2, B52, AV8B, ...)

    Any WWII war plane (P51, Spitfire, Me 109, Zero, Seiran, long list)

    Military transport (and refueling) planes: (KC 135, AC47, C17, C130, A400M, Noratlas)

    Others: Fieseler storch, E2C hawkeye (or C2), OV10 Bronco, DC3, B36, Fokker Dr1, paraglider, hang glider, KA8 glider, X15, Xwing fighter, tie fighter

    I won't go into helicopters (or gyrocopters) for now:saint:

    My "reasonable" list would be A10 (or OV-10) for maneuverability, DC3 for civilian planes flyers.;)

    That's just from the top of my head, and I'm willing to help with the work.

    Michael

  • 3D Printed Force Feedback Yoke

    OK responding in this thread.

    I love this project, and I love the work you did with it, looks great.

    We currently do and will have similar needs. Our needs however are only for military hardware (because what the museum is) so it's limited to helicopter (our current most pressing need) and Navy aircrafts (very likely in the future).

    We are developing VR experiences with a variety of immersive things, just like you did. Currently we are working on a mockup cockpit of a helicopter (so fake gauges, and so on, but looks real (3D print and other modeling and building methods), Oculus for display and a real control system (collective, cyclic and pedals)). We have a buttkicker, no motion, and no force feedback. That may evolve over time.

    In the future we most likely will expand to aircrafts. Of course anything (like Force feedback, motion, etc..) is under consideration, we have the competency, but it's a matter of budget (not for people, but for hardware mostly, non profit, limited funds) and strategy (what program the museum wants to develop next).

    In any case I'm laying the groundwork for the team to start to look into this. The team however is involved in many projects, all based on technology, but not all based on VR sims, it could be fixing, reverse engineering, restoring, any piece of complex equipment like radios, fire control mechanical computes, hydraulic systems, displays and electronic monitoring, etc.. or developing new technologies in any domain.

    So while I will certainly look into this and have the team look into it, I don't have current resources to dedicate specifically to this. That may change but I can't control how, when or how fast (we're all volunteers, so schedule is typically loose and slow).

    So in short:

    - Yes we're interested.

    - Yes we have the competency (mechanical, electronics, software, computers, etc..) and tons of experience (I'm talking retired aerospace, military, etc.. engineers and similar mostly, as a team) to do pretty much anything we put our mind to and is programmed to be done.

    - We will eventually very likely work on such a software and hardware (or source it), I just can't know when and how fast the development would be right now, it could be years, or soon, or never. Better immersion, motion, etc.. are all on the table. Anything that betters the experience. Again timeframe and budgets are the 2 factors that are unknown.

    - We, as a team, have a constraint of benefiting the museum, so while our work could maybe be used otherwise (for example for a yoke for a commercial plane like yours), our primary focus will be military hardware (joystick) and so on. If it is not part of our objective, I cannot make the team work on it, it then becomes a purely individual and personal desire.

    - That same team has a lot of various projects on its plate, so that again, other than time and budget, introduces a variable in terms of priority and availability

    - FS2 and its interaction is currently looked at for future projects, so we're currently doing some preliminary evaluation and groundwork, not working full steam, so to speak, and projects have not been decided yet. If and when we move forward and develop a project based on FS2, then a lot of things may be happening (but still slow probably). It will depend on many factors (like what is possible, what do we want to do, what we can do, etc..). So far very early evaluation shows a lot of potential, so that's good. I am slowly looking into the FS2 SDK to see the potential and understand its possibilities and limitations to see if it fits and what we can imagine with it (Separately, I'm personally very interested in FS2 also). We're looking at everything that is available out there however, so I cannot guarantee where we'll spend the resources ultimately. A lot of factors are at play.

    And that is the best I can offer to you. We'll look into it, I don't know what and when it will produce if anything. If it does you'll be the first to know. And If personally I do anything, it will be in this forum I'm sure, as it has been so far, my personal specialty is mechanical systems and complex dynamics (aero, thermo) more so than purely software however.

    Let's see where all this is going organically and how much we can collaborate.

    Michael

  • Control surface deflection due to downwash...

    Quote from Jet-Pack

    1. Yes that is simulated

    2. Force on the stick is not simulated, rather pure stick position. Trim in the Cessna for example is currently only affecting your position of the stick it offsets your stick position back to center. And since the hardware isn't capable of providing better feedback than a spring back to the exact same position we can't really model the stick movement by force better. Sure we could try to optimize for force feedback instead of position feedback but people like me, that fly gliders don't usually fly by force (because there is barely any in a glider), we fly by stick deflection.

    And there are other problems... if I'm in a Cessna and hold my elevator fix (don't move my hand) then a pitch down trim would pitch the nose up since the trim tab acts like a little elevator and can't move the real elevator because I'm holding it. But the force moves the other way, so it's just impossible to model that with a spring force joystick. The attachment point of the other end of the spring would be moved by the trim but if I hold my stick fix the elevator is not going to move in the real world.

    And this is what Aerofly models. Stick + Trim move Elevator. And not Elevator + Trim moves Stick, stick moves elevator....

    Jan, could you relatively easily setup an option where you could output that to a variable that a force feedback system would use?

    Then we could develop a stick for it (I think there is already someone that is developing a force feedback stick in another thread)

    Then people would have a choice: no FF joystick -it modifies position

    If FF joystick available, then it is implemented as force.

    And then even with a spring back joystick, they'd have 2 options to choose from, they could pick the one they like best as a simulation.

    I don't know how the other existing FF joystick read the info, but we can look into it, to try to make it a standard of some sort, but if it's not satisfying, then we can always develop a better model.

  • Sharing User Created Content

    So I see that a lot of people have already converted quite a bit of areas successfully, yet we cannot share them at this point.

    I was willing to share 3D work of special elements and converted scenery and was hoping that all coming together there would be quite a bit of user created content shared and that the overall flying area would progress nicely.

    From reading this forum on the subject, there seems to be a copyright concern with sharing geoconverted terrain. I would think it falls under "derivative" work of copyright laws, much like taking a picture of a painting (or of another picture). The transformation (geoconvert tool, plus adaptation to the IPACS format) should be sufficient to justify "derivative work" and thus creates a new copyright on the created content.

    So the newly created content belongs to the author (the person doing the conversion) which he in turn can dispose of at will (sell, give away, put in public domain, etc..)

    USGS data is public domain, so even if it were to be used as is (no transformation), there shouldn't be any issue.

    Any definite answer on the subject?

    Michael

  • USS Iowa: Seeking help with scenery placement for museum exhibit

    Yes I think it's time to proceed, this stuff gets addictive I want to do more and more details, and more and more buildings. But I'm reaching the limit of what information I have on the picture as far as shapes. All that comes from a single aerial photo.

    I wanted to do the big X building in the background, but between the picture info and other issues it's a step up in difficulty right now (if I can at all, there is quite a bit of stuff in front, so the pict may not have enough info), so maybe after we validate the export/import.

    There are a few liberties I took to extrapolate info, some stuff I know is wrong but it 's plausible and only the people that have been there would know it's not exact (I haven't)

    Anyway the next big step is textures, that's going to take me some time. Then I can export and we can import into FS2.