Posts by larrylynx

  • F104G Starfighter

    First, thanks for all your kind comments, much appreciated

    Hi Hotshotmike

    Your rocket idea gave me an idea to experiment, and no there won't be one...

    I adjusted the afterburner thrust in the standard no frills Starfighter. She climbed like a rocket though had to do it in steps as the speed bled off, I finally managed 81090ft, max up trim and stick all the way back, was very unstable in roll at higher altitudes even at 240kts. The NF-104 did have extra wing tip extensions, perhaps for this very reason..how accurate is FS2, great work guys.

    Did make me think, what is the maximum we can get to in FS2.

    Good fun though

    Hi Matt

    Yes it is set up for bump mapping, I always find it's very over done in flight simulators so I kept it low. The Starfighter has very few areas that are not smooth, even rivets were filled and then smoothed. Just remember to save with the correct name but adjust anything you want, it's yours to play with

    Hi Dave

    That would be Jetpack's area so hopefully he will chirp up, though the Starfighter was sensitive to both pitch and roll. Real aircraft has a stick pusher to stop you going above 5% of equivalent AofA

    Steve

    edit, forgot to add the evidence DOH

  • F104G Starfighter

    Rest assured guys she will be uploaded as soon as I can.

    As I mentioned I am waiting for Jetpack to have a look around to see if anything obvious jumps out to be fixed right away, the rest will be upgraded over time. We do have to remember he has a day job bringing us better aircraft and I hope a private life that is much quieter than the day job, so we'll just have to take up golf or yoga or bungee jumping if that's your thing.

    I will also be posting some notes when I upload which I hope you will all read, they should help answer some of your questions, and the paintkit

    Steve

  • F104G Starfighter

    Hi Jan and fellow builders

    Target scale is great if you know what size the maps are to begin with, as we don't know what is on a HUD texture and what size it is, its all guess work and seeing what looks ok in the sim hence the weird numbers.

    Any chance we could get a look at the hud_color and hud_light in normal bmp as a ttx tells us nothing. The mbb339 and f18 ttx's are both 2kb, really small for maps or most likely with zero info on them. I get the impression the HUD doesn't require any info on the maps, just a ttx file

    Help is needed badly

    Steve

  • F104G Starfighter

    Hi Jan

    Moving the target figures does not change the relationship between the pitch ladder/compass readouts and the speed/altitude readouts, it just moves the whols display around unless I'm missing something

    My figures are below. The HUD is longer than wider hence the non square numbers, though changing these to square numbers didn't help either.

    <[tmvector2d][TargetPosition][ 0 0 ]>

    <[tmvector2d][TargetSize] [ 896 768 ]>

    <[tmvector2d][TargetScale] [ 896 768]>


    In the attached screen grabs you can see I need to move just parts of the display not the whole display

    Steve

  • F104G Starfighter

    HI Jan

    Rebuilt the HUD in the TMD and it seems to be fine in VR, for the moment. A little dim maybe but where do we adjust this or is it managed by the sim as it seems to have inputted a lot of things in the HUD with me doing anything, just a simple object is all I added

    I am still unable to see the speed box, its off to the left, it's as if the speed and altitude boxes are not centred. I can adjust the complete HUD left and right but I cannot find a way to move just the speed and altitude boxes

    I'm assuming the ttx files are 32*32 (or similar) maps with a single color as they are so small but without access to the originals this is all guess work. Do these texture maps actually perform a function with a HUD.

    Any thoughts or amendments to the files I sent ?

    Steve

  • Aircraft Development

    I would also like to point out, if your using VR then check it out early. You may notice that switches, knobs etc are smaller that you would expect even if modelled to the exact size. I scaled mine by 30% where I could and they do look a lot better but still not big enough.

    I assume it's a VR projection problem as anything closer to the projection point gets smaller. I tried to add an oxygen mask and it came out looking very thin.

  • Aircraft Development

    Hi Alex

    Making good progress

    To align a hinge I use a method I found on FSDevelopers, I think.

    Lets assume were going to setup the hinge for an aileron.

    First, Draw a tape measure helper object that roughly aligns with the aileron. Use snap to move the end points of the tape to the places where you want the hinge line to be.

    Now the important bit, make sure you are in local mode for the screen view your working in.

    Select the object you wish to setup the hinge for, open the hierarchy tab, select affect pivot only.

    Now select the align tab and select the tape helper. A dialogue box opens. Make sure all x y z positions are selected and align orientation x y z, click apply and ok.

    Your done, perfect alignment

    There may be occasions when the object moves unexpectedly when clicking the x y z orientation, if this happens, undo what you did, apply a reset Xform to your object (in hammer tab), click reset selected. un-select reset Xform, right click on your object and select, convert to editable poly, try again with the axis align.

    For knobs and switches etc, if you didn't model from scratch and the pivot is miles out then use centre to object in the hierarchy tab and manually adjust, near enough is usually ok for these small items. Animating in the aircraft TMD and controls TMD for switches etc are whole different story but still use the pivot (axis) point, so best to get it right

    Steve

    In answer to which tmd to edit, if you want quick feed back and no changes to the model ahve been made then use the documents one. If you make any changes to the model and need to convert, copy all the documents tmd (that you made all the changes to) and overwrite the intermediate one, then convert. The converter will kick up an error and not convert if the intermediate tmd is older that the one in the documents folder, goes for controls TMD as well. A good safety measure. I would issue a WARNING here, make sure your happy with the overwriting before you convert as what ever is pasted here will overwrite the documents TMD. I pasted the controls TMD into the aircraft TMD and lost a lot of work so its easily done when your editing both files, also make backups regularly of both aircraft and controls TMD, it can save a lot of screaming and shouting =O

  • Aircraft Development

    Hi Donny

    It's ok to attach objects using different materials, it can cause problems in max if you need to update a material, as when you update the objects with a material from a differnt texture map they will get replaced and you need to re-apply to those elements that used a different map.

    Try not to overload an object with attached object's. By this I mean don't have everything attached to the fuselage. For the interior I have 3 main cockpit objects and try to attach other objects so they are even and roughly in the same area. Ejector seat, pilot, pilot head, needles, controls, knobs, switches are individual objects.

    Never attach the wings to the fuselage unless you do not want wing bending, even the Starfighter has wing bending, things like elevator, ailerons, flaps, wheels etc remain separate. For the undercarriage, try to think where things move or rotate around, if it all stays together when moved than by all means attach. So the nose for example would have NoseUpper-Oleo-NoseLower-NoseWheel and a retraction setup, probably 2 struts. You have to think like an animated system would be in the modelling program and then do it all manually in the TMD.

    Axis are very important so plan ahead, gauge needles, knob and switch axis. All these need to be separate objects. Might seem a lot of objects but they get scattered around the TMD like confetti in the end so you don't notice them. This I have 5-600 objects in the Starfighter. So if you want to animate it, it's a separate object. If you want a moving map, its a separate object, like wise a hud screen

    It's all pretty much common sense stuff but FS2 is different so you just have to be aware of it.

    Steve

  • F104G Starfighter

    Well I patted myself on the back too soon.

    Whilst the HUD works on my development machine it crashes FS2 on my games machine in VR. More investigation needed.

    I did manage to get it to work one time, I noticed the missing speed indication is way off to the left and the altitude is where the speed should go, the joys of being a developer

    Steve

  • Aircraft Development

    Hi Donny

    Welcome to the mad house.

    For item 1..ignore it, it will always be there, or at least it is for me

    for 2 to 6...have you re-applied the textures in max and applied a uv map to them.

    For the moment you can pretty much forget 2, 4, 5 and 6, number 3 is the most important to see if the model in the sim, the rest are eye candy. Any material you make in max, I would recommend to included all the texture slots, even if you don't plan to use them at first, it help later if you do. Sure you will get the errors listed above but the sim works just as well. A stand in bmp can be used, ie all black.

    Tm.log from the exporter does not get over written by the converter, that produces the report.txt, get used to looking at this, some errors can be ignored some need attention. The main sim also produces a tm.log (popular name) this can be very useful to track down your errors. If the Sim crashes as soon as you launch your model then check for duplicate names in the TMD, Converter tm.log is useful for pivot point information, which you will use a lot.

    The TMD can be a pain in the butt but it is very powerful and worth getting to know, As you already know Jan is very helpful and will solve pretty much everything.

    Steve