Posts by Fabs79

Quote from Trespassers

Well, I'd not be so definite : of all my engine out practice with Lycoming engines (mostly DR400) my experience is you have to slow down to quite low speeds to stop the prop... at 80kts (best glide speed for the Robin) the prop keeps windmilling.

It much depends on engine and prop...

BTW:

One aspect that is usually poorely rendered in flight simulators is the rather long delay between action on a fuel selector and effect on the engine.

During PPL basinc training my instructor would occasionnaly shut off the selector while asking me to identify the name of that village on the left, to test my actions. The engine keeps running for a quite a few seconds before to cough and shut down.

After failure processing, we would switch back on the fuel selector, wait for engine to restart and continue the failure exercise with throttle cut...

On the opposite, some aircraft in our fleet have 2 additional 40 liters wing tanks. When flying long range and if I have enough ground clearance I like to use them until they run totally out of gas - there's no point in leaving 5 liters in them that you won't be able to use in case you are a little bit short...

So the gauges indicate zero for several minutes (up to 10 minutes actually !), and you never know when the engine will suddenly run out until it suddenly happens.

The procedure may differ from an aircraft to the other, for the DR400 you turn on the electrical pump and switch the fuel selector to the desired tank and wait keeping level flight until airspeed drops to best glide speed, then you let the aircraft glide down keeping best glide speed (80kt clean).

I never did it with a stop watch in the hands so far, but I'd say it can last some 30 seconds, maybe more, with the prop windmilling until the engine restarts... I can tell you, with the engine out it feels like an eternity!

So never do it without enough ground clearance...

If the prop would stop mindmilling it's even worse since you don't know when the engine is ready to restart...

My 2 cents...

Cheers

Antoine

Display More

And would you say that the gliding behavior of say the Aerofly C172 is realistic? I have absolutely no real life experience with this but I was always under the impression that GA aircraft, unlike fighter jets, as a rule are designed for benign behavior in emergency situations that gives the pilot a chance to resolve the problem before something bad happens. I thought that included things like relatively easy stall recovery and at least some basic gliding capabilities in case of a engine out failure. At least that was what my friend told me when he was practicing these procedures. In Aerofly I have the feeling that the GA planes like the C172 or the Just Flight C152 drop like a rock when I set the engine to idle or when cut the mixture in flight, but maybe that's just from my lack of real world experience. I also thought that the real world Piper PA28 that my friend's FI once landed with me on the right front seat had a landing flare that seemed to last forever, while in Aerofly I habe difficulties to get into a decent flare before hitting the ground, but of course that might also be the difference between a low wing and high wing aircraft.

Quote from Jet-Pack (IPACS)

Keep in mind that the real world cessna also glides different if you just idle the engine or when you actually shut it down and the prop stops. If the prop is rotating at idle it creates more drag. If you only practice emergencies with engine at idle it may not be representative of an actual engine failure. I would suggest trying both with a flight instructor on a long enough runway so that you can land long without running out of runway...

I actually have a Cessna mod with different flight characteristics: https://www.aerofly-sim.de/dow…oflyfs2/af2_c172_download

Please give it a try and provide feeback so that I can correct things like this.

If my modded cessna flies exactly like it should, then we can think about changing the default cessna to that setting.

I'll try the mod and report back, though I lost my only real world flying reference because my friend moved to Switzerland a few months ago so I can't let him try the different tmd settings and ask which one he deems the most realistic.

On another note, does the prop really stop at an engine out failure? Depending on the cause of the failure wouldn't it be possible that it keeps spinning because of the airflow going over it, unless you have a prop pitch lever that lets you feather the prop, which the C172 doesn't have if I'm not mistaken? This is a question to the real world pilots out there because I obviously don't have any real experience with these situations.

Hi, I was wondering if it was possible to assign functions like the Just Flight C152 carb heat or primer to hardware axes? The carb heat is not that important since Aerofly doesn't seem to simulate Carburetor icing, but it would be a nice touch if I could use push and pull the primer lever with a real hardware axis.

Cheers, Fabian

Out of curiosity, if I understand correctly you're saying that the default C172 glide distance is too low, correct? I'm really interested in your findings because a friend of mine who recently got his PPL in a C172 once told me how he was practicing engine failure emergencies with his flight instructor by cutting the throttle on downwind and then had to return to the runway while gliding, and I was never able to recreate this procedure in Aerofly because the C172 dropped like a rock once I pulled the throttle all the way back. I asked on this forum if this was a mistake and was told off for having no idea how a C172 is not a glider and so on.... but your post suggests that there really might be a unrealistic value in the tmd file. I'm looking forward to what you'll find out about how the gliding performance changes with different values for the Flaps settings.

Quote from Schnuffelduffel

This was the problem ( not the original object - no spoiler! ) :

Yes, that was my first though too, but i became first a little trouble whith textures ( problem fixed ) and i have it now attached to the main object. Now it's ok.

Btw., another question: My object has a normal Textur in a simple diffuse slot. But in Aerofly she's looking like a little selfilluminatet - is that correct - should it be so?

Display More

I'm not entirely sure but I think If an object in Aerofly doesn't have a specular texture it will have a "standard" specularity which makes it look shiny. You could try to create a completely black texture and use it as a specular map and see if the shinyness is gone.

And when you're at it, overhaul the sound of the whole simulator maybe? As fantastic as the graphics quality and performance is, Aerofly's sound is one of its weakest aspects. All the sounds are thin and don't really add to the immersion, compared to for example an A2A plane for P3D where the sounds are an important part of the experience.

Du hast brauchst kein Flughafenskript. Mit MCX kannst du das Objekt mit dem geoplacement Tool platzieren und dann anstatt Export object export scenery klicken. Dann hast du eine tmb file (das Objekt im Aerofly Format) und eine tsc file (eine Textdatei, in der die Koordinaten, die Höhe, die Rotation etc angegeben sind). Außerdem solltest du zumindest noch eine Textur im ttx Format haben, die diffuse map endet im Aerofly konventionsgemäß auf _color. Und ja, du brauchst eine Textur, ein Material kann Aerofly nicht lesen, was sehr schade ist weil man ja mit guten materials echt tolle Sachen machen kann. Es gibt nur diffuse map, bump oder normal map, specular map und light map für die Nacht Textur. Mach doch mal probehalber folgendes. Im 3D?Programm eine Textur erstellen und dann irgendwie auf dein Objekt drauf machen, egal ob es am Anfang doof aussieht. Dann MCX Das Objekt laden und schauen ob es im Viewer mit der Textur erscheint. Wenn nicht, kannst du versuchen, über den Material editor die Textur von Hand zuzuweisen. Hier kann man auch den alpha channel löschen bzw am besten gleich im 3D Programm eine Textur ohne alpha channel erstellen, damit kommt Aerofly nicht zurecht. Dann auf geoplacement tool, dein Objekt mit dem sich öffnenden map viewer über Google maps, Bing maps oder was auch immer an die richtige Stelle platzieren und dann auf export scenery. Dann solltest du o. G. Drei Dateien bekommen. Diese in ein Szenerie Verzeichnis für Aerofly kopieren (in der Regel in einen Ordner der places heißt) den simulator starten und dann an die location fliegen und erstmal schauen ob dein Objekt auftaucht. Schreib mal ob es geklappt hat, sonst können wir auch gerne mal telefonieren. Ich arbeite zwar mit Blender aber das Prinzip ist gleich. Bin selber noch ganz am Anfang aber immerhin erschienen bei mir die Objekte im Simulator, das feintuning ist dann aber nochmal ne Menge Arbeit.

Judging from the performance data this could be a good plane for the Lukla scenery. Service ceiling of 8500 meters and STOL capabilities. I'm really looking forward to this one

Hi Jan,

Just to let you know, the problem I described above turned out to be non-existent, I obviously just expected the CDI needle to be more sensitive than it actually is. When I strayed off the programmed flight path some more the CDI started moving as expected. What I have yet to try is if it also works with the CDI set to VLOC and the NAV radio turned to a nearby VOR frequency.

Thanks and best regards,

Fabian

Jan, I'll make some Screenshots next time I'm flying, unfortunately I don't have much time for my hobby at the moment but I'll report back

I know that this question technically belongs into a Just Flight support forum, but before I post it there I just wanted to ask if anyone else is having this problem or if I'm doing something wrong.

When I create a flight plan on the navigation page, it is transferred to the GNS correctly. But when I do the flight, the CDI does not move at all even if I'm way off the programmed flight path. Even when switching from GPS to VLOC and back doesn't move the CDI. Am I missing something here?

Thanks, Fabian

I guess they won't change the clouds before they develop a new weather system. The problem with the rotating clouds is not exclusive to Aerofly, you can see that in P3D, and I'd reckon in Xplane, too. The only solution would be to have real 3D volumetric clouds instead of the 2D sprites we have at the moment. But this probably would be quite heavy on performance. The new MSFS 2020 seems to feature volumetric clouds, and I'm really interested to see how it looks there and how big of a performance hit it will be.

Quote from ryansumei

I think ORBX has taken a look at the New Microsoft Flightsim and pulled the plug on their True Earth development. I mean whats the point when the entire world is now generated in unprecedented reality, all in one Sim.

True Earth might not be needed in its current form but detailed airports will most likely not be available in the default scenery for the whole world with its 40000 or so airports and airfields, so there's still a market for developers here. Furthermore, it was stated that there are only 450 high detailed photogrammetry cities, the 🍴 will be rather generic. In an interview the lead developer also stated that outside the detailed cities only a few hundred POIs have been modeled all over the world, while the true earth regions mostly contain more than thousand custom objects in a comparably small area. So orbx could release regional POI packs for example. I'm really looking forward to seeing what 2020 will bring to the world of flight simulation

Quote from larrylynx

Give the users some serious and easy to use tools and we will do the job. One of IPACS biggest failures, in my opinion, is to fully appreciate the power of the user base.

My thoughts exactly. Couldn't have put it better.

Airport development tool

Blender plugin

Open up the texture files, great they are encrypted but naffing useless to a developer

And don't get me started on the TMD file

+1000 for the blender plugin

Add to the list : ground flatten polygons like in FSX (easily usable with tools like ADE or Sbuilder X) ; exclude polygons that remove all default objects so that you can place custom ones

True Earth GB for Aerofly has been put on indefinite hold according to the ORBX CEO because of problems with the conversion that made it difficult to achieve the same quality as for the other platforms (especially concerning the airports in the region if I remember correctly) and the small potential customer base. It seems that sales of previous ORBX products for Aerofly accounted for less than 2% of total sales so it seemed economically unreasonable to continue development.

OK, great news! Jake (ZoSoChile ) solved the problem for me!

Quote from Trespassers

Absolute height is an acceptable workaround, but it only works with the elevation mesh on which it was setup.

If someone creates a more refined elevation mesh for your scenery your object won't adapt.

Moreover, wind turbines are seldom single, isolated objects, but usually there are fields of them, so manually adjusting each single object height means a lot of work.

I have a group of airport buildings that suffer the same issue, I'll look into them if I find a fix on the 3D objects themselves and let you know...

Cheers

Antoine

Display More

It´s good to hear I´m not alone. Another thing I was thinking of is that maybe the fact that not all the vertices are connected to each other causes the issue. My model has several components that I just moved into place so it looks like they are connected, but in fact they aren´t, i.e. the vertices of the turbine rotor blades are not directly connected via an edge with the vertices of the "nose" and so on. If all vertices need to be connected I´d need to use a whole different approach to modeling from the beginning. It would make things considerably harder.

Quote from Jet-Pack

each geometry in your 3d model is displayed when the model is placed onto the terrain. The height offset comes from different 3d origins for each geometry which is useful to displace buildings by different amounts.

You need to make sure that all objects that belong to your model share the exact same pivot point or 3d origin otherwise each part is going to be moved according to the terrain height directly underneath the origin, which at a slope means the parts move relative to each other.

Hi again,

I did what you suggested but still no luck, in fact it looks even worse now with the wind turbines sunken halfway into the ground and the rotor still detached. I set all the 3D origins of the individual components to the bottom of the pylon of the turbine because I assumed that the simulator would place the origin on ground level height. But obviously there's still something wrong? Is there a certain way to correctly place a 3D origin of the model? At the bottom? At the center of the geometry? Another thing that came to my mind was that maybe the export to collada format had something to do with the problem? Maybe the origin is not preserved correctly? Blender doesn't have a direct export option for Aerofly so I have to somehow get the model into MCX, But maybe exporting to .3ds format might help?

Asked much as I appreciate Just Flight's support for Aerofly the recent aircraft are too similar in my eyes to justify buying them all, at least for me. Apart from the Duchess they are all single engine piston aircraft with at least similar performance specs. I'd love to see something like a single engine turbine aircraft like a C208 or a Pilatus PC 6, or something to complement the recently released Lukla scenery like a Twin Otter.

Quote from Jet-Pack

each geometry in your 3d model is displayed when the model is placed onto the terrain. The height offset comes from different 3d origins for each geometry which is useful to displace buildings by different amounts.

You need to make sure that all objects that belong to your model share the exact same pivot point or 3d origin otherwise each part is going to be moved according to the terrain height directly underneath the origin, which at a slope means the parts move relative to each other.

Thanks Jan, I suspected it had something to do with autoheight and the fact that I made the model by assembling different components. I just thought that by joining the components into a single object before export they would automatically share the same origin but obviously somehow the original origin is preserved within the models. I'll try setting all origins to the same 3D location before joining the parts and see what happens.