Dynamic Objects

[RollerBall]

After seeing that fantastic ZHSC scenery with it's moving vehicles and stuff I thought I'd have a go myself.

Thought the simplest and least complicated way would be to use DOD - so I did - but it didn't (sorry - couldn't resist that)

Actually I managed to get trucks etc moving around the apron fine - trouble was everything floated a metre above the ground. Other people before have found the same too.



I asked all the experts over on the FS scenery design forum but I couldn't get anything to work - so it looks as though I'm gonna have to look at alternatives.

Pity as this was easy to do.

Anyone else doing dynamics - and what method(s) are you using?

Roger

[RollerBall]

IMHO anyone with a serious interest in scenery design MUST read this.

After a bit of help from falko over on the other forum I've now got a fuel truck driving round my apron in quite a complex pattern. I need to do a bit more experimenting but this seems a very easy method to put dynamic objects like fuel trucks, follow me vehicles, food and service vehicles, stair trucks etc etc in your scenery.

We know from the ZSHC scenery and other things that are going on that adding dynamics is where it's gonna be at in the near future and this seems to be the easiest way as far as I can see for 'hick' designers (like us ) to do it.

Yes, we know that you will need PC cpu power to make em work effectively, but sorry, this is the way it's going and you can't stop progress. If you're trying to work with a less than 1 GHz machine I'm afraid that you're gonna have trouble in any case. And very soon with all the latest bells and whistles 2 GHz is probably gonna be needed to get the full benefit.

If people are interested I'll post more information on the method but in the meantime I've got more work ot do!



Roger

[Hagar]

Roger. As always, I'm very interested in your experiments. Please post more details when you have it perfected + the time of course.  ;)

[RollerBall]

Doug, as one of the old school like me I'm sure you will love this.

I've not had access to GMax since I changed to XP Pro (I've downloaded the latest version, tutes etc on someone else's PC with Broadband but haven't had a chance yet to put the files onto CD) so I haven't done anything with GMax scenery design at all. That's why I'm doing all my custom objects in EOD.

When I thought about dynamics I therefore had to look at the 'old' ways which ruled out straight GMax and new ways like BusyObjects which is GMax based.

So I read up on DOD v3 and Dynakit which I've had but never used since FS98 and as I'm not interested in dynamic aircraft, which of course these were originally for, I thought that the principles for the 'static' dynamics haven't changed, so why not give em a try.

I found that in the DODlibs (eg DODL06) there are quite a few excellent little objects apparently all ready for use so I thought I'd follw the instructions and give em a try.

Unfortunately, as others before have found in FS2000, the objects work but float above the ground. So you have to find 2 files on flightsim.com (as far as I know this is the only place at present) called DIDL01.ZIP and DIDL02.ZIP in which a number of selected objects have been adjusted for altitude. There are also some accompanying pic zip files if you would like to see pics of the objects, but these are not essential.

When you unzip them you get DIDL01.bgl, DIDL01.dki (an essential Dynkit file) and some texture files. We'll work with DIDL01.

Step 1
Put DIDL01.bgl and DIDL01.dki in your main FS2002\Scenery folder - my advice as always

[Hagar]

Roger. Thanks for taking the time to write all this up. I didn't expect anything quite so soon. LOL
It's going straight into my bulging Tutes folder. Might be a while before I get the chance to try it myself. Meanwhile , carry on experimenting. Good luck with your project.