MODEL/testing questions

[Alphajet_Enthusiast]

FIRST OF: I EXPORTED MY OWN AIRCRAFT AND THE MODEL WORKS!!!

Okay, now that thats gone....

When I start my aircraft in flight simulator on a runway for example, or for that matter anywhere on the ground, by default it rest on the ground on the fuselage and taxis/lands on the fuselage.

I understand that I need to raise the fuselage onto its gear by changing the contact points in the aircraft cfg or something. How do I do this?  ???

Also, when I zoom onto my aircraft it sometimes just becomes invisible untill I turn the view a certain distance or zoom out or something like that. How can I correct this? Thanks!  :)

Kobe

[Merlin66]

There's a good tut over at the Hints and tips page. You need to determine the position of each of the wheel contact points X,Y,Z when insert them into the cfg file.

When the game starts, ie with "pause" on, the aircraft should be seen sitting in the correct position. Sometimes when the "pause" is released the aircraft will appear either to drop onto the runway or bob up!! this is due to the use of incorrect wheel contact points. It can also affect the stability during taxi and takeoff.

Hope this helps. If not, drop me a PM and I'll send some info.

[Milton]

Back to basics first:  See Lou "Firestrikers" CoG examples and setup as close to this concept as possible in gmax of FSDS.

http://www.oregon-coast.net/Tutorials/CofG/index.htm

The crosshairs in Firestriker's examples are the XYZ 0,0,0 reference point in gmax and FS.  Now, you must ensure that the aircraft.cfg file properly identifies your reference datum point and CoG at 0, 0, 0.

After that, you adjust gear, suspension, static height and static pitch in the aircraft.cfg to get the visual model to sit correctly on the runway.

Then, adjust lights and effects.  All these coordinates can be gotten from the modeling program.

Once everything is where it should be, you can focus on flight dynamics and have the visual model (mdl file) help represent what the sim model (.air and .cfg files) is doing.

I recommend you download the aircraft container SDK and use it for reference.

http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsi ... ds_sdk.asp