Making A new plane

[Guy123]

Hello There

I am not new to the flying aspect of Flight simulator, however I have not yet made my own content for the game. I study computer games design and am also very up-to-date with 3ds max and photoshop.

However My main problem is that I have created a nice little plane (Piper Warrior III) But I have no idea how to import it into the game?

I am sure that certain parts of the plane would need to be given names (so the sim knows which bit is the propeller etc.) But I have so far not been able to find any sufficient resources on this subect.

Could someone pelase help me?

Thank you very much

Guy

[eskaihla]

Hi,

All the naming information, as well as instructions for setting up the key frame animations can be found in the FS2004/FSX SDK (depending on which version of the sim you have). There are several SDKs available, each focusing on different areas of aircraft and scenery creation. They should be available from Microsoft's site. One of the SDKs also include the tools necessary for exporting the model from Gmax/3DSmax to your sim.

Links for the FS2004 SDK.

Regards,
-Esa

[rootbeer]

This is something that also interests me. I am having a homebuilt design of mine made into an FS model by a talented young man from Canada. He has done a marvelous job in the visual aspects of the design. What I want to know is when or where does the model take on its "real life" persona? Where is the maximum ceiling prescribed? When is the maximum cruise specified? When and where does the model take on a life as opposed to being just an image on the screen? Thanks.

[Milton]

The model is given life by the flightsim engine.

[rootbeer]

Thank you, Milton. Your reply is exactly the type of answer I am seeking. I have no idea what .air files or .cfg flies are. I have only looked inside the .cfg file for a few of the default airplanes and I see that there are many, many dozens of lines in there-- most of which mean nothing to me. It amazes me that people like Mike Stone can crank out a new airplane in a few days or weeks given all the information required to actually do that. My homebuilt design has been in-process for over a year, now. That's not too bad, I guess, given that the designer is also going to college.

I have FSDSv3, still in the box. Is that all I need to make an airplane? I also have Custom Panel Designer, but it won't seem to launch. What I don't have is the time to learn how to use them. Such a pity because I have another design bouncing around in my head that would be great fun for lovers of high-performance proppers...

[Milton]

FSDSv3 is an excellent tool to create the exterior and interior models.

You will find given the size of these projects that it is good to team up with simmers who have talents in other areas such as panel/gauges, textures, sounds and flight models.  This will help you achieve the end goal while learning along the way about all the aspects of delivering a project.