Looking for virtual cockpit tutorial

[Dickert]

Hi, I am new here.  I'm looking for a tutorial how to model a virtual cockpit.  Here are a few pictures of the aircraft I am doing.
www.dickert.ca/swift

Harold

[Travis]

If I were you, I would go check out the FFDS forums since they seem to be the best at helping with this kind of technical shtuff.

[Ben252]

Hi Harold, are you making this for FS2004 or FSX and what program are you using FSDS or GMAX?

Brian Franklin

[Milton]

Here is a VC tutorial set (one of a series) I created for the SOH Design forums for users of gMax.

http://www.flightsimonline.com/C162/vc1/

http://www.flightsimonline.com/C162/vc2/

http://www.flightsimonline.com/C162/vc3/

http://www.flightsimonline.com/C162/vc4/


You can see the entire set of exercises based on developing a Cessna 162 here: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=58014

[Dickert]

Hi Milton

Thanks for posting those links.  I reviewed them and had already done a number of those steps.  I have a bit of cleaning up to do, and more details to add.
I have no idea how to import instruments into the Virtual Cockpit, and I will need to make some custom instruments as well.  Will the same custom instruments work in both FS9 and FS10?

I cloned the cockpit area and left it at the original location in Gmax.   I have already tried to export the Virtual Cockpit with the Interior Dummy object at 0,0,0.    When I loaded Flight Sim, the eye point was completely in the wrong place to see out the window.   I know the Dummy Object has to stay at 0,0,0, so how do I control where the initial eye point is?  Do I move the Virtual Cockpit so the Dummy Object is where your eyes would be?  I have not had a chance to try this yet.

To answer Bens question... I am using GMax and the model is for FS2004.
When the aircraft is complete, then I[ch8217]ll have an excuse to buy an new confuser, operating system, software, FS10, and then try to amend the aircraft to work in the new sim.

[Fr. Bill]

The visual "eyepoint" in the VC is set in the aircraft.cfg using the horribly misnamed entry called...

eyepoint = 48.2, -1.55, 1.9

[Milton]

Fr. Bill has the answer.

To assist in the placement, you might create a very small object and place at the pilot's eyepoint in the VC or exterior model.  Set the local coordinate pivot only to center of that object then get the coordinates.  Place those coordinates in the eyepoint statement in the aircraft.cfg.

[Dickert]

Tried the Virtual Cockpit again.   Big problem!!
I merged the interior model into the file along with the exterior model, and then exported to an MDL.  That worked, and everything showed up, but the scale of everything was all-wrong with the aircraft showing up way too huge.
When I first started this model, I didn

[Fr. Bill]

When exporting both an exterior and interior model, the final "scale" of the model in the sim will come from the interior node's properties.

If you simply clone the exterior node and rename it to interior, this might work for you.

[Dickert]

Hi Bill.

Well

[Inspector Poly]

MAKE SURE:

#1 Your interior and exterior nodes have their part axes "aligned to world"

#2 Your SYSTEM UNITS is set to 1 unit = 1 meter (Customize:Preferences and see that "System Units Scale"  is set to 1 Unit = 1.0 Meters)

[Dickert]

>#1 Your interior and exterior nodes have their part axes "aligned to world"
Any place with instructions to do that.  The parts I've used all overlap perfectly in GMax, and were effectivley clones of the same parts.

>#2 Your SYSTEM UNITS is set to 1 unit = 1 meter (Customizereferences and see that "System Units Scale"  is set to 1 Unit = 1.0 Meters)
Been there, done that!  and still pulling my hair out.

[Milton]

If you would like to send the exterior parts necessary to clone for the Interior model, I'd be happy to look at it to assess any issues, and clone it for you to see what happens.

[HarvesteR]

try giving all your parts a good 'ol 'reset scale'... but be warned there is a proper way to do this... otherwise your animations will go berserk

select your top node, goto hierarchy panel and click Reset scale... then press Pgdown, this will select everything that is one level below in the hierarchy, press reset scale again... keep repeating that procedure until you reach the bottom level of the hierarchy (no new parts are being selected) and that's that... you've reset the scale of all your parts...

that should take care of that error message (hopefully)

and if working with a 1 unit = 1 meter calibration makes the model too small for you (near culling problem), you can work with 1 unit = 0.1 meter, which makes it all more comfortable to work... but make sure your plane has the correct dimensions in Gmax as well (use a box or tape measure object to get a proper reference)

also, check to see if there are any scale keyframes set in the timeline... i can't remember if Gmax follows the same system, but 3DS Max has a color code for keyframe types... red is for position, blue for rotation and green for scale (i think)... if you find any scale keys, delete them, because FS doesnt like scale animation... but be careful when deleting keys because your parts may get stuck at any point of the timeline, so make sure you're on frame 0 and delete them going backwards on the timeline

one last thing, just to be on the safe side... make sure all your motion controllers (found in the 'motion' tab) are linear... FS doesn't like bezier controllers for animation, and Max tends to use that as default

ok last one i promise... it would be a good idea, if you don't have it already, to get MDLCommander and Middleman... these programs sit between GMax and MakeMDL and they allow you to tweak some settings that MakeMDL doesnt even display... they allow you to bypass a number of export bugs

hope this helps

Cheers

HarvesteR

[Dickert]

Hi HarvesteR

>select your top node, goto hierarchy panel and click Reset scale... then
>press Pgdown, this will select everything that is one level below in the
>hierarchy, press reset scale again... keep repeating that procedure until
>you reach the bottom level of the hierarchy (no new parts are being
>selected) and that's that... you've reset the scale of all your parts...
Thanks for the attempt but it didn't work.  I followed your instructions one step at a time, but when checking the properties, I still ended up with AOA vains larger than the entire aircraft.
Any other ideas???

Harold