Helicopter w/ autohover

[Jakemaster]

I made a scenery with a helipad tower, but I cant fly well enough to land on it.  anyone know of a helicopter with autohover?

[|| Andy ||]

I think the Gmax Bell 407, has it...
and the Bell 47....

[Alphajet_Enthusiast]

Jake, try the Blackhawk, Seahawk and Jayhawks available from www.hovercontrol.com, okay?  ;)

[Calb]

It's just my biased opinion but I think you'd have more fun by learning to fly the helicopter and I'd welcome the opportunity to help you with that.

http://members.shaw.ca/hoversafe/Hoversafe.htm
(in our 6th year of operation)

Cal

[Moach]

there's a dauphin II by Antti Pankkonen which is very awesome and includes auto-hover and other A/P thingys

[Gnome]

Seconded.  Get thee to hoversafe and learn how to do it properly.

The FS2002/FS9 Bell is really easy to fly (IMHO), the FS9 Robinson a little harder (but nicer, again IMHO) but anyone who followed Cal's tuition ended up being able to fly devices like the horrible FS98 Bell and that was a real pig!  So you'll have no trouble learning and it will be huge fun.


Kev

P.S.  Hi Cal.  Did you ever do the FS2002 versions of the Kamov Ka-26?  (Nag, nag, nag)  :-)

[Calb]

Ummmmmm. Doesn't the original version created for FS2000 run okay in 2002 ? I seem to recall I never had to do an update for FS2002. I didn't install FS2002 on this computer when I bought it year ago cuz don't have any students using it so I can't check.

I've dabbled with fixing it for FS2004 but my heart isn't in it. Someone else was gonna do it and I sent him the source files but so far he hasn't done anything with it.

Cal (CYXX)

[Gnome]

Oh, it works perfectly...  It's just that you were going to do a passenger pod version when you got one of those round tuits.  :-)


Kev

[Calb]

Ok, now I remember. I found I had poorly designed  the fuselage section and it didn't lend itself well to modification. It was my first effort. I'd have to redesign a good portion of it to get the Pod version to look right. I guess my heart was just never in it again.

I originally wanted to do the Kamov Ka-27/28/32 Helix helicopters and the Ka-26 looked like a good practise run and someone coaxed me into it. It turned out much better than I expected.

And now..... the complexity in designing for FS2004 is much greater and being 5 years older, (just crossed 66) learning the new stuff is harder. Gmax is  a mystery to me and even some parts of FSDS leave me shaking my head.

And to add further to my sob story, I've relocated since then, over 1000 miles, to a bigger city which has an Air Museum that gets quite a bit of my time.

Life sure gets complicated, don't it?

Cal (CYXX)

[Gnome]

It sure does.  :-)

Ah well, it's a shame you won't take another look at it as it really was a lovely bit of work but I do understand.

GMAX is a mystery to me too.  I do all my actual modelling with an old Amiga program that can save in DXF format then port the parts into GMAX for texturing and animation.  It works but I have some bad habits to break and I tend to make my objects with far too many polys.  They always seem to end up framerate-friendly though.


Kev

[Calb]

Not a bad idea. I can readily make parts with FSDS and I know they can be taken over into Gmax.

I've never had a problem with "poly-bloat". Probably just the opposite -- a bit too stingy. I come by it honestly. I started out first with Flight Shop and soon after got AF99. They were very limited in poly count. FS2000 & FSDS changed all that. It wasn't long until some designers were bragging their latest project had 15,000 polys. I guess by today's standards, that's too low. Different strokes for different folks.

Cal

[Gnome]

Just bad modelling practices on my part.
The best way to make a model realistic was to add as much detail as possible and if I wanted smoothness I would add facets.  So... I would end up with details like dome-headed, castelated nuts with split pin (tweaked 36-sided torus, naturally) and washers, includinbg the one that was mostly hidden by the nut etc.  1000 or so polys.  Ulp!

I have since discovered that a simple hexagon looks almost as good in FS.  :-)


Kev