Albatross!! Albatross!!!

[fsafranek]

I don't see a paintkit on the list of features. Do you know if one is included?

Thanks.
Rick

Not sure. Still awaiting a link to download the final version after the beta testing ended earlier. If there is it will be on the download page. I'll ask around.
:ernae:

 

[Mithrin]

I'm having some issues with the water behaviour. It doesn't seem to like to get slewed into the water. The thing skips over the water and even with the engine off it acts as if it has a life of it's own and circles around in an odd manner. Refreshing it sets it in the water ok again but then when I dip my wings at any speed above 60kts it starts to show the odd behaviour again...so far 3 other people I fly online with have the same issues. I have no idea what causes this. Anyone has got any idea?

 

[gajit]

I'm having some issues with the water behaviour. It doesn't seem to like to get slewed into the water. The thing skips over the water and even with the engine off it acts as if it has a life of it's own and circles around in an odd manner. Refreshing it sets it in the water ok again but then when I dip my wings at any speed above 60kts it starts to show the odd behaviour again...so far 3 other people I fly online with have the same issues. I have no idea what causes this. Anyone has got any idea?

Hi - yes I have the same weird beaviour especially when taxing from shore to water.

I also note that there is no wake created by the floats - only the hull - does anyone else find that?

Otherwise it has a reasonable VC ( bet we have Dan to thank for it being of quality) , great external model and sounds impressive.

 

[warchild]

It's a plane, innit. It's a bloody classic amphibian with seven unique models and twelve texture sets . .. it's not any bloody flavour. Albatross!

Albatross isnt a Flavour????






OH..

 

[Paul K]

It's a plane, innit. It's a bloody classic amphibian with seven unique models and twelve texture sets . .. it's not any bloody flavour. Albatross!

Thanks. You caught that one nicely.

 

[ColoKent]

Feature question...

...I'd be flying the Albatross at this instant-- but alas, I am on the road and unable to get back to my FS rig until early June!

Here is the question:
- Are the cockpit overhead hatches operable independently of the rear side door?

Just wondered...

Kent

 

[Javis]

Are the cockpit overhead hatches operable independently of the rear side door?

Yip. Shift/E opens cockpit hatches,Shift/E/2 opens rear side doors.

@ Gajit : no wakes from the floats here neither, just the hull. ( afaik they should be sitting in the water, not hovering above it, the whole ship should sit lower i guess.. )

Still i love my boat ! Wonderful model ! Great Sound ! :ernae:

( wouldn't have mind an option to get rid of the yoke... )

cheers,
Jan

 

[Shane Olguin]

I might be able to explain the skipping on the water. The landing gear on the Albatross is very tall, which necessitated a very high static height on the contact points. However, the Albatross sits very low in the water, which necessitated very high water float points. The result is that the difference between static height and float points was such that if the plane is "dropped" from slew mode or encounters an odd position in the water it will start behaving eratically.

Initially I reduced the static height. The result was perfect water behavior, but a consequence was that you could not spawn in on a hard surface because the gear would start below the surface and catapult the aircraft into the air.

The compromise was to lower the waterline on the hull to try to reduce the difference between them. We tested pretty vigorously the compromise static height and were satisfied with the tradeoff.

If you haven't changed anything, it should work fine. Have you made any adjustments to the contact points?

 

[gajit]

Hi

No - I have not touched anything. It ruins the amphib experience. Back to the great Catalina me thinks for any land/water transitions

Other than that problem I love it and it has kept me away from the Cat for a good few hours now!

 

[michael davies]

The best trade off for amphibs is to make the statci_cg_height match the land config so that the aircraft does not jump or drop when loaded or slewed, then to adjust the water contacts to sit correctly.

This does mean that when loaded to the water scenario it will jump or bounce when loaded or slewed but water is not as hard as land and you wont damage your gear.

The reason the wing tips floats behave oddly is because they are set as type 3 which is ski, skis dont like water, they would be better set as type 4 which is float like the rest of the amphib section, that should give you a wake effect if they dip and should stop it grabbing and draggin you round.

Amphibs are a trade off, luckily all the helos I did had short dumpy legs so the trade off between water and land was not so great.

I'd suggest to the brave ( backup the cfg first ), change point 3 and 4 to class 4, then points 5 through 8 to reduce column 3 by 1 foot, thus -6.75 becomes -5.75 etc. This will make it sit 1 foot lower in the water. This will make it bounce a little more when slewed or loaded to water enviroment but it will sit better in the water and may negate the other issues y'all might be having. If you primarily load to water then you can alter the static_cg_height so that it loads fine to water, but be aware that will make it bounce when loaded to land, you can not have both I'm afraid, the sim isnt that smart.

Hope that helps someone.

Best

Michael

Hi

No - I have not touched anything. It ruins the amphib experience. Back to the great Catalina me thinks for any land/water transitions

Other than that problem I love it and it has kept me away from the Cat for a good few hours now!

 

[Mithrin]

Shane, first of all thanks for the explanation. I've re-installed the Albatros and still I get the same behaviour. I'd much rather have it behave perfectly in the water than on land. If you say it spawns on a hardened surface with the gear sunk below it then would this be fixed when you slew it and kind of drop it on the runway? Cuz that'd be better for me than having it misbehave a lot on water.

Also this odd behaviour doesn't only just occur when slewing it into the water. We tested it for two hours (four guys with 3 having 100% similar trouble and 1 only running into one issue).

Take off from land and land at sea. Caused the same problem. It would skid and jerk over the water with extreme behaviour of the rudder showing (super rapid movement of the animated part). Almost as if it was detecting a crash or how it behaves when you try to land a regular plane on it).

Taxi from land into the water, same problem most of the time.

Starting in the water, same problem,however a refresh would sink it into the water perfectly. So we did that and then took off, no problem there but once we landed back the same issue surfaced say about 50% of the time.

Also from 60kts on during water take off, dipping the floats into the water seems to reset the plane from water behaviour to land and you get the same odd things. This does seem like a config conflict between the land and sea settings?


I hope this helps to create a slightly clearer image of what is happening and thanks already for taking the time to reply. I hope we can get this beauty to like the water a bit better.

Thanks Shane (and anyone else who might be involved behind the curtains
).

 

[michael davies]

Erik, as discussed elsewhere and posted here for anyone else who has water problems, the issue seems to be related to the damage value for the water components, in the cfg points 5 to 8 are set to 750 (column 4), these are becoming damaged when slewing and at higher speeds, a change to 2500 in line with the default Goose solves issues with skipping and skidding when they become damaged.

The same value should be added to the floats points 3 and 4, technically these should be (column 0) class 4 (float) not 3 (ski) but if ski works for you then leave alone, float should give a water wake effect IRC, ski may not.

Ride height is a matter of preference but a one foot reduction in column 3 for points 5 through 8 will help it sit better on the water. points 3 and 4 are fine as they are and match the model correctly.

For those with no problems, change nothing and ignore this post.

Best

Michael

Shane, first of all thanks for the explanation. I've re-installed the Albatros and still I get the same behaviour. I'd much rather have it behave perfectly in the water than on land. If you say it spawns on a hardened surface with the gear sunk below it then would this be fixed when you slew it and kind of drop it on the runway? Cuz that'd be better for me than having it misbehave a lot on water.

Also this odd behaviour doesn't only just occur when slewing it into the water. We tested it for two hours (four guys with 3 having 100% similar trouble and 1 only running into one issue).

Take off from land and land at sea. Caused the same problem. It would skid and jerk over the water with extreme behaviour of the rudder showing (super rapid movement of the animated part). Almost as if it was detecting a crash or how it behaves when you try to land a regular plane on it).

Taxi from land into the water, same problem most of the time.

Starting in the water, same problem,however a refresh would sink it into the water perfectly. So we did that and then took off, no problem there but once we landed back the same issue surfaced say about 50% of the time.

Also from 60kts on during water take off, dipping the floats into the water seems to reset the plane from water behaviour to land and you get the same odd things. This does seem like a config conflict between the land and sea settings?


I hope this helps to create a slightly clearer image of what is happening and thanks already for taking the time to reply. I hope we can get this beauty to like the water a bit better.

Thanks Shane (and anyone else who might be involved behind the curtains
).

 

[gajit]

Hi Micheal - thanks for the advice - I will give it a go.

 

[Mithrin]

Setting the class from ski to float, as it should be makes the plane nose over in the water. Setting it to ski is probably a compromise made by the development team?

However I'd much rather see the spray coming from the floats, so how off is this config file for that to get fixed? Any ideas anyone?

And thanks so far Michael. The other settings work really good now!

 

[Fireball6]

I do bit of "customizing" the Outside - change the glass_t.dds to the one that Bob Rivera (BananaBob) did for the Mentor - i`m in love with the blueish tone of it and add his new released GlobalEnvTest.dds.

 

[Fireball6]

If someone is interest - you can let her smoke

[smokesystem]
smoke.0 = 0.00, -10.80, 2.00, fx_ALPHA_Hunter_smoke
smoke.1 = 0.00, 10.80, 2.00, fx_ALPHA_Hunter_smoke

I prefer the Alphasim-Hunter smoke - if you like another one or don`t own it, you can add another effect at this place.

 

[Mithrin]

Ok guys. Here's what Michael and a bunch of testers came up with so far. This seems to be a good balance and she sits nicely in the water. Note that on request Michael changed the rudder section so that we get a workable water rudder (just use your rudder input) even though in real life the pilots had to use their engines to steer the thing in the water, which was probably quite tricky.

max_number_of_points = 16

//--------0------1-------2-------3--------4------5-----6-------7-----8------9------10------11------12----13---14---15-

point.0 = 1, 17.60, 0.00, -10.80, 1000.00, 0, 1.20, 30.00, 0.30, 1.30, 0.75, 7.00, 7.00, 0, 150, 225 //Nose gear
point.1 = 1, -2.00, -9.75, -10.60, 1200.00, 1, 1.90, 0.00, 0.45, 1.98, 0.68, 10.00, 10.00, 2, 150, 225 //Left MLG
point.2 = 1, -2.00, 9.75, -10.60, 1200.00, 2, 1.90, 0.00, 0.45, 1.98, 0.68, 10.00, 10.00, 3, 0, 0 //Right MLG
point.3 = 4, -2.70, -36.65, -3.00, 2500.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.50, 2.50, 0.65, 0.00, 0.00, 5, 0, 0 //Left float
point.4 = 4, -2.70, 36.65, -3.00, 2500.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.50, 2.50, 0.65, 0.00, 0.00, 5, 0, 0 //Right float
point.5 = 4, -3.00, -3.00, -6.25, 2500.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.50, 2.50, 0.70, 0.00, 0.00, 5, 0, 0 //Left rear float point
point.6 = 4, -3.00, 3.00, -6.25, 2500.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.50, 2.50, 0.70, 0.00, 0.00, 5, 0, 0 //Right rear float point
point.7 = 4, 15.00, -3.50, -7.75, 2500.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.50, 2.50, 0.70, 0.00, 0.00, 5, 0, 0 //Left forward float point
point.8 = 4, 15.00, 3.50, -7.75, 2500.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.50, 2.50, 0.70, 0.00, 0.00, 5, 0, 0 //Right forward float point
point.9 = 2, 0.00, -51.25, 4.25, 750.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 5, 0, 0 //Left wingtip
point.10= 2, 0.00, 51.25, 4.25, 750.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 6, 0, 0 //Right wingtip
point.11= 2, -35.00, -16.00, 6.50, 750.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 5, 0, 0 //Left horizontal stabilizer
point.12= 2, -35.00, 16.00, 6.50, 750.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 6, 0, 0 //Right horizontal stabilizer
point.13= 2, -37.25, 0.00, 19.75, 750.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 9, 0, 0 //Vertical stabilizer
point.14= 5, -16.5, 0.0, -6.5, 2000.00, 0, 0.0, 20.00, 0.00, 0.00, 1.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0, 0, 0 //Water rudder

static_pitch = 2.00
static_cg_height = 5.00 or 7.00
tailwheel_lock = 0
gear_system_type = 1

The static_cg_height of 5.00 is for starting on water, for starting on land the original figure of 7.00 is sufficient, in fact a value of 7.00 only gives a little jump in water start now, and no crash as the rest of the points are all sorted. A value of 6.00 would make it jump a little in both modes when starting.

Personally I've set the static_cg_height to 6 as this seems to have her behave good on land also. As always backup your cfg file first and then try this.

Thanks again to Michael and everyone else involved for putting some time in it. This should have been AlphaSim's job but Phil's response to one of our testers wasn't what I had hoped to see. No compromises like skis on a floatplane AlphaSim. This is a floatplane and it can behave like that as we have proven. Yay team. :ernae:

 

[michael davies]

It should be noted that the red lines above were the last set of changes, not the total set of changes, simply cut and paste 'all' the points into your current cfg if your having issues on the water. There is a list of all changes made in red if anyone is interested or wants to explore whats been changed, if not, just move along quietly .

As Erik says, make a back up first.

The work is not official or endorsed by AS, simply a bunch of guys bending it to suit their tastes for a little more realism and flexibility.

Best

Michael

 

[Mithrin]

It should be noted that the red lines above were the last set of changes, not the total set of changes,

Quote adjusted and all fixes are now shown in red as requested.

 

[TimL]

Ahhh...much better, thanks guys!