Angle Deck Essex

[BASys]

Hi Folks

Cheers Skippy
Excellent info.

Thought the runway might add the meatball.
Couldn't remember.

Much appreciated.
ATB
Paul

 

[michael davies]

Skippy,

Ok that proves the aircraft are ok and its my attach points, good thing with the carriers from that site is that once your locked on then the plane aligns with the track and the JBD raises, as the Essex does not have a JBD then it might be prudent if I add a deck drew whose arm raises or some sort of visual animation to say your launch bar is locked in place, something to consider before the next compile.

Now I just have to ascertain why my attach points dont work.

Best

Michael

Michael

http://www.simtours.net/defaultaircraftcarrier.php gives a schedule for the freeflight carriers in acceleration.

You shouldn't need the parking brake if you're hooked onto the cat, not sure what effect having it on has.
Depressingly it's always something simple that's stopping it working so you feel a bit of a t*t when you solve it rather than some sort of genius!

 

[michael davies]

Yeah that threw me for a while, thanks for the timely mail yesterday LOL.

Paul,

added a few bits and a link to the mini tutorial I did on how to actually add the attach points as they're not in the attach point tool!

Paul,

Its the cat that doesnt work yet, landing and trapping is OK, just the cat, now I have seen how it works on another carrier I know what I'm looking for, or how its supposed to work LOL, it'll be a silly syntax error some where I'm sure.

Best

Michael

 

[sparouty]

Hello,
I would like to share with you some points I noticed about attach points handling.
- runway attach points (runway lights and FLOLS) seem to work only if catapult attach points are added(?).
- cables attach points seem to need a hard deck to work
- catapults seem to work according its position. I made tests for my BigE model who's cat didn't work. I was sure that the code was OK, because the attach point objects were picked up from my Clemenceau working catapult. So I tought it was a question of distance between begin and end attach points, but it appears that moving my reference point from the bow to the island was a solution...

If anyone have similar observations, I wish we should be able to find out how the catapults work, all the 4 ones...

Last, I have a simple sample model (flight deck, attach points and light effect to show up positions) if anyone wants it for further tests, please MP me.

I hope it helps...
regards
Sylvain

 

[michael davies]

Hello,
I would like to share with you some points I noticed about attach points handling.
- runway attach points (runway lights and FLOLS) seem to work only if catapult attach points are added(?).
- cables attach points seem to need a hard deck to work
- catapults seem to work according its position. I made tests for my BigE model who's cat didn't work. I was sure that the code was OK, because the attach point objects were picked up from my Clemenceau working catapult. So I tought it was a question of distance between begin and end attach points, but it appears that moving my reference point from the bow to the island was a solution...

If anyone have similar observations, I wish we should be able to find out how the catapults work, all the 4 ones...

Last, I have a simple sample model (flight deck, attach points and light effect to show up positions) if anyone wants it for further tests, please MP me.

I hope it helps...
regards
Sylvain

Sylvain,

Well you might just have rescued my project from the recyle bin !, its about 3 miliseconds from total deletion, how can a simple attach point create so much angst and foul language ?.

Like you I've cut the model back to a hull, deck and attach points, to help find the invisible attach points I've placed dummy blocks that show up on deck, so I know its all lined up.

I'll go and try moving the cat ref points and see what happens, though surely the start needs to be where you connect to ?, is it the end that needs moving ?.

Ironically I did think it might be something like that as the balst shield I have is upside down and backwards ( doesnt work yet as the launch assist box isnt working ) which is usually a fault with the ref point location or axis rotation.

I also thought it might be the compiler or naming, but the wires all work so I must have the FSxA SDK and compiler installed, the naming is all correct and mirriors Pauls notes, PC-12s blog and Skippybings tutorial, I even hex checked the MS default code and the names are all the same, so it has to be something else and really fundimental too.

Off to play again <SIGH>.

Kindest

Michael

Addendum, Sylvain, your a bloody genius !, moving the whole shooting match ( cat start and end ) nearer to the vessel center point fixes everything, of course thats no good because the Essex Cat is to starboard bow, I dont have the runway points in, but do have ahard deck, I wonder if the runway points define the boundries of the attach points ?.

 

[stiz]

For example, the Quad 40s need to be in a three or four colors, this depends on their location and the paint scheme, you cant just paint one quad 40 in grey and leave it there, simplest thing is to map one and clone with each paint scheme, problem is, that will make four or five distinct seperate textures where the only difference is the base color, it would be smarter to use one large 1024 with a Quad mapped four times on it, each quarter in a different color, easy enough but I'm only just scraping by mapping and baking one item per texture, cloning it and mapping four times on one texture has me lost at the moment. I know whats needed but not the skills to achieve it, or to be frank the stomach to learn long hard winded inner depths of Max to get the result.

Doing baked textures isnt so hard for say aircraft or even a landing gear, but a decent Quad 40 model is another story, then duplicate four times into one texture is another task, setting Max to simple bake is easy, but you end up with a mish mash of polys all over the place, you need to start grouping them into some sort of cohesive form so its not just a map of 450 seperate polys. Indeed some parts can be replicated in model form from one map, examples would be the seats, magazines, sights or barrels, you only need map and bake one, then clone across when done to replicate the duplicate parts.

The way i'd do it :- map one of the guns to how you want (i tend to do flatten mapping and piece then together, not the quickest way but it works for me) then clone the gun say another 3 times, now with one of the guns selected attach the other ones you've just cloned, then in the unwarp UWV modifier, click select by elment, then select one of your guns and drag it into another portion of the map (might have to rescale etc), then do it for the others and when you done you'll have all 4 guns on the same texture each with their own uv space, so they'll all have their own AO and paint etc.

Also for texture bakeing have a read through this: http://www.aerodynamika.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1187043062

What I'm saying is, if I gave this to anyone else to paint or map they'd have a seizure LOL, I dont want simple grey bland textures for anything, it would be so easy to do that, I want a full 3D mapped and baked model, and that is going to take an inordinate amount of time and effort.

well after unwraping all the struts in an avro 504 nothing scares me anymore current count on it is 248061 faces to give some idea

I've heard 250K is possible

you can go a lot higher than that as long as you keep each material to 64k verts

If you want a insane person to map it all i'd be more than willing, plus i'm free at the moment :wave:

 

[michael davies]

Sylvain,

Ok some more tests, it appears the cat start point has to be close to the 'master' hierarchy part ref point, traditionally 3rd party developers put this at x,y,z 0,0,0, certainly in aircraft where 0,0,0 is the CoG. However around FS2002 MS changed the way they used 'their' ref point and placed them at the very front of the aircraft, so all values were negative ( tanks, control surfaces, landing gear points, eye points etc etc ). So following the above principle I moved the master part ref position to the front of the vessel and the cats now work in there correct places ( cat2 still to solve...JBD too ). Next I moved the ref point way out in front of the vessel ( +100m ) and again the cats refused to work.

Initial tests show that the master ref point needs to be within 30m ahead of the cat start or 20m behind, hopefully on the Enterprise you can find a point somewhere between all four cats so that it will trigger them....when cats 2-4 are solved.

I also think the default carriers are too small scale wise, they feel about 80% scale, I'd need to compile my Ronald Reagan and park it next to one of the default ones to see how far....if at all...the scale is out.

Attached my set up showing the ref point and hierarchy, initially I thought it might just be the parent of the attach points so made a dummy cat start ( yellow squares ) with its ref point very close, but its not that, its the master part ref point thats appears critical, the part can stay at 0,0,0, but the ref point needs moving, don't go up or down or the model will fly or sink lower.

One worry with moving the ref point was that the wires might no work, don't worry, they still do, with the ref point at the bow stem they still work just fine. Runway attach points have no bearing on cat start issues, in fact all then seem to do is add a massive set of glide slope lights, whose location currently seems impossible to tune or move in relation to the vessel ?.

Best

Michael

Addendum, now its stopped working again ?...grrr !

 

[michael davies]

The way i'd do it :- map one of the guns to how you want (i tend to do flatten mapping and piece then together, not the quickest way but it works for me) then clone the gun say another 3 times, now with one of the guns selected attach the other ones you've just cloned, then in the unwarp UWV modifier, click select by elment, then select one of your guns and drag it into another portion of the map (might have to rescale etc), then do it for the others and when you done you'll have all 4 guns on the same texture each with their own uv space, so they'll all have their own AO and paint etc.

Also for texture bakeing have a read through this: http://www.aerodynamika.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1187043062



well after unwraping all the struts in an avro 504 nothing scares me anymore current count on it is 248061 faces to give some idea




you can go a lot higher than that as long as you keep each material to 64k verts

If you want a insane person to map it all i'd be more than willing, plus i'm free at the moment :wave:

Stitz, copied and pasted for a rainy day LOL, thanks for the pointers, exactly what I need, baby steps in baby speak . I already had the link to baking, but glazed over the layers attributes in PSP so it never worked and I end up always baking as a one shot affair, it was the layer attibutes I wanted so I could paint 'underneath' the baked layer.

Will get back on the rest anon.

Kindest

Michael

 

[sparouty]

Hi Michael,
It's very interesting, I didn't try to move the 'master' hierarchy point.
What you find out explain me why my Clemenceau cat is working. In this picture I put green points on working catapults. The F14 is at the 0,0,0 point. Why cat2-4 don't work is still mysterious...
By the way, you can compare default FSX carrier to Enterprise (and Clemenceau )...

Concerning JBD, have you got in your .mdl compilation log something like that: <!-- ++++ Processing Animation : blastshield_0_pct ++++ -->?

If not, it means that the JBD animation is not compiled...

Good luck
Sylvain

 

[michael davies]

Hmm, the ref point seems to be a read herring, suddenly it all didn't work, so I set it all back to original, then moved cat1 start back toward 0,0,0 and suddenly it worked again, it works out to +62m, even +72m in a straight line, but offset to port 5m and it breaks, It cannot be the off set as the default must be +30m off the center line.

It looks like the Cat start must be within 60-65m of 0,0,0 not the ref point, that would fit for the Nimitz and Enterprise and because there cats are very long and start close to the middle of the vessel, on your Clemenceau you have your 0,0,0 near the front of the vessel, that will allow your bow cat to work but even if we got cat 2 to work I don't think your port cat will work as its to fat from 0,0,0.

The problem with the Essex model is that its quite long ( 265m ) and the cats are old hydraulic ones which were quite short, so the starts are a long way from 0,0,0. The next trick is to shunt my whole model back 20m and effectively off set the 0,0,0 by 20m fwd, not just the ref point but the whole scene, if my theory is right then that will solve it.

Good comparison on the carriers heres mine and it looks like default is pretty close, that makes your friends Enterprise too long and not wide enough, if you want dimensions to compare with then let me know, I do have some drawings of the Big E kicking around somewhere, mind you have to be careful with the Big E as her deck is different from all the other carriers, especially around the stern area, though yours looks pretty close so far .

I've added a 60m ring around the vessel which is where I think the cat starts have to be, I might be in trouble with cat 4 myself, attached also the Essex with the same 60m ring and as you can see my cats are out side, the yellow blocks are where it works, the red is where they should be.

Ok time to shunt my Essex and see if it helps.

Best

Michael

 

[sparouty]

Nice pictures!!
I think your analyse is right. I'm sure it is more a side-effect than a rationnal decision...
The position of my Clemenceau 0,0,0 is a work-around for a wake effect issue: I wanted to have wakes along the hull. I will certainly change that soon.

Your remark about Enterprise size sow confusion in my mind, if you have drawings I'll accept them with pleasure, it will help me to check it up.

I'm going back to these strange cat2-4...
Thank you and regards,
Sylvain

PS : dummy's question : how do you insert clickable thumbnails pictures to your post?

 

[michael davies]

Ok, that all worked, shunted the whole model 'except' the master hierarchy part back 10m so that the cat starts are +62m from 0,0,0 and it works, then I pushed it out in 1m increments to the original 72m.....and it still works ?, move the whole model back fwd 10m and it doesn't.

So rather than waste more time I'm going to stick to the 60-65m bubble as that seems to consistently work, problem is now that all the other Essex models ( long - short hull, Korea and different weapons fits) plus associated layers all now have to be moved to match this new master.

JDB, well it is generating a xanim file so it seems to be working, the JDB is there but facing directly down below decks so it'll be a syntax, hierarchy or animation key frame error, currently its 0-100, with 0 as down and 100 as up and linked to the attach point, not sure if thats right or not, should work.

Best

Michael

 

[michael davies]

Sylvain see attached for attachement .

Wakes, yes I had a simular problem and made my 0,0,0 at the center and then added the wake in the cfg

[EFFECTS]
wake=fx_wake_carrier

however whilst I Hex checked the default carriers I noticed they were attaching all sorts of effects in their code and there were some wake ones in there I think, that is the only way you can add two wakes. If you dont use wake effects and only use a cfg wake then you only get one wake and its generated at 0,0,0. So for Catermerans or dual float plans I think you need to add attach effects and then delete the cfg ones.

Enterprise plans, will look them out shortly, you want pictures too ?, 240+, many high quality 3000x2000 sized, 216MB in total.

Best

Michael

Nice pictures!!
I think your analyse is right. I'm sure it is more a side-effect than a rationnal decision...
The position of my Clemenceau 0,0,0 is a work-around for a wake effect issue: I wanted to have wakes along the hull. I will certainly change that soon.

Your remark about Enterprise size sow confusion in my mind, if you have drawings I'll accept them with pleasure, it will help me to check it up.

I'm going back to these strange cat2-4...
Thank you and regards,
Sylvain

PS : dummy's question : how do you insert clickable thumbnails pictures to your post?

 

[chinookmark]

Regarding the wake effects: I remember reading a couple things about ships and effects, I think at fsshipyards, but I don't remember for sure. If it's a pilotable ship, you can pretty much add whatever effects you can add to an airplane. But the AI ones will only have one wake. Some of the designers created special wake effects that added a bow wave, smoke effects, and lights to the wake effect. You can offset the position of each effect within the effect (.fx) file. The only drawback is you will only see smoke and lights if the ship is moving.

 

[PutPut]

Just to note I am watching this thread very closely. I have always used the rcbco gauges for carrier ops and have been very happy with them. However, I am a designer still not too old to learn new tricks so I am in the middle of designing a airplane-carrier combination using the attachpoint approach. I am perfectly willing to wait and see how you all make out.

Thanks, Paul

 

[michael davies]

Just to note I am watching this thread very closely. I have always used the rcbco gauges for carrier ops and have been very happy with them. However, I am a designer still not too old to learn new tricks so I am in the middle of designing a airplane-carrier combination using the attachpoint approach. I am perfectly willing to wait and see how you all make out.

Thanks, Paul

Cheers !!, to be honest its a bit of as mess, if you just tried to follow the SDK you'd get pretty much no where LOL.

I'm fighting the JBDs now but theres no text anywhere on how to do this, it simply says name part blah blah, key frame 0-100, so you do and nothing happens, then it says use attach point xyz, so you do and nothing happens, do you attach the attach point to the JBD or vice versa, do you use the animation tool to add the code ?, its just garbage and not documented at all. The SDK calls for blast_shield_0_pct, yet the animation manager calls for blastshield_0_pct, which syntax is right, you cant alter the animation one so you'd better hope thats right and the SDK is a typo ?.

If it wasnt for Skippy and Sylvain I'd have walked off days ago in a strop LOL. When I'm done I'll hopefully do a little idiots guide on each step and how to get it to work and stick it on my blog, I'm not saying what every one else has written is no good, just that some times there's assumptions made and for a numptie like me the're assumptions too many LOL.

FSx is far too complicated when it comes to many things, in the good old days you just named it the right way and it did what it was supposed to do .

Kindest

Michael

Addendum, ok got it !, sort of, some names work and some dont ?.

 

[Helldiver]

As far as wakes are concerned, at flank speed when launching or recovering aircraft, that is going flat out at 37 knots, the ship would have a rooster tail, quite pronounced.
As far as a bow wave I can remember about a 14 foot lump of water coming at me should we ever ditch and turn us into the rooster tail.
In bits and pieces.

 

[sparouty]

Hi Michael,
Have a look to the Enterprise JBD I coded.
The little purple cube is my dummy with the attachpt_blast_shield_1 property. The small xyz axis is the JBD pivot.
JBD pivot and attach point are at the same place.
Last, it shows you the animation window, where I choose blashield_0_pct animation for cat #1 (numbers are from 0 to 3 there and 1 to 4 everywhere else...).
Frame 0: the shield is down
Frame 60 (for me): the shield is full up

I hope it will help you

Thank you for the drawing, I will check my model as soon as possible..

Regards
Sylvain

PS : thanks for the thumbnails tip !

 

[michael davies]

Hi Michael,
Have a look to the Enterprise JBD I coded.
The little purple cube is my dummy with the attachpt_blast_shield_1 property. The small xyz axis is the JBD pivot.
JBD pivot and attach point are at the same place.
Last, it shows you the animation window, where I choose blashield_0_pct animation for cat #1 (numbers are from 0 to 3 there and 1 to 4 everywhere else...).
Frame 0: the shield is down
Frame 60 (for me): the shield is full up

I hope it will help you

Thank you for the drawing, I will check my model as soon as possible..

Regards
Sylvain

PS : thanks for the thumbnails tip !

Interesting, it appears your part name has no issues and you are using blastshield_0_pct, that doesnt work here at all ?, will try and recompile again.

Enterprise, your welcome.

Best

Michael

 

[crashaz]

I love threads like this... all of us get to learn a lot. :focus: