CFS1 Curtiss-Wright AT-9 "Jeep" Work In Progress.

Spelling....

Almost forgot to mention. Fledgling is how the word is spelled....

You can edit the BMP because you only need up to 2300 RPM. The Mitchell's engines go to 2600 RPM and the Lightning's engines go to 3000 RPM. Even 2600 RPM pegs the FS98 gauge.

At this point, I need to find an old utility called GauDmp. The old version worked on FS98 gauges. The newest one does not.

- Ivan.
 
Hi Ivan,
Spelling glitch: Oh dear, well, nobody´s perfect. Thanks, I´d never thought it was wrong. I´ll put all the docs right!
I´ll try my hand at the generic RPM gauges bitmap then! I´ll try and pruduce something that looks WWII-ish.
By the way: Gauge Dump for FS98. Avast or Google Chrome thinks and says there´s a virus in it or something.

http://www.bruceh.com/gdump12.html

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Thanks for the link.
I have been to the author's site before but didn't see a link to this version.
Perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention.
I also get a warning from McAfee, but only because it is "Not Commonly Downloaded".

I plan on running it on a non-networked Windows 2000 machine, so I believe I should be safe enough.
Next step is to poke around at some stock FS98 gauges to see how THEY do a few things.

Time to go clean up the mess after dinner.

- Ivan.
 
Strange FSFS generic gauge readout

Hi Ivan,

I took out the generic FSFS Cessna 182 rpm-1 gauge bitmaps to re-draw the dial for a correct 2300 rpm readout, and was comparing the Beckwith gauge stack RPM readout with the generic gauge one to get the exact 2300 RPM needle position, when I noticed something rather strange:

The generic gauge gives a false readout until full screen mode is entered, after which it is more correct, and stays correct when going back to the windowed screen mode.

Another thing I discovered was that on all stock gauges, the needles are a little inaccurate and sit between the 2300 and 2400 RPM lines - the needles are square and only the left corner would be aligned correctly. But well, that´s not too bothersome, I suppose.

So... now what? Good question.
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Difficult hairline crack in the cockpit frame licked!

Hi Ivan,

The Cockpit frame had a hairline crack visible from outside and inside, between a spar and the aft wall. AF99 vertices did not allow this to be eliminated as it was on a slanted side of the adjacent part. Left-right adjustments from 1.46 ft to 1.45 to make it invisible from inside only made it worse from outside.

So, doing the multiplication: Position (inches) x 2.54 / 100 x 512, this gave me the exact position of the coordinates for that corner of the spar in the .scx file SCASM listing, which I quickly found, both for the V-cockpit and for the normal Canopy frame parts.

The corresponding l/r position was 228 and -228, and AF99 would only let me overcorrect to an equivalent of 226 and -226. No good either! So I entered 227 and -227, and the hairline crack disappeared both from the inside view as well as the outside view!
In AF99 this would have been equivalent to 1.455 ft, which it won´t accept.

I thought this was quite cool!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp.
 
Panel config question

Hello everyone!

I was wondering if perhaps a panel config expert could help to solve the following:

I added an extra second window into the panel.cfg to show some canopy frame spars without having to completely alter the main instrument panel window and bitmap, in which the panel occupies the whole bitmap and only reaches upto half the screen-height.

This second window is (obviously) tagged as "visible=1", and positioned at the top of the screen, but unfortunately also appears when it shouldn´t: e.g. when in virtual cabin view you load a different version of the same plane into CFS1, you suddenly get the canopy-spar bitmap showing.

The only cure for the moment is to "S"-key-toggle through the different views, and back in virtual cabockpit view, the canopy-spar bitmap doesn´t show. I´m sure I´m doing something wrong, but what is it?

Cheers and thanks in advance for an answer and/or help
Aleatorylamp
 
Just a Hair....

Hello Aleatorylamp,

The hairline crack thing tends to happen a lot when joining anything to a structure.
You obviously got it pretty close with your method, but on my own projects, I really dislike doing this kind of thing because I know I will forget to do this on the next SCASM pass.

In case you are wondering, the numbers in SCASM represent 1/512 of a Meter (around 1.953 mm). 1/100 of a foot is 3.048 mm which obviously doesn't always make for an exact conversion, so yes, you can get more precise within SCASM.

Hubbabubba and I had a discussion about this a while back. I think it was in the AF99 versus SCASM thread.
The title may not be exactly right but is something along those lines.

Another possibility and the one I would choose is to put an additional Vertex that matches up with the Canopy Frame.
That method is guaranteed to work regardless of conversions though you may have to Triangulate a Polygon as a result.

Another thing is that the Canopy Interior doesn't have to match the exterior.
In fact, most of mine do not match; The interior frame pieces are much narrower.
Some of them may have a Vertex shifted here and there to avoid bleeds.
I actually discussed this in the Warhawk thread a long time ago when I built the Canopy Interior for that aeroplane.
I believe the problem is that in real life, a Pilot typically has two eyes and can see around bars that block the field of view for one eye. In the game, the screen acts as only a single eye and you can't see around it.
I do think the narrower Canopy Frames look better than the full width ones, but this is a judgment call
For what it's worth, I don't narrow down ALL the frame pieces.

- Ivan.
 
The quick way out!

Hello Ivan,

Interesting. Yes, I understand your arguments. In this case it was a matter of fitting a spar which was half the width of a slanted aft-cabin roof-side component-part with vertices matching the vertical aft cabin wall. As it was half the width, halfway along a slanted edge, the position was 0.005 ft off in any direction.

3 extra matching vertices, 1 on the spar, 1 on the aft cabin wall and also 1 on the slanted cabin-roof side would have definitely served too, but then I would have had to run the SCASM processes for the 2 Jeeps again and with so many entries it seemed too much work, so the 227 instead of 228 SCASM adjustment was the quickest way. In effect, I thought I´d solved that hairline crack in the aft canopy before SCASMing the 2 planes, but it was still there, only smaller!

Actually, on the same canopy frame spar, in a different position, I had already successfully joined a second, thinner slanted spar that was also 0.005 ft off, and in this case an extra vertex did the trick perfectly (without extra triangulation - for which there are no parts left over anyway on these planes!).

I realize that the inside virtual view can use different parts to those of the outside view, but in this case, the hairline crack coincided in both cases, only that in the V-cockpit Chase-view it was much more noticeable as it was much closer, and the same part from the outside was also still slightly defective, so this way it was also the easiest way to kill both problems at the same time.

The narrower canopy frame you mention: Then that would be fitted in such a way that it wouln´t need to match any of the other parts, of course, as it would overlap and cover any gaps. Possibly that would also give a better feeling for a small, cramped cockpit like in this case, without such an ample "bridge"-like sensation! I´ll take that into account next time!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Finished and uploaded

Hi all!
Well, with many thanks to Ivan for his never tiring help and counsel, especially as regards the transparent cabin and is content, the virtual cockpit SCASM process, (which on this occasion has involved a pilot´s head animation!), as well as accurate flight dynamics, the Curtiss Wright AT-9 Jeep is finished! The two versions provided are very slightly different in their performance.
The links are:
Curtiss Wright AT-9:
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?action=jump&catid=19&id=20195
Curtiss Wright AT-9A:
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...id=19&id=20194
I hope you all enjoy them!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Hello Aleatorylamp,

Good show on the release of the Fledglings!
It looks like the audience likes it.
In one day, one of the versions has picked up as many downloads as my Macchi C.202 has had since it was uploaded!

Hello All,
I haven't downloaded it yet myself but I suspect I already have almost everything that is in it because Aleatorylamp has been sending me advanced copies to examine for the last couple months.

It really is a very unique and cool subject.

Well Done!
- Ivan.
 
Cool subject... and object!

Hi Ivan,
Yes, cool indeed, and not only the subject but also the object - i.e. the model itself, that gained so much with your suggestions, coaching, as well as hands-on help!

Hi all!
Thanks for your interest in downloading!

Now for the next new subject/object project... I wonder. Once it´s decided which one to do on the Conspicuous thread, I´ll open another thread for it. I have to make up my mind first though. Possibly meanwhile I´ll prepare one of my antique FS98 WW1 planes if bleedthroughs are not too bad on it. I was extensively working on the Caudron G4 to do this, but the bleedthroughs are preventing a CFS1 upload for the moment.

We shall see!
Aleatorylamp
 
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