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Flight Réplicas Douglas Dc-4 and B-24 free Released

SeeRyFly said:
The versions that got uploaded must be an older set of the files. Hopefully the latest copy can get integrated and solve the usability issues.

For the fuel tanks and other elements - zero effort was put into making the flight model, weights, fuel burn, etc. accurate other than a generic 'heavy' feel and roughly appropriate airspeeds. Flight models are the most obnoxious part to work on so a lot of it gets copied from plane to plane and tweaked. There is lots of room for improvement for anyone who is up to it :)
Click to expand...
I've got the B-24 working with a proper flight model config and modern flight model. Give me a few days and I'll whip it into shape.
 
It is great to have these ports in the sim, especially with Jankees' magnificent skins

I am having trouble with a couple of his skins not appearing in FS2020 however. For the Boise Bronc and Pistol Packin Mama skins, I get the dreaded pink checkers of death in place of the external textures. Anyone else having the issue?

EDIT: I have spotted what I think might be the issue. The skins that don't work are missing one file for each texture. It is the COMP.PNG.DDS file. So, for example, the textures that work will have four files for the fuselage:

B24_FUSELAGE.PNG.DDS
B24_FUSELAGE.PNG.DDS.json
B24_FUSELAGE_COMP.PNG.DDS
B24_FUSELAGE_COMP.PNG.DDS.json

The ones that don't work for me are missing the third of these files.

If these files are not needed for the particular skin and the intention is to default to one of the backups given in the texture.cfg, then perhaps the fix is just to delete the _COMP.PNG.DDS.json files.

EDIT TO EDIT: Ok, the issue is different in different skins, but generally it seems to be either json files being there where there is no corresponding texture, or textures being there where there is no corresponding json file.

August
 
Last edited:
K5083 said:
It is great to have these ports in the sim, especially with Jankees' magnificent skins

I am having trouble with a couple of his skins not appearing in FS2020 however. For the Boise Bronc and Pistol Packin Mama skins, I get the dreaded pink checkers of death in place of the external textures. Anyone else having the issue?

EDIT: I have spotted what I think might be the issue. The skins that don't work are missing one file for each texture. It is the COMP.PNG.DDS file. So, for example, the textures that work will have four files for the fuselage:

B24_FUSELAGE.PNG.DDS
B24_FUSELAGE.PNG.DDS.json
B24_FUSELAGE_COMP.PNG.DDS
B24_FUSELAGE_COMP.PNG.DDS.json

The ones that don't work for me are missing the third of these files.

If these files are not needed for the particular skin and the intention is to default to one of the backups given in the texture.cfg, then perhaps the fix is just to delete the _COMP.PNG.DDS.json files.

EDIT TO EDIT: Ok, the issue is different in different skins, but generally it seems to be either json files being there where there is no corresponding texture, or textures being there where there is no corresponding json file.

August
Click to expand...
It's odd, because as you can see from my screenshots, things were fine on my computer. I'm aware that there are sometimes redundant files in the texture folder. That was partly a result of the conversion process, where I wasn't sure in the beginning which files I needed to convert, but as the additional json files never interfered (in my sim), I sort of forgot about them, and got on with making or converting more textures. I probably should have cleaned them up before posting, sorry about that.
 
I've been tweaking the DC-4/C-54A flight model, plugging in correct values for the aerodynamics etc. Seems to work well so far. If anyone would like to be a guinea pig and test them they are attached to this post. Simply unzip to a safe place and copy the two .cfg files into the DC-4 Skymaster folder. If you used the default names it will be in 'DC-4_Skymaster_FSXP3D_conv\SimObjects\Airplanes\DC4 Skymaster'
Any and all feedback is welcomed.
 

Attachments

  • DC-4 Replacement Files for Testing.zip
    8.4 KB · Views: 23
Had a quick flight, feels mostly OK but very under-powered I think (the empty weight having increased a lot).
The original was too fast, now it's too slow :)
I'm experimenting further...

I've been doing my own changes, mostly complementary to yours:
The flaps aren't anywhere near correct in the original, I've changed them to
flaps-position.1=10,200,0.2,0.2,0,0,0
flaps-position.2=15,170,0.3,0.4,0,0,0
flaps-position.3=20,144,0.4,0.5,0,0,0
flaps-position.4=25,122,0.64,0.5,0,0,0
flaps-position.5=30,103,0.8,0.5,0,0,0
flaps-position.6=40,87,1,0.5,0,0,0
but more work is needed.

The cargo loading is based on the firefighter but any 'realistic' change ends up with CofG too far aft, so I've changed to
station_load.0=510, 6.2, 0, 1.6, Crew, 1
station_load.1=2000,0,0,0,Bay 1
station_load.2=510,-3,0,0,Bay 2
mostly so it works well in FSEconomy.

There are several possible fuel configurations, I think you went with the 'military' config with lots of fuselage fuel, which is fine
though I'm not sure the centre tank was a 'collector', I think the wing tanks fed the engines?
Anyway I'm using the DC-4 in FSEconomy and the FSE DC-4 only has wing tanks so my fuel config matches that.
 
keithb77 said:
Had a quick flight, feels mostly OK but very under-powered I think (the empty weight having increased a lot).
The original was too fast, now it's too slow :)
I'm experimenting further...

I've been doing my own changes, mostly complementary to yours:
The flaps aren't anywhere near correct in the original, I've changed them to
flaps-position.1=10,200,0.2,0.2,0,0,0
flaps-position.2=15,170,0.3,0.4,0,0,0
flaps-position.3=20,144,0.4,0.5,0,0,0
flaps-position.4=25,122,0.64,0.5,0,0,0
flaps-position.5=30,103,0.8,0.5,0,0,0
flaps-position.6=40,87,1,0.5,0,0,0
but more work is needed.

The cargo loading is based on the firefighter but any 'realistic' change ends up with CofG too far aft, so I've changed to
station_load.0=510, 6.2, 0, 1.6, Crew, 1
station_load.1=2000,0,0,0,Bay 1
station_load.2=510,-3,0,0,Bay 2
mostly so it works well in FSEconomy.

There are several possible fuel configurations, I think you went with the 'military' config with lots of fuselage fuel, which is fine
though I'm not sure the centre tank was a 'collector', I think the wing tanks fed the engines?
Anyway I'm using the DC-4 in FSEconomy and the FSE DC-4 only has wing tanks so my fuel config matches that.
Click to expand...
I've just amended the aerodynamics so far, but will take a look at the engines too!

I've been using a C54A pilots manual for all the reference figures but one of the things they omitted were the flaps; they gave a flap area but not the values for the drop and/or extensions.

The internal fuselage tanks were used in several long-distance configurations, including pax operations and fed the engines through four crossfeed valves. I've been looking at rewriting the fuel system using the modern 2020 section instead of the legacy one to make this more accurate but it will need to be operated using keystrokes as I've no clue how to change the cockpit model to animate levers etc.

I'll keep tweaking the flight model and engines first though to get it to fly correctly. Everything else can come after :)
 
Benoen said:
I've just amended the aerodynamics so far, but will take a look at the engines too!

I've been using a C54A pilots manual for all the reference figures but one of the things they omitted were the flaps; they gave a flap area but not the values for the drop and/or extensions.

The internal fuselage tanks were used in several long-distance configurations, including pax operations and fed the engines through four crossfeed valves. I've been looking at rewriting the fuel system using the modern 2020 section instead of the legacy one to make this more accurate but it will need to be operated using keystrokes as I've no clue how to change the cockpit model to animate levers etc.

I'll keep tweaking the flight model and engines first though to get it to fly correctly. Everything else can come after :)
Click to expand...
I've got the original P3D DC-4, which has a much more complex flap arrangement - I'll look to see if that can be ported.
Also includes cruise power curves - I was intending to try and get the 10,000 ft settings as close as possible, using the power and fuel-flow scalars..
Do you have the manual from the hathitrust site?
 
I have one manual specifically for the C-54 and C-54A from Douglas themselves, dated June 1942. The manual was the property of Lt. H. W. Fish USNR. It was used initially by Squadron VR-4 at NAS Oakland when it was formed in 1943 and later by Air Transport Squadron 5 at NAS Kodiak where Lt. Fish became the Engineering Officer and promotion to Lt. Cdr.
Another reference I use is a flight manual for a DC-4 from Resort Airlines Inc dated April 15th 1951. I also have a C-54 pilot training manual from Aug 1945 which I think I found on Google Books.
As for the flaps - it appears that the flap lever has Up-Off-Down on a sliding control. So, for example, to lower the flaps you'd put the lever to the Down position to start the flap movement and when they reach the required angle the lever is put to Off which locks the flaps in place.
I just took a look at the engines.cfg and it's using figures for the wrong engine: R-2800-10W Double Wasp instead of the R-2000-7 Twin Wasp. It'll be a challenge to get the correct info but not impossible :)
 
The manual I have is at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015024230826&seq=7, probably the one you got from Google.
Can be read but not downloaded.
I've put the original Flight Replicas flap entries back in but not flown them yet.
Basically three sets of overlaid flaps are defined, one for no drag, no lift, one for just lift and one for just drag.

The original Flight Replicas engine spec isn't identified, but includes:
cylinder_displacement= 143 //Cubic inches per cylinder
compression_ratio= 6.5 //Compression ratio
number_of_cylinders= 14 //Number of cylinders
max_rated_rpm= 2700 //Max rated RPM
max_rated_hp= 1450 //Max rated HP

Smaller and less powerful - I'll try and uprate.
 
keithb77 said:
The manual I have is at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015024230826&seq=7, probably the one you got from Google.
Can be read but not downloaded.
I've put the original Flight Replicas flap entries back in but not flown them yet.
Basically three sets of overlaid flaps are defined, one for no drag, no lift, one for just lift and one for just drag.

The original Flight Replicas engine spec isn't identified, but includes:
cylinder_displacement= 143 //Cubic inches per cylinder
compression_ratio= 6.5 //Compression ratio
number_of_cylinders= 14 //Number of cylinders
max_rated_rpm= 2700 //Max rated RPM
max_rated_hp= 1450 //Max rated HP

Smaller and less powerful - I'll try and uprate.
Click to expand...
1450hp is the P&W R-2000-9 and used in the C-54G models - the highest hp of all variants (unless you include the Canadair North Star DC-4M which was built in Canada under license and used the Rolls-Royce Merlin 626 (1760hp) or a single model with the P&W R-2800-CA15 (2400hp)
1350hp is the P&W R-2000-11 and used in the C-54D and E models
1100hp is the P&W R-2000-7 and used in the C-54A and some B models
1100hp is also the original R-2000-3 used in the C-54 and some C-54B models

I'm rebuilding the [PISTON_ENGINE] and the [PROPELLER] sections with more accurate data using the modern flight model variables as the entire engines.cfg seems to be from the Vought Corsair - not quite the 4-engined transport we're looking for :)
 
edakridge said:
If the engine data is from the Corsair that would explain why it's only pulling from one tank.
Click to expand...
It has four Corsair engines...
The actual fix for taking fuel from the left main only is in post #75 above, repeated below :)
------------------x------------------x---------------------
The following change to flight_model.cfg helps:
line 306
number_of_tank_selectors = 4 ; Max 4

lines 315, 316
default_fuel_tank_selector.3 = 20 ; RightMain
default_fuel_tank_selector.4 = 20 ; RightMain

The fuel gauges are calibrated to 505 and 433 gallons so to get a full fuel load:
LeftMain = 2, -8, -1, 505, 6.2
RightMain = 2, 8, -1, 505, 6.2
LeftAux = -2, -14.3, -0.4, 433, 1.5
RightAux = -2, 14.3, -0.4, 433, 1.5
 
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