In flight refuelling thoughts

[Firebar]

Wow it's been a while since I last posted here! Busy times!


I remember some fairly large discussions on in flight refuelling back a (few) year(s) ago and how difficult it was being with fs9. As I haven't really been following these forums for some time I don't know what came of these discussions.

However I had a little thought pop into my head while sitting in a lecture this morning. I was thinking of an xml gauge that fits behind the 2d ( / 3d) panel that would give the impression of approaching the tanker aircraft and when the gauge calculated that the heading and course were being held close enough to the tankers at a close enough distance for a long enough time it would trigger a refilling of the player's fuel tanks.

It's been a while since I've done any xml coding or any flying to be honest but it struck me as an amusing idea to play with over the summer holidays and wondered if anyone had any thoughts and/or suggestions or fancied telling me I was being ridiculous.

Cheers,
M

 

[Matt Wynn]

Lago's old F-16 and Tornado came with AAR that actually worked quite well (both Boom and Hose procedures).... basically you'd fly along, call for the tanker, and get a bearing to it, approach it where you'd hear "Visual", "Clear Join on the Right" (or was it left), then once in place you'd hear "Stabilise" and such... if you dropped out of the refuelling box you'd hear along the lines of "don't sweat it, and clear join on the right".... i'll try and get a video....

 

[jeroen79]

Three things would need to be tackled:

The actual refueling.
Doug dawson has a fuel dump gauge that will empty and fill tanks. This gauge is controlled by L:vars.
You would need to add some code to control in which tanks the fuel goes and how much fuel is loaded.

Then you would need to determine if the player is in a position for refueling.
For that we would need some sort of radar gauge that provides the position and velocity of nearby (AI) aircraft.
With that data you can calculate if the player is within a box behind the tanker aircraft.

Finally you would need to direct the player to the tanker.
The aforementioned radar gauge would be used for this as well.
A simple way is to tell the player where he is relative to the tanker and have him sort it out for himself. Think of a VOR attached to the tanker's belly that turns with the tanker.

But providing vectors is possible as well. You would use the player's relative position and motion.
The approach would be treated similar to an approach to a runway and the tanker's forward movement would be treated as a big wind blowing along the 'runway'.
If you place the player on a grid relative to the tanker with 'north' aligned to the tanker's heading there would be no crosswind, only a headwind.

 

[dhazelgrove]

Three things would need to be tackled:

The actual refueling.
Doug dawson has a fuel dump gauge that will empty and fill tanks. This gauge is controlled by L:vars.
You would need to add some code to control in which tanks the fuel goes and how much fuel is loaded.

Then you would need to determine if the player is in a position for refueling.
For that we would need some sort of radar gauge that provides the position and velocity of nearby (AI) aircraft.
With that data you can calculate if the player is within a box behind the tanker aircraft.

Finally you would need to direct the player to the tanker.
The aforementioned radar gauge would be used for this as well.
A simple way is to tell the player where he is relative to the tanker and have him sort it out for himself. Think of a VOR attached to the tanker's belly that turns with the tanker.

But providing vectors is possible as well. You would use the player's relative position and motion.
The approach would be treated similar to an approach to a runway and the tanker's forward movement would be treated as a big wind blowing along the 'runway'.
If you place the player on a grid relative to the tanker with 'north' aligned to the tanker's heading there would be no crosswind, only a headwind.

All entirely do-able, I'd have thought. It's all already available in FSX, as RAZBAM's Harrier GR7/9 comes with an AI VC-10 that can be 'called-up' at need.

A challenge for the gaugemeisters?

Dave

 

[Firebar]

The actual refueling.
Doug dawson has a fuel dump gauge that will empty and fill tanks. This gauge is controlled by L:vars.
You would need to add some code to control in which tanks the fuel goes and how much fuel is loaded.

Then you would need to determine if the player is in a position for refueling.
For that we would need some sort of radar gauge that provides the position and velocity of nearby (AI) aircraft.
With that data you can calculate if the player is within a box behind the tanker aircraft.

Yeah I remember the fuel dump gauge, though I seem to remember something about only being able to refuel by 25% at a time.

I was actually thinking something even more simple than the radar and the ai aircraft bit, I think that there was something done on an idea similar to this and it wasn't working very smoothly.

My thought was that when you switch on the refuelling panel (or similar) a tanker aircraft appears some distance ahead of the player at a similar altitude and velocity. The gauge could compute if the player was close enough by comparing the velocity vectors of the theoretical tanker and the player over time. The way the tanker could be displayed is as a 2D image that shifts and swaps view angle depending on orientation relative to this theoretical tanker aircraft. The images of the tankers could essentially be modified screenshots of an aircraft that already exists as a model.

 

[Desert Rat]

I was actually thinking something even more simple than the radar and the ai aircraft bit, I think that there was something done on an idea similar to this and it wasn't working very smoothly.

Firebar, you are quite correct, Rob Barandregt worked on one using a similar technique to his hover gauges. It utilised Marciano's payware radar (although I think a version of this is in the Alphasim Eurofighter which I think is now freeware) to choose your 'tanker', any AI plane above a certain altitude would suffice. Basically it allowed you to fly formation with any AI, with an AI tanker you just adjusted your position to the end of the hose. A fuel flow gauge then allowed you to 'refuel'.

It was never released as it required lots of end user work and Rob though this was to much on the user-support front. You had to install the radar and fuel gauges into the panel of each plane, the radar is/was payware which was also a consideration.

The other main issue was it didn't work with some Autopilot gauges (a main upset for me as it didn't work with the PSS/JF Vulcan) and with some planes, due to airfile/cfg/autopilot limits the results where sometimes very erratic. To fix each plane would require a high skill level on the user part, and Rob didn't want endless requests to 'sort this plane, sort that plane, adam finitum'.

I beta-tested it way back and when it worked, I loved it, still use it when I do fly. When it didn't work,whilst I could fix each plane, I sometimes didn't bother as it was sometimes quite a bit of work, and I know what I'm doing.

Jamie

View attachment 89152

 

[Tom Clayton]

The very first option in the Assignments menu is Add Fuel. It's unassigned by default, but I'm using Shift+A. Each time you use it, it adds 25% spread across all tanks evenly.I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but it might make a good temporary solution.

 

[awj112]

Lago's old F-16 and Tornado came with AAR that actually worked quite well (both Boom and Hose procedures).... basically you'd fly along, call for the tanker, and get a bearing to it, approach it where you'd hear "Visual", "Clear Join on the Right" (or was it left), then once in place you'd hear "Stabilise" and such... if you dropped out of the refuelling box you'd hear along the lines of "don't sweat it, and clear join on the right".... i'll try and get a video....

Still use this myself...