Question for Milton or Lionheart....

F

Felixthreeone

Charter Member
I am in the beginning stages of trying my hand at tweaking the aircraft.cfg files to alter the lights, flight tuning, and a few other areas of the configs for a number of my addon aircraft. I don't, however, know what every entry means nor do I know what it does. I have figured out some of the basic stuff, but is there a 'guide' that can walk me through the various entries so I know what is where and what exactly it does? Some of the modifications and tweaks I have so far have yielded good results; but some aircraft seem to still need tuning beyond what 'basic' knowledge I posess...any advice or info would be appreciated.
 
I appreciate the honesty, Bill! I was on the FS Developer forum perusing some of the topics, but couldn't seem to find an 'all-in-one' tutorial...If you know what I mean...
 
Well after a fairly thorough read, I have yet to determine how to correct the three most prevalent issues I seem to have. The first is that a few of my aircraft gain speed too fast and rotate at too high a speed (200-300kts??) and MANY of my aircraft stall very easily (like at 300kts with a bit of pull on the stick):pop4:. the third is the gear being too 'stiff'? Aircraft tend to touchdown with little to no 'give' in the grear, then rocket skyward again... I can't seem to find any fixes for those in the config itself...at least none that are somewhat easily understood. HELP :isadizzy:
 
Well, you are correct; there are no easy fixes for these things. And, not much we can do to help without knowing the aircraft and file you are flying, what the real world characteristics are, vspeeds, stall characteristics, etc., procedures for takeoff at weight, and then still, if the gear are modeled to match RW suspension.

Even if we had all that, it is still not easy to do a correct FM, or model gear to perform realistically. The point is there are no easy fixes for a bad FM, and if its a good FM, it shouldn't have these issues.

Sorry, likely not what you had hoped for.

Can some of these characteristics be changed? Yes, but if its an unrealistic FM, you would still be dissatisfied.
 
Felix,

If you can somehow get Aircraft Container Manager or 'ACM' as its known as these days, you can add in the 'aircraft geometry' into your aircraft. This is massively important and will show you some of the terms meanings with an actual 'picture' of the plane with the values in entry boxes. You can then adjust the wings and also show the polygon layout of the wing area's so you can adjust to actual shape. (This is 'only' in the aircraft geometry section though, things like wingspan, htail height from datum, etc).

The Tailwind uses the J-3 Cub airfile templates, and in it, they have somewhere in the airfiles, a value for winglift. We didnt know where or why the tail was flying so high in the back of the plane at speeds over 90 knots. What I found is that lift, somewhere in the airfile is stated as HUGE, and probably written in a table. I found the value by mistake by cancelling lift in the Flight Tuning section and the tail came down. (I had been looking for a value that caused excesslive lift in the horizontal (htail) elevator structure.

Long story short, you can do these for many many years and still run into snags and mysteries with airfiles. They are very difficult, mind bongling at times, and are similar to the game 'Pick up Sticks' where you have a ton of sticks in a tower or pile, and in moving one stick you will usually move several other sticks.. Same with FM's. You can make one change to something, and bing! you just changed 5 other values.. (or more... ).

No wonder they call FM tuning a 'black art'. :monkies:

That probably doesnt help, but at least you have a better idea of what to expect in working with airfiles. Dont be daunted though. Steady on!

If your plane is freeware, get the tool/program/payware called AirWrench at Flight1.com Awesome program! By Jerry Beckwith. Just cannot use this for payware.


Note to Jerry if you are watching. Have you thought of doing a commercial version of AirWrench for us payware guys?

:jump:
 
I thank you both for your insight. Do you know where i can get a copy of aircraft container manager? Sounds like it could be extremely helpful. And as far as airwrench is concerned Bill it seems that most of my 'problem children' are payware aircraft that I can't enjoy because they suffer from poor flight models. I will see if I can find the ACM and give that a try...thanks
 
A couple of hints... There is another program called Aircraft Airfile Manager, which allows one to adjust the curves in the airfile fairly easily, which being written in hex can be otherwise somewhat difficult to play with. Now knowing what the curves do is part of the black art.

The dear departed Aircraft Container Manager was without peer for adjusting contact points etc!

An essential item for flight test is a good performance monitor. Jerry Beckwith has a test panel on his mudpond.org website. I use the AFSD utility by Herve Sors which allows access to a multitude of aircraft workings within the sim.

Cheers: tom
 
Thank you as well, Tom. Any and all help is appreciated. I have already managed to salvage a few aircraft using some of the tips i have learned, but am still at it :applause:
 
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