bortdafarm

sadly i have not the patience for computers i used to have ho hum another day wasted....6 hours straight work on a damage profile and nothing...absolutely no progress what so ever....i cannot prevent the fuselage from simply vanishing completely when damaged... the gunsight does not line up with the bullet trajectory so it's impossibel to aim...(even when the mg psotion and flash location are both lined up exactly on the gunsight..the bullets them selves travel half a inch above...no way to adjust...that i have been able to find..... unable to persuade the wires nose and upper cowling to be visable from the cockpit endless drivelling techno fetish computer bollocks!!! :slow(en): got an airfile set up i quite like (doesn't conform to ANY history book tho--right speeds right flight characteristics...completely wrong statistics!! lol that's more like it..) all flying control surfaces remember...wing warp roll controll etc... so that's it no damage profile... bizaare gun sight issue...... invisable nose/upper decking/wires etc no release damage profile gunsight ok nose ok release move onto next model.. it's that simple..

many Thanks TEX! trouble is i'm getting so bogged down in the damn fiddle faddling about with the damage profile this parts breaks of that part breaks of the other part breaks of that part etc etc...in fact the only thing that breaks is the fuselage..which simply vanishes no matter how i set it up...typical computer bollocks...the one part which should NEVER vanish....is the only part that will....patience wearing thinner here...

EmlD did i read some where that if the lower LODs dont have the same hierachy as the main LOD then nothing shows up...??? to be safe and for early testing just have the one LOD and edit the others out of the ini file (as per the DWFC) it should show up then-- or slap some texture on it (mine was an eindecker shaped cloud untill i put texture on it!) Brandy ...Cheers.. kinda lost me a bit on the undercarraige thing ..i need more coffee i'm not being that accurate about it all i must admit!! here's me engine thingamadoodle...!

very true ! tell you what tho...i have a CH flight yoke and pedals....and was gratefull that FE is compatible with them both...the springs that create resistance on the yoke don't really affect you in non combat sims but with the need to use full elevator movement in turns and so on after a short while it actually begins to wear you out!! after three kills i usually need a rest! that's one thing that allways get forgotten in realism stuff....you'd be absoloutely knackered in a very short time indeed in real life..in a sim that would keep the kill tally down for the player.!!! certainly keeps mine down...it's exactly this sort of stuff that renders most realism issues in sims to be so selective that they become irrelevant.. folks want to feel that they are flying something as close to the real thing as possible and i'm all for that... but there's no sense in taking them seriously..it's supposed to be fun ...any-one who says otherwise has potentaily lost the plot..!! i'd like the aircraft to have that certain magic tho i must say!! but that's going to take a bit more imagination than just typing the correct stats into an airfile.. it's going to need to be a game engine specific element...something unique..you see the problem with flight sims is that nothing actually flys... there's no Air....everything is controlled by the FM....you can model a railway station and attach an airfile to it and it'll fly just the same as if it were an aircraft....the day they can model actual flight in flight sims ..that'll be the day we can really enjoy ourselves... i dunno has to come some day....create genuine Air in the sim...create a genuine relation ship between the wings and flying surfaces and that air to create lift as in the real world...and off you go...be very simple at first...but you wouldn't be able to take the drag of a FokkerDVII's undercarraige by editing a text file..you'd have to add streamlining to the model file itself!

Cheers MJ!! i'm not a great believer in realism in sims..not in the traditional sense anyway... i try to bring what is there to life as much as possible without trying to lay down any law on wether the stats match the real world...a game/sim world has it's own unique rules...sometimes it is better to work with those rules rather than against them (as often happens with out and out realism work)..ya can't take the real world an slap it in a game/sim one and expect the two to make much sense together.. a sim world has to have it's own unique "life" if it does then it will be convincing regardless of any other considerations...that's my take on it all....mind you i spend most of my time watching the AI fly ..so it's a bit of a WWI movie to me rather than a sim.... it's great!!

i have to admit to having been driven half barmy by realism concepts in sims...!!!!

Hmmm cheers Capun i am making a note of all this info it's most appreciated.... i did try the prop linking approach and found that the rudder and elevator rotated with the prop...even tho there was no link between them at all...the grouped method does appear to work.... even with the individual groups (nose) (prop) (wires) etc etc all grouped to gether into one large group which is the entire aircraft...BUT this is open to re-evaluation of course so i'll bear it in mind....i'll change the fuselage to damaged for the time being untill i get a better feel for it...and i'll knock up a damaged version just to see how it works for later on there's certainly no end of details to tidy up and understand here....allmost as many details as the modellor desires...!! i'm going to try to simplify it as much as possible at least for now...to spare my poor brain the endless trail and error...

for me there is one issue with ALL microsoft combat flightsims which renders them toyish...and it is collision detection....it's appalling...get within a snifter of another aircraft and blam game over...you don't even get the grace of seeing your self crash into the ground ..just blam over....this seems to me to show the core principle of the series...quake in slow motion with aircraft

ok i got round the issue by instead of linking the fast prop and slow prop discs to the prop axle...i just grouped them all as prop axle..floated the pivot point to the centre of gravity (which is a handy way of coping with grouped sections... i like it now i understand it a bit better) and i have a use-able (if a little unimpressive!) prop animation... i'm hoping that the grouping method will be a way of handling the damage effects.. grouping the appropiate elements into the named groups the game expects for damage breaking parts etc..dunno if it will work...am i right in supposing that the bullet holes display on the D model file??? or will they display on the normal ones allso? i guess i need the D model files in there as when the fuselage gets damaged it just vanishs completely ..

many thanks Capun ... i did get some-where i used the Prop Axle tag used as the prop hub,,, then i attached two prop type discs called Prop Slow Hub Prop Fast Hub with the stock fas slow textures on them... then i linked the two discs to the Prop Axle worked great.... except..... the rudder and elevators rotated with the props....it was at this point i gave up for the night.... i slapped one disc on called Prop Axle just to have some rotation on the prop disc and left it..will try again later ...need sleep...

cheers ... i don't think at first thought that you can damage parts of your aircraft with your own guns...dunno tho ??

Cheers...struggling to find the correct tag for the prop animation...as soon as i do i will add the engine,,,,i hope that i can work out all the niggly details in this model so i don't have to go through the trauma with any other i might knock out...on the one hand it's quite a good straight forward system for FE on the other it requires you to be pretty organised about it...which is one thing i tend not to be...lol

Cheers MJ' just increase or decrease the thickness for an overall effect...

it's getting the sods to do both (survive and get kills) that's the problem!!!

he he!! it's all in AIMODv1..and this thread allso!

some rigging and passable decal placement job...looking more the part

Cheers if i can get into a system and there are no unforseen complications (that'll be the day...3D modelling --- no unforeseen complications---lol) then i can get a bit of a production line going... if i hit seriuos problems then everything will become pretty labourious...

dang it why didny i think of that!!!

he he!! good evasive maneuvers tho!!

simultaneous post sorry capun..it was the dang typo thing .. the pivots are pretty key to this game....especailly when linking or grouping objects your bang on..will be paying attention as you say many thanks!

you were absolutely right and i don't mind admitting it! i added a hypon between elevator and R (g-max habit) well things are beginning to make a little more sense now...following your advice and studying the data files etc getting a feeling for what is going on....even got a rudimentary damage system working ..not far off a working prototype i'm trying to get the scale right...compared to the other aircraft it's still a tiny bit to large.. so i'll keep tweaking the overall scaling untill it fits in well with the other aircraft..the temptation is allways to make em just a tadge oversize..(i have a habit of doing this..) but with this sim everything looks so well that i want it to fit in correctly so am taking more time over that side of it...

must be something like that capun... i'll have to leave it and carry on on the assumption that the answer will present itself at some point.....i'll try the prop and see if that responds....can't imagine why the rudder would work but not the elevator....unless there's something finicky i've missed....i had a hell of a job at first adjusting the pivot point on the rudder....everytime i rotated it to the correct position ...even tho i had move pivot only selected ....the entire rudder moved with the pivot and distorted and stretched out of shape....very annoying....untill i rembered an old glitch that affected G-Max and rest the scale and then it allowed me to move the pivot seperately as it should be...there are allways little finnicky things to discover with these processes...they can drive you mad if you don't know the way round them...so fingers crossed (what are TCB motion controllers by the way???) there are no stabs or vertical stabilisers on the eindecker ....do you suppose that might be an issue?

quickly done undercarraige and mocked up texture job runs the same FPS with three on screen as it does with one... duno why the rudder is red...will solve that one later..probably summat to do with the decal settings.. anyhuw you can see the basics of it ...will be nicer with rigging wires the engine prop mg and markings and other details on it of course...

many thanks Capun ..i will investigate further...so it ties to the data.ini entrys for the model file in that the name used for the part needs to match the name used in the data.ini... it will be summat simple as with the rudder all i did was name it "rudder" and adjust the pivot..... but with the elevator i named them LeftElevator and RightElevator as it is in the data.ini and it didn't co-operate...he he i grouped the cowling and cheek fairings and front upper decking into a group called NOSE and was intrigued to find that it appeared moved as a group back towards the tail..so i ungrouped it aand it appeared where i modelled it back at the nose ...

yes as it turned out i got the trail version of 3dsMax 8 (with some extra material packs and the service packs) ...but i mentioned it to a neighbour and he had an old copy given to him from work....and with some bartering we managed to come to a deal....(one i could actually afford..it hadn't cost him anything originaly so alls fair as they say) so finally i have access to a licensed copy of 3ds max...hence the work....it's very much the same layour etc as G-max (which i allready got to grips with) so it's not too difficult to get some basic modelling done...strangly the computer died BEFORE i took the mailed version of max out of the jiffy bag it came in ..lol some trick that ...lol anyhuw had been wanting to clean up the computer for a while so this proved to be as good a time as any and a complete wipe and re-install of windows certainly sorts the wheat from the chaff program wise... he he!! the uv map is just a throw over job just to get some texture on the thing...all mapped to the same texture file at the moment...will be working on the texture later on... cheers Gr' have got the SF notes and am reading them...very handy stuff...tho it doesn't mention the elevator animation name tags...the rudder animates fine..the elevator seems to be more reluctant...any-one know the correct name tag for the elevator?? personaly i'm dreading the FM and damage editng part for it...i don't have a huge amount of patience for that sort of thing...so it'll get what it's given and it will rougly appropiate slap on some pilot and engine armour and off it will go...others can edit it to their hearts content if the fancy the job later one..(as with any aircraft i guess)