gregoryp

Sorry I missed this. Daughter went into the hospital and I put my 2d world on hold to deal with the 3d world (she's fine now). This is a major update I was working on. Still getting back up to speed. Last I remember I'd discovered a major prop thrust issue in the SF prop FM (looks like it had been there since day one) and was trying to work around it. Maybe TK has fixed it with the latest release/patch? AvH_US_P-38J-25_FlightModel.zip

One neat feature of CFS3 was we could preload files/textures so they didn't need to load during the game. I have Stary's HiRes GermanyCE enhancement and it's fantastic at 1920x1200 with all the sliders maxed, and I'm staying at 59fps. The only problem I've run into was as I approach a city (around 200ft) for the first time I get a micro stutter for about 5-10 seconds and the framerates drop down to the 20's. It appears to be loading the city graphics from the HD, CFS3 would do the same thing. Since I have 2gig on the graphics card it does have room to load stuff before flight. Anyway, the question is, does SF2 have a similiar feature to pre-load stuff?

My old slow system running SF2 I had to pause it right when I started a mission. Go to external view, move around the aircraft, do the same with any enemy aircraft. If I didn't when the aircraft got in visual range my system would stop and the HD light would be solid. I think it loads on the fly as needed. I hear you on the poly renderings. CFS4 went to cities with one giant poly. When we did the same in MAW we greatly inproved frame rates. The MAW dev's LOD'd everything. Which explains how we could have 250 aircraft in a dogfight with reasonable frame rates.

I'd sure like to post over there, I've done the Forgot Password and resend auth and nothing comes back to my email Hope I wasn't banned

Hi Wrench There are 3 pitch setting I've found in my AI research [AIData] MaxPitchForAltitude=22.98 MaxPitchCombat=27.13 TakeOffRotationAngle=11.49 On the ground, during takeoff, the AI rotates to this angle. It only works in SF2. In SF1 my Lancasters drive to the target TakeOffRotationAngle=11.49 Once off the ground at around 100ft the AI will then rotate to this angle. MaxPitchForAltitude=22.98 A rough calc to use is (=atan(ClimbRate/ClimbSpeed) ClimbRate = Max power rate of Climb at Max Weight in FPM ClimbSpeed = ClimbSpeedMph*5280/60 And finally, the AI will switch to cruise climb and reduce power to 85% and climb at this airspeed. [FlightControl] ClimbSpeed=63.9 And use what ever pitch angle needed to maintain this speed. In this mode the AI can have a low pitch angle fully loaded and a steeper angle at light weights. ** Note, I discovered a bug in the prop thrust which makes it lower than it should at climb speeds. I posted it over at the Thirdwire forum. Gregory

Thats a neat solution! I'm using the Combo pak which has the Dec patch. I wonder if it's the exe? TK said they are all the same but they do have different sizes. For my WW2 mods I'm using the base SF2 exe.

Are you running SF2 or SF1? There are a few AI fixes in SF2 which made me abandon SF1. With the SBD the problem was gettig all 3 to drop Here's the last iteration of the SBD's data [LevelBombAI] PullOutRange=0 PullOutAlt=0 ReleaseAlt=0 SecondPassRange=0 SecondPassAlt=0 ReleaseCount=0 ReleaseInterval=0 [DiveBombAI] RollInRange=2268 RollInAlt=4267.2 PullOutRange=13.4112 PullOutAlt=213.36 ReleaseAlt=731.52 SecondPassRange=914.4 SecondPassAlt=914.4 ReleaseCount=3 ReleaseInterval=0.14 AimPitchOffset=0.1 [RocketAttackAI] RollInRange=8999.8296 RollInAlt=1499.9208 PullOutRange=1499.9208 PullOutAlt=249.936 ReleaseRange=1999.7928 SecondPassRange=5999.988 SecondPassAlt=999.744 ReleaseCount=16 ReleaseInterval=0.2 AimPitchOffset=0 [strafeAI] RollInRange=5999.988 RollInAlt=304.8 PullOutRange=30.48 PullOutAlt=27.432 ReleaseRange=914.4 SecondPassRange=1524 SecondPassAlt=304.8 ReleaseInterval=1 AimPitchOffset=0

If you can, bring up the HUD in Debug mode. Tell your wingmen to attack and then use F6 to jump to fly with your wing man. Watch the HUD data and see which mode the AI is using to drop the bomb. You can then use AimPitchOffset=1 To help them get the bomb/shoot on target depending on the AI mode. If they always bomb past the target, use a negative number -1, -2, -3 ..... and a positive number 1, 2, 3 if the bomb hits in front of the target. [DiveBombAI] AimPitchOffset=1 [RocketAttackAI] AimPitchOffset=0 [strafeAI] AimPitchOffset=1 You can also set the angle the AI bombs at and the altitude they climb to for their second pass shown here http://forum.combatace.com/topic/51538-sf2-finally-got-the-ai-to-dive-bomb-properly/

Add this to the aircraft's _data.ini and adjust as needed to set how your AI bombs things on the ground. [LevelBombAI] ReleaseCount=12 ReleaseInterval=0.14 [DiveBombAI] ReleaseCount=4 ReleaseInterval=0.14 [RocketAttackAI] ReleaseCount=16 ReleaseInterval=0.2 [strafeAI] ReleaseInterval=1

Is there a way to get the AI to fire the FIRE_SECONDARY_GUN? On the WW2 aircraft I’ve been setting the MG’s to FIRE_PRIMARY_GUN and the Cannon to FIRE_SECONDARY_GUN but looks like the AI only fires the FIRE_PRIMARY_GUN. All are set to GunGroup=1. I'd really like to keep them seperate for the Human player.

The other thing I noticed is the numbers appear to be feet, not meters. When set to 300 for the MG-17 the Bf109 literally climbs up the fanny of the Lancaster before firing.

Can go in each aircraft's data.ini and custom tuned specifically for the aircraft or the main AIRCRAFTAIDATA.INI file for all.

Tk posted this to my question. I just tested it. It does work! [DogfightAce] MaxCannonRange=914.4 <<<<<<< range for Primary Guns OptimalCannonRange=914.0952 <<<<<<< range for Secondary Guns MinCannonRange=18.288 here's the default from the AIRCRAFTAIDATA.INI MaxCannonRange=3500 OptimalCannonRange=1000 MinCannonRange=500 That's why the default MiG 17's don't fire the secondary gun. Now you just need to figue what ranges you want. Now to convert all my FM's back to Primary/Secondary since each aircraft has it's own ranges

http://outerra.com/ It's a planetary engine, so you'd have the entire Earth before you. They just got JSBSim's flight engine to work with it so it might be easy for TK to adapt the SF engine over.

I can automatically set MinBaseSize= for each aircraft flight model ini. What are the standard runway lengths for each airbase type in the WW2 scenery? What are the different airbase types? Small, Medium and Large?

Is it possible to add more TargetType= runway types?

Still not happy with it, but at least the AI no longer splatter all over the ground. They can also glide bomb to (good new for the TBF's). It's really neat TK allows us to tune the AI for each aircraft type. Now lets see what we can do with torpedo's. .

If you have excell, it makes life for stuff like this real simple.

When you run a single mission/create mission, how does the sim know what aircraft are allowed to use that airbase?

That gives us runway lengths of 3,937ft, 8,202ft and 9,843ft We need the 9,843ft runway for the B-29's. Is there any easy way to add Gepard's 500M (1640ft) as Tiny? And maybe a 6000ft one?

Takes some trigonometry. Should work in both. I'm done with SF1, there are some neat things in SF2 for us prop heads. Let’s use the SBD and we’ll keep it in feet to make it simple, you have to convert my numbers to meters. [DiveBombAI] RollInRange= 7,444 RollInAlt= 14,000 PullOutRange= 44 PullOutAlt= 700 ReleaseAlt= 2400 SecondPassRange=3000 SecondPassAlt= 3000 ReleaseCount= 3 ReleaseInterval=0.14 AimPitchOffset= 0.1 Let’s take the 2 known’s. The start is 14,000ft at a 70deg dive angle. We need to calc the RollInRange= value 14000/TAN(RADIANS(62)) Note, I’m using 62deg above because the AI/human can’t instantly dive. They actually will fly past the RollInRange= which is where they push on the stick. With the 62 when they stabilize and are in the dive it will be about 70deg. 14000/TAN(RADIANS(62)) = 7444ft So at 14,000ft of altitude, 7444ft horizontally from the target they will push over into the dive. Both PullOutRange= 44 PullOutAlt= 700 Are not needed unless you want them to always begin the pull out at a higher altitude. Baron Otto Matic made a deal with TK to allow the Baron to determine when to pull out if he see's his life flash before his eyes. But the same equation above can be used to determine it. ReleaseAlt= 2400 Is very important. You have to ride along F6 and watch the AI several times to determine at what altitude the AI will pull out. This number has to be above this, and high enough for the AI to ripple all bombs or the AI will not drop all of them. Not to big a problem see below. SecondPassRange=3000 SecondPassAlt= 3000 After the dive the AI will pull out and head towards this point. If not all bombs are dropped, they will 180 and do a glide bomb run from here with any remaining bombs. If they have no bombs, but a forward firing gun they will go into strafe mode. Otherwise, it’s run Forest, run! ReleaseCount= 3 ReleaseInterval=0.14 This sets the number of bombs to drop and the ripple interval. AimPitchOffset= 0.1 Is very important. This allows you to adjust where the bomb lands. Takes a few tries to get the bomb right on targets. A stationary target is a must. Start with zero. To force the AI to always Dive/Glide Bomb set/add [LevelBombAI] PullOutRange=0 PullOutAlt= 0 ReleaseAlt= 0 SecondPassRange=0 SecondPassAlt=0 ReleaseCount=0 ReleaseInterval=0 The reverse is true if you want them to always level bomb.

I'm working with SF2 and some old WW2 visual models. They don't have any LODs. When you get a lot of them on the screen your frame rates go way down. I want the aircraft to be seen far away. Is there away to adapt a low poly LOD from another aircraft to use with the older visual model? I have the additional LOD section in the INI and the lod in the aircraft's folder. Names are all lower case. But it doesn't show. I see empty sky (the ultimate in low poly ) with smoke trails, but no visual model. Ultimately a square block would be a perfect lod for what I'm trying to do since I really just want to show a dot way out there, which also ought to improve framerates in a large furball.

The near visual showed up fine. The copy of the visual, set to a greater distance did not. Two smoke trails was all you saw and the engine sound stopped.

The LODs didn't have to match the host aircraft, I just wanted a low poly blob for the far view to help improve frame rates. I even tried making a copy of the original lod and renaming it with a _lod2 and still it didn't show. Is there a standard naming structure used in the heirarchy so you could create a box with just a fuselage (all branches trimmed) that could be used? A one size fits all?

All the AvHistory stuff is designed for Hard