Jump to content

arno54

Members
  • Posts

    318
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

Posts posted by arno54

  1. You're welcome.

    I'll answer any question about technical conception or use of the bird, with pleasure.

    I just will no longer answer to what does not sound like a question.  :P I'm quite sure everyone can understand.

  2. I dropped the bombs, and for some reason it didn't blow up the bird.  I even checked the external view, but they fell straight through the fuselage.

    UH-60 is correct. The 3D model has no physical existence as far as Xplane's physics are concerned, so it's perfectly possible to drop the bombs THROUGH the bomb bay door, as this door simply is not there according to the "opinion" of the bombs.

    This is one of the flaws that were pointed at - as I previously said, lot of things are to be improved.

    The fact is, we were aware of this fault. But as we (specially I) were not very interested in the armament question, I decided to let it this way. If I feel brave enough, I may have a look at this for the patch to come.

  3. @Nicola

    That's not the point.

    The point is, when you criticize sthg, you expect something to be done.

    Right now, I do not have the smallest idea of what is expected, and as apparently nothing is expected, I assume this is angry childish chinning. The only request I heard was a private mail COMMANDING me to "fix the props", which I obvioulsy won't as I guess they work as I intended them to.

    But I disagree with you, one has the right not to be happy with something that is free, and the right to ask for more. ;-) For instance, I was definitely opposed to bomb carrying : but as everyone has requested, I did so. I do listen to complaints and wills ;-)

  4. On the other hand, he hasn't addressed the ten points that fatherjack did make above. For example, fatherjack points out incorrect engine position, foil sections, aileron size and tailplane dihedral.

    [...] I think it's a question to which any ACF author or would-be author would be interested in seeing answered.

    Ok...  :-[ here we go. Please note : I did address these points, in private, days ago, to fj. Repeating them countlessly will not make them more relevant. Once again : I scratch my head, but I really do not see where this can lead, in what way it can help anyone to improve xplane enjoyment or whatever. You're trying to force me into pissing contest. But anyway, as it looks there is no other way to close that stupid argument :

    1. The engine locations are not correct. The outboard engines are too high with respect to the inboard ones. the outboard engines are actually not far enough outboard but that is visually insignificant. + 2 +3

    >>What to answer ? This is not a question, but free affirmation. The plane is "blenderized" from actual boeing plans. What am I supposed to answer this kind of "constructive" remark ? One thinks the plane is not accurate enough ?  DO NOT FLY IT. I DO NOT CARE. Clear enough?

    4. The mesh is not fine enough. Mesh density (within limits) has little impact on rendering performance and does not need to be scrimped on as much as many modelers think.

    >>This plane runs on my netbook eeepc and that's what it's intended for. Not beautiful enough? Don't fly it.

    5. It's too shiny. A little thing but it shows up the coarse mesh too much.

    >>I don't like purple, the beattles and bananas. Quite as relevant as this one. Not beautiful enough? Don't fly it.

    1. The fuselage has zero Cd.

    >>Pure invention, or fj has definitely no idea about hox PM works. In both case, I'm not going to teach lessons in here. The fuselage CANNOT have 0cd or it wouldn't load in-game. Not accurate enough ? Don't fly it.

    EDIT/COMPLEMENT :

    1 - It needs this because the props are useless.

    >> Pure invention. Check out I/O when you'll be airborn if this ever occur, and tell again. You don't understand how this works? Ok, this doesn't mean it does not work.

    2- Flying along with data showing you can see a L/D of 17 or 18 but you can still only manage 500 fpm at sea level.

    >> Pure invention by someone who never succeeded in starting the plane. The take-off perf is given in official doc at 1770ft of runway for +1150ft/mn at 55000lb at sea level, in-game it's 1750ft-1130ft/mn, so i assume it "almost" perfect. If you had tested and/or understood the systems, you'd be aware of that.

    Please not that you have a L/D of 18. Ok, if it had no drag has you claim everywhere and everyone, the L/D would be INFINITE. No, fj, I'm not trying to show how stupid your argument is : you show it by telling anything and its opposite in the same sentence !

    END OF EDIT

    2. The props have working angles from 89.9 to 90º

    >>Definitely true. Done on purpose. What's the pb with this? I'm fed with repeating, again and again, that the engines are NOT managed in PM. This one, that comes over and over, just shows that fj has simply NO IDEA about pm really works. Not a solution good enough for you ? change it. Don't write to me again "fix the props urgently! " as an order, because I won't. Make "your own stuff".

    2-and must be feathered to work,

    >>Pure invention. Not a question : nothing to answer to this. I scratch may head searching what it may mean.

    2- bypassing god knows what functionality in the sim.

    >>If fj doesn't know what it bypasses, why is it a problem to him? I think do know what it bypasses, and this is the reason why the pitches are set the way they are in PM. I assume my choice is correct. One disagree? That's ok for me, this one is really "out of the books" and ben said. One wants a "classical" solution ? No problem : DO YOUR OWN THING.

    2-They are seriously oversized too.

    >>Pure invention.

    3. The wings use the default NACA16 x-plane section.

    >>True. Not choosen randomly.I don't give a cent for the NAME of the foil, I'm only interested in the result. Anything else, here, is irrelevant. naca16 not good enough ? Change them. Or best  : DO YOUR OWN THING !

    3-This is nothing like the required NACA 0018 to 0010 to spite the name similarities.

    >>"required"? by who? What to do ? I've ran hundreds of hours of tests on that subject, made thousands of perfs. measurement, and I, on my own, decided that naca16 was the best choice to be the closest to the original perfs, what is the very only thing I consider as relevant. If one disagree, that's ok for me !  I don't give a cent for the NAME of the foil, I'm only interested in the result. Anything else, here, is irrelevant.

    3-They also only use two elements per mainplane, negating much of the clever programming by Austin.

    >>True. Have ever heard of "saving cpu resources?" The plane is inyended to fly on very weak hardware. It does. Accurately. I'm only interested in the result. Anything else, here, is irrelevant.

    3- Multi-engined aircraft should use plenty of elements. Multi-element wings are necessary if you wish to see some of the normal aileron deficiencies at low speeds with a bit of slip.

    >>Should ?  What am I supposed to respond to this? It just doesn't make sense !

    4. Ailerons are massively oversized.

    >>If it's about the 3D object, it's pure invention. If it's about PM object : I don't know, I don't care, because it's not my concern. It may be true. Let's say it's true? So what? I'm only interested in the result. Anything else, here, is irrelevant. Too large, too long, too god knows what ? change them OR DO YOUR OWN THING.  There is no question, no problem, no nothing, it's just "it's wrong because it's wrong" and I do not see the point ! What fj wants from me? I do not have the smallest idea.

    5. With no drag, this baby is not going to want to land, so they've added 60 square feet of flatplate area to the landing gear.

    >> This one so absurd that I do not know how to handle it.

    - I just cannot see the link between the 2

    - Saying that the plane has no drag is simply non-sense or total un-knowledge of PM

    - Flatplate area is a question of differential drag, that is, momentum induced by the change of geometry.

    - All those who have flown the bird are still airborn waiting to go down? that's stupid.

    A lot of defaults where pointed at, and in most case, the end on my notebook for v1.1 correction. Want some to discuss about? differential brakes are reversed. Much more obvious and relevant than shinyness of the fuselage. I have a whole list of stuff like this, picked up by users. We'll correct them : the plane is NOT perfect, obvioulsy there are a lot of things to improve.  

    But now, having to discuss about aerodynamics with someone who apparently doesn't understand at all that PM is, in this case, totally irrelevant, someone who did not read the manual, someone who criticize the flight model WHITHOUT HAVING FLOWN THE BIRD.... This pisses me off.

    Yet nobody now has asked WHY props are sets 89.9-90. Up to now, I've just heard "this is uncorrect". No question, no whatever. Just non-constructive criticism.

    The plane is not good enough for you ?  Claim for a refund!

  5. >>That is no mystery but it is still causing problems (as are your brake priming controls).

    This is not a question. So, I don't have an answer.

    I DO have a question : can you tell ONE perf of the FM that is wrong by more than 3%?

    I do have other questions : in the end, what do you want? what do you expect from me? Why are you soooo interested in such a crappy plane? Why don't you simply do a better one to show the world how much I am wrong and you're good (because it sounds to me this is the point!)

    Make the bird. Show us. I'll applaude and use it.

  6. @Tonka,

    you make a lot of very good points indeed.

    But you are wrong on the very main point.

    X-Plane is, or should be, about more than eye candy. Its about fidelity of the flight model, in both the core sim, and the aircraft that we make for it.

    I could not agree more. I won't take back all the points because I'm REALLY fed up with this, but in short, I really don't mind the name of the airfoils or the figures of the props in PM or whatever else. They are irrelevant here, it's just not the way the plane is done, the ONLY very thing that interests me is the behaviour of the plane in the sim. Anything else, is, from my point of view, definitely irrelevant.

    Here is what I suggest : try the plane as a test-pilot, make any measurements about size, weight, climb rate, speeds, stall, ceiling with different payloads, lenght of runway used to take-off or land, turn rate, thickness, whatever you want. Compare to original charts, as we did the flight model AND the design from original docs - that's a rough 2000 pages to go through, for weeks of studying, (I can give charts to you, I do not wait for anyone to give ) compare the behaviour of the model in regard to the behaviour of the real thing as described in the orginal 1942's papers, in any aspect of the flight model you want. Tell me you find an error that exceeds 3% in anyway, but this will not occur.

    If you are interested in knowing why on hell the props in PM are set to 89.9-90°, why it's declared as 600hp whereas it's supposed to be much more (or whatever other value that looks weird), I'll be very happy to explain why these choices, in an adult way of speaking. I'll be very happy to change my mind if you explain to me why I was wrong. I'm just not interested in tenths of posts/mails repeating "you're wrong because you're wrong". Because this, yes, IS indeed trolling.

    One would like to understand and improve? okay, let's go for it, I'll take all the time that will be necessary.One thinks the plane is crappy? That's ok for me, really ! He just has to not use it. Or do a better one. Or whatever else, honestly, I don't give a cent about it.

  7. Here are today's figures :

    2200 downloads,

    several hundreds of happy messages,

    around 50 questions, mainly about piloting the plane rather than using the file,

    and... well... our friend David "fatherjack".

    The world is wrong, He Has The Truth. Well, we probably can live with that.  8)

  8. - Attention to other readers/moderators : we know the guy. 

    For some reason, he has a visceral hate against this plane and has spoiled us with endless hate emails (I eventually had to mark him as "spam").  I can't figure out why, as, as far as I know, he never flew her but has studied every bit of the file, making a very special inventory of what is wrong and how it should have been done. I'm always confused to see that some poeple are able to waste so much energy in negative action. (for instance, note that in this post, he mention faulty parts - why not? but no question nor suggestion or whatsoever : it's simply angry chinning)

    Quite sad, actually.

  9. I finally saved the situation where I can load the sim with engines started to save time and try again.

    [...]

    Beautiful work on the plane, and thanks for giving it away free.

    Tom

    This will NOT work. Actually, the feathering buttons write the acf "on-the-fly", because on the acf (inside PM), the props are fixed AND feathered. When you reload the plane you your engines running, the pitch is thus very HIGH, something like 89,9° ! As a result, the only thrust is is small one generated by the engine torque : to the right, and slighty backwards.

    I guess your trouble as something to do with 1) wheels not braken 2) engines wrongly infeathered.

  10. Sound (.wav files) support is a little buggy, but you can test ideas at least.

    This is a high priority item for me to make better.

    I do confirm, XPlane is, from this point of view, the third-world of modern video games. If it's high priority for you, that's great news for me.

    I have been a big fan of the XPFR projects for a long time - I look forward with great interest to see what you do with Gizmo. 
    You know how things goes... It'll probably a long time before we release a bird with this technology that's new to us (me). For instance, the B17, who beat all speed record, was on the table during 4months. So... make your business, we'll do ours, I'm sure we'll meet half-way for everybody's pleasure :-)
  11. I think Arnots frustration is caused by using an aircraft that has a 3D cockpit that loads as the default mode.

    (Such as the Mu-2 and Falco.)

    Actually no. As a dev, one thing I learned is :"don't do it". In other words, simplify anything that can be. I did my test on an empty acf of my own.

    When X-Plane in "3D cockpit mode" OnDraw_Gauges() is not called at all, you should use OnDraw_Gauges_3D()

    The Cirrus Jet and C172 load with a 2D cockpit on screen. OnDraw_Gauges() will work for these airframes "out of the box".

    This was quite obvious to me, because of the page http://dl.dropbox.com/u/948813/Gizmo_API.htm were 2Devents and 3Devents are definitely separated. I'm a newbee with gizmo, but I 'm quite used in a couple of other things  ;)
    @Arnot: Am I correct in assuming you have jumped right in and tried to add these scripts to your B17 project?

    I understand that we get attached to working on certain projects because we know every corner of them.

    As I told, sorry to say you're wrong (even though as soon as I think I handle the plugin for anyother thing than a pedagogic prototype, I switch straight onto the boeing, reason why I consider scripting!)

    At the end of the day, the most important thing is that Arnot was able to get something working, even if not exactly right.
    I cannot agree more. Now that I get started, I have all my time to go through how-to's. In the last couple of hours, I already written half a dozen of mini-scripts only intended to explore the possibilities, things like

    function speech()
    sound.say( "Here is our first plugin. Does this work?" )
    end

    it allows me say "ok, this is the right syntax, let's make it to en event... and so on.

    Hope that helps! Thanks again to everyone who pitched in. 

    That will for sure, as, being a rookie, it'll allow to make me begin on safe basis.

    Thanks a lot for your input, 2 days only and I trigger custom DR, speech synth., sounds... a whole world is now opening to me.

  12. Ok, dice thrown.

    tatadaaaaa !!

    Cameron 1 - Pete 0.

    Sorry Pete, but the fact is Cameron's correction behave right on my system, whereas your version of the scripts does not set crit_alt (it stays suck to 0 instead of 20000, according to DRE)

    So there is really something that SHOULD be investigated about main(), because even in the tutorials, Ben do not use it for the helloworld exemple.

    Anyway, I thank you both for your time, I guess the point is done now;-)

    Thanks Pete,

    Thanks Cameron

    ... and thanks Ben for this tool that could change sooooo many things for us, at xpfr!

  13. Solved, not quite.

    here it is : using main() actually allows dofile() to activate main.lua

    to me, this means that dofile() is ok, but ondraw_gauges has to be called within main(), or the helloworld example does not execute.

    but, conversely,

    the main() you set up for main.lua from Pete's script makes no difference, pete's script doesn't work for me either with this fix, while it works on his system.

    So, it looks like the use of main() is only part of the answer to the question "why init.lua does not activate subfunctiuns?". I GUESS there is an other hint, one that now wasn't enlighted.

    Anyway, thanks to both of you, I think I'm on the right path (if i dare say) to get it working, so that I can begin really creating stuff.

  14. Thanks for this Cameron.

    Your script works  ;)

    Now I have to figure out why Pete's script doesn't, and to make sure I can call the files without troubles.

    I'm going to lead some more tests, from this very simple prototype to more advanced functiuns, but step by step to be absolutely sure I really handle the gizmo.

    To be followed...

  15. Hi Cameron,

    used version is this one :

    http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=1885.0, windows, 11.3.15

    tests are driven on windows sp3 on a eeepc 904hd (but it is the same on debian and ubuntu as my machine is multi-booted, I tried to confirm)

    No other file is used.

    plugin is installed as :

    resources/plugins/gizmo.plugin/win.xpl

    resources/plugins/gizmo.plugin/firmware/

    there is no

    resources/plugins/gizmo.plugin/script/

    the plane is :

    aircrafts/proto/proto.acf

    aircrafts/proto/scripts/init.lua

    aircrafts/proto/scripts/main.lua

    scripts.zip is the simpliest proto I could think of  : dofile()->helloworld

    scripts.rar is the "kit" Pete sent to me. If I rewrite it into inti.lua, it works, but as is, it doesn't.

    Content of the scripts folder is enclosed, but as you'll see, there is hardly nothing - that's just a prototype before I really get into it. If I rename main.lua into initi.lua, everything seems to go fine (numerous test to create custom dataref, to trigger action, sounds etc), but if i try and trigger main.lua through init.lua, nothing happens.

    Thanks for your help.

    scripts.rar

    scripts.zip

×
×
  • Create New...