I've been looking through many of the aircraft models for FG, trying to learn how I might create my own aircraft. I've come up with many answers, and a couple questions.1. This may sound really stupid but, how does FG know what part of the model is the gear, flaps, etc? Would you define this in Blender (or AC3D), or is this handled by the fdm? Either way, would someone please tell me how to do this?2. Does FG support variable-geometry wings, or, if not, would support for variable-geometry wings be easy to implement?Thanks!

>I've been looking through many of the aircraft models for FG,>trying to learn how I might create my own aircraft. I've come>up with many answers, and a couple questions.>>1. This may sound really stupid but, how does FG know what>part of the model is the gear, flaps, etc? Would you define>this in Blender (or AC3D), or is this handled by the fdm?>Either way, would someone please tell me how to do this?If you are referring to how these components can affect the flight characteristics, then the answer is in the FDM definition file. Unfortunately, I am not a FDM-guy, so I can't tell you how the FDM is setup.If you want to know how the animations are handled for these components, then the answer is in part-3 of this tutorial:http://flightgear.org/Docs/fgfs-model-howto.html>>2. Does FG support variable-geometry wings, or, if not, would>support for variable-geometry wings be easy to implement?Don't know. If not, it would be hard to implement... unless you are a programmer, because you need to go under the hood of FlightGear and modified the sourcecode.

Thank you! That's exactly what I was looking for.I've looked through most (if not all) of the aircraft for FG, but it doesn't appear that any of them have variable-geometry wings. So my guess is that it's not supported, but I'll keep looking.

Actually, this can be done in JSBSim. My advice is to first use a "normal" FDM configuration while you develop the model. Later you can add some swing-wing effects to the config, but you shouldn't worry about it unless you are really into swing-wing aerodynamics.