Hi all

When AI aircraft (AIA, TFS etc.) are used as AI, on landing and engaging reverse thrust, it is animated. However if I fly these myself, when I engage reverse thrust, it is not animated. So, my questions are:

 

1. Why?

2. How do you fix it? Obviously it is something in either the .air or the . cfg files.

 

Thanks

As far as I know, AI aircraft do not use reversers per se, so the animation is linked to other input values.

 

 

I also strongly advise against the use of AI aircraft for anything else than AI purposes. The FDE is nowhere near real and as you've experienced, the animations aren't made for user interaction either.

It shouldn't be too hard...as the animations already exist???

Then investigate yourself. Try to change the FDE for one from a userspace plane and see if it improves things or whatever.

On both a search for 'animation' yielded 0 results

I looked in the .cfg and .air file.

What file format are aircraft animations stored in?

They're part of the model...

That's annoying...correct me if I'm wrong but aren't .mdl files a read-only format?

Yeah you really don't have a way to edit the animations without some serious program which can be used to make mdl files...

 

May I ask why would you want to use an AI aircraft as flyable one anyway? They are mostly in low quality to reduce FPS hit, their flight dynamics aren't really made for normal flying either. There are plenty of superior freeware models made for flying purpose which you could use instead... 

Here's a fully flyable and animated AI .

 

McDonnell-Douglas MD-83 FSX Package Version 2

 

http://simviation.com//fsnd/Downloads.htm

I can't find a decent freeware A330, so I am using TFS.

Tom Ruth's model is highly recommendable and can be found in the library here (search for his name and dig through).

I tried that...but it won't taxi properly

 Most AI models have the reverse thrust animation tied to the spoilers. This is because the AI will not use reverse thrust when landing, but they do arm their spoilers, meaning that it appears they use reverse on landing when the spoilers deploy. The same applies to flaps, except for that they are connected to the beacon light rather than the spoilers. When they turn on the beacon, the flaps deploy, and then retract after reaching a certain speed.

So if I turned on the spoilers on landing, should I get the reverse thrust animations?

 That depends on how the author designed the AI model, but yes, in most cases, that is how it should be. Also, if you like watching AI, you might notice they sometimes deploy their spoilers in flight (as is normal). What isn't normal is that they'll (appear to) be using reverse thrust!