SimDirector tutorial: create your own misssions/scenarios

[andi20]

Hi guys

When I made my first steps in SimDirector in 2018, I would have liked to have a tutorial like this.

Reason

Spoiler

I worked everything out myself and often got stuck on one problem for days.

I don't speak English, which doesn't make things any easier.
The Prepar3D and SimDirector help page is only available in English.

Sure, you can read everything in detail in the help page, but where do you start?
There is help for every topic....

That's why I started by opening existing missions and analyzing them to find out:
- How did the creator monitor landing gear / flaps position, or altitude?
- How did the creator include mission picture, briefing and other.
- Where is the starting point of this mission?
- Where does this mission end?

I found out:

There is no clearly defined starting point, like a book that begins on page 1.
A mission starts exactly when the flight starts.
Nothing happens until the first active trigger is fired, and triggers some action.
In this example flight this is the "5s to start" trigger, if this would not be present, the "AreaTrigger", which starts the timer after the roll off, is the starting point.

By the way, a fixed mission end is only available if Goals are present in the mission. As soon as all Goals have been evaluated as "fulfilled", a window pops up with the text "Mission fulfilled".

Anyway, by now I have created over 30 missions / scenarios, which I make available to everyone for free download (see here).

I have created a detailed tutorial on how to create a mission.
The tutorial is available in English and German.

Why create a mission at all? A simple flight will do the trick.

Spoiler

Good question, in my tutorial this question is answered and proven.

Normal Flight:
The problem with a normal flight is that you don't have full control over flight and settings to the plane:

You create a normal flight and want an oil leak to occur on the way.
So you set an oil leak under Vehicles / Failures in the category "Engines", which should occur 4 - 5 min. after takeoff.

When testing the flight you will notice that a few seconds after the oil leak the engine stops.

You don't have time
- to recognize the problem...
- to initiate appropriate countermeasures, or to react to it at all...
Not very realistic, is it? The oil flows out within seconds.

Mission:
Here you have full control, you can set how big the oil leak is:

At mission start you define that an oil leak occurs, but you can define how big the leak is.
100% = Maximum oil leak (same as normal flight)
0% = No oil leak (engine is 100% OK)
95% = Small oil leak (used like this in the mission, the oil drips out, takes about 5 minutes to empty).

You have plenty of time:
- Identify the problem...
- To initiate appropriate countermeasures, or at least to look for a place to land.

The tutorial is divided into 2 main parts:

- Parts 1 through 4 create a simple flight in which an oil leak occurs.
You can rebuild this tutorial in less than an hour.
After that you have enough basic knowledge to create your own simple missions.

- In part 5 to 10, the simple flight will be expanded a little more comfortable.
Instead of takeoff, climb, oil leak, landing, the flight will go longer:
1) If you take it easy on the engine, (propeller speed reduced) you can fly to the destination airport.
2) So that an oil leak can still occur, an oil leak will occur randomly.
How to install such a random generator and many other things is explained here.

I hope my instructions were understandable and helpful.

Have fun with the rebuilding.

Greetings
Jörg

The instructions can be found here:
https://andi20.ch/p3d/tut1.html

Edited October 22, 2023 by n4gix
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