Animating Ships

[Guest]

After seeing the prior post on the ships available for fs2002, I d/l the WWII ships and am ready to go sailing. Actually, I would like to go flying while the ships are sailing themselves.How do I animate them. I tried to treat them like aircraft, set up a little harbor runway and sent them off to parts unknown, but they never showed up to make the trip. Also, how would I get them to avoid crashing into islands?(I would be almost as happy if they were api's - since I want to set them in a harbor- but was unable to convert them from mdls to apis.)So many challenges, so little time.Thanks.Phil Crowther

[Guest]

Hi Phil.You could have a look at the BusyObjects framework I am currently developing (http://www.brainon.ch/area51/brf/BusyObjects). It can be used to animate static objects in scenries.At a reolution of 1m for the animation (which should be fine for large objects) you can move the objects around in an area of 60km by 60km, which allows even long cruises to be made.Have fun, Bernd.

[Guest]

Bernd,Thanks. I had tried out the Busy Objects demo, but didn't realize that you had taken it further. Sounds like, once this has been fully implemented, making a ship move will be child's play. You could have the ship pull up to the dock and start unloading.Just scanning through the docmentation, I see that your program uses GMax and "Airport for Windows". I use FSD2 and FSSC. However, it appears that your program also accomodates APIs. So, I assume that I could somehow use the API code generated by FSD2 which can also be used by FSSC?This will make for an interesting weekend.Phil

[Guest]

Hey this sounds interesting... I have a ton of WW II ships I would like to put in static scenery. Am redoing my CFS2 Iowa for FS2002 Missouri in Pearl Harbor BGL.