Static Aircraft

[Guest GerrishGray]

In a separate thread, our friend Joerg asks about static aircraft to populate his latest scenery.In my humble opinion, this has been a sadly neglected area of late, although Jean de Langristin has done some good macros. Since the introduction of AI traffic, we have mostly been concentrating on low-poly AI aircraft and AFCAD etc. This adds wonderful, realistic, aircraft movements to the FS world and populates the aprons etc. of our airfields with a aircraft. But there is still a need for simple statics to represent all those hundreds of other aircraft parked around our airfields. Even with AI, the most strikingly unrealistic feature of FS airfields (which are otherwise becoming amazingly life-like) is the glaring lack of sufficient static aircraft.AI is not the answer - it is too resource hungry, and its aircraft models still too complex, to fill this need. We need some really simple models with no animation etc. to fill up the empty spaces. Most of the static aircraft macros currently available are now rather old and use pre-FS2002 modelling techniques (i.e. non-floating-point code etc). We need something more up-to-date made with the latest modelling tools such as gMax or FSDS2, and preferably compiled as library objects so that large numbers of them can be placed with minimum load on frame rates. The models should also be made sensitive to the scenery complexity setting, so that they can be turned on and off as the user desires according to his preferred scenery density. The emphasis should be on general aviation, which represents the greatest number of aircraft seen around most airfields, although all aircraft types would be welcome!Gerrish

[Guest sapper42]

Bold of you to say such Gerrish, with all the emphasis on low poly AI that is being implemented and i totally agree, its a brilliant idea. The Library option is so simple its a wonder no-one thought of it before. You may have tweak my grey matter into attempting a GA Aircaft instead of simple buildings but ive a couple of projects to complete, wonder if i can squeeze a few more hours out of a day to attempt something.best regards Jeff

[Guest unglajo10]

Hallo GerrishYou exactly reflected my needs. It would be nice if all the aircraft designers, designing in GMAX or FSDS2 could simplify their models, export them as scenery objects and build some kind of library. The only question would be: How can we communicate our needs to the aircraft designers?I think a number of scenery designers would be glad if they would get some new static frame rate friendly aircrafts.ByeJoerg

[wsieffert 0]

Hi Gerrish,My opinion differs, as you probably already read from the other post. :D I read posts from individuals that want to know how to get rid of the static aircraft from some downloaded or purchased scenery. It may be that the scenery designer decided to place static aircraft at terminal gates and the scenery user would rather have the gate active with AI.I totally agree with you on the state static aircraft available for inclusion to scenery.One way to help scenery user's with adding/removing static aircraft would be to compile the static aircraft separately from the detailed scenery. Then if a user wants to remove the static, they just remove a small static aircraft scenery file. I'll even recommend its name - _StaticAC.bgl. :DW. Sieffert

[Guest GerrishGray]

Hi BillActually that always has been the recommended approach for static aircraft - putting then in a separate BGL. The problem is that scenery designers are increasingly ignoring this aspect in their designs, because of AI traffic, when they should actually be increasing the statics content in this age of more powerful PC's and ever-growing realism in FS scenery.The idea is not to replace or obstruct AI traffic by putting static aircraft at gates or AI parking spots, but rather to add statics as 'background' in all those miscellaneous places around airfields where planes get parked on a more permanent basis. And make the density controllable so that the user can turn the numbers up or down according to his needs, as all scenery should be designed, rather than just rely on a simple on/off switch. I like to view scenery in great detail when on the ground or in low-level VFR 'scenery-spotting' flights, but turn the density down for landings etc. to get smoother frame rates.CheersGerrish

[Guest seev_39]

Hi AllLet me add my humble opinion. No doubt that static a/c are needed, especially as background "objects" in g/a airports and even at international a/p (but not at the gates). Working on my recent scenery I was surprised to find out that there are NIL!!! gmax macros available on the web. I was actually looking for boats, ships and other port objects (cranes, containers, etc). So I asked myself; how can that be - there are hundreds of beautiful sceneries with gmax objects - but non available as freeware?Gentlemen, we are the ones to be blamed. For some reason, when we make such objects (including a/c) we keep them to ourselves like a hidden treasure. A Gmax object is worth nothing without the original gmax file and bitmap files, because you need both to "export" the object to a new scenery (I work with gmax, so I don't know about other state of the art technologies). On the other hand, if a free to all library would exist, with objects AND the working files we could save hundred of hours of "inventing the wheel" and start a healthy competition to make more and more "objects".Who is to be blamed? maybe the recent trend to develope our hobby into a business, people think they can make money on their designs and therefore they keep them to themselves, but maybe I am wrong. What I suggest is - lets start such a public and free to all library for gmax objects. Same as uploading AFCAD's we can upload Gmax and bmp files with a nice screenshot of the final product. Then people will start to use those designs and add their own.Have funSeev

[martin_ktpa 0]

A rather humble contribution, but a start:http://library.avsim.net/search.php?Search...=&CurrentPage=1There aren't any GA aircraft in there yet, but the Gmax comes as "open source" and you can do whatever you want with it, improve it, add to it, put it in a library etc.

[ShezA 176]

Actually Martin's statics are beautiful and the excellent new KBOS scenery has these in the pics (could not see them in real time though???). These statics are great and can be merged in with the scene in GMAX. My original SNA scenery had a bunch of statics but they were of the old FS98 MDL2bgl conversion type and were difficult on frame rates. These new GMAX ones are probably going to be fantastic for the frame rates and also designing.I have another idea for GA aircraft...get from MS's scenery library. I know the choice is limited but hey the effect is pretty good.I think all we need is for these Martin developed statics to be given more livery choices.I have not put any statics in my recent scenery projects for the point mentioned above...AI traffic.Shez

[Guest Sam Hawks]

How do you take objects from the FS scenery library to add to a scenery?

[Guest sapper42]

If you are useing FS2K2, you can find and dissasemble the applicable Library.bgl file with BgAnalizer to locate the macro identification number and then create an API macro call for that object.You may need to do some digging around unless others here can supply you with the information.rgds Jeff

[Guest Sam Hawks]

Thanks, so where might one get this BgAnalizer?

[ShezA 176]

A better way is to use FSRegen 0.31 and look into the FS2002 bgl for the GUID numbers and call them with the standard API method in AFW or whatever program.Shez

[Guest sapper42]

goto the scenery hallof fame. www.scenery.org i think and its in the Download section for tools

[Guest ayrsimming]

HiI have successfully added default FS2002 and Fs2004 library objects such as ships and cranes to sceneries using a calling object file but so far I can't get any aircraft to appear as statics. Is there something different I need to be doing?Iain