Dynamic vehicles in FS2004

[Guest christian]

Anyone done any research in howto use predefined vehicle library objects and animate them in FS2004? Is this possible easily?I'd like to add a few sailing ships that actually move on predefined paths...Cheers, Christian

[Holger 0]

Hi Christian,I've got ships to move as AI on predefined "taxiways" (requires AFCAD2 overlays), which allows for effects to be attached to the vessels. Alternatively, I believe that the "old" dynamic objects still work in FS9. Richard McMaster has pulled together all the relevant utilities and a few examples and uploaded the package as "dynamic.zip". As far as I know it's available at flightsim.com only.Cheers, HolgerP.S.: if you do a seacrh for "dynamic objects" in the Avsim file library you might find examples and utilities.

[Guest christian]

Thanks, HolgerIf you use ships as AI (I knew about that solution already), don't they make radio calls and clog up CPU time because the agents have to coordinate all those ships? Not an ideal solution.Good news that the old opcodes still work, I assumed they wouldn't as MS got rid of all of the old files. They have even redone the vehicles as new FS2002 mdl objects. I had a look over the default scenery and found some areas where vehicles are used in FS2004. They are all static. I may go with that, not ideal, but proper dynamic support will probably come for FS2006 at the earliest. An alternative would be programing paths as new library objects in gmax, but for now I'll leave that...Thanks for the help anyway...Cheers, Christian

[arno 1]

The GMax animations are indeed also an option, but you have 1024 frames at maximum (which is almost 1 minute of time). So not enough for big movements. But it can be used for small movements of course. I remember a scenery where they had a sailboat that moved in small circles, just to let it not be static.And for the AI, the radios are a good point, need to check that (one of our Dutch scenery team member just came with some AI ships). I don't think the performance is a problem. The user can disable them easily by adjusting the amount of traffic.

[Guest a.savarese]

i did a try of AI ship following Holger's way , but they were contacting the APP or lower ATC sector to request startup :-), so it was fun that a ship had priority on you in ATC communication.alex

[Holger 0]

Howdy,that is an interesting point about the communication attempts of AI ships but doesn't the fact whether you hear them or not depend on the frequencies you choose (if any) for the AFCAD AI ship overlay? In other word, you would have to tune into the AI ship frequency via the "nearest airport" ATC list to hear them. Or is there some general frequency they will use I'm not aware of?Cheers, Holger

[Guest Pilotski]

Hallo ! Since Fs5, with a smaller update in FS98, the oldfashioned animation technic called "dynamic scenery" still works fine !You can use Fltrec for recording patterns, DOD for collecting data, and notepad to edit, and scasm for compiling. With some basic scasm knowledge you can create libraryobjects from FSDS/EOD api:s and even from decompiled Gmax-bgl's (!?) and with more scasm knowledge you you can add features to your objects. I'm adding diffent type of lights to mine and turns them on and of by the dynfile. And a lot more...Regards, Peter Here you can see some pictures from a project in progress;http://www.flightsim.no/home/textureart/Peter/Peter.htm

[Guest a.savarese]

yes, i've experencied hearing them on APP freq during landing too!then watching the ship's facilities in the nearby airport list isnt' so good. Maybe an hidden afcad should be the max! If you are interest our group developed a large group of both cargo and passenger ships ( ferries too). We started develpoing this project, then for these reason we left.Contact me if you're interesteda.savarese@isdproject.comalex

[Guest MatthiasS]

Hey Peter,I checked out your site. This is very cool. I can't wait to see this in action.Matthias

[Guest luissa]

Hi,Here is a piece of code to control the action of a dynamic "Follow Me" object:http://www.ptsim.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=131Regards, Luis

[arno 1]

I asked our team member who made the AI ships and he said he just hadn't added any frequencies to the airport/seaport and therefore you don't hear the ships talking. But I still need to check that by loading the files he made in FS :D.

[Guest gorchi]

Hi Luis!Have You animated dynamic scenery objects by hand or by using some software like DOD? I tried to make it using FSSC and lines (it gave me coordinates) but it didn't work good. So far I made dynamic scenery more or less by hand and it took me a lot of time. Any suggestions how to make it easier?Best regards,Goran BrumenFS Slovenija 2002 teamhttp://slovenia.avsim.net

[Guest Pilotski]

Hallo Goran ! I suggest FltRec and DOD. Then you can edit the code as you prefer and depending on your scasmskills ( which is not small! ) and I think this way it goes pretty fast to make a medium airport "alive". There are Fltrec for every versions of FS.Good Luck ! PeterBtw, thank you again for the animatedflag code. It make me understand the 5fc-clock and it have been very useful in my latest project.

[Guest gorchi]

Hi Pilotski!Do YOu know how should I configure fltrec to be DOD compatible? I have version 8.x.. (hmm, I don't remember exactly) and I know it has some possibilities. And the next thing, I hope DOD will convert those coordinates to normal SCASM commands - MoveTo, MoveBy, MoveXY, Turn etc. Otherwise it doesn't make sense. Using these commands I can control acceleration, decceleration, speed, objects can make nice turns and so on.Best regards,Goran BrumenFS Slovenija 2002 teamhttp://slovenia.avsim.netP.S: It's nice to hear it worked for You. My animated flag was realy tricky and using VARBASE in SCASM is still a dark hole for me (not completely black but dark grey :) )

[Guest Pilotski]

Hallo ! The versionnumber for FltRec for Fs2004 is 9.0 and it's downloadable from ; http://www.avsim.com/hangar/utils/nav/. If you record with Fltrec you have all the accelerations, movements aso. In Dod there is a "Draw and translate" funtion but I never got it to work nowadays but this function can do what you are surching for.It worked before on my old system so I think there can be some problems with the cooperation XP/DOD, but I don't know.But it's not so hard to edit the recorded path's in notepad. You can always use the commands ; "MoveToPos5" or "MoveToPosN" ( followed by the amount of seconds, up to 60 works fine) if you want smaller dynfiles. The maximum is 64 kB in the dyn-file(?). Maybe I should mail Rafael Garcia Sanchez and encourage him to update the sofware. I know there is a newer program out there which does almost the same, forgotten it's name, but it also work only with the default libraryobjects and that's a limitation. About the "Varbase" command I have tried it but I could never reach the objectVariables from within the varbase, which I have to, to be able to turn lights and other features on or off from the dyn-file. Though, If I got time I will test it more because I want a possibility for the objects to "know" each other, and I think this maybe is possible by the Varbase to avoid using a global userVar. O. Pabst have in the latest version of EDDW used the Varbase for this purpose I think. Cheers, Peter