AI Aircraft Sinking

[dolph98 24]

Hi all,I posted this in the FS9 forum and got zero replies/answers so I thought I would try here...I have added my own traffic both airplanes and helicopters. All of them are military, no GA. I have noticed that things are fine at the beginning of a flight but after some time, at the destination airport, these added helos start sinking, sinking right up to their bellies. I used a file from AVSIM called "ai_helos.zip" as a basis for getting helos to fly AI. I modified the included aircraft.cfgs to use the same contact points as the original aircraft which seemed to do as I expected, puts the wheels on the ground. The choppers do fly but they also taxi, a side effect that I can ignore. But it's difficult to ignore that the landing gear appear to have collapsed.What in the world can cause this? If I reset the flight the choppers are back to normal. I don't notice it on any of the addon planes, just the helos.Thanks in advance,dolph

[dolph98 24]

To bump this and to add more info, I used AFCAD2s for the mil bases. Most I downloaded but some I made myself. Could it be these AFCADs?dolph

[scott967 62]

There are 2 general things that need to be checked: the aircraft, and the aiprot elevations.For the aircraft, first set the static cg and pitch to gt the aircraft in correct positin relative to ground, then adjust the contact points as necessary. Be careful with the contact points, as playing with them can cause poor taxi/landing performance. These settings affect the aircraft at all airports.For the airports, it is necessary that the default airport, AFCAD airport, and flatten elevations agree. Due to the way FS loads and uses the elevation, the problems can be seen as user aircraft not located properly at startupAI aircraft not nocated properly on the stands at startupuser and/or AI aircraft not located properly after landingtexture bleed-trough on airport elements (taxiway/runway)If you have "AFCAD2", you can use that to open both the default (stock) airport and any AF2 airport file. Verify the elevations are the same in both for:airport elevationrunway elevationstart position elevationNote: I haven't fooled around with helipads, but I assume the same type of things need to be checked.If the elevations are the same in both files, you should be OK unless you are using addon scenery besides AFCAD files. If that is the case you might need to examine files to determine if the terrain flatten elevation was changed, either with a flatten entry in the sceenry.cfg or with flatten commands in the scenery itself. In this latter case it can be difficult unless you are familiar with some scenery development tools. One quick way though is to use a user aircraft in slew mode. To do this you need to know the static cg and cg position values in the aircraft.cfg. Add these together to get an offset. For example for the default C172 it is about 3.1 ft IIRC. Then in slew mode move the aircraft down until it stops on the ground near the runway and read the altitude. subtract the offset from the altitude and that should give a good value for actual ground elevation. It should agree with the airport elevation value. (Again I don't know about elevated helipads.) The actual ground elevation should be the same or very slightly lower than the AFCAD elevation to prevent texture flashing.scott s..

[dolph98 24]

Hi Scott. I did not check the static cg nor pitch of the helos as I know nothing of this, but they do appear fine at the start of the flight. The airport elevation I did check, it was right on. I will look into the CG thing.Thanks,Dolph

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Dolph,This just happened to me recently. The Eurocopter started out fine on the apron, I flew off, and after a while, tried some landings off terrain. The helo sank right down to the rotor. I tried numerous times and always the same result.Now, I have tried again with the same helo and same terrain, but this time reduced autogen display for better performance and could not reproduce this problem.It seems that FS X starts throwing out textures and terrain elements when resources become scarce and perhaps this is what is going on. It could be that the mesh is not hardening and so the aircraft just falls through.It could be something to try - reduce display settings and see if you get the same problem.Best regards.Luis

[dolph98 24]

Thanks. You might be onto something there. It does seem that it's something that happens after time for sure. But I sure do like my autogen scenery, trees especially. dolph