Making lanndable surfaces on moving FSX ships

[Guest avrovulcan]

HiI am creating a virtual Royal Navy for FS9 and FSX to releace as freeware. The bulk of the ships have already have been created in FSDS 3.5, all major warship classes are included (post ww2), all have animated radars ect, and as i am a current serving member of the Royal Navy, the ship modles are ultra realistic as i have access to information not available in the public domain. Another Forum member has very kindly given me some assistance where i can find information on how to make the ships move as AI traffic, but within the SDK, i cannot find anything specific in how to make the flight decks that go with the ships, move with the ships, (such as the Aircraft carriers and other ships provided by the FSX Acceleration addon).And help would be greatly appreciated.kind regardsAndy

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Andy,Sorry, not exactly clear what you mean by the Flight Deck. I thought that everything was part of the carrier, and that if you placed the carrier, its Flight Deck was included.Have you noticed some other behavior? Can you not place the detailed carrier and land on it normally?By the way, Lamont has another little tool for carrier placement - it is called simply "AI Carriers" and lets you place a carrier or an entire fleet from the FS menu when flying. Very nice and lots of fun.I suppose the only problem that comes to my mind is that the carrier will not turn into the wind when you want to land.Best regards.Luis

[Guest avrovulcan]

Hi LuisBasicly what I have done is create an ultra realistic Model of a British Type 42 Destroyer (one of about 2 dozen models im working on) in FSDS 3.5. What i want to do however is for FSX compile the model as an .mdl file and then animate it to get it to follow a track along the ocean, just like the aircraft carriers included in FSX Acceleration. However what i lack is the knoweldge on how to make the flight decks solid, thus landable. In FS9 i would just compile as a scenery .bgl file and create a landable surface using AFCAD2, this is fine as the scenery in FS9 doesn't move apart from model animations such as making the radars rotate. If you was to compile the model in FS9 as AI trafic to follow a path, again created with some kind of AI editior, it still wouldnt allow you to add a landable flight deck, as the ship would move but the AFCAD file would remain static. Im not aware of any switch in FSDS that allows you to select a groupe of polygons and set some kind of switch that when compiled into a .mdl file for FSX would make the surface of the deck solid so you can land on it.Basicly what i want to do is re-create the proceedure used in FSX Acceleration that makes the moving aircraft carrier decks landableHope this explains things a bit betterKind regardsAndy

[GHD 21]

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthrea...70823#post70823George

[Guest avrovulcan]

Hi GeorgeHave looked at this link with intresst, I suspect then that i need to use GMAX or 3D Studio, to construct the models in, this is a bit of a problem for me as iv designed the models in FSDS 3.5.But I think it is possible to port the models over to GMAX, so anyway thanks for the info.Best regardsAndy

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

I get it, Andy. It now makes sense. In GMax, you can make part or all of your model into a platform. I don't know about FSDS at all, perhaps somebody else can advise.Dave Nunez has created an add-on for FSDS 3.5 that adds some of the FS X materials functionality - please see FSDSxTweak Suite v2.1 in the Avsim library. It may very well not deal with hardening surfaces, but only with materials.Anyway, as George points out, in GMax or 3D Studio Max, either make a clone of your surface mesh (and place it in the same location) or add a plane on it, then attach a platform to it:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/190408.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/190409.jpgThe reason for the clone of your surface is that attaching a platform makes that mesh transparent, so you need another to display.The platform will now move with your mesh if it is a moving object. In any case, it will usually act hardened, unless sometimes you fall through it.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/190410.jpgAnyway, I assume that this is how the ACES developers added hardened decks to the default carrier.Best regards.Luis

[Guest avrovulcan]

Hi Luis, Many thanks for the info, loks like I will be using GMAX for any future ships i contstruct, apparently there is a simalar tool within FSDS, BUT, it involves writing XML files, will probably have a go, but I think the GMAX option will be much easier.As a thought, do you happen to now if FSDS files can be ported to GMAX???Best regardsAndy

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Very sorry, Andy, I have no knowledge whatever of FSDS. Perhaps somebody else here will provide that information.Best regards.Luis

[Guest avrovulcan]

Hi Luis, thanks for the intrest you have shown with my problem, fortunatly I have been given some information on how to do this proceedure within FSDS, it basicly involves using XToMDL to compile the model and making a PartsPerDef file (XML) to add the harden'ed surface to the polygon. I now consider this question well and truly closed on this forum.Again, thanks for showing an intrestVery Kind RegardsAndy