Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
mikesflight

AI Helicopters - landing in a tightly defined runway

Recommended Posts

AI helicopters - Bell 206B JetRanger (MS Default) and Hughes 500DI have enjoyed the new AI helicopters that Holger Sandmann has made available to us (aiheli_1.zip and aiheli_4.zip at Avsim). Here I am concentrating on these two helicopters as my modest PC does not enjoy some of the large frame-rate hungry helicopters. I am also unfortunate enough to live at the end of a long copper wire so downloading large files is a tortuous business and so have limited my AI helicopter experience to smaller files.By tweaking the aircraft.cfg for ZZZH Bell 206B JetRanger:[flight_tuning]cruise_lift_scalar=0.60 // was 1.15parasite_drag_scalar=0.1 // was 0.8induced_drag_scalar=0.1 // was 0.8andZZZH Hughes 500D Gmax:[flight_tuning]cruise_lift_scalar=0.6 // was 1.20parasite_drag_scalar=0.4 // was 0.8induced_drag_scalar=0.4 // was 0.8I have my fleet of helicopters landing and stopping in less than three times their length, taxiing and parking and working well. (There are ocassionalmisbehaviours in parking, but they are infrequent and they consist of some determined ground circling before locating their respective parking bay). This has allowed placement of the runway in front of hangar areas which most of the larger airports seem to have available. The flightplans have 23 entries for the JetRanger and 6 for the Hughes 500D travelling to airports up to about 2 hours away which gives me AI helicopter traffic every 10 minutes or so in a 24 hour period (set on 4Hr and 6Hr as appropriate).I now have the overlay placed on three of my main large airports and it really adds a wonderful dimension to AI flying.I have also experimented with the larger helicopters and have managed to contain them within an 800' runway. However when mixed with the smaller ones the smaller ones do not stop as tightly so I have made a separate overlay for the larger helicopters. WSSS (Changi International - Singapore) is my favourite testing space and there I have the two helicopter layers operating side by side along with all the GA aircraft. Unless I really trim back the big helicopters though my frame rates get hit for a six.Thank you Holger for what you have brought to us.CheersMikehttp://forums.avsim.com/user_files/18341.jpg

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi Mike:thanks for the kind words and great work on the tweaks! Keep working on these as the AI choppers project might have a second, more formal "life" starting soon and I might be looking for "staff" ;-) I have a couple of questions for you:With the .cfg tweaks, do you see changes in the climb rate after takeoff? Also, do cruise speed and flight stability change? Are you using AIView for testing flight parameters or just slewing/flying along?With the AFCAD file, what is the reason for pulling back the parking spaces so that an "adjusting knob is clear of blue node"?Also, if a chopper leaves the runway at one of the three inner exits, does he taxi to one of the hold-short nodes first or directly to parking?BTW, interesting observation about the interference of big choppers on the smaller dude's behavior. I suppose that might be due to the additional processing requirement, which is known to "play havoc" with AI behavior.Those 360-degree circles can be annoying, particularly in tight places. I found that placing lots of extra blue nodes keeps it to a minimum.Thanks for sharing.Cheers, Holger

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi HolgerI always use AIView (great program) and have not been able to ascertain any difference in flight behaviour because of the tweaking. The models are remarkably stable compared with some other AI aircraft.The reason for pulling the parking bays back was as a way of improving the behaviour of the helicopters on the ground going to their parking spaces. From my observations it seems to have helped given that it is such a confined space. There is much less "nonsense" of 360 madness!CheersMike

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...