The Mooney, The 747, and the DC3. And Traci Lords.

[Guest Dann]

Well, I admit to finally being somewhat disappointed.I have always enjoyed FUIII for the accurate feel and performance of the aircraft, how they handle for the most part (with a few discrepancies), and their performance parameters.After what must have been months and months of flight model testing and tweaking by the original designers, it took me exactly 90 seconds to find that the Mooney is completely porked. Not the aerodynamics, but the engine settings. Google, searching under "Mooney Bravo power settings."In a nutshell, the FUIII Mooney must have about 600 horsepower under the hood.The real plane: 30" MP and 2400 RPM @ 10,500 feet: 157 knots indicated.Ours in FU3 will do this with 22" and 2300 rpm, and if you set it at 30" you will hit better than 190 knots indicated and the engine will not set below 2700 rpm! Talk about a good way to trash an engine!Did you know the "TLS" on the Mooney Bravo TLS means "Turbo Lycoming Saber? This Mooney was going to be called the Saber, but marketing chose M20M instead, using their conventional naming system after the aircraft's top speed.So, anyone willing to fix Flight Unlimited's Propellor Flagship? I'll do any and all testing, but I have no idea what I am doing with flight models (and in fact I've had trouble getting some of the programs to work correctly...another story).Ansgar:I recently flew your 747 and DC3 again...and again, thank you thank you thank you. The 747: hearing those four huge turbofans spool up, racing down the runway to rotation...what an awesome feeling of power you captured for us. And flying the DC3, well, it's almost as if I am reliving some history there. Thanks again for those two wonderful aircraft.Can anyone tell me why, at the very end of the Flight Unlimited II (yes, 2) manual, porn star Traci Lords gets an "Extra Special Thanks"?Overly verbose today,Dan

[Hans_Petter 1]

Dan, you're hitting the sore thumb of FU III here, one that I've mentioned in earlier posts. The issue: If you test a flight model by checking fuel consumption, rpm and manifold pressure versus power output most models will flunk the test. This could (and can) be fixed if someone with access to the manufacturer's specs and a zest for perfectionism wants to tweak the flight dynamics. Actually, it would be useful to get this right since proper flight procedures DO require that you run the engine(s) according to specified manifold pressure / rpm settings. The casual simmer (including me most of the time) will just apply whatever power it takes to obtain the required result :-)Where FU III DOES shine is in the weather / atmosphere modeling. So, what has this got to do with flight dynamics? In a direct sense precious little but by indirection quite a lot. The way the aircraft interacts with the air plays a major role in creating the perception (or, illusion) of flight. Even on a calm day FU III provides "little bumps in the air". This is real. Other sims tend to go from dead calm to a horrendous shear, failing to model "normal" weather in a convincing way.Tracy Lords? I checked and she has indeed been credited. Well, you have to keep in mind that this was back in 1995 or something. Today it would have been more appropriate to credit... eh, let's drop that topic :-)Slightly more serious, I guess that some of the Looking Glass team members had a far-out sense of humor. It probably goes with clouds taking the form of Peter's face.best regards,Hans Petter

[Guest Dann]

Hans,Thanks for the answer; the Traci Lords question was a little tongue-in-cheek on my part.As for the flight model, I'd be willing to start tweaking, however first, can anyone point me in the right direction as to what areas I need to address, considering the two issues are:Too much power for MPRPM becomes uncontrollable at higher speeds (in the yellow band).That's it for flight model...Second issue: After tweaking the extracted flight model, and then reassemblying it in preparation to reinsert, I get an error message. If this is ringing a bell with anyone, I'll reproduce the problem and email some screenshots of it.Dan

[Guest jonpoint]

Dan,Grab Planeunlimited, as well as the set of tools I uploaded recently.-Open the Mooney in Resviewer, go to near the end and find the file with resource code 2130. -Select 'export-multiple', select all files from the one just mentioned to the end and save without conversion.-Open Planeunlimited, find the exported '2130' file (ignore all others) and open it. Save as e.g. 'mooney1.txt'.-Open this text file up with notepad or wordpad and you've got the flight model!Before you do anything, have a GOOD look through it and see if you can make sense of the entries. Some things are not obvious but you need to see it yourself.Once you've made the changes, ensure your textfile and all the above-mentioned tools are in the same folder and...-Open a DOS box and type -Then It should say '9 resources written' etc.-Open the Mooney again in Resviewer (you are using a backup?) and hit 'import-flight model'. -Navigate to your 'mooney1.res' file and click on it.-Go flying....That's it! Really!PS I suggest reducing 'boost' in the engine settings ;):-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[Guest jonpoint]

Whooooops!Sorry, Dan! I made a typo ;) Try this instead..."-Open a DOS box and type -Then It should say '9 resources written' etc.-Open the Mooney again in Resviewer (you are using a backup?) and hit 'import-flight model'. -Navigate to your 'mooney1.res' file and click on it.-Go flying...."Sorry to lead you astray. Also, make sure that ALL the '.h' files are in the same folder as your flight model file before attempting conversion. This last one had me confused for about 6 months :-eekPS Don't edit the '.h' files! TERRIBLE things will happen :-(:-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[Christopher Low 5,325]

Maybe Traci Lords helped the development team to "relax" :-lolChris Low.

[Guest glidernut]

Dann,When tweeking an engin,s performans, it might be werth bairing in mind that FU3,s weather sistem, models the air density and the rateat which it changes with altitued.You might think that the air density changes only a little between diferant weather files.But on mor than one ocation lately, Iv found that the engin on my stemme was bairly abel to get me airborn, and after strugaling forseveral minits to gane an altitued of only 500 feet, the enginstopt working alltogether.The same engin with a diferent weather file will hav me takeing offlike a roket, with no altitued limitation.Well perhaps not as pouwerful as a roket, but you get my drift.I suspect that just as peopl hav ther faveret pair of wings.Peopl also hav ther faveret weather files too.So your eforts to acheev altimat acurasy in engin performans, maynever be fuly apresheated, or even seen by others.Sory if this puts a damper on things, but it might be esyer tochang the engin,s performans by using the WEATHER UNLIMITEDprogram, rarther than using them DOS programs.Throwing a spaner in the works,glidernut.

[Guest Dann]

Jon,EXCELLENT instructions, tips and hints! That may have solved some of the problems I had when first fooling with the flight models...I will start fooling with it on Monday (I work weekends, it's a cop-thing).GlidernutGood point you made about weather and air density...that really ends up pointing out a minor flaw in FU3 itself. I will keep my tweaking subtle and make sure a wide variety of weather is accounted for, even if sacrificing some realism.As for Traci Lords, well, I'm sure she and some of her peers have helped more than one of us "relax" a little, too...Dan

[Guest Ansgar]

Hello Dan! :)wow, what a nice compliment... Thank you very much for it!!!In my eyes it

[Guest Dann]

Ansgar,There is no way any of us could pay you what you're worth.Thanks again...you do amazing work.Dan

[Guest juvat2]

HI Fellas,I've never-ever been successful converting the seg file to res. When I try it, I get an error each every time stating:"Mini-Parser error: Can't open C header: resdefs.hAt file: beaver.seg, line 4: ..."What and how many "h" files are supposed to exist. WHich tool in the process is creating them?When I export without conversion a flight physics file, am I correct in exporting file 2130 and all the others below it to the end of the list? When I open planeunlimited, open file 2130, then save as beaver.txt, the txt file has very limited information. What use are the files that were exported with 2130 (2131 etc).Forever puzzled, Jim B.

[Guest jonpoint]

"Ansgar,There is no way any of us could pay you what you're worth.Thanks again...you do amazing work."I'll second that! Actually, I would go so far as to say that if it wasn't for Ansgar, many of us would still only be 'users'. I cannot think of a single issue that Ansgar hasn't helped me with. I only hope that now I am blessed with (a small subset of) his FU3 knowledge that I can help others as Ansgar has helped me ;)I also know that there is much more still to learn and I'm looking forward to it!BTW, an anagram of Ansgar's name is 'mega nerves array'! Quite fitting I think ;):-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[Guest jonpoint]

Jim,Please follow my instructions to Dan and please grab the above-mentioned tools and make sure ALL of them are in the folder that you are working from. The error you mention relates to the 'resdefs.h' file not being found. I too stumbled at this stage for a while. Only when I grabbed every tool I could find and put them together in one folder did it work.That said, I still get errors sometimes and end-up with a 3kb file :-( It's probably my typing though ;):-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[Guest Ansgar]

Hello Jon,hello Jim,if it comes to planeunlimited and the physics-file there are some important "tricks" you must respect:1. If you export the 2130-files and all the following to the end pls. beware that you save them under a very short name!!! If the name is too long the generation of the plane.txt physicsfile will sure fail! So use max. 7 chars for the name of the exportet files, I often use only 4..5 to be sure it works!2. You need the 3 header files: resdefs.h segparts.h segtype.h3. this header files you need allways for a proper conversion and they should all be copied into the same folder then the exported files out of the res-fileHopefully this helps to prevent failures here. ;-)Best regards:)Ansgar