SilentEagle

Does the new Sounder method of sound modding allow addition of external sounds to work over multiplayer for custom aircraft? Has anyone experimented with this new method of sound modding? It looks like ED is slowly replacing the older methods with Sounders, but there has been no discussion of how it works.

I will have to agree here. My L-39 EFM suffers the same "over-responsiveness" as many other recent additions to the DCS module aircraft list. Joystick curves are the simmer's solution to this lack of feedback. However, aircraft with FBW flight control systems are a little more well behaved to a human's inputs on a simulation and responses are more in line with what seems correct. Even in those cases, however, most FBW aircraft have some artificial control feedback forces to give the pilot's resistance to requested inputs.

I have never flown or owned the hawk or C-101 either, but it is my guess that they also define animations in their code somewhere, whether it is in the cockpit dlls or the lua, I don't know. I have some SFM aircraft modules that require defining the external animations and some that do not. I am not sure of the exact trigger for that requirement.

Yes, I believe you are correct. This was a change ED made a couple years ago to how custom aircraft external animations work. If you want to use a completely custom aircraft, you will need to define the external animations values yourself.

Count me in!

Thanks for doing this!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This will not work in aircraft placed in the Saved Games mods folder. I've been pulling my hair out the last few days trying to get this to work with our mod. It wasn't working for me, but my teammates were seeing the different cockpit liveries in the combolist just fine. Obviously, I was the only placing the aircraft in Saved Games.

While I don't know how LN have modeled the suspension system and I haven't tested it myself, I had a terrible time trying to model a free castoring nose wheel with rudder based differential braking on the L-39, which works in the same fashion as the Mig-21. Eventually I just added a bit of nose wheel steering (temporary cheat) for low speeds to assist the horrible turn radius we were experiencing, because the nose wheel refused to turn sufficiently when differential brakes were applied.

While I never examined the high altitude properties of the air within DCS, I have faith that the properties are correct. Any issues our L-39 had at high altitude was most likely due to engine performance or long period longitudinal stability.

Just to clarify Tango's comment. We had a deal on the table for a modeler to create the L-39 cockpit and contract agreements were drafted the day before we were informed. We had every intention of completing the project within Q1 of 2015, but it required a financial investment; one that we can no longer provide given the loss of marketability.

Just so we are clear on who knows what, when did this occur?

The decision was made because of the time and financial investment still required on our part to finish the module. The custom code base Tango and I have amassed is not lost and will certainly serve as the basis for future endeavors outside of the DCS engine.

Yes that is true, not disagreeing with that. But let's also not assume every aircraft they update with new 3d models will get a special DCS module. Anyway, a public list of restricted modules from ED will not happen for obvious reasons.

I wouldn't read too much into that either. I was the one who requested the wunderluft style example with respect to creating an L-39 mod. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1470916&postcount=12

No, this external program has nothing to do with DCS except for the fact that the same flight model dll was used. The flight model API for DCS, as anyone can see, sends atmospheric data and current aircraft state and retrieves updated forces and moments. Instead of using DCS to perform the time step physics updates, I used JSBSim to send the atmospheric conditions and current aircraft state. JSBSim can be entirely self contained and provides native methods for force calculations, but they are very limited, so I simply bypassed those and used my own calculations.

Both our C and ZA variants share the same base flight model. The differences are in weight and extra drag sources.

Flight Model Visualization Tool Hello everyone, Today I figured I would show you guys how I go about investigating flight model bugs and issues and how I was able to accelerate development through a custom written flight model visualization tool. I actually created this tool earlier this year and it has been essential in finding some of the more pesky bugs lurking in the code of the flight model. Flight Model Visualization Tool The program was written in C++ and visualization is powered by OpenGL. SFML was used for joystick interaction with the program. Simulation of aircraft flight dynamics can be real time or slow down/sped up. Forces and moments are calculated in an independent flight model dll and passed to JSBSim for physics integration and time-step updates. See it in action:

You can do it by modifying any SFM aircraft thrust value to an insanely high value. You just go full throttle and point the plane vertical before you lose elevator effectiveness. On our AFM L-39 model I have tested fake rocket engines to do crazy ascents into the atmosphere, but you are right, the atmospheric haze kills the long distance viewing. Otherwise, seeing the edges of the current map would be possible.

I've used modified SFM and AFM aircraft to fly well into space, but you lose view of the ground after a few hundred thousand feet.

That's because we never announced it. Yes!

I still don't understand this decision and we never got a solid answer on what the SDK that we were buying into really entailed. I feel like it will create a large burden on RRG and any map makers. Anyone who has developed something knows how many iterations it will go through, hundreds if not thousands. I understand that the EDGE viewer can visually test the map environment, but we still don't know if it will be sufficient to create a map from scratch. Would be interested in hearing any updates on what the SDK actually is.

I appreciate your point of view, but please keep in mind that none of us were born with intimate knowledge of module creation on the DCS engine. Most of us are still learning the ins and outs of the engine and how to access certain data or use built-in features. In many cases, it is much easier to write our own system than it is to figure out any basic interraction with the core engine. Any third party who did not know that this would be the case when they started their project was extremely naive. Because of this, some third parties elected to start DCS development with simpler aircraft, like trainers. These types of aircraft may require less DCS engine knowledge, like how to create an MFD or HUD or require less interaction with core engine features that may not exist yet, such as advanced air or ground radar. Another factor is development team size. Some of these teams only have one or two dedicated coders, meaning the workload is very high and simulating every system to DCS A-10 levels on a complex aircraft would take many years the first time around. I imagine that development cycles will shorten for third parties once they have developed a code base and a good understanding of the DCS engine and how to work with it.

The Hawk is made by a third party group, not ED, who has a particular interest and expertise in that aircraft. DCS doesn't think about anything, it is just a simulator platform that you and anyone else are free to develop the F-4 on. ED does not tell what aircraft 3rd parties have to make and that is a good thing. In my opinion, a training aircraft has a place in a combat sim, but not everyone has to agree or buy it if they aren't interested, but why limit the already small pool of dedicated 3rd parties who are creating high fidelity aircraft? If you really want the aircraft, do something about it. Our team really wanted to bring the L-39 trainer to DCS for our own selfish reasons, but everyone else gets to benefit from that work. That's what capitalism is all about.

To save anyone the headache, I saw this on their forums. "Currently we only have drag forces for the system as it would be in a wind tunnel which doesn't include any concept of a reaction force." In other words, this is not a tool you want to use for aircraft!

How many lines of code it takes isn't really a good gauge of how complex an aircraft is. It is a better estimate of a how complex the flight model is. However, a decent flight model could be written for that aircraft in a couple thousand lines. Also, I don't know about other AFM devs, but I'd love to make FMs for other aircraft, if only I had 48 hours in a day. It has nothing to do with money for me, but I am already tied up full time working on one AFM as it is. To make an AFM is not difficult. To make it react perfectly in all flight regimes and scenarios is a monumental task.