SilentEagle

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.

AFM is not limited to 3 wheels. Looking at the AFM API include file, it has allowance for 10 different wheel definitions. Another thing to keep in mind is the hard lower limit on airspeed with SFM aircraft. No matter how much lift you give an SFM, it will stall at ~60 knots, so modeling a slow tail dragger may not be possible.

Maybe you misunderstood me. I don't work or speak for Razbam. My work continues even if I don't show progress, so dont always assume that nothing is happening. Someone above just linked to the Razbam AFM development thread, where progress is still being made, but some people are missing it.

This is not true. Lack of updates does not make a project dead. I work on our aircraft almost every day, but I only post updates when I feel like I have something worth showing off.

3rd parties currently develop their own engine model inside the flight model code, since the ultimate output is the thrust force to send back to the sim. Just like there is no preset for external flight models, I don't expect there to be a preset for an engine model. The only exception to this that I can think of is the suspension system, which 3rd parties don't seem to have much control over for some reason. ED does have its own internal methods for modelling the engine, but it seems that each engine has been unique so far.

Glad to hear there are average community members out there taking steps to learn the skills needed to enter the third party development scene for DCS! It is a steep learning curve, but anyone with aerospace engineering knowledge can make it happen. Good luck with your studies!

No complete HUDs, but you should take a look at HUD/Indicator folder in the scripts for Wunderluft. If you spend enough time staring at all the LUA files that make up the indicators for all the DCS planes, you might begin to understand it. I haven't ever been able to fully understand the process, so I can't really help. Thankfully, the L-39 doesn't require any HUD or indicators. :) It does.

Makes me want to restart my California map. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=64947 If only I had the time... I have figured out that all of California and portions of nevada would be appoximately equal to the size of the Black Sea map we already have.

This is why I have added a keyboard button to the L-39 that retrieves weather info from the sim and displays it as a METAR printout on the screen.

Thanks for the reply. I understand that using the terrain will be impossible until release of EDGE in the alpha, but I was assuming you had meant that the terrain conversion to be usable in the simulator would never be part of the SDK for average backers. Glad to hear differently! I think.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this would make it impossible for developers to test their creations in the simulator. That seems pretty counterproductive. As a developer myself, I find this part hard to understand. If the concern is an oversaturation of mediocre or "half-baked" terrains, why release the tools to all backers in the first place. Why not just just to those with serious interest and capability, such as how 3rd party development of aircraft is currently operating? If a user wanted to create a free terrain or even one that was only used by himself, would he really need to have ED/RRG convert it for him. What about every time he wanted to make a change?

While true, I was speaking about the general atmosphere and effects. Effects like rain would have to have parameters that differed by aircraft.

I thought this was strange as well. I'm not sure what it does, since you are already defining thrust in the engine table. Unsure on these two. All speeds are m/s TAS. You know as much as almost anyone else. Changing these values (even in a scientific manner) has never allowed me to make any conclusions. I wouldn't take the thrust values too seriously when it come to accurate values above transonic regions. It seems ED may use this to tweak the top speed at high mach numbers. In a way, I guess that means they are using it as net thrust due to the high ram drag.

Good to hear these things will be coming to the atmosphere model! Fogging and frosting canopy effects will be nice, but I still think a canopy rain effect would be the ultimate in immersive simming.

Yes, it works exactly the same. I believe there is a priority order, so make sure you don't have different versions of the same file/mod in the install and saved games directory. You will have to create the Mods and aircrafts folder I believe, but afterwards you can just drop your mod in and forget about it.

I'm still trying to understand the usefuless of this function. I already had AGL from the radar altitude function from the cockpit systems. The different surfaces don't seem to be varied enough to be as useful as you originally thought. Perhaps it will change over time.

Keep us updated on what you find. I saw this function a while ago, but I haven't attempted to use it, yet.

Excellent! I had some interest in making a guide like this myself, but I realized just how time consuming that would be. However, this is great for those looking to get started. Once you get into the programming is when this guide will have limited use, as much of that is up to the individual developer and many things would be covered under NDA. When I have some free time, I'll look through this more in depth and see if I have anything to add.

I have seen this equation: Cx = Cx_0 + Cy^2*B2 + Cy^4*B4 is Russian aerodynamics books, but nowhere else. Perhaps it is a Russian convention.

All third party aircraft (Wunderluft is considered in this category) crash on start since the last three hotfixes and there is no information as to why. If you want to see if this is the cause, roll back to version: 1.2.5.15865 (The version we are still developing on)

DCS crashes for us as well after the last update and I haven't been able to get an answer as to why. I figured it was some change in the SDK that broke our connection to the core code, but if others are seeing it as well, maybe it is a more general problem with 3rd party aircraft.

Don't forget about the A-7 and the harrier as well. I don't know what they plan to do after the T-2, but it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine them working their way up in aircraft complexity before attempting the F-15E. Honestly, I want the harrier more than any other planned third party aircraft!

If you still have beta 1 or 2 install files for the A-10C, you can grab the terrain from there and it still works on the latest version of DCS. It may not be finished or even polished, but it helps to add some variety when you get bored of the default map.

When reducing maximum pilot input due to hinge forces, do you scale all inputs so 50% input is now 50% of the new maximum pilot deflection or do you just cap the input so any inputs greater than the maximum are ignored at that high speed? I have tried scaling them and it created fairly sluggish controls. Also, isn't knowledge of the internal workings of the control system needed to estimate pilot stick forces, not just control surface size, deflection angle, airspeed, and angle of attack. Is there any standard way of estimating this? Book definitions always assume you know everything about the control system.