Simviation Forum - Making A new plane

Apr 28^th, 2007 at 7:00pm

Guy123 Offline
2nd Lieutenant
I Fly Sim!
Wiltshire - UK

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Posts: 1

Hello There

I am not new to the flying aspect of Flight simulator, however I have not yet made my own content for the game. I study computer games design and am also very up-to-date with 3ds max and photoshop.

However My main problem is that I have created a nice little plane (Piper Warrior III) But I have no idea how to import it into the game?

I am sure that certain parts of the plane would need to be given names (so the sim knows which bit is the propeller etc.) But I have so far not been able to find any sufficient resources on this subect.

Could someone pelase help me?

Thank you very much

Guy

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Reply #1 - Apr 29^th, 2007 at 11:13am

eskaihla Offline
Colonel
I Fly Sim!

Posts: 21

Hi,

All the naming information, as well as instructions for setting up the key frame animations can be found in the FS2004/FSX SDK (depending on which version of the sim you have). There are several SDKs available, each focusing on different areas of aircraft and scenery creation. They should be available from Microsoft's site. One of the SDKs also include the tools necessary for exporting the model from Gmax/3DSmax to your sim.

Links for the FS2004 SDK.

Regards,
-Esa

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Reply #2 - May 2^nd, 2007 at 5:33pm

rootbeer Offline
Colonel
Fernley, Nevada

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Posts: 852

This is something that also interests me. I am having a homebuilt design of mine made into an FS model by a talented young man from Canada. He has done a marvelous job in the visual aspects of the design. What I want to know is when or where does the model take on its "real life" persona? Where is the maximum ceiling prescribed? When is the maximum cruise specified? When and where does the model take on a life as opposed to being just an image on the screen? Thanks.

emachines T6212; AMD Athlon64 3800+ (2.40 GHz; Venice core); Allied AL-B500E 500W power supply; 2048Mb PC3200 DDR400; Westinghouse LCM-22w2 wide-screen LCD monitor; eVGA e-GeForce 7900 GS KO X16 PCIe video card; Logitech Extreme 3D Pro flight controller;&&Cyber Acoustics CA-4100 4-channel digital sound with 5 speakers; 300 Gb external hard drive in an enclosure; Windows XP Home; 3 Mb/s AT&T/Yahoo! DSL service; Microsoft Intellipoint trackball; Supergate EC-2000 multi-media keyboard. Epson CX-7800 Stylus all-in-one printer. Canon PowerShot S3 IS digital camera with 1 Gb SD card.&&Next thing: A CH Products USB 2.0 Flight Yoke (for enhanced realism).

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Reply #3 - May 2^nd, 2007 at 9:58pm

Milton Offline
Colonel
Props forever!

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Posts: 301

The model is given life by the flightsim engine. There are various aspects of the model all centrally controlled and coordinated by FS.

The exterior model is the 3D design, just an object with animated parts.

The VC is also the Interior model with animations set forth in the design program.

The flight model defines the aircraft's flight and handling characteristics. The flight model's .air file contains all the tables and the aircraft.cfg file is our "easy .air file manipulator" allowing you to simplistically modify air file tables.

The sounds are controlled by their own cfg file that define position, loudness, and pitch of the sounds.

The textures for the exterior and interior models are stored in their own folder and have been mapped to the models from within the model design program.

The 2D panel and gauges and VC gauges are built separately to mimick their real world counterparts. These are placed and modeled differently for the 2D vs the VC.

In my perspective, all these have to come together well to bring the aircraft to life, however motion happens once the aircraft model is loaded in FS with a flight model. The panel/gauges, sounds, and textures are not needed to fly the aircraft.

Attached is an example of an exterior model in FS with nothing more than a flight model.

Hope this helps.

xp-72.JPG (Attachment deleted)

Milton&&Dash 7, Aero Commanders, Howard 500, D18S, Spartan, XP47J, Beechcraft A28 (Grizzly)

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Reply #4 - May 3^rd, 2007 at 8:26am

rootbeer Offline
Colonel
Fernley, Nevada

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Posts: 852

Thank you, Milton. Your reply is exactly the type of answer I am seeking. I have no idea what .air files or .cfg flies are. I have only looked inside the .cfg file for a few of the default airplanes and I see that there are many, many dozens of lines in there-- most of which mean nothing to me. It amazes me that people like Mike Stone can crank out a new airplane in a few days or weeks given all the information required to actually do that. My homebuilt design has been in-process for over a year, now. That's not too bad, I guess, given that the designer is also going to college.

I have FSDSv3, still in the box. Is that all I need to make an airplane? I also have Custom Panel Designer, but it won't seem to launch. What I don't have is the time to learn how to use them. Such a pity because I have another design bouncing around in my head that would be great fun for lovers of high-performance proppers...

emachines T6212; AMD Athlon64 3800+ (2.40 GHz; Venice core); Allied AL-B500E 500W power supply; 2048Mb PC3200 DDR400; Westinghouse LCM-22w2 wide-screen LCD monitor; eVGA e-GeForce 7900 GS KO X16 PCIe video card; Logitech Extreme 3D Pro flight controller;&&Cyber Acoustics CA-4100 4-channel digital sound with 5 speakers; 300 Gb external hard drive in an enclosure; Windows XP Home; 3 Mb/s AT&T/Yahoo! DSL service; Microsoft Intellipoint trackball; Supergate EC-2000 multi-media keyboard. Epson CX-7800 Stylus all-in-one printer. Canon PowerShot S3 IS digital camera with 1 Gb SD card.&&Next thing: A CH Products USB 2.0 Flight Yoke (for enhanced realism).

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Reply #5 - May 4^th, 2007 at 2:24pm

Milton Offline
Colonel
Props forever!

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Posts: 301

FSDSv3 is an excellent tool to create the exterior and interior models.

You will find given the size of these projects that it is good to team up with simmers who have talents in other areas such as panel/gauges, textures, sounds and flight models. This will help you achieve the end goal while learning along the way about all the aspects of delivering a project.

Milton&&Dash 7, Aero Commanders, Howard 500, D18S, Spartan, XP47J, Beechcraft A28 (Grizzly)

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