Propeller setting

[jgowing]

Inspired by all the great things I've seen , I've taken the plunge and started to learn FSDS. So I have a couple of projects underway, and it's hard but it's fun. One is a Shorts Skyvan, which I thought might be relatively straightforward and it hasn't been made for AI, as far as I know.

It looks like a Skyvan, it flies well and I'm much encouraged to go further. But at the moment there's one thing I don't understand: the propellers stop turning when the engines are idling, so when waiting at the hold before take off, and in the final stage of landing; as the plane rolls out and taxies, the props start to rotate again.

I'm sure I'm missing something basic; can anyone advise what it might be?

Jon

[JohnTenn]

Jon

I am also technically a novice.

Bear with me, you possibly have these already.

First the naming of the propeller parts is important.

Name copies of the spinner or hub, Prop0_Still, Prop0_Slow and Prop0_Blurred. For the other prop's Prop1_xxx and so on.

Important to LINK your blades to the spinner for Prop0_Still. You can link blades and a disk for Prop0_Slow. Lastly link a disk for Prop0_Blurred.

In Aircraft.CFG find:

[General]
prop_anim_ratio = 1 or make it a larger number to spin faster.


[Propeller]
Rotation= 0 for anti-clockwise or 1 clockwise. From cockpit perspective.

There is a tutorial out there but I can not find it right now.

Hope this gets you started.

John

[John Young]

Jon, you must put the prop_anim_ratio in each individual aircraft section of the aircraft.cfg file. It won't work in the General section. I made some props the other day and found by experiment that a value of 0.8 worked fine, but it varies for each prop size so try several values. I control the direction of spin by the pivot point of the prop. A negative value on the ratio will also reverse the direction.

To create the slow and blurred disk textures, take a head on screen shot of the still prop in your design program. In PSP or Photoshop, use the radial blur tool to spin the image - two different values of course. To create the alpha channel, copy each disk texture, convert it to a greyscale image and reverse it so it's negative. Adjust the brightness to the desired level of opacity in the sim.

John Y.

[jgowing]

Thank you both for the feedback, it's much appreciated. I hadn't learned about prop anim ratios yet, so I'll tinker with those when time allows over the next few days.

Jon

[jgowing]

No time like the present, and it worked, first attempt at 0.8! Thank you very much. What was interesting was that the prop anim ratio parameter hadn't been in the cfg file I'd borrowed from another plane at all, and also not in a few others that I did a quick check on..

Jon