First AI project ( P-91C Black Widow )

[DC1973]

Hi folks, hope you're all well,

I've used MAIW sceneries and AI for a long time, and until recently have not been able to give anything back. However, Martin contacted me at SoH regarding an AI version of my soon to be released P-61C and RF-61C, and so it looks like I have some extra stuff to learn!

I've been tinkering in my spare time looking at various AI and have a few questions if anyone can answer them. To get a feel for what's required I've picked one of the older but popular AI aircraft ( Nick Black's F-14 ) which according to Google searches has some display issues from time to time in FSX. I thought I'd have a play with it ( personal use only ) just to see what the parameters were for textures, materials etc and what could be done. I haven't altered the model, just fixed the animations in place and exported as a BGL so I can study it close up and see how it looks.

Piccy attached. My questions with regards to the AI Widow and Reporter are as follows;

1) 10,000 polygons seems plenty for these AI aircraft, but what about the textures? 1024 x 1024 seems a little small these days. The F-14s in the picture are textured with 2048x2048, still all on one sheet. Is that becoming the norm now do you think? I could, of course, include a 1024 texture sheet with the Black Widow so that folks have an option for older machines ( or FS9 for that matter ).

2) Animations. Do AI aircraft have custom animations for certain things when developing for MAIW? Visibility conditions are easy but are they controlled by lights, engines, other factors and do you think I'd need to create some custom XML for pilots, wheel chocks etc?

3) Flight plans. These are something I have only the briefest of understanding of. I can create them, but not anything like on the scale that MAIW does. Are there wizards here who take care of that side of things?

4) "That Tomcat does look nice!" I thought after placing it. Is Nick Black going to upgrade it? I'd throw my towel in the ring and have a go if nobody else was interested and Nick was ok with it!

[DC1973]

And after typing all that, I find the "Tutorials" section of the forum. It's an age thing...

[mikewmac]

Hi folks, hope you're all well,

I've used MAIW sceneries and AI for a long time, and until recently have not been able to give anything back. However, Martin contacted me at SoH regarding an AI version of my soon to be released P-61C and RF-61C, and so it looks like I have some extra stuff to learn!

I've been tinkering in my spare time looking at various AI and have a few questions if anyone can answer them. To get a feel for what's required I've picked one of the older but popular AI aircraft ( Nick Black's F-14 ) which according to Google searches has some display issues from time to time in FSX. I thought I'd have a play with it ( personal use only ) just to see what the parameters were for textures, materials etc and what could be done. I haven't altered the model, just fixed the animations in place and exported as a BGL so I can study it close up and see how it looks.

Piccy attached. My questions with regards to the AI Widow and Reporter are as follows;

1) 10,000 polygons seems plenty for these AI aircraft, but what about the textures? 1024 x 1024 seems a little small these days. The F-14s in the picture are textured with 2048x2048, still all on one sheet. Is that becoming the norm now do you think? I could, of course, include a 1024 texture sheet with the Black Widow so that folks have an option for older machines ( or FS9 for that matter ).

2) Animations. Do AI aircraft have custom animations for certain things when developing for MAIW? Visibility conditions are easy but are they controlled by lights, engines, other factors and do you think I'd need to create some custom XML for pilots, wheel chocks etc?

3) Flight plans. These are something I have only the briefest of understanding of. I can create them, but not anything like on the scale that MAIW does. Are there wizards here who take care of that side of things?

4) "That Tomcat does look nice!" I thought after placing it. Is Nick Black going to upgrade it? I'd throw my towel in the ring and have a go if nobody else was interested and Nick was ok with it!

Welcome aboard!

I'm not the best person to answer all your questions, but I'll do the best I can until others chime in.

1. All of the MAIW FSX conversions that I have seen so far use the original 1024 X 1024 textures converted to the dds format. I'm not sure why 2048 X 2048 textures have not been used, but someone else can probably answer that question better than I.

2. As you have found the tutorials can be helpful with animations, but some of our model developers and FSX model converters can probably be of more help.

3. Normally the FSX model converters only do the model conversions and the original FS9 traffic files contained in the pertinent MAIW packages are converted to FSX format by someone else.

4. To the best of my knowledge nobody has signed up yet to convert the NBAI F-14 models to native FSX and I for one would be delighted to see you take on that task.

Good luck!

[John Young]

Welcome aboard indeed. Great to see someone having a go at AI modelling.

Some brief answers, more if you want it:

- The reason I avoid 2048 x 2048 textures is that if you have a lot of them that all come into in view at the same time, eg on a flight line or on a shelter site, they can cause a substantial stutter as they load, even with mip maps.

- To use them you must have your TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=2048 in your FSX.cfg file. The default is 1024. The problem is after setting it to 2048, if you change any of the visual settings on your FSX sliders, the .cfg reverts to 1024 and you will then see only a re-sized texture. P3D fortunately, doesn't do that and 2048 is retained.

-The third problem is that 2048 will quadruple the texture size. If you have a 100 or so paints in the zip file, along with everything else, that might exceed the upload limit.

- Yes AI aircraft use custom animations that are more complex to do than in FS9. Each animation needs a key frame sequence and assigned an animation tag. Where necessary, a visibility tag is also needed.

Keep asking, tutorials will only take you so far.

What program are you modelling with?

John

[DC1973]

Thanks for the answers and encouragement gents!

Mike: if I can get permission to upgrade the F-14 I'll definitely take it on, I've always loved that plane, even before Top Gun was released.

John: Many thanks for the answers. I noticed the larger 2048 files and wondered whether it would be an issue. 1024 it is, but I'll probably design textures in the larger format to future-proof things, then just shrink them down.

I'm modelling in FSDS 3.5.1 - it's enough for the level that I want to work at, although I may switch to GMax or blender in the future. I've been developing for a year, and my first full airplane is being released next month. I won't clog the forum here with images, but there's a long running thread on the project over at Sim Outhouse and the plane is on my avatar;

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/s ... C-Reporter

I'm used to animating, tagging, basic XML coding etc. I've watched the AI produced here and noticed that things operate differently - canopies open before engine start, flaps deploy at set times, lights come on etc. Is this a set of XML codes specific to AI within FSX or have MAIW crafted their own set of standard modeldef codes that are employed on all projects, for instance? Just interested to know when the time comes to do the AI Widow and Reporter, and also regarding the F-14 - it for instance has wings swept when parked and also in high-speed flight. I'm guessing that Nick would have coded XML for the wings that would reference simvars like Airspeed / knots and also maybe SimonGround / Flaps up as triggers.

Any general advice you can offer is very welcome. I'm hopelessly addicted to developing now, literally everything I discover makes me want to get involved!

[gsnde]

You have a PM...

[John Young]

Yes, I always create my texture artwork at 2048 resolution and then re-size to 1024 for conversion to .dds. We have a host of custom xml code to do all sorts of things , including variable sweep wings. Just ask when you get to that stage.

John