First converting of a helicopter: Need some help of the champs...

[Manschy]

Hi,

while got stuck with my light cones for the FSX RAF Brüggen scenery, I divert myself with another kettle of fish altogether:
Trying to convert a helicopter from FS9 to P3Dv4+

It's the Westland Alpha Lynx from Virtavia, and I know it is not an AI aircraft, but the specialists around here maybe can give me a little helping hand by solving one or two things.

First experiments were running really good - the AH-7 versions (all with skids...) are working quite fine in P3Dv4+.

But with the AH-9 (the wheels version...) I got a little problem with the main gear section:





The suspension completely works, but the Lynx does not sink with its tail.
So my question: Is it a gear animation issue I did not notice in the MDX Hierachy section or do I need to play around with some other parameters?

[hschuit]

Manfred, I tried a quick & dirty conversion of the AH9 model and I do not see a gear animation issue on my side. BTW, I used the latest MCX dev version from 21 Feb 2022. I found other problems like the main rotor slow/blurred disks are missing, wrong transparency settings for several materials and the fde needs to be reworked.

Other than that I do not think it is a good idea to use this model for AI purposes, the drawcall footprint is so high that it will hurt performance on most systems.

Henk.

[Manschy]

Thanks for reply, Henk. No, I intended to convert the AH-7/9 only as flyable heli, not for AI usage. But the specialists here with a lot of experience how to use MCX for converting FS9 to FSX/P3D aircraft may help for sure.

With the AH-7 (skids) everything works fine and also the rotors are moving well. I didn't have to change anything with the animations there - I only had to seperate the rotors and merge it afterwards before I export the model. The Lynx is still a remarkable up-to-date helicopter model and was missing until now in my RAF Gütersloh aircraft hangar. Next will be the Westland Wessex - so all aircraft which had been stationed there I finally can fly...as soon as I have time to do so

[hschuit]

OK, if you are aiming at a flyable conversion the 1st thing I would do after importing is delete the extra LOD model. The FS9 model has 2 LODs, 124 and 249 - keep 249 and delete 124. From past experience I have learned that it is prudent to remove all LODs except the one you want to work on. If you separate parts from a multi LOD model, chances are that the structure gets corrupted between the LODs.

[Manschy]

Ah, that sound interesting. Will give it a try.

[Manschy]

It works now