F-35 Variants (FS9, FSX and P3Dv4)

[John Young]

I have 7 F-35C's on the deck Mike. Pushback is not a problem in FSX or P3Dv4 with blue nodes placed on the outbound links of the AFCAD and dragged back to the centre of each spot. The turning circle is a bit of a challenge as is this phenomenon - the landing aircraft (like the one in the centre) are at a different elevation than those parked and departing:



The same thing happens in P3Dv4. In addition, in FSX the deck of the model shows through, which is good. In P3Dv4, the AFCAD polygon takes precedence, which is not so good:



I'll need to do a bit more work on this, but I have a modification to the xml doors trigger on the F-35B SRVL model to test for Steve first.

John

[Greg]

Is that an apron poly? Try setting the draw flags to false. The flags ("Draw Surface" and "Draw Detail") were fixed in P3Dv2.

[COA732]

A little off topic, but is there a way to reposition the carriers from Car2006? I'm trying to move the one in the sea of Japan further south. It's way to close to North Korea.

[John Young]

I don't think so Jamie - not without the source files. I'm assuming that you would need to extract the model of the ship you are interested in with MCX and export it as a new .bgl, together with a repositioned AFCAD to where you want it. The Carr2006 scenery folder has 165 .bgl's files in it that comprise the main carrier models plus many bits and pieces that are generic to each type. If you load one of the ship .bgl's, MCX reports that no model is found. I don't know if there is another program out there that will globally shift .bgl's.

It would be quicker perhaps to do what I did and place one of the default carrier library objects where you want it. You will need an ocean flatten file and an AFCAD on the deck, but I can show you how to do that.

John

[COA732]

It would be quicker perhaps to do what I did and place one of the default carrier library objects where you want it. You will need an ocean flatten file and an AFCAD on the deck, but I can show you how to do that.

That'd be great. I'll shoot you a PM.

[mikewmac]

I have 7 F-35C's on the deck Mike. Pushback is not a problem in FSX or P3Dv4 with blue nodes placed on the outbound links of the AFCAD and dragged back to the centre of each spot.

Looks like you are making great progress John.

I use the anti push back node technique in all my drive thru parking configurations in P3D v3/4, but find it a tad challenging to totally eliminate at least a slight push back using ADE, which can back the AI's main gear wheels off a carrier deck depending on how close you park them to the deck's edge. Did you experience any push back at all on your carrier setup?

Did you use AFX, ADE or AFCAD2 for your carrier airport design?

The turning circle is a bit of a challenge as is this phenomenon - the landing aircraft (like the one in the centre) are at a different elevation than those parked and departing.

That is not an uncommon problem and if I remember correctly there are a couple possible causes which offhand I don't remember. You might want to check with Steve as he seems to be really good at remembering the fixes to those types of problems.

..., in FSX the deck of the model shows through, which is good. In P3Dv4, the AFCAD polygon takes precedence, which is not so good.

Did Greg's suggestion solve this problem?

[hawk_sh]

A little off topic, but is there a way to reposition the carriers from Car2006? I'm trying to move the one in the sea of Japan further south. It's way to close to North Korea.

cv_74.zip @ flightsim.com

This file includes the carrier .mdl file. You can place it wherever you want.

[John Young]

I have everything working now on the carrier, thanks Mike.

Placing the anti-pushback nodes requires a steady hand and a deep breath. The node has to keep the parking link straight and be right over the centre spot, not a mm in front of it nor a mm behind it. Greg's deck fix worked fine, the turning circle I tamed - the landing aircraft was going past the runway exit node and looping wide. The solution to the height differential on landing aircraft was contributed thanks to Brent. Finding the right elevation to match the deck in the AFCAD by trial and error was good for the aircraft on the ground, but the changes were not being carried into the runway and that was causing the landing high problem. That's now fixed.

The 7 F-35C's on the deck are operating without through-parking so park nose out on return. There's no collision conflicts, but I'll have a go at a "plumbed" AFCAD to see if I can get them to turn around to park, but I think it will mean fewer aircraft on deck. At the moment I'm just replacing the sun shelters in Jamie's Eglin AFB to house the F-35C's in FSX/P3Dv4.Then there's a couple of hundred deep breaths for the anti-pushback nodes in the AFCAD to tackle.

The F-35B xml door trigger test for Steve went well, so step by step we are getting there. It's certainly a challenge to my mental agility swapping between 17 models, 7 FDE's, a couple of hundred paints, plus 4 sceneries and 2 carriers all across 3 sim versions! I thought the Osprey was complex but nah! This is most definitely the craziest project so far.

John

[COA732]

cv_74.zip @ flightsim.com
This file includes the carrier .mdl file. You can place it wherever you want.

Thanks for the info. I'll give it a try.

[mikewmac]

I'm delighted to see that you have got your JYAI F35C carrier operations working well now John.

I've been upgrading and optimizing the scenery and ADE files for my personal local airport containing the VT ANG airbase to use in P3D v3.4 and 4.1 and of course that included optimizing the location of a large number of anti-pushback nodes. After getting frustrated dragging, dropping and tweaking the location of them way too many times, it finally dawned on me that there had to be an easier way.

Making a long story short what I ended up doing was opening up the properties window for the parking spots and jotting down their coordinates and then opening the properties window for the anti-pushback nodes and changing their coordinates to be identical to those of their parking spots in order to get a perfect co-location for them. This worked perfectly, it resulted in perfect forward departures from parking spots and there were no deep breaths required whatsoever.

Using this technique I've knocked off 42 of them so far in a fraction of the time it would have taken me using the dragging and dropping technique.

Unfortunately it has caused a few minor cosmetic problems on the visible taxi lines through the parking spots, but I have an idea to try today in order to fix that.

[mikewmac]

This worked perfectly, it resulted in perfect forward departures from parking spots and there were no deep breaths required whatsoever.

John,

It seems that I misspoke slightly when I posted the above statement in my previous post. In closer observation while testing my workaround for the minor cosmetic defects in the taxi lines I found that although the anti-pushback nodes and parking spots were perfectly co-located, there was a very slight almost unnoticeable pushback prior to them taxiing forward out of their parking spot, so the anti-pushback isn't perfect, but it is going to have to be good enough or at least for me it is.

[John Young]

I hadn't thought of placing the nodes by copying and pasting the centre coordinates Mike, so I just tried it. It took 48 seconds that way for a single node, compared to 8 seconds moving by hand. That's fine for a carrier deck, but for 200 spots on an airfield, probably better for me by hand.

John

[mikewmac]

I hadn't thought of placing the nodes by copying and pasting the centre coordinates Mike, so I just tried it. It took 48 seconds that way for a single node, compared to 8 seconds moving by hand. That's fine for a carrier deck, but for 200 spots on an airfield, probably better for me by hand.

John

John,

You certainly have the steady hand and deep breath drag and drop technique perfected much better than I do then. Of course with my current physical problems my hands are not as steady as they once were.

Joking aside, I find it quite challenging to both find the exact center of a parking spot and drag and drop the anti-pushback node perfectly there using ADE v1.76. By chance are you using AFCAD2 or AFX when you accomplish this perfectly in 8 seconds?

[John Young]

I can do it comfortably with AFCAD2 or AFX Mike, although I prefer to use AFX because of the live preview facility. ADE is more difficult because of the arrow head in the link. The secret is to do it in one quick movement, keeping the line behind the node straight as it reduces in length down to zero as it's dragged backwards. This is an example of 48 spots in the Selfridge ADCAD:



John

[gsnde]

Mike,

I love your trick. For me with ADE it reduced the time almost to nothing. Many thanks!!!!!!!!!

[Garysb]

Can I just check the way you do this John
Take the centre row, you extend the taxiway back but dont connect to the node then draw it back so it covers the centre spot?

Cheers

Gary

[John Young]

Draw the AFCAD as you normally would Gary. Then place a new blue node on each outbound parking link and then drag it towards the centre of the parking spot until it is directly over it. As you drag, you must keep the new section of the link straight, which is a little tricky because it gets shorter, obviously, when dragging.

John

[Garysb]

I can understand that on the ones that are connected back and front but what about the ones with no connection at the back?
Just checking lol

Cheers

Gary

[John Young]

Even though the parking link is pointing out, the aircraft, unlike FS9, will still push back by about it's length. A blue node placed as described will stop that and the aircraft will taxi forward straight out.

John

[TheFoufure]

I tried Tarawa_fleets.zip in FS9, (suggested above) but it's just weird. When I select Tarawa (TWFL) off the Florida coast, I start in the back of a pick up truck floating on it's own in the sea off the coast of Africa. When I go to find another carrier in the Middle East, I start with no carrier but just a sea of ice. I did find one carrier, but it's really basic. I know from the code used in the package, which was current 12 years ago, that it is not suitable for FSX, never mind P3Dv4.

John

Yes, I also test this scenery and is not really top. I've tested other LHD type sceneries (Cavour and Garibaldi for Italy, Principe di Asturia for Spain) and they are better.

I find another LHA scenery, on sim-outhouse.com. The file is "LHA5 for AI Carriers.zip"
Available here : http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/l ... ge=3&pp=20
It's for FSX