Unusual elevator - animation question

[YoYo]

Question is about FS9 converted C141 Starlifter to P3Dv5. Here I have unusual elevator and it stays at the same position all the time (btw. see working flaps ).



In animation I have trimtab_elevator (it works in animation editor in MCX) but it doesnt work in P3D.
Do you know which option from the animation is the best to change it?
In MAIW library I found few Starlifters but... for all animation of elevator is ... turned off. I can do the same but maybe is a solution for this unusual elevator.

[John Young]

How do you want the elevator to behave - do you want it to deflect downwards on the landing roll?

Are all these conversions for your own use, or do you have permission to convert for uploading?

John

[YoYo]

How do you want the elevator to behave - do you want it to deflect downwards on the landing roll?

Are all these conversions for your own use, or do you have permission to convert for uploading?

John

Ad.1 as normal elevator (only the direction of flight so up/down), I dont see here nothing special for landing:



Ad.2. it's conversion of free project, those models are present already with agreements for free use (credits included), I improve it only. In some situation (if I added something new) I sent some mails with askings but without reply (authors did it 10-13 years ago, mostly no contact, however I'll check it again, not everything has been done here yet to be sure for 100%, eg. Michael 'Mike' Pearson from MAIW, I used his 4 models -21F-13, F-4, F-8 and F-101, but did it as static models only, still waiting for reply, maybe I'll remind him again).

[Muckinator2005]

So this is the now freeware model from Alphasim. This is a flyable aircraft, not AI.

There are actually two animations, one for the elevators (at the end of the horizontal stabilizer) itself and for the pitch trim that moves the whole stabilizer. Elevators should be pretty straight forward. Pitch trim is only supposed to move in the range from +4 to -9.6 degrees. Check the conversion for RATS's IL-76. You'll see that it's connected to the position of the flaps, which I think is the easiest way to do it.
Regarding the conversion of MiG-21, F-4, F-8 and F-101 there are already conversion packs available for each of these planes (MiG-21 I did myself), so there's no need to do this again.

Best regards,

Jean Claude

[YoYo]

So this is the now freeware model from Alphasim. This is a flyable aircraft, not AI.

There are actually two animations, one for the elevators (at the end of the horizontal stabilizer) itself and for the pitch trim that moves the whole stabilizer. Elevators should be pretty straight forward. Pitch trim is only supposed to move in the range from +4 to -9.6 degrees. Check the conversion for RATS's IL-76. You'll see that it's connected to the position of the flaps, which I think is the easiest way to do it.
Regarding the conversion of MiG-21, F-4, F-8 and F-101 there are already conversion packs available for each of these planes (MiG-21 I did myself), so there's no need to do this again.

Best regards,

Jean Claude

Thanks Jean. I'll check this IL, I'll try to figure it out.

About those models - I did only static version (exactly in several places), so that it only "simulates" traffic and it looks fantastic:



if someone in the future wants to create more realistic Traffic (what I hope for), they will use your conversion for full, I hope they will even appear on MAIW , here is map finished airports. Btw. if Mike doesn't answer (the e-mail was sent 2x, the first few months ago), who should I ask?

[Muckinator2005]

As those planes are already converted and released MAIW already got the permission from Mike Peason.
The right people to ask about this probably would be the one of the admins of MAIW, Firebird or Greg.

Picture really look great.

If you go on with those conversions don't be surprised if one day you'll get an email from gsnde. This is how he trapped me and I'm still liking it .

Best regards,

Jean Claude

[YoYo]

As those planes are already converted and released MAIW already got the permission from Mike Peason.
The right people to ask about this probably would be the one of the admins of MAIW, Firebird or Greg.

Picture really look great.

If you go on with those conversions don't be surprised if one day you'll get an email from gsnde. This is how he trapped me and I'm still liking it .

Best regards,

Jean Claude

Hehe, LOL .

I checked this IL but I see that it use own xml, however I partially solved this, it works like normal elevator now but I think its ok (this full part, I don't think it was used very often or it's hard to see because the movement of this part of fin was minimal.



thanks for your help and details to who I must to go with the questions.

[Muckinator2005]

Looking at some takeoff videos of C-141's it seems a little bit too much elevator but otherwise good job.

As for the xml, there's a topic named 'Draft instructions on how to convert models from FS9 to FSX / P3D' over at the guys from AIG (https://www.alpha-india.net/forums/inde ... #msg257143). This is how I started with conversions. At the first post there's a pdf-file that contains the code for the 'L_R_My_flaps' animation used in IL-76.

Best regards,

Jean Claude

[John Young]

The web site says "Dedicated to Microsoft Flight Simulator X, this project is freeware". That's not the same as "Public Domain" or Open Source". Unless I am interpreting it wrongly, It's the same status as everything here at MAIW. It grants no right to alter the models without the consent of the authors, although you could do it for personal use. You can't assume because the authors' have not responded to your e-mails that copyright has been removed.

Is that the correct interpretation?


John

[YoYo]

The web site says "Dedicated to Microsoft Flight Simulator X, this project is freeware". That's not the same as "Public Domain" or Open Source". Unless I am interpreting it wrongly, It's the same status as everything here at MAIW. It grants no right to alter the models without the consent of the authors, although you could do it for personal use. You can't assume because the authors' have not responded to your e-mails that copyright has been removed.

Is that the correct interpretation?


John

You have right but I think the key is always non commercial use in this case, respecting someone else's work, giving links and credits from an original source (and everything will be in readme), i.e. work for the FS community (on Avsim/Flightsim are full of such cases - sceneries with objects from the others, not to mention sites like Rickoo and Flyaway that rebuild models in bulk but this is a very bad example), so what do you advise in that case? Many are waiting for it. Every day I have a post or a question about release date of this upgrade hehehe. Some French guys (FS community too) did investigation for me too (with Facebook ect) but without sucess.

[Muckinator2005]

In general John is correct. Even as it says 'amend/distribute as you fit' I'd say the amend part is for repaints, not necessarily for modification. As Alphasim isn't around anymore but Virtavia is hosting the files they'd be the first to ask.
Being requested by a lot of people unfortunately isn't criteria for release, see the Tornados of Fernando Martinez as an example.

Best regards,

Jean Claude

[John Young]

No, "non-commercial use is irrelevant". I think to upload is a breach of copyright unless you have specific permission from the author. I wouldn't permit it with my work and the Conversion Team here have been careful to only work with what they have permission for.

What are the conditions in the original readme's? Your call, but If you are not 100% sure you have a licence to amend the models, then I wouldn't.

John

[YoYo]

Virtavia is hosting the files they'd be the first to ask.

Right, will do. Virtavia is on range.

Your call, but ...

For now, it's still my unpublished work and I still have some work to do . Ok, I have some ideas to find the original author - Xavier Carré or Jacques Godfrin, I played a lot of spam on FB now we'll see. If this site is still running, does someone pay for it? Maybe I will ask on some French forums. All advice is appreciated.

[John Young]

So, am I right in thinking from what I have read here, that you are you intending to upload modified flyable aircraft for use as AI, with high polygon counts, or have you made LODs to mitigate that and also reduced the textures down to one sheet to reduce draw calls? That's not going to be very usable, frame-rate-wise, if both are not done.

John

[YoYo]

Yes its a one LOD only (like mins Hueys), like it was before in the orginal project in 2010 (here I have 30xAI). However I didnt noticed any FPS impact with high traffic even. They are old models from FS9 period mostly and I fly... in VR only so it is an additional system load and extra requirements. I did the whole AI traffic as add-on.xml so it will be very easy to turn in on/or off if someone will notice FPS impact.

[Muckinator2005]

From what I read and also from my personal experience flyable aircraft often (not always) make poor AI planes. You'll need to tweak aircraft.cfg and most likely the .air file in order to make it work properly. But maybe the C-141 is an exception, don't know.
Regarding LOD P3Dv5 can more easily deal with high polygon counts and usually allows for a much higher frame rate than P3DV4. So if the planes is released you might get a few complains about FPS hits from the P3DV4 corner.
In my conversions I also reduced the number of LODs to only two - there's some discussion going on about the need for more or not - but it always includes the low level paper plane model. You might want to think about this option. John created so many wonderful models so far, he definetly knows what he's talking about and you should at least consider his advice.

Best regards,

Jean Claude

[John Young]

So, you have modified flyable aircraft that you don't own, with no LODs and multiple texture sheets and no licence to publish what you are doing. It's not how we build AI aircraft at MAIW I'm afraid. Mins owns his models I think, so it's not quite the same comparison.

If you want to seek advice hear, then first, off, you need to listen.

John

[YoYo]

John, if it worked in 2010, why should it not work in 2021, when the hardware has changed at least a couple of times? I don't understand this attack a bit, I'm trying to do my best (and I definitely do not consider myself a specialist, I am still learning) and AI its an addon for my main project. What I noticed, not any FPS impact for me in v5. Of course, if there was an option, I would love to do a different LODs on top of what it was but as I know for this I need Gmax, in MCX is only option "Generate LOD from current model", but when I checked it, it did not happen that something changed, I will look for it, I did not follow this topic before.

About publishing - I didnt publish any of those addons. The whole project I started to for my own only ... but during the process when it began to grow enormously I had many question and request about publish it. I would like many people to finally enjoy as much as I do now when I do it, learning and testing. Im still waiting for some replys and here is example one of last few:

"mighty impressive stuff you're doing - I'm sort of retired from simming but you are welcome to use anything with my name on it and alter it to be compatible with your platform".

John created so many wonderful models so far, he definetly knows what he's talking about and you should at least consider his advice.

For sure and this is what Im doing .

[YoYo]

Ok, I found this tutorial for LOD (so its present in MCX, nice!), looks like not difficult:

I’ll check how it works with this Starlifter.

[John Young]

Sorry, I apologise if you think I was attacking you. I'm trying to understand what you are doing so that I can respond to your requests for help here, particularly your query about the elevator. You have to decide whether animating such a device with such small movement is worth the effort and draw call penalty in the overall scheme of things. We do try and respect copyright here, so again apologies if you think that response was too inquisitive. I don't want my help to contribute to a breach.

The Alphasim C-141, when it was released by Virtavia in 2008 was designed as a flyable aircraft and not for AI. The B model has:

1 LOD
20,559 mesh polygons,
180 draw calls
21 texture sheets
19533 texture vertices

That's way over the top if the aircraft is used for AI in numbers, particularly by people with a less powerful machine than yours. My advice is to put in at least an intermediate LOD and a final paper aeroplane LOD as a safeguard.

MAIW already has an AI C-131B Starlifter converted for FSX and P3D with permission. These are the comparable performance figures:

11 LODs
3075 mesh polygons (LOD1)
83 draw calls (LOD1)
1 texture sheet
3388 texture vertices (LOD1)

You can see the huge overhead that the flyable aircraft has. I know you are using this as a learning exercise, but if you wanted your users to have a better option, you could offer the MAIW link:

https://militaryaiworks.com/download-ha ... conversion

On the subject of copyright, the Virtavia readme says:

"These files are freeware. Please amend/distribute as you see fit.
They are unsupported, so please do not e-mail us if you have problems.
Under no circumstances may these files be sold or uploaded to a payware site or any kind of illegal warez site.
All rights reserved - AlphaSim 2008"

That's a bit of a contradiction and I doubt that Virtavia would respond if asked about it. I'm not sure "amend" means "re-engineer".

I’m not sure you are ever going to resolve that since Virtavia now holds the copyright it would seem.

John