Precipitation inside the Hangar!

[falcon409]

I thought I had a solution to this problem, but it didn't work, so I'll ask if someone has a better solution. I have a scenario in my Flight Simulator where I have heavy snow falling and so I taxi my bomber into the hangar for Maintenance. All well and good except it's also snowing inside the hangar. I thought applying an "autoplatform" in MCX, on the roof and side walls would prevent the snow from penetrating, but to no avail.

So, is this a known bug in Flight Sim or is there a way to correct the snow from falling inside a hangar? I should also mention that this is FSX and P3D related. . .the building was done in Sketchup.

 

[pinkjr]

Falcon did you scale the building at all during modeling or model placement?

 

[falcon409]

Falcon did you scale the building at all during modeling or model placement?

No nothing like that. Just built it, mapped the textures, compiled in MCX and placed into the scenery using Instant Scenery 3.

 

[pinkjr]

Mapping the textures sometimes doesn't work. The best way to test is just to try to place your aircraft on the roof and see if it "holds".
If it doesn't you may have to create the platforms manually, which is not difficult.

 

[falcon409]

That has already been checked and while I did state that I mapped the textures, I also applied the autoplatform function in MCX as mentioned in my original post, so there is a platform active in the sim and it keeps the airplane on the roof. . .but it has no affect on the snow.

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Ed:

This is an interesting scenario which, IMHO, must be considered for purposes of maximizing 'realism' when we create hangars and other 3D scenery objects that are intended to be navigable / viewed by the camera within a user aircraft or other SimObject.

Have you tried placing a small BGLComp-XML-type Exclusion Rectangle to exclude "Effects" on the ground inside the perimeter area of the hangar 'footprint' ?

GaryGB

 

[falcon409]

Hi Ed:

This is an interesting scenario that must be considered when we create hangars and other 3D scenery objects that are intended to be navigable / viewed by the camera within a user aircraft or other SimObject.

Have you tried placing a small BGLComp-XML-type Exclusion Rectangle to exclude "Effects" on the ground inside the area of the hangar 'footprint' ?

GaryGB

Had not thought of that Gary, but that sounds promising. I'll give that a try.

 

[arno]

Hi Ed,

As far as I know there is no way to prevent snow inside the building. But I might be wrong.

 

[falcon409]

Hi Ed,

As far as I know there is no way to prevent snow inside the building. But I might be wrong.

It appears you are right Arno, both the autoplatform and Gary's suggestion of excludes have failed to keep the snow outside. Too bad.

 

[n4gix]

How about rain? Many years ago I had the issue of rain inside a custom hangar and finally found the solution (which I have now forgotten of course!), but I never did think to test for snow...

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Bill:

Thanks for mentioning that there has at one time, been a way to fix this.

Any possibility that we might discern what the solution may have involved at the time you last used it ?

I'm wondering if it involved SCASM or newer FSX-era code to stop precipitation within a small area defined by a polygon.

I'm also wondering if a 'manifold' / 'solid' 3D model hangar with a ex: transparent / non-textured inner door frame 'face' (with no crash box) is capable of "fixing a hole where the rain gets in, ...and stops my mind from wandering" ?

(credit: The Beatles)

GaryGB

 

[Deano1973]

How about a transparent panel across the roof assigned the material "concrete" in the same way as an aircraft carrier deck? Would that be possible? Being a solid and landable surface it might also keep the weather out.

 

[=rk=]

It is rational to invoke the "flight simulator" rant. We see many, many examples where ACES took expediencies to provide a "real world" simulator, starting with the fact that it takes only 41 decently high quality airports to accomplish this. An entire planet with 41 airports that have a reasonable expectation of an immersive experience does not bode well for any sort of code accommodation that has any affect on the weather on anything less than a regional scale. That said, a good try would be through some sort of weather enhancement, like getting REX to set up a reverse microburst over the hangar, or something. ACES might have argued that they simulated flight reasonably well enough and did not, unfortunately accommodate hangar queens.

 

[n4gix]

Any possibility that we might discern what the solution may have involved at the time you last used it ?

Gary, I haven't the time to check myself, but here is the "Eaglesoft Hangar" .gmax source file in which I fixed the rain problem. For some reason I'm thinking it was the addition of a floor that fixed the problem, but this was from 2004 and my memory is fading from that epoch.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6g8xoxlcr4ldyia/New_Hanger.zip?dl=0

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Bill:

Thanks for your reply.


I wonder if the 3D model attached above is the "Eaglesoft Hanger Scenery by Bill Leaming" discussed in 2004:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/78856-eaglesoft-fbo-hanger-scenery-kit/

...and downloadable from this web page:

http://www.eaglesoftdg.com/downloads/downloads.htm

...via this download link:

http://www.eaglesoftdg.com/downloads/ESDG_Hangerkit.zip


I have not installed or used GMAX for many years, and Arno's MCX does not directly import *.GMAX source files.


If I can verify that the 3D model you attached here is identical to the above linked "Eaglesoft Hanger Scenery by Bill Leaming", the "esdghanger.x" file in the latter package may be imported into Arno's MCX to see what the geometry involves.


Thanks in advance for your further kind consideration in clarifying whether the 3D model in "New_Hangar" is identical to ex: "esdg_hanger_KEVV" in the above linked "Eaglesoft Hanger Scenery by Bill Leaming".

GaryGB

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Ed:

I tested the ESDG FBO / Hangar which apparently does not stop precipitation effect visibility within the hangar.


IIUC, a parameter in MDLs determines a offset radius for an 'attached' Fx weather precipitation effect 'cylinder'.


Possibly Arno may tell us how to change a MDL's weather precipitation effect 'cylinder' offset radius ?


AFAIK, that weather precipitation effect cylinder is mapped to a *.Fx file, texture, and HLSL Shader.


Perhaps one might create a custom camera view to be added to a desired end user Aircraft.Cfg to utilize 'inside' hangars (that do not contain a "Hangar Queen"), but which instead contain a spawned user aircraft "Start Location" from an airport BGL or saved *.FLT file, which has "ShowWeather=No" set for the custom camera view definition within the 'active' Camera.Cfg file ...located at:

C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX\Cameras.CFG

http://www.fstipsandaddons.com/understanding-cameras-fsx/

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc526984.aspx#CameraDefinitions


One can then switch to a "normal" cockpit / spot mode camera when the user aircraft is 'outside' the hangar ?


Hope this helps !

GaryGB

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hangar_queen

 

[=rk=]

<PartInfo>
visibility
<Name>
user
<Parameter>
extraneous weather
<Code (0-ignore, 1-react)>
0
</Code>
</Parameter>
</Name>
<PartInfo>

 

[GaryGB]

OK, time for a brief 'comedy relief' during all this serious SDK stuff !

//Program describing how a chicken would cross the road in Borland's object-oriented version of the Pascal language.
//It was designed so that even an inexperienced programmer could read it.
//It elicited many guffaws and an even larger number of groans, and appeared in Windows Tech Journal
//(in an ad for the magazine, of all places). It went like this:

program KFC;
usesSalt, Pepper, Flour, HotOil, Poultry, MackTruck;
constMPH = 90;
var
{Don't reference your chickens before they're declared!}Chicken : Poultry.Fowl;
Truck : MackTruck.EighteenWheeler;beginChicken.Hatch; {Constructor}Truck.Start;
{Constructor}Truck.Rev(MPH);Chicken.CrossRoad);
Truck.Horn.Honk;
Truck.Brake := TRUE;Truck.Tires.PutStr('Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...');
Chicken.PutStr('Scra-daaaaaaaaaaaaaawk!');
Stop; Look; Listen;
if Chicken.Flat thenOutput(Colonel,Chicken);
end.:


“I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson


GaryGB

 

[n4gix]

Hi Bill:

If I can verify that the 3D model you attached here is identical to the above linked "Eaglesoft Hanger Scenery by Bill Leaming", the "esdghanger.x" file in the latter package may be imported into Arno's MCX to see what the geometry involves.

Gary, it is indeed the identical hangar. I have all of my scenery projects from GMax archived for some strange reason. I could have sworn though that I had fixed the "rain inside" problem.