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That is something we would like... and I have a lot of helipads on my ships and oil rigs
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Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:
- Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
- Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
- Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
- Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
- Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
- Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.
Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.
By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.
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Hehe, just found this thread!
I'm glad people seem to like it!
My sincere thanks goes to Alexis both for originally thinking up the idea and basic technique of making animated arresting cables which eventually developed into what you see here (and a lot of other features that aren't shown in the video), and his excellent work on the modeling end throughout the process, and to Heretic, JB3DG, and the other good people at fsdeveloper who have patiently and thoughtfully answered my stupid questions over the years. Now that I'm somewhat more comfortable with sim programming, I'll try to be on here more and hopefully answer some questions myself.
Regarding "How it works":
As usual, JB3DG is correct, it's a custom flight model/autopilot which completely bypasses the default AI engine - that is, it's very much a programming challenge, and not a scenery challenge (which is a good thing, as I know next to nothing about scenery). The ship-relative waypoints themselves not only need to be dynamically loaded, but need to have an intrinsic velocity vector, so that the aircraft flies to where the waypoint will be, rather than where it is now. This is not possible (as far as I know) with the default AI engine, so I made my own, which accepts moving waypoints. None of it is a secret, just SimConnect, a lot of arithmetical elbow-grease, and a willingness to bypass FSX's default engine whenever it can't provide the desired behavior.
Regarding payware stuff in the showroom:
We have released an SDK which will allow any ship developer to equip their ships with our tech. Getting AI on the carriers took me a large amount of work to figure it all out, primarily because it is predicated on having custom arresting gear, catapults, and meatball/LSO/guidance system that are built from the ground up to be used by any airplane, whether user or AI. These systems have to be aware of certain aspects of aircraft and carrier geometry, and then do a lot of math to get everything to line up, look right, and behave correctly. That was the tricky bit. After that it's just building an AI flight model/autopilot/guidance system, tweaking/tuning it to make it look more realistic (which I'll still be doing for a long time to come), and then just letting it ride the meatball and catch the wires exactly the same way as the user aircraft does. Due to the fact that it's not a trick requiring some special knowledge or smarts to implement, rather, established sim programming techniques combined with a large number of lines of code and many hours of effort, it makes more sense to release a module and publish an SDK for it, and let others make use of it that way, rather than attempting to outline all the techniques or just dumping the code. Using the CEX SDK, you provide certain aspects of your carrier geometry and an invisible taxi/parking map for the carrier deck (basically equivalent to AFCAD for carriers), etc., and then let the CEX module do all the trig behind the scenes to make everything work.
Regarding AI helicopters landing on ships/scenery:
Of course it's possible, using the exact same techniques! I can reuse a large percentage of my fixed-wing code, and it is definitely up there in my medium-term queue of things to do. It's just a matter of building a new (simpler) terminal guidance system and a different AI flight model/AP, and of course cats/gear aren't needed (though there is RAST, which I doubt I'll be able to resist having a go at eventually).
Farley
I'm glad people seem to like it!
My sincere thanks goes to Alexis both for originally thinking up the idea and basic technique of making animated arresting cables which eventually developed into what you see here (and a lot of other features that aren't shown in the video), and his excellent work on the modeling end throughout the process, and to Heretic, JB3DG, and the other good people at fsdeveloper who have patiently and thoughtfully answered my stupid questions over the years. Now that I'm somewhat more comfortable with sim programming, I'll try to be on here more and hopefully answer some questions myself.Regarding "How it works":
As usual, JB3DG is correct, it's a custom flight model/autopilot which completely bypasses the default AI engine - that is, it's very much a programming challenge, and not a scenery challenge (which is a good thing, as I know next to nothing about scenery). The ship-relative waypoints themselves not only need to be dynamically loaded, but need to have an intrinsic velocity vector, so that the aircraft flies to where the waypoint will be, rather than where it is now. This is not possible (as far as I know) with the default AI engine, so I made my own, which accepts moving waypoints. None of it is a secret, just SimConnect, a lot of arithmetical elbow-grease, and a willingness to bypass FSX's default engine whenever it can't provide the desired behavior.
Regarding payware stuff in the showroom:
We have released an SDK which will allow any ship developer to equip their ships with our tech. Getting AI on the carriers took me a large amount of work to figure it all out, primarily because it is predicated on having custom arresting gear, catapults, and meatball/LSO/guidance system that are built from the ground up to be used by any airplane, whether user or AI. These systems have to be aware of certain aspects of aircraft and carrier geometry, and then do a lot of math to get everything to line up, look right, and behave correctly. That was the tricky bit. After that it's just building an AI flight model/autopilot/guidance system, tweaking/tuning it to make it look more realistic (which I'll still be doing for a long time to come), and then just letting it ride the meatball and catch the wires exactly the same way as the user aircraft does. Due to the fact that it's not a trick requiring some special knowledge or smarts to implement, rather, established sim programming techniques combined with a large number of lines of code and many hours of effort, it makes more sense to release a module and publish an SDK for it, and let others make use of it that way, rather than attempting to outline all the techniques or just dumping the code. Using the CEX SDK, you provide certain aspects of your carrier geometry and an invisible taxi/parking map for the carrier deck (basically equivalent to AFCAD for carriers), etc., and then let the CEX module do all the trig behind the scenes to make everything work.
Regarding AI helicopters landing on ships/scenery:
Of course it's possible, using the exact same techniques! I can reuse a large percentage of my fixed-wing code, and it is definitely up there in my medium-term queue of things to do.
It's just a matter of building a new (simpler) terminal guidance system and a different AI flight model/AP, and of course cats/gear aren't needed (though there is RAST, which I doubt I'll be able to resist having a go at eventually).Farley
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Yeah, among other things. That radio code will not be wasted though...
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I was working on an ai heavy cruiser WWII to be able to be spawned in CCP with the SOC or Kingfisher seaplane on a catapault that would be able to be launched. I was able to create a static cruiser which in essence is an airport in the ocean based on Paul Clawson's USS IDAHO battleship and with RCBCO-50 launch the seaplane with the catapault function successfully. In real life the seaplane landed next to the cruiser and then was picked up with the crane and put back on the catapault. Didn't expect to do that but I WAS able to take off from a seaplane ramp base and then find the cruiser and land next to it. CCP was putting the seaplane everywhere but on the catapault so I tabled the idea but may go back to it. I had the thread here. I haven't given up yet on getting Paul at GAS to do either a Curtiss SOC or an OS2U Kingfisher of his quality. The ones that are out there are FS9 port-overs. Nice at the time but 10-15 years old now and VERY simple panels.
