Front Gear Animation issue converting from FSX to P3D v4 - What we do wrong ?

[peterk]

Dear Arno

First, thank you for your great programms and support !
Our system: Win 10 Prof, P3D v3 and v4, Lenovo X1 Extreme with nVidia 1050. Latest versions and drivers installed.

We try to convert our originaly for FS2004 designed models, converted to FSX, to be used in P3D v4.
So far evreything looks fine, just the front gear does not have correct animation. It does not retract. left and right do so. We tried several models, also from other sources. Same issue:
No errors are advised during loading or compiling models.

Do we need to update animations by hand ?
How we can repair this issue ?
What you need to track this error ?

Best regards
Peter

 

[arno]

Hi Peter,

Does the animation show in MCX or does it not even show there?

If it shows in MCX, but not in FSX/P3D after exporting the BGL it might be the animation type is not correct.

If it doesn't even show in MCX it looks like it was not imported from the FS2004 model. In that case it would help to see a test model to see if I can reproduce it.

 

[tgibson]

Look in the animation manager for anything that is displayed with a red background in the listing. You will lose that animation unless you rename it to something that MCX understands.

 

[Milton_Shupe]

Have you assigned animation tags in the Animation Manager?
Your extension and suspension animation should be okay to just tag as c_gear, but you will need to re-animate your C_Wheel steering animation.
Use 0, 50, 100, 150, and 200 keyframes to turn your steering, animated looking top down in a clockwise fashion.
In the aircraft.cfg, contact point for center gear must have 180 degrees for deflection for castoring or use 35-45 degrees for pedal steering.
Also, your l/r/c_tire_xx needs to be animated 0-100 in 25 keyframe increments in the desired direction. Tag as l/r/c_tire in the animation manager as _still, and use _blurred if you have that as well.

 

[peterk]

Good afternoon everybody
Thanks for feedback

@Milton_Shupe
The keys are in. But it is a FS2004 model. L and R animated the same.
MX shows all animations correctly.

@tgibson
I found 4 parts in the FS2004 model marked red. Changed this to c_gear. Than export to P3Dv4.4. Protocoll shows
18:00 XtoMDL Information <!-- ++++ Processing Animation : c_gear ++++ -->
However no change in P3D itself:

@arno
MX shows all animations correctly. Both in FS9 and P3D v4 model.
What type of test model you need ? I'm happy to send the aircraft. You need textures ?

With best regards
Peter

 

[arno]

Hi Peter,

Good to hear that in MCX shows the animation fine, that means the keyframes and such have been read from the FS2004 MDL correctly. So it looks like an issue then with assigning the correct animation type.

When I asked for a test model, I was thinking the problem was in MCX. This sounds more like an issue that needs to be tested in P3D. In that case I don't think a test model will help me a lot. Hopefully some others have tips on how to test it in P3D, that's not something I know a lot about .

When you import the MDL file back into MCX after you give it the c_gear animation, does it still have the right animation type? Or did it get lost somewhere in the process?

 

[peterk]

Dear Arno

MCX show fine. All my models converted from FS2004 or FSX have the same issue. Front Gear stays out.
The parts stay in MX corrctly after re-import. I will re-check.
Also if I convert a third party model, the same. As we fliy our big simulators with real cockpit sections we never look to the aircraft from outside.
It is just my developper proudness scratched .

I will go thru documentation to find what we do wrong.
Maybe I will build a dummy in gMax FS2004 to test.

Thank you
Peter

 

[Milton_Shupe]

I have converted 50 aircraft from FS2004 to native FSX.

You said the keys are there. You did not say that the animation tags for c_gear and C-Wheel are there. ???
Have you ensured that all animated parts have keys and animation tags from key frame zero?
Have you animated c_wheel at 0, 50, 100, 150, 200 key frames?

Also, have you tried resetting the scales for the animated hierarchy for the gear?

 

[arno]

Peter,

Can you maybe show one of the nose gear parts in a screenshot of the hierarchy editor in MCX? Maybe we can spot something from what we see there.