Nose gear steering not working for FSX

[Melo965]

Hello everyone,

Building my aircraft in Blender 3.6.5 for FSX Acceleration.

I have a retractable nose gear and the gear is not down in position until animation frame 100. So I want to animate the steering between 100 and 200 only. I have been using c_wheel as the animation but the steering angle is wierd after animation. Is there a rudder key that I should link the animation to for nose wheel steering instead?

I have read other threads here which go into custom code for wheter the aircraft is on the ground, but I would prefer to use the most simple answer in this case. I have yet to add any custom code to the modeldef.xml file.

Using frames 0 to 200 for steering in FSX just does not work for me because 0 to 100 is while the nose gear is still extending.

The part highlighted in orange is the c_gear part. Please advise.

 

[tgibson]

Two things. First, you know that the actual animation limit of the nose gear is determined by a aircraft.cfg file setting, right?

Second, you could use the animation used for the FS9 c_wheel, which is between 100 and 200. I use this when converting FS9 aircraft to FSX. You would need to add these lines to your modeldef.xml file that you specified in the ModelConverterX options. Make sure that the GUID is not a duplicate of some other entry. Then select c_wheel_FS9 for the animation tag.

<Animation name="c_wheel_FS9" guid="BC935F16-43CD-4042-8EF3-06E44A5940AB" length="200" type="Sim" typeparam2="c_wheel_FS9" typeparam="AutoPlay" />

<PartInfo>
<Name>c_wheel_FS9</Name>
<AnimLength>200</AnimLength>
<Animation>
<Parameter>
<Code>
(A:GEAR CENTER STEER ANGLE, grads) 0 &gt; if{ (A:GEAR CENTER STEER ANGLE, grads) 0.5 * 100 + } els{ (A:GEAR CENTER STEER ANGLE, grads) 0.5 * 200 + }
</Code>
</Parameter>
</Animation>
</PartInfo>

Hope this helps,

 

[Melo965]

Thanks a lot!

Yes I know that the animation limit of the nose gear is set in the aircraft.cfg file. Had not adjusted that yet. Just trying to get the animation to show properly first.

Maybe a dumb question, but can I use the same part for c_wheel and c_wheel_FS9 as you describe above. If not I can easily create a seperate part to be c_wheel_FS9.

 

[tgibson]

In FSX, you can assign any animation tag to any part. You can assign that animation tag anywhere in the process that you like.

 

[Melo965]

Problem solved, thanks so much for your help!

My first rookie mistake was to put some of the c_gear animations under c_wheel. Moved all of the c_gear animations under c_gear, and just left the c_wheel animation to only handle the wheel rotation from keyframe 100 to 200. First time I tried it with the FSX c_wheel code it only worked for left turns, but not for right turns. Then I checked your code above and added the "100 +" in the right spot, and now it works like a charm!

 

[tgibson]

Glad to help.