P3D v4 What is the pink blocked areas in animation manager mean?

[unc1rlm]

Maybe I missed something..curious,
Bob M.

 

[arno]

Can you show a screenshot? I can't think of anything pink

 

[unc1rlm]

Here's one. looks kinda pink anyway..have notice them lately on different aircraft and wondered what it means.

Bob M.

 

[arno]

Ah, that pink color. That means these are animation that are not present in the modeldef.xml. So if you export the model to FSX/P3D these animation will be lost. It's a reminder that you have to map them onto the right type.

 

[unc1rlm]

ok...if lets say something in not in the modeldef...what then..is there the latest greatest totally updated modeldef anywhere.. I know henk put out one maybe year ago and a piece of Tom's for his DC6..
Thanks,
Bob M.

 

[tgibson]

You need to change all those flap_key animations (which are FS9 only) to the FSX equivalent in the Animation Editor.

 

[arno]

Note to myself, that I should check if the flap ones are on the automatic conversion list already. For some animations I do automatically rename them. What should those flap ones become?

 

[unc1rlm]

Thanks, I not sure since I am not a modeler what the FSX equivilents are. Thank you Tom and Arno.

Bestest!!
Bob M.

 

[arno]

I'm sure Tom or Henk can tell me that, and then I'll check if I have it implemented correctly in MCX.

 

[unc1rlm]

Well Thank you Arno!!!!
Bob M.

 

[Henk Schuitemaker]

Well, translating FS9 flaps animation tags to FSX can be tricky. The most common animation type is keyframe zero for flaps up and keyframe 50 or 100 for full flaps down. In my experience, FSX animations do not use flap angle, always use flap percent. I most use these FSX animation tags:

"l_flap_percent_key" guid="DB029E5C-1A48-42d5-8290-EF098DFABB4F"
"r_flap_percent_key" guid="3849E47F-9088-4699-8959-EC0C54DF8015"

Then there are variants like negative flap percent animations for reversed animated flaps and lead edge flaps (slats):
"l_flap_neg_percent_key" guid="3F985D87-71C0-4f27-8295-AA694A810413"
"r_flap_neg_percent_key" guid="51A6131E-FCC9-4dd9-A512-9F08DE50CCBB"
"l_lead_edge_flap_percent_key" guid="1B2C12B5-8539-439c-980C-A198647C9291"
"r_lead_edge_flap_percent_key" guid="D27F63C4-2260-4dbe-8973-9C920A3C8898"

This should cover most types of flap/slat animations but there will always be odd cases where you have to write custom tags for FSX (usually you take one of the above and change the scale/bias value till it works).

Hope this helps, Henk.

 

[arno]

Hi Henk,

Would it be a safe default to translate to the flap_percent_key animations. The idea is that MCX should already take the deflection limits from the aircraft.cfg and use them when defining the key frames.

For the causes where the other types are needed, users can change it manually afterwards.

 

[Henk Schuitemaker]

Not a bad idea, most flaps animations should be OK with that, key is to replace the flaps angle tags with flaps percent tags:

"l_flap_key" => "l_flap_percent_key "
"r_flap_key" => "r_flap_percent_key "

 

[unc1rlm]

Thank you Gentlemen. I don't have a clue what that all means but when you have 10 r.flaps to chose from...whats a guy to do?
Warmest and Bestest

 

[Henk Schuitemaker]

Start with assigning the FSX r_flap_percent_key tag to all of them and see what is does in the sim. Nothing wrong with some good old fashioned trial & error, I learned a lot that way.

 

[unc1rlm]

Thank you Henk......if I tick r_flap_percent_key tag to all R_flap and assign them R-flap? and export? and save mdl? Should the flap go up and down (these are AI"s) for taxi, landing etc?
I just have old models with a non-existant, for the most part airline...trying to get ai's right....Thanks, I know I am frustrating everyone. Just no newer working models for these planes and I don't have a clue how to repaint one because most of them don't have paintkits anyway.....
Just learning..here's an example of flaps on an AI that just stay deployed and didn't retract after take-off.
Thank you Henk and all you guys, really,
Bestest

 

[Henk Schuitemaker]

For normal flyable aircraft that is indeed how you do it, tick the flaps tags you want to re-assign, select the r_flap_percent_key tag in the re-assign listbox and hit the "Assign animation type" button. You can also use this procedure for AI traffic models but there is a caviat. By default, the flaps of AI traffic models only go down during the approach, they follow the aircraft.cfg [flaps] stages. As you may have noticed, the more savvy AI traffic models do also lower their flaps partially or fully for take off. This can be achieved by using special animation tags which are custom coded. You have to understand XML coding and the FSX/P3D SDK to pull this off (or learn from analyzing existing FSX/P3D AI traffic models in MCX).

 

[tgibson]

Hi Arno,

Yes, the l_flap_percent_key versions are the ones I would use. If you are looking at these again, some others that get lost are;

c_tire to c_tire_blurred
l_tire to l_tire_blurred
r_tire to r_tire_blurred

Hope this helps,

 

[tgibson]

If you use the l_flap_percent_key versions for AI aircraft, they will use flaps only while on approach for landing, not while taxiing or while taking off. I have some modeldef additions that add takeoff flaps that deploy at the hold short node before taking the runway that I've been using for my AI aircraft.

 

[unc1rlm]

OMG Tom...give it to whoever..lets roll or is that Let's taxi.
Bob M.