Classic British Flight Sim

I am currently in the process of finishing work on a model of the LT-6G that flew FAC missions during the Korean War.



The last thing I hope to do is make working smoke rockets. I first tried to create a custom smoke effect and it worked OK. I got stumped on figuring out how to make the generated particle make a smoke column once it hit the ground. Then I discovered the FSX Beaufighter published by the group here at CBFS. Is there a tutorial somewhere that explains how to make the model for a droppable object? I was really impressed with how the rocket projectile model had both the rocket and the launcher rails and that the rails stayed on the model after the rockets were launched.

Another developer type question.
Is there any way to turn off the little window that says how many salvos are left?

Thank you

Hi X_eidos2 and welcome

Dave Garwood did the Beaufighter and will probably be up sometime this evening so hopefully, you'll get an answer to your question. I believe Rick's (Skysim) Hawk has 'working' ordnance too so maybe he'll be able to help. Someone here will know something

ATB

DaveB

X_eidos2,

The model for the droppable object is essentially another object (think it goes in the SimObjects/Misc folder, check out the Wyvern it drops bombs).
The number available to drop are added in the saved flight file, the objects hanging from the wings are actually part of the aircraft model which are set to appear if the number of droppable objects is above X, where X is an integer corresponding to the weapon station. So for the Wyvern the left wing bomb appears if the number of droppable objects is greater than 2, the right if it's greater than 1 and the centreline if it's greater than 0.
So if there are three objects all three appear, as soon as you drop one the left wing bomb will disappear, the object falling from the aircraft is separate from the aircraft model, the fact it looks like the ones hanging from the aircraft is by design rather than it starting there.

Hope that makes sense!

edit: deleted.

It would have been polite to mention this is for a payware release.

I apologize, I didn't see the requirement for the notice on the way in. The package being developed has 8 separate player controlled items. 2 are properly classified as payware, the rest are free add-ons.

Not a requirement, I said it would be polite to mention it was payware.
This forum is primarily to support freeware.

X_eidos2 wrote:I apologize, I didn't see the requirement for the notice on the way in.

From the heading of EVERY page in this forum

Classic British Flight Sim
The Home of Classic British Freeware for Microsoft Flight Simulator

I'm moving this to the payware section

DaveG wrote:Not a requirement, I said it would be polite to mention it was payware.
This forum is primarily to support freeware.

Tut tut tut. I find this thoroughly hilarious. A payware developer approaching some of the best freeware FS developers in the world?

Here is my suggestion:

The FSX Software Development Kit is contained on the Flight Simulator X Deluxe Edition distribution DVDs.

You can install the FSX SDK by inserting FSX DVD #1 into your dvd drive, changing to the SDK\ folder and running setup.exe



Ben

EDIT: Really glad I bought Alphasims Texan, I suggest everyone boycott this laughable developer. I wont give Skyunlimited the benefit of the doubt now after reading this.

A little OTT perhaps but each to their own Ben.

The chap found this site and asked an innocent question.. much like one might have done at Alphasim in the bad old days or similarly, at CaptainSim. Let's not lower ourselves to that level

ATB

DaveB

Regarding the use of the SDK to learn how to make droppable objects. A search of the SDK help file that comes with the FSX Acceleration edition produces nothing that would tell how to make part of a model a droppable object. Earlier versions of the SDK are over-written or removed when the Acceleration SDK is installed. Doing a word search of the modeldef.xml file in the hope of finding an example like the flour_bomb didn't provide any clues either. After posting my question at other development forums and not getting any answers I decided to expand my search. I found the sample of the FSX Beaufighter and the read me files lead me to this forum.

For the benefit of others that might want to explore the use of droppable objects I'd like to share some of the things I've learned the last few days.

1. You can use droppable objects with an aircraft without having to create a mission. It's a matter of adding certain text to a saved flight or FLT file. Detailed instructions on how to do this can be found in the weapons pack for FSX created and modified by Chris Sykes. Or you can read the readme file in the Beaufighter package.
2. You can have only one type of droppable object per flight.
3. Objects with forward movement, missles or smoke rockets, will not trigger a "destroy on impact" effect when they hit the ground.
4. Making part of a model's mesh a droppable object requires the writing of a custom script, which is then added to the modeldef.xml file, which then allows the property to be "attached" to the part of the model using the attach tool. Essentially what is happening is that a visibility property is being applied to the part so that it turns off or disappears when the proper drop object condition occurs. A copy of the part will also have to be exported as a mdl file and placed in it's own folder in the Misc folder found in the SimObjects folder. Finding out exactly what needs to go into that custom script is the hard part. But it's often much easier to find an answer when you know exactly what it is you're looking for.
5. So far the biggest draw back to using a droppable object is that it places a little counter on the screen, telling you how many objects you have left. If there is a way to turn this counter off, I haven't found it yet.