Contact points & FDE Tweaks.

Dyl Roberts · Post by **Dyl Roberts** » 03 Oct 2006, 18:27

Hi Guy's,

I was wondering if anyone here could point Me in the direction of a good tutorial on both the subjects above.

Whilst carrying on with the modeling side if things, I also want to set aside some time to get acustomed to the "technical" side of things.

Just one last request, can anyone recommend a good tool that I can use to tweak FDE's with.

I know You recommended a tool a few weeks ago when we had a chat Brian, but My son decided to bin that peticular piece of paper that I used to make notes on

Cheers,

Dyl Roberts · Post by **Dyl Roberts** » 03 Oct 2006, 19:25

Just found Rick's link to fsplaza.com

It explains everything I wanted to know & then some...... Oh well, I should look in future before starting to type........

P.S I'm still on the prowl for an FDE tweaking tool though.... :redface:

Brian Franklin · Post by **Brian Franklin** » 03 Oct 2006, 19:46

Dyl,

Here's another good tip.. if you look closely in the aircraft.cfg you'll notice that the contact and lights sections are very similar. You can make use of this when trying to sort out contact point problems.

Example :

The wheel section of the contacts might look like this

point.0=1,-32.25, 0.0, -6.00, 1574.8,0.0, 0.52, 39.42, 0.66, 1.0, 0.852, 5.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
point.1=1, 7.5, -6.3, -7.30, 1574.8,1.0, 0.52, 0.00, 0.76, 0.5, 0.623, 5.0, 0.0, 2.0, 0.0, 0.0
point.2=1, 7.5, 6.3, -7.30, 1574.8,2.0, 0.52, 0.00, 0.76, 0.5, 0.623, 5.0, 0.0, 3.0, 0.0, 0.0

copy the first four sections of each wheel data onto the end of your light section and use an fx_navwhi as a light type.

light.7 = 3, -32.25, 0.00, -6.00, fx_navwhi ,
light.8 = 3, 7.50, -6.30, -7.30, fx_navwhi ,
light.9 = 3, 7.50, 6.30, -7.30, fx_navwhi ,

What this does is give you a visible white light where the contact point is, making it a simple matter to adjust and transfer the info back to the contact section.

Don't forget to remove the extra lights data afterwards.

Brian

AndyG · Post by **AndyG** » 03 Oct 2006, 20:05

Dyl Roberts wrote:Just found Rick's link to fsplaza.com

It explains everything I wanted to know & then some...... Oh well, I should look in future before starting to type........

P.S I'm still on the prowl for an FDE tweaking tool though.... :redface:

I use AirWrench, available at http://www.mudpond.org/ . Don't know if that is the sort of thing you are looking for?

AndyG

Brian Franklin · Post by **Brian Franklin** » 03 Oct 2006, 22:01

Dyl,

As Andy says, Air Wrench is quite good. I use AAM (Aircraft Airfile Manager) but I can't remember where I got it from, should be easy enough to find.

Brian

Dyl Roberts · Post by **Dyl Roberts** » 04 Oct 2006, 12:13

Hi Brian, Andy,

Thanks for Your suggestions chaps....

All Noted

dswanson · Post by **dswanson** » 04 Oct 2006, 12:35

Dyl,

A simple test for checking the wheel contact points is to trundle at a fast taxi across any grassed area when the dirt dust shows the wheel placement.

It's amazing how many addon aircraft (free and payware) have wheels in strange places !! :roll:

steve p · Post by **steve p** » 04 Oct 2006, 18:55

To confirm the location of contact points I just temporarily add lights in the cfg file at the position I want to check. Works a treat.

Aircraft Container Manager also allows you to check them but I'm a tight fisted g*t.

.Best wishes
Steve P

Dyl Roberts · Post by **Dyl Roberts** » 04 Oct 2006, 21:03

Hi Guy's,

Thanks for all the suggestions, it all helps.....

Cheers,

Dyl Roberts · Post by **Dyl Roberts** » 09 Oct 2006, 22:49

Hi Brian,

Just tried using AAM - but I cant get it to work? Looks like it's set up for FS2002 mate.

Reason I chose this is because Airwrench is almost 10GBP to buy, considering the Firefly IS freeware, I'm not going to purchase it, although it does look very impressive.

I'm not going to pay for something I'll use to build a freeware AC :huf: