FSDreamTeam forum
General Category => Unofficial F/A-18 Acceleration Pack board => Topic started by: Orion on July 14, 2014, 12:37:21 am
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(View on YouTube for better quality (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqG70QbioBg).)
Your radio comes to life with the landing signal officer's voice. "Three quarter mile, call the ball," he says.
Visibility is bad, but you're just able to discern the light from the ball. "Three zero one, Hornet ball, four point two," you call back. This is going to be one heck of a landing. Rough seas and low visibility make one of the most challenging things in naval aviation even harder.
The LSO acknowledges you. "Roger ball, 33 knots down the angle." The crosswind is buffeting your aircraft, throwing you off course. Your ghost vector on the HUD is way off to the side. The LSO's voice comes back. "A little power. Come right." You react accordingly.
The carrier is now clearly visible in the midst of the clouds, deck pitching and rolling. You follow the ball for a stabilized approach. As you pass over the fantail, the deck heaves up. You snag the two wire, and quickly come to a complete stop. You're down.
And now you too can experience the challenge of landing on a pitching deck, from the comfort of your desktop computer. In this new version, an improved and more intuitive user interface allows you to easily create pitching and rolling boats for Microsoft Flight Simulator X. If you're lost, you can request your bearing and distance to the boat to help you find your way. You can now also control the period and amplitude of the pitch and bank independently from within the program itself. And by popular request, there's even a new option to freeze the boat attitude after landing.
Prerequisites:
- Flight Simulator X: Acceleration
- .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17113)
Installation:
- Download the file below.
- Extract the files contained in the ZIP archive into a new folder.
Uninstallation:
- Remove the folder you created in installation step 2.
Features:
- Intuitive interface
- Pitching and rolling deck
- Boat directions (bearing and distance)
- Variable period and amplitudes
- Option to freeze boat attitude after landing
- Custom location files
- Persistent settings
- Built in updater
- Compatible with vLSO
Usage:
(http://i.imgur.com/Z4MIt7i.png)
Click Connect when you have Flight Simulator X open, and click Create Boat when you want the boat to be created. To change the location or boat, select a preset from the drop down menu, or enter data in the textboxes manually.
Title refers to the SimObject title, as seen in the sim.cfg file. Latitude and longitude should be expressed in decimal degrees. Heading is in degrees, and speed is in knots.
The sliders for the pitch and bank amplitude are in degrees. You can adjust the period (time it takes to go from the maximum amplitude to the minimum, and back to the maximum) of the pitch or bank by changing the appropriate frequency slider. The maximum frequency (100%) creates a period of approximately 6 seconds; 60% is approximately 10 seconds, and 20% is approximately 32 seconds.
To request directions (bearing and distance) to the boat, press Tab+Q while in the simulator.
Data entered in the textboxes will not be saved. If you wish to create a new preset, you can create an XML file similar to the one below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<locations>
<location name="Honolulu">
<title>CVN68_1</title>
<latitude>21.2333333333333</latitude>
<longitude>-157.833333333333</longitude>
<heading>142</heading>
<speed>25</speed>
</location>
<location name="Cape Canaveral">
<title>CVN68_1</title>
<latitude>28.374</latitude>
<longitude>-80.476</longitude>
<heading>160</heading>
<speed>25</speed>
</location>
</locations>
Then locate the PitchingDeck.xml (in the same directory as PitchingDeck.exe, created after first run) and add a new LocationFile element with the path to your new preset XML.
The example above contains two locations, but you can have as many or as little location elements as you wish.
Known issues:
- Carrier lights (i.e. IFLOLS and runway lights) do not pitch with the deck.
- Catapults become disarmed as the deck pitches. You can work around this by either enabling the freeze boat attitude after landing option, or by launching immediately after arming the catapult.
- Some aircraft may exhibit a slight bouncing behavior while on the pitching deck.
- The carrier may jitter if the frame rate has large fluctuations. If you find the carrier to be jittering, consider locking your frame rate to an attainable setting.
Change log:
December 22, 2012 (0.1.0.0)
January 22, 2013 (0.1.1.0)
- Stores pitch/bank period/amplitude settings in the XML file
January 3, 2014 (0.1.2.0)
- Refactored update class
- Migrated web presets and updates to different server
- BeatlesBlog SimConnect is now contained within the program executable (no need to keep track of the DLL)
July 13, 2014 (0.2.0.0)
- Completely rebuilt from the ground up
- Improved interface
- Boat directions (bearing and distance)
- Variable period and amplitudes
- Option to freeze boat attitude after landing
- Custom location files
July 18, 2014 (0.2.0.1)
- Increased maximum pitch and bank amplitude to 30 degrees
May 22, 2015 (0.2.1.0)
- Assorted fixes and improvements
Download (http://goo.gl/w1vLI4)
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Ha :)
Way to go Orion.
Just one question....is this package TacPack compatible? ???
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Yep, you should be able to use it with VRS TacPack running.
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The carrier may jitter if the frame rate is not consistent. If you find the carrier to be jittering, consider locking your frame rate to an attainable setting.
Exceptional talent on this Forum.
Would there be a minimum frame rate required while on deck in addition to the frame rate being consistent requirement (I am assuming the frame rate could increase, but not decrease!!!)?
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I mention that because I had a tester who reported that the carrier was jittering. It turns out the frame rate was set to unlimited and fluctuating between 40 and 90 FPS. Locking the frame rate to 24 FPS resolved the issue. However, the issue doesn't seem specific to an unlocked frame rate, as I tried it myself and carrier movement was smooth. Though, now that I think of it, in my case I had VSync on, which kept my frame rate around 60 FPS.
So to answer your question, no, not that I know of. I tried generalizing the statement, and perhaps it wasn't the best way to go about that. I should probably rephrase it to say "The carrier may jitter if the frame rate has large fluxuations. If you find the carrier to be jittering, consider locking your frame rate to an attainable setting."
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Here's a short teaser video:
(Viewing on YouTube seems slightly better quality (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqG70QbioBg).)
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Nice.
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Apologies for the bad approach and landing, but some of the people over at Sim-Outhouse seem to think the deck doesn't pitch and roll enough:
(View on YouTube for slightly better quality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oriIP2BfxXA).)
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Hi Orion,
Great video! Have you tried it combined with Paddles' vLSO? If do, how does it adapt to it? It seems to be a WO candidate...:)
Johan
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Yep, Serge's vLSO works just fine with it (as noted in the features list). I just didn't record the video with it on because I kept getting waved off (though I got a considerable amount of wave off patterns; I didn't realize manual ball call was on). I did acknowledge it was a bad approach and landing! :P
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For those that would like more pitch angle, it seems possible to experience such given these Pitching Deck Quals showing white water breaking higher than the flight deck (that is 60'):
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I've updated Pitching Deck to allow the pitch and bank amplitude sliders to go to 30 degrees. If you require pitch or bank amplitudes in excess of 30 degrees, you can manually edit the PitchAmplitude and BankAmplitude elements in the PitchingDeck.xml file. After doing so, make sure not to move the pitch or bank amplitude sliders, otherwise the custom values will be overwritten.
The download in the beginning of the thread should now point to the new version. Alternatively, you can get the update by launching Pitching Deck and letting it download the updated version.