Author Topic: The Pitching Deck Saga - Redux (Read 37339 times)

Orion · « **on:** December 10, 2012, 04:22:47 am »

See the new thread for more information.

Pitching Deck Sample (0.1.2.0)

Ever wish you could land on a pitching and rolling aircraft carrier in Flight Simulator? Well, it's about time - now you can. Enjoy, and happy holidays!

- Create AI carriers
- Enable a pitching deck motion
- Enable a rolling deck motion
- Save settings locally
- Load locations from web presets
- Automatic updater

Requirements

- .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17113) or newer
- Flight Simulator X: Acceleration

Usage

Select a preset from the drop down menu, or enter data in the fields manually. The title field 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. Changing values in a textbox after creating AI will not take effect until the next time you create AI.

Hover over any control to see a tooltip describing program usage.

Known Issues

- Pausing the simulator may cause the pitching and banking motion to become irregular.
- Runway and FLOLS lights do not pitch with the carrier.
- Catapults may become disarmed.

Change Log

December 22, 2012 (0.1.0.0)

Initial release.

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.)

Download is located at the new thread.

Paddles · « **Reply #1 on:** December 10, 2012, 08:32:13 am »

Cool!

And how much the ship would roll and pitch?

Orion · « **Reply #2 on:** December 10, 2012, 08:50:22 am »

Right now it'll pitch about ±0.7° and roll about ±0.3°. Not nearly as dramatic as other solutions, but it helps hides the fact that Javier didn't model the under waterline section of the hull.

Paddles · « **Reply #3 on:** December 10, 2012, 08:53:39 am »

Lovely!
What about FLOLS? Would it pitch/roll as well?

Orion · « **Reply #4 on:** December 10, 2012, 08:55:32 am »

FLOLS, along with the other runway lights, stay stationary relative to the rest of the visual model.

Paddles · « **Reply #5 on:** December 10, 2012, 09:14:42 am »

...which means pilots will have problems trying to stay on glideslope?

Orion · « **Reply #6 on:** December 10, 2012, 09:26:59 am »

It's effectively stabilized - the ball shows the glideslope relative to the normal position of the carrier - so pilots won't be chasing the deck up and down. Additionally, the ILS/TACAN needles still work on J.R.'s HUD, so people can find glideslope/lineup deviations that way as well.

GOONIE · « **Reply #7 on:** December 10, 2012, 02:34:07 pm »

Very cool, could be an early xmas!

Is this ready for beta test or download?

If not, do you have a video showing the degree of motion? Curious to see what the pitch and roll looks like in FSX, the values seem low, but it is better than nothing.

Did you see VRS's pitching deck as part of TACPACK? Pretty crazy

GOONIE

Orion · « **Reply #8 on:** December 10, 2012, 05:47:32 pm »

No. I'd like to make sure everything works properly before releasing it.

I don't have any video, and can't currently record one. It's enough to be noticable, but not overly done. 0.7 degrees is actually quite a bit considering the size of an aircraft carrier. I wasn't able to find any specific values of amplitude/period to match, so I just went with what I thought looked reasonable.

I've seen VRS's pitching deck and found videos of it to be quite silly. While I could make the deck pitch and bank as much as they have, I certainly wouldn't want to.

Mickey_Techy · « **Reply #9 on:** December 10, 2012, 07:01:20 pm »

Can I do "anything" to help, Orion!!!!

dave76 · « **Reply #10 on:** December 11, 2012, 12:10:47 am »

orion, this is great, thanks a lot; hope you will release it soon

SUBS17 · « **Reply #11 on:** December 11, 2012, 12:31:43 am »

I wonder how much this would effect the vLSO? Awesome work Orion I'm looking forward to this mod.

GOONIE · « **Reply #12 on:** December 11, 2012, 03:31:26 am »

Orion,

Understand the carrier lights are modeled separately in FSX. Do you know how they get the lights to sync with the carrier when it moves, even at varying speeds which you can adjust? Curious if that same logic could be used to sync lights to the pitch and roll of the carrier model. Just thinking pitching deck at night would be the ultimate.

Definitely up for helping you beta test if you want, Xmas is still a few weeks off.

GOONIE

Orion · « **Reply #13 on:** December 11, 2012, 05:26:05 am »

I haven't tried, but vLSO should continue to work normally.

The carrier lights are located based on the model's attachpoints. Based on my testing, boat type SimObjects inherently do not support rotational velocities. I've managed to work around this by putting the carrier in slew, then setting the slew pitch velocity. However, attachpoints don't seem to rotate along with the rest of the boat - even though it works fine for aircraft.

You will be able to see lights as long as they're not obstructed by other parts of the model, though - so you're not entirely in the dark.

DigitAL · « **Reply #14 on:** December 11, 2012, 05:58:20 am »

That is insane! can't wait to try that out.

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