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How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

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How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby dp118m » Sun Oct 25, 2015 9:22 pm

Hello!

I'm writing a fictional book and want to create a simulation of a dragon as a promotional material (that dragon plays a central role in the book).

In other words I'd like to build a FlightGear compatible aircraft, which

a) looks like a dragon,
b) has the flight dynamics of a Cessna 172 or similar aircraft and
c) (optionally) custom controls (which do the same thing like in Cessna, but look differently).

What tutorials can I read to get a basic understanding, of how to do parts a) and c), and how to re-use the existing flight dynamics model (item b above) ?

Thanks in advance

Dmitri Pisarenko
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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby clrCoda » Sun Oct 25, 2015 10:50 pm

I'm not going to be very helpful, unfortunately, but I wanted to ask...

Don't dragons fly much faster than propeller planes? hehe

--Ray
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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby sanhozay » Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:02 pm

Santa may help?

http://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fga ... aft/santa/

And a general pointer with resources for modelling aircraft and instruments.

http://wiki.flightgear.org/Portal:Developer/Aircraft
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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby LesterBoffo » Mon Oct 26, 2015 6:53 pm

Even what type of dragon, there's still the problem of animating it with FG's animation coding. It would be huge in .xml size, given the wings and snake-like physiology of a dragon.

Not to say I wouldn't like to see one in FG.
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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby Hooray » Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:30 pm

it's definitely possible, and the plan outlined in the original posting also sounds reasonable - if I were doing that, I would download a freely available/public domain 3D dragon model and then use the ufo/ogel FDM for starters. Then, everything can be refined/replaced step-by-step.
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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby erik » Mon Oct 26, 2015 11:03 pm

I think the ornithoper would be a great start, the c172 is a bit too static for this purpose.
Now, where to find windtunnel data for the beast..

Update: Ah, here's a start:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... ame=header

Update2: And more useful data:
http://mail.sjgames.com/pipermail/gurps ... 17749.html


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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby erik » Tue Oct 27, 2015 7:08 pm

Based on the Pterosaur data I have now a wing flapping JSBSim FDM which generates thrust with wing motion but does not generate enough lift yet. So I can keep steady horizontal flight but with a modest sink rate.

The fun part is the small pitch variation during flapping.

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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby Hooray » Tue Oct 27, 2015 7:13 pm

:lol:
you should post a video or at least a few screen shots

BTW: I once demonstrated how to abuse the AI traffic system, and a little Nasal code, to come up with bird flocks to simulate/visualize bird-strikes (check out the lower left corner which is driven by tanker.nas):

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25112&p=230072&hilit=birdstrike#p230072

Subject: Bird strikes script
Hooray wrote:Just to prove my point: It really doesn't take any longer than say 2-3 minutes to open the tanker.nas script, change the model file name to point to the 3D model of a bird, what you end up with is a "funny bird" flying at 330+ kts ground speed at 17000 ft AMSL (I took the first freely available bird model that I could find...):

Image


Honestly, with FlightGear, your imagination is the only limit - just check out this:
Subject: Giant Marshmallow Man for FlightGear, v0.01

richter wrote:Folks,
I have developed a giant marshmallow man model add-on for FlightGear. It will allow you to deploy a marshmallow man approximately 20,000ft tall, and 10nm wide, from the B-1B weapon bay. It is designed to be installed within a certain derivative version of the FlightGear B-1B package.

Image
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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby erik » Tue Oct 27, 2015 7:15 pm

There is still a ground trim problem. Once I have sorted that out I'll make the configuration public.

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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby Hooray » Tue Oct 27, 2015 7:18 pm

Something like this could be very useful and may even deserve its own dedicated wiki article, because so many people seem to be interested in using FG for doing unprecedented stuff - also, anybody interested in exploring similar ideas, is encouraged to check out this discussion:

Why are there fictional aircraft in FlightGear?
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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby erik » Wed Oct 28, 2015 11:33 pm

Here's an early version of the Pterosaur:
http://www.adalin.com/emh/Pterosaur.zip

I still need to fix the gear setup but at least it flies nice now.
To get around the gear problems start like:

fgfs --aircraft=Pterosaur --altitude=1500

(oh and don't forget to retract the landing gear).

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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby wlbragg » Thu Oct 29, 2015 1:01 am

erik, I think it's missing the model folder and file?
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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby erik » Thu Oct 29, 2015 8:42 am

There is no model, my effort was for creating an FDM only.

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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby erik » Thu Oct 29, 2015 2:08 pm

There's a new version of the FDM at
http://www.adalin.com/emh/Pterosaur.zip

This one includes all aspect of flight, including takeoff but requires a bit of user effort now and then.
To start:

1. Turn on HUD for airspeed
2. Set throttle to 100%, when the airspeed reaches 30kts pull up gently:
-> it takes a bit of time to move but then it accelerates rather quickly into a flying model.
3. When airborne retract gear (it is also used as a bit of a speedbrake) and level out for a moment
4. Gently pull up to gain altitude.
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Re: How to create a dragon in FlightGear?

Postby Thorsten » Thu Oct 29, 2015 3:11 pm

This is awesome! I wish I had the time to work on visualizing this better - I've never realized we could do that.
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