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Cargo Towing Addon

FlightGear has support for add-ons, to further extend the simulator's core functionality.

Re: Caldor Fire: Water Bombers, Helos, Pathfiders, Oh My! 9/

Postby Johan G » Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:08 am

LesterBoffo wrote in Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:17 pm:Besides adding the anchor point for the weight in the FDM [...]

As long as the FDM have weight points for external loads in the FDM no changes to the aircraft is needed. :)

These lines, in the file Cargo-Towing-Addon/Aircraft.xml in the add-ons directory, lets the cargo towing add-on know what property to to add weight to FDM with, and where to attach the 3D models:
Code: Select all
    <aircraft n="31">
        <!-- weight x="0.5" y="0" z="1.2" mass-prop="/sim/weight[1]/weight-lb"/ -->  <!-- This *commented* line is copied from the FDM file. It the position of the weight point for the cargo hook and a good starting point when fine adjusting the location of the rope/cable. -->
        <name type="string">500e</name>  <!-- Name of FDM file without file extension. -->
        <x-pos type="double">1.75</x-pos>  <!-- Position of cargo hook (will likely need to be adjusted). -->
        <y-pos type="double">0.0</y-pos> <!-- Position of cargo hook (will likely need to be adjusted). -->
        <z-pos type="double">0.325</z-pos>  <!-- Position of cargo hook (will likely need to be adjusted). -->
        <offset type="double">3.75</offset>  <!-- Seems to be z offset of rope/cable coil before takeoff. -->
        <diameter type="double">0.75</diameter>  <!-- Rope/cable coil diameter before takeoff. Might need adjustment to be within the skids. -->
        <wincharm type="int">0</wincharm>  <!-- /!\ I have yet to figure this one out. I have not used it. -->
        <loadpoint type="int">1</loadpoint>  <!-- The index of the weight point in the FDM. -->
    </aircraft>


LesterBoffo wrote in Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:17 pm:[...] what do you have to add to the menu choices in the ***-set file?

You will get the extra menus by installing the cargo towing addon by adding the path to it and enabling it in the launcher (on the Add-ons page, under Add-on Module folders. (Could probably also be done on the command line). Again, no changes to the aircraft needed. :)

LesterBoffo wrote in Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:32 pm:Here's some long-line hovering with a AS315 Lama.

Real professionals make it look so easy. Even with auto-attach it takes me 5-10 minutes to attach a load. Lots of tries, fails, and a few crashes.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:56 am

If possible I'd appreciate if people would let me know when an aircraft needs to be added to the list. Or send me their entries so I can update the list.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:39 am

Continuing on with the Bambi Bucket implementation. It's got some issue I still need to overcome. The issues are scaling the bucket upon water fill changes the location of all the points in the chain of objects on the rope. It looks like it is miss-alignment or center point positions changing. I'm not really sure what the problem is nor how to fix it. Maybe most of the nastiness is lag in the animation. The concept is really cool, but the implementation is rather challenging. The particle effects appear to exhibit the same issues. Even the harness has alignment issue from before the bambi bucket implementation. That might be the start of the problem.
From way back I introduced an offset from center for all the cargo and the harnesses. I think it is biting me in the but. I probably need to revisit the origination of every cargo and start from the center. In the long run it might make my life a little easier.
But other than these visual bugs, everything is working, from picking up the basket, filling it with water, dropping it and reporting to wildfire that a drop occurred.

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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby Johan G » Sat Sep 11, 2021 11:53 am

Exciting. :)
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:47 pm

II pushed some changes to the base cargo set, that is the set the bambi bucket is contained in. I used to have all the different object .ac files called from one file, both the object.ac and the objectharness.ac. I change that to now call the object.xml instead. The object xml calls its .ac which now contains both the object and the harness in the same ac. This effectively got rid of several harness.ac files and compartmentalized the object code to one central file so it will make it easier to customize any individual object's actions or effects. I still need to do the other three cargo sets to follow the same flow.

I'm still stuck on positioning the particle effect animation for the bucket water drop and the animation delay caused from scaling of the bucket with the introduction of filling it with water.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby Johan G » Fri Sep 17, 2021 6:51 am

It will probably help bring in the tiny bucket for the MD500 (550 L) and the gigantic bucket for the CH-47 (7600 L). Still have not got around to model them though.

It seems the big ones more often is a Bambi MAX (valve opened momentarily) or Bambi Torrentula (valve opened and closed gradually).
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Fri Sep 17, 2021 11:49 pm

You model them, I'll get them added.:)

I think I messed up the pulling effect when the cargo is still on the ground. It was never very good to start with. Maybe I can make it a little nicer while I am at it.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Sat Sep 18, 2021 8:11 pm

While I was working on some details for the bambi bucket I revisited the fire fighting apparatus connection using the cargo towing addon as a method for attachment.

It's an interesting concept. Between the bambi bucket and the fire fighting apparatus, it's proof of concept for special use cases of the addon. It certainly makes creating custom functionality fairly easily using the addon as the base to introduce models and their special functions.



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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby TheEagle » Tue Mar 01, 2022 11:24 pm

That bambi bucket … is it anywhere on GitHub / SF already ? I checked both the GitHub and the SF repo, and both have the last push more than a year ago ! :?
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Wed Mar 02, 2022 11:18 pm

As far as I remember it is a part of the addon. I can verify that when I get near my computer.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Tue Nov 01, 2022 12:57 am

I added the ability to do an emergency longline disconnect to your cargo. There are a few properties exposed in the addon that can be used with any aircraft.

The following properties are exposed an can be used by other aircraft to hook into addon features.

sim/cargo/rope/length
sim/cargo/load/weight
sim/cargo/snorkel/deploy
controls/emgshear

The AirCrane by default uses all these properties.

The capability has been pushed to addons (trunk).
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