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Cargo Towing Addon

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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:29 am

@Hooray, you must not have ever loaded this addon. Everything is there except the scoring. The scoring is not needed though. There are 5 pine-trees, place them at least 100 yards away from the truck, then simply time how long it takes to transfer each tree to the truck. It's all set-up already! :wink:
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:32 am

FYI: As of yesterdays update there were a couple major bugs in the towing section of the addon. I never tested that portion after adding the ability to break out the cargo into separate sets. Those bugs are now corrected and pushed. However I had to disable portions of the "Hard docked" capabilities temporarily.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Wed Apr 29, 2020 2:55 am

Pushed some fixes and cleanup. The ranging dialog is now actually useful. It tracks the nearest object, once connected turns green and tracks stacking elevations.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Wed Apr 29, 2020 8:17 pm

FYI: Current issues I'm working on.
Un-stacking cargo, it's currently broken in a couple different ways.
Cargo not moving just because you connect to it. It shouldn't move until you put tension the rope.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Sat May 02, 2020 6:01 am

I pushed a fix for the ranging function. It's now fully 3 dimensional and the stacking and un-stacking is working as it should. Note: you are allowed to connect to a cargo on the bottom of that stack if that is where the end of the rope is the closest to per the ranging function. If you do so you can remove the bottom cargo and the top cargo will hang in mid air. I guess I need to come up with an elegant solution for that. Either not allow it or let the cargo above the removed cargo fall. Neither option will be a simple fix.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wkitty42 » Sat May 02, 2020 2:37 pm

or pick up the entire stack if the rope/cable connects to the bottom entity... but i think it should be a big problem if connecting to the bottom of a stack, in the first place... else when you lift, the stack will rotate over as being top heavy ;)
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Sat May 16, 2020 11:50 pm

Some changes to cargo towing addon. Now using geo.getPosition for all ranging and positioning in cargooperations.nas.
Notification of cargo connecting and auto-connect and auto-disconnect is now in ranging GUI only. It was causing performance issues in the rope animation effect using the gui.popupTip method.
Green text = cargo connected
Yellow text = auto connect/disconnect active
Black text = nothing connected and no auto mode set
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby GinGin » Sat May 16, 2020 11:58 pm

Nice work Wayne !
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby vnts » Thu Nov 05, 2020 12:27 pm

This is really nice :mrgreen:

Doesn't this belong in FGAddon/Addons (link) where it will get updated with core changes and such?

I was looking at the changelog, and there isn't a mention of it - I think if it was added at least a few extra people would find it. If it was submitted to FGAddon it could/should be added to the changelog.

Long term it's probably better to just merge into FGData as it's only 30mb(?). Things like this only take up a small amount of space and there will be 500mb+(?) freed up in future when liveries are moved out of FGData. The amount of people finding the addon appears to decreases exponentially if it has to be downloaded separately - like with some of the download stats for FGUK helicopters vs FGAddon ones [1].

I think you also mentioned that you've forgotten wiki syntax in the media section, so there isn't a page for the Cargo Towing Addon yet - I can add one if you don't mind(?). The whole wiki syntax thing can be avoided if the wiki gets updated with the new visual edtor on wikipedia (link). That allows anyone to instantly be able to contribute, and has a lot of features like searching for articles and images to link, adding references and so on. I had no issues just creating a draft for an update to the FG page on wikipedia without really having edited a wiki before, but it was a long while later before I started looking to edit the FG wiki - it's still a lot faster to use the visual editor and simpler than typing a forum post (no special image/link syntax needed).

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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Thu Nov 05, 2020 4:47 pm

Doesn't this belong in FGAddon/Addons

Yep, I think it deserves being in there. I asked on the dev list as to how to go about getting it in there, but I didn't get a reply. I have access to fgaddon (the aircraft section) but I couldn't figure out how to get it into addons?

so there isn't a page for the Cargo Towing Addon yet - I can add one if you don't mind(?)

Sure, its something I've wanted to do but just haven't taken the time. I'm currently putting a bunch of time into the c172sp. I would really appreciate it and maybe once there is a basic article I might be more apt to contribute to the text with some detailed instructions.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby Richard » Fri Nov 06, 2020 3:41 pm

wlbragg wrote in Thu Nov 05, 2020 4:47 pm:
Doesn't this belong in FGAddon/Addons

I have access to fgaddon (the aircraft section) but I couldn't figure out how to get it into addons?


it's just another folder: fgaddon / trunk/ Addons is where addons are to be uploaded.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby vnts » Fri Nov 06, 2020 3:44 pm

wlbragg wrote in Thu Nov 05, 2020 4:47 pm:I would really appreciate it and maybe once there is a basic article I might be more apt to contribute to the text with some detailed instructions.


Done :) http://wiki.flightgear.org/Cargo_Towing_Addon

I'm not an expert on wiki either, I modified the infobox code from the RedGriffin ATC addon. It seemed to work fine. Also added to the list in the addons page.

I asked on the ML, and James said you should simply be able to add the Cargo Towing Addon to FGAddon just like any other directory and commit [1].

Once you do you, it can probably be added to the ML, and possibly the release notice.

Edit: one thing I noticed when I went to fill in the infobox, was the license is GPL v3. I think for FG purposes the licenses should be GLPv2 or 'Version 2 of the GPL or any later version' (GPLv2+) - see link .

----

There's a website https://www.helisimmer.com/ that covers news about helicopters and also freeware addons project for all sims - they cover WiP things and progress reports as well. They'd probably be very curious about the cargo towing addon, and also the soft-body rope simulation.

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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Fri Nov 06, 2020 7:23 pm

Thanks for your for help.

It should be easy for me to add some details to the article. Thanks Richard, I should be able to get it pushed to fgaddon/addons then. I didn't want to waist my time trying if I didn't have access. But it sounds like I do so it is only a matter of taking the time to figure out the steps.
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Re: Cargo Towing Addon

Postby wlbragg » Fri Dec 18, 2020 5:55 am

FYI: A minor fix to a faily major issue in the CargoTowingAddon has been pushed to fgaddon/Addons. When winching the rope the cargo was not keeping aligned or in sync with the rope. Also the property that holds the calculation of the deployed rope length for use by aircraft subsystems that might need to display a deployed rope amount (such as the AirCrane) was not working. Well they were caused by the same issue, a misplaced update in the nasal code logic to update that property. This is now fixed and has corrected both issues.
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Re: Caldor Fire: Water Bombers, Helos, Pathfiders, Oh My! 9/

Postby Johan G » Mon Sep 06, 2021 8:47 pm

Some posts were moved here from the multiplayer event topic Caldor Fire: Water Bombers, Helos, Pathfiders, Oh My! 9/9.


Do we any helicopters with a "bambi bucket"?

I would guess it could probably be added to the cargo towing add-on. There seems to be the regular variant, but increasingly popular is a long line bambi bucket with a several times longer line down to the bucket. They allow for dropping the water closer to the fire, and also for better clearance from trees and other obstacles making it possible to fill the bucket even from very small water sources surrounded with for example trees.

Image
Bambi bucket drop DVIDS304223 by Airman 1st Class Rachelle Elsea, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A good resource in case someone want to make one Manufacturers website.
Last edited by Johan G on Wed Sep 08, 2021 10:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Some posts were moved here from the multiplayer event topic "Caldor Fire: Water Bombers, Helos, Pathfiders, Oh My! 9/9".
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