Board index FlightGear Development Aircraft

Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Questions and discussion about creating aircraft. Flight dynamics, 3d models, cockpits, systems, animation, textures.

Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby iamzac » Fri Nov 30, 2018 9:14 am

I have made some small updates to the existing Robin DR400-dauphin, you need FlightGear 2018.3.1 or newer to use it because it can optionally have a glass display using the FG1000 instrument based on Garmin G1000 that is part of the new FlightGear.

Download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/a3yvhpxsb8q5v6h/DR400-dauphinR4.zip?dl=1 (last updated 8 December 2018)

The changes I made where mainly to make it closer to the newer Robin DR401 155CDI because I have been using it a lot in x-plane lately, and also because I wanted to try the new FG1000 after using the canvas ZKV1000 in the past on some of my other updated planes.

Main changes:

-Optional glass cockpit based on the FlightGear instrument FG1000.
By default it starts with the existing classic cockpit and FG1000 is not loaded or initialized for maximum performance, once you toggle it from he menu or by pressing "g" it's loaded and initialized the first time, and if you toggle it again it remains loaded and running in the background even if it's hidden.
The FG1000 is completely vanilla and it's loaded from flightgear's folders so any improvement in the future of the instrument with flightgear will be used automatically.
Compared to the ZKV1000 it has antialiasing issues and I notice some frame rate stutter from time to time when the map is updated but hopefully these issues will be fixed in the future.
The placement is not realistic as the DR401 has a different panel and cockpit compared to DR400.
-New glass effects including reflections and rain effects.
-It's based on the version found on FGMembers with a few improvements I merged from the version on Patten's Hangar and a few extra liveries from the x-plane version from XPFR (they are all GPL), I only chose the liveries that didn't have fake painted windows or errors.
-Sound improvements and bugfixes including new rain and thunder sounds.
-Automixture to make it closer to the new DR401.
-The model of the engine and propeller was changed to be close to the 155CDI version (the appearance is the same), although it's not perfect, since the 3d model doesn't match either, so between 6000 and 10000 ft it's pretty good, bellow that is a bit too strong and above a bit too weak. This can be fixed by adding a boost or even simpler by making the engine stronger and reducing the maximum mixture from the automixture script to something like 0.8 but for now I am happy with the model as it is.
-ALS lights and procedural lights.
I also tried adding shadows but the cubemaps I modified by hand (since I don't use blender) where too bad so I kept it without shadows as it is.
The original plane seems to have wrong Vne (176 instead of 146) and wrong fuel capacity (more than it should), I didn't change these values.
Last edited by iamzac on Sat Dec 08, 2018 8:00 am, edited 4 times in total.
iamzac
 
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:52 am
OS: Windows / Kubuntu

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby legoboyvdlp » Fri Nov 30, 2018 11:11 am

So is the X-Plane version based on Flight gear's 3D model (the same liveries work on both)?

Nice work!
User avatar
legoboyvdlp
 
Posts: 7981
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:28 am
Location: Northern Ireland
Callsign: G-LEGO
Version: next
OS: Windows 10 HP

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby iamzac » Fri Nov 30, 2018 11:28 am

legoboyvdlp wrote in Fri Nov 30, 2018 11:11 am:So is the X-Plane version based on Flight gear's 3D model (the same liveries work on both)?

Nice work!


Thanks although I did almost nothing.
The x-plane version (DR400) and the flightgear version seem to be made by the same people (I might be wrong).
The same with DHC-6 and maybe others too.
The DR401 155CDI from x-plane is different, it used to be payware.
iamzac
 
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:52 am
OS: Windows / Kubuntu

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby iamzac » Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:30 pm

A few new small updates:

-Added 4 different interior colors associated with liveries from XPFR: brown, gray (how it was), blue and black, and one extra livery.
-Added interior ALS shadows and irradiance, the shadows are not perfect because they are made by manually editing shadows from other aircraft and because ALS sometimes sees some objects located in other parts than they visually appear (for example text plaques on panel), but for casual flying they appear ok. Also no shadows on the fg1000 because I didn't figure out how to apply effects on an object located outside the aircraft folder.
-Reduced maximum engine power at low attitude to get closer to the 155CDI engine model.
-Reduced the 166 VNE from the old POH to 146 from the new POH, also updated analog ASI markings and fixed buggy interpolation.
-And a few other tiny things here and there.
iamzac
 
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:52 am
OS: Windows / Kubuntu

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby legoboyvdlp » Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:40 pm

If you want me to bake some shadowmaps to compare with the manual ones it's a matter of seconds using Richard's toolset for it.

If you have any objects with relative positions (offset tags in the XML) then they will not work properly with the shadow effect, so that might be causing your problems.
User avatar
legoboyvdlp
 
Posts: 7981
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:28 am
Location: Northern Ireland
Callsign: G-LEGO
Version: next
OS: Windows 10 HP

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby iamzac » Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:50 pm

legoboyvdlp wrote in Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:40 pm:If you want me to bake some shadowmaps to compare with the manual ones it's a matter of seconds using Richard's toolset for it.

If you have any objects with relative positions (offset tags in the XML) then they will not work properly with the shadow effect, so that might be causing your problems.


If that's possible that should help with half of the problem.
I would also need to know where to place them, or this:
<opacity-cube-center type="vec3d" n="0"> 0.45732 0.0 0.1825 </opacity-cube-center>
<opacity-cube-scale type="vec3d" n="0"> 1.5 0.5 0.7</opacity-cube-scale>
I played with this for some time trying to position the existing shadows properly and I still got weird results.
And yes, there are objects with relative positions, the most obvious ones the plaques, and I can't fix them without using some 3d modeling program.
iamzac
 
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:52 am
OS: Windows / Kubuntu

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby legoboyvdlp » Fri Dec 07, 2018 2:21 pm

Image

I also fixed some jsbsim problems due to stricter error checking.

Dropbox coming shortly.
User avatar
legoboyvdlp
 
Posts: 7981
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:28 am
Location: Northern Ireland
Callsign: G-LEGO
Version: next
OS: Windows 10 HP

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby legoboyvdlp » Fri Dec 07, 2018 2:39 pm

User avatar
legoboyvdlp
 
Posts: 7981
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:28 am
Location: Northern Ireland
Callsign: G-LEGO
Version: next
OS: Windows 10 HP

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby iamzac » Fri Dec 07, 2018 3:14 pm



Thank you!

I did a quick test, at first it was obvious that they are much better aligned, but then I saw that wings photos and some other elements such as some nonexistent holes in the panel are also projected even though it should be impossible, because I did my tests while rotating on the runway so the sun was always above so no shadows of the wings should be visible inside.
Something is wrong with the cubemaps but I don't have time now to investigate more, I don't know yet if removing the wings and making everything else black would solve this or not.

As a separate observation when I made this it was made more for personal use and I shared it hoping I will bring more eyes on the new fg1000 to help with development, but if anyone wants to use this model in the official repositories then I should probably make two models, the original .set file + the original jsbsim model and my fictional one as a separate .set file (fictional because dr401 looks different) with the rest of the changes including the optional fictional glass cockpit the same.
If this is needed someone tell me and I will make the changes when I have time but I won't make the updates to the repositories myself because I don't have time to become a maintainer.
iamzac
 
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:52 am
OS: Windows / Kubuntu

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby iamzac » Sat Dec 08, 2018 8:03 am

Update: Edited the shadows made by legoboyvdlp by removing external elements from them and making everything else black. To me they now look as good as it's possible with the ALS shadow system.
iamzac
 
Posts: 96
Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:52 am
OS: Windows / Kubuntu

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby vnts » Mon Feb 24, 2020 8:03 am

The nice work being done on the C182T reminded me of this thread. It seems the FGAddon version missed getting updated with iamzac's version?

Edit: Seems both DR400 versions complain about "Cannot add listener to tied property /controls..." on a few days old windows nightly. New stricter error checking (?) it seems.
vnts
 
Posts: 409
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 1:29 am

Re: Robin DR400-dauphin 155CDI with optional glass cockpit

Postby D-ECHO » Mon Feb 24, 2020 9:17 am

The FGAddon version seems to not have been updated for quite some time (last commit from 2017 by Thorsten introduced new-style splash screens https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fg ... 0-dauphin/ )
@IamZac, it might be worth contacting F-JJTH who seems to be the original developer/maintainer of this version and ask for your changes to be included in FGAddon.
D-ECHO
 
Posts: 2458
Joined: Sat May 09, 2015 1:31 pm
Pronouns: Bea (she/her)
Version: next


Return to Aircraft

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 13 guests