On Thu, 04 Apr 2002 14:03:10 -0500 Justin Palamar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Hello, flightgear devolpers, this is my first message to >this list, so please excuse any question that may sound >'stupid', I'm just a newbie.
We all remember when we were newbies - no question is stupid. This *answer* may be, though ;-) And this is as good a place as any to post your question. >I am currently a member of a development team working on >a Senior Design project at Pennsylvania State University. PSU? Does John Anderson still teach aero there? > We were assigned to construct a Blackhawk flight >simulator for educational use within the Rotocraft >center. We decided early on to use flightgear as our >engine, due to its vast customizability. We were having >problems in a few areas, and if anyone could provide ANY >insight on any of these subjects I would greatly >appretiate it. Have you seen the rotorcraft-related technical reports at Richard McFarland's web site at Ames? >1) A design goal was to have a moving aircraft carrier >within the simulator with the option to land on its deck >Right now we have only been able to insert the static >model by editing the appropriate .stg scenery file, >including > "OBJECT_STATIC saratoga.3ds -122.353617 >37.624617 -130 0" The following statement is an off-the-top-of-my-head idea thrown out to the developer wolves for your amusement only. However, it is an approach that might be a decent hack. Note that I am vaguely aware of other most assuredly better ways to do this, but here goes, anyway: JSBSim will soon have the ability to model multiple flight vehicles - or rather, multiple _vehicles_. This design feature is specifically for carrying and dropping bombs, missiles, experimental aircraft, etc. and flying them out to completion, or staging a launch vehicle, etc. However, it could also be used for such things as an AI "spotter" plane flying a viewpoint "camera" near an aircraft of interest. Or, I am thinking, just perhaps, it could model an aircraft carrier at sea, given the right set of parameters. It would have few, if any, "aero" coefficients (instead they would be "fluid" coefficients), and the ground reactions (landing gear) would be a bit different than that of an aircraft, instead representing bouyancy? Or maybe that would be done by "fluid" coefficients. Norman might have some observations on this. In any case, the multi- capability is not quite "there", yet. I plan on having a bunch of time this weekend to program, and hope to get that stuff in JSBSim CVS at least in beta this weekend. Whether or not this might actually work for an aircraft carrier in JSBSim is unknown to me at the moment, but I think it could work OK. I might play with it once the time comes. In the meantime, I am sure there will be better ways presented here of doing what you want. How are you modeling the helicopter dynamics? Jon _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
