On the aero side, I have few tweaks that I want to make before it's "announced" in whatever fashion. It should not take me too much longer to get to that.
As for the elevator animation, I have use +-20 deg deflection on my model, but from pictures it looks like more elevator throw was possible. The update will include the wide elevator range w/ particulars to be determined.
Regards,
Michael
At 11/9/02, Jim Wilson wrote:
Progress has been slow, mostly because of real work getting in the way, but
the Wright Flyer is getting much closer to completion.
Most of the detail and animation is done. Here's a shot from the front with
the elevator mechanism tilted up for initial ascent.:
http://www.spiderbark.com/fgfs/wrightflyer-starting.png
>From the earlier discussion and pictures available I took a guess on the wing
warping. For now the animation is pretty crude (only three positions), but
better than nothing. This is a shot from behind showing the wings warped for
a roll toward the left:
http://www.spiderbark.com/fgfs/wrightflyer-warp.png
This is the startup line I'm using. The location and heading is based on a
best guess from various accounts. Pictures of the Wright National Monument
and a scan of a guide brochure from the Park helped a lot in at least matching
reasonably close to the "best guess" that was arrived at in 1928 by a
contingent of witnesses to the original event:
fgfs --aircraft=wrightFlyer1903-v1-nl-uiuc --lat=36.020247 --lon=-75.669041
--heading=5 --disable-random-objects --enable-auto-coordination
Crazy details left on my todo list:
- Adding control cables/chains and blocks for all the control surfaces.
- Animating Orville's hips and the cradle.
- As soon as I figure out the exact shape, adding the foot stop that kept
Orville from sliding off the back of the wing at startup.
- As soon as I get some more information (a good picture or diagram), modeling
the "instrument cluster" that was mounted just to the right of Orville's right
arm.
- Correct the elevator animation once information on its actual range is
learned (anyone know this?)
- Modeling the rail.
- Modeling the rear skid (this is tricky because it gets dropped and left
behind when the aircraft becomes airborn).
I'm really not up to speed on scenery modeling, but if someone wants to it'd
be great to have a tiny bit of territory covering just Kill Devil Hills, NC
and the Outer Banks, that was simply covered with a nice beach sand texture as
it was back in 1903.
Another idea: if we had that little chunk of sandy scenery we might want to
put together a special release (that included a binary and a tiny subset of
the base package) for school teachers and whoever else to download during the
centennial year. Might be kind of cool to release it next month on December
17th, the 99th aniversary of the first flight. Sounds like a potential
promotional thing for the FlightGear project too, I'd think.
Best,
Jim
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************************************************** Prof. Michael S. Selig Dept. of Aero/Astro Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 306 Talbot Laboratory 104 South Wright Street Urbana, IL 61801-2935 (217) 244-5757 (o), (509) 691-1373 (fax) mailto:m-selig@;uiuc.edu http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/m-selig http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/m-selig/faq.html (FAQ) ************************************************** _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
