posted 02-03- 07:32 AM               

Take a look. I'm going to shorten it up a bit, texture it, and add nice white smoke out the smoke stack. In its current configuration I clocked it in the African desert at 22 knots. Of course I can make it much faster or much slower (or stopped). I'm thinkin of doing a nice rail yard and having a few engines move around it, and some buildings with it.

The key to this was the carrier. I imported the train obj to the carrier file I had working, removed the pitching and rolling dofs, and made a mission for it. I was very glad to see it work.

BUT the shortfalls are these...
1. It goes through the hills and underground.
2. Since its NOT a root object when you see it's ID tag it says "unknown" (as with any moving object I've made like these).
3. You can shoot it but you won't get credit for killing it.

I think for now in SDOE's current state it's just a "cool, look at that!" kind of addition. It is a hack as many have said and the game engine hopefully will be updated to have proper moving vehicles, scoring, etc in the future.

Anyhow, just another neat thing to see. I'm going to take a few more days and get all these new MOVING objects (Carrier, PT103, Akagi, Train, and maybe some other stuff) put together in a sort of package that you guys can download and mess with. I'll let you know when it's done.

posted 02-03- 08:17 AM               

What if you have then go slow. not fast enough to take off. would that help? Or if we just have then move around on a flat surface. Say trucks moving back and forth on a field. It would look cool when your taking off to see trucks moving around the field.

or if you have a mission to bomb another field, and you see trucks moving on it.

posted 02-03- 08:30 AM               

Or am I being way to simplistic. I do that sometime.

posted 02-03- 08:37 AM               

This means things can only move perfectly straight or rotate in a big pure circle, etc. Combine a couple of DOFS and you can get it to bob, etc.

I think the best use for Pete's new DOF motion idea is the WWI balloon bobbing up and down - maybe even "launchin", staying up for 10 minutes, then "landing" - repeat. This would kick ass!

------------------
-Sv =FC=

WWI in SDOE!

posted 02-03- 08:41 AM               

Hey, we could paint little tunnel openings into the hillside. How cool would that be!

posted 02-03- 08:48 AM               

I just did the WWI balloon DOF thing and it's AWESOME! I had two balloons rise up to about 2000 feet, slowly, rolling and pitching as if by the wind... it was BEAUTIFUL! You can even have them raise at an angle too. This is truly an awesome site!
You can have them sit for a while before they go up, stay hovering (while pitching and rolling) for however long you want... then come back down and do it all over again. This will make for some KILLER missions!

One semi-bad note though, I added a gun to one and the game crashed... I'll try and fix it somehow.

Important... Michael mentioned to Chad one day that there's a way to have the sim engine start the dof's for you when the mission loads, that way you don't have to enter the object, take control of it (F6) and hit a key to get the dofs working. So we need to find out how to do a "call" function to make this work. It'd make it a lot better.

THIS SIM ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!

(of course this means I'll have to do this to the Zeppelin now as well

posted 02-03- 08:55 AM               

Interesting. You guys will see what I mean soon.

JT, yes, trains into hillsides, I thought about that too... that'd kick butt!

posted 02-03- 10:48 AM               

Nice train, but European one's tend not to have that sort of smokestack and cowcatcher on the front.

posted 02-03- 11:01 AM               

"To get the train to move up and down hills.
Can we put an invisible rope on the front of the train say 300 feet long with a rotate dof where it attaches to the train so the rope can move up and down.

Attatch the other end of the rope to a translate dof that is 100 feet above the train. Add a rotate dof so the rope can move up and down.

Hopefuly the Translate dof can pull the rope and allow the train to move up and down over the hills as it's contact points follow the ground.

Like using a rope to pull it."

posted 02-03- 11:21 AM               

I'll look into it more. Thanks. Actually I just thought of something. As long as the track so to speak for the train is carefully thought out, then yes you could have a dof pulling the train along and then another one pulls it up and so forth. It'd be tricky but is worth looking into.

posted 02-03- 11:39 AM               

Like the way the wings can be bent back when the plane flies too fast. I can give a wing a range of +/- 90 deg. and a spring rate of 100. When I fly the force of the wind will make the wing swing back.

If this would work it would be much easier than trying to time the dof's to move up and down over hills.

posted 02-03- 11:46 AM               

Yah!! This sim rocks; and so do ALL of you devoting the time, effort, and damn fine talent to let it rock!! And to MH and Parsoft crew for having the foresight and courage to provide the tools to let us try, another THANK YOU!! AGAIN!!

Re: an earlier thread involving pay for play; I still am adamant in my refusal to go that route. But an alternate idea of 'packs' being made available for purchase is one I would not be adverse to, providing a way could be found to make it not be a necessity for online play...daunting task, I know. But somehow, some way should probably be found to reward the efforts of these individuals...perhaps a continuous series of contests? Or a 'SDOE Kitty?'?

Just a ramblin' thought, but with serious undertones, hehe. Thanks Pete, and everyone.

posted 02-03- 02:58 PM               

------------------
We shall fight on the beaches, in the streets, on the sea, in the air.... and in SDOE!!!

posted 02-05- 12:42 AM            

I've been messing with a train object for several days now. My idea is to create "trucks" similar to a real train and place the wheels inside a track. Like below:

/]W W[\
________

/] - is the rail and W is the train wheel. Basically this is how a train works. I have a model for a train car now I just can't get it into an sm format (see my other post).

If you control a couple of the wheels like a turret could you not move down the track (or would they spin in place?) You could then layout track in a fixed pattern (long straight or a yard) and move around. I think the track and the train have to be one object. But the track wouldn't need a lot of polys to work (especially long straights). Turns can be managed by enabling the wheel assembly to turn freely or using 2 wheel assemblies. If they spin in place then create a translational dof and you would be able to move up and down the track.

On the WWII railway trains, check out www.german-railways.com for a whole host of good pics and specs. I have an engine selected that I want to model and several other cars but I need to figure out the mg to ops / sm thing first.

------------------
Spin
Fortunae Nihil
RCAF 429

Download the current Multiplayer mission pack

- over 250 online missions -

Spin's campaign to stop the desktop

posted 02-05- 05:00 AM               

Jt thats exactly what i was thinking. That would work for now anyway and could look pretty cool.

Some of the future terrains will have to be built with some tunnles

posted 02-05- 05:43 AM               

Here are the problems with that. For the objects right now (that move), they go through anything and everything (except my flyable plane which I have crashed into them). But getting ANTHING to operate in motion while being over another object or part of an object that is not part of it's own, is VERY tough if not impossible in the games current state. It IS a good idea you have, just highly improbable right now.

For the future I really things like that are possible! Heck Inertia could market huge "do it yourself Virtual Trainsets!) That would be killer! And the best part would be you could use them in ANY OpenPlane sim! (ok I'm dreaming maybe, but I'd buy it).

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and for now, since the AI cannot taxi a plane except maybe on taxiways for only very short distances but ONLY before taking off... they land and stop on the runway (NOT GOOD!) (god I hope this gets fixed so we can setup elaborate taxi paths for them to follow, like Flanker2 has when they go park after flight, but it'd be better with complete control from start to finish)...

Well, I'm thinking only this will work for trains or user powered ground vehicles. I paint up a nice railyard/track on some part of a map, throw an SM model in with some RR buildings and such, then with a variation of the train (pics I posted earlier) that I have, the train follows DOFs in say a large oval, or at least slowly back and forth (complete with steam "white smoke" coming out of the engine's stack). The only trouble with this is that you need VERY flat terrain so it won't sink into the ground.

I honestly can't wait for Inertia to get it's R/C sim done and get deep into the next major sim, hopefully implementing a lot of this stuff. It would open up SO MANY new doors of fun. (ground wars with vehicles, trains, planes taxiing all over airfields, etc).

posted 02-05- 07:42 AM               

A train sim that was based on an openplane type thing but much more highly advanced that came with a huge library of trains. tracks. buildings and more. would kick ass. It should also come with a terrain editor. Then you could have a virtual train set and be able to import your own stuff just like we are doing now. It would also give intertia a chance to work on the ground aspect of openplane and make a terrain editor to include both in the future flight sims.

I bet that would take no time at all. and help fund futher research into the the above aspects. It would also be cool cause you could stand in the train while you drive or watch from above like normal train modeling.

That would really kick.

posted 02-05- 08:05 AM               

So Michael, are you listening? Trains would kick butt! (probably WAY easier to get the TMs right as well (train models) But the best part me would be importing them into OP sims with airplanes and airports. Boy I'd mess with that daily! (ok, like I don't already) :P

posted 02-05- 08:16 AM               

YO YO MA how cool would it be to contruct your railway too eh? Ya know what i mean putting the tunnels where you wanted them via the terrain editor and the train brigdes

And ya know the best part of this? YOU could have openplane planes attacking your german supplie train. You could have some really kick ass train wrecks. Like everyone doesn't want to take there train set and crash that sucker. but its too expesive. You might be able to put in some more detail too cause you don't need such a high FPS in something like this.

posted 02-05- 08:46 AM            

I've had an HO model train in my life for as long as I can remember. At one time I had an AFX race track included (really cool derailments were a regular occurance).

posted 02-05- 12:16 PM               

Please keep in mind that I have NO idea what I'm talking about when it comes to all this openplane crap but I have an idea. You may have already said that it can't be done but I don't understand the ins and outs so I'll just tell ya anyways.

What if you attached some wheels to the side of the train that ran along the ground like training wheels. When the wheels hit a hill would that not cause the whole train to climb the hill? Or am I just not getting it?

I heard you say that no matter what you do your train (or other obj too I guess) goes right through hills so maybe this won't work but I thought I'd just throw that in there. I guess it's alot like spins idea too.

Anyways....You guys rock!