posted 06-12- 04:42 PM
from the OPP forum..--
FM FAQ Version 6.2
Q. If I only remember one thing after reading this FAQ what should it be?
A: DOCUMENT ALL YOUR CHANGES. If someone has to take up where you left off they will have to throw your plane away unless YOU leave a record of WHAT you changed and WHY. Be specific! List the sources of your information !
Q. What DOS commands do I need to know?
A.
1) Type the letter of the drive you want to use followed by a colon and hit enter. For example type E: and press enter to go to your E drive
2) Type DIR and press enter to see a list of files in the current folder
3) Type CD followed by the directory name to change directories into another folder for example CD OpenPlane
4) Type CD .. and press enter to go up a directory
5) Type notepad filename.asc to edit a file. For Example notepad typh.asc If the file is too large for notepad you will be prompted to open the file with wordpad. Click on YES.
Q. What tools to I need to modify planes and how do I get started?
A:
Step
1) Make sure you have at least 20 megs or so hard drive space free
2) Download Hippie's Extractor by Clicking Here
3) Download the parfile tools (attached at bottom of this message). When you click on the link at the bottom, select the directory you want to save the file to and change the name to ParFileTools.zip
4) Make a directory on your hard drive called OpenPlane
5) Unzip both the files into this directory
6) Run the BigMunger Program from your OpenPlane directory
7) Click on the unbig tab
8) In the path to bigfile box type in the name of your data13.par file from the latest plane pack. For example
E:\Fighter Squadron\media\data13.par
9) Make a directory called PlanePack
10) In the destination directory box type in the name of your planepack directory for example
C:\PlanePack
10) click the OK button. When the program finishes you should have all the plane pack planes extracted into your planepack directory
11) Go into the the PlanePack\aircraft directory and find the plane you want to work on. Lets use the typhoon as an example so go into the typh directory.
12) Click on the file typh.sm, then press control-C. Now go to the directory you put all your tools in (OpenPlane) and press control-V to make a copy of the typhoon there.
13) Click on the start menu, then programs, then Command Prompt. A box will open, use type
CD C:\OpenPlane
and hit return.
14) Type
extractor typh typh
15) Type
notepad typh.asc
16) Use notepad to search for the word 'CYL do not forget the quote. There will be three of these, the first two provide drag on the gear, the third represent the drag of the fuselage. When you get to the third 'CYL line, you should see:
(obAirfoil (airChord 34.2658 airPt 0,-8.56644,0 airArea 176.121 ))
Just for fun, try changing airArea to something like 976.121. This will cause more drag on the plane, reduce it's top speed and gliding ability.
Save the file
17) At the command prompt, type:
builder typh typh
18) Congratulations you changed a plane! Copy the typh.sm file from your openplane directory to your Fighter Squadron\media\aircraft\typh (you may have to create these subdirectories)
19) Fire up SDOE and take the tiffie for a test drive, you should notice it flies different.
Q: How do I calibrate a plane for climb rate and top speed?
1) Determine the top speed of your plane at different altitudes. Determine the plane's climb rate. Determine wing area and wing span. Determine the weight of the plane including a combat load with guns and ammo but no fuel or bombs. NOTE this is DIFFERENT from empty weight. Most of this information is available on the internet or I can send it to you if I have it.
3) Take the wingspan and multiply it by itself. Divide the result by the wing area of the plane. This will give you the Aspect Ratio of the wing.
4) Plug this number into the airAR property of the airfoil for the wings. You can do this using OPStudio or the builder method mentioned above. In our Typhoon example the two lines you are looking for say: (airWing airSection "TYPHfoil" airK 0.6 airAR 8.25 airAdvantage .5 airMax .75)
If you are using builder you can find them by searching for "modelname: leftWing" and "modelname: rightWing"
5) Build and test the speed of the plane at different altitudes. Test the climb rate (we need to all use the same method to test climb rate).
6) I'll give a table of the different test results and how you can fix the problems.
H means speed too fast up high
h means speed too low up high
L means speed too fast down low
l means speed too low down low
c means climb rate too low
C means climb rate too high
HLC - add more drag
hLC - Increase max prop pitch, increase drag
HlC - decrease drag, increase prop pitch, reduce prop size
HLc - decrease max prop pitch
Hlc - decrease drag decrease max prop pitch
hLc - increase drag decrease max prop pitch, increase prop size
hlc - increase prop size
Do not increase max pitch beyond 70 or so.. at 90 degrees the prop is totally flat and not much use.
To make performance drop off or enhanced at higher altitudes make the blades fatter for better performance or skinnier for worse performance.
Q: How do I trade off between climb rate and top speed without altering drag or the propeller?
If you don't have the actual engine gear ratio you can modify this.. a lower gear ratio will give you better climb and lower top speed, a higher gear ratio will give you better top speed and worse climb.
This one's from Zurawski:
High-pitch & high-rpm = high top-speed .. low torque (poor climb)
Lower-pitch & higher rpm = better climb
Note that setting max pitch too high will make the propeller stall and perform poorly at high altitude.
Q: How do I increase drag?
The planes in SDOE often do not have enough drag for whatever reason. I think it's because drag on the cockpit and nose are not modelled, could be the air is too thin, I'm not sure I haven't been able to pry the information out of MH. Anyways to increase drag search for the 'CYL airfoil representing the fuselage and increase the area of it. This will have two effects.. slightly increasing lift and greatly increasing drag. Not the best solution but oh well. See the first question in the FAQ for an example of increasing drag.
Q: How do I change max Prop pitch?
Search for the property "propMaxPitch". Increasing this value makes the plane go faster and reduces it's climb rate. Decreasing this value makes the plane go slower but it climbs better and has a greater P-factor (torque)
Q: How do I change propeller size?
Search for the property PropRadius. Increasing this makes the plane go faster and climb better at lower altitudes but go slower and climb worse at higher altitudes. An alternative to changing prop size can be to change the propelements list that defines the shape of the propeller. Its pairs of numbers specifying angle, area. Increase each area value by a small amount to get better climb and top speed.
Q: How do I set the plane weight?
Search for the property CAircraft. The Typhoon looks like this:
(obProto 'CAircraft obClass 'fighter phyLBS 8600)
This means the plane weights 8600 pounds without fuel or bombs but with guns and ammo. Make sure any values you research correspond to this loadout. In a pinch you can increase plane weight to decrease it's climbing ability but this can affect handling and the threshold for gear damage.
Q: How do I go back to using the original plane pack planes?
A: Just remove any .sm files you copied to your aircraft directory and you will be back to normal.
Q: When calculating the weight of the plane, I know I should leave out fuel but what else do I need to add to the dry weight of a plane?
A: Here is an example from the spitfire:
2 Browning .50 gun and accessories 162.5 lb
Ammunition 130lb
2 Cannon and accessories 297.5 lb
Cannon ammunition 130 lb
Gyroscopic gun sight and lamps 8.5 lb
1 lb incendiary bomb, clock and crowbar (????? LOL) 3 lb
Gun Camera, adaptor, front flange and indicator 7 lb
Oxygen in 3 cylinders 7 lb
Dingy 18.5 lb
Radio and accessories 80.5 lb
Radio, Detonator and Control Unit 35lb
Pilot and Parachute 200lb
They Call this the "Total Typical Removable Military Load" and of course it varies from plane to plane. Note that SDOE adds the weight of the pilot at runtime, so leave that part out.
It also lists oil in the spit as 101.5 lbs. SDOE doesn't model oil usage/weight/loss so we have to add that.
You can double check the weight of the plane by adding this line to your sdemons.ini file:
ShowVehicleWeights = 1
Now when you F5 through the planes you will be able to see the weight of all planes including fuel and bombs.
Q: Do loadouts affect plane weight and Center of Gravity?
A: Bombs do alter the weight and CofG, ammunition doesnt. I dont think ammunition makes a big impact anyways.
Q: Why do the planes glide so well?
A: The current plane models do not account for drag created by the cockpit, oil coolers, and the nose of the plane. I had to add a bunch of drag to the Spit IX to get it to match specs, the cockpit and the oil coolers, nose etc are not factored into the model at all so I had to add extra drag to compensate. I think this is why all the planes glide so well.
Q: How heavy is fuel and oil?
A: 9lb/gallon for oil and 7.2 lb/gal for 100 octane aircraft fuel. These weights are for English gallons not US gallons. I think SDOE uses US gallsons. 1 US gallon 0.8327 UK gal, or 1UK gal = 1.2 US Gallons. Make sure to do the conversion if you are setting fuel tank capacity on non-US planes.
Q: How do I adjust roll rate?
A: If the roll rate is too fast at all speeds, lower the airmax value for the ailerons. If the roll rate is too fast at high speed, decrease the airadvantage property for the ailerons. If the roll rate is too slow at high speeds, increase the airadvantage property for the ailerons. Make sure to set these values so the same for both elevators.
Q: How do I make the plane harder to pull out of dives?
A: Decrease the airadvantage property for the elevators. Make sure to set this value the same for both elevators.
Q: What does airMax do?
A: Airmax determines the range of travel for the control surface. A value of 1 is 60 degrees total travel (30 degrees each way from center). A value of 0 means no travel. A value of 0.5 would be 30 degrees or 15 degrees from center each way. You can calculate airmax from degrees by dividing by 60.
For example, if you have plane specifications that say the aileron travelled 10 degrees each way, 20 / 60 = 0.333 for an airmax value. Note that it is not possible to specify non-symmetrical travel. IE most ww2 planes had rudders that travel farther one direction than the other. This is not currently possible using airMax.
Q: How do I set or verify engine gear ratio?
A: If you have the engine gear ratio for your plane it's probably something like 0.5, to use this in SDOE you need to take the reciprocal (1 divided by 0.5) which gives you two.
Q: How do I increase/decrease performance at high altitudes compared to down lower?
A: Make your propeller blades 'skinnier' for less bite into the thin air up high or 'fatter' for better high alt performance.
Q: How do I see the CG boxes for the engine in OPStudio?
A: Edit the properties for the engine and remove the (obhidden) property. Save and reload the plane. When you are done modifying the CG box for the engine add the property back in and save. Make sure your engine CG box does not overlap any other CG boxes (the original planes had a problem with this)
Greg Pringle / Tailslide
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