posted 07-11- 08:45 AM               

Here's some questions:

1) I'm using OPS and it seems I can't rename groups to something friendlier. Is this a limit of OP or OPS?

2) How does one make a shadow? I see the "parts" are kept in a separate group, can someone explain the logic here?

3) The reason the guns are too powerful in the 100 is that they appear to be both too powerful and fire too fast to boot. I tried getting some values from the 109E4, but those seemed different than the ones I had too. Is the author of the 109 around? I'm using Gustin's paper on the topic for figures, is that a good one or is there something better out there?

4) The current model includes a cyl for the gear drag! I'd like to replace this with a good drag model, but I know nothing about airfoils. Can someone ship me one that starts out low (gear inside the well) and gets higher once it clears and then stays high? Will this result in the drag coming from the "right place" as the gear extends, ie, small down force to start, then increasing? I'd also like to know how to add it in OPS.

I'll keep hacking! OPS is a breakthrough app, it lowers the barrier to entry into OP space considerably.

posted 07-11- 09:02 AM            

quote:

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3) The reason the guns are too powerful in the 100 is that they appear to be both too powerful and fire too fast to boot. I tried getting some values from the 109E4, but those seemed different
than the ones I had too. Is the author of the 109 around? I'm using Gustin's paper on the topic for figures, is that a good one or is there something better out there?

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I believed I used the WWII gun debate for all the data when I first did loadouts. Whether or not newer aircraft are using this information, i dont know. Kopper and I compiled a table of the major aircraft guns of WWII.
http://home.cwru.edu/~rxf17/openplane/obhits.html

One problem guns have in version 1.5 is they obey the users request for rate of fire up to 400, then begin to round off to values of 500,600,and 1200.

its a tough call of where to put the rate of fire for stuff like the browning .50cal, which did 750rpm. I tended to round down to the next lower acceptable value (ie the .50cal in the game does 600rpm)

quote:

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2) How does one make a shadow? I see the "parts" are kept in a separate group, can someone explain the logic here?

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posted 07-11- 09:17 AM               

quote:

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2) How does one make a shadow? I see the "parts" are kept in a separate group, can someone explain the logic here?

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Look here:
http://www.schoolmusic.com/chickencoop/se5a/docs/shadow.htm

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-Sv =FC=

WWI in SDOE!

posted 07-11- 09:20 AM               

3. I'm using this paper too, it's a good one.

posted 07-11- 10:01 AM               

How do the gear get retracted, and how do I "link to" that action?

The 100 had a semi-retractable radiator that was raised once you were in the air and up to speed. As a first approximation I'd like to link this to the gear control.

posted 07-11- 10:19 AM               

The production models all had 1 20mm MG FF and 2 7.92 MG 17. Earlier iterations (as in the He100C) had had 2 20mm MG FF's and 4 of the MG17's. The D-1's had a service ceiling of 32,450 feet and a top speed of 416 mph. Noticeably superior, in those areas at least, to the concurrently available Messershmitts. It's completely possible that the He100 wouldn't have made any difference, but grist for the mill, nevertheless. Udet himself once collared Herr Heinkel and told him he should stop trying to develope the 100, and insisted that he not attempt to take the landplane speed record back after the so-called Messershmitt "Me109R" captured it. Udet is said to have told Heinkel: "The Me109 is and will be our fighter. Don't try to make trouble with this plane of your's." Words to that effect, anyhow. Despite the performance advantages shown above, and the fact that the Heinkel fighter's cruise speed was almost 60 miles per hour faster than the Me109, the He100 languished.

posted 07-11- 11:08 AM            

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1) what model of the MG/FF did you pick? It appears you're using the MG/FF-M model, is that right? If I'm right, why this model and not the "plain" MG/FF, is the -M the one in the 109 historically? Any ideas on the 100?

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Falck scrambles to find the gunfighter debate page

Firstly I apologize for being kinda rusty on this topic. Its been about a year since I made the first loadouts. I think I modelled the 151 in the 190's though I dont remember. At the time I did loadouts the 109 and 100 were not in SDOE. Heres a good chart of which guns were in which aircraft: http://web.mountain.net/~arringto/table-leth.htm

I think the 109E's (except maybe early variants) had MG FF's. And according to vanderstock's page the 100 featured the MG FF. http://www.xs4all.nl/~hofstra/heinkel/

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2) The ROF in the E4 is 968 (or something like that), which is lower than on the refs I've seen. Why this number?

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I dont know why that number. But Ill bet if you sit down and count the number of seconds it takes to deplete your ammo that it will work out to either 600 or 1200rpm due to the bug in v1.5 of SDOE. If you mean that as being for the MG FF its probably shooting at an accurate rate, but that would be too slow for the MG 17's.

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3) does gunRange actually do anything? Suggestions on good values if it does?

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Bullets travel for that distance. I think
I kept these values the same for all the gun
types.

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4) your Blanks loadout keeps one "normal" gun of the 7.9's and "blanks out" the others. Is this typically how people do this loadout?

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posted 07-11- 01:27 PM               

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Hey Laika, can you explain the logic behind your instruments?

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Two pics:

..sm-structure from the P51 = really bad, you can't rename them and OPS crashes when you try to delete some of them and I really don't know what groups good for.

..Pe-2 = good , no groups no problems..

It might be necessary to remove unwanted groups with smd/olc from hippie (version 7 !).

Still questions ? Ask !

LK

posted 07-11- 01:30 PM               

And I'm also curious about how they differ from normal instruments, you mentioned something in one of the threads about them not having alpha and that's why they looked "flat" - why would instruments have that? Was I just not understanding it?
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I cannot answer why exactly Laika used a texture that is only 128x64 he will have to answer that for you, but I can help you with your little problem on understanding the alpha channel on the gauges. Okay when you first put the texture on the dash it is flat just like it looks when you made it. I.E. It has no glass covering it. So you add an alpha channel to it in your graphic editing program. I can't remember off the top of my hand which color intensities do what but I will explain what they are supposed to do when you add colors to the alpha channel. So you got an image of a gauge and you want to make it look "extruded" and you've added an alpha channel to it. On the alpha channel you add a color of certain intensity and try to make darker in the middle and lighter around the edges as to get a glass effect on it. That way when you look at the gauge it doesn't look like a piece of paper pinned up to the dashboard. In other words the alpha channel adds depth to the texture. If you want to make a canopy for the cockpit and have reflections then you will be messing with alpha alot. I cannot remember which colors do which once again but I am sure someone will post to this and explain the colors to you.

posted 07-11- 01:41 PM               

Ok, The whole story, the Pe-2 is a soviet plane, we want it to be historical accurate (as far we got informations on specific parts). That means we need new instrument textures, Oleg from Maddox Games was so kind to send me some screenshots of the Il-2 cockpit with some soviet gauges. I tried to rebuild/repaint them in 64x64 (common texture size for instruments), but no luck - next higher size in OP/SDOE is 128x128. The others explained (see http://www.fightersquadron.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000869.html )that this would use much more texture space and so you would need a 32 (or even 64MB) graphic-card. What to do ? It was Tailslides idea to make the texture in 128x128 and resize it to 128x64, so it is possible to put 2 gauge-textures to one 128x128 sized texture. This saves space and keept the detail. One other thing, i.e. the Altimeter uses the same scala like the RPM-gauge, only difference is the writing on the gauge ("BbICOTA" etc..). So I made an extra 128x128 sized "deatil" texture with the writings on it (see MainPanel topic in General), this way I can do "high-detailed" writings even on 64x64 sized textures. Hmmm.

"Flatness" - This is more a texture problem...

LK

posted 07-11- 01:47 PM               

You can get the same effect when you just add the "shine" to the texture in any paint program:

like on this (untransparent) old I-16 texture.

posted 07-11- 06:00 PM               

When I look inside the sm's (in OPS) I see lots of references to ./aircraft/thingy/... etc. However I don't have any of these files, I (like everyone else) have a bunch of .par's.

How does this work? Are the .par's extracted into a virtual file system when the game is launched? If so, doesn't this make using OPS a lot harder because everything is "hidden" like this?

posted 07-11- 06:10 PM            

BigMunger extracts par files.

posted 07-11- 09:28 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Falck:
Maury if you want access to those files, download the openplane tools from

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Yeah, I did that. It takes a lot of hand munging to get everything ready to go though, it would be nice if it was a bit eaiser.

Maury

posted 07-12- 07:59 AM               

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Originally posted by FarmerJoe:
You have to make sure you extract all the .par files in order into a specific directory starting at data1.par and working your way up numerically.

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Ahhhh, now I get it. [slaps forehead]

Ok, next newbie question: what are the brown arrows in OPS? I have some attached to aero surfaces, others are attached to guns, etc. I thought they represented DOF's or areo's, but every time I think I know the pattern I find one that breaks the rule.

I guess I'll have to make one of those status things now!

posted 07-12- 11:13 AM               

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Originally posted by Bryan Russell:
They are actually meant to be orange, but brown will do. They are just place holders for models that are currently hidden, or don't have a mesh. Machine guns on the spit are a good example.

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Ahhhh, that explains why many of them end up buried in the wings and such!

What's odd about the 100 is that some of the model's parts seem to done "one way" and others are done "another way". For instance the right-hand gun is a cyl (floating in the middle of space no less) whereas the left-hand one is one of these hidden surfaces.

I think once I understand it all I'll simply re-create the plane from scratch to get new groups and organization, as well as remove oddities like this.

So much to learn, so little time...

Maury