posted 09-04- 08:49 PM               

Well I have a small tearStear object that has the steering DOF. Under that part I have the tail wheel that is a standard tire object. This works great! I checked, and changing the tireRadius does alter where it contacts the ground, so this tire is functioning. It steers fine too - it is a visable teel wheel now that I will hide later.

Now I add an object above these two, called "tailSkid." It has a rotate DOF at the point of pivot for the "hook" like tail skid. If this DOF if not given a prop list, then all works fine. It is set at +5 -5 max/min values.

Now here is the problem. As soon as I add the typical DofSpring prop list, the tire no longer works! It falls through the earth Anotherodd thing, it no longer steers as well - in the air. Very near the ground the tail wheel does become steerable again, but only 1/2 its travel and slower. As soon as the tail wheel falls into hell (bellow the ground) it steers perfect again!

If I remove the DOF prop list all is happy again. Also, if I change the rotate DOF into a translate DOF it works as well, but now it is not the correct motion I need.

Any ideas? I am stuck so far. I know other wheels have parents that have the same spring rotate DOF and they work. There is one major differnce though, on these working dofs the rotate pivot point is above the wheel, so it takes no constant load - they are they for DM. Mine needs to be under a constant load, the "hook" is holding up the tail of the aircraft by bungee force alone. This is how the translate spring DOF's of all the WW2 gear work - they are under load. Maybe a rotate DOF can not take a load without crashing something? I don't know

Is this does not work, then I can not implement the main gear bungee system as well. For anyone interested, the Fokker EIII can be found here:

http://www.schoolmusic.com/chickencoop/eiii/eiii_a1.zip 1 meg

2 missions in Dover, eiii starts on the ground, eiii_2 starts in the air just about to land.

Thanks for any hints, I'll even take out-right solutions

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

WWI in SDOE!

posted 09-05- 07:16 AM               

So we think OpenPlane is somehow detecting the special presense of this rotate DOF and in some way not implementing the obTirePt object and steering functionailty? It seems to be the case. Or maybe my DOF/object positioning is not what it appears to be in OPS... oh well, I will expirent with this notion on other aircraft. Can a rotate DOF dpring never be used in the area between the parent and a Tire object? This is not true, EVERY ww2 aircraft does this with the landing gear. What makes mine different? Well the positioning is different, that is it.

I will try it on other planes, maybe some other seperate bugs are cuasing this issue...

Thanks again for the help, it really keeps me going

posted 09-05- 08:24 AM               

Maybe Inertia added a special feauture that lets rotate DOFs act in some sort of special DM way only - like just the force and vector data from the DOF is used and not the movement. This way an object could resist a tourque force and break, but not "wiggle"

At any rate, there ARE rotate DOF springs in SDOE and they do at least function to a DM extent, and most importantly, they do not crash other DOFs below them in the part tree.

The quest begins