Project Lua Script Helicopters!

[gattispilot]

Nice. so when it is finished. How hard will be to make it for other copters?
I made a lot of them. Here is an UH60.
The cockpit center section needs to be redone. Hopefully use your instruments,....

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Nice. so when it is finished. How hard will be to make it for other copters?
I made a lot of them. Here is an UH60.
The cockpit center section needs to be redone. Hopefully use your instruments,....

@misha.physics and I are putting the finishing touches on the R-4. I think once that is out I'd like to circle back to your Bell 222 as I have figured out a lot of things about lights and VC arrangements. I think once that script is up to scratch it would be pretty straightforward to update it for various other helicopters.

 

[gattispilot]

Sounds good

 

[Thunder Chicken]

We're not done yet..

 

[Buck Rogers]

Can one have different Touchdown points for land and water?

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Can one have different Touchdown points for land and water?

Yes. You can redefine the touchdown points whenever you like.

 

[Buck Rogers]

But how do you detect what your landing on?
The tiles have water masks, could one read those?

 

[Thunder Chicken]

But how do you detect what your landing on?
The tiles have water masks, could one read those?

I don't know anything about the water masks. I'm not sure if that tells you if you are over water or not generally.

The best you can do is check your altitude and see if you are above the sea or not. You can get the vessel altitude above the mean radius of the Earth, which is sea level, and the altitude above the terrain, and compare the two. If they are similar, you are likely over the sea. If the altitude over terrain is less than altitude over sea level, you are likely over land.

This obviously won't work on fresh bodies of water inland that are not at sea level, but it's something.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Chasing my skiff:




The screen annotations for my skiff are showing up in the helicopter. Not sure how to fix that as the annotations are OAPI calls, not vessel. Check for vessel focus I guess? I'll have to do more reading.

 

[Buck Rogers]

This might be a cool extension for your VW thing...

Volkswagen Schwimmwagen - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[gattispilot]

So do you want those digital read outs on the dash?

 

[Thunder Chicken]

So do you want those digital read outs on the dash?

Those annotations are for the skiff in the simulation. I want them when I am in the skiff, not when I am in the helicopter.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

This might be a cool extension for your VW thing...

Volkswagen Schwimmwagen - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

OK, that's pretty cool. Basically a private duck boat. Yeah, that might be a project.

Needs rotor blades. Volkswagen Hubschrauberschwimmwagen? With hypergolic rocket assist? What could be more German?

 

[Buck Rogers]

Needs rotor blades. Volkswagen Hubschrauberschwimmwagen? With hypergolic rocket assist? What could be more German?

Funny, I was thinking it should really fly as well
I fear the transition from land to water might be tricky? NaNs abound

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Funny, I was thinking it should really fly as well
I fear the transition from land to water might be tricky? NaNs abound

Yeah, the touchdown points would need to be adjusted individually based on their local elevation somehow.

For someone who actually doesn't fly a lot of spacecraft in Orbiter, I frequently do something in my boat/car/helicopter code that sends me into solar orbit. It's really something to be sitting in a boat and watching Earth recede into the distance at a large fraction of the speed of light.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Funny, I was thinking it should really fly as well
I fear the transition from land to water might be tricky? NaNs abound

I actually tried this with the R-4 and it works!

I set up two touchdown point definitions for the pontoons. One determined touchdown points for assumed contact with solid ground, and the other set touchdown points to mimic buoyancy. I calculated the vessel altitude above sea level, and made a function that switched to the water touchdown points when the elevation was less than 1 m, and switched to ground contact when above 1 m.

I inadvertently put the R-4 into a ditch, and it kept sliding into the water, sliding out the other side, and going back and forth like a skater in a half-pipe. It just transitioned between the water and ground contact points with a little bump.

 

[Arvil]

But, what happens when you touch down on land below MSL such as Death Valley or the shore of the Dead Sea; and what happens when you touch down on a lake above sea level?

 

[Thunder Chicken]

But, what happens when you touch down on land below MSL such as Death Valley or the shore of the Dead Sea; and what happens when you touch down on a lake above sea level?

In these cases the model fails. As far as I know, there is nothing that defines the presence of water in terrain in Orbiter.

If you land above the mean radius sea level on terrain, it's going to be treated like a rock in Orbiter, whether it happens to be a flat blue rock or otherwise. If terrain is below the mean radius sea level, it's going to behave like it's floating on water. Here it is floating in Death Valley:



Unless there is some magical way Orbiter can tell me if water or rock is below the vessel, there isn't much I can do about this.

 

[gattispilot]

How are hard is it to convert the LUA script into CC+ so one can have UACS crew? I got meshes that need updated for 2024/2026

 

[Buck Rogers]

Can't one call UACS modules from the Lua code? Might be easier?

Can one calculate/estimate the displacement/hubraum with other factors (dimensions etc..)?
Can find everything but that for an Allison 250/M250?