Roll: left/right. Yes, I want to do the steering with my right hand
Throttle Engine input. As throttle only goes from 0 to +1, this only lets the car move forward
Therefore:
Trim: Reverse: Trim in highest position flips the input for Throttle so that the car can move backwards. Power/speed is still controlled via Throttle, only now it is in reverse
Yes, I love to make thr helicopter go up and down with my left joystick, as for the engine: I first and foremost use the governor option to have the engine run at optimal speed for the pitch settings. To start and run the engine itself, I have 3 methods, ranked by preference, lowest to highest:
- Assign engine input to VTOL slider or Trim
- Start/stop engine with activate button (Activate1 is my standard choice) and a button or switch on the dashboard in pilot view/VR mode
- just assign engine input to Throttle but set the governor real low (5-10%) so that the first 5 % is for starting the engine, for settings higher than that Throttle controls the pitch and the governor takes over the engine speed
@MonsNotTheMonster I experimented with RainMCDeer layout. Although I get used to it fairly quickly I prefer tht flaps on the right side: if I have to take a hand of its joystick to work with the flaps, I rather drop the Throttle setting and have my other hand on the pitch and roll than vice versa.
I have seen Activate1 for engines, and I believe it makes sense but I've seen a lot more builds where Activate1 is used for the cockpit doors or canopy.
VTOL plane:
- Throttle, pitch, roll, yaw: standard joystick
- VTOL slider down: flaps
- VTOL slider up: VTOL mode: in building menu and on initial spawning, I have the VTOL nozzles pointing back to function as standard jet exhausts. VTOL up rotators them downwards to full vertical and also moves all other flaps/gears/covers into VTOL position.
- Brake: wheel brakes and air brakes
Almost from the beginning I set my VTOL nozzles to rotate a bit past 90°, 120° being my current favorite. This makes that with the VTOL slider at full too, the nozzle points slightly forward to enable braking or even flying backwards.
To start off: my personal favorites: Airplane:
- Throttle, pitch, roll, yaw: standard joystick
- VTOL slider down: flaps
- VTOL slider up: air brakes 0 to 100%
- Brake: air brakes 100%
- Trim all up or all down: special actions
- Braking parachute: I prefer a double approach: either one of the buttons or Trim to 'prime' the parachute, when 'primed', the parachute will deploy when the craft is something like 3m /10ft above the ground.
As said by the other posters: Funkytrees has an if -function in the form a?b:c
This is a conditional formula that returns b if a id true and c otherwise.
For instance: <Rotator input> is VTOL>0.5 ? Throttle:0 returns the value of Throttle if the VTOL slider is pushed higher than 0.5 , and 0 otherwise.
If you want your input to be <x> when the ground speed is 0 and 0 otherwise, you can try: <Input> is GS=0? X:0
Although you might get better results with <Input> is GS<3? X:0
(Ground speed is measured in M/s, which is roughly half of MPH and 3.6 times KmH. So GS<3 would correspond with 6mph/10kmh.
I wouldn't upvote an aircraft that has neither flaps nor air brakes, but this thing has so many other cool features I don't mind having to land at 399 mph, even if I still crash half of the time. Upvote sent.
Important: for the chase and flyby cameras to work right, the flight controller has to be pointing upwards. So as soon as you download this aircraft, look to the back of the canopy. The flight controller is glued against the back of the canopy wall, the vertical canopy wall. Rotate it along the x-axis so all 4 of its tabs are pointing downwards. Only then try to take it for a test flight.
I posted a version where I changed the controls to VTOL neutral= nozzles straight back for forward flight, VTOL up= nozzles rotate from full back to full down and a little further to 39° forward for flying backwards/braking. You can find it HERE..feel.free.to lol at it and use what you find useful for your next build. You can even repost the aircraft wholesale as your own. You built most of it after all.
Sorry, for now the Bein Army aircraft maintenance pools are too busy building them for their own needs. However feel free to copy the paratroopers for use in your own aircraft. Just update the code for the detacher and parachutes to fit your need and hit me up if you have any questions
@StockPlanesRemastered I still have the original 1980's role playing game where you move your airplanes on a hex grid and scratch off boxes of 'armor' by rolling a dice. Loved tht airplanes (the video game took their designs) and always wanted to build some in SimplePlanes, just to see if their harebrained designs actually could fly. Unfortunately too busy dreaming up my own harebrained designs
@StopBreathingMyAir actually no need to fix it. It looks marvelous in it's light green livery. Just wanted to help you out if for some reason you definitely wanted a brown color
It's actually a light green with some hint of blue, somewhere between jade and turquoise. If you click a color in the custom palette you can see its RGB code brown is a bit of red with a bout half that amount in green and no blue so something like 603000
@Zerkk I was about to remake the craft with some custom XML but then I discovered everything was already in place just as long as you remember not to land with the missiles still attached. Right now the only thing I would do is to set the detacher at "IAS>50" (will detach automatically when speed exceeds 100 mph) and then move the missiles to the top of the wings
Just discovered this one. Still debating between a flying camper van or a steampunk jungle land cruiser but I still got 3 days. So you might actually get an official entry.
Nice plane for 180 parts. Also one of the historical planes that deserves a bit more spotlight. Being mostly forgotten for being introduced smak between tht Lockheed Electra and the DC-2
Love the details, especially the engines.. unfortunately I play on an Android phone so calculating all the parts.slows the plane to about 2 frames per second.
So can I request a slimmed down version with simpler engines? Just deleting the ribs in favor of a tube for cylinder would free up 240 pieces.
@Trainz448 Udate: after I deleted the gyroscope, I found that the signs on the throttle input need to be reversed in order for the heli to turn in the right direction. Also I found that the hack only works at a throttle smaller than 30%. After that, the RPM governor takes over and rotor speed is the same in both regardless of your input.
However you can trick the throttle governor into going faster or slower by instead of the engine speed, apply the yaw to the collective Pitch input of the rotors.
So top rotor: input collective (2nd tab on XML overload editor) =VTOL-0.3Yaw, bottom rotor: input = VTOL+0.3Yaw
Love this one. Nice illustration of what one can do with just the basics and also a nice practical example of a working helicopter.
Ps, if you want to be able to turn your helicopter in hover Mode, click the top rotor and in XML replace the power input 'throttle' with 'Throttle +0.1'Yaw'. For the bottom rotor replace Throttle with 'Throttle -0.1 Yaw'
Not bad for a plane built with the materials that were available 7 1/2 years ago. Would be worth seeing how it would look if rebuilt using the latest version of SimplePlanes (VR cockpit, real gauges, custom wings....)
Say, you put in air brakes, but then you set their drag scale to 0? How they supposed to work when they don't generate any drag. I actually cheat by giving the air brakes in my builds an artificially higher draft, 3 or 4, sometimes as high as 7, to have them 'brake' far over their size.
@Kenzar go ahead, please. This is the beauty of SimplePlanes that you can build off of each other. So yes, Anti-submarine versions, radar-disk versions, paratrooper-dropping versions with opening release ramp.... Or just copying the wing folding or landing gear mechanism. Feel free to take what you need.
(Ps, and if you just switch the paint palette from 'cusrom' to 'default' you get something like an US American paint scheme to work with)
Interesting concept. You might want to get rid of the tail rotor though. A self-powered rotor would make them redundant. Just a big tail plane with some control nozzles for low speeds would do.
Thinking of nozzles. Ever thought of replacing the jets with one VTOL engine and fixed VTOL nozzles on the rotor? Because if you don't, I'm going to build one.
The left tail plane sticks out more than the right. I t does so by default when you mirror your plane because the flight computer/cockpit is offset 0.0391 clicks and so the program moves through whole plane 0.0391 clicks to the right but mirrors the wings and tail planes in reference to the flight computer.
By the way, check the tail plane 's rotators. I think they are turning that wrong way: tail plane down when you pitch forwards while it should be when you pitch back. Just a simple oversight
@hpgbproductions how do you do 'control bases'? I already used XML to set the rotator assembly's mass and drag out 0 that doesn't seem to help.
The Ardelian empire 'pirate fighter' from Buck Rogers?
Car/Truck/Anything wheel-driven:
Therefore:
Helicopter :
Okay, this is going to be controversial
Yes, I love to make thr helicopter go up and down with my left joystick, as for the engine: I first and foremost use the governor option to have the engine run at optimal speed for the pitch settings. To start and run the engine itself, I have 3 methods, ranked by preference, lowest to highest:
- Assign engine input to VTOL slider or Trim
- Start/stop engine with activate button (Activate1 is my standard choice) and a button or switch on the dashboard in pilot view/VR mode
- just assign engine input to Throttle but set the governor real low (5-10%) so that the first 5 % is for starting the engine, for settings higher than that Throttle controls the pitch and the governor takes over the engine speed
@MonsNotTheMonster I experimented with RainMCDeer layout. Although I get used to it fairly quickly I prefer tht flaps on the right side: if I have to take a hand of its joystick to work with the flaps, I rather drop the Throttle setting and have my other hand on the pitch and roll than vice versa.
I have seen Activate1 for engines, and I believe it makes sense but I've seen a lot more builds where Activate1 is used for the cockpit doors or canopy.
VTOL plane:
- Throttle, pitch, roll, yaw: standard joystick
- VTOL slider down: flaps
- VTOL slider up: VTOL mode: in building menu and on initial spawning, I have the VTOL nozzles pointing back to function as standard jet exhausts. VTOL up rotators them downwards to full vertical and also moves all other flaps/gears/covers into VTOL position.
- Brake: wheel brakes and air brakes
Almost from the beginning I set my VTOL nozzles to rotate a bit past 90°, 120° being my current favorite. This makes that with the VTOL slider at full too, the nozzle points slightly forward to enable braking or even flying backwards.
To start off: my personal favorites:
Airplane:
- Throttle, pitch, roll, yaw: standard joystick
- VTOL slider down: flaps
- VTOL slider up: air brakes 0 to 100%
- Brake: air brakes 100%
- Trim all up or all down: special actions
- Braking parachute: I prefer a double approach: either one of the buttons or Trim to 'prime' the parachute, when 'primed', the parachute will deploy when the craft is something like 3m /10ft above the ground.
As said by the other posters: Funkytrees has an if -function in the form a?b:c
This is a conditional formula that returns b if a id true and c otherwise.
For instance:
<Rotator input> is VTOL>0.5 ? Throttle:0 returns the value of Throttle if the VTOL slider is pushed higher than 0.5 , and 0 otherwise.
If you want your input to be <x> when the ground speed is 0 and 0 otherwise, you can try:
<Input> is GS=0? X:0
Although you might get better results with
<Input> is GS<3? X:0
(Ground speed is measured in M/s, which is roughly half of MPH and 3.6 times KmH. So GS<3 would correspond with 6mph/10kmh.
I wouldn't upvote an aircraft that has neither flaps nor air brakes, but this thing has so many other cool features I don't mind having to land at 399 mph, even if I still crash half of the time. Upvote sent.
+1Important: for the chase and flyby cameras to work right, the flight controller has to be pointing upwards. So as soon as you download this aircraft, look to the back of the canopy. The flight controller is glued against the back of the canopy wall, the vertical canopy wall. Rotate it along the x-axis so all 4 of its tabs are pointing downwards. Only then try to take it for a test flight.
+1Love the design, but honestly, a third engine just for pitch? And what does VTOL do?
I posted a version where I changed the controls to VTOL neutral= nozzles straight back for forward flight, VTOL up= nozzles rotate from full back to full down and a little further to 39° forward for flying backwards/braking. You can find it HERE..feel.free.to lol at it and use what you find useful for your next build. You can even repost the aircraft wholesale as your own. You built most of it after all.
@YarisHatchback bah, the An-2 has been through worse. It will get over it.
So it's sailplanes only, or are we allowed to fudge something with rotators?
Actually flies pretty well.
+1I'd give it a 10 for looks. Also with some RCN nozzles to the front and the back, you can fly it without gyroscope.
+1You could of course just put a PID controller on each leg with the target value being 1.5 + x times the controller's angle
Love the details... And on top of that, she flies like a dream. It's definitely a trainer because I just can't seem to crash it
+1What? So stable it flies without a gyroscope?
+1Sorry, for now the Bein Army aircraft maintenance pools are too busy building them for their own needs. However feel free to copy the paratroopers for use in your own aircraft. Just update the code for the detacher and parachutes to fit your need and hit me up if you have any questions
I built a successor tweaked for launching paratroopers. And yes, it's brown
@StockPlanesRemastered I still have the original 1980's role playing game where you move your airplanes on a hex grid and scratch off boxes of 'armor' by rolling a dice. Loved tht airplanes (the video game took their designs) and always wanted to build some in SimplePlanes, just to see if their harebrained designs actually could fly. Unfortunately too busy dreaming up my own harebrained designs
+1So yes, I did post an improved version with automatic launch and the ordinance moved to above the wings. Feel free to take all my changes and incorporate them in your next project.
https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/w0P03p/Bomber-Ground-attacker-Challenge
You still got 10 days to enter
@StopBreathingMyAir actually no need to fix it. It looks marvelous in it's light green livery. Just wanted to help you out if for some reason you definitely wanted a brown color
It's actually a light green with some hint of blue, somewhere between jade and turquoise. If you click a color in the custom palette you can see its RGB code brown is a bit of red with a bout half that amount in green and no blue so something like 603000
@Zerkk I was about to remake the craft with some custom XML but then I discovered everything was already in place just as long as you remember not to land with the missiles still attached. Right now the only thing I would do is to set the detacher at "IAS>50" (will detach automatically when speed exceeds 100 mph) and then move the missiles to the top of the wings
+1Hurray, made the deadline. Although still with barely half the functions I wanted. So keep an eye out for newer versions
Just discovered this one. Still debating between a flying camper van or a steampunk jungle land cruiser but I still got 3 days. So you might actually get an official entry.
Nice plane for 180 parts. Also one of the historical planes that deserves a bit more spotlight. Being mostly forgotten for being introduced smak between tht Lockheed Electra and the DC-2
Nice rebuild. However, landing remains a challenge. Consider adding a braking parachute.
Love the details, especially the engines.. unfortunately I play on an Android phone so calculating all the parts.slows the plane to about 2 frames per second.
So can I request a slimmed down version with simpler engines? Just deleting the ribs in favor of a tube for cylinder would free up 240 pieces.
+1@Trainz448 Udate: after I deleted the gyroscope, I found that the signs on the throttle input need to be reversed in order for the heli to turn in the right direction. Also I found that the hack only works at a throttle smaller than 30%. After that, the RPM governor takes over and rotor speed is the same in both regardless of your input.
However you can trick the throttle governor into going faster or slower by instead of the engine speed, apply the yaw to the collective Pitch input of the rotors.
So top rotor: input collective (2nd tab on XML overload editor) =VTOL-0.3Yaw, bottom rotor: input = VTOL+0.3Yaw
Love this one. Nice illustration of what one can do with just the basics and also a nice practical example of a working helicopter.
Ps, if you want to be able to turn your helicopter in hover Mode, click the top rotor and in XML replace the power input 'throttle' with 'Throttle +0.1'Yaw'. For the bottom rotor replace Throttle with 'Throttle -0.1 Yaw'
+1Not bad for a plane built with the materials that were available 7 1/2 years ago. Would be worth seeing how it would look if rebuilt using the latest version of SimplePlanes (VR cockpit, real gauges, custom wings....)
Incredible level of detail. And a designer's dream
Here's my version
+1Looks quite spiffy and definitely has the look of something the British would have built in the 50's.
+1Trying to nfit an automatic hover function for working with the winch
+1Congratulations on making Silver.
Say, you put in air brakes, but then you set their drag scale to 0? How they supposed to work when they don't generate any drag. I actually cheat by giving the air brakes in my builds an artificially higher draft, 3 or 4, sometimes as high as 7, to have them 'brake' far over their size.
@WinsWings I'm taking the thing apart to see how exactly you did this. Thanks
+1Is there a plan to build out the cockpit?
@Kenzar go ahead, please. This is the beauty of SimplePlanes that you can build off of each other. So yes, Anti-submarine versions, radar-disk versions, paratrooper-dropping versions with opening release ramp.... Or just copying the wing folding or landing gear mechanism. Feel free to take what you need.
(Ps, and if you just switch the paint palette from 'cusrom' to 'default' you get something like an US American paint scheme to work with)
+1@C47skytrain just did. Just got too busy writing the text.
+1@canadianavgeek853 you're welcome
+1Interesting concept. You might want to get rid of the tail rotor though. A self-powered rotor would make them redundant. Just a big tail plane with some control nozzles for low speeds would do.
Thinking of nozzles. Ever thought of replacing the jets with one VTOL engine and fixed VTOL nozzles on the rotor? Because if you don't, I'm going to build one.
+1@NewWorldAerospace too bad, I'd love to use my knowledge of custom gears and variable propellers to give this babe a completely new engine
+1The left tail plane sticks out more than the right. I t does so by default when you mirror your plane because the flight computer/cockpit is offset 0.0391 clicks and so the program moves through whole plane 0.0391 clicks to the right but mirrors the wings and tail planes in reference to the flight computer.
By the way, check the tail plane 's rotators. I think they are turning that wrong way: tail plane down when you pitch forwards while it should be when you pitch back. Just a simple oversight
+1Before you publish this for good, consider uploading an updated version with cameras in the cockpit.