Howto:Make an aircraft: Difference between revisions

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The content in this article gives a summary of codes and can be found on most planes. So, for examples on how it's used, you can take a look at some random planes.

# The '''appearence''' of the aircraft, which can be split in two areas:

## 3-dimensional model and all of its visual aspects: animations (These give visual feedback from your FDM. Move the aileron of your 3D model when the aileron control is moved. Same for the other aero surfaces, the gear. Than go ahead with the instruments, animate the needles, the digital readouts. Define hot spots and pick animations, so you can click in your 3D cockpit.), [[Howto: Add aircraft lights|lighting]] and textures (images that are put in specific locations on the 3D model).

== Introduction ==

There are lots of FlightGear aircraft that need cockpit work. This requires both artistic (create 3D models and textures...) and technical abilities (create XML, perhaps even nasal scripts and gathering information of the thing being modeled). This is also one area were your work is very visible to every day FlightGear users and this makes this effort one that has a major impact of the apparent quality of FlightGear.

* Find an aircraft that is part of fgdata GIT that needs cockpit work that interests you. This is important the aircraft should be one that you have a fondness for. This work is a labor of love and that will not be the case if you just pick some random aircraft.

*  Also the aircraft dev will likely have to spend time mentoring you and it may actually take him more time to do this mentoring than it would have taken him to do the work. So stick around and do enough work to that aircraft that the mentoring effort pays off for the aircraft dev.

*  Keep in mind that the learning curve is fairly steep and at first the work will take a lot of effort to do what would be trivial task for someone with lot of experience doing this stuff. You need to be ready to deal with the learning curve.

=== Rules and guidelines ===

If you realize this is harder than you expect, don't worry. For the first-timer, the FDM(aircraft.xml), aircraft-set.xml, and the engine.xml files are the easiest. Modeling will require considerable time and practice. You want to have the tools for the job, so here are some tools to help:

** '''NOTE:''' Implement the specifications into the xmls

* A friend, and/or another developer, let's say you only want to do the FDM and XMLs. You'll need another person (a modeller) to model. Don't worry, the <author> tag has enough room. ;)

== Directories and files ==

It's worth noting that FlightGear doesn't expect any particular structure of folders or files, i.e. you could theoretically put things ANYWHERE, as long as you properly reference all files and paths in the top-level aircraft-set.xml file. However, it makes sense to follow some existing conventions (look at other well-maintained aircraft). Some more tips can be found here: [[Standard aircraft structure]] (needs to be updated as of 05/2012). A more recent discussion covering the pros & cons of the various approaches is to be found [http://flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12903&p=156902#p156902 on the forum].

This file contains the entire (or partial) [[Flight Dynamics Model]] of the aircraft. We have three different systems; they all have their up- and downsides.

* [[YASim]], needed for: helicopters, towing over a [[Howto: Multiplayer|multiplay network]]

* [[UIUC]] (rarely used these days)

With limited data available, YASim is generally considered to be the best way to go. When you have acces to real windtunnel data and/or require more flexibility, JSBSim might be a better choice.

=== Engines/ directory ===

== Related content ==

* [[Howto: Make a helicopter]]

[[Category:Aircraft enhancement|Make an aircraft]]

[[Category:Howto|Make an aircraft]]