FSUIPC Slew mode

[Guest pranav]

I have a application which uses directplay to simulate a team of flying aircraft coming together in a formation. i tried using FSUIPC for scripting the camera motion to tracking these planes but since FSUIPC works only in the slew mode, it makes the flight of the other planes appear discontinuous. I was wondering if there is a way of having the air craft flow the trajectory without actually going into slew mode. Also is there anyway of independently moving the camera to view the formation ??

Thanks

pranav

[Pete Dowson]

I have a application which uses directplay to simulate a team of flying aircraft coming together in a formation. i tried using FSUIPC for scripting the camera motion to tracking these planes but since FSUIPC works only in the slew mode

It isn't FSUIPC which "works only in slew mode". All FSUIPC can do is forward your requests onto FS.

How does DirectPlay come into it? Do you mean Multiplayer? This is all an unknown area to me.

I was wondering if there is a way of having the aircraft flow the trajectory without actually going into slew mode.

With AI aircraft you can open windows to view them as they fly. Possibly the same can be done with multiplayer aircraft, I don't know.

Also is there anyway of independently moving the camera to view the formation ??

That I have no idea about I'm afraid. ActiveCamera does some fancy tricks with views in FS, so maybe that can be adapted. You'd need to write to the author.

Regards,

Pete

[Guest pranav]

Thanks..

My understanding was that its not possible to update position/velocity information for an aircraft if i dont put FS into slew mode.

Is it that i can do it anyway, even without the slew mode??

Also, when i write TAS/IAS using FSUIPC it doesnt seem to correctly appear. What format/units should the TAS IAS be written in for it to work properly?

Thanks again

[Pete Dowson]

My understanding was that its not possible to update position/velocity information for an aircraft if i dont put FS into slew mode. Is it that i can do it anyway, even without the slew mode??

I don't think so. FS simulates flight. It is recalculating all those things on each frame and updating them. Those really are *output* values from the simulator. It isn't actually designed to let you set up a dynamic situation from which is can then continue computing. It has hundreds, maybe thousands, of values to compute and derive the next situation from. All sorts of accelerations, motions, drag, resistance, thrust and so on come into it. Please see the different velocities and accelerations at offsets 3060-30B8 and 3178-31D0. You might be able to write to those and achieve something, if you know what you are doing, but even there I'm not sure which are causes and which are derived effects. I suspect they are all both, at one time or another during the simulation process.

Slew mode is different. Slew mode says go here, go there, move this way, move that way. There's no aerodynamics to compute, nothing to simulate about flight at all.

The only other possible ways apart from slew mode are Pause mode (which stops the simulation so your values don't get overwritten), and "frozen" mode, where you tell the simulator to proceed at 0 frames per second (zero in offset 0C1A). You could try one or other of those, but I doubt they'd give much benefit over slew mode really. They are all effectively preventing the simulation process doing its job of simulating flight.

Also, when i write TAS/IAS using FSUIPC it doesnt seem to correctly appear. What format/units should the TAS IAS be written in for it to work properly?

They are results, derived from simulation. You can't set them. They don't mean so much in slew mode, but you can control the speed and slew directions et cetera in locations 05E4-0%EE instead.

Regards,

Pete