Here's a link to the file that I hope to upload to Simviation as soon as I get a little feedback that it's O.K. in FS9. I will upload to AVSIM as well.
It took about a week to get it right, and it was a natural that it was dedicated to the memory of Steve.
I've landed a Cessna on it quite nicely, as well as taken off successfully.
Be gentle with your landings and you'll be golden.
Note my Tomcat approach....did I make it? I'm not telling...but it will be very interesting to see what you folks can get onto her and off of her. She's a big girl, but you need skills.
Hark,
I am noticing that I am falling below the deck in the HINSON Tomcat that we used for the memorial flight. It doesn't matter which end you use either... Yes, I landed it over the top of the hanger area.
Also, it looks like the altitude is not being shown correctly when used as a take off point.
These may be mistakes on my part, this is wonderful and I think it looks great.
Thanks for the feedback Cat1, I'm hoping there are no issues with the height of the .XML runway. I was rather careful when fine tuning the height of the invisible platform to the visual model of the runway. As far as my extensive personal tests go, if you have the right aircraft for the length of runway (I have no idea how long it is.) - you can land on it nicely as long as you have made a gentle, controlled touchdown. Dropping your aircraft onto the runway the way you might drop a fighter onto regular tarmac will result in a 'Building Crash'. Even a rough Cessna landing has resulted in broken landing struts and a stopped prop, even if it doesn't 'Crash'.
Make no mistake though, if you are crafty and careful you should be able to land a few smaller planes on this baby without crashing. I've repeatedly brought in Steve's Tomcat, the Cessna 172 and 182, and the Robinson helicopter. I don't count the STOL craft in my collection...I'm curious what regular aircraft people can land on it with a little practice - not too much by my tests to date, you need a light smaller plane that can come in slower with full flaps.
A few tips and tricks to putting a few different planes down on the USS Steve Hinson;
Cessna 172 and 182:
Be lined up nicely and well above the deck for the start of your approach.
The carrier is bigger than it appears as you approach from afar, lining up with the runway can be a bit weird when there's no 'usual' horizon line in the background.
Be steady and consistent in your approach, begin a controlled descent before engaging flaps incrementally to 'full flaps' and come in low and long. In order to touch down just so and still stop before the hangar, you can just about swoop in a little below the level of the deck - giving just enough throttle to clear the deck edge and then stall smoothly onto the runway early. I can stop a 172 halfway down the runway.
The Grumman F-14 Tomcat ...Steve's masterpiece;
Same deal...set up a nice approach well above and well back from the Steve Hinson. Incrementally engage flaps to 'full flaps' as you get closer and closer, keeping a smooth, steady approach. If you start well back with flap implementation and come in long and low you'll have a chance. Being really steady and sure helps a lot...this bird floats in with ultimate control - a pure pleasure to land anywhere. I usually engage the airbrake 2 to 3 seconds before actual touchdown. I often end up in the hangar...and I often go through the back wall and down downdown...but I can put 'er on there and stop with some wheel-weaving and hard braking most times.
Looking forward to more feedback on the landable surface, although I can't see how to make it better...it matches up perfectly with the visual model in my FS9.
I guess .XML 'hard decks' are best suited to buildings and helipads, not so much for raised carriers, as the runway is crashable all the way down to ground level. (Fly under the runway area and you'll see what I mean.)
I haven't got hard surfaces to work with gmax yet so I'll work on alternative methods. This .XML method will have to do for now.
....Does it work if you type 'HARK' into the airport I.D. box of 'Select airport'?
Do you spawn properly and level on the runway if you choose 'aircarrier - active runway, or helipad 36? Anyone else having success or failure on the hard deck with various small aircraft (remember, this is a bit different and will take a bit of practice.)?
EDIT: Cat1, is your terrain mesh default or add-on?
The landing surface is specified in .XML as a certain altitude above ground level and should match perfectly in all FS9's. (Or so I figured...very curious here on landing on and spawning on this deck...thought I had nailed it. ) THX.
....Does it work if you type 'HARK' into the airport I.D. box of 'Select airport'?
Do you spawn properly and level on the runway if you choose 'aircarrier - active runway, or helipad 36?
It does work by typing in HARK, and I spawned in the middle but below deck, facing forward, away from the main engines. Didn't think to check the helipad.
harkonnen wrote:
....EDIT: Cat1, is your terrain mesh default or add-on?
Add-on... FS Genesis mesh and landclass.
I did not try flying under it, but I still had my settings set for the formation flight, crash detection and such was off.
Well, it can't be much fun to start your flight under the visual model of the flight deck. Crap. ...And thanks big time for the feedback, I was sort of ready to just upload this scenery file to a few sites...then I thought it might be a good idea to let some buddies have a try - just to be sure. Glad I did.
Here's the process I used to get this landable platform happening for me in my FS9.
Create the visual model of the landing surface in gmax - just the runway, or helipad, or what have you.
I remove the crashboxes for this deck in gmax and try to harden the surface with the 'Attachtool' script. This hardening of the platform with the Attachtool has never worked for me yet, hence the .XML coding for the hard surface as a starting point and landing area. Removing the crashboxes for your meshes is done with the Attachtool as well...and I'm never sure if I've done that right really.
So I now export this visual model as a scenery item, which produces two files; a .mdl file and an .XML file, side by side. The .XML file you open up in notepad and put in the coordinates and height for your visual model. Remember, I failed at the surface hardening in gmax - this is purely a scenery item, hopefully with crashboxes gone, but with no landable surface. Now I drag and drop this .XML file and the .mdl file onto the BGLcomp icon (both at the same time)..and it instantly kicks out a .BGL file. This file, in its 'scenery' folder, along with the separate 'texture' folder gives me my scenery in FS9.
Now I create another .XML file from the 'helipad' dummy I have - this file has the airport I.D., the country, region, state/province, city info, along with the coordinates that match the first .XML file AND the height AGL that this .XML helipad is supposed to be. Thing is, between the two .XML files the heights can't match...not for me anyway - I have to have a height set in the first .XML file and then keep changing the height in the second (helipad) .XML file, recompiling and restarting FS9 to see where I spawn. With some tedious editing I get the two files matching up; the visual model sits perfectly level with the .XML landing pad. Or so I thought....very weird how it's perfect in my sim and buggered in yours.
Anyway, once the Cessna sits her wheel bottoms perfectly on the deck upon spawning, I go back into gmax and build a model around my visual deck, re-export and re-compile.
Sooooo ....now what? I suppose I can start editing the .XML (LANDINGPAD.XML) platform height and sending off new .BGL's to see if it's not too goofy trying to level up the aircraft to the deck. Awww...holy crap, it's a pain in the ass even when I'm doing it just for my FS9 and can see right away what I did. This sucks. Hafta think on this one.
Anyone with default terrain mesh for FS9 give this thing a whirl? I don't really even know why the height is perfect in my FS9 and too low in RD and Cat1's.
This motivates me to try harder to figure out the Attachtool technique for hardening surfaces right in gmax....it's eluded me so far...there's about twenty posts of different natures here and there on how to do this in gmax, with partial descriptions of the method in each post! Finally I think I may have enough info to start testing again - the last effort in gmax was all lunchbag letdown.
I'm pretty long winded for a Wednesday, sorry...and thanks again for the feedback.
I do have an idea or two on syncing up these heights, but need to do some testing first...and it would be perfect to figure out my platforms in gmax as I need to do this for landable buildings, air carriers, and I'll need hardened surfaces for my 'Trench' air race track.
I've had two or three Crash To Desktop's in as many days while flying away from the carrier - swinging the view around to see the nose of the tomcat with the carrier receding in the background. I think it's just my poor ol' PIII with 512 megs of RAM having a hard time with the New York scenery along with the carrier and my camera swings. Just a head's up...I'm pretty sure it's my equipment being so weak and wimpy. Man, I push this stupid old IBM desktop to it's limits daily. I just got used to between 3 and 10 or 11 FPS average...and I can't enhance FS9 too much or I lose frames.
Yes, another computer and related gear is imminent.
I did another test last night with two different aircraft but I am in Wichita, Kansas on a business trip and didn't get to the results up before I left. It was basically the same result with the default cessna and a Otter.
Thanks for the info. Looks like I'll want to figure out hard surfaces in gmax. For some elusive reason my .XML heights sit a little differently in my sim.
Hmmm, just thought of something...I wonder if anything would change if I put the carrier over water...no terrain differences between sims. Well, lots of experimenting to do this weekend.
OMG I did it! Finally figured out how to attach a hard, landable surface to selected polygons in gmax. I bummed and begged around the developer forums over the last long while for an idiot-proof tutorial on the process...sometimes I got partial answers from helpful folks that assumed I had a brain, lately I've been ignored because I think I'm a pain in the ass and they want me to figure it out for myself. Well, it worked because I exported a massive green box to FS9 and was able to land my Cessna 172 on it. A big deal for me at that instant as I was fully expecting to fall through the top as soon as I landed....but this time there was the satisfying squeak of rubber on cement and I was on top of this thing. Unbelievable. It took finding and reading no less than about 15 forum posts over time and then combining that info with the instructions provided in the documents for the 'Attachtool' script that I installed into gmax. Seems I was trying to harden selected polygons without detaching them from the mesh first, along with 2 or 3 other random mistakes as I did tests.
If anyone needs the info, let me know and I'll try to re-create the process in detail for you as a mini-tutorial.
Looks like the USS Steve Hinson may have a life after all...along with various structures with landable surfaces...and of course, I now have to try to build the 'Trench Of Doom' air race course! (When you say 'Trench Of Doom' you have to use a deep, booming voice, and add your own echoes. )
Thank you Mel, believe it or not I searched for some AFCAD info over the weekend - knowing it could be done but not how - but came up short. D'loaded the tute and am about to read...great to have another tool and source of info for these surfaces, perfect.
My obvious next test after my first ever gmax hard surface was to see if the whole mess could be cloned and scaled, and have all the surfaces remain hardened. Works just fine but I believe I have to remove crash boxes from all poly's on the clones. The big original block is just fine but on the smaller, cloned ones you crash at the edges of the block...looks like clones grow new crash boxes that need removing, or I messed up somewhere! (The 'crash detection boxes' are slightly larger than the actual object that they are a part of....so there's a lip, or small perimeter at the edges that crashes you if you try to taxi off of it. The landable surface itself [top square] automatically removes crashboxes when converted into the 'platform' in gmax.
More experimenting to do, but I'm really really pleased that I've finally gotten somewhere with actually hardening scenery stuff right in gmax!
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) THX. 
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