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AI aircraft turning circle

jgarnold

jgarnold

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australia
I have two float planes (I created from the flyable ones) and after landing and taxiing to the dock one will make the turn (180 degree) correctly to line up at the parking spot (using the 'plumbing method' or drive through parking method) but the other one will NOT turn as tightly and ends up running over the top of the dock.
I checked the contact points in aircraft.cfg and NEITHER aircraft had a contact point class 5 (rudder). I understand that this contact point stores the maximum rudder angle (at position/argument 8 on the line) . Anyway I created a contact point class 5 with maximum rudder angle of 50 and it made NO difference.

Is there something else I can change so that the aircraft turns more tightly.

Thanks
 
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Hi,

The tightness of the turn is usually most dependent on the location of the gear contact points. If it is set up as a taildragger (center gear is behind the main gear) the turn radius seems to be greater than with a nose wheel. Also, check the turn angle value in the nose/tail gear line of the contact points - the greater the value (up to 85 or so) the sharper the turn.

The 5 value contact points have no effect on AI aircraft because those are values for a water rudder. AI aircraft are land only.
 
Thanks Ronald and Tom.

I don't know how to control water taxi speed although the 'rogue' floatplane (turbo Otter) visually moves forward quite slowly after reaching the first 'node' in the taxipath and doesn't seem to taxi any faster than the 'good' floatplane (Beaver).

I will check the contact points although I will have to work out which ones are for nose/tail gear.

Maybe it's also affected by the vertical position of the floats and in relation to the vertical position of the wheels (wheels used by AI for taxiing on the taxipaths)?

(added later)
I tried changing the 'steering angle' to a much higher value but it didn't seem to make any difference.
In desperation I copied all the contact points (wheel and float only) from my AI Beaver float plane (which turns ok) to my AI Otter float plane. The Otter then turned much tighter but not quite tight enough so there must be something else affecting it.
 
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Perhaps the greater empty_weight may affect that too? No clue.
 
Thanks Tom

I tried changing the empty weight both higher and lower without any noticeable difference.

I also tried adding lots of nodes so that there isn't much distance between each node so that the taxiing float plane doesn't travel in a straight line very far but that didn't seem to work either - maybe there is a minimum distance that works between each node?
I will create a thread on the ADE forum.

I also tried moving a nearby dock further away to allow a larger turning circle - I had been trying to make the scenery as close to the real think as possible using a Google Earth satellite image as the background. The turning circle was obviously still too tight for an Otter.

I then changed the angle my taxiway approaches the dock so instead of approaching in in an almost direct router from the water runway and also parallel to the dock before the 180 degree turn it now approaches a point to the left of the dock (further away from the dock) before making the final turn which gives a larger turning circle.
Well it will work for one of the two parking spots so better than nothing (see image).
sechelt taxi new.jpg
I will change the radius of the second (bottom) parking spot to prevent the Otter (with a larger wingspan) even trying to dick there.

Strange though that the Beaver turned ok and I even copied the contact points from the Beaver to the Otter.

Anyway time to 'move on'.
 
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I think that I have solved this problem - yes a year later but better late than never as they say.

I added contact points for the float rudder which were missing even in the user flyable DHC3 Otter. I looked at the FSX included DHC2 Beaver floatplane and noticed it had contact points for the float rudders so I copying those lines and made a guess at the values for longitudinal, lateral and vertical positions using those for the DHC2 as a refernce and it now turns (as an AI aircraft) much better.
 
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