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Cannot see custom made jetway??

jtanabodee

jtanabodee

Resource contributor
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3,924
Country
thailand
Hi Jeffrey,
I am still struggling with SODE jetway.
I can use your example jetway in my project now. I started to understand how XML handles all the things and how the structure of the files is. I am telling you in steps what I did so you can pin point what could be wrong.

  1. I have done my own jetway and put LOD in. I use LOD 600 and LOD 400 in Gmax.
  2. Then I ran the script and it came out successfully without any warning. I got the text file to use with jetway.cfg .
  3. I made a folder for jetway and named it model.jetway_T3_model1 (there is two model in the terminal). Then I put jetway.cfg, jetway_T3_SODE.mdl in and made a model.cfg file model=jetway_T3_SODE.
  4. Put all the require textures to the folder texture (day, night and specular textures).
  5. Made a sim.cfg by copy your example sim.cfg and modified it to fit my model folder.
  6. Make an xml in the folder XML and modified you SODE_EXAMPLE.XML to fit my models name in sim.cfg and make parking 315 in ZBAA as an experiment. I used one jetway as your example jetway and another as my custom jetway.
  7. I got into FSX:SE and I can see your jetway. The menu has two jetways options but I can see only your example jetway, not mine.
The only one different is static jetway, I haven't used it yet. I delete the static jetway out to test. Is that the problem? Static jetway is the must?
Thanks for your help.
 
No you don't need to have a static jetway.

Is it displaying ok without it?

Is it defined properly in the .xml?

<SODE>

<Stand AfcadICAO="KAMA" AfcadGateName="Gate_A" AfcadParkingNumber="2" CustomDesignator="Terminal A;02">
<SimObject Name="Jetway GATE_A 2">
<Placement Lat="35.2188343182206" Lon="-101.706039905548" Alt="0#AGL" Hdg="115.0"/>
<Model SimTitle="KAMA_JETWAY_2" StaticSimTitle="KAMA_Jetway_2_Static">
<Jetway InitialState="75;50;75;50"/>
</Model>

Make sure they correspond correctly to the sim.cfg names:

[General]
Category=Viewer
Module=SODE

[fltsim.0]
title=KAMA_JETWAY_3
model=KAMA_JETWAY_3
texture=

[fltsim.1]
title=KAMA_JETWAY_3_Static
model=KAMA_JETWAY_3_Static
texture=

[fltsim.2]
title=KAMA_JETWAY_2
model=KAMA_JETWAY_2
texture=

[fltsim.3]
title=KAMA_JETWAY_2_Static
model=KAMA_JETWAY_2_Static
texture=

And these correspond correctly to the model names and the folder names in the simobjects folder:

[models]
normal= KAMA_JETWAY_2

and

[models]
normal= KAMA_Jetway_2_Static


For the sake of my sanity I named the folder, and the model the same bloody name.

Static gates do not need a jetway .cfg.


If you want me to send you my whole SODE setup I can put it in a zip for you to have a look at.
 
Thanks Shaun, I will try again. I think I did it correctly.
I did add empty LOD in MCX. Does it cause problem?
I did the way you did, give the same name of MDL to the folder, that makes life easier.
 
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You can do that for the static, not for the animated one.

I only used LOD 400 for all of the animated one, and generated LODs for the static one in MCX.

Don't forget to have a skinned mesh in the animated one's materials, and export as a skinned mesh and the animations: sure you know this already, I forgot about it once and it took me ages to remember.
 
So, there should be only one material. I wonder if I have interior inside the glass jetway. If we need to see inside, the material inside need to be opaque. That may cause problem. I will try another way.
Thanks for the tips.
 
I did a test. I used the example jetway and applied my texture to it and export. I found the same problem, I just could not see the jetway even though there was a menu to be selected. Does SODE jetway support day, night and specular texture?
 
Oh Shaun, I found what I did wrong. Nothing to do with the material nor the XML and files system. I forgot to put custom made cube environmental map to the texture folder. I have my custom made jetway in ZBAA already.
Bravo!
But I do have another problem. Lot of parkings in ZBAA is angle, not square to the jetway direction and I got the waring that the jetway is too far from the parking. How should I get away from this problem?. I think I might need another longer model of jetway.
 
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I set the root rotation min/max to -90 to 90 and same for the head.

If this isn't enough, you can literally change the angle at which the initial bit of the walkway comes out of the top. Say by 20 degrees, then set the jetway placement heading to 20 less than it is initially.

For the length issues. I make each bridge as long as possible inside the next one, and you can make them as long as you need to.

Remember they will never be set a 0 extension, so the bridges A and B can go right into the head even if it looks strange in 3DS at 0 extension.

SODE.jpg
 
Thanks Shaun, I will try that tomorrow. At least there are 3 types of jetways already. I don't want to add any one more.
I notice that if I use LOD 400 only the jetway disappear in some angle or distance while they are working I need to use another LOD 200 for the animated one.
Static jetway comes into use when that jetway is not in use, doesn't it?
 
Yeah, static until the jetway is selected in SODE.

Increase the bounding box size in MCX special tools if it isn't showing at a certain angle for the static one.

And use the model tweaker to increase the radius of the animated one so it displays the animation in FSX from more than 20m away.
 
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Ok, I got it. I didn't understand at first why we need to increase the bounding box. Now I think LOD for animated ine is useless since the airplane is in the parking, not flying. The whole detailed jetway doesn't hurt anything.
Thanks Shaun.
 
Now the problems solved. I got all my jetway running.
The animated jetway will bounce to the most turn to the left if I set the root to the range -30 to 90 but it can work to match the angled parking. I set up the static jetway to match the animated one. It is quite confusing since the script rotate in in percentage but the set up in animation is in degree from the center line.
Here is the video:
 
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Congrats Tic!

Some hints: Negative angle is perfect, because the jetway can handle more situations, -90 to +90 (as Shaun does it) is even covering practically all cases!
If you are not happy about the jetway being turned to the left of the center axis, you can modify the intial pose! It is handled in the InitialState of the jetway xml. So for 0 degress (on axis), you'd need keyframe 25 as initial root rotation, since your range goes from -30 to +90 => 120 degrees sweep, you want to rotate 30° to reach the center axis -> 120/30 = 4; 100 keyframes / 4 gives 25.
Rebuild the static one to match.

I am planning to release a beta of my graphical tool (based on Whisplacer) next week, stay tuned! You can then place your jetways live in the sim, manipulate the initial position keyframes also live, etc.
It will be a huge time saver, I promise. The foundation is a finalized AFCAD/ADE file in terms of parkings (names and numbers), so I hope you have that ready ;-)
 
Jeffrey Stähli said:
Congrats Tic!

If you are not happy about the jetway being turned to the left of the center axis, you can modify the intial pose! It is handled in the InitialState of the jetway xml. So for 0 degress (on axis), you'd need keyframe 25 as initial root rotation, since your range goes from -30 to +90 => 120 degrees sweep, you want to rotate 30° to reach the center axis -> 120/30 = 4; 100 keyframes / 4 gives 25.
Rebuild the static one to match.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Oh, I see. That is how to calculate. I got it.
Jeffrey Stähli said:
You can then place your jetways live in the sim, manipulate the initial position keyframes also live, etc.
It will be a huge time saver, I promise. The foundation is a finalized AFCAD/ADE file in terms of parkings (names and numbers), so I hope you have that ready ;-)
Click to expand...
That would be a perfect one solution. We can have visually feed back how it looks in Sim. It is quite hard to do by the numbers in xml. I think it would be benefit to VGDS too. Perfect align with the parking. I wonder if it is possible to make T mark fits to the information on the VGDS. The airplane can park just right on the T mark according to the infromation on VGDS.

I guess it is hard to do that since there is no information of the front wheel of the airplane. But we can edit that, can't we?
 
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