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Feature Wishlist

12bPilot

12bPilot

Messages
611
Country
switzerland
Please use this thread to place feature request. I will collect the ones that I think are feasible in this first post.
Implemented features are shaded in light grey.

Animation System
  • Display (different) subparts of model during forward and reverse animation
    • This can also be attached visual effects as created with the Effects SDK (for example a warning beacon light for a hangar door)
  • Play (different) sounds during forward and reverse animation (e.g. warning horn)
Conditional Visibility Variables
  • Hour of Day, Minute of Hour
  • Geographical Area of user-aircraft
  • Altitude of user-aircraft
  • Distance to user-aircraft
  • Day of week
  • Day of month
  • Year
System Solutions
  • Visual Docking Guidance System
Developer Tools
  • Error logging, XML validation
Trigger Text-Menu
  • Sort triggered objects by distance to user-aircraft
  • Register custom key-stroke for calling the text-menu
 
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Is it possible to go to a certain frame in an animation based on conditions?
This would allow for multiple model states without actual models being swapped in and out. For example:
an analogue clock with moving hands based on the time of day. This is the optimal way I can think of doing it. unless you can rotate the hands around the x axis.
I don't actually want a clock but I think it it might be a good example and have lots of uses.
 
nz255 said:
Is it possible to go to a certain frame in an animation based on conditions?
This would allow for multiple model states without actual models being swapped in and out. For example:
an analogue clock with moving hands based on the time of day. This is the optimal way I can think of doing it. unless you can rotate the hands around the x axis.
I don't actually want a clock but I think it it might be a good example and have lots of uses.
Click to expand...

I'm rethinking the way how to drive animations. To enable another feature (play effect along animation) the engine would the current keyframe of the animation to determine the end of the animation (stop the effect). For this, I need to drive the animation by the tool itself implementing some kind of keyframe counter local to each object.
As a side product, it would then be possible to jump to specific keyframes depending on conditions. So yes this could be implemented.

As for the clock example, I plan to add the Minute of hour (0-59) and hour of day (0-23) to the list of 'VariableDrivenRotations'. As the name implies, the model will turn around a defined axis driven by the variable. It's just a solution for the analog clock without using animation.
 
Would be nice, that we can use SODE also for Prepar3D. In Prepar3D we currently loose all the nice things like windsock, landing-T, PAPI and SODE could bring them back to us again.
So the installer should also install the tool for P3D. I made some first tests with SODE in P3D (manual installation) and will report on a second thread here.
 
Some kind of an error log would be very helpful. I add more features in my xml-file and don´t know, why they not appear.
If SODE finds out an error during xml-analysis, an entry in a log-file would help a lot to find the error.
 
Jeffrey Stähli said:
I'm rethinking the way how to drive animations. To enable another feature (play effect along animation) the engine would the current keyframe of the animation to determine the end of the animation (stop the effect). For this, I need to drive the animation by the tool itself implementing some kind of keyframe counter local to each object.
As a side product, it would then be possible to jump to specific keyframes depending on conditions. So yes this could be implemented.

As for the clock example, I plan to add the Minute of hour (0-59) and hour of day (0-23) to the list of 'VariableDrivenRotations'. As the name implies, the model will turn around a defined axis driven by the variable. It's just a solution for the analog clock without using animation.
Click to expand...

Findings so far: FSX SimConnect SDK is sooo restrictive:banghead: I tried 3 different ways (read: workarounds) to trigger effects, all of which failed in some aspect (sound or visual). Especially the sound part is really tricky. So I'm not sure if I'll be able to provide this functionality. I see that the Prepar3D SDK has a API-function for triggering effects.
 
Perhaps the effects need to be attached to a tiny ( or dummy ) object, then compiled as a model. Then that dummy can be conditionally exposed?

Dick
 
About VDSG, is it possible to have information of the airplane like the way Actigate does? The VDSG has information of the airplane.
 
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Are you sure the draw order issues aren't to do with the effects themselves? I think the method Dick suggested is sound -- that's how I'm triggering the fire effects in FS Active Fires.
 
Yes, I'm pretty sure that an effect attached to a dummy model conflicts visually with nearby placed SimObjects.
I tried to trigger the attached effect with a Visibility parameter. Whereas the visual part (effect) is ok now, the sound is not shut off when the part is hidden.

Tic, info about user-aircraft is a planned feature of the VDGS.
 
Jeffrey Stähli said:
Yes, I'm pretty sure that an effect attached to a dummy model conflicts visually with nearby placed SimObjects.
I tried to trigger the attached effect with a Visibility parameter. Whereas the visual part (effect) is ok now, the sound is not shut off when the part is hidden.
Click to expand...

Just a thought but is it not posibile that a sim object can have its own sound folder, like some of the other sim object? or does the user have to be in full control (e.g like an aircraft) to have the sound played. For example, in an aircraft you close the canopy and a sound is played, you start the engines a sound is played. How is this achieved? Is it not possible with all simobjects?

;)
 
Well, to enable sounds along an animation was still on my to-do list, so I gave it another try.
To make SODE work efficiently, we need to use SimObject of category 'Viewer' that has their internal simulation of states (like body velocities and such) disabled per default. For that category, most of the system gimmicks used by aircraft (electrical, light, sound system and lots of variables as well) is not used. It would also be hard to drive those by a Simconnect client.
So I ended up in writing a small DirectSound Engine within SODE and first tests were successfull. I still need to implement some sort of attenuation using the distance to the object from the user aircraft and handle all the different simulator states (pause, master sound off). But the basic framework is now built into SODE and it is really cool to hear stuff going when you trigger the animation :)

I will also need the sound engine to play a "radio click" sound for the new feature "pilot controlled lightning using radio frequency".
 
Jeffrey first of all thanks for your amazing software! I am using it for several things in my scenery. (Hangar doors, wind turbines, etc.)

It would be nice if the hotkey for the menu can be customized in cfg. I am using "S" for the next view and every time I press "TAB+S" the view is changing. Something like "CTRL+SHIFT+F11" would be nicer for me.
 
Hi,

If the TAB+S key can not be registered by FSX, it will look for alternatives, see the SODE entry in the Add-Ons menu at the top. It will list the registered key stroke combo.

Having a customizable key through a cfg file is a viable option. I try to integrate something like this for the next version.
 
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