Short SC7 Skyvan - The Shed in the shed

[Shawn]

Looks fantastic, do you have any video of the sim?

cheers
Shawn

[meatbomber]

Well not a real serious video but something I guess everyone would like to try in real live (sound was only in the earphones I really need to make a better video wall around with the sound on too)

http://youtu.be/UpD8dhqpclQ

[Matt Olieman]

Nice landing

[meatbomber]

As the flying season is coming up the work on the sim is going to go slow now for a few months as we won't have much time to do much on the sim, but for mid Mai there is a week of systems programming coming when James our XPlane model maker is coming over from the UK for a 5 days session of programming and fine tuning of the performance (it's great when you have access to the real plane and if in doubt can just make a flight to see how the real one behaves )

once the x-Plane model does all the real plane does and also the systems have been modeled we can proceed with the final stage of interfacing. Thank good the Skyvan isn't all that complicated an airplane I've been doing some digging in the xplane innards and plane maker when making the simavio instruments and centralized warning panel and some things In Xplane really leave me scratching my head in disbelief, for example there is lots of options for nearly any system but hydraulics, why? It doesn't even have a switch (tho there is a dataref for it)
AC power is similar, it's there but that's about it. Lots of this stuff will probably have to be programmed in SASAL with LUA scripts, we shall see.

as for future (next winter) developments, we been looking at motion platforms and the other big thing would be building the MIP with real gauges.

To that I have a question, does someone know a way of getting Xplane data output as milli volt/ volts? There are lots of gauges that could be stimmulated rather than simulated like voltmeters, ammeters, oil PX and temp, fuelflow, OAT and the such

cheers
Mb

[meatbomber]

The second pro dongle arrived so we can finally use the secondary machine as IOS or for formation flying

heres a short clip of formation flying the other plane is flown with a Saitek joke that's not exactly smooth.

http://youtu.be/Wzt0B40AMcQ

[meatbomber]

not much progress on the hardware side of things, but huge progress on the software side.

Our Skyvan now has all her Centralized warning panel working as it is supposed to.
The Engines have been completely overridden from the X-plane stock simulation. We are now using LUA scripts to control the engines like a real TPE331 does with underspeed governor, overspeed governor, prop governor and manual pitch control in Beta mode, surprise surprise the engine is now indicating everyting as it should
Also included is the unfeathering pump for real windmilling air-starts as well as unfeathering on the ground. etc etc.

Next work in progress is to get the hydraulics to work probperly, here X-plane is very uncooperative as there is no way to have a hydraulic reservoir that holds pressure with the pump off.. well we will see how we proceed about this

cheers
MB

[Avro748]

Will you be releasing the Skyvan Software you've developed?
Keep up the good work.

[meatbomber]

I guess that's up to James he's started the xplane model I'm just providing the data, and real life experience and little bits of script here and there

but i already told him the engines I think more people will be interested in! I've had a look at a couple of pay ware xplane TPE 331 planes like the jetstream and MU2 and was somewhat underwhelmed by their engine modeling

[meatbomber]

Thanos Motion controller card with 6DOF extension ordered today my oh my its going to be interesting !
Thomas is really keen on building a motion platform for the sim, i think tho we`ll need to make a major teardown and rebuild before we put teh cab on teh platform because as of now there is lots of duct tape and loose hardware and i doubt th sim would withstand teh rigours of motion for more than a few seconds

[xplanematt]

Your project is looking great! I have been watching your progress. It's nice to see such a unique aircraft modeled.

I don't have motion, but I have hauled my sim up to Kansas twice, and once down to a local airport (about 40 mins away). It has been lifted two stories on a forklift, shoved onto trailers, dropped, tilted, twisted, lifted up with a pry bar, and I will tell you this: over-engineer everything! I went heavy-duty on my structure, but a lot of my interfaces and wiring on more like what you describe with the tape and loose hardware, solder points with no strain relief, etc. Just look at how real aircraft are put together and try to do something along those lines....although you can probably skip the safety wire on everything. Since my next sim is based on a real cockpit, I have a little jump start on the wiring, but I'm still going to take a lot more care this time on how I mount my interfaces, how wiring is secured, and how I handle connection points and splicing of new wire into the old aircraft harness.

I see you're using Fly-Elise for your visual stuff, but you also mention using pro USB keys for X-Plane...have you not tried the pro-only visual options that X-Plane offers? I have thought long and hard on this, and I have come to suspect that you can never really get spherical/cylindrical rendering "right" with post-render software. Fly-Elise might have gotten around this since they are able to actually work within X-Plane's render loop (as opposed to MSFS options that have to take the planar image in its final form and bend/twist it around). But at any rate, you have a ton of cylindrical rendering options built-in if using a pro key.