Comments on: I Feel Manipulated

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:01:37 +0000

Dan 31, we have an excellent cockpit builder's sub-forum at http://www.x-plane.org. You'll find all manner of help interfacing X-Plane with physical controls like rotary switches, potentiometers and the like. The flight sim world is awash in quality products to make this sort of thing happen with both off-the-shelf options as well as parts to roll your own control panels.

My apologies for "manipulating" your blog, by the way, Ben…again!

By: Dan 31

Dan 31 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:26:11 +0000

And what about real button ?
It's perfect to use a mouse for control, but it could be usefull to be able to use real one. I know there are a lot of USB button available, but not so much rotating

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:42:50 +0000

The problem, unfortunately, is that X-Plane landing gear is very, very simple. When you model the hydraulics of the retractions, for instance, they cannot be accurately modeled with purely linear rotations and translations. One mount point or the other will wander a bit as the main elements of the gear retract. The same thing happens with shock absorbers that are more complex than simple oleos. I understand that IK integration is likely beyond the scope of X-Plane. A bit of overkill. However, it would be good for those of us that model complex mechanical systems within the sim to be able to manipulate objects more realistically. Perhaps a simple proportional or curve calculator could be implemented so that IK could be simulated simply, rather than injecting a whole bucketload of code.

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:46:43 +0000

Hi Steve,

In-sim IK resolver...very very low chance of it happening. I think the IK resolver is really needed for the tool chain - that is, a lot of the time you want the IK resolver to speed up the process of authoring particular animations.

(I can see how if you have a truly independent set of gear, you might want this, but you really want to be modeling the same mechanism that x-plane models.)

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:28:45 +0000

Most cool, Ben. Fun to find that there always seems to be more depth to the creative possibilities in X-Plane than one can imagine. On a related note….what are the chances of X-Plane ever having an IK solver (now that you mention it)? That would make worlds of difference to some of the more complex landing gear animations, and no doubt other animation capabilities as well.