Thinking about some helicopter AI - is it likely to work?

Watching on youtube how the US Navy does replenishment by helicopter between ships, it seems that the helo may or may not actually land, depending on what it is doing. Sometimes it merely hovers close above the deck, dropping off or picking up cargo. I am hoping to replicate some of this in AI.

 

I guess the first question is, will AI work with helicopters?

 

Assuming that it will, the way I was going to do this, is that using ADE or AFCAD, I was going to put two helodecks with invisible surfaces on each ship. One on the deck itself, on the 'H' helodeck texture, ("A" in the attached pic), and another, dead vertical and slightly above the deck ("B" in the pic, with the vertical height shown greatly exaggerated for clarity). The idea being that a helo "landing" on [invisible] helodeck B would look like it was hovering above deck A. a possible enhancement might include for each runway a landing runway per se and then a parking area, which might mimic what youtube shows a little more accurately, but that's a fair way away yet.

 

The flight path would be as indicated by the red line: 1A -> 2B -> 1B -> 2A -> 1A. The timing would be such that the helo du jour would stay on its "runway" or parking area for a few minutes then move on.

 

Is there any a priori reason why this would not work?

 

Has anyone done any helicopter AI? Are there any significant differences between this and traditional fixed wing AI?

 

 

Steve from Mudgee

I guess the first question is, will AI work with helicopters?[/Quote]

Most helicopter work as AI, as long as you use "Stemme_as_helicopter_1.air" file instead of default file. The Afcad need a runway of 300 ft lenght.

 

Is there any a priori reason why this would not work?[/Quote]

AI helicopter don't hover straight upwards, they need some 50 to 100 ft before taking off. For your projet I would suggest to use Heli2009 of Flight1. They will hover straight up from very small surfaces like on ships. And no need modified air files. However, you can't schedule the flights at certain days or with diiferent time intervalls like AI traffic files. I use it with a Jetpack, Skywalker and Mirage IIIV Balzac (VTOL).

 

 

Has anyone done any helicopter AI? [/Quote]

Modified "flyables" - more than ninety just for one heli show. The only one I couldn't get flying up to know is the Sycamore.

 

Are there any significant differences between this and traditional fixed wing AI?[/Quote]

Most AI helicopter are taking off after taxiing just some feets.

 

Bernard

I have seen AI helicopters flying around while I look at the different AI aircraft around me in the air. Mostly mil helicopters in Russia. Not much help of an answer, just confirming it is possible.

 

I have never seen them taking off or landing though, only either on the ground or already in the air...probably included in addon AI package.

Here the said JetPack. With Heli 2009 it lands exactly whre it should. BTW, the flying objects renders no sound, and they can't be followed with Traffic Toolbox. I forgot to specify that.

 

Bernard

 

Meanwhile I remembered of an other AI helicopter: it's the AI AH-64 Apache released one and half year ago by MWAI with some packages (Israeli Air Force f.i.). It takes-off vertically and stops immediately after touchdown. Since I never saw any other helicopter with this behaviour.

 

Bernard

Look here, I bought this pack and they take off and land virtical:

 

I haven't much experience in FSX, yet, with about 10 days worth, total, but I know in FS9 the choppers work great as AI packages. The biggest problem I can see with doing vertrep on the ai ships in FSX is that they move around. A lot. I don't see a way, unless you not only make them move from ship to ship (always reminds me of bees in a field of flowers...), but also duplicate the ship's path(s) as well. Probably doable, but it seems to me that it would complicate their flight paths a bit. Like, a BIG bit.

That's just my take n the whole thing, sorry I'm not more help...

Pat☺

Thanx everyone for the great replies. I will stagger on.

 

 

Steve from Mudgee

i haven't much experience in fsx, yet, with about 10 days worth, total ...the biggest problem i can see with doing vertrep on the ai ships in fsx is that they move around. A lot.

Pat☺

 

fsx?

Sorry, gwillmot, I forgot your FS9 tendancies. Disregard my post, big G. It wouldn't make any sense to you. No frame of reference...

:D

Pat☺

Pat, my ships are totally static, not AI ones, so they don't move around. Thanx for your encouraging remarks.

 

Steve from Mudgee.

Oh! okies, that'll make your life easier, no doubt. I'll keep an eye open (best I can do, only have one left, after the horse/motorcycle incident) for anything forthcoming!

Pat☺

I have not long returned to FS so I'm still very rustry but I did a bit with ai helicopters years ago, I had them landing on a carrier plus doing a mock recon over ships by using waypoints above the ship/s.

In those days I/we had to change a few things in the cfg of the heli, they used to fly like a Censsna.

I did at one point play around with the sound files and had the chopper sound to them, I must have spent hours tweaking to get get this effect.

You could take a look a Hovercontrol and see what those guys have been doing, I'm sure by now there has been some improvement in getting ai to act like a heli instead of a fixed wing like the link I posted earlier in this thread.

Another interesting thing I played with was having ai Osprey, I got some decent results on those along with a bit of help from a few other guys who were also playing with them.

Recon over the ships through waypoints! What a great idea! Hadn't thought of that. Thanx for the thoughts.

 

Steve from Mudgee

Yes the recon over ships, I used navy or coastguard heli's flying around a ship, I created an ai flight to the waypoint that I place above the ship, as it circled a few times it gave the impression it was doing the recon then it left and flew back to base.

Something like this here:

 

 

Bernard

Bernard, your work is excellent. This is exactly the direction that I wish to go. Your shipwreck is magnificent.

 

This year I am going to learnt Photoshop. One of the projects I hope to do as part of this learning is to create a texture file that will sit on top of the water, that will be suitably blurry, partly transparent and correctly coloured. In the context of your Torrey Canyon, I would put it between the bow and the stern to give the "impression" of the rest of the hull underwater. I anticipate that this will take me several months. If I get a result worth showing I will post it as you have. The only other thing I would add is an oil slick :D

 

 

Steve from Mudgee.

The only other thing I would add is an oil slick

 

There are CFS2 oil slicks which can be added as AI (!). Unfortunately they only work with default water texture and aren't suitable with mine.

 

Bernard

An Oil Slick as AI??? Magnifique. Yes, I noted your quite different water texture. It looks very artistic. I can't decide whether the dark water in the foreground is a lighting effect or an oil slick (again!).

 

Steve from Mudgee

Once I had a suitable dark water texture and it looked perfect.

 

 

Bernard

Bernard, you are truly a leader in this area. I have seen no-one else who had tried to do this. I can only hope to follow you. You have given me a target to aim for :D

 

But I do have some comments and questions.

 

In this image, the black square outline of the texture file is very obvious. Why is that? Have you not made the texture transparent where there is no oil slick, or are you suffering from the problem caused by "ground objects cast shadows"? I ask because I had what looks like a similar issue with the wake behind my aircraft carrier.

 

Having looked at some images of the "real" Torrey canyon, I note that there was a lot of spray on the waterline parts of the ship. Have you tried getting some spray effects happeneing? If not, have you tried (as I intend to) to paint the texture of the ship's "current waterline" a ragged white to at least give the illusion of some spray?

 

Are you sure that this is the Torrey Canyon? Because I also looked at the "real" Amoco Cadiz shipwreck, and your model actually looks more like that than the Torrey.

 

 

Finally, have you made any progress on your James Bond underwater bomber?

 

 

Steve from Mudgee.

In this image, the black square outline of the texture file is very obvious. Why is that? Have you not made the texture transparent where there is no oil slick, or are you suffering from the problem caused by "ground objects cast shadows"?

 

I used it as it's available at http://simviation.com//lair/cfs2sully.htm. As said before, with a darker water texture the dark blue squares won't be seen anymore.

 

Having looked at some images of the "real" Torrey canyon, I note that there was a lot of spray on the waterline parts of the ship. Have you tried getting some spray effects happeneing? If not, have you tried (as I intend to) to paint the texture of the ship's "current waterline" a ragged white to at least give the illusion of some spray?

Sorry, but I never intended to create an historically perfect and accurate situation. I used one of the static ships created by CalClassic. In my opinion still better than any of those modern tankers of Gmax ships or something like that.

 

Are you sure that this is the Torrey Canyon?

Not at all. But anyone is welcome to create an exact model! Therefore I deleted the annotation, and I will be more careful in future. So now it just remains a commun shipwreck somewhere.

 

Finally, have you made any progress on your James Bond underwater bomber?

No.

 

 

In fact that all isn't anymore the subject of your initial post. So let's go back to that again.

 

Bernard

OK ....why?