Never Ceases to Amaze Me When Screwy Things Happen Like This

Hi all:

I'd like some ideas on this ridiculous issue. It concerns the Carenado King Air, a very nice aircraft. Except that for me in my system the aircraft slowly rotates and jiggles while on the tarmac. I can honestly say in almost 20 years of simming I have never seen anything like this. It sort of oscillates back and forth ever so slowly. From inside the cockpit the scenery rotates very slowly then rotates back in the other direction with jiggling like on a bumpy road. I have zeroed the winds, turned off AccuFeel, no change. Substituting other aircraft, problem goes away. Could this be some weird anomaly with the King Air? I googled it and came up empty.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on this "Weird Harold".

Thanks

Hi,

I had a similar problem several years ago that turned out to be one of the MOI values in the Aircraft.cfg. This was with a freeware aircraft and the values were off by a factor of ten, but it might not hurt to check the Carenado's values against a similar sized aircraft.

Jim F.

That has to be it. Roll moi. Double all of them (just to make sure-won't hurt) then make the roll moi 4x what it is. You can then play with values, reducing them gradually. Gennerally the MOI's are 1x for pitch, 2x for roll, and 4x for yaw. So pick a value, say '30000.000' for roll. Then you would use '60000.000' for pitch and '120000.000 for yaw'. Good luck.

Chuck B

Napamule

I had a freeware FSX Ryan that kept jiggling and dancing on the ground and got this reply about a fix when I asked about it in the forum (sorry can't remember the guy's name), it's something to do with contact points, and it worked..:)

DANCING RYAN FIX

Kid,

Went and got the cnt pts I used in both FS9 and FSX for you. Try them out. Hope this helps you solve the shaking.

[contact_points] //cb cnt pts as in FS9 AND FSX for Ryan PT-16.

point.0=1, -15.600, 0.000, 0.190, 1268.0, 0, 0.238, 45.000, 0.330, 2.5, 0.800, 0.0, 0.0, 0. 0.0, 0.0

point.1=1, 0.100, -3.300, -3.100, 1268.0, 1, 0.512, 0.000, 0.400, 2.5, 0.700, 0.0, 0.0, 2, 0.0, 0.0

point.2=1, 0.100, 3.300, -3.100, 1268.0, 2, 0.512, 0.000, 0.400, 2.5, 0.700, 0.0, 0.0, 3, 0.0, 0.0

point.3=2, -3.000, -1.500, -1.100, 1387.4, 0, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.0, 0.000, 0.0, 0.0, 5, 0.0, 0.0

point.4=2, -3.000, 1.500, -1.100, 1387.4, 0, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.0, 0.000, 0.0, 0.0, 6, 0.0, 0.0

point.5=2,-13.300, 0.000, 0.200, 1787.4, 0, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.0, 0.000, 0.0, 0.0, 9, 0.0, 0.0

point.6=2, 3.300, 0.000, 0.200, 1787.4, 0, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.0, 0.000, 0.0, 0.0, 9, 0.0, 0.0

//point.7=1,1.100, -14.420, 0.350, 1268.0, 1, 0.512, 0.000, 0.300, 0.5, 2.700, 0.0, 0.0, 2, 0.0, 0.0

//point.8=1,1.100, 14.420, 0.350, 1268.0, 2, 0.512, 0.000, 0.300, 0.5, 2.700, 0.0, 0.0, 3, 0.0, 0.0

static_pitch=12.000

static_cg_height=2.840

//Notice I changed tail wheel size (0.529 to 0.238). Just being thouroughlyexactomundo (ha).

//As you can see, I commented out the 'wing wheelies' in both FS9 and FSX. Did not effect

// performance. I believe this will not do any 'good' at ALL. (also has brakes?-no way!!).

I reasonable place to start is get the MOI values from the default King Air and go from there.

-Pv-

I found an entry in the AirEd air file editor's help that specifies it's the Aircraft.cfg's PITCH moi value that one should increase for aircraft bounce on the runway. I don't mean to be argumentative, I just ran across it when editing an .air file for something else entirely (flap settings believe it or not). When I saw this thread I just thought I'd throw it out there, for what it's worth.

Pat☺

Hi all:

I'd like some ideas on this ridiculous issue. It concerns the Carenado King Air, a very nice aircraft. Except that for me in my system the aircraft slowly rotates and jiggles while on the tarmac. I can honestly say in almost 20 years of simming I have never seen anything like this. It sort of oscillates back and forth ever so slowly. From inside the cockpit the scenery rotates very slowly then rotates back in the other direction with jiggling like on a bumpy road. I have zeroed the winds, turned off AccuFeel, no change. Substituting other aircraft, problem goes away. Could this be some weird anomaly with the King Air? I googled it and came up empty.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on this "Weird Harold".

Thanks

Hi, are you talking about the Carenado B200 KingAir? If so, then this is very odd. She does not do this on my system, so I don't think that this is a bug - and twiddling the numbers in the cfg won't do you any good. I suggest removal and reinstall, maybe something jumbled up your installation. If you want to check on it, make a copy of the folder and compare the files after reinstall.

Thanks everyone for making me realize I am really stupid. You see I routinely increase the MOI's and stability numbers in [Flight Tuning] to match my controls and make the aircraft feel more realistic. In this case I //the yaw MOI but when I replaced it with a higher number, I left the // at the higher number also. Duhhhhh. Really dumb. So thanks guys for pointing me at the MOIs or I never would have seen the error. Everything fine now.

Thanks again,

Rick

So I was right. HAD to be the ROLL MOI (and not the PITCH moi-ha). And those contact point for the Ryan were posted by ME (see '//cb..' - I am 'cb'). So that was also my mods, thank you very much. Glad to hear you solve your problem. (I'M TOO GOOD-hehe).

Chuck B

Napamule

Hi Scatter,

I noticed a rather large discrepancy with the contact points you posted and what I have. I was just going to let it go but seeing as Chuck has brought it up I'll pursue the matter.

Here's my contact point section:

[contact_points]
// For each point.x:
// 1 - Class (0 = None 1 = Wheel 2 = Scrape 3 = Skid 4 = Float 5 = Water Rudder)
// 2 - Longitudinal (ft from reference datum)
// 3 - Lateral (ft from reference datum)
// 4 - Vertical (ft from reference datum)
// 5 - Impact Damage Threshold (fpm)
// 6 - Brake Map (0 = None, 1 = Left, 2 = Right)
// 7 - Wheel Radius (ft)
// 8 - Steer Angle (deg)
// 9 - Static Compression (ft 0 = rigid)
// A - Max/Static Compression Ratio
// B - Damping Ratio
// C - Gear extension time (secs)
// D - Gear retraction time (secs)
// E - Sound (Gear: 0,1,2,3 = C, Aux, L, R) (Scrape: 4,5,6,7,8,9 = Fuse, L Wing, R Wing, Aux1, Aux2, Tail)
// F - Airspeed limit (Gear extension limit knots)
// G - Gear damage speed (knots)
//        1      2     3      4     5  6     7   8     9    A    B  C  D  E  F  G
//        CL    LON   LAT   VERT  IMPD BM   WHR DEG   STC  MXC DAMP GX GR S GSL GSD
point.0 = 1, -12.7,    0, -2.35, 2500, 0, 0.35, 45,  0.1, 2.5, 0.8, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
point.1 = 1,   1.3, -2.8,  -5.5, 2500, 1,  0.8,  0, 0.15, 2.5, 0.8, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0
point.2 = 1,   1.3,  2.8,  -5.5, 2500, 2,  0.8,  0, 0.15, 2.5, 0.8, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0
point.3 = 2,     0,   15,  -1.3, 2500, 0,    0,  0,    0,   0,   0, 0, 0, 6
point.4 = 2,     0,  -15,  -1.3, 2500, 0,    0,  0,    0,   0,   0, 0, 0, 5


//static_pitch = 13.2
static_pitch = 13.6
static_cg_height = 5.2

I was assuming they were simply copied from another aircraft and had little relationship to the actual contact points of the modeled aircraft. I recommend getting the Visualizer tool from FSDeveloper and checking. It seems that the contact point sections of the aircraft.cfg are frequently copied from a similarly sized aircraft so are one of the first things I check when adding a new plane.

Without knowing the reference data point I can't state categorically that all the points are wrong but at least some are due to the relative displacement.

Note also that my point numbering agrees with that of the SDK not the boilerplate numbering included with the default aircraft.

Jim F.

Quote: '...point numbering agrees with that of the SDK not the boilerplate'

Well EXCUSE ME Mr Mircofost. Who said that the SDK is 'right' about the numbering on the LEGEND part. You could of used LETTERS, for that matters as it (numbering) is NOT (and shouldn't ever be) HEXIDECIMAL (for cripes sakes!!!). What is wrong with you (hehe)?

And you seem to imply that I copied some cnt pts from some simular plane. I NEVER do that. Don't make sense. FYI the original contact pts for Bill Ryan's Ryan STA were messed up. Even had 2 left brakes. AND the Ryan was for FS2002/FS2004 and came out on 10-06-2005. I have had it in FS9 but not in FSX or FSX Accel. Swingman came out with a STA for FS9 and FSX back in 2012, but I never got those. I like all of Bill Lyon's stuff (Silver Wings, Waco, 34 Ford, etc).

I got the model, installed it and did trial-n-error tweaks. Then I posted the cnt pts section (as you see above) in the thread (did not do zip upload). That was a few years ago, but I remember it well. My tweaks worked. And you are right about ref pt, but the ref pt was '0,0,0' so that is a mute point. The cofg lon value was '-0.100' and THAT alone would not infuence ANYTHING, in case you get worried about that. Cheesh.

Chuck B

Napamule

Hey Chuck,

Seeing as I used a "G' instead of 16 wouldn't that make it Septidecimal? There are 2 reasons that I replace the boilerplate contact point header however. When referring to a numbered point as defined in the default I often forgot whether to add or subtract one when looking something up in the SDK. And using letters rather than digits for numbers greater than 9 prevents crowding in the display.

As I said, one of the first things I do when installing a new aircraft is to review the aircraft.cfg for errors. I've often found errors. I wasn't pointing a finger at you for having simply copied the values from another aircraft. And I have no recollection as to what values were present in the aircraft as downloaded. I was familiar with the PT-19 values as I recently re-installed it after the Harrison Ford incident.

And I highly recommend using Visualizer. Case in point: I downloaded a aircraft with floats, don't remember which one, and found the float points preposterously close together which resulted in the aircraft slowly tipping over when landed on the water. Visualizer made making the corrections a snap.

I just checked and "46778-1936RyanST-FSX-v1.1.zip" was filename of the Ryan that I downloaded but don't recall where I downloaded it from. And if you have the same basic aircraft and know of a way of toning down the reflectivity of the skin I like to hear how.

Jim F.

That Ryan ST model for FSXis by Swingman, and the zip name you cite is on AvSim.SU (Russian) site (24.3 Mb, 08-10-2012). That is not the one I am talking about. It's the Bill Lyon's model, which came out originally in 2003 (for FS2k2/FS9) but was re-uploaded in 2012 to AvSim, SimViation, SOH, and FltSimCom by somebody. I have been looking in my HDrives for the notepad file with my cnt pts edits but can't locate it. Will look in my CD/DVD backups later.

The point it that you have to actually load the ac (and not just peruse the cfg) to see if wheels are off the ground, the tail wheel is sunk, etc. I use light to pin-point where the wheels are, the fuel tanks, the engines, the horiz stab, the vert stab, and the center is/are. Works for me. It takes a minute. Reload and ck, etc. So, it's work, but I enjoy the results. Have a good one.

Chuck B

Napamule

Salinas, CA 93907

Hi,

How come I'm not in bed? Oh yeah, I'm retired and I don't have to get up early!

After I posted I recalled a problem with a Republic Seabee. Every time I tried to take off I'd end up seeing a shower of sparks from the nose area. This got me interested in checking the points. The Seabee had a scrape point set forward of the nose that was way off.

I recall seeing your suggestion about setting lights at the contact points and it seemed like a good idea but I don't recall ever trying it. And I doubt that it is simpler than using Visualizer. With Virtually every measurement value set in the Aircraft.cfg can be selected and displayed graphically. You simply start a flight in windowed mode, start visualizer, set the parameter of interest and see it displayed graphically. Here's what's visible with just the wheel points selected:

You do have to rotate the view to really determine where the points lie relative to the visual model and usually slightly tweak the vertical to get the wheel to look just right. And I guarantee that you'll see some major discrepancies if you just do a random check on aircraft that you've downloaded.

Jim F.