Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Vampire_pilot]

I am now faced with a bit of a dilemma and a decision to make.

Theoretically, the airship can be made to "land" and "take-off" on invisible gear.
But as we found out in the process of building it, IL-2 has limits as to how far from plane 0/0/0 these gear hooks can be.  A meagre 10 meters max. The size of this airship is beyond everything, so in order to get workable gear hooks, you have to move the plane center artificially outside the main hull, much much lower.

Now, that in itself has consequences.
#1 the plane center is the virtual point in space any AI plane attacks and lines up their shots with. A Center outside the hull effectively forces the AI to shoot past the target all the time.  (there's the other thing of stupid AI colliding Kamikaze style all teh time but oh well...)
 
#2, and the one I find even more annoying personally, is that a small black dot is almost constantly visible at that center, unless you are 1000m distance or closer.  To have this suspended fragment floating in the air is something I find distracting, particularly since you look there constantly with all the docking approaches and so on.


The only workable solution to remove it (that we know of so far) would be to move the center back into the hull but therefore rendering landings and take-offs impossible.

Now for me that would not be  a great loss. I can live with air-starts only. In most cases, the airship will be an AI-controlled base ship anyway I guess?
Take off would work like in a  STOL aircraft anyway, there is no lighter than air mechanics in IL-2.

At the moment I lean towards air-start only, in order to get rid of the stupid dot artifact.

[Mission_bug]

First of all Andy before going any further is can we actually fly the airship or will it just be the fighter or can it be both depending on how the mission is set up?

Anyway, that aside what about a mooring tower, could something like that be made to work, in the same way we are able to take off and land from a carrier deck, could something raised above sea level be given such a function?

The height would hopefully mean you can leave the airship centres and such as is, the difficulty would be trying to make a docking system for the airship itself as well as the aircraft it carries so the next issue is can that docking procedure normally used only for aircraft in flight be used with a stationary tower?


Failing that I would go for air start even though I particularly dislike that in missions but in this instance it would be acceptable and if you actually take one of the fighters then the mission might have started in the air anyway due to the nature of what we have here, same as with the I-16 and its TB-3.

The game only allows certain things to be done anyway due to its age and for what it was originally intended to do so it is not really a issue because you would need to mess up so much to gain very little.

Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[Vampire_pilot]

Think of it as "just another Zeppelin, like the ones we have" ...

First of all Andy before going any further is can we actually fly the airship or will it just be the fighter or can it be both depending on how the mission is set up?

It will be flyable, I have adapted the Zeppelin P cockpit.
But flying it is not the most exciting experience. It lumbers along lazily for long periods of time along quite straight lines....
No bombs to drop, just a flare maybe? Making it flyable is possible because it's easy to do, not because it's particularly exciting.
A nocturnal raid on London with a Zeppelin P is something entirely different (but also not for everyone)

For the longest time you could not take off or land those Zeps either. I only edited their gears to make that possible one or two updates ago.

Anyway, that aside what about a mooring tower, could something like that be made to work, in the same way we are able to take off and land from a carrier deck, could something raised above sea level be given such a function?

Collisions is the issue. An invisible elevated deck will not solve that. You have collisions with a carrier too.
The problem is the Il-2 game itself. You'd need to place gear clips some 35 + meters below the 0 plane to be low enough to make the plane "sit" without ground collision or collision with any sort of deck or whatever.  That is possible to write in the msh but they do not work anymore. That's the problem.

The game only allows < 10 meters. That does not work out. Not enough ground clearance possible (unless the whole 0 plane is moved below the fuselage with the negative effect of the rendering dot)

if you actually take one of the fighters then the mission might have started in the air anyway due to the nature of what we have here, same as with the I-16 and its TB-3.

Flying the fighters from its belly is the exciting thing to do indeed. The scenario then is that the airship is in the area of operations, you spawn, undock, do your thing and head back home.

Think of it just like with an aircraft carrier. You don't want to drive a CV from Hawaii to Midway in game (I guess...).

[Vampire_pilot]

meanwhile, the Consolidated N2Y Skyhook trainer and the new supersized airship hangar.

[Vampire_pilot]

Big is good.
But Bigger is better.

Please let me introduce the ZRCV-1, USS Long Island. A true flying aircraft carrier.

This is not a mere science fiction idea but was an actual Bureau of Aeronautics design project, led by C. P. Burgess in 1937, featuring a great many lessons learned from the earlier designs. A few famous renditions exist, showing off the berths along the keel, equipped with the brand new Northrop BT.

It is 897ft / 273,5m long with a volume of 9.5 mio ft³ / 270.000 m³, that's 135% the Hindenburg volume.






ZFlyer provided the base meshes, a few others were borrowed from the shelves....
Storebror provided most valuable help with code to enable the docking of a full flight of 4 planes to another plane, something that hasn't been done before. The game (currently) only allows docked spawning of one Flight of 4 aircraft. You can't dock planes of two different flights, even when both flights only consist of  one or two planes.
You, as player can approach and dock to any of the 8 berths, there just can't spawn more than one flight of 4 in a docked position at a time.
Well, certain carrier decks have in-game limits too....

[Vampire_pilot]

After some back and forth I am now satisfied with the external engine gondolas for ZRCV

[Greyhound87]

 
That is so cool. Can't wait to fly it.

[Mission_bug]

This looks more impressive each time I see it.

Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[stiv_069]

Супер!

[Vampire_pilot]

We are getting closer to becoming operational.
I asked Mike about the docking code and after he had his morning coffee he made a suggestion and here we are.





Still, one or two bigger questions remain but when I think back where I started with this, the Frankenized blown up Zeppelin meshes for fun, I can safely say, I never had envisioned what's running here now.

Thanks to everyone who answered (and is still answering) my questions when I had them.
Mission_Bug, ZFlyer, Storebror

[cbradbury]

Looking great, Andy. One question: is it going to be possible for the aircraft to reconnect to the airship?

[Vampire_pilot]

Player can, sure.

AI can't.