S-55 question

[PRB]

This concerns many helicopters in FS, but in particular the beautiful S-55 by Alphasim. Upon lift off, you need to push forward on the control stick (that’s the “cyclic”, right?), hard, to keep the ship from going backwards. And you need constant heavy fwd force applied to the stick throughout the flight. I noticed this a lot in FS9 helicopters, but the effect is very pronounced in this ship in FSX. I found myself clicking on the nose down trim, but that obviously, does not work.
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Is there some adjustment I can make in the aircraft.cfg, or someplace, that will “add nose weight” or “nose down trim” or “cyclic forward bias”, or something that will help this condition?

[michael davies]

The flight envelope has been modified several times since it went freeware, theres a thread running at CBFS and one here a while ago with a modified FDE for the S-55, however here is the latest rendition that will level the helo up for you http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mickoo/files/Aircraft_V2.4.zip

Be warned though that as fuel burns off it'll become slightly tail heavy again, I never fly long enough to find that out LOL, but I may well run a V2-5 off in the very near future to compensate for that, but 2.4 will see you on your way for the immediate future, feedback so far is encouraging and makes the S-55 even more fun to fly.

If you have added new paints or schemes then you'll need to edit the headers as this 2.4 FDE is based on the default freeware release.

BTW, fwd cyclic input is quite normal, thats how helos work, you need to keep the nose down to make the rotor have the right angle to 'pull' it along, also dont fly every where at 100% Q, you'll end up looking down hill all the time :), 75-80% will give the correct nose down pitch of about 5 degrees for level fwd cruise flight.

Kindest

Michael

[PRB]

Thanks Michael, that new aircraft.cfg is perfect! I hadn't thought about adjusting the fuel load before reading your post, so before swapping out the aircraft.cfg files, I tried flying with the rear tank empty, and that helped some also, but not as much as the new cfg.
:ernae:

[PRB]

Next stupid question:

I think I'm supposed to have a texture file applied to the VC cockpit panel, but it doesn't appear to be there. I've looked in the texture folder and found the file that I think I'm missing, called vpanel_t.dds. I added it to the other texture folders, but to no avail. I think the other texture folders shoudl be able to find it anyway, through the fallback.1=..\texture line in the texture.cfg files, but that's no working either. Any ideas?

[michael davies]

Paul,

Did you have it before V2.4 ?, if not then I dont know, if yes then theres probably something wrong with my cfg somewhere I suspect, though its not been noted by others before.

Best

Michael

[PRB]

Yep, panel was textureless before v2.4. Interesting. I'll play around with it some more.

[djscoo]

Paul,

Did you have it before V2.4 ?, if not then I dont know, if yes then theres probably something wrong with my cfg somewhere I suspect, though its not been noted by others before.

Best

Michael
I re-downloaded it from the Alphasim store after the freeware release, and that's what my panel looks like. I seem to remember a texture there on the original purchase however.:kilroy:

Edit: yep look at this link...http://www.avsim.com/pages/0607/3Helos/s55-2007-jun-12-013.jpg

[PRB]

I found it! I installed the FS9 one and noticed an extra file in the panel folder named vpanel.bmp. This file, referred to in the panel.cfg as well, is not in the FSX zip file. Not mine anyway! Looks awesome now!

[michael davies]

Paul,

Hmm that is most odd, I was checking the interior mdl in Hex and noticed the same thing, it was calling for two textures $vpanel and vpanel_t.

Now heres the strange thing, textures with $ in front of them are generally dummys and are transparent and only used to throw the gauges onto the panel face, sort of a projection screen, generally when $vpanel is missing you get a poly block blocking your view in the VC, usually you just make a four sided poly that covers the whole panel and then throw the gauges onto that, of course it has to be square so if its a wide panel then the projection poly has to be equally tall and blocks your view.

What I'm guessing here is that they have made a projection poly the same size as the panel face, so rather than the texture being missing it is blocked by the projection poly...these are normally placed a few mm in front of the panel any way to prevent z buffer bleed over. Normally if this projection screen or its texture $vpanel is missing then you also have no working gauges, so how we have working gauges with a black projection screen and no panel texture is quite beyond me !.

Because $vpanel is a dummy screen it is not normally required in the end package, its just something used to compile the model and requires a line in the panel cfg, nothing more. I've looked back through all my FS9 models and not one has the $vpanel in the final product, the only ones I can find so far are the S-55 and the CH-46 which is my exterior ( 75% ) but the rest of the package was finished by the same guy who did the S-55.

I'd love to know what or how he's compiling models with $vpanel as an actual texture, clearly it works, yet all the SDKs and tutorials state it should not, very bizzare and good find.

Those not having access to the FS9 version can collect the required texture from here http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mickoo/files/$vpanel.zip simply place this texture in the panel folder and enjoy.

Kindest

Michael

[PRB]

Very interesting. Does the “$panel” file, used only as a projection screen, usually contain actual texture features, such as gauge frames, like this one does? It’s as though they intended this $vpanel.bmp file to be used both as a projection file, and the actual texture file. But, as you said, it should have been invisible. And then what of the vpanel.dds and vpanel_t.dds files in the texture folders?
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On a related note, I opened the VC panel in FSPanel Studio, so I could add a digital radar altimeter. Now normally when you open the VC in FS Panel Studio, you don’t see a panel image, like you do when you open the 2D panels. This makes it difficult to edit the VC, because you have to “guess” where the gauges will appear when you run the sim. But with the S-55, I saw the image of the $vpanel.bmp file when editing the VC! I’ve never seen this before. Can’t be a coincidence…


... also dont fly every where at 100% Q, you'll end up looking down hill all the time :), 75-80% will give the correct nose down pitch of about 5 degrees for level fwd cruise flight.

Finally, what is this “Q”? I’ve been poking around the Hovercontrol (http://www.hovercontrol.com/) site, but haven’t run across that term.

[michael davies]

Paul,

Generally you dont, or at least I think you cant add textures to the $vpanel poly, why would you as it makes it invisible :), though looking at it it seems that you can, but then the gauges are there with out it, all very odd indeed :).

I've no idea what the other dds files are for TBH, odd thing is, both the interior and exterior mdls in Hex are looking for bmps, it doesnt really matter as the sim will look for bmp first then look for dds, or the other way around, cant quite remember right now, what is odd is that the FSx compiler is putting bmp in the mdl code and not dds, you can edit it yourself manually of course....and that might speed texture processing up a little, especially on bigger texture set models. When I load the S-55 it is all grey for a few seconds as the textures load, other aircraft are not ?. I forgot to check a default mdl to see what the Hex code is looking for, bmp or dds, will do that tonight.

Q, ahh sorry thats a hang over from my Seaking days, the Seaking pilots I spoke to call the Torque gauge the Q gauge, it may even be common in other circles, certainly the Huey / CH-53 pilot knew what it was, Q is short for torque basically and isnt as far as I know in piston helos, only turbines, basically its power setting 0-100%.

Best

Michael