Missions with more than 8 aircraft in a flight.

[mongoose]

I know this has been a sublet on SOH before but I was revisiting it for missions where there were more than 8 aircraft supposedly part of a same group and meant to be flying together. getting them to actually do so as totally separate flight s is very difficult with mb app.
In this case I had 11 Spitfires, and separately, 12 BF110c-4/Bs meant to be together.
Initially I made groups of 8 + 3 and 8 + 4 and then using notepad I edited the xml to add the 3 Spits and 4 110's to their respective 8's and cancelled their respective separate flights.
The result, which probably I knew some years back, was explosion as another ac merged with the player.
Next I kept the 3 and 4 flights separately but transferred/copied the respective 8 flight waypoint info to them.
Result the same. See photo.
Finally I altered the 3 and 4 flight waypoint altitude by about 4-5 metres from the 8 flights, plus adjusted the Longitudes and Latitudes by a few seconds or so; depending.
Result; All OK and all flying more or less together; 11 Spits and 12 Bf110's.

Now someone may have an easier way to deal with this, in which case I would like to know. as it is very relevant to really large groups which all should be flying together. Ideally one should be able to work out the geometry WRT alt, Lat, & Lon for each flight so they are in their proper large formations. It would help if one knew what 1sec. Lat or Lon was in metres I suppose.

[Daiwilletti]

Hi James, could you include the unit and waypoint information so I can understand better?

[gecko]

I've thought about this in the past was well. What is needed is a calculator that can take inputs of lat, lon, heading, and a desired offset forward/backward and left/right in feet or meters, and then output the new lat and lon accounting for the offset in position. This would allow you to precisely build large formations out of smaller ones. Take the attached image of a 12 plane formation for example. In CFS3, you could create this formation from two 6 plane formations using the shotai formation type. So to build it, you would set up the first formation of six in MB to get the lat and lon for all the route points. MB will also display the heading. Then you enter that info and the required offset for the second formation to get the lat and lon points for the second formation. If all other route parameters are the same, it ought to work.

[mongoose]

Hi James, could you include the unit and waypoint information so I can understand better?

I'll email you tomorrow.

[mongoose]

I've thought about this in the past was well. What is needed is a calculator that can take inputs of lat, lon, heading, and a desired offset forward/backward and left/right in feet or meters, and then output the new lat and lon accounting for the offset in position. This would allow you to precisely build large formations out of smaller ones. Take the attached image of a 12 plane formation for example. In CFS3, you could create this formation from two 6 plane formations using the shotai formation type. So to build it, you would set up the first formation of six in MB to get the lat and lon for all the route points. MB will also display the heading. Then you enter that info and the required offset for the second formation to get the lat and lon points for the second formation. If all other route parameters are the same, it ought to work.

To make it accurate one would have to have a better knowledge of the relationship between Lat and Lon seconds and distance; given CFS3 works in decimals for seconds AFAIK. But a formula as you suggest would be ideal!

[gecko]

That part at least is a fairly easy conversion. If someone knew or came up with a working formula to make the offsets, I could probably create a calculator program for it.

[greycap.raf]

To my understanding, if using a rounded figure of 40000 km for the Earth's circumference:

Length in metres of 1° of latitude = always 111,11 km
(one minute ~1,85 km, one second ~31 m)

Length in metres of 1° of longitude = 40000 km * cos( latitude ) / 360
(at the height of the English Channel, 1° ~71,42 km, one minute ~1,19 km, one second ~20 m)

No idea if CFS3 does it properly though, or if it uses a fixed value for the longitude, but seeing that there's the MS Flight Simulator engine in the background it probably does it properly.

[gecko]

As I understand it, that would allow you to calculate offsets on 000, 090, 180, and 270 headings, but not for anything else. Of course we're assuming the map is layed out properly as you say.

[greycap.raf]

Basic trigonometry will take care of the rest though. As on a right angled triangle a² + b² = c², if the desired angle and distance are known, the rest can be calculated.

Whether the coordinates work properly, that just has to be tested. The difference between the two options is so large that one test will probably be enough.