FS 2004
This may be old news to many of you, but for those like me who are new to FS2004 and just making discoveries, I thought I would share this little tutorial.
I have been having a blast with my float and sea planes. I have been modifying the contact point info...actually the Float lines, to give the planes the ability to have wake sounds when on water. Once I stumbled upon this, it became quite easy to modify the float lines to make the planes ready for water sounds.
As with any and all modifications you plan to do to your plane, make a back up of the original files first....if I had a dollar for everytime I totally botched a file and had to redownload the plane just to get a copy of the file in working order I would be a rather wealthy man.
First, lets take a look at a stock Float Line from a Contact Point section.
Standard Float Line
point.3 = 4, -31, -3.66, -10, 1600, 0, 0, 0, 0.85, 2.5, 0.65, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
Notice that the line has the designation of 4 (in blue) as the first number in the sequence. This is the designation for a float point. That is important to keep in mind when you are modifying your sea/float planes for water sounds.
Now note the last part of the sequence...specifically the third to last number (in red). It is a 0. To give your float/sea planes the ability to have water sounds, this number needs to be changed to a 4, as in the line below.
Modified Float Line
point.3 = 4, -31, -3.66, -10, 1600, 0, 0, 0, 0.85, 2.5, 0.65, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0
The 4 in this position designate that Float line as having a Fuselage Scrape sound call. This is the key. Once you have changed the third to last number in each of your float points from 0 to 4, save the file.
Now for the sound pack modification. I like to create a separate sound pack for my float planes...it is the best way to go as you will see. What you want to do is simply modify one small part of the sound config file. Below is a copy of the [Fuselage_Scrape] section found in most sound config files.
[FUSELAGE_SCRAPE]
filename=smblylnd
minimum_speed=1
maximum_speed=60
minimum_rate=0.5
maximum_rate=2.0
This section tells the sim what sound file to play when it detects that a Fuselage Scrape has happened. When you fly too low and the belly of your plane hits the ground and you hear that screechy sound...that is this section of the sound config file in action.
Now, to get a water sound as your float/sea plane is taxiing or slowing down on water, you simply have to modify the "filename=" to look like this:
filename=xwaterloop
Once you have edited the [Fuselage_Scrape] section of the sound config file to have the sim call up "xwaterloop", save and close the file. The "xwaterloop" and "waterloop" files are stock items and are found in the main SOUND folder of FS2004.
Now for the fun. Fire up FS2004 and select the float/sea plane that you just modified. When you take off, listen to the lovely sound of water against the hull or floats of your plane....internally and externally. With some sound packs, the water sound may be a bit hard to hear if the motor sounds are loud.
The reason I like creating dedicated Float/Sea Plane sound packs is that once the [Fuselage_Scrape] line is modified to call the "xwaterloop" file, anytime the sim detects a fuselage scrape, it will play the waterloop sound...which would seem a bit odd if you are flying a land based plane and belly up in the desert. I know that float planes and sea planes (amphibians too) do not always fly over water and might belly in on land and have an odd watery sound when sliding across a corn field, but we just have to accept the limitations of the sim and live with certain anomolies.
This modification has not had any ill effect on the handling or landing characteristics of any of the planes I have modified.
OBIO
I don't know if this technique will work in FS2002 or FSX. I don't have FS2002 so can't test it there. I have FSX, but I simply refuse to have a sim installed that looks like a slide show...this old P4 system just isn't up to snuff for FSX (though I did swipe some of the sound packs from FSX while I had it installed...I really like having a lot of sound packs).
Now to get sound panning to work in FS9....
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