Dummy Missile Unit

[chris330 0]

Dear All,

I have been trying to manufacture a dummy missile for an experiment I am doing. The missile's .p3d file is already built and I have extracted its MLOD model and tweaked a few things. Firstly I have put it absolutely dead centre at 0,0,0 in all views so it is not strayed off to the left or right or whatever of the origin. I have made its geometry model almost identical to its 0.000 LOD model because I need its Geometry model to be very accurately related to the detail LOD for this experiment.

My problem is that I want it to be able to fly through the air, not necessarily in the conventional sense rather it just has to be able to be recognised by the game's engine as something that must not be set automatically to 0 height above terrain whenever it is set positioned up in the air.

So thinks me (incorrectly as it turned out) I can define it as a helicopter with a Cobra class inherit and just change the .p3d model. Wrong Good old OFP, you don't get ANYTHING for free Doing this made the missile start flying about randomly like a ballistic missile gone very wrong. It also had a remarkable tendency to be able to dance around up in the air without falling down. Using just a Helicopter class inherit caused exactly the same thing.

I applied some mass to the Geometry LOD. The same thing happened. I even substitued the config file with an MLOD extracted Apache model and this time the model just stayed up in the air without moving

It cannot be defined as an object because it needs to be used with the setvelocity command. I tried just using an Air vehicles class inherit and nothing else only this time no model appeared and the unit could not be set positioned.

I would imagine there are many guys who have had this problem when making new helicopters for this game. Can anyone please point out to me where this is going wrong? Is it simply just not heavy enough for the expected vehicle class? I don't want it too heavy though or it will not be of use for the experiment I will be conducting on it.

Thanks in adavnce

[[aps]gnat 28]

Trying to understand what your doing Chris ......

I'm assuming this is an un-manned vehicle your trying to use.

Either way, normal aircraft addons can be SETPOS'ed at any height as well as SETVELOCITY'ed any direction ..... so why not copy this class ?

The only thing you can't do is "setpitch" the addon, otherwise simulating a "missile" could be near flawless.

I'm sure the MCARS team have been herre before

[chris330 0]

Gnat @ Mar. 13 2006,13:02)]The only thing you can't do is "setpitch" the addon, otherwise simulating a "missile" could be near flawless.

Funny you should say that That's what I'm trying to do with it. That's why it musn't be too heavy or the collision energy required to rotate it will be too high and will cause excessive armour damage or even destruction.

Thanks for getting back to me Do you have any more ideas I'm a bit stuck. I'll give the Air - Helicopter - Cobra class configs a damn good screening tonight infront of the TV and see what I can find. I don't want to say too much on the forum about my methods in case the idea is stolen by someone else who then claims all the credit (I'm quite surprised to find that this can be an issue in a community like this one, but it appears as though it can be).

I'd rather discuss technical aspects of the method via pm but I'm happy to share any information about getting a stable dummy missile addon (without a very high weight/mass) in this thread

[[aps]gnat 28]

You could try animations to simulate pitching of the missiles, but that would require a couple more scripts to detect vertical vs forward velocity and animate the missile model to the approximate angle.

I did notice last night while experimenting that if setvelocity an unpowered plane sideways, it actually automaticily tried to straighten out and fly at the correct angle, but it also gives itself a forward velocity vector in the process, so it sort of overrides any pure right angle velocities.

Shame it didnt do the same for vertical velocities, would have solved some of the setpitch problem *smacks BIS coders hands*

BTW, also noticed that Ship class has some sort of in-built damping of forced velocities ..... good if you actual need it.

Which is weird because it doesnt always work ingame .... missiles impacting ships *sometimes* cause ship to becomes high speed airbourne missiles themselves !!

Sorry Chris, I only go *confidential* when BIS or BIA starts paying for my time .... which will be never LOL

[vektorboson 8]

Gnat @ Mar. 14 2006,14:37)]You could try animations to simulate pitching of the missiles, but that would require a couple more scripts to detect vertical vs forward velocity and animate the missile model to the approximate angle.

I've done that for my Tomahawk starting sequence.

The advantage was that I set the velocity and therefore automatically knew the angle at which it is flying (and set the animationPhase accordingly).

I've also done a JSOW once, using the plane class and setting the weight accordingly; unfortunately, I have neither of them anymore.

[Guest RKSL-Rock]

UNN and I have been developing this for Sea Skimming missiles and Stand-off weapons. Intended for release by both RKSL and the Falklands Mod.

We have a working system thats AI compatible we're just trying to develop an interface to alow the player to designate targets from extented ranges.

There was some leaked video form the early tests floating around - once we get a cleaner and better text platform we'll release a short vid.