PC Pilot Issue 51 4120 PC Pilot Issue 51

REVIEW – Expansion for Flight Simulator FSX and 2004

L ast issue, we started getting into the ‘nitty gritty’ work of creating our detailed plan and established

our fledgling Mission files. Now we progress to adding scenery and creating some audio. If you have had difficulty getting your Sydney Seaplanes Mission file to work on your first try - take heart - everyone does. You can download a working set of files by following the PC Pilot Tutorial links at http://peter.r.stark.googlepages.com and compare them to yours as an aid to getting the syntax correct. Adding your own world FSX comes with a huge range of accessible scenery objects. Every object you see when flying in your virtual world is available for you to add to your own customised Mission scenery. What’s more, they are quite simple to add using the Object Placement Tool. To get to our Rose Bay base, we simply need to start FSX and open the basic Sydney Seaplanes Mission we created last issue. By clicking the Fly button, we will

be transported to Rose Bay in our chosen aircraft, livery and weather (Figure 1). Start the Object Placement Tool (Tools > Object Placement Tool) and you will see a forward view, the OPT window and a set of green cross hairs. Those cross hairs literally point to a location where we will place an object. You will notice that the crosshairs are currently pointing towards the sky. To avoid getting error messages when you start adding scenery, it is essential to move the crosshairs down to the ground or water by using your joystick POV (Point Of View) button.

To get started, let’s add some simple scenery to Rose Bay. On the OPT, click on the Objects tab, then click Add. Open the drop-down list as shown in Figure 2 and select Scenery. Now go to the drop-down list immediately beneath and open it. Displayed is a long list of possible scenery objects you can now add to your FS world. Included in this exhaustive list are not only ‘add-on’ objects such as marinas, windsocks, etc, but also all the tree types and heights used by FSX, customised buildings and as we will see shortly, even animated scenery! So it is simple to even add you own scale model of the Eiffel Tower in your own backyard or your personal secret island if you so wish!

For our Mission, we will want to add a pier to connect the beach to our Mission

Mission Building in FSX – TUTORIAL

FSX Mission Building starting position. To do this, scroll through the scenery object list until you find ‘gen_dock_seaplane_4x20B’. Highlight it with your cursor and click Add. Voila! A small dock now appears in your view (Figure 3). You may need to move the OPT window to see it clearly. Hint 1: Most users will use FSX in full screen mode. However, if you do this when creating your Mission, you will find that the OPT window cannot be moved around your screen - creating a congested work area and making it very difficult to accurately gauge your scenery positioning and alignment. To solve this, simply take FSX out of full-screen mode (Alt + Enter) and you are now free to move the OPT window as required.

When you clicked Add, you may have also noticed that two pieces of data appeared in the OPT (Figure 4). Firstly, at the top right hand corner we can see that under ‘All Items’, the ‘gen_dock’ has appeared in the SCENERY OBJECTS list. This will be useful later when it comes to editing. Whenever you highlight an item in this list, the relevant placement data such as altitude, scale etc is then displayed in the main box.

Figure 5 is a close-up of this data and we need to examine how to use it in order to correctly place our dock. Let’s take a peek at

the fields that are of most use to us. ‘WorldPosition’ obviously contains the latitude and longitude of the object we are placing. The final value (+000000) which is the altitude we wish to place the object. Naturally, we want the dock to be on the surface and so the value is ‘000000’. A very useful field is ‘Orientation’. These three values equate to the pitch, bank and heading of the object. While most objects will require a pitch and bank of zero, this field does allow you to create, for example, a sinking ship, by altering the pitch so that the hull disappears under the water (Figure 6). The heading value however is very useful and allows you to rotate the object to attain alignment with existing scenery. So change this value and observe the effect on your dock, noting that the Heading value uses true north as the reference point. By examining the Scenery Objects section of the Software Development Kit (SDK) we introduced in Part 1, you can explore how the other values may be useful to you in your Missions. As an exercise, create several more identical docks as described above (Figure 7).

Hint 2: Rather than manually edit the fields in the OPT to move the docks into place, simply drag the new docks into position by clicking on the relevant object so that the thin outline box turns green, indicating you have control of it. Drag the individual docks into position so they form a long and reasonably straight dock all the way to the shore line. You will probably notice that the objects aren’t perfectly aligned. No problem! RIGHT click and HOLD the object in question, making sure your cursor is about in the middle of the object. As you move your cursor, the object will rotate around a vertical axis. Cool! If you also wish to change your object’s orientation around a longitudinal axis (ie bank), right click and hold the object making sure that your cursor is at either end of the object. Move your cursor and the object rotates about that axis!

Continue to align your docks. Figure 8 shows my effort, and I also added a building on the shoreline to represent the offices of Sydney Seaplanes (‘Kenmore_Main_Office’), as well as slewing to nearby positions to place a marina and

40 PC Pilot Issue 51

Adding scenery and creating audio

TUTORIAL – Mission Building in FSX

FIG: 1

Back at Rose Bay and ready for work

FIG: 2

Simply select your desired object and click add

FIG: 3

Voila! The selected object appears

You can use all the default FSX scenery objects in your own missions

The real deal - VH-AAM over Sydney Harbour

several static float planes. You are free to slew to anywhere along your Mission route and place any scenery objects you think might be useful or just entertaining to the end Mission users. Animated Scenery Another wonderful aspect of FSX is the ability to simply add moving scenery objects to your Missions or other scenery projects. To demonstrate this, slew to a nearby area, return to the Objects tab on the OPT and click the Add button again. Select ‘Scenery’ and choose

PC Pilot Issue 51 4120 PC Pilot Issue 51

REVIEW – Expansion for Flight Simulator FSX and 2004

L ast issue, we started getting into the ‘nitty gritty’ work of creating our detailed plan and established

our fledgling Mission files. Now we progress to adding scenery and creating some audio. If you have had difficulty getting your Sydney Seaplanes Mission file to work on your first try - take heart - everyone does. You can download a working set of files by following the PC Pilot Tutorial links at http://peter.r.stark.googlepages.com and compare them to yours as an aid to getting the syntax correct. Adding your own world FSX comes with a huge range of accessible scenery objects. Every object you see when flying in your virtual world is available for you to add to your own customised Mission scenery. What’s more, they are quite simple to add using the Object Placement Tool. To get to our Rose Bay base, we simply need to start FSX and open the basic Sydney Seaplanes Mission we created last issue. By clicking the Fly button, we will

be transported to Rose Bay in our chosen aircraft, livery and weather (Figure 1). Start the Object Placement Tool (Tools > Object Placement Tool) and you will see a forward view, the OPT window and a set of green cross hairs. Those cross hairs literally point to a location where we will place an object. You will notice that the crosshairs are currently pointing towards the sky. To avoid getting error messages when you start adding scenery, it is essential to move the crosshairs down to the ground or water by using your joystick POV (Point Of View) button.

To get started, let’s add some simple scenery to Rose Bay. On the OPT, click on the Objects tab, then click Add. Open the drop-down list as shown in Figure 2 and select Scenery. Now go to the drop-down list immediately beneath and open it. Displayed is a long list of possible scenery objects you can now add to your FS world. Included in this exhaustive list are not only ‘add-on’ objects such as marinas, windsocks, etc, but also all the tree types and heights used by FSX, customised buildings and as we will see shortly, even animated scenery! So it is simple to even add you own scale model of the Eiffel Tower in your own backyard or your personal secret island if you so wish!

For our Mission, we will want to add a pier to connect the beach to our Mission

Mission Building in FSX – TUTORIAL

FSX Mission Building starting position. To do this, scroll through the scenery object list until you find ‘gen_dock_seaplane_4x20B’. Highlight it with your cursor and click Add. Voila! A small dock now appears in your view (Figure 3). You may need to move the OPT window to see it clearly. Hint 1: Most users will use FSX in full screen mode. However, if you do this when creating your Mission, you will find that the OPT window cannot be moved around your screen - creating a congested work area and making it very difficult to accurately gauge your scenery positioning and alignment. To solve this, simply take FSX out of full-screen mode (Alt + Enter) and you are now free to move the OPT window as required.

When you clicked Add, you may have also noticed that two pieces of data appeared in the OPT (Figure 4). Firstly, at the top right hand corner we can see that under ‘All Items’, the ‘gen_dock’ has appeared in the SCENERY OBJECTS list. This will be useful later when it comes to editing. Whenever you highlight an item in this list, the relevant placement data such as altitude, scale etc is then displayed in the main box.

Figure 5 is a close-up of this data and we need to examine how to use it in order to correctly place our dock. Let’s take a peek at

the fields that are of most use to us. ‘WorldPosition’ obviously contains the latitude and longitude of the object we are placing. The final value (+000000) which is the altitude we wish to place the object. Naturally, we want the dock to be on the surface and so the value is ‘000000’. A very useful field is ‘Orientation’. These three values equate to the pitch, bank and heading of the object. While most objects will require a pitch and bank of zero, this field does allow you to create, for example, a sinking ship, by altering the pitch so that the hull disappears under the water (Figure 6). The heading value however is very useful and allows you to rotate the object to attain alignment with existing scenery. So change this value and observe the effect on your dock, noting that the Heading value uses true north as the reference point. By examining the Scenery Objects section of the Software Development Kit (SDK) we introduced in Part 1, you can explore how the other values may be useful to you in your Missions. As an exercise, create several more identical docks as described above (Figure 7).

Hint 2: Rather than manually edit the fields in the OPT to move the docks into place, simply drag the new docks into position by clicking on the relevant object so that the thin outline box turns green, indicating you have control of it. Drag the individual docks into position so they form a long and reasonably straight dock all the way to the shore line. You will probably notice that the objects aren’t perfectly aligned. No problem! RIGHT click and HOLD the object in question, making sure your cursor is about in the middle of the object. As you move your cursor, the object will rotate around a vertical axis. Cool! If you also wish to change your object’s orientation around a longitudinal axis (ie bank), right click and hold the object making sure that your cursor is at either end of the object. Move your cursor and the object rotates about that axis!

Continue to align your docks. Figure 8 shows my effort, and I also added a building on the shoreline to represent the offices of Sydney Seaplanes (‘Kenmore_Main_Office’), as well as slewing to nearby positions to place a marina and

40 PC Pilot Issue 51

Adding scenery and creating audio

TUTORIAL – Mission Building in FSX

FIG: 1

Back at Rose Bay and ready for work

FIG: 2

Simply select your desired object and click add

FIG: 3

Voila! The selected object appears

You can use all the default FSX scenery objects in your own missions

The real deal - VH-AAM over Sydney Harbour

several static float planes. You are free to slew to anywhere along your Mission route and place any scenery objects you think might be useful or just entertaining to the end Mission users. Animated Scenery Another wonderful aspect of FSX is the ability to simply add moving scenery objects to your Missions or other scenery projects. To demonstrate this, slew to a nearby area, return to the Objects tab on the OPT and click the Add button again. Select ‘Scenery’ and choose

42 PC Pilot Issue 51 PC Pilot Issue 51 43

TUTORIAL – Mission Building in FSX

one of the animated objects such as ‘ani_birds_gulls_x28’ (which will place 28 sea gulls) and click Add. You may notice a ‘box’ appear over your position. The animated objects will move through this box, ie in the seagull scenario, the 28 gulls will fly about this boxed area. Place them near the end of a runway or take-off area to give your Mission users an unexpected thrill. As with static scenery, you can add as many as you wish - but do keep in mind that not everyone might have a PC as fast as yours! Adding lots of animated objects will eventually slow your system down and take away from the Mission experience. Mobile scenery What is the difference between animated and mobile scenery, I hear you ask? Animated scenery certainly gives us flocks of birds etc flying in a predetermined area, but Mobile Scenery also allows those objects to move through the virtual Mission world. It emulates the ferries, cars and ships we see in free flight. Again by example, let’s add one to fully appreciate the differences between static animated and mobile objects.

Slew to a clear area, click on the Objects tab if you aren’t already in that section of the OPT and again click Add. This time however, locate Mobile Scenery in the list. If you now examine the drop down list of objects, you will notice that they are the same objects we saw under the basic Scenery drop-down list. The real difference occurs after we select our object. Select a suitable large vessel such as an Aircraft Carrier (just so it will be obvious when we have created it) and then click Add. The Carrier should appear (Figure 9) and the position details should also appear in the OPT Property/Value box. You can now edit the ‘SpeedKnots’ field by double clicking it and typing in your

preferred value (Figure 10). Easy, isn’t it? As if that isn’t enough for you, it is also possible to enter MSO (Moving Scenery Object) way points so our Carrier sails a predetermined course and speed and then we can actually program the ship to safely leave Sydney Harbour! This is getting beyond the scope of this tutorial but you can find the relevant details in the SDK.

You now have enough knowledge to start experimenting and adding Mission scenery to your personal scenario. If you did write a script and plan before you started on this project, you may now wish to amend it to include some of the marvellous features available to you. Making yourself heard If you have been busy flying as many Missions as possible, you may have come across some that don’t use any voice files and rely instead on text messages. These can work perfectly well and they usually rely on an audible warning tone to alert you to the new text being generated on your screen. However, voice files do add another dimension of realism and so we will include them in this series. Last issue, we discussed how important it is to have a detailed plan to make the actual programming of the Mission simpler and bug-free. This also extends to when you make your audio files and it is advisable have a written script.

Once you have completed your script, find your WAV file recorder. The Missions

FIG: 4

You have the ability to fine tune position and alignments using finite values

FIG: 5

Most fields can be changed by double clicking the line & entering your data - but check the SDK to avoid corrupting essential values

FIG: 6

The OPT allows you to create custom scenarios

engine requires all the audio files to be in WAV format and Windows XP users can use the default Voice Recorder that is packaged with XP. Some Vista users may find that the default sound recorder will only record to WMV files and so you will need to download a simple WAV file recorder such as the freeware Pocket Voice Recorder 3.5 from www.xemico.com/pvr or Audacity from http://audacity.sourceforge.net. Practice recording some test messages and replay them – you may be surprised to hear how much the recorders have modified your voice. If this concerns you (they made me sound like a mouse), Audacity allows you to add modules to modify the files to restore them to a more realistic tone.

Once satisfied you can competently control the Recorder, record each of your voice files in turn, saving them to your Missions > Missions in Progress > Sydney Seaplanes > Sound folder, and create the Sound folder if necessary. As you will be creating quite a large number of files and attempting to link them to event triggers that occur in the Mission, be sure to name and number them in a logical

FIG: 8

Ready for business

Audacity is a versatile audio recorder that will help improve the quality of your sound files

Create your own customised competition courses using the OPT

FIG: 9

The number of objects available is HUGE!

Mission Building in FSX – TUTORIAL

Don’t you just love the default FSX Beaver!!

FIG: 7

And then there were two!

Success Sydney Seaplanes operate several types of amphibians and floatplanes

42 PC Pilot Issue 51 PC Pilot Issue 51 43

TUTORIAL – Mission Building in FSX

one of the animated objects such as ‘ani_birds_gulls_x28’ (which will place 28 sea gulls) and click Add. You may notice a ‘box’ appear over your position. The animated objects will move through this box, ie in the seagull scenario, the 28 gulls will fly about this boxed area. Place them near the end of a runway or take-off area to give your Mission users an unexpected thrill. As with static scenery, you can add as many as you wish - but do keep in mind that not everyone might have a PC as fast as yours! Adding lots of animated objects will eventually slow your system down and take away from the Mission experience. Mobile scenery What is the difference between animated and mobile scenery, I hear you ask? Animated scenery certainly gives us flocks of birds etc flying in a predetermined area, but Mobile Scenery also allows those objects to move through the virtual Mission world. It emulates the ferries, cars and ships we see in free flight. Again by example, let’s add one to fully appreciate the differences between static animated and mobile objects.

Slew to a clear area, click on the Objects tab if you aren’t already in that section of the OPT and again click Add. This time however, locate Mobile Scenery in the list. If you now examine the drop down list of objects, you will notice that they are the same objects we saw under the basic Scenery drop-down list. The real difference occurs after we select our object. Select a suitable large vessel such as an Aircraft Carrier (just so it will be obvious when we have created it) and then click Add. The Carrier should appear (Figure 9) and the position details should also appear in the OPT Property/Value box. You can now edit the ‘SpeedKnots’ field by double clicking it and typing in your

preferred value (Figure 10). Easy, isn’t it? As if that isn’t enough for you, it is also possible to enter MSO (Moving Scenery Object) way points so our Carrier sails a predetermined course and speed and then we can actually program the ship to safely leave Sydney Harbour! This is getting beyond the scope of this tutorial but you can find the relevant details in the SDK.

You now have enough knowledge to start experimenting and adding Mission scenery to your personal scenario. If you did write a script and plan before you started on this project, you may now wish to amend it to include some of the marvellous features available to you. Making yourself heard If you have been busy flying as many Missions as possible, you may have come across some that don’t use any voice files and rely instead on text messages. These can work perfectly well and they usually rely on an audible warning tone to alert you to the new text being generated on your screen. However, voice files do add another dimension of realism and so we will include them in this series. Last issue, we discussed how important it is to have a detailed plan to make the actual programming of the Mission simpler and bug-free. This also extends to when you make your audio files and it is advisable have a written script.

Once you have completed your script, find your WAV file recorder. The Missions

FIG: 4

You have the ability to fine tune position and alignments using finite values

FIG: 5

Most fields can be changed by double clicking the line & entering your data - but check the SDK to avoid corrupting essential values

FIG: 6

The OPT allows you to create custom scenarios

engine requires all the audio files to be in WAV format and Windows XP users can use the default Voice Recorder that is packaged with XP. Some Vista users may find that the default sound recorder will only record to WMV files and so you will need to download a simple WAV file recorder such as the freeware Pocket Voice Recorder 3.5 from www.xemico.com/pvr or Audacity from http://audacity.sourceforge.net. Practice recording some test messages and replay them – you may be surprised to hear how much the recorders have modified your voice. If this concerns you (they made me sound like a mouse), Audacity allows you to add modules to modify the files to restore them to a more realistic tone.

Once satisfied you can competently control the Recorder, record each of your voice files in turn, saving them to your Missions > Missions in Progress > Sydney Seaplanes > Sound folder, and create the Sound folder if necessary. As you will be creating quite a large number of files and attempting to link them to event triggers that occur in the Mission, be sure to name and number them in a logical

FIG: 8

Ready for business

Audacity is a versatile audio recorder that will help improve the quality of your sound files

Create your own customised competition courses using the OPT

FIG: 9

The number of objects available is HUGE!

Mission Building in FSX – TUTORIAL

Don’t you just love the default FSX Beaver!!

FIG: 7

And then there were two!

Success Sydney Seaplanes operate several types of amphibians and floatplanes

44 PC Pilot Issue 51

TUTORIAL – Mission Building in FSX

You can use the OPT guide lines to assist you in aligning your objects

FIG: 14

The modified Rectangle Area will capture even the most wayward Mission pilot

FIG: 13

As with scenery objects, Rectangle Areas are simple to customise

FIG: 12

Make them large enough to ‘trap’ any wayward Mission users. It will increase the reliability and enjoyment of your Mission

way, eg 1_intro.WAV indicates that it is message number one and is the initial introduction message, 2_Airborne.WAV indicates it is message number 2 and contains the message that will be triggered as you become airborne. This may take some time if you have large numbers of messages and you may record some several times until you are happy with the results. Before any of our audio files will play automatically in the Mission, we need to examine one of the most versatile aspects of the FSX Missions engine – the Proximity Trigger. Proximity Trigger Next issue, we will examine another core part of creating Missions - setting up triggers that can activate our audio files, special scenery objects and so on. So to finish this issue’s tutorial, let’s take a look at one of the most common methods of triggering a subsequent event - the Proximity Trigger.

One common use of using a Proximity Trigger is to activate an audio file as the aircraft flies through a specific, defined area. For example, we may like to activate an audio file saying “Wow - look at those whales down there!” when the aircraft flies through Sydney Heads. We create this finite area using the OPT again. Slew to the suitable area at the entrance to Sydney Harbour and open the OPT.

As usual, we click to Objects tab and then the Add button before selecting ‘AreaDefinition’ in the top drop down list. The second drop down list will automatically select ‘RectangleArea’. Click Add and you will get a default box appear (Figures 11 and 12). You can immediately see a few possible problems if we use this default box. If the pilot doesn’t fly through this box, the relevant audio file won’t play. As it stands, this box is quite small so let’s make it a wider gate which will ensure that any Mission pilot that is following the instructions will hit the box.

To do this, click on the relevant Rectangle Area and the data for that area will appear in the Property/Value box of the OPT. After a little experimenting, I decided on a length of 1300 units (all units in the OPT are in metres) to cover the full width of the harbour entrance, left the width as 200 units (wide

FIG: 11

The default Rectangle Area must be modified to your situation

enough by far for this purpose) and the height of 500 (which is ample as my mission is set to take place at or below 1000 feet (330m)) - Figure 13. As a final adjustment, I altered the Orientation so that Rectangle covers the full width of the harbour entrance (Figure 14). Again - quite simple once you know how!

Homework You now know how simple it is to add scenery and understand a little about how to create a basic trigger. Until next issue, review your Mission plan and script and add proximity triggers for all the audio files you created earlier. If you’re feeling brave, continue reading through the SDK and try some additional trigger types and add some animated scenery. Remember, you can always download my Missions files from the website mentioned in the introduction should you come to grief. Keep things relatively simple and you will learn a vast amount and enjoy the experience!

Again, thanks to the people at Sydney Seaplanes for permission to use their company name and images, and to Mike Hall for his Sydney Seaplanes repaint of the default, FSX De Havilland Beaver (vhaamrep.zip from Flightsim.com).

Peter Stark

■

FIG: 10

Selecting the speed of our mobile object