Embedded Files
Creating a new aircraft for Flight Gear is a very rewarding experience, however it can be quite frustrating as well. First, the following standard reference materials are listed here:
Flight Gear documentation if you have installed Flight Gear
- drive_c/Program Files (x86)/FlightGear/docs/model-howto.html
- Flight Gear Wiki article
- JohanG's article on Wiki
- Flight Gear Forum discussion
- Modelling Getting started article on Wiki
The fastest and most sure way of getting a working aircraft into Flight Gear is to modify an existing aircraft.
Please see "Aircraft creation step by step" in this site.
These are the basic steps:
- Create a 3d model of the aircraft
- Find a similar working aircraft
- Transfer the 3D model and features to the new aircraft
- Test fly and publish the aircraft.
To create a 3D model it is best to use Wings 3D and Blender 2.4 or earlier that allows the user to import and export in .obj format which
is a great format for exchanging 3D models.
From a forum post: (steps have to be reviewed for accuracy)
Re: Exploring Flight Gear 0.910 Legacy ...
Postby openflight » Tue Nov 26, 2013 5:56 pm
Documentation of aircraft files
As we have seen, sometimes a model does not load into the FG program, either a substitute aircraft appears or we are left with an invisible aircraft.
To test out the loading of the 3D model, the following steps are useful:
1. Copy a working model into a separate folder, for example the pa-28-161 entire folder
2.Rename the copied folder : eg testac for test-aircraft
3.Inside the folder testac the settings file pa-28-16-set.xml can be found.
4. Rename the pa-28-16-set.xml file as testac-set.xml
5. Rename the pa-28-16.xml file as testac-fdm. This is because this file is actually the flight dynamics model file, the fdm, and to avoid confusion I think it best to rename the file with the -fdm tag at the end.
6. Navigate to the models folder and rename the file pa-128-161.xml as testac-3dmdl.xml. This is to prevent confusion as the flight dynamics model had the same file name.
7.Open the test-ac-set file.
Edit these two lines: change the
<aero archive="y">testac-fdm</aero>
<model>
<path archive="y">Aircraft/testac/Models/testac-3dmdl.xml</path>
</model>
Do not rename anything else in the files. Now the PA 28 should load. In order to distinguish between the original, edit the testac-set.xml file:
<description>Test Aircraft Based on Piper Warrior27112013 </description>
#### Note Oct 24 2015 - remove all animations in the model file
This description should appear in fgrun
Why is this useful? Sometimes a model will not load, so with the above procedure, a folder structure is created where we can simply replace the 3d model file with the model file of the new aircraft, edit the testac-3dmdl file and troubleshoot the loading of the aircraft.
The folder structure is now as follows:
flightgear/aircraft/testac/testac-set.xml
flightgear/aircraft/testac/testac-fdm.xml
flightgear/aircraft/testac/models/testac-3dmdl.xml
References to files are as follows:
flightgear/aircraft/testac/testac-set.xml
Refers to :
-testac-fdm
-models/testac-3dmdl.xml
flightgear/aircraft/testac/models/testac-3dmdl.xml
Refers to :
pa-28-161.ac
The 3d Model file, usually .ac but can be .3ds or other formats. In this case the pa-28-161.ac file name is left unchanged.
To test out a new 3d model, simply copy it to the models folder with its texture files and edit the -3dmdl.xml file as above.
Last edited by openflight on Tue Nov 26, 2013 10:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
openflight
Posts: 293
Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2011 5:14 am
Version: 1.0
OS: Lubuntu 12.04LTS
3D Model created in 30 minutes in Wings 3D.
The test aircraft in flight in FG. Colors are done by materials not textures, and the cabin is see-through but can be fixed by incorporating a separate 3D interior that blocks the transparency.
Older site describing modifying of FG models:
https://sites.google.com/site/openflightfggallery/
Google Sites
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