Aerodynamics modification in realtime
Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2020 1:26 pm
Hello
This is a feature I have been looking at for a long time now, even if it can somehow be achieved unofficially, but a proper PDK service would be very nice and much better performing here.
The idea is that currently, airplanes (& helicopters) have their aerodynamics capacity fixed in their air & cfg files. These files being fixed before runtime, you cannot change that in-flight.
Also, the flight model chosen in FSX/ESP/P3D has some small flaws which would be, I think, quite easy to fix and get the flight model to a very nice one. That would remove the need to use an external flight model such as JSBSIM.
My idea is to give add-ons realtime R/W access to the air file parameters once the model is loaded. One could update tables according to whatever their needs are, for instance to model different stall incidence for different flaps settings.
As I said, it is unofficially possible to do that on some parameters. Basically an add-on DLL can look in p3d process for the same airfile tables then change these memory location on the fly.
While it works, this is not a good long term solution (though I have used it throughout all fsx and p3d versions so far...), as any day you developpers could change how the tables are loaded into memory making this approach obsolete (please don't ;-( )
Instead, a PDK access to each tables/coefficients/parameters from air and cfg file, with an on the fly recomputation of aerodynamics figures (stall AoA, CDi, wing aerodynamics center, etc..) that would be so awesome and all developers could then work around any limitation they encounter.
It could be possible to extend that function to other features like surface friction coefficients, fuel weight, atmosphere constants, etc...
An other great possibility would be to duplicate the tables for engine computations. So each engine could be fiddled with independently (simulate engine mechanical failure or icing directly using engine tables).
Best regards
Jean Luc
This is a feature I have been looking at for a long time now, even if it can somehow be achieved unofficially, but a proper PDK service would be very nice and much better performing here.
The idea is that currently, airplanes (& helicopters) have their aerodynamics capacity fixed in their air & cfg files. These files being fixed before runtime, you cannot change that in-flight.
Also, the flight model chosen in FSX/ESP/P3D has some small flaws which would be, I think, quite easy to fix and get the flight model to a very nice one. That would remove the need to use an external flight model such as JSBSIM.
My idea is to give add-ons realtime R/W access to the air file parameters once the model is loaded. One could update tables according to whatever their needs are, for instance to model different stall incidence for different flaps settings.
As I said, it is unofficially possible to do that on some parameters. Basically an add-on DLL can look in p3d process for the same airfile tables then change these memory location on the fly.
While it works, this is not a good long term solution (though I have used it throughout all fsx and p3d versions so far...), as any day you developpers could change how the tables are loaded into memory making this approach obsolete (please don't ;-( )
Instead, a PDK access to each tables/coefficients/parameters from air and cfg file, with an on the fly recomputation of aerodynamics figures (stall AoA, CDi, wing aerodynamics center, etc..) that would be so awesome and all developers could then work around any limitation they encounter.
It could be possible to extend that function to other features like surface friction coefficients, fuel weight, atmosphere constants, etc...
An other great possibility would be to duplicate the tables for engine computations. So each engine could be fiddled with independently (simulate engine mechanical failure or icing directly using engine tables).
Best regards
Jean Luc