Speaking of FMS....

After the recent mentions of the free FMS simulator here, I ordered a USB interface for my Tx. It works well. It came with the Version 2 Beta7 of FMS on CD.

After I set it all up and started playing around with it, I was quickly reminded of some of the things that bugged me about the program when I first downloaded it and tried it with my keyboard. (like how the heck do you stop the airplane once it's on the ground? What does "nick" represent on the control mapping page? etc., etc..) I had hoped to find the answers to some of my questions on an FMS forum or help file somewhere....

The FMS homepage has a forum link, but it doesn't work for me. Does anyone know if there IS an active FMS forum (or if the FMS forum site is just temporarily down)? I figure FMS is pretty popular and somewhere, someone must have a good website with helpful information. I Googled and didn't come up with much at all.

Thanks for any information, Bob Scott

Reply to
Bob
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has an english speaking forum for FMS.

or try the simulator forum at www.rcgroups .com

Reply to
ray fisher

Hi,

The FMS-site has indeed an active forum, most in English, some Germans are only posting in German... The link works for me (but indeed seems to be down for the moment : thursday, 22h00 UTC) click the link and then click on forum :

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Reply to
Olivier tx2tx

Try this one Bob

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I set up my usb interface with my Tx during calibration I left the throttle stick open 2 clicks when it said to leave the sticks centred, then when calibration was finished this allowed me to cut the engine when the stick is fully down.I have not come accross "nick" on mine, only reverse and exponential tick boxes. Hope this helps. Andy.

Reply to
Andy

The first four mappings are your standard 4 aircraft functions. The second four are for helicopters. Nick is the elevator, with the pitch control being collective. I might have those two backwards, but you get the point. There is no throttle that I know of, unless the keyboard is used. The exponential checkbox does weird things to trim if it's marked, at least on my machine. The inv checkbox is "servo reversing", btw, so you don't have to change your transmitter settings.

Reply to
John Alt

I have just downloaded the latest version (8.1) and found that if I don`t de-select "simulate empty tank" in the simulation parameters, then I do not have any throttle. otherwise seams ok. Andy.

Reply to
Andy

That gets me to the FMS home page, but the Forums link still doesn't work for me. I guess the forums are down temporarily.

I'll give that a try.

It's on the list of eight things to assign to Tx inputs. The first four are obvious: "Rudder," "Elevator," "Ailerons," "Throttle." But then there are "Tail," "Nick," "Roll" and "Pitch." If you're using a four-channel Tx, what are the correct assignments for these four?

The sim seems to work pretty well but I find I have some problems with rudder authority. I'm unable to knife-edge any of the models, even the Pitts or Sukhoi. The rudder seems to work very well with the SuperCub and pretty well with the Pitts, but is very ineffective with the Sukhoi.

It did. Thanks very much!

Bob Scott

Reply to
Bob

Thanks for the information, Oliver. I'm happy to find that there is indeed a working forum. Apparently, it's just not working right now.... I'll try again tomorrow night.

Good flying, Bob

Reply to
Bob

It's easy to change the model parameters. In your FMS directory, there is a folder marked Models. Inside, you will find (usually) 6 files with the name of the model, followed by different extensions, such as BMP, MQO, etc. The model parameters are controlled by the .PAR file

Pick one, such as Pitts.PAR, open with notepad or wordpad. It's a text file.

For BETA 7, you will see lines like the following if the author was German or they just modified an existing model and didn't change the documentation

0 iModelType: 0 = Flugzeug 1 25 Motorkraft: Schub in Newton 2 0.022 Seitenruderausschlag in rad 3 0.09 Max. Hoehenruderausschlag in rad 4 0.004 Querruderausschlag (Flgelverwindung) in rad 5

Now, there are 26 lines of code in a particular order, no error checking. The number at the beginning of the line is read and everything else is a comment. Editing that leading number will change the performance, and you can write the original number next to it if you want to change it back, such as

0.01 (Orig .022) Seitenruderausschlag in rad 3

Now, here is a PAR file with English definitions. It's for an F 100. If you don't have one in English, I suggest you copy and paste the following someplace you can find it. The order or items MUST stay the same, so if you have a german/japanese/whatever file, changing the leading number on line 3 will affect the rudder no matter what the comment says.

0 1:Type(-) Type[0=Plane] ParDesigner Ver0.8 50 2:Tmax(N) Maximum Thrust 0.02 3:Drmax(rad) Maximun Rudder Angle 0.04 4:Demax(rad) Maxmim Elevator Angle 0.006 5:Damax(rad) Maximim Aileron Angle 1.0 6:CLmax(-) Maximum Lift Coefficient

-1.0 7:CLmin(-) Minimum Lift Coefficient

8 8:CLa(/rad) Lift Gradient 13 9:CLaSt(/rad) Lift Gradient in Stall 0.018 10:CDw(-) Drag Coefficient of Wing 0.02 11:CDb(-) Drag Coefficient of Fuselage 0.4 12:mug(-) Friction Coefficient of Wheels 0.76 13:dCDSt(-) Rise of Drag Coefficient in Stall

-0.007 14:CM(-) Moment Coefficient

0.005 15:alpha0(rad) Wing Angle 1.6 16:b(m) Wing Span 0.32 17:c(m) Wing Chord 0.08 18:hce(m) Equivalent Center of Gravity 1.8 19:m(Kg) Mass 0.05 20:Izz(Kg*m^2) Yaw Inertia Moment 0.05 21:Iyy(Kg*m^2) Pitch Inertia Moment 0.06 22:Ixx(Kg*m^2) Roll Inertia Moment 0.09 23:She(m^2) Effective Area of Stab 0.03 24:Sfe(m^2) Effective Area of fin 1 25:Lt(m) Tail Moment Arm 0.02 26:VForm(-) Effect of Dihedral Angle (.04)

You could change the rudder performance by changing line 3 from .02 to .1 or whatever. Note angles are in radians, other units are metric. Double what you have, try it, and adjust. You could also change Yaw inertia, Effective area of fin, tail moment, etc. to change the rudder influence.

Have fun

Reply to
John Alt

I just downloaded the recommended FMS version, 2.0 beta 7, but cannot get it to function properly.

Now, I downloaded this version although it doesn´t say it supports XP, because I´ve read many win2000 programs may function under XP as well. Also, I was a bit afraid of downloading an alfa version, thinking it may be very buggy.

I have good hardware, the graphics driver is radeon 9800 and the processor is a P4 2,6. Everything else works fine, just cannot get FMS to rock. Did get it installed, do get it running, but loading a background takes minutes, the same for a plane and the initialization takes almost forever (meaning like 5-10 minutes=). The frame rate is probably near zero on the ground, gets good in the air, then slows down again when the background comes in sight until your´re back to almost zero again. Oh, and by the way, this is when running in full screen mode, trying to run it in a window is 10 times worse, I mean slower.

Does this mean I should try the alfa version instead or is there some other tweak I should try out? I got the RC-electronics pic-serial interface so I´m dying to try out the sim with the tx, but there´s no use trying that before I can at least get the whole thing working with the keyboard.

I too tried to go to the FMS Forum today, didn´t work though. So, hopefully someone could give me a hint or two of what to try next?

TIA, Ken

Reply to
Ken Mattsson

Use Beta 8 and turn off True Alpha Shadow under graphics.

-- Dave Thompson

Reply to
Dave Thompson

John,

That was some valuable information! Thanks for sharing it. I think it will help me enjoy the sim a lot more.

I'm still curious about what numbers to plug into the "Tail, "Nick," "Roll" and "Pitch" boxes on the control mapping page. Can you or anyone help me with that one?

Good flying, Bob Scott

Reply to
Bob

: I'm still curious about what numbers to plug into the "Tail, "Nick," "Roll" : and "Pitch" boxes on the control mapping page. Can you or anyone help me : with that one?

They seem to be the controls for choppers, so that you can define different setups for a fixed wing and a chopper. I fly with a Logitech game controller, and have fixed wing throttle set for controller throttle slider, but for a chopper the throttle ("Nick" I think) is in the left stick.

-Tapio-

Reply to
tapio.linkosalo

Just see which channels your controller activates and assign at will. You can assign the same number to both the upper (fixed wing) and lower (helicopter).

-- Dave Thompson

Reply to
Dave Thompson

: Just see which channels your controller activates and assign at will. You : can assign the same number to both the upper (fixed wing) and lower : (helicopter).

The different location for the throttle is intentional (the other three channels are the same for FW and chopper), but I have not so far modified my game controller not to center the left stick forward movement, thus I prefer to use the throttle slider for FW (slam it open and let go :) , while using the centering stick for throttle in chopper.

-Tapio-

Reply to
tapio.linkosalo

I put it in another post, but I'll repeat it here:

The first four mappings are your standard 4 aircraft functions. The second four are for helicopters. Nick is the elevator, with the pitch control being collective. I might have those two backwards, but you get the point. There is no throttle that I know of, unless the keyboard is used. The exponential checkbox does weird things to trim if it's marked, at least on my machine. The inv checkbox is "servo reversing", btw, so you don't have to change your transmitter settings.

Reply to
John Alt

"Dave Thompson" kirjoitti viestissä news:lB02c.28164$aZ3.15344@fed1read04...

Thanks Dave! Now it works very nicely indeed! :-)

I find the wind setting of wind 1 m/s, gusts 1 m/s to feel very realistic for a very usual flight day, meaning that it feels like much more wind than the numbers would suggest, but still a light wind and something I would be flying in.

Is it true that the planes for the earlier version, the beta, cannot be used yet with this alfa? Would be great with an aileron trainer, the Suhoi and the double decker feel a little too hot to train with.

A HUGE THANKS to the guys behind this sim!!!!!!!!!

Reply to
Ken Mattsson

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