- Q. I've never designed
an aircraft before. Will I be able to use Aircraft Animator?
A. Yes. Aircraft Animator's
Moving Parts Wizard animates propellers, flaps, spoilers and
landing gear on most aircraft and lets you add landing lights
to them with just a few mouse clicks.
- Q. Can Aircraft Animator
be used to animate all aircraft?
A. Almost all aircraft.
You can't animate the "stock" aircraft nor can you
animate aircraft that lack the capacity (file size) to add the
moving parts. In general, Aircraft Animator can animate
any aircraft created with Aircraft Factory 99 or Flight Shop.
Most add-on aircraft found on the Internet have been created
using one of these tools.
Neither Aircraft
Factory 99 nor Flight Shop are required to animate the landing
gear, flaps and spoilers or add landing lights.
- Q. Can all parts be animated
by Aircraft Animator?
A. Aircraft Animator
can animate propellers, landing gear, ailerons and spoilers found
in existing add-on aircraft. Also,it can add shining landing
lights. All this is automatically performed by AA's Wizard, and
can be done with just a few clicks of the mouse. You can immediately
save the aircraft and fly it, or fine-tune the animation in the
manual editing mode. For most aircraft, the Wizard produces good
results and manual editing is not needed.
In addition,
aircraft designers can add rudders, elevator and ailerons to
their aircraft that can then be animated by Aircraft Animator
too. To do this, the designers may need the original AFX file.
Using a few
simple techniques, designers can also animate other parts. For
example, we describe a technique to simualate the lowering and
raising of the nose on the famous Concorde (see below).
- Q. Can I see the animation?
A. Yes, there are two
ways to see the moving parts:
- The first
way is the conventional way. Start Flight Simulator 98 (or Combat
Flight Simulator), select the plane and view the moving parts.
- The second
way is the easy way. Simply press the F12-key and watch
Aircraft Animator show you a visual preview of the
moving parts right before your eyes.
- Q. I can see the elevator
and rudder on my aircraft, but I'm not able to make them move.
Why not?
A. The rudder and elevator
are "painted" onto the aircraft. The aircraft was designed
without using the proper "tag" for that control surface.
Without the
tag, Aircraft Animator is unable to present this part
to you for animation. If you have the original AFX file, you
can redesign the aircraft to include the proper tag using Aircraft
Factory 99 or Flight Shop. A list of the tags is in the HELP
file.
Advanced
Technique
- Q. Using the Moving Parts Wizard, the landing gear
doors are bleeding through during retraction and extension. What
can I do to avoid this problem?
A. The bleedthrough happens because the landing
gear doors move to an unrealistic position and can be solved
by making them stay under the aircraft.
An easy solution is to use
manual edit mode, click on every landing gear part and disable
"Animate" in the right-click popup menu for the landing
gear door parts. This results in non-animated landing gear doors
without the bleedthrough.
To animate the doors, keep
"Animate" enabled and adjust their hinge axis in manual
edit mode. You may also want to sequence their animation with
the landing gear retraction using motion sequences described
in the User's Guide.
Visual
Model Too Complex - Technical Issue
- Q. When I try to animate this one aircraft I get
the following error message: "Visual model too complex (5200)".
What does this mean?
A. The space available for animations was limited
to 64K in earlier versions of Aircraft Animator.
Download latest version of
Aircraft Animator in order to correct the problem.
Advanced
Technique
- Q. I'm designing a Concorde using Aircraft Factory
99. Is it possible to animate the nose on this aircraft?
A. Of course you can! Keep in mind that the technique
for animating the Concorde's nose can be used for other "parts"
as well. One of Konstantin's goals in making Aircraft Animator
is to extend the user's capability to create even more imaginative
aircraft designs.
Back to the nose. Unfortunately,
FS98 lacks a separate control to raise and lower Concorde's nose.
To simulate this, you'll have to "tie" the nose to
either the flaps or the landing gear. By doing this, the nose
will move down as you extend the flaps or landing gear and move
up when retract the flaps or landing gear.
Let's see how to do this by
tying together the nose and the flaps.
With Aircraft Factory 99, add
the nose in the "up" position. Tag it with either "Flaps,
up" or "Speed, below 195" effect. Produce the
aircraft and load it into Aircraft Animator. Make sure
the "Flaps" and "Tagged parts" are checked
in the Moving Parts Wizard. Aircraft Animator will think
the nose is a flap and animate it accordingly. Most likely, the
nose will rotate 45 degrees down around its tip. We'll fix this
shortly.
To set the proper rotation,
enter the manual edit mode. Select the nose in the tree view
(it is somewhere under "flaps"). You'll see a blinking
hinge axis in the wireframe view. Drag the axis to the point
where the nose is attached to the rest of the plane. Align the
hinge axis with the X axis by right-clicking on it and selecting
Align axis | Along X in the popup menu. Finally, make
sure the nose rotates downward, not upward. If the arrows on
the axis point away from the nose, right-click on the axis and
select Reverse axis. Save the aircraft and test it in
FS98.
By now, you'll have animated
the nose which will lower with the flaps. The only problem is,
it rotates by 45 degrees! This is a bit too much, so we'll want
to limit the rotation to the last half of the flaps extension
cycle. We'll do this by applying the proper motion sequence to
the nose.Right-click on the nose axis and select Properties.
Under Motion seq, type the following:
0-500;50-100+1 and press Enter.
This means that during the
first half of the flaps movement (0-50 percent), the nose will
stay in the "up" position (speed factor of 0). During
the second half (50-100), the nose will move down with the same
angular speed as flaps (speed factor of 1). At the end, the nose
will drop by 22.5 degrees (45deg * 50%).
There you have it, a nose that
you can raise and lower together with the flaps. Now it's your
turn. What kind of imagination do you have?
MultiPlayer Mode -
Technical Issue
- Q. Why aren't the animated gear and props working
in multi-player mode?
A. This problem is now resolved.
After you install the latest
version of Aircraft Animator, it will automatically fix
the problem in aircraft that were animated with previous versions.
You are not required to register Aircraft Animator in
order to do this.
Note that the aircraft on both
PCs connected by multiplayer must be fixed.
FS Design Studio PRO
- Q. I just purchased FS Design Studio PRO to build a few FS2000 aircraft. Can
I use my existing copy of Aircraft Animator to add moving
parts?
A. You can use the latest version of Aircraft Animator
(Version 1.2 or higher) to make moving parts for FS Design Studio PRO aircraft. The new Aircraft Animator
was released to specifically support this new aircraft designer.
When used with FS
Design Studio PRO,
Aircraft Animator acts like a "plug-in" - it is launched
by selecting one of the FSDS menu items and makes the moving
parts behind the scenes.
Of course you can continue
to use Aircraft Animator as a standalone program to make moving
parts for Flight Shop and Aircraft 99 planes.
If you're a registered user
of Aircraft Animator V1.01 or V1.1, the upgrade to V1.2b is FREE from our from FlightSimDownloads.Com site.
Problem with aircraft using Windows
2000
- Q. The planes that I animated will not load when
I run FS2000 (FS98 and CFS) on my Windows 2000 computer. What
is the problem?
A. There is a minor problem with the animated MDL
file that Aircraft Animator has created. If you encounted this
problem, please download the following file from our ftp site:
AbacusMDLFix.zip
Unzip the contents of this
file into your FS2000 \Modules folder. When you start FS2000,
the new DLL will fix any aircraft MDLs that have this problem.
You can also use this with FS98 and CFS aircraft.
You do not need this
fix if you're running Windows 95 or Window 98.
Standard and Commerical
Versions
- Q. What is the difference between the Standard
Version and the Commercial Version of Aircraft
Animator?
A. Both version have the same capabilities. The
difference between the two depends on whether or not you intend
to sell the aircraft which you animate:
- Purchase the Standard Version
if you are not planning to sell the animated aircraft.
- Purchase the Commerical
Version if you are planning to sell the animated aircraft.
In either case, the user is
reminded to adhere to any copyright restrictions that belong
to the original aircraft designer.
Selling
Animated Aircraft
- Q. I'm an aircraft designer and want to sell the
animated planes that I'm creating. What do I do next?
A. Contact us about a Commercial
License Agreement. After we receive your signed agreement
we will send you the special Commercial Version.
Free
Trial Mode
- Q. Can I "test drive" Aircraft
Animator?
A. Click the Download button to receive the full Aircraft
Animator package from our FlightSimDownloads.Com site. You'll
be able to install and experience Aircraft Animator in
just a few minutes using the FREE TRIAL MODE.
- Q. How long can I use Aircraft Animator
in FREE TRIAL MODE?
A. You can use TRIAL MODE indefinitely. However,
in TRIAL MODE, when you're flying any aircraft that you've animated,
you are restricted to flying within a 10 mile radius of Meigs
Field (using FS98) or Interlaken (using CFS).
After seeing the capabilities
of Aircraft Animator in TRIAL MODE, you'll be able to
easily unlock the full capablities by ordering a Registration Key.
Ordering
a Registration Key
- Q. How do I order over the Internet?
A. You can purchase a Registration Key to unlock
the full capabilities of Aircraft Animator by clicking
the Order button.
Additional Information
- Q. Where can I find out more about using Aircraft
Animator?
A. You can read the AA
User's Guide in PDF format (Hold Shift and click the link
to download the User's Guide). You will need Acrobat Reader to
view and/or print the User's Guide which you can get free from
Adobe's website.
- Q. Is there any other information about using Aircraft
Animator?
A. Aircraft Animator has an extensive HELP
file where you can find out about the numerous features of this
amazing software utility.
- Q. Are there any other places on the Internet where
I can get additional information about using Aircraft Animator?
A. Yes, there are two forums that have quite detailed
discussions about using AA.
- Q. Who do I contact if I have further questions
about Aircraft Animator?
A. You can address your questions or comments to
Abacus Customer
Service.
