The original post quoted below exemplifies why I beleive it is a mistake to ever have crash detection for water in a flight sim however let me lay it out simply.
1. Anyone who lands on water in a flight sim knows they are doing it. It is highly likely they WANT to do it - ie have a float plane or want to ditch. Setting a crash default is silly. It forces people to not be able to do what they want and it isn't realistic. 2. In reality all water is in fact landable even in a non float plane. It simply acts like extremely mushy ground. It should be treated like land and have a large drag component. In fact all ground should have a drag componenet so pavement, grass, snow, and muddy runways can be modeled - water should just have a very large drag component. This would more properly simulate takeoffs and landings on ground on water or snow or hard ground etc.. Water should be treated like land - period. Any crash detection should ONLY result from the speed of vertical decent during landing but frankly even that should be selectable because all planes have different undercarriage survivability (and again you will end up limiting people.) We should rememeber that water crashes were an error result caused by limited flight sims of the late 80's. Water "Crashes" in flight sims originated When BAO marketed by Microsoft added water crashes early on and it was an ENTERTAINMENT feature - it caused an exciting sound and forced a restart. IT WAS A BAD IDEA THEN AND HAS BEEN CARRIED FORWARD BY HABIT RATHER THAN REALISM ever since. It was a cheap stunt partially caused by limited contact feature routines (there was only one contact routine - crash!) in the EIGHTIES whether between buildings, other vehicles or water plus I suspect the desire of Microsoft (or BAO Bruce Artwick) to create excitement and a "feature" for amateur flyers. One should NEVER CRASH simply because one lands in water. One should be allowed to land in water anywhere. Anyone landing on water is chosing it. He either has a float plane or has decided he wants to put his cessna down ignoring all reality or simulating a ditching. The sim should on default allow it. One should ONLY crash when the rate of collision in the direction of contact (in landing that is vertical speed) exceeds any reasonable impact whether it be with a building, other aircraft, or in a landing. That should be modeled with seperate default factors for vertical side and frontal impacts - especially vertical- that an aircraft model file will carry modifiers for so different aircraft structures survivability can be slightly modeled without full structurally analysis. This way a jungle jumper or bush plane could have say a 3 in the vertical modifier key so the sim could calculate that the bush plane won't "crash" unless it's vertical touchdown (rate of descent in meters/sec) component is more than 3 times default. If you want to get even more accurate landing without structural analysis, "crashes" (unrecoverable landings) should be modeled by calculating the gross weight including remaining fuel times the vertical component at touchdown times the aircraft models factor modifier. Anything beyond that and you need to start introducing structural analysis in the sim which is a whole different ballgame. George On Mon, 24 Dec 2007 7:08 am, gerard robin wrote: > On lun 24 décembre 2007, AnMaster wrote: >> Maik Justus wrote: >> > Hi Gerard, >> > >> > gerard robin schrieb am 24.12.2007 01:14: >> >> BTW: i could not use the c172 because mine makes difference between >> >> water and solid >> >> >> >> Cheers >> > >> > Yes, all YASim aircrafts do. But while the default scenery looks >> like >> > water it is marked as solid. Therfore you can land on water >> everywhere >> > you have no scenery installed. >> >> That sounds strange, you would be unable to land with a float plane >> on sea >> tiles then? >> >> And when I started with A-6E once where I laked scenery, I was unable >> to >> take off, because the aircraft had "crashed" into the water. >> >> Regards, >> >> Arvid Norlander >> >> > I am not sure that i have understood very well. > > My c172 is a JSBSim aircraft and it makes difference between water and > solid. > > The seaplane can land and take off on that sea tile, when there is sea > tile, > the North Pole shows that there is NO tile, which explain that the > Aircraft > can't fly on it. > > Merry Christmas! > > > -- > Gérard > http://pagesperso-orange.fr/GRTux/ > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft > Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. > http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ > _______________________________________________ > Flightgear-devel mailing list > Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel www.GlobalBoiling.com for daily images about hurricanes, globalwarming and the melting poles. www.ElectricQuakes.com daily solar and earthquake images. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
