Taming the Virtavia Blackhawk and Pavehawk.

[Sbob]

While its still a payware title and listed as "for FS9", the Blackhawk takes off and flies well.
Landing the son-of-a-gun, however, always feels like you're aiming for a narrow strip of very wet ice.
Get it wrong and you'll KNOW something screwed up as the helo dances, jumps, and spins.


The problem is found in the [contact points] section and this is how you fix it.

Open the aircraft.cfg file (using Notepad) and find the [contact points] section.

For those of you with better things to do, replace the old lines listed below:

//--------0-----1------2-------3-----4---5---6----7-----8-----9---10----11-12-13-14--15

point.0 = 1, -24.60, 0.00, -8.25, 5500, 0, 0.95, 90, .82, 1.3, 0.7, 0, 0, 2, 00, 300 // tail wheel
point.1 = 1, 4.30, -4.35, -6.83, 2800, 1, 1.50, 0, .90, 1.3, 0.5, 0, 0, 3, 00, 300 // left wheel
point.2 = 1, 4.30, 4.35, -6.83, 2800, 2, 1.50, 0, .90, 1.3, 0.5, 0, 0, 3, 00, 300 // right wheel


point.3=2, 26.075, 0.0, 3.900, 10.0, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0, 0, 5, 0, 0
point.4=2, 0.0, 26.250, 4.275, 10.0, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0, 0, 6, 0, 0
point.5=2, 0.0, -26.250, 4.275, 10.0, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0, 0, 9, 0, 0
point.6=2, -35.550, 1.0, 4.100, 10.0, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0, 0, 9, 0, 0


point.7= 5, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0, 0, 0.00, 0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.20, 0.20, 0, 0, 0 //Artificial water rudder for animations


gear_system_type=0



and Save. That's it, you're done.

If you're wondering why it works, read on.
Notice that the "point.#=" lines are broken into three types (types 1, 2, and 5). The first group are the actual contact points where things are allowed to touch the ground.
I changed these points slightly so the tires sink into the ground a little bit and also softened the spring rate a little so the chopper doesn't bounce as much.
The second group are "Scrape points" which are things which normally don't touch the ground unless you make a real hairball out of your landing.
This section tends to read more like "voodoo dynamics" because its harder to visualize. I based this section on data from uh-60_cu.zip by Michal Lubiscak.


The final line (point.7) can be thought of as a "float point" for things like pontoons floating on water.

If you want to learn more about what all of those numbers control, let me know and I'll keep the thread going.

[Sbob]

Just a quick update/addon to this thread.

I went back to my [contact points] edit and played around some more.
These MDLs have complex gear movement and I wanted to see if I could really nail the gear position on the ground in terms of shadows.
I also made the main tires contact patch a little wider to add some more stability.

This is as close as I can get it in FS9:


point.0 = 1, -24.60, 0.00, -8.35, 5500, 0, 0.98, 90, .82, 1.3, 0.7, 0, 0, 2, 00, 300 // tail wheel
point.1 = 1, 4.30, -4.55, -6.80, 2800, 1, 0.80, 0, .85, 1.3, 0.5, 0, 0, 3, 00, 300 // left wheel
point.2 = 1, 4.30, 4.55, -6.80, 2800, 2, 0.80, 0, .85, 1.3, 0.5, 0, 0, 3, 00, 300 // right wheel

One thing I noticed about the Virtavia Blackhawk is that the main wheels would start to "levitate" just a bit before it would hover.
There would be a slight gap between the tire and its shadow when the tire should have been touching the ground.

It looks really close to the original edit but I wanted to play around with stuff like the tire diameter.
This edit only took about twenty tries and FS restarts and I can't be certain the ground polys and textures are really locked to the ground surface.


So, this was still a payware aircraft, why didn't Virtavia fix it?

Like I wrote above, this stuff is a pain in the ###.
This is also based on my system and its resolution. You may not get the same results, but it will be close.

[AndyG43]

Sbob, if you don't have it already Aircraft Container Manager makes that kind of job far easier. It used to be payware, guess it is considered abandonware these days and can be downloaded from Simviation.