setting altitudes for aircraft

[Trash Can Man]

Can someone tell me if there is a tutorial for making aircraft to fly at the proper altitude for parachut drops. I have tried a couple from other sites but it never seems to work. Any help in this matter would be appreciated....thanks!


Trash Can Man

[macguba]

I have a vague memory that there some tricks to this because the standard flyInHeight command doesn't work as you would expect.   Use the forum search function, this has come up before although not recently.    

Tell us which plane and which parachute script you are using.   It might make a difference.

[penguinman]

I think the problem is not the flyinheight command but the aircraft. I had the same problem but I changed the aircraft and it worked fine

[Kammak]

I have the best results by putting a trigger in front of the a/c with the flyInHeight command there.

The only issue I'm aware of, is that if the flying alt is too high, the game engine doesn't realize the a/c has reached a waypoint, as it seems to go by slant range instead of ground distance.

So if you need an a/c to hit waypoints after setting a high altitute, you must lower the altitude before the next waypoint is encountered.  Or just use a script to control the a/c, where you compute the true horizontal distance between a/c and reference location, instead of the slant range.

I've got a GP a/c script that allows you specify an array of locations it should fly through, and the altitude to fly at.  It is used in place of waypoints.  If you need it let me know and I'll post it.

[Kammak]

Also, if you are not interested in writing your own scripts, check out my general purpose helo script in the editor's depot "pending" section.  It includes a parameter that will make the troops parachute, and you can specify whatever altitude you want for the drop.  I've used it with both regular para drops and HALO drops, with an altitude > 1000 - no problems.

[renegade798]

I have the same problem as trash can man, I'd like to know the salution, cause it's annoying.

[Raptorsaurus]

Hey, I wrote a function that will force an aircraft to go to whatever altitude you want (it must be looped in a script - the function header explains how).  Anyway, the function is NOEAng (Nap OF Earth).  You can get the function bundled with my Super Guided Missile Script which can be found in the script library in the Editor Depot.  If you look at the script(s) in the example mission you can see an example of how to implement the function. Basically if figures out what angle is required to get an aircraft to the desired altitude over a given distance - it takes the ground slope over the distance also into acount.  You can then use my VeltoAng function (also in the Super Guided Missile script/demo) to find the velocity values needed to get the craft going up at the angel.  Then use the setVelocity command.  You can put these in a loop that repeats until the paradrop is complete, then the craft will decend back to whatever the original flyinAltitude was before the script started.

[Homefry31464]

FlyInHeight doesn't work in the init field... I'll go back in my hole now...

[Kammak]

Trash Can Man - I got your PM, here is the script with a demo mission and a readme.

Hope it does what you need!

[Trash Can Man]

Trash Can Man - I got your PM, here is the script with a demo mission and a readme.

Hope it does what you need!

Thanks dude! I'll take a look at it and give it a go!  Cheer!


Regards,
Trash Can Man