Hey all,

I was experimenting with the Submersible this afternoon. I wanted to see how it runs and how it works underwater.

I found that the joystick at full back causes a fast rise, but I couldnt trim it to fly level. Its either full joystick back for up which breaks to the surface or you dive. I am sure there is a way to experiment though with the balance and fins and seeing if it could be zero balanced like a sub.

Full throttle got me to 4 knots, so I guess that is the speed on this little baby. I hope to install my U-Boot Type VIIC in here to see how it performs. Should be fun.

I tried using Slew with keyboard 'subtle' controls and it worked very well. One or two taps of forward arrow (top arrow) gives me slow speed, and Q - Z works the surface and dive. One click of either will give you a very subtle change towards surfacing or diving.

It will be pretty dang cool to set up submarines in this sim. Imagine what all you can do. Bubbles effects, churning prop cappilating cloud, mist in the visibility, installment of boundry layers via Scenery BGL design placement (mirky shiny layers underwater, similar to fog). Then, what if one found a way to do seaweed and things at the bottom in tiles as LOD close proximity Autogen!

This opens up tons of doors... . Very nice to include this, Team P3D!

Bill
LHC

There is a sunken ship? Is this a mission?

Nice... Thanks for the heads up.

I experimented yesterday evening by putting in a copy of the Piper Cub air and config files, changed out the sections of it with the sections from the Submersible's config, raised the speed limit on it from 4 to 25 to see what it would do.

I was hoping that adding wings into the config would allow it to have more control via the joystick on up and down movement, but it didnt work. I did get up to 11 knots though.

For the person asking if it could sit above the water when out on the ground (Submersible) and at water level when in the water, the first thing I thought of was pontoons / floats on a plane. Retractable wheels on the float act like that. Thus you set water line on the floats to be up high, and the RG gear from it, its contact points way below it. Thus on the ground, it would set way up in the air, and in the water, it would have its water line. But, I dont know if it would submerge with floats.

Bill

Roger that FSMP and thanks for the input.

In FS2004, I created U-Boots for my Operation Valkyrie WWII gamepack. The U-Boots were Type VII-C ships, and had flaps controls that lowered them at certain amounts; surfaced was zero feet, water line, 1 click was up to the conning tower, and 3rd click was periscope depth. The ships center was the flaps, so I made that move and that moved the object up and down on the surface. The object was an airplane on floats.

It worked for what I needed. We didnt have the sea floor which would have been nice. I has a periscope animated to a control which was also cool. I wanted to model the entire sub interior (which is a nightmare). Being able to have submarines in 'this' would be like being able to have a full Silent Hunter in the FS world. Having modern day prototype submarines would be pretty dang cool. Being able to launch torpedoes, deck guns from a WWII U-Boot, etc, would be so very dang cool......

Bill

Quote from FSMP on April 10, 2012, 21:32
Bill,

Interesting -- with the current limitations in P3D, the only way I could get a submercible to do very much was to use a similar method.

Basically, a Transparent AIRSHIP, coupled by a Transparent Vertical ROD, down to the SUB, some distance below the water.

The Airship could be "Flown", and the sub below, moved through the water. !!
Since the Airship was above the water, in the air, it could also hit Mission Position Triggers, and thus the Sub "appeared" to be within a mission.

Not much of a work around, and riddled with flaws. It did work to a certain extent, but was far from a practical solution.

Geoff

Very interesting also! A blimp is basically exactly what a submarine is, but in the opposite direction. Quite an ingenious route!

Dang....

Now if only a blimp could be made that flew down instead of up. We would have our Submarine airfiles.

Bill

Quote from lionheart on April 10, 2012, 11:25
There is a sunken ship? Is this a mission?

It is just one of the start flights, not really a mission...

The SDK's Terrain and Scenery.html document has a Bathymetry section with a description and map of supported areas. Basically coastal U.S. and Hawaii.

Mike

More experimenting yesterday.

This time, it occurred to me, perhaps with the low speed, the sim wasnt seeing enough 'area' on control surfaces, so I doubled rudder and elevator area, increased max up down amounts for control surfaces, added trim effectiveness (by quite a bit) as well as elevator and rudder effectiveness, and all of that seemed to have no effect on the submersible. I beleive that it only works on power input (throttle/speed) and update on the joystick which makes the Submersible only rise and lower. Nothing else seems to work. I tried trimming the sub to run flat ahead, that too didnt work. So I think that nothing in the config will tune these guys to fly properly underwater. They, I think, will need a core tune that will allow for tuning of submarine underwater flight characteristics.

I look forward to that. Man, I could really get into the submarine thing.

and tanks!

Bill