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skiselkov / BetterPushbackC

This is the BetterPushback plugin for X-Plane 11 and X-Plane 12
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Plane Request #32

Closed Thalios closed 7 years ago

Thalios commented 7 years ago

Would it be possible for you to add the PMDG Douglas DC-6 please? I love your plugin but can't use it with my favorite vintage plane.

skiselkov commented 7 years ago

I will investigate this. The DC-6 has a single-wheel nose gear, which none of the Goldhofer tractors support. I plan on adding a smaller bizjet- and turboprop-class tractor in the future, which should provide support for the DC-6's unusual (by modern standards) nose gear arrangement.

Thalios commented 7 years ago

Thank you so much! Your plugin has made my sim life a lot more immersive and enjoyable.

skiselkov commented 7 years ago

Glad you like it. The tug I plan to add for this is an lithium-ion battery-powered electric tug. It'll be a fun contrast with the old gas-guzzling, smoke-spewing, oil-dripping radials of the DC-6 :)

skiselkov commented 7 years ago

Making good progress on this, should have something test-ready in a few days. ap88

birdydma commented 7 years ago

This one ready for a tug race.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P27oVdvb3Z8

Thalios commented 7 years ago

Waouh! That fast?! The 3D model looks great already. 👍

And that race.... OMG! ^.^

This one ready for a tug race.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P27oVdvb3Z8

skiselkov commented 7 years ago

Please test with the release 0.23, which includes the AP88 model.

Thalios commented 7 years ago

Same thing as before I'm afraid: "Pushback failure. No suitable tug for your aircraft."

skiselkov commented 7 years ago

Can you attach the Log.txt from the run? It should contain a reason that explains to me which aircraft parameter was out of bounds for all tugs.

Thalios commented 7 years ago

Here you go ^.^

Log.txt

skiselkov commented 7 years ago

It's as I suspected. I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to fix this to your satisfaction. The problem basically amounts to the fact that the DC-6's nose wheel is just so freakin' large. It has an outer tire diameter of almost 1.2 meters. That's more than the AST-3F can handle and it would absolutely dwarf the AP88. And while the AST-1X can handle that tire size, it can't normally handle single-tire landing gear (because of its two-arm grasping mechanism, which relies on there being two wheels side-by-side to grab onto). I do however have a workaround for you. If you don't mind the tug looking somewhat wrong, you can modify the AST-1X config file in "objects/tugs/AST-1X.tug/info.cfg" by appending the following two lines to it:

min_mtow 40000
gear_compat ff

This removes the gear-compatibility check and lowers the minimum allowable aircraft MTOW of the AST-1X from the normal 150 tons to just 40 tons. This should make BP happy to give you the AST-1X model. The underlying towing algorithm isn't dependent on the actual tug model used - that's just eye candy. You will have to re-edit this file after a plugin update, but at this stage this is the best I can do for a compatibility workaround.

Thalios commented 7 years ago

That's plenty fine for me. Thank you very very much!

Thalios commented 7 years ago

It does work, so thank you very much again. Only trouble is that it doesn't seem to follow the plan and seems very very slow. On the other hand, I can guide it with rudder controls so that's plenty good enough for me. Thanks again o/