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Coming Soon! A Race in the Swiss Alps


Karen Hamilton

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We will be doing a race in the Swiss Alps featuring the new Aerosoft Discus Glider! :groupwave_s:

We will run the race as an online multi and also as an offline race. Pilots will have the option of participating in either or both races. We are looking at an October timeframe. Keep watching this post for more details! :cheers_s:

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Hi Karen,

great news!

Will there be contest classes?

E.g.

Online/Offline

Real weather (for rally and records)

Realtime (no pauses)

Here some older ideas con competition rules:

http://www.forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?showtopic=24622&st=0&p=153249&hl=record&fromsearch=1&#entry153249

best regards,

Peter

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Hi Peter,

My first concern is to come up with a mission to tie all the elements of the race into one package. Ian's articles are helpful but a little disheartening for a novice designer like me. I am buying Flight 1 Instant Mission Maker in the hopes it will make the learning curve a little easier for me.

Your Rules suggestions look great. I will study and make use of them.

I have given the cheating problem some thought after dealing with this issue so much in the past. I have come up with this idea and am wondering if it would work. Please give me your opinion about this concept. Often when comparing flight times for a race, most of the times will be clustered in a loose group with a few pilot times much slower than the others, and one or two pilot times much faster than anyone else. Of course the fastest one wins. We would try to fly the winners thread using Soar Track, but it would be impossible. We suspected cheating but could not prove it. In hopes of discouraging the motive for cheating, I thought I might announce as part of the rules that extraordinary fast and unreasonable flight times that are much faster than anyone else could be disqualified as suspicious.

I have to go to Fairbanks Monday-Friday for doctor appointments. I will be back on line Sat.12 Sept.

Cheers, :rolleyes:

Don

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Hi Peter,

I Forgot to mention following.

Online/Offline............................yes

Real weather (for rally and records)......not sure but will do if possible

Realtime (no pauses)......................yes

Cheers, :rolleyes:

Don

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  • 3 weeks later...

  • Location:Central, Alaska

LOL. Doesn't 90% of the population of Alaska live in Anchorage?

Creating a mission in FSX takes a bit of getting used to, and www.flightsimulatorxmissions.com is probably the best place for help. Just getting your *first* mission to run ok is probably 75% of the journey. Most people would underestimate how many elements make up a typical soaring mission, with waypoints and triggers and rectangleareas and dialogs and timers, just to get the basic function. But your *second* mission looks a lot like the first, with a few lat/longs and heights changed...

My advice is try creating your first version with a startline and a turnpoint and maybe a couple of the ancilliary files (chart, reward), and then start again using one of my missions as a base (pick a Mifflin mission with the same number of turnpoints that you want, and tweak the lat/longs and hey presto you've transplanted it to your location). Then worry about how to make sure the multi-player definitions are ok.

B21

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Hi Ian,

Thanks for the information. I am going to try to create a mission by creating a flight from Sion to Furka Pass and back to Sion. No in between way points. A goal and return flight. All ridge lift.

Do you now anything about Flight 1 Instant Mission Maker? Would this program be of use to me?

Don

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I had a look at the "instant mission maker" documents and they've had a good shot at simplifying the process *but* it doesn't take long to work out the tool is just a thin skin on what FSX is doing anyway. In other words, to build a mission you have to understand RectangleAreas, Triggers, Actions and Dialogs (there's a hell of a lot of other stuff but these are the features you really need.) The basics are not that hard in principle:

* Dialog - record a speach segment "Well done you've reached the turnpoint!" and name it "MyDialog"

* Action - create an 'action' called "MyAction" that "plays dialog MyDialog"

* RectangleArea - draw a box in the FSX world somewhere and give it a name "MyBox"

* Trigger - define a trigger to fire whenever the pilots flies into "MyBox" and call action "MyAction"

I'm fairly sure you have to know this stuff regardless of which mission tool you use and in my experience on *every* mission you have some issue during construction that you couldn't sort out unless you at least know which file is which. In the experience bank of every mission designer is the time that FSX simply choked and refused to load a mission *at all* because it contains an error (e.g. you simply deleted a dialog but left in the action that calls it) and you realise you are completely stuffed at that point without having kept some prior versions of the XML file - the IMM tool is equally capable of nadgering up your mission in spite of the 'undo' feature...

By the way, if you have the FLT, PLN and WX (i.e. you've positioned the glider at the intended start point, have a PLN file showing the route, and have set the weather you want, and then done a 'flight save', I can turn this into a 'working soaring mission' very quickly using a templating tool I've made for my own use. At that point the mission will 'work' perfectly fine but the dialogs, HTML briefings and charts will be from some prior mission of mine, i.e. you need to re-record each dialog ("Well done reaching Hunky Dory Airport"...) and edit the HTML files and chart image so the briefing is relevant, but the mission will function without you needing to go into any mission editor and mess with the XML. So that's an offer if you need it - but I wouldn't recommend it unless you at least get off first base with your mission creation...

*BUT* while the programmer in me says go to the school of hard knocks and at least get a mission working by copying across the default FSX soaring mission folder and translating it into your FLT,PLN, WX and mission xml, I have to admit getting your first mission running will be easier with the Flight1 product (but you'll be less prepared for any issues you have).

Apologies this post is longer than I intended, but the underlying issue is that missions are a bit more complicated than they look.

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......By the way, if you have the FLT, PLN and WX (i.e. you've positioned the glider at the intended start point, have a PLN file showing the route, and have set the weather you want, and then done a 'flight save', I can turn this into a 'working soaring mission' very quickly using a templating tool I've made for my own use. At that point the mission will 'work' perfectly fine but the dialogs, HTML briefings and charts will be from some prior mission of mine, i.e. you need to re-record each dialog ("Well done reaching Hunky Dory Airport"...) and edit the HTML files and chart image so the briefing is relevant, but the mission will function without you needing to go into any mission editor and mess with the XML. So that's an offer if you need it - but I wouldn't recommend it unless you at least get off first base with your mission creation...

Thanks for the offer, and I may take you up on it. First let me see how far I can get with my first attempt.

Cheers, :)

Don

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first attempt.

My first attempt at a mission was maybe a couple of years ago and it was freakin horrible - I had no idea what was needed just to get a basic mission up and running. But you quickly gain familiarity so stick with it! And if you haven't had the computer throw away everything you've worked on for the past couple of weeks you haven't lived.

But if you'll be able to get help via the web, including from me. For soaring, the mission itself can be pretty simple, but it pays to put effort into a decent chart and maybe a good briefing including Wx, and think carefully about the task/flightplan. If you can record (and trigger) a few dialogs to offer encouragement, so much the better.

cheers,

B21

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just an update on the Swiss race. :( Sorry but we have had a family emergency and Don is not going to be able to get back to the Swiss Race until mid November!

We want to thank Peter for getting something going in the meantime and apologize for all those waiting for the Swiss Race. If there are any other pilots out there that would want to do a race, fun-fly, etc. when Peter's ends using the new Aerosoft glider, please go for it!! We would appreciate any and all contributions to promote this wonderful new glider and bring more events to SOAR. :D

Will let you know more in November

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