IKChains / IK Limb Solver / LookAt for Aircraft

[MSFS 2024] Questions & Community Discussions Aircraft
1

Hello All,
I’m working on a helicopter project and I’m trying to implement the Rotor Cyclic Input ( Longitudinal and Lateral Cyclic ). The problem is that when the Swashplate is doing Cyclic Input and the rotor is pitching, the angles of the pitch links need to change dynamically and in realtime, so the idea is to use IKChains or similar for calculating the angles of the rods.
Please advise how to use IKChains for Aircraft instead of Jetways, thank you.

Angles
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2

I tried to Use IKChain but it didn’t work

<IKChain Name="IK_PitchLink">
	<Start>SKEL_ROTOR_BLADE_01_PITCH_CHANGE_LINK</Start>
	<End>SKEL_ROTOR_BLADE_01_PITCH_CHANGE_LINK_TOP_END</End>
	<TranslationSpeed>1</TranslationSpeed> <!-- Meters per second for each Node compared to its parent -->
	<RotationSpeed>10</RotationSpeed> <!-- Degrees per second for each Node compared to its parent -->
</IKChain>


<IKConstraint>
	<Node>SKEL_ROTOR_BLADE_01_PITCH_CHANGE_LINK</Node>
	<Pitch/>
	<Bank/>
	<Heading/>
</IKConstraint>

<IKConstraint>
	<Node>SKEL_ROTOR_BLADE_01_PITCH_CHANGE_LINK_TOP</Node>
	<Pitch/>
	<Bank/>
	<Heading/>
</IKConstraint>
3

Bake the animations, in 3DS you do this by converting the IKchains to full key frames..

R.

4

Hi, The Baked Animation won’t work for Cyclic Input, for collective pitch yes I have baked it and it is working fine, but for Cyclic Input they must be dynamic. in Unity3D or unreal engine there is built-it feature that can be used and for MSFS i believe the jetways and pilot hands are using IK Chain so i am looking for a way to use it for other animations.

5

Don’t believe this is supported for airplanes, I use IKchains a lot for aircraft animations and converting them to full KEY FRAME animations has always worked for me.

Maybe look at the Calibry example and see how is done for that helicopter?

R.

6

I use a baked IK solver animations for gears and rotors as well but The Main rotor Cyclic Input is not implemented yet for Cabri sample, those baked animations won’t work correctly because of the issue I mentioned first and they have to be calculated in sim instead of a baked animations. if you check in sim you will see only Collective input works.

7

I have a similar issue with the landing gear of another aircraft, in the end I just wrote a custom equation for calculating the position based on the position of the other animations. It is only an approximation but it is close enough. You may have to do the same. Not an ideal solution though.

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