EGDAM Intro

Introduction

This guide is intended to describe what is necessary to get from nothing to a new Mod that provides a human flyable aircraft in DCS World.

It is a collection of wisdom from the forum brought together into a single place to illustrate the skills and process and my thanks goes out to the many forum participants that answer questions from new developers such as myself.

This document aims to centralize as much detail as possible about creating a new aircraft for DCS World.

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Skill Requirements:

The skills required to add an aircraft Mod to DCS World will depend on the accuracy and completeness that is desired. Adding a graphical aircraft model is not terribly difficult, but making it look realistic requires an eye for detail and a lot of skill with texturing. Creating a Standard Flight Model representation of the aircraft is not difficult, but making it behave close to the actual aircraft's performance may require math skills in geometry and calculus as well as a basic understanding of aircraft aerodynamics. It may help to have spreadsheet programming skills as well. Creating a clickable cockpit will require scripting programming skills at a minimum and adding an External Flight Model (EFM) will require C++ programming skills.

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The general flow for adding an aircraft is the following:

1. Build a 3D external model using 3ds Max

2. Build a Mods directory structure for the aircraft

3. Make the aircraft flyable for AI

4. Animate the external features

5. Define the collision model

6. Define the LODs

7. Define skins / liveries

8. Build a 3D cockpit model and integrate it with the 3D external model

9. Animate and integrate the cockpit controls with aircraft systems

10.Add a Flight Model (SFM or EFM)

11. Documentation

12.Refine, refine, refine

While it is not absolutely required that these steps be followed in sequential order, there are dependencies that will tend to push this kind of ordering. TIP: It may be more reasonable to push the EFM higher up in priority since it appears that integration with the cockpit model may depend somewhat on whether or not an EFM is in use. This may be a chicken and egg problem where the EFM needs some basic cockpit integration as well.

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Back to EDGAM main page: EGDAM

(Pulled mostly directly from the BGDAM, Credit to Redbeard2)