LOL I wish I could spray at .46 GPA in real life. Although if that were the case they wouldn’t pay us as much per acre.
To be fair, I don’t know what a typical rate for liquid fertilizer is. I’ve never applied liquid fertilizer. I’ve applied dry fertilizer though and that went on heavy.
Dude, this is awesome! I’ve been on the fence about getting msfs 24, but finding this thread has convinced me.
I’m not an ag pilot like some others in this thread but i am a regular pilot, have good friends that fly ag, and i do a lot of spraying in ground rigs for my job (farmer), so ag flying is a big interest of mine.
It would be cool to be able to load certain amounts, have the ability to control rate and do ‘missions’ of multiple loads per paddock etc
I’ll give it a good test!
I know what you mean. I became fascinated with Ag flying just by watching videos like this one which pretty much shows what I am trying to replicate in the sim. Unfortunately, the lightbar does not film well and it’s unreadable. But the idea that it will indicate the line with feet of precision is very intriguing.
I have been improving the code and will have a new version soon.
I’m not flying missions since I don’t have the time to enroll in career mode, I’m waiting until MS/Asobo makes them available outside career mode. However I’m upvoting because if they are like what you described, they’re anything but real, or at least a reasonable simulation.
Jim Burgess has a lot of cool and in depth videos of ag flying (mainly in NZ), and the lightbar shows up better as its mounted on the panel in the cockpit.
In this video he describes its functions a bit
I had a suggestion to make the Back to Back pattern open-ended. So you only need to mark the A-B line and it will just continue to add swath lines each time you move to the next. The same for the Expand pattern.
I also fixed the engine gauge which I guess got broken from my mod. And I adjusted the flow rate for the Air Tractor. Since I can see how many acres I have sprayed, I could figure out that I now get around 3 gallons per acre of coverage. This helps a lot to use up a tank and have a reason to land and reload.
The application amount will be up to the community to find the correct values. It seems like it only sprays liquid but if we want a variant with dry product, I guess that could be done.
I flew some fields to test it out and please give this one a try if any of this sounds interesting. It’s a fun challenge.
During testing, I discovered a pretty big flaw with how I was drawing the extended locked line and I will have a new version very soon that corrects for this. Also I was able to add the lightbar and sat nav to the 188 AgTruck, H125 and R66 so you can fly your preferred aircraft with precision guidance.
This mod is fairly easy to add to third-party aircraft so other developers could include it in their addons. I’ll have an open-source license so anyone can use it or extend it for their purposes.
That sounds great! Thanks for your work. Will be looking forward to giving it a try.
This is a bit of the H125. I made a different model of the lightbar to use for the helicopters so I just need to position those and it should be ready for another test round.
That looks pretty good! I’ll have to give those a try too. I’m not a helicopter pilot so probably won’t be able to hold my line though lol.
I have a tiny amount of flight time in a R22 helicopter with a helicopter instructor. I actually found a lot of common ground on things like straight and level, turns, climbs, and basic stuff like that. I was able to figure all that out pretty quickly. When we got to hovering though that’s when things fell apart.
I’m not particularly good at helicopters myself. I did find the H125 to be fairly easy to fly though. I was quite slow at first but I did get the hang of it most of the way through the field.
That’s the most surprising part of all of this. I started into this with curiosity but the more I fly, I can see that I am getting better at handling and this just spurs on more desire to get more precise. I thought it would get boring after a while but there are unlimited fields out there and you can pick any of them.
I thought to add some additional data parameters to the sprayed lines to track height and the error at that point. This could show as a “score” of sorts so even if this does not score career mission points, you can challenge yourself to do a thorough job.
It’s possible to save out the sprayed lines as well as any waypoints to plot in external applications. I’ll probably add some support to make that as easy as possible.
All great points and ideas. It is true that every field is different. A lot of them are shaped similarly. But the obstacles and conditions are always changing. Unfortunately, MSFS doesn’t really model obstacles besides XC power lines and windmills(which makes sense). But even in MSFS there’s plenty of opportunities to switch things up.
Keeping track of certain data points on performance is a cool idea. I actually think this add on would be a good way to introduce someone to how a lightbar works, and even for an ag pilot to practice following a lightbar in the off-season. Even more so if it kept track of data like that.
Sort of like how simulators are great for practicing IFR procedures and emergency procedures. Not great for practicing landings and maneuvers though. But simulators have their uses for sure. And they’re only getting better.
One more beta test and I think this is ready to release on flightsim.to. I added the Cessna 188 Ag Truck, H125 helicopter and R66 helicopter. There is also a smaller, interior version of the light bar for helicopters.
You will also see some new statistics that show the average height of the sprayed swaths and the total amount of error in acres which is labeled as gap/overlap along with the percentage vs. the total sprayed area. This represents sort of a “score” of the quality of the sprayed area.
For testing, I am looking out for any off-by-one errors in the patterns. The ones that use the centerline might have problems with even vs. odd number of lines. And the other thing would be the flow rate changes for the Air tractor. I raised this to around 5 gallons per acre so you could go through the tank quicker but this may be too much. Let me know. The other planes have their default flow rates.
I will likely spend today working on a user manual to explain all the features and how to use it.
My favorite has been the Cessna 188. This is only in the deluxe edition sadly but it flies very stable and even though it has a very small tank, it gets the job done.
I am very happy with how this addon has developed and It has given me an appreciation about the job of agriculture aviation in a very visceral way. Accuracy makes a difference in real money and that is an interesting perspective. When you have a distinct goal, you can get a higher satisfaction when it’s done well.
I don’t think very many people understand how much work Asobo has put into the new sim. This mod is only possible because the sim supports complex instruments and the new modular attachment system to inject these things into the aircraft. I know that many others have worked on similar addons and have also faced the same challenges, They all have my admiration because to realize such a detailed system requires a lot of work.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Earlier today I opened the topic Spraying fields with the H125 in Free Flight?, wondering how to see what I sprayed in free flight (being frustrated by the idiotic career mode) and you just delivered the solution.
I only had a half an hour to test your mod with the H125: it is just amazing, FS2024 is finally fun, will continue testing tomorrow.
Would it be possible to add key bindings for the most important functions like New Area/Abort, so one can switch to a new field in VR easily?
Oh, and you could also spawn a refill truck? I’ll send money just let me know where…
It’s my pleasure to satisfy these desires. I feel them too. I have the bones of code that should be able to assign key bindings for the main features. I will continue to work on these details.
I like the idea to spawn a landing area to refill close to your working area because that is very realistic. But I have to say I am not sure how to do that at this time. I will think about it!
Played a little more with the H125, two questions:
What would be a realistic swath width, the default 75 seems way too wide, the boom is probably about 30-35 feet but not sure if it sprays wider than that?
The reference point used to calculate the cross track error seems to be about 6 feet behind the pilot. Not a problem at all, just wondering if it is intended, I just noticed it when turning around.
Just for reference, the boom is usually 75% the length of the wings or rotor blades. And the swath will go wider than the boom. There are a lot of variables that affect the swath width.
I’m not sure about helicopters. But the Cessna 188 I fly in real life has a wingspan a little over 40 feet but has a 65 foot swath.
The Air Tractor 802 has about a 60 foot wingspan (I think 59) but I think usually will get around an 85 foot swath.
And the swaths vary per airplane. Airplanes will actually be tested periodically to determine the swath for that specific airplane. For example, the 188 I fly has big winglets which give it a wider swath than a 188 without it.
I know I didn’t answer your question. But I just wanted to provide some context on swath width.
I think it is not only agricultural aviation, but firefighting missions are far from reality comparing to what is shown in ’Air Crash Investigation’ S25 ‘Firebomber Down’.
I’ve been trying to mention this where I can, but the complexity of Ag aviation and Firefighting and how they are trying to make AI generated missions out of them is what’s killing the missions in career mode currently with a lot of the bugs. Well, and missing features, like the light bar for you guys in Ag aviation.
Whether it’s rotary or fixed wing, these mission types in particular are so dynamic, using an AI generated less than optimal creation parameter like they are right now, isn’t going to cut it unless they do some serious overhauling on top of putting the fully functioning airplanes into the sim to accomplish those tasks effectively.
Us in aerial firefighting don’t really have anything. We have a couple less than optimal scoopers and that’s it. The CL-415 can’t even carry a full load of water.
At least with you guys over here with Ag ops, there’s more hope to at least help fix the shortfalls.
