[Part 4] Animate Custom Jetways

[Marten@Stairport]

If you want to animate your custom jetway object to work with SAM we propose to use a library jetway as a reference. The following datarefs and their values are available:

sam/jetway/rotate1 | -/+ 90 degrees | Rotation of the entire jetway around Z-axis at 0,0,0

sam/jetway/rotate2 | -/+ 90 degrees | Rotation of the docking door  

sam/jetway/rotate3 | -/+ 6 degrees | Vertical rotation of the gangway around X-axis

sam/jetway/extent | 0-10 meters | Gangway extent in meters along Y-axis

sam/jetway/wheels | -/+ 2 meters | Distance of vertical translation of the wheel pillar

sam/jetway/wheelrotatel | 0-360 degrees | Left wheel rotation (forward)

sam/jetway/wheelrotater | 0-360 degrees | Right wheel rotation (forward)

sam/jetway/wheelrotatec | -/+ 90 degrees | Wheel turn axis rotation

sam/jetway/warnlight | 0/1 | status 1 = Jetway is operating

 

Note: You have to animate from/to all values listed above. If your jetway does only extent 5m please animate it to 10m so SAM can calculate the correct value. You can limit the extent to 5m in the authoring tool later.

Once the object is finished and placed in your custom scenery you configure the animation the same way like library jetways except setting own values instead of the template. In this case you don’t need to register the datarefs but set the measures of your object in the Description tab.

We propose to read out the measures from your 3D Editor. However you can also use debug lines by selecting Show Debug Lines in the Util tab. They will indicate each value as a colored string. Furthermore use the Force Connect to Aircraft button in the Test Arrangement tab to check your entered measures. If the docking door is in a wrong position you can finetune the values until they are correct. Please do this finetuning mainly by changing the Distance from cabin pivot to end of cabin and Height of bottom jetway edge above ground. If you change other values your animation might get messed up under different circumstances (other door heights or extend distances).

If you don’t want to enter the values for all jetways again simply store them as a template in your custom scenery and load them for each following object.

Finally you have to set up the jetway limits per object as described in PART 2.

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL

Edited January 10, 2019 by Marten@Stairport