How do parachutes work?

[Wavenarra]

Quite simply, how do they switch from that undeployed state to the deployed state? I can't work it out.

[rednick]

look at the part.cfg for the parachute, it probably needs these :

module = Parachutes

and

// --- parachute parameters ---

deployAltitude = 500
closedDrag = 0.22
semiDeployedDrag = 1
fullyDeployedDrag = 55

Don't know for certain though

[Wavenarra]

Yes, I know that, I mean how does the program know which bits of the mesh to hide and which bits to show?

[mixinghoney]

Maybe in the script there may be a function telling the program to animate the parachute on and activating

[Ordosis]

Hi all, newbie here and very much enjoying the game.

It seems that the chute currently works as follows. You have 3 objects 'base', 'cap' and 'canopy'. The base is just the body that 'holds' the parachute, the cap shoots off when the threshold is reached which you define in the cfg. Now for the animation, it seems that the game itself recognizes the 'canopy' object and deploys it in a squeezed state.

So as long as we have no access to the animation variables, which aren't baked in the DAE file. We can only create single chutes that unsqueeze.

I tried it with three chutes, and the best thing to do is just set the deployAltitude really high, so the chutes immediately take there fully deployed position.