Is there a way to disable or hide blocks?

[Flashy]

Hi all,

 

I have a mission where I want static aircraft to only appear at a certain time, but nothing I do to try hide or disable the static aircraft blocks seems to work.... is there any workaround to this issue, or is it just not possible? It seems the spawner, deactivate and even the delete MCU's have no effect on blocks.. 

[Sketch]

Unfortunately, you can not hide or disable static entities. However, you can make them destroyed/repaired. If it's just a few airplanes, you could enable/disable them to get the effect you want.

[Flashy]

hmm thanks @Sketch that is what I had feared.. I have an airfield with lots of static planes, and I want to disable/hide the static model and replace it with a "real" plane at a certain time when its ready to take off.. and I dont want tons of AI planes sitting there on the airfield doing nothing for most of the mission and eating up CPU resources..

its a pity we cant do this because it makes static vehicles and planes a lot less useful if we cant hide/show them when we need to

 

EDIT: just a thought.. if I set the to "Delete after death", then kill them at the beginning of the mission, then repair them later, will they pop back into existence I wonder..?

Edited November 19, 2024 by Flashy

[Jaegermeister]

6 hours ago, Flashy said:

hmm thanks @Sketch that is what I had feared.. I have an airfield with lots of static planes, and I want to disable/hide the static model and replace it with a "real" plane at a certain time when its ready to take off.. and I dont want tons of AI planes sitting there on the airfield doing nothing for most of the mission and eating up CPU resources..

its a pity we cant do this because it makes static vehicles and planes a lot less useful if we cant hide/show them when we need to

 

EDIT: just a thought.. if I set the to "Delete after death", then kill them at the beginning of the mission, then repair them later, will they pop back into existence I wonder..?

 

If you use Complex planes as scenery on the airfield, you can disable them all as soon as the player aircraft is out of sight, and then reenable them when you fly back within sight. Use checkzones for Further and Closer, object linked to the Player aircraft at further than 6000 meters and closer than 5000 meters. Target the AI parked planes with the disable and enable MCUs. AS long as you don't have more than 30 aircraft enabled, it should not affect frame rates.

[Flashy]

Thanks for the reply @Jaegermeister. I have used that method in the past and know it well. Its not really what I was hoping to do this time though - I dont really want complex planes sitting in the hangers and on the flight line with pilots and observers in them doing nothing. Its not just planes either, but trucks, vehicles etc.  I wanted to just have statics, and then replace them with complex planes as they become active. The idea is to create a "living" aerodrome idea where there are tons of static objects and they are "activated" and go do random stuff at random times, and then come back and become inactive.. the idea was also to make it very lightweight CPU wise so you could do this for every airfield on the map, so no matter where you fly over, you would see planes and vehicles sitting there, and some would be doing stuff..

[IckyATLAS]

On 11/20/2024 at 1:46 PM, Flashy said:

The idea is to create a "living" aerodrome idea where there are tons of static objects and they are "activated" and go do random stuff at random times, and then come back and become inactive.. the idea was also to make it very lightweight CPU wise so you could do this for every airfield on the map, so no matter where you fly over, you would see planes and vehicles sitting there, and some would be doing stuff..

But this can be done. I do not see it as a limitation in the sense that for each airfield you could have a set of static stuff that will stay and a set of planes and vehicles that will be active when you can see them or deactivated when not.

You can have trucks, AAA vehicles, Fuel Trucks, Tanks, infantry moving around the airfield even planes taxiing, and then when you leave the airfield they get deactivated, and when reactivated they may continue. It is a lot of work to have all this setup and working but you can do it. I have AI planes taxiing around and going to a parking place or going to a service area and have fuel trucks coming to service them etc. And by using the linked objects that are associated with walking human personnel and having infantry running a round you can do a lot. I even simulated infantry boarding trucks or entering barracks. The Editor is very powerful but it is a lot of work to synchronize and manage properly activation and deactivation. Then you have to design this for each different airfield, but I see no issue.

Edited December 4, 2024 by IckyATLAS

[Flashy]

2 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

But this can be done. I do not see it as a limitation in the sense that for each airfield you could have a set of static stuff that will stay and a set of planes and vehicles that will be active when you can see them or deactivated when not.

You can have trucks, AAA vehicles, Fuel Trucks, Tanks, infantry moving around the airfield even planes taxiing, and then when you leave the airfield they get deactivated, and when reactivated they may continue. It is a lot of work to have all this setup and working but you can do it. I have AI planes taxiing around and going to a parking place or going to a service area and have fuel trucks coming to service them etc. And by using the linked objects that are associated with walking human personnel and having infantry running a round you can do a lot. I even simulated infantry boarding trucks or entering barracks. The Editor is very powerful but it is a lot of work to synchronize and manage properly activation and deactivation. Then you have to design this for each different airfield, but I see no issue.

This sounds very similar to what I was trying to do.. do you maybe have a copy of this mission somewhere so I could take a look?

[Flashy]

The use case I was trying to use the statics for was a bit different in that I wanted the statics to sit in the hangars, and then get "moved out" before a flight. The amount of time they would sit in the hangar, and even on the flight line is random..(they can be sitting in the hangar for hours, and on the flight line for up to 30 minutes before they actually take off), so I didnt want to use AI planes just sitting there using up resources and doing nothing.. I also wanted the static to be linked to a "real" plane on the airfields, so if you bomb or destory the static, it effectively removes that plane from the airfield (the static will no longer be there and the AI plane will no longer spawn). So you can then destroy all the static planes on an airfield and it will no longer have any planes sitting around the airfield.

There are ways to work around this for sure, but its just annoying that we cant deactivate statics.. its very immersion breaking when you know an airfield only has 3 planes left, yet there are 12 statics sitting around...

[IckyATLAS]

3 hours ago, Flashy said:

There are ways to work around this for sure, but its just annoying that we cant deactivate statics.. its very immersion breaking when you know an airfield only has 3 planes left, yet there are 12 statics sitting around...

I totally agree with you on this, but unfortunately so it is. You can link a block (a static plane is a block) destroy it but you cannot delete or deactivate.

That's the drama of my life 🙂