Today I have tried to break a limit of FS again. This time the 1024 frames per animation limit was the thing I tried to come around. Of course I can not really increase this limit, as it simply is there, but I have tried to play different animations after each other (each maximum 1024 frames long). That way we can make an animation that requires more than 55 seconds to play, I want to use it for animated traffic at an airport for example.

Those who have followed my forum a bit longer, know that I have been working on this before as well. I have started to create a tool called AniLinker, based on CAT, that does the same. But due to lack of time (or should I see to much things to do?) I haven’t finished that tool yet. But recently I found a way to let an animated windmill rotate with the wind direction, by tweaking the animation code a bit different from the CAT tweaks. And with this new knowledge I had a look at the animation length problem again.

The good news is that it basically works. I could switch between the different animations, each having a length of 1024 frames. I still need to think of a smart trigger to automatically do the switching between them (I now used the NAV2 frequency just to test it). Another problem with this technique might be that all animation must have the same length. But if a tool does all this math work for you, it shouldn’t be a real problem either.

So for the coming days I need to work on a cool trigger and then I can let my test object drive around the airport. Should be fun…