BIS uses an inconsistent pylon proxy placement. We went a different way. A more logical way, in our opinion at least. We went with the real world NATO System.

NATO uses specific standards, primarily guided by STANAG 3726 and related U.S. military standards like MIL-STD-8591, for “bail (portal) lugs” used to suspend munitions from aircraft racks. The key dimension for compatibility is the lug spacing, not the individual lug's size. Common NATO/military lug spacings include:

• 14 inches (356 mm): Used for 250 lb and 500 lb class stores, such as the GBU-38.
• 30 inches (762 mm): Used for 1,000 lb and 2,000 lb class stores, such as the GBU-31.

The lugs themselves are robust to handle the weight and forces involved. A specific embodiment in a patent described one such lug as approximately 4 inches wide, 6 inches long, and 3 inches deep.

In the aircraft model, you add a proxy object. These appear as a triangle in Object Builder. The arma dynamic pylon system uses the “proxy object” placed in the model to to located any weapons and racks you select.

BIS decided to do things in a very odd and in my opinion illogical way. Their way means you need to make a custom pylon for each plane or move the proxy location in each model to suit different pylons.

This poses a problem with a pack as large and as diverse as ours.

By using the centre point between the lugs we get consistent and flexible weapons placement on any pylon.

The images below illustrate the proxy placement in the plane model. The first shows the proxy that is on the plane.

• The red triangle dictates the orientation of the proxied object.
• The size of the proxy triangle is irrelevant, scaling it does not change the scale of the proxied object.

The second image shows the 'weapon carrier' or launcher rail in this case. A LAU-117 for AGM-65 Mavericks.

You can see the orignal image in wireframe in the background. The red triangle in this frame is the proxy for the actual weapon.

BI uses an 'autocenter' named property flag in the geometry LOD to control the relative location of the model. It uses the averaged point of all the vertices in the model mesh to decide where the 0,0,0 point should be. For launcher racks and rails we disable this using the named properties In the geometry LoD:

autocenter = 0

This ensures the that proxy does not move to the calculated center of all the vertices in the model. Ensuring we get the placement exactly as we wanted. We do the same for the launcher rails and the proxied model of the weapon. Where as on the 'fired' versions we reset it to 1. This apparently affects how the weapon's physics are calculated by the game engine so make sure its set properly.

The final image, shows the weapon placed on the Rail, with the original still in wireframe behind.

For weapons that directly mount to the plane's pylons we use exactly the same setup as the rails.

Weapons like FFARs, CRV7 and S8 Rockets the system is almost the same. The launcher pod is setup exactly the same way the LAU-117 is above. The center point between the lugs etc. The difference is the proxies for the rockets.

Any weapon that is launched from a tube is done the same. The proxy is placed on the centreline of the tube. The proxy for the rocket is set to Autocenter = 0 just like any other proxy weapon.

The remaining issue is the Z placement along the pod's launch tubes.

For our pack, we have rockets with different length warheads. We want the rockets to sit at the back of the pods, touching the igniters. Assuming the rocket motors are the same length we can now use any warhead option in the same pod.

But this maybe a problem in none RKSL launchers. So if you want to use our rockets in your own pods or launchers you may need to slide the rocket proxies in the pod model either forward or back to suit.