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DC-8 50 series update

Spec looks just fine on this Michael! Need to implement that on my T.5, since it look terrible with al those shiny hotspots everywhere.

Regarding the custom environment map for the gauge glass: is it for the cockpit? I once made a custom environment map for my D.21's cockpit, based on a Blender render technique. Only within seconds during flight testing the envmap, I realized that, as soon as I got inverted, the envmap inverted as well...

Keep it going!
 
It's true the environment map can only be fixed to the world and not the aircraft. I get around this problem by using a custom map consisting of a dark background and a random collection of large light-toned rounded squares and rectangles. These are intended to represent reflections of the windows, patches of sunlight and the pilot's white shirts. They do move as the aircraft pitches and yaws, but in a transport aircraft, its not that big a drawback. You need to see it in the sim and not just a screenshot to see what it's really like.
 
Ok, that's an interesting approach! In understand, in an airliner you won't make those wild manouvres. Noted ;)
 
Yes, it uses the Simufly INS. The readouts display in the VC but you will need to use 2d popups to interact with it, unless I can find a C++ coder who wants to work on this project.
 
You could do what the Simcheck A300 does; make a static model of it, but map the entire thing as a gauge area. They did that so that users could swap out the stock INS for the Civa in the VC and still have it 3d.
1ZGxkto.png
 
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No, it would work with the Civa. The screenshot is from ModelConverterX. The checkered area represents a texture designated for gauge placement. The Civa INS is placed over the 3d INS, and it becomes both clickable and 3d. This technique only works because the entire unit is buttons and round knobs, meaning no animation is required.
 
Interesting. I found some screenshots of this and while it looks better than I would have thought, I would still have issues with the aesthetics.
 
Michael2 said:
Growing collection of half finished, half coded, half textured parts starting to resemble a VC:
Click to expand...

LOL I am in the same stage!!! She looks very good and I hope not insult anyone with the next words: only true artist can get this results with low poly models. Wish I could do that and you've done it extremely well; amazing work!!! :D:D:D

Cheers,
Sergio.
 
Thanks guys. I tried the bare metal a number of different ways before settling on a chrome-type material.
 
How many primary lights does the DC-8-50 have? Two landing, two taxi as in your screenshot? If so, the bone solution might still work. If you want to equip more lights with custom splashes, you might want to stick to fixed-size planes. They're easier to handle, but require running the model through RADItor to set the model radius (and camera distance) to an acceptable value.

Give me a shout if you need some more input for the lights.
 
There are landings lights that drop down from the wings as you see in the one screenshot. These each have a separate polygon and set of bones and animations as their origins move a lot when the aircraft banks. The lights on the nose gear are both taxi and landing lights; they have different intensities (not modelled yet) depending on whether you set the switch to land or taxi. They have one polygon with animated bones.

In the screenshot showing the light splashes, all three polygons are overlapped. As the aircraft descends the splashes get smaller and diverge. I just need to tone down the brightness and make duplicates that will start animating at progressively lowwr altitudes so that they get brighter as they get smaller.

There are also lights in the wing roots that the manuals describe as ground floodlights. I haven't decided how to deal with those. Maybe I could do them with a low intensity fixed polygon that only becomes visible when the aircraft is on the ground with less than, say five degrees pitch. The thing is I don't know what kind of area the ground floods should light up. My photos appear to show them pointing close to level. Maybe they are intended to make up for the fact that the landing lights are angled down as those lights need to take into account the three degree glide slope and nose up landing attitude.

Anyhow Bjoern, thanks for offering to help and if I can't find RADitor or figure it out, I'll let you know. I may need it for the ground floodlights.
 
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You can download RadItor from here: http://www.scenerydesign.org/raditor/

The runway turnoff lights in the wing roots can use a simple, fixed plane. I don't know how intense the real ones are, but I guess if you make them splashes show at less than 10 ft AGL and slave them to your pitch and roll controller, it should be a good compromise between pain and gain.


Another cool effect is the beacon light splash illuminating the ground. Fairly easy to implement to boot.
For illumination from the wingtip lights, the DC-8 might sit just a bit too high though.
 
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