First of all, thanks everyone for the compliments!
“That is one stunningly detailed model!
...but, I didn't see any "safety wire" on the hardware...”
Actually…if you look close:
It’s there!
Easy to pick it out in the screenshots from FSDS, but with the screenshots from the game, after resizing and with the jpeg compression it’s hard to see. The safeties on the nuts/studs
should be palnuts, but if you model those, then most folks think you’ve done a
bad job on a regular AN nut. lol
I
drew the lockwire on the generator brush cover:
The insert shows the texture (cropped from a 1024x1024 bitmap) that I used.
But that reminds me - how much detail is necessary? I work using the principle that if I can’t see it in the game, then I shouldn’t model it. Some of things I’ve done with the engine and accessories are hard to see in
this model, but might show up well in another, and since I reuse the engine models, it’s a hard call to make. Also, I’m always amazed at the vantage points people can achieve in FS2004. I get screenshots and videos that I have
no idea how they were done, so you never know.
“My goodness man! PT, that is the biggest model yet for FS9, lolol... Surely this is the record.”
Maybe…it’s probably one of the biggest, that’s for sure.lol
”I am curious how big the MDL file is. I am going to guess 26 megs, but its probably much more then that.”
The .mdl file is 12.9 MB, and the total count right now is 339,395 polygons. There’s no shadow model yet, so the file size will go up when I add one. Having a shadow model would help those with lower performance hardware, but even without it, with my I7 box (stock 3.2 clock speed), the lowest frame rate I see is still over 60 fps with the frame rate target set to “Unlimited”. That’s with all sliders maxed, and in the toughest scenery areas of the game.
I have a bit to do yet, so it’s going to get even larger. Still trying to figure out where to install the remote avionics units. In the real plane, forward of the panel would be smoking hot with that big engine kicking over, and the baggage compartment, while well ventilated by ram air, has a big tank full of hot oil. I think aft of that bulkhead is the best choice for the radio racks, better for cooling and weight and balance, not so good for maintenance since the metal fuselage panels, and the original fairing assemblies (what Boeing called the stringers and formers that fair the aft fuselage) would need to be removed. One of the other placement problems was putting all the gauges and avionics into the space-limited panel. That was a real challenge; and I’m still not satisfied with some of it.
”You must have your gauge visibilities working through switch coded visibility polygons? One set of gauges hide, the others show up,…”
Yes. The parts of each gauge that I want to illuminate are linked to a top node in each of the VC panel models. There are 5 models for lighting; the parent nodes for those go from “dim” to “bright”. Each of those nodes is controlled by a visibility condition dependent on the return from the rheostat’s L:var. For example: as the dimming rheostat is turned, between 1 and 59 degrees the dim parts will display, as the rotation increases, the medium parts, then medium-high, high, and finally bright.
The radiolite parts are linked to a node named “radiolite”. That node and it’s dependencies will display when the rheostat’s L;var is returning zero (lights off), and the time of day variable is dawn/dusk/night. During the day, or anytime the lights are turned on, it isn’t visible.
“…new material glow coded into the X file?”
I like your phrase “glow coded”. It’s a perfect description!
But no, I don’t edit the .x file for that. MakeMdl will set all
textured emissive material properties to zero as it compiles the model. It doesn’t matter that you set those properties in FSDS or Gmax, as soon as you slap a texture on it MakeMdl turns off the glow. So editing the .x file won’t help. However, once you get MakeMdl to regurgitate the .asm files, you can edit the emissive properties of the material and BGLC_9 will respect your wishes as it compiles the model.
Here’s a material line from the .asm file:
MATERIAL_DEF 1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000, 0.392157,0.392157,0.392157, 0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,
0.000000,0.000000,0.000000, 0.000000 ; 1
The values in bold above (11, 12, and 13) are the R,G,B, values of the emissive material. Note that thanks to MakeMdl they're set to zero. To edit that, you need to determine the proper values to use. There are two ways to do it, I went with the simplest. I found that FSDS only exports a one place decimal in the .x file, for example, a value of “17” for red will be rounded to “0.1” instead of “0.066666”. As you see in the excerpt above, MakeMdl will produce a number with 6 decimal places in the .asm file, but testing showed that there was no distinguishable color difference between using all six places and just the tenths place, so I use the
values from the .x file for any given emissive color:
MATERIAL_DEF 1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000, 0.392157,0.392157,0.392157, 0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,
0.100000,0.700000,0.600000, 0.000000 ; 1
The above is for 17, 174, 151 RGB, a
really ugly blue/green shade.
In line with the above, the reason why I separate the dim to high parts into separate models is to have an easier time editing the .asm files. Other guys might be able to keep it all straight in a big file, but I find that more mistakes and lost time occur that way.
Another use for this is to brighten digital displays in the VC. The KI 267 DME looks like this without an emissive material:
Assigning that gauge planar an emissive material results in this:
I do that by adding another material def line, and changing the material number for the part:
; Node 187 - dme_ki267_planar transform:
BGL_TRANSFORM_MAT -4175.369141,12873.951172,-16765.554688, 1.000000,0.000000,0.000000, 0.000000,1.000000,0.000000, 0.000000,0.000000,1.000000
MATERIAL
4,15 ; <0,0,0,0> $D75N1 VC1;;;
The "4" shown in bold is the material number. On the material def line it's the last value:
MATERIAL_DEF 1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000, 0.392157,0.392157,0.392157, 0.000000,0.000000,0.000000, 0.900000,0.900000,0.900000, 0.000000 ;
4
I also use it for suction (vacuum) and stall warning lights, and hot exhaust stacks. There are a lot of other uses for this that I won’t go into here - I’m sure people can come up with many more possibilities than I can.
My goodness man.. I salute you...! Thanks for sharing. The guys would love to see this over at the FS2004 room at the Sim-Outhouse.com forum. They wouldnt believe it though. Its beyond FSX model complexities, lol...
Thanks Bill! You asked, so I took some time and made some screenshots.
“Had to leave another note or two.
Nice engine. That is a work of art. Setting hear looking at it. You even put in the air filter, lol.. Goodness man. Love that mesh screen in the air intake and the ribbing on the cone of the front of the engine crank case. No visual signs of notching from polygons are visible. Just a beautiful, rounded shape.”
The nose case was easy to build once I got the rib spacing correct. I finally had to make a background image from the maintenance manual and that allowed me to figure out the rotations involved.
While we’re on the engine subject: I’ve modeled the entire single-row P&W line, from the Wasp Jr. to the Wasp and Hornet - the last two have both direct drive and geared types - and that entire line is “in the can” so to speak. Now when I model a plane using one of those engines, I only have to concentrate on the airframe and model specific engine related parts like the cowling, exhaust, etc. Saves time. I’ll start on the double-row P&W stuff someday, probably when I have a use for it.
“That's fantastic work there - I don't know how you have the patience to do all the engine stuff...”
It’s not as difficult as it might seem at first glance. Once you model one cylinder, you copy/paste and rotate it 40 degrees. Do that 8 times, and theres a big part of the engine. It takes 30 seconds in FSDS, and can be done even faster in Gmax. That’s true of most of the engine, but the accessory case and engine accessories are another story. Patience and good reference materials are a must for those chores.
