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MSFS20 Introducing Chief Petty Officer Mike Forney and prepare to be projected to the 1950's

=rk=

=rk=

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So I've been trying to bring a little character to my creations and I thought, "maybe bringing a bigger character would help." Seems logical. Except I can't model human faces. Luckily there's AI.

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AI also crafted the hat and preserver! My job has been all but replaced!

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Could you provide additional info (as much as possible) on the pictured Sikorsky H-5? Is this going to be a detailed flyable model for MSFS? We haven't seen one since the FS2002/early 2004 era at the latest, so this is a potentially exciting development!
 
Yes! Sorry to be unclear! It is a flight sim site first and foremost so we'll be focusing in on the H-5 used in the filming of the James Michener novel, Bridges at Toko-Ri. Except for historical significance, there's nothing unique about it, how could there be, it was practically the first so that will be what's featured.

There will be no tablets, chip based circuitry, or advanced avionics. It does have a very ornate and nicely modeled winch, so there may be a feature to retrieve Harry Brubaker from the sea after ditching, in a similar way the K-Max project can emulate logging operations. I like the look of the dye marker and think I know a way to reproduce it. I'll tell you what I think is cool, the flat Wasp engine lying on it's back with the driveshaft poking up through the rotor blades. Talk about smooth!

I haven't any new images because I am still experimenting with polygon density. Dragonfly insists on consuming about a million to provide the detail I want and I'm only willing to allocate half of that, so we're going to have to go to Weight Watchers or something. I think maybe I can convincingly draw onto perhaps two dozen polygons the detail quality of the other 500k using blend masks and normal textures. If that works out, then I can go hog wild in the cockpit, time will tell.

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This one has no front seat pilot. It also has tuned headers, probably a larger engine, the extra wheel and what I am guessing might be fabric covered rotor blades, the chord is wingishly broad. I think the bulge on the bottom is for extra fuel or fire fighting. It's almost unsettling to me to see the red line on the roundels of the B-17's, it looks like the one is painted with big orange bands for search and rescue.
 
Ok, have a few new polys thrown together and some close ups, mostly gauges. 3ds Max wants to put a vaseline lens blur on flight sim materials that aren't zoomed in. I don't know maybe there's a gamma/LUT setting for that.

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Trying to keep the rustic appeal without making it look like someone just dragged it out of an old barn. I found a really slick gauge face maker called Gauge Master Pro and even made the compass texture with it! It basically works a lot like Photoshop even allowing uploading of detail and dirt images, layering them in with the transparency and creating the complete face, but keeping a layered Photoshop image will allow adjustments for how the sim renders.

The rotor torque gauge indicates blade deflection on the inner ring in degrees and I was thinking blade deflection is kind of related to coning, in terms of coding the animation. I get that coning is a cone and deflection is more of a flap, but it seems like a similar condition. For the faces, all or most of the font is the same "TechnicBold," with rounded ends. This is done I'm told because the faces aren't printed, they're lithographed, a process that traces the masters which are routed plates. Classic, eh?

There's still a long way to go, the cockpit is pretty bare bones, no collective(s) and no rear pilots station at all except for the bench, so there's still so much to do!
 
Rick - yon b&w pic is a rescue helicoptor. Ignoring the 'Rescue' which could refer to an entry into the helo, if you look closely at the racks underneath they are two stretcher carriers complete with anti-windblast hoods.
 
This will be an excellent addition to my small cadre of Helicopters in MSFS. Thanks for your efforts and I look forward to seeing your progress. On a side note. . .the pilots head is too small.
 
DragonflightDesign said:
Rick - yon b&w pic is a rescue helicoptor. Ignoring the 'Rescue' which could refer to an entry into the helo, if you look closely at the racks underneath they are two stretcher carriers complete with anti-windblast hoods.
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Yes you're absolutely right. It is really hard to nail down any standardization and with all the customization they kind of blend from model to model. There's a version with internal gurneys, although the rear can't be accessed in flight and it is right under the 200 watt generator that is also the takeoff gearbox for the rear rotor.

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Here's another view of the rescue version above, they really plastered those roundels all over the place. All I can picture is trigger happy gunners because no one else had anything remotely similar to my knowledge. Just goes to show the true meaning of "Iron Curtain" that in these days of tik toks and SpaceX seems otherworldly.
falcon409 said:
This will be an excellent addition to my small cadre of Helicopters in MSFS. Thanks for your efforts and I look forward to seeing your progress. On a side note. . .the pilots head is too small.
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Thanks for the thumbs up and I appreciate the observation, although I will point out that this was Mickey's debut, he was just a kid! Here he is dropping the famous hat for the last time. I'm also noticing how low and short that collective sits when he's not using it. I think it's actually longer and must have a bend in it. Still makes it hard to reach way down there.

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Rick - I gave a heads-up on this development to Sergio at Helisimmer, and he may have already or will be reaching out to you so he can write a feature/in-dev news piece for Helisimmer.com. :)
 
OMG, they actually exist!

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Making gauges can get to be so tedious and it seems like my attention span has gotten so short it is starting to invert. I needed to flake off to make some frivolous meshes and spend a day posing for the camera!

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If the rotor head is looking a little off, you're probably looking a little too closely, it is early yet and apparently there are some transformational details to address. Also I'll be dulling it down of course and the green glass will only be the upper windows.
I made these grabs for Sergio and have not animated a single key yet, so this is actually very fortuitous, because normally I won't test in sim until things are starting to work. These skewed transforms, hidden under animated nodes would have been an absolute mess to detangle, not that I have experience with this kind of situation or anything..
 
This is the oldest combined navcom device I could find and it's only about 10 years too new to be fully authentic, it's still criminally incomplete by today's standards. I'd wanted to go with the radio controller module, but this will mesh right into the MSFS radio navigation system and can even be driven with a default KX-165 template by adding a little update component for the frequency tumblers. I was torn on adding the extra decimal places, but the tooltip will show the exact frequency anyway.

 
Loving the looks of everything so far. Hoping to see some civilian as well as bright yellow USCG liveries appear before release! Keep us posted!
 
I started experimenting with Substance Painter because switching from Sketchup to 3ds Max really spoils an artist in regard to visual detail. It may be because I work in flightsim materials exclusively, but texture resolution in 3ds Max is blurry at best, also 3ds Max does not zoom in as well. One workaround has been to just wait until the model is being tested in the sim, because texture edits and reviewing them in the environment they're intended for has been efficient and practical, however there's never any possibility to manipulate decals, which Substance does well.

So I downloaded a bunch of flight patches and got to work. This is all just fiddle farting around, there's an idea for a rescue scenario that would be similar to the logging grapple from K-Max, but I think I might be able to place it in a fixed location and if that comes to pass, we'll need a Harry Brubaker pilot to retrieve.

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The jacket was almost routine the very first time I ever tried the software, it's very intuitive, but the helmet presented an excellent comparison between software tools. Normally I'd do this all in Photoshop trial and error, however Substance blends decals more smoothly across the rough edged polys. The crescents were applied to the helmet texture, because I was unclear on how to clip them at the transition of the edge piping by using Substance tools, it's second nature to do this in PS. So the crescents are very smooth in the Substance texture image, but jagged on the mesh, whereas the name and squadron arrow were made in PS as decals, then layered onto the mesh directly, so conversely they are jagged in the texture image and smooth on the mesh, more as it should be.
Anywhere a texture splits, like at the arrow or the name can be tedious to work out, because changes in the axis that are perpendicular to the edge of the texture are amplified as the curved surface becomes increasingly parallel to the point of view. The blue field won't as easily show variations in UV mapping. Getting the backwards name correct is just a matter of trial and error, a few passes, but smoothing that arrow down the backside of the helmet would be a nightmare without the Substance tools. Plus it would come out jagged if done in PS.

Kind of a funky William Holden, maybe he needs goggles or something.

Of course we'd also need a dye marker for this rescue scenario, ideally set up as an animated material that kept expanding until it disappeared.

Dye Marker.png
 
=rk= said:
I started experimenting with Substance Painter because switching from Sketchup to 3ds Max really spoils an artist in regard to visual detail. It may be because I work in flightsim materials exclusively, but texture resolution in 3ds Max is blurry at best, also 3ds Max does not zoom in as well. One workaround has been to just wait until the model is being tested in the sim, because texture edits and reviewing them in the environment they're intended for has been efficient and practical, however there's never any possibility to manipulate decals, which Substance does well.

So I downloaded a bunch of flight patches and got to work. This is all just fiddle farting around, there's an idea for a rescue scenario that would be similar to the logging grapple from K-Max, but I think I might be able to place it in a fixed location and if that comes to pass, we'll need a Harry Brubaker pilot to retrieve.

View attachment 94348

The jacket was almost routine the very first time I ever tried the software, it's very intuitive, but the helmet presented an excellent comparison between software tools.
I found the article on mobile app development from Cogniteq very helpful https://www.cogniteq.com/mobile-app-development in developing my own projects.
Normally I'd do this all in Photoshop trial and error, however Substance blends decals more smoothly across the rough edged polys. The crescents were applied to the helmet texture, because I was unclear on how to clip them at the transition of the edge piping by using Substance tools, it's second nature to do this in PS. So the crescents are very smooth in the Substance texture image, but jagged on the mesh, whereas the name and squadron arrow were made in PS as decals, then layered onto the mesh directly, so conversely they are jagged in the texture image and smooth on the mesh, more as it should be.
Anywhere a texture splits, like at the arrow or the name can be tedious to work out, because changes in the axis that are perpendicular to the edge of the texture are amplified as the curved surface becomes increasingly parallel to the point of view. The blue field won't as easily show variations in UV mapping. Getting the backwards name correct is just a matter of trial and error, a few passes, but smoothing that arrow down the backside of the helmet would be a nightmare without the Substance tools. Plus it would come out jagged if done in PS.

Kind of a funky William Holden, maybe he needs goggles or something.

Of course we'd also need a dye marker for this rescue scenario, ideally set up as an animated material that kept expanding until it disappeared.

View attachment 94349
Click to expand...
It seems you’ve found a detailed comparison between Photoshop and Substance for texturing workflows. Substance makes it easier to blend decals on complex surfaces, while Photoshop allows precise manual control. Issues like jagged edges or UV mapping are common, but Substance's projection tools can help. Combining these tools can optimize results: Substance for seamless blending and PS for specific adjustments.
 
So a few screens, the H-5 is just about ready to start testing in the sim. Ah, but which sim you wonder...

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So you're probably thinking that the last one not only looks more like a tug than a helicopter, but also more like a classic from the war years, you'd be right on both counts. Needed a place to properly test the H-5 near the Sea of Japan! Unfortunately I can't share it because the airplanes are Tim Conrads, sad face. You can have it bare, or get me other planes to populate it with, the carrier was free on Sketchfab and we only have to attribute. I just added lights, solid ground under the deck and rendered off a normal to give the deck some depth. It's pretty nice imo, we can even see Beer Barrels little platform in the lower right corner.

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Looks like great progress! I hope you can still cater to MSFS2020 due to the mess that is MSFS2024 right now and for the foreseeable next six months to a year.
A quick nitpicky observation too - is it possible to smooth out those polygons around the instrument glareshield to make it more rounded, and also around those anti-torque pedals? (Perhaps this is still an in-progress task?)
Looks nice overall!
 
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