Part of the reason for the lack of recent activity was waiting for MS Flight Simulator to be released to see if I it was where I wanted to focus activity. Having figured out how to get aircraft into the new format I think I will because it’s so much better than the legacy platforms.
I’ll be playing with getting the Sea Fury up and running as a precursor to finishing the Seafire in the new format.
For some reason, mainly a desire to remain in full time employment, lock-down hasn’t given me as much time as I’d have liked to work on the Seafire. On the plus side I think I’ve got the instrument panel all modelled now, stand fast the hook lowered indication light which is just a copy of the one to the right of the VSI.
There’s still a bit of texturing to do but the hard part of marking up the gauges is done along with setting the animation limits, although some still need the coding to drive them written.
Incidentally if you’d like to know more about the Seafire, Mortons Books have just released a book on the type by the aviation historian Matthew Willis. Well worth picking up a copy, if only to point out what I’ve got wrong so far!
Finally I’ve set up a RedBubble shop with a few designs I’ve had lying around for a while. This was mainly because I wanted a British Pacific Fleet roundel sticker for my laptop and couldn’t find one anywhere!
In case you’re finding yourself with a lot of free time on your hands at the moment why not try the old Flying Stations Sea Fury? The FSX version should work in all versions of P3D up to v3. The v4 version works in the 64 bit sim.
Just in time for the weekend the Firefly has been updated with TacPack and updated installers are now available at SimMarket and Store.Flightsim.Com. If you got it from PayLoadz drop me an email and I can send you a link to the new installer.
Hope you have a good weekend!
In a slight break from Flight Simulation an article I wrote on the RN’s highest scoring fighter has been put up at Hush Kit.
In other news I’ve stopped selling downloads via Payloadz. It was the only option I was using that charged a monthly fee while at the same time having the lowest sales so it was normally costing me to keep the store open. Anyone who brought from there will be able to get a re-download by contacting me via the forum.
Finally the TacPack update for the Firefly should be out in the next couple of days. The P3Dv4 version is done and I’m just waiting on some testing to confirm the cannon sound effects work in FSX.
The Firefly TacPack integration for P3Dv4 is now done, if you’d like to try it out now the files are available here. They just need to be copied into the respective directories. If it’s working the TacPack logo will appear on the loading panel.
The FSX update is in final testing and you can try it out, it should work in FSX and any version of P3D below v4.
I’ll have updated installers uploaded in the next week or so once I’m happy there aren’t any major SNAFUs! Any questions or problems add a comment.
Worryingly over a year ago I said I’d add TacPack to the Firefly! The screenshots above show I’ve actually got around to finishing it off by making the rockets, and bombs, work along with the guns. The eagle eyed will spot the rockets turn into HVAR after leaving the rails because VRS haven’t got a 60lb RP model yet.
There’s a bit of tweaking to some gauge code to stop the built in weapon firing from functioning if TacPack is installed (currently I get round it by using a different trigger button) and then I’ll issue an update. Basically if you have TacPack it will take precedence, if you don’t the original system should work seamlessly.
If you’ve ever used Henrik’s Global AI Ship Traffic you’ll have realised it’s a labour of love. He’s currently working on adding some Falklands Conflict shipping and was on the hunt for a Wessex HU5 to put on the deck of Fearless and the Atlantic Conveyor. So in a fit of enthusiasm I managed to convert the old Flying Stations AI HAS1 into a passable static model.
Not sure what the expected release is for the Falklands traffic but hopefully in the next few months.
Right I should probably get back to the Seafire…
Updating to Win 10 was relatively painless, except I seem to have lost the most recent model file! This shouldn’t have happened as the only thing on my C drive is the operating system and programs, all my model files, textures, essays, etc. etc. are on a separate drive and in most cases on Dropbox. Presumably I was accidentally working from a recovered file which was on the C drive, which got formatted when I did a clean install of Win 10 before Win 7 went end of life…
Helpfully Model Converter X let me recover the missing bits that had already made it to a P3D model so the only things I really lost were the instrument panels! Fortunately this didn’t take too long to make a second time and I’ve now done most of the gauges. Helpfully there’s normally a choice of options with most Spit/Seafire gauges, so I’ve gone for the ones in the Seafire pilots notes.
The moral from this story? Probably make sure your files are where you think they are before you reformat a drive!!
Just a quick post to show the beginnings of the interior. The instrument panel uses a lot of standard instruments that I’ve modelled before but as I’ve got dimensioned drawings for them I’m remodelling them. I should still be able to reuse the gauge artwork which will speed things up a bit.
With a bit of time off over Christmas the external mapping is now more or less finished, give or take some minor animated parts that will go on a separate small texture. This has also let me check the different textures are aligned properly by applying the standard pattern camouflage. At the moment the textures are 2048×2048 but I’ll up this to 4096×4096 for the final product.
I’ve also modelled the four bladed prop, this appears to be more or less the same as was used on the later two-stage Merlin Spitfires. It was only used on the low-level Seafires with the cropped supercharger that gave combat power up to 2750′. The standard Merlin gave max boost up to 14000′ and was paired with the three bladed prop. Oddly although the Spitfire V came in normal and low-level versions as well it only seems to have ever had the three bladed prop.
With a single-speed single-stage supercharger as used in the early Merlins the cropped unit for the low-level version took less power from the engine . Hence although it was providing the same boost as the standard engine at 2750′ the engine was providing more power to the propeller, by a few hundred horsepower.
Bravo Zulu 