With Flying Stations website closing down imminently I’ve added the freeware downloads here. Still need to decide what to do with the payware stuff, however if you’ve already purchased something and need a reload get in touch and I can sort it out.
Before mapping the windscreen and canopy frame I thought I should probably finish making them. Then I thought I’d do something about the see through fuselage. Of course I still haven’t mapped the framing…
You can just make out the canopy jettison mechanism on the outside of the frame, which is a lot more Heath Robinson than I’d imagined. Basically you pull a cable which is routed to the outside of the canopy on either side. This pulls two bars forwards which are hooked onto pins that extend from the canopy runners through the framing. Once they’re unhooked the pilot used his elbows to push the front of the canopy wider and wind flow does the rest!
Just the canopy locking mechanism to do and then I might actually finish the external mapping…
Quick shot showing the fuselage mapping. Not intended to represent the final textures but it’s useful to throw some stuff on there to make sure the scaling will show the right level of detail.
More details added to the fuselage. Some of which, such as the fuselage datum plates, only show up if you zoom right in which makes me suspect I may have overdone it…
I’ve also started on the cockpit door mainly so I can start the mapping for the fuselage before I model the cockpit. The animation for that will have to be changed at some point as it also acted as a lock to stop the canopy sliding forwards in flight/landing.
Hopefully I’ll have finished modelling the fuselage by the end of the week and can get it mapped next weekend.
Having somehow written enough words for a dissertation I’ve managed to get back to the Seafire. Although to be fair you can squeeze quite a bit about Seafires into an essay on Escort Carriers…
Possibly not obvious in the screenshots but I’ve remodelled the nose forward of the engine fire wall as it wasn’t smoothing well in game. I’ve also added the various bulges for covering air compressors, Coffman starters, and bits I haven’t fully identified.
I’ve also added the carburetor intake, the Seafire II uses the same intake as the Spitfire Vc. The Seafire III uses the larger Spitfire Mk IX intake which does away with the need for a separate tropical filter. I’ll be modelling hat later along with the other Mk III differences.
Hopefully the updates will be a bit more frequent now I’ve got less distractions!
Just a quick note to say the Firefly is now also available from FlightSim.Com’s Store. Link on the right.
Apologies for the lack of updates, I’m currently trying to finish a 4,000 word essay on the RN in the Burma Campaign for an MA in Naval History I’m doing. Oddly this is taking a lot of my time! However that’s due in by next Sunday so there should be more to show on the Seafire by then. Cunningly my dissertation will be on Escort Carriers so there’s a lot of cross-over with what I’m doing here!
In the meantime if you’re reading this you’re almost definitely the target audience for Hush Kit’s top 16 Fleet Air Arm aircraft. Lots of top authors and historians have contributed, and then I made up the numbers with some helicopters and the Fairey Fulmar.
After I made the last post I realised I hadn’t modelled the radiator under the starboard wing! That took a bit longer than planned due to real life getting in the way. Since then I’ve also added the early style exhausts that were predominantly used on the Spitfire Vc and Seafire IIc, the later style individual exhausts for each cylinder were used on most if not all Seafire IIIc but should be easier to model as they’re basically a tube!
I’ve also added the early rear view mirror, the Seafire III generally had the later one which was a half sphere. Again I’ll be making that when I update the II to a III. Most of the rest of the work on the external model is the various bumps around the engine and then cutting the access hatch for the cockpit.
So it turns out there are a lot of parts in the wing now. More than 200. So it’s taken me a few weeks to get all the mapping done. Now that’s finished I can finally mirror it and look vaguely symmetrical in flight!
It was only once it was in P3D I realised I hadn’t set the animations for the starboard gear and flaps but that’s only a few minutes work.
The propeller and exhausts still need to be modelled plus some detailing on the fuselage but other than that the basic exterior is done. The more observant may have realised I’ve basically now got a Spitfire Vc, not a Seafire. That’s intentional, the next step for the exterior after it’s all mapped will be adding the parts for a Seafire II, but I’ll probably release the Vc as well as it’s no additional work as long as I save a copy of the model file before I cut the hole for the arrestor hook!
Before I mirror the port wing etc. I want to make sure it’s all texture mapped so I don’t have to do it all twice! The gear is probably the most complicated bit to map and I’ve finally got the leg and the panel on the inside of the door done.
These shots were done in Quixel which lets you assign different materials to different parts and then produces the correct textures. Once I install the P3D v4.4 SDK it should allow me to produce PBR textures fairly easily.
It doesn’t look quite as good in 3D Studio but at least it’s mapped now! There’s probably a similar amount of work to do on the gear bay and then the wing should be fairly straightforward… I’ll probably try and get the PBR textures working in P3D 4.4 before then so I can see how they look. By which I mean I’m hoping by next weekend!
Bravo Zulu 