My space

Just a small update to the Reagan photo album showing current progress, sadly progress has slowed to a crawl with other issues taking precedence, this has culminated in the removal of all other works in progress, some will just be deleted, others that are more advanced may be offered elsewhere in a take as seen status.

 

Merry Xmas to all and best wishes for the new year.

 

Kindest

 

Michael

I really should visit here more often, I've just noticed that all blog image links have been broken, not quite sure how that happened, some were due to images in the photo albums being deleted, in other instances the source images are still present but the link is defunct, more probably down to some name changes in the URLs or some such technical excuse, they should all be sorted now so apologies if you visited and found a page full of little red Xs.

 

I've finally got to the point of having to address exactly which CVN I should model, so far all of the modelling has been generic, or layered parts for each type of vessel to keep options open, however the point has been reached where crunch decisions need to be made. I've finally decided on the Ronald Reagan, CVN76, primarily because she is the newest and more digital information is available, some fundamental changes were needed to sponsons and openings etc, and the bridge structure is quite a bit different from the previous vessels in the class. The largest area of change is the fan tail area and it has been cleaned up a lot from previous vessels. The original first few vessels in the class were quiet clean but later vessels have seen a profusion of pods and sponsons added over the years until, one presumes, the USN took stock and decided to clean it all up.

 

Heres a new render of the preliminary hull for CVN76, hopefully now that the decision has been made as to which model will be built, progress will once again begin to pick up.

 

 

 

I've also added some more aircraft WIP images that I've slowly been working on over the year, and finally I've left Gmax behind, the program has been deleted and several part built models were bundled up and given away for free on the Sim Outhouse and CBFS forums, I've not used Gmax in three years so decided it was time to clean up that part of the shop.

 

 

Well the FSx bug has well and truly bitten, as usual my lagging behind has caught me short, learning the new compiler and materials wasn't as hard as I anticipated, though some niggles remain, the animation tool only seems to accept certain animations, for instance l_flap_key fails to work in the sim, yet l_flap_percent_key does ?, I'm sure there is a logical explanation or correct work flow, however once I find a way I tend to stick to it and ignore the other ways.

 

I've always liked the glass effect in FSx, though the default reflection of a ...church ?... hardly seems appropriate at 10,000 feet, maybe a better reflection map can be used once I'm more up to speed on bits and pieces. The conversion of FS9 materials into FSx materials was problematic to say the least, none of the SDKs or on line tutorials I found helped, I didn't fancy remapping the Jetstream 41 to new FSx materials at all, in the end the good old approach of clicking every button helped, though it took several hours to work out which button did help and which buttons just messed it all up, the old adage of back up often certainly played its part here. For those struggling heres a little tip, if you have a FS9 model and want to convert the materials then open the FSx ACEs tools roll out and select the materials manager, in the preview window on the left select the material or mapped texture you want to convert, then click the visualise in DirectX button and wait, seriously you need to wait, it wont look like anything is happening but it is, each fuselage material on the Jetstream took 3-4 mins to convert. If you can see the model in the main Max screen then the material you are converting will grey out on the model, do not touch anything until that mapping reappears, only then will the material be converted to FSx use. That might be the right way to do it, but I couldn't find any thing written anywhere that told me that.

 

The default material assigned to FSx models is very bright and shiny, unlike FS9 where you could adjust a base material to give specular shine, I personally prefer specular shine to reflective shine, but each to there own, the shine is about right for passenger liners, but hopelessly too bright for military aircraft of ships. FSx materials do allow differing levels of specular shine with a specular map, but it looks like you can also alter the underlying material specular attributes at the materials base level, that will be something to experiment with over the next few days.

 

Self Shadowing, this is a new feature in FSx and one of those that I'm unhappy with, not only does it hog FPS but it never seems to match up with the actual model, its almost like a layer is off set from the model, shadows never line up with the actual part making the shadow, normally this is only a few inches but on the Jetstream the 3D modelled windows are creating havoc with the self shadowing map, I suspect there isn't a resolution to this, its a shame as it could be a nice feature, one of those, if it isn't just right then best left off features.

 

So what has been ported into FSx, so far the BAe-146, Jetstream41, Lynx Mk8 are fully integrated ( bigger images in their respective folders if you select download ), both the Essex and CVN carriers are in as well ( moving AI and 1st person models ), none of these are actually finished models, really must get a grip and finish one or two  before moving onto others. Whats left to convert, well theres the Huey's to port over, they should rather splendid, there low poly count will laugh at FPS, actually more on FPS below, then maybe the HH-3E and probably the Choctaw will get moved across.

 

Anyway heres some tasters more in photo albums and more over the next few days will be added.

   

 

FPS, well theres been a lot of talk saying that FSx generic models are better than FS9 port overs, having never had a problem with FS9 port overs I found this hard to comprehend, in fact in the case of the Alphasim Blackhawk, I got significantly better game play with the FS9 model ported over than the specific FSx model, even now entering the FSx VC of the Blackhawk just crashes the sim to a stuttering 4-6 FPS, I've not got to the bottom of it and being as its not a aircraft I fly anymore its not a issue I need to dig into very much, in Alphasims defence the default FA-18 does the same, yet Rick Pipers vastly more complex Hawk doesn't ?. 

 

Having ported the Jetstream 41 into FSx I had a stable and comfortable locked 24 FPS so figured everything was fine, the conversion to FSx proved different, whilst still locked at 24FPS the pan was infinitely smoother, if I pan too fast then odd clouds at the peripheral vision will appear as small black boxes for a brief moment as the textures struggle to get loaded, mind I'm talking a pan rate of about Mach3 so its bound to struggle, yet with the FSx Jetstream this no longer occurs, I suspect that I can probably ramp up my locked FPS, though in reality I'll probably use the saved FPS for more AI or Autogen. So, yes pure FSx models do have an impact, it might not be in your face obvious but for me the fluidity is enhanced.

I've been putting this off for a long time now, compiling a model into FSx, I don't know why, maybe because it was new or a change in working procedures ?, either way it has been a long time coming. I'm not fully conversant with all the FSx attributes but just seeing a model in FSx SP2/ACCEL was personally gratifying. The compiler had no problems with the Essex model, even at 125,000 polys it whizzed through, some errors were generated but did not seem to impact on the model. The CVN went through even faster and easier, having said that it should do as its only 29,000 polys at present.

 

Through hints and tips on forums the models were made drivable, camera views added and for the first time they can be explored in the sim. Oddly the test threw up some mesh anomalies, generally when you render it shows all the ugly poly's in torsion and allows remedial work, in this instance it did not show some on the CVN model, once into FSx there were a few surprises, a work around is easy enough, but it does go to show how each sim FS9, FSx and Max each render and present the model differently.

 

Here is a couple of shots in FSx, a few more can be found in the respective vessel photo albums.