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Early Aircraft...

Questions and discussion about creating aircraft. Flight dynamics, 3d models, cockpits, systems, animation, textures.

Early Aircraft...

Postby Kugelfang » Thu Dec 28, 2006 10:32 pm

My personal interest in flight sims is early aircraft. And I do mean early... 1900 - 1920 or so. I'm slowly rebuilding a Wright EX (1911) for FGFS but finding time to work on it is often difficult. But certainly one thing that will spur me on is finding like minded people here.

Are there other early aero buffs here? If so, how do you plan on coping with modern airports and vintage planes? Do you think an "Antique" scenery for FGFS is possible?

--jeff
www.static-lift.net
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Postby curt » Fri Dec 29, 2006 2:18 am

It would be possible to work with a historical set of city outlines and historical land cover/land use data and historical roads and railways ... and then regenerate the scenery with that data. But the trick is, where do you find such a data set?

Perhaps in the meantime, you could limit yourself to flying vintage aircraft from small grass or dirt strips and just stay away from all the big city modern stuff.

Curt.
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Postby ajm » Fri Dec 29, 2006 11:29 am

Hi Jeff,

I wouldn't call myself a "buff" but it is an area I have some interest in. Vivian and I have produced a new Camel model which you might like to try (this is maybe on the modern side for you :-)

If you don't already use FG CVS, you can download a tarball of the camel from the repository here (it works with older FG versions too);

http://cvs.flightgear.org/cgi-bin/viewv ... z?view=tar

You'll also need this one;

http://cvs.flightgear.org/cgi-bin/viewv ... z?view=tar

The latter should be extracted under Aircraft/UIUC, the former under Aircraft (it will live happily with the exisiting model).

It's not quite finished (some animations, working guns and other little bits and pieces) but the cockpit is mostly complete and, I hope, a slight improvement on the existing model!

FDM wise we haven't really changed anything significant, yet. I'd like to have a config for a more flexible FDM so that we can model some of the niceties of the fuel system etc, but I don't have as good data as Prof. Selig seems to have had. Having said that, the current model seems too tame and easy to fly.

Any good info welcomed...

Cheers,

AJ
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Postby hvengel » Sat Dec 30, 2006 3:32 am

I would like to see more golden age aircraft myself. Things like the Locheed Vega and Orion and the like would be great additions. These aircraft were flown by some of aviations greats such as Willy Post, Howard Hughes and Emilia Earhart. In addition these aircraft have enough performance that they would be fine at a modern airport.
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Postby Kugelfang » Sun Dec 31, 2006 2:17 pm

--AJ, Thanks for pointing this one out. The 2002 camel model was definitely showing its age and this is quite an improvement. I noticed a few model issues such as the missing inside faces of the cowling, which allows a slight gap where the gun breeches extend into the cockpit (and also when viewing the plane from the front.).

I'm also curious... the shadows of the engine cylinders are visible on the external cowling and the ring of the compass is completely visible. Are these issues fixable by changing the model (perhaps by changing the order of the parts in the *.ac file) or is this something that would have to be handled in the rendering internals of fgfs? I haven't delved too deeply into the plane xml files yet but perhaps there's an option to suppress the shadows of a particular part like the engine?

I don't have too much on the technical specs of the Camel, but if anybody can point you in the right direction, the guys over at www.theaerodrome.com can. Or, you can try writing to experts@overthefront.com (how's that for a subtle plug for an organization I wholeheartedly support?).

Still... your Camel is quite an improvement.

--hvengel, I agree. I do have a Laird Super Solution model I've been thinking of porting over. Perhaps some on-line pylon racing is in order!

--jeff
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Postby ajm » Mon Jan 01, 2007 12:42 pm

Kugelfang wrote: I noticed a few model issues such as the missing inside faces of the cowling, which allows a slight gap where the gun breeches extend into the cockpit (and also when viewing the plane from the front.).


Actually this isn't a problem with the model (there are no faces missing in the model) but with the old "chrome" shader effect, which turns all surfaces 1-sided. Since our main development target is FG-OSG and that shader is being rewritten, I'd rather wait and see whether that can be fixed at source rather than adding yet more vertices to work around it.

Kugelfang wrote:I'm also curious... the shadows of the engine cylinders are visible on the external cowling and the ring of the compass is completely visible. Are these issues fixable by changing the model (perhaps by changing the order of the parts in the *.ac file) or is this something that would have to be handled in the rendering internals of fgfs?


I haven't yet tried using the model with shadows enabled (and they don't exist in FG-OSG yet either). It's easy enough to prevent objects casting shadows though and we'll have to do that at some point no doubt.

Kugelfang wrote:I don't have too much on the technical specs of the Camel, but if anybody can point you in the right direction, the guys over at www.theaerodrome.com can.


Done that already :-) Haven't come across the others yet, I might try that some time.

Cheers,

AJ
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