jonsberndt wrote:Are there any screen shots of this aircraft anywhere?
JB
Not really. So feel free to create some of your own. I did a few when I created the splash image that now appears when FG is starting.
The exterior has not changed too much other than the new landing gear (which looks more realistic), addition of the doors to the dog house and the improved fuselage texture (which has more detail) and of course the new external stores (rockets, bombs, drop tanks and pylons). In a screen shot of the exterior I don't think the new gear, dog house details or the improved texture would be too visible. The biggest changes that could show up in a screen shot are to the interior of the cockpit since it has many new objects (switches, control levers, rudder pedals, control panels, panel lights, indicator lights and so on). The cockpit still needs lots of work since it is missing many things such as:
1. radios (VHF, DF, IFF, rear warning radar...)
2. fuel gages
3. hydraulic pressure gage
4. gear door hydraulic pressure release value
5. various placards
6. oxygen system components
7. flare gun port
8. arm rest
9. canopy crank handle
10. engine air intake controls
11. gear lever
12. manual bomb/tank release levers.
13. other components too numerous to mention.
Also currently the seat in the cockpit is apparently a clone of a wooden seat from some other aircraft. This needs to be replaced by an aluminum chair of the correct configuration.
Creating, placing, integrating and animating the 3D models for these (other than placards) is time consuming. In addition I am not really a 3D modeler although I can fumble my way through creating basic models. This is one of the reasons that I am now using gitorious as it will allow others who may be interested in adding new detail to this model to clone my repository, make their changes in that clone and then request that those changes be merged into my master copy. So those with modeling expertise who feel like adding any of the above (or things not listed above) should feel free to do so as I will be more than happy to merge their changes back into the my repository and hopefully these changes will end up being merged into the the main fgdata repository.
As a side note I now have created textures for various placards (for example I have one for the retract lever) and anyone who is interested in adding placards should feel free to use these textures for that work since these are already in the Models directory. There are textures for perhaps 11 or 12 placards that have yet to be used and most of these are very simple placards that are rectangular and flat (very easy to model). Placing placards is a fairly simple 3D modeling task and is a good one for those just starting out. It is also a good way to quickly add more detail to the cockpit of an aircraft. Since the textures exist the hardest part of adding a new placard is figuring out where it belongs.
Hal