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P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby MOJO » Tue Oct 05, 2010 4:29 am

Yep, already had that info thanks, and as far the wings/flaps/ailerons it's all in hand just WIP :wink: also I am waiting to get specific dimensions for the landing gear from Richard Curtiss then it will all be in order but I do appreciate the feedback
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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby MOJO » Wed Oct 13, 2010 10:50 am

Hi all,

Been a bit busy lately so not had much time to work on the Warhawk, but managed to find time to start work on the cockpit, not added anything to the dashboard yet in terms of instruments but I have been adding things like generic boxes that house switches, throttle, rudder/trim etc. Just a couple of screenies to show the little progress. I have masses of detailed pics and videos now so I will continue as fast as time permits.

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First time doing a cockpit from scratch so again, I'm learning.

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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby MOJO » Fri Oct 15, 2010 11:30 am

Quick question, when doing cockpit textures, is it best to work the textures around the switches or switches around the textures? For example, one part of the P-40 dashboard has a lot of switches and writing telling you what the switch is, I don't want to do a texture then find out the most of the writing (switch name) is obscured by a switch.

Hope that makes sense.

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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby hvengel » Fri Oct 15, 2010 5:34 pm

MOJO wrote:Quick question, when doing cockpit textures, is it best to work the textures around the switches or switches around the textures? For example, one part of the P-40 dashboard has a lot of switches and writing telling you what the switch is, I don't want to do a texture then find out the most of the writing (switch name) is obscured by a switch.

Hope that makes sense.

Simon


My experience is that the best approach for me is to think of related groups of switches and the lettering around them as a unit and then to create a separate model of this unit. In most aircraft and particularly in aircraft from this era most of the surfaces that have switches mounted to them are flat. So you might have a group of engine switches (starter, primer, oil dilute...) or a set of gun/gun site switches (gun site on/off, camera on/off, guns on/off) that are in one area of the panel. What I would do for this is to build this as a separate model that has a rectangular "board" that the switches are mounted to and that serves as the surface that will take the textures that have the lettering related to those switches. Then I position that group of switches in the cockpit using the flightgear XML. I know this takes you into the next phase where you start integrating your 3D work into flightgear but you will have to make that transition sooner or later in any case.

Another thing related to this is that having too much stuff in the interior of the main model can make it very difficult to work on where as having numerous separate smaller models that are positioned using the flightgear XML makes things easier since it makes each sub-model much easier to work with. I am not sure that others will agree with this so it may be a personal choice. There are also models that break this down by having an exterior model and a cockpit model and these are integrated using the flightgear XML. The Beaver is an example of this but the beaver interior is fairly simple compared to a WWII fighter. For example a typical fighter will have controls/switches all around the pilot/cockpit where as the beaver has almost all of this stuff mounted on the main panel.

Note that my approach and the beaver approach are flightgear based rather than a 3D modeling tool approach. In the end, if you implement a complete cockpit, you will be dealing with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of objects in the cockpit that need things like animation, sounds (switches that click for example), illumination, hot spots in addition to the 3D models for these objects and a lot of this stuff is flightgear stuff that can't be worked on in your 3D tool (blender, AC3D or what ever).

I have not used AC3D but in Blender there are tools for scaling and positioning the textures so that lettering can be the right size and in the right position. I think doing large complex textures, like the whole panel with dozens of switches and labels for those switches will likely be difficult but if you can break these up into smaller clusters by way of using a lot of sub-models the texturing is easier.

I don't know how much the P-40 cockpit is like the P-51 but I do know that US fighters of that era had a certain amount of standardization. For example I notice that you have at least the start of the radio control stack on the right side of the cockpit. I suspect that these are the same basic units that would have been used in the P-51 and other US fighters of the era. If you treat these as separate models others working on WWII era US fighters will be able to grab your models and use these to quickly enhance their models much the same way that you will be able to reuse models of generic instruments that are part of the flightgear package and perhaps use instrument models that are part of other WWII era aircraft in flightgear. After all why reinvent the wheel if you don't have to. So if you are going to create detailed 3D models of the radio control units you would be doing everyone a favor if you had these as separate 3D models since these will then likely be used by many other modelers which will make flightgear better for everyone. Again this is a flightgear (some would say open source) approach in that it allows for a higher level of sharing and reuse that allows all of us to to do more with less work. Another example of cockpit details that could be shared is the O2 system (hoses, mask, switches, pressure gage...) which I am sure was basically the the same in all these US WWII aircraft. There are probably dozens of examples of things that were basically the same in every US WWII fighter (flare gun port, g-suit connector, seat...) and most of these have not been modeled yet as separate models if at all.

By the way you should consider getting this into GIT sometime soon so as to make it easier for others to contribute and to also make it easier for those working on other models to grab those parts of your work that can help them out.

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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby MOJO » Mon Oct 18, 2010 1:15 pm

Coming along slowly but surely (been really busy at work)

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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby MOJO » Sat Mar 26, 2011 7:05 pm

Time to revive this warbird. The other day I found a tutorial on the net and it also had download along with it. To say I was impressed was an understatement. I checked the website for terms of usage and also a readme file in the download and all it says is "for personal use not commercial". I have emailed the author to see if we can use it but yet no reply....so do any one know if the terms of use will allow us to use this model?

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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby tmen9939 » Mon Mar 28, 2011 6:23 am

wow great job,
i can't wait to fly this baby, it looks great.
do you think you could give us some pics of the cockpit
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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby DutchPilotMitchell » Mon Mar 28, 2011 12:18 pm

Awesome!
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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby MOJO » Mon Mar 28, 2011 12:39 pm

It doesn't have a cockpit yet, if I get the go ahead that is what I will be developing as I have all the documentation on it. :D
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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby skyop » Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:23 pm

MOJO wrote in Sat Mar 26, 2011 7:05 pm:I checked the website for terms of usage and also a readme file in the download and all it says is "for personal use not commercial". I have emailed the author to see if we can use it but yet no reply....so do any one know if the terms of use will allow us to use this model?


Ask the author. Those terms are pretty vague- you're not using the model personally, but you're not distributing commercially either. If the author refuses to waive the "non-commercial" requirement, then it cannot be released under the GPL. :(
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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby Blairdean » Sun Jun 19, 2011 8:45 pm

Any update?
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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby jack » Sun Jun 19, 2011 10:19 pm

I would classify this project as 'dead'. Old warbirds aren't really my interest any more(now I work on helicopters and Vietnam era aircraft), and I don't think Mojo is working much on the model. The source is available for anyone looking to pick up this project, though.
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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby MOJO » Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:11 am

I still have the model and all objects have been cut and named if someone wants it
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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby hvengel » Wed Jun 22, 2011 7:48 pm

MOJO wrote in Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:11 am:I still have the model and all objects have been cut and named if someone wants it


I already have my own WWII project so I can't pick this one up. I would be great if someone could take ownership of this.

FG GIT has the BC-602-A VHF radio control box that would have been used in this aircraft (located in Aircraft/Instruments-3d/SCR-522C) and rear warning radar panel and bell for the AN/ASP-13 (located in Aircraft/Instruments-3d/AN-ASP-13). There is gitorious a merge request for the the SCR-522C that will make it fully functional. The P-51D also has a 3D model for the SCR-695 IFF radio (basically a simple transponder with 6 squawk codes). The AN/ASP-13 and SCR-695 would have been from later in the war so these may not be appropriate for this model but the SCR-602-A control box and SCR-522C (US)/TR1133 (UK) VHF radio was in use very early in the war and was used in most US and UK aircraft through out the war and in the P-51D until after Korea. These models should be useful in a number of WWII aircraft so owners of Spitfires, Hurricanes, Mosquitoes, P-38s, P-39s, F4Us, F6fs and so on should consider adding these models .
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Re: P-40 Warhawk Coming Soon

Postby Boeing » Wed Jun 29, 2011 4:42 pm

Sigh I was really looking forward on this one.
Won't be doing much anymore....
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