Project 3

[LionKing]

Thanks!

[Reuben]

When will it be done? LOLOL *don't kill me Goran*

Jokes.

Hope works progressing well mate. Keep it up.

[LionKing]

Any progress?

Want to fly it earlier than march 2011:D

[Goran_M]

The person doing the animations has been very busy lately and understandably, hasn't worked on it as much as we both would have liked.  Depending on what he is doing workwise in the next week or 2, I MIGHT take over the animations as the Sundowner is moving very quickly and I will be able to dedicate more work on the Saab after that.

More will be known in the next few days.

[LionKing]

Hello again!

Two months ago you wrote a "list of things that need to be finished". What can you say about it now? What has been already done and what is need to be finished?

Thanks,

Andrew.

[Goran_M]

Hello again!

Two months ago you wrote a "list of things that need to be finished". What can you say about it now? What has been already done and what is need to be finished?

Thanks,

Andrew.

Without putting too fine a point on it, The Saab animations will be finished by me after I finish the Sundowner, which will be very soon.  I have finished the animations and Theo is about a quarter of the way through mapping click spots and manipulators.  Once that is all done, and testing is done, it'll be ready for sale.

The 3rd person who was working with me on the Saab has had other priorities come up and he cannot continue with the project.

I cannot speak for Theo, but I, personally, have been working on the Sundowner every single day, all day, finishing up animations for the past 1-2 weeks.  The Saab will take approximately the same amount of time as most of it is animated.  I just have to go over it and fill in the blanks.

[MatthewS]

Why so many projects but nothings actually finished?  How's the 747 coming along?

[Cameron]

Why so many projects but nothings actually finished?  How's the 747 coming along?

It's simple, Matthew.

There are a lot of projects because it's a team environment. Goran strictly does 3D modeling. When he gets done with his part, he passes it along to the next person. It goes from UV/Texturing, to programming, to animating...there are various people involved. As such, Goran makes the best use of his time by creating a new model in the mean time since his job is "finished."

[Goran_M]

Why so many projects but nothings actually finished?  How's the 747 coming along?

Just to add to this.  The 747 is at the point where I cannot do anymore to it for the time being.  To save myself a whole lot of grief, it is always advisable to animate AFTER the UV mapping has been done.  This is on top of the fact I need many textures that show indicators and limits on the gauges.  I cannot animate a gauge or dial without these textured markings.

Theo simply cannot UV map and texture as fast as I can model so it is not possible to do animations for the 747 until AFTER Theo UV maps it.  And on top of that, programming cannot start on the 747 until AFTER it has been animated. 

Also, to put it in a bit of perspective, Javiers CRJ has now been in development for well over a year now.  Tom Kylers MU 2 was in development for about 2 years.  "Mick431"s cessna has now been in development for over a year. 

My projects:

Hawker 4000 was started in May last year

Saab in October

747 in November

And I'm confident I can get most, if not all of those out before the end of this year.

I hope what Cameron and myself have said has helped clear up how this process, for me at least, works.

[MatthewS]

Ah ok... I thought you were basically a one man operation, but if its a team effort then makes sense.

[Agrajag]

I just came over after being with FS since 1.0. Really enjoying X-Plane (frankly much to my surprise and it'll be really something if I can ever get g2xpl going) and after looking for new planes I see the Saab 340 being done here.

This is a killer for me because there was a famous Saab 340 project on FSX/FS9 that I waited on for 2 years and never got it. Delay after delay after delay and then finally boredom with FSX.

Here's hoping things go great for you guys and since I'm getting in at this late juncture the wait won't be nearly as painful. It all looks truly magnificent.

[Goran_M]

Welcome to the x plane world.

The Saab won't be too much longer.  It pains me to say it is a few months overdue, but it will definitely be ready soon.

[Maxime]

Sooo excited,

Have any cabin pics to show us?

Best,

Maxime

[Goran_M]

I'll see what I can do about cabin pics in the next couple of days.  I'm flat out getting the flight model for the Sundowner working as close to perfect as possible and helping Theo with getting the bugs out.  When I have some spare time, I'll load up the Saab and take a few screens.

[Goran_M]

Well, now that the Sundowner is finished, we have rolled straight into the Saab.  A lot of it will be re textured and I plan on optimizing the mesh some more to get rid of the excess polygons.  Not to mention going over the animations that have been done and adding animations that need to be done.

No definite timeline, but we hope to have it ready by sometime in the 2nd half of next month.  Then it's straight to the 747

[Maxime]

Do you know when the sundowner will be avail at x-aviation?

[LionKing]

No definite timeline, but we hope to have it ready by sometime in the 2nd half of next month.

So, you mean that Saab will be available only in June-July?

[Goran_M]

No definite timeline, but we hope to have it ready by sometime in the 2nd half of next month.

So, you mean that Saab will be available only in June-July?

The Saab will hopefully be released and on sale from sometime next month or July.

Also, we're going to try working on 2 projects at once.  While I start optimizing the mesh for the Saab, Theo will probably start UV mapping and texturing the 747.  Once we finish that, we swap over.  Theo textures the Saab while I animate and program the 747-200.

It should push the 747 release date forward.

[LionKing]

Now understood.

[Goran_M]

Do you know when the sundowner will be avail at x-aviation?

Should be sometime within the next 7 days.

[Goran_M]

We're re doing a few things on the Saab.  Theo is adding a lot more detail in the textures and some of these things require re-baking.

To give you an idea of the detail...

We're looking at having the Saab done and finished by the end of July or earlier.  We're adding quite a few new things which we discovered while making the Sundowner.

I'll throw up some more screenshots soon.

Goran

[Goran_M]

This is where we're going with the cabin seats.

Not much to show but Theo is making things look better than the original textures in the Saab.

[Goran_M]

The Saab is turning out to be more work than we originally anticipated.  I just had my "technical consultant" over today for a good few hours and we went through A LOT.  Over the last few weeks, as I have been animating and implementing the various systems, there were areas of the Saab I didn't fully understand.  So I made notes and we went over them today.

The Saab can not be made with straight out of the box datarefs.  It will need custom programming for a few systems.  The CTOT system, setting engine torque for takeoff, even the engine start sequence looks like programming work.  We do have a rough time frame of finishing this, including the programming.  But if we were to include a buffer and being realistic about it, I would say it will be at least 8 weeks at the bare minimum before it's ready.  The reason we have taken this long so far was because Theo went back to completely re uv map and re texture everything and I chose to do animations from scratch.  (Sorry Reuben).  Not because Reuben didn't do a good job.  But because the person testing it for me (Saab 340 pilot who wishes to remain nameless) came back and gave me a ton of feedback of things to fix.  I figured it was easier to start again rather than fix things.

Also, instead of just adding a small handful of plug in work, we decided to go the whole hog and program every system that needs it and use out of the box datarefs for the other stuff.

Bottom line, this will be, at the very least, very close to a study sim of the Saab 340. 

Cheers

Goran

[Maxime]

Aw man!  :'(

That's to bad!

Well,

Good luck Goran!!

Maxime

[Jacoba]

Bottom line, this will be, at the very least, very close to a study sim of the Saab 340.