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This is a quick "where are we". There are some aspects to projects that are slow to get past. This occurs generally when you do not have the proper information, or proper reference photograph in order to do a task...so you kind of "guess" and if its wrong, then you have to redo and redo and it bogs down quick. For a while now, I have been chipping on the flap animation. The team is super-picky about visual realism and trying to animate the flaps such that everything looks and works and you have no mesh collisions or overlaps, especially in the super-tight tolerance areas of the flaps has been a real challenge. I've walked away more than once. If the flaps aren't right, then you can't do the mechanisms right and all this stuff is visible when the flaps are deployed so if you want to get it right you have to build it right. Well I am happy to report than the flaps have been "substantially" done. This means all the surfaces, fore/mid/aft flap have all been animated and their motion is such that the mechanisms can now be animated and all the motions "jibe" with real mechanism properties...i.e. the hard part of the wings are done. What remains on the exterior is quickly coming to a close...some misc mechanisms to model and texture...some gear well stuff, a few odds and ends and finally the door animations. Inside we have the aft cockpit to texture, the aft galley to UV and texture and then we will be in '3D scrutiny' mode to see what we need to add, or re-UV map, increase or decrease in detail / resolution. That will substantially conclude the 3D. I keep using the word "substantially" because the work is never done...we touch up here and there, probably till the very end, but all the pieces are in place, no more difficulties remain etc. At that point, we'll go back to the programming and work on finishing up the FMS and begin testing all the systems in order to get ready for a beta test. Again, NO telling when this will be. We can see the end of the road, but aren't quite sure how far away it is. Getting pas the flaps was a big hurdle to jump. I'll include a work in progress screenshot below. Texturing on a lot of things is "quickie mode" and we'll be adding higher detail in the upcoming weeks. TomK

I'm working on using a popular design that was used for the 1970s factory paints for the JetRanger. Here's the design I'm on about. The idea is that once I get the basic design done, it should be a simple idea to then change and mix & match colour components easily. I welcome any ideas/requests for colour variations, as I haven't found quite the range of examples I was hoping I would. I know it was the seventies, but the colours were very same-y. The same goes for any registrations. I had hoped to use N206JR, but that's already on a current bird so I'm gonna go with N206XA for now unless people want particular registrations. Should only be a couple of months. The two biggest headaches are 1. getting Conex's paintkit corrected (the right side is larger than the left, and darker!) and 2. getting the basic design down. Once those are done, it's downhill all the way! Right now I've already corrected the basic paintkit (that's headache #1 gone). In the shot below I've duplicated the left side and pasted it over the right, and you can see the difference between the two, with the darker right hand side sticking out. The shot below demonstrates the difficulty with this helicopter in just the lengths you have to go to just to get a straight line........ .....which ends up looking like this.

First flight with a full glass cockpit in a month! Stupid SAAB!!! KSAN-KSJC

Hello dudes ! I don't know if this has been already posted, but I found ( and just starting to watch right now ) a show that looks to be very interesting ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy9_pZrT1GA I know there are some serious bush flying enthusiasts around here, such Bamboo Cougar and such ;-) That really makes me want to use the Carenado Caravan, as well as the incoming Beaver for SMS ! Sadly, what we miss here is good african ( or any bushy land ) sceneries and appropriates missions. Hope that market will develop a bit in the times to come, making accurate airplanes is not the only thing that bring entertainment ... missions a la FSX could add a huge added value to X-Plane ! ( hint hint !! ) Good watch

I am not an expert at all but you'd better register on some Blender specialised forums, and find a lot of time to study youtube tutorials. Starts with simple geometry, cubes etc, build tables, houses, common objects such glasses, bottles, then a bit more complex ones such stairs etc ... Virtually, all can be started with : a cube and a circle ! Including the most detailed airplane ! Then you need to develop some special techniques to build " properly " and saving as much polygon as possible. For me, the hardest thing in 3D modelling is making things as detailed and accurate as possible while aiming for lowest polys ( for its evident use in a flight simulator or any video games ) Check here : http://blenderartists.org/forum/%C2'> But if you ask questions such how to make a table, they will laugh at you so you'd better get used to Blender interface and basics first with all the great youtube video tutorials Hope it helps !

Something like this? I have to agree - I prefer it than the high skids.

now i am more interested in bush planes, wish xplane had more bush planes.

The flight we discussed yesterday on chat ;-)

I tried upping it to 8K resolution. Took a while to build. Almost 9 hours to be exact. But it added some nice subtle details. Compressed JPEG attached. If you want to see an uncompressed PNG.. 7MB. Click the image for full resolution, 3840x1302px!