Goran_M

Use a bit of lateral thinking. When I do eventually mention what I have in mind, you're going to say..."aahhh, so THAT'S what you meant!"

I really want to post my plans about this project, but I can't just yet. The project is still moving forward, but I can't elaborate on it just yet. I can say it will be finished sooner than expected and will have something extra "attached" to it.

sorry Theo, I shouldn't 'crack' jokes ;D : LOL Simon!! You "crack" me up!. But seriously, if you keep trying to make jokes, I'm going to feel absolutely "shattered"!

Radio stack is now working. We had a few issues with it to begin with but now I can safely say it is fully functional. Theo and I have both agreed to leave the cracked glass. It's not in this screenshot but it will be in the final package. While I go over all the animations, Theo will finish up the night lighting and manipulators. Then finish up the manual, test it, and have it available in a matter of weeks. I just noticed I put the wrong screenshot up. DUH. We made the radio look better than the one I showed here. I'll put up a few more screens soon.

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.

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.

The first night I get more than 5 hours sleep and I wake up to this cracked glass stuff. WOW. (I got a great sleep though!) I'm now leaning towards leaving it in, to be honest. I can safely say it won't be distracting while flying because the radio stack is actually not visible when flying in 2D cockpit mode. Only when flying in VC mode can you pan around and see the radios. Although, in saying this, I'm going to have to adjust the viewpoint so we'll see what happens. If, by some chance it does become visible after adjusting the viewpoint, we'll fly it around and see if it is a distraction. If not, we'll almost definitely leave it in. Goran

Everything but the Hobbs is animated on the Sundowner at the present time. Every knob, switch and gauge. The Hobbs is proving a little tricky. We're adding clickspots and manipulators over the next 2 or 3 days. BTW, we will be adding glass to the gauges. That's actually last on our list.

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.

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.

SSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the comments, gentlemen. They are much appreciated. Wombatboy, I'll send you a PM soon.

Coming together rather quickly now. All gauges and controls are working nicely.

There's always a trade off somewhere. Where they add detail, some detail must be taken away from somewhere else to maintain good fps. ESPECIALLY for FS9 and FSX. Looking at those screenshots, I can see they textured the holes for the switches, fire handles and digital displays instead of modelling them (Holes actually use up quite a few polygons). The gauges... I try to find some kind of middle ground between performance and appearance. Keep in mind, those screenshots I put up are extreme closeups. No one will fly with their viewpoints THAT close and from that angle. Not bashing their work, by any means, (Although I have heard their planes don't work properly) but to each their own.

It depends on what gauges are being used in FSX. SOME of the gauges used in FSX (true 3D mesh) use enough polys to make it look like a nice rounded circle, and those are used sparingly, but MOST gauges are the equivalent of Planemaker default gauges. Flat textured surfaces with animated textures. And those can be made to look extremely high res. A texture doesn't use nearly enough resources as a 3D mesh so it gives the illusion of a high res gauge. You can see this in a 2D panel made entirely with Planemaker. Comparisons screenshots...

And some more screenshots. More videos coming soon. These are all "in sim" screenshots. Perhaps a little tweaking here and there will be done on the textures to adjust contrast/brightness/color saturation. But it looks like I'm finally going to release something!.

Animations of the exterior and panel gauges are just about finished. Have to go through clickspots and manipulators and mapping the Garmin on the the 3D object of the GPS. However, it seems I'm animating faster than Theo is texturing (understandably as the texturing is quite tedious), so might be a little while longer. And I cannot animate some things without textures from Theo as some textures have indicator markings on them. I'll throw up another video soon. Goran

I'll keep you in mind, Dave. Jack......... I'll just say "LOL"

A small video to show the animations that have been on the panel. This is purely a TEST to compare the 3D animations with the planemaker gauges and make sure they all line up with each other. Apologies for the low quality. It's my very first video upload, ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aflZGI9As4g&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aflZGI9As4g&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aflZGI9As4g&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

A small progress update on the Sundowner. Theo and myself are both burning along with this one. Theo is working on UV maps and finishing them at about 3-4 UV maps per day. I animated the exterior yesterday in about 3 hours and spent the rest of the day getting the flight model accurately made. Today I started the interior animations and have 4 of the gauges done. Also, today I did a test flight with it from Mittagong to Hoxton Park airport. (albeit with a 2D panel I made purely for testing the flight model) This one will definitely be finished before the end of the month.

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.

There could be different rules for different regions, but from what I remember, if there are no waypoints around the airport, you follow runway heading for a pre determined distance and then once it is safe to turn, you make a turn on the crosswind leg as allowed by the traffic pattern or you can keep going straight or turn away from the circuit pattern of the airport towards the nearest waypoint/VOR/NDB and track that heading.

Oslo?? I'm just guessing since you live in Norway.

Thanks for that. I'll give it a go.

How did you get fscommander to work with X Plane?