Goran_M

I wanted to wait until everything was pretty much finalized. I just spent several hours on the Skype phone to Cameron. After weighing up all the options presented to me, and in the interest of the other people working with me on this project, we have agreed to sell our products through X-Aviation. Cameron has the confidence that we will produce some high quality work, and with the X-Aviation team of programmers helping us, we will be putting out some pretty high end stuff. Jason and I have many projects planned comprising of GA, bizjets and heavy airliners. The first 2 projects we are planning to release are the 2 Hawker business jets. The 800XP and the 4000. I originally anticipated release for both of these by end of August, however, to maximize realism in these aircraft in the way of a custom FMC, we are pushing back that date to sometime in October (hopefully). We will have our own website also, mainly to showcase our products in conjunction with X-Aviations website, but all sales will go through X-Aviation.com. We will have our own support forum up and running very soon in the commercial vendors section of these forums, but in the meantime, please continue to visit this section of the forums with any comments, feedback or questions and Jason or myself will be more than happy to answer them for you. Goran

From now on, all posts regarding the 4000 will be posted in the Hawker Fleet Project. Goran

Thanks Nick. I mostly just add color to see how it would actually look. As I'm new to Blender, I wasn't sure if the colors get imported into X Plane. Goran X Plane CAN import Blender rendered objects. Just tried it. Works great

When a person works on blender so much, that he gets screen burn from the blender interface, he has to be able to model that good. A small update. While Jason works on the object version of the 800XP, I've started working on the flight model. It'll be done by tomorrow. Then I'll return to the 4000 and whatever Jason doesn't finish on the 800, I'll jump in and help so we can get it out. And also we have another person jumping on board with us to help with texturing. OlaHaldor is a genius with render baking and texturing. So he will be working with Theo to bring us a very high quality addition to our projects. I've also re done my landing gear for the 4000. Below are screenshots showing Olahaldors work and my landing gear. The reflection, unfortunately, cannot be rendered in X Plane. But we'll definitely be making some top quality textures and releasing repaint templates. Some more news will be coming soon but I will mention that in due time. Goran

You missed a spot!

Let's just say it's good to know people in high places. Goran

Thanks for the comments, gentlemen. Another small update. I was able to get my hands on the airfoil data. It has been added and she flies BEAUTIFULLY. I'm still tweaking the PM version and making sure everything is there. I'm anticipating release of the PM version this week sometime. Goran

The amount of work and detail going into this will be very high. So this will be payware. But we'll try and keep it in direct comparison to the other payware add ons in the X Plane market. We will, however, release some Planemaker versions as freeware with custom panels and high quality repaints. Goran

I already have a list of aircraft that we'll be doing. I plan on doing the entire Beechcraft bizjet fleet and some other airliner stuff so we'll be quite busy for a while. Also, Theo will be doing all our textures. Goran

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I thought I might put up a wireframe for y'all to see. There have been a few delays with the modeling side, but it's progressing nicely. And the wings. They are divided into 10 sections for high resolution and no segments are visible in object mode. It's a nice smooth mesh. Trying to get it done asap but I want it to be pretty. Goran

I could use a programmer for the FMC in the Hawker 4000. It will be payware and if it sells well and the programming is high standard, I will have no issue about paying someone who can do it. Let me know if you're up to the task. Goran

Not yet. But I've lost a few hairs making this one. AND a few nerves. :-\

Ah, ok. That is not something that is on the 4000 out of all the photos I have seen. However, it is on the list of projects I have compiled for X Plane. But more on that later. Goran

I'm not aware of any lip. The only one I know of is the one at the rear. The 4000 DOES have a section of wingbox that actually comes off at the position you are describing. Perhaps if you could provide a photo so I know exactly what you are referring to. One thing about the 4000 is it is customizable. I have a lot of photos and some of the interiors are different with the seating arrangements. I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but that screenshot of the 4000 is at Heathrow airport and is getting 47fps. Goran

Please make yourself comfortable! They turned out better than I hoped. The runway is visible because I haven't closed off the cabin and the normals for the fuse are facing outwards. So the walls are transparent. When I finish the cabin, I'll close off the rear and it will all be nice and cozy. Windows are next.

It's amazing what a little more detail can do. I added more detail to the cockpit (chamfering more edges and rounding more corners using subsurf) and the sim grinds down to 19fps at the busy airports and then adds the customary fog to be able to cope. I was actually hoping to have the modeling done by now, but unfortunately, still more things to add/fix/modify. But not much. Goran

1 quick update. I may have some very interesting, BIG news to share in the next few days but no details on that just yet. If/when it becomes final, I will definitely post back. Put it this way. Emails have been sent out and responses have been made. Also, 1st real full flight was done with the object model in X Plane. YSSY-NZAA 400 000 polys and fps didn't drop below 21 at the major airports with max detail on. Flying over landscape and ocean, I was able to get fps in the 60's-80's. I'll do some more testing at a few other airports to see what kind of fps I get and depending on the results, I may increase or decrease detail in the cockpit. I'm not going to bother too much with the cabin detail, because honestly, we don't fly from the cabin. After I polish it a bit, I'll post some screenshots. Goran

Don't you just LOVE crunching numbers??!! :-\ 9 test flights in the last 3 days. 300nm@FL430@M0.84 600nm@FL430@M0.84 1000nm@FL430@M0.84 Then at M0.82 Then at M0.78 Next, Doing it all again at FL450. All this to make sure it matches performance figures in the POH. I actually had an issue with the landing gear. Believe it or not, when outputting the flight model, the landing gear, which was slightly out of the wingbox, was producing drag!!?? So that was fixed. At least I'm finally flying in X Plane! BTW, Theo will be doing a custom panel for the freeware version. The screenshot above is the freeware version with 2D panel. obj version has NOT been exported yet. But it soon will be.

Small delay in the Project. I found a much better, more efficient way to model the wheels and the holes that are cut into them. Originally I boolean cut them but it was always bugging me that I had to do that. Now I found a pretty good way so I'm starting them again. Wireframe coming when I'm done.

I changed the sofa in the back of the aircraft to look more like a sofa. Happy with how it looks now. Today I have a mission to create the entire interior and fix the front landing gear. Hopefully I start UV mapping either today or tomorrow. Goran

I might make a separate set of low poly seats as an alternative. Goran

Cabin under construction. Unfortunately, it will be a somewhat higher than expected poly count. I'll see how I go with it. Goran

Hawker 4000 flight model is COMPLETE for X-Plane 9.31. I just spent 2 days making the flight model (using some info I got from Hawker Raytheon) and making a new Planemaker version. And it flies BETTER than the 9.22 version I made. I might tweak some settings because the autopilot can't capture the flight level "cleanly" but handling, takeoff roll, landing, all the good stuff is working beautifully. The shapes of all the parts of the aircraft have been made cleaner and I made every effort to create all planemaker parts as accurately as possible so the flight model can reflect that accuracy. I'm half thinking to make the planemaker model "donationware" but it'll probably be freeware. We'll see. Anyway, more updates soon. Goran

very soon.