J_Will

Ah, everyones favorite little copyright infringing, IP stealing, problem child is back under another pseudonym. This should be good for a few laughs until Cameron drops the ban hammer down again.

File Name: RAF Transport Command LES DC-3 File Submitter: J_Will File Submitted: 10 Aug 2012 File Category: Vintage X-Plane Version(s): X-Plane 9 & 10 Livery For: Click Here For Aircraft This well maintained DC3 wears the elegant and noble colors of the RAF Transport Command. Originally formed in March of 1943 (Wikipedia) as a unit charged primarily with ferrying aircraft from the factories to the forward operations airbases of World War 2, then later taking over the harrowing task of dropping paratroopers into the fight, this unit was an integral part of the Allied forces war effort. Following WW2, the Transport Command expanded greatly and took part in a number of famous operations such as the Berlin Airlift, utilizing amongst other types, many DC3's designated as Dakotas in Great Britain and wearing these colors. The RAF Transport Command continued to fly with distinction in many historic operations throughout the world, flying millions of miles and visiting every continent save for Antarctica. In 1967 the unit was reduced and renamed the Air Support Command, which reflected a change in task to a more active combat role instead of the transportation of goods and humanitarian aid. The RAF are renowned for taking great pride in their aircraft, so this DC3 is clean and well maintained. The cockpit is still indicative of a hard working DC3 of course. I've included a conversion for the prop disks to show yellow tips on the spinning props. Instruction are included as a PDF. The livery "RAF Transport Command" folder goes into the usual liveries location within your LES DC3 aircraft folder. I hope you enjoy flying in the colors of the RAF Transport Command. Thanks! Click here to download this file

I was just chatting with another user about if there was a way to do really thick smoke in X-plane, which as far as I know can't really be done. But it reminded me that one of the small things I was hoping for in an update for the DC3 was some proper smoke from these big old radials, especially at start-up. As it stands now, nothing, not even a wisp, ever emanates from the exhaust pipes. Strangely if I do hit X to turn on X-planes smoke function, some wisps come out from in front of the engines instead. I know X-plane does a really pathetic job of displaying smoke by default. It looked like cotton balls firing out of the engines before I edited the smoke_puff.png file to have at least a modicum of realism for this. It's just a small thing, but it would just add to the immersion of flying this old bird. Thanks again!

I've noticed this also. When the problem occurs, the aircraft will go from nicely straight, level, and trimmed to a wild pitch up. After you disconnect the autopilot in order to right the ship and then try the autopilot again it just flips on and off afterwards. As far as I can tell, once this happens you can't turn the autopilot on again until you reload the aircraft.

I actually fixed that modern "Ding-a-ling" by inserting a blank autopilot_disco.wav into the sounds folder. It's a hack fix, but it works. I'll probably do the same thing for that irritating constant brake skidding sound as well. I swear Austin must have gone around recording sound effects with his old walkman from the 80's for most of the default sounds in X-plane.

Having a bolt-on GPS in the cockpit would be a fantastic update to this awesome DC3! Which GPS unit do you have modeled? I have a nice KLN90B of my own almost finished. I dream of hooking it up to the EADT simulated one, but I'm not a programmer so I have no clue how to do it.

Just a thought. A "Historic" section for aircraft liveries might be cool. Seems to fit the gorgeous LES DC3 better to have that category to place my liveries in. Thanks!

This is a great day for X-Aviation and the X-plane community indeed. Now that X-plane is finally getting some much deserved attention in the flight simulation category, it deserves to have a website run by courteous and professional people to support it like X-Pilot. The megalomaniacs who run that "other" X-plane site can kiss-off. That other place is outmoded, unfriendly, and unprofessional. It has been a hindrance to the growth of X-plane into the mainstream. X-aviation is a great company which offers some of the very best add-ons for X-plane available today as well as having great customer service and support. With the other place, I feel like I have to constantly slog through the forums on everything that I've purchased to see if anything has been updated or fixed. With downloads available on here now, I hope to see a large migration of traffic come over from the other site as well as new comers to X-plane coming here first instead. Austin should change the Laminar site to direct people here instead of that other filthy rotten ORGanization.

Definitely glad to hear it's getting a positive response. Thanks for the kind words on my livery. For my next file I've chosen a much more well known subject, the 1940's Alaska Airlines livery. I'd actually like to do two different versions of this same livery. What I'm working on now is based on the gorgeously restored aircraft which is currently hanging in the Museum of Flight here near where I live in Seattle, Washington. If I get some time I could even go up and take some pictures of it myself. If I only had a giant ladder! I could get pictures of the interior which seem strangely hard to come by, especially in color. Though this plane isn't the original NC91008, which sadly was lost when it struck a mountain in 1954 on a positioning flight in Alaska that claimed the lives of the two crew members, it is a stunning example of the aircraft none the less. Then I'll probably do a version of this same livery, of the actual aircraft designated NC91008 after it was retired from being a C-97 in 1949. This one will be made as a down and dirty Alaska bush work horse. Oil stains, grime, dents, chipped paint...it will be glorious!

Ok the updates are coming fast and furious now. I've figured out the radio tuning problem. It had nothing to do with the deletion of the X-plane temp files. If I turn on the batteries, then I can tune the radios just fine. sheesh

Oh ok. As long as I know that it's supposed to be "broken," it won't bug me that it doesn't work As for the autopilot issue, don't think that it's a problem with only your DC3; I've had this problem intermittently with almost all aircraft in X-plane for quite some time now. What I noticed is that if I delete the temp files in the main X-plane directory that are created when X-plane starts up and then load it the problem disappears, at least for a short while. Irritatingly the last time I tried that solution just yesterday though, the autopilot worked, but then somehow the click spots for the radio tuning knobs didn't work! Arrrrrgg! This flight simulation hobby certainly takes a lot of patience. The next time I loaded X-plane I had radio control as well as the autopilot problem back, which is somewhat less debilitating than not being able to tune the all important Nav radios. My DC3 piloting skills are improving at least, though I still haven't managed to get this old bird down without bumping and ballooning onto the runway yet. I'd have some pretty sick and angry passengers at the end of a flight in real DC3. On another note. I've been doing some painting for this aircraft which I believe has turned out well, but it seems that so far I've only had a paltry number of downloads on the org for my files. Another fantastic painter whom you probably know through the forums, Leen de Jager, has expressed similar sentiments with the disappointingly low number of downloads for his DC3 paints as well. Seeing as how we both do this work in our spare time free of charge and the only payment we wish to see is interest and maybe a few thank-you's here and there, this does prove to be disheartening. I hope this isn't from lack of interest in the .acf itself! That would really be unfortunate, because this is truly one of the best aircraft available for X-plane today. It always seems like it's the modern jet jockeys who get all of the attention in flight simulation. People are going crazy for the upcoming 777 and eventually the 737 Classic projects. Honestly I am too, but for me it's the 737 classic that gets me most excited, for the very reason that it is old and doesn't just fly itself after you've programed the FMC. Which is one of the many reasons I love this DC3. It's such a deceptively simple aircraft. You can be in the air in minutes once you've got the checklist down. But just as I mentioned before, there isn't a computer flying the plane for you, hence no ILS auto-land to keep you from bouncing down the runway with virtual passengers screaming and throwing up in the aisles.

Also, as an addendum, I've tried to interact with the red switch labeled "ac type a-9" which doesn't seem to be an active click spot or moveable selector.

First and foremost, this is by far the best DC3 and indeed one of the best classic aircraft for flight simulation that I've ever come across, period. She's both beautiful and challenging to fly well. I truly enjoy this "gooney-bird! " I've notice a couple of things that don't seem to be working correctly. First is that the ammeter on the main cockpit console never moves at all from the bottom left section of the gauge. Not a big deal, but it does detract a bit from the immersion of flying this aircraft especially since it is so prominent in view. Second is the autopilot which sticks on 0 when I first load up the plane for flight and is impossible to set to a heading because it always just moves back to 0 no matter what. This issue however I know is not with the aircraft but with X-plane itself as all other aircraft like to do this as well. I was just curious if you might know a fix for this. Thanks for creating this masterful add-on. I hope it has been and will continue to be a success for you.

Esther Mae (N3006) would be absolutely gorgeous to fly in X-plane! Unfortunately Leen is quite right, beautiful bare-metal reflections such as that would need to be written as a custom Open GL shader in the X-plane rendering engine. It just couldn't be faked with a simple texture. Perhaps something can now be done in Xplane 10 with it's brand new HDR lighting system, but I still don't think it does aircraft reflections like what you would see on a polished metal surface.

Add a splash of color to your LES DC3 flights! I just uploaded this livery to Xplane.org. Please enjoy!

I would create a new livery for this helo, but unfortunately there is no paint kit or blank texture available for it as far as I know. Without a blank texture to start with, it would be a nightmare to try to do a new livery. It's really a shame because I have this helo and I love it. It's really one of the most revolutionary ACF's for Xplane yet, but there seems to be a lack of product support for it.

A quick update on the aircraft I have been working on. They're still on the make, I've just been stymied by the processes of getting the gauges and animations to work in the sim. For me the 3-D art is relatively easy. But I've been having problems figuring out the back end program aspects of building a custom aircraft with a quality 3-D cockpit. How do you get the PNG's set-up properly to drive the gauges? How do you link up the throttle, prop RPM, and ect... animations? I know it has to do with datarefs, but it still doesn't quite click with my right brained mind. All it would take is knowing how to make one custom gauge, and I'm sure I could figure out to do the others. Same goes for the animations. If anyone would like to take a little time to help me via email or chat, it would be very much appreciated. I've gone through Dan Klues tutorials on Youtube more than a few times, but there's information that's either missing or a few in between steps that are needed for me to finish the aircraft. If anyone could help it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Well I've attached the ACF for my deperdussin. Hopefully someone can figure it out, because I sure haven't been able to. Thanks very much for all the help so far everyone. Deperdussin Monocoque.acf.zip

Ah, yes that was it. I don't have the red dot any more. Thanks! Still the question of why it flips though. I wonder why it is that when I put the C of G at zero it ends up at the tip of the aircraft. When I opened up another ACF in Planemaker the C of G ends up somewhere near the middle when all of the number fields are zero'd out. I don't know, it's such a pain in the ass. I feel like I'm bursting with ideas that people would love to see in X-Plane, but I'll never get there because I can't seem to slog through figuring out all these technical problems.

Goran Still no luck with solving the issue with the Deperdussin I'm afraid. I tried doing what you had instructed with the C of G, but to no avail. I'm tired of dealing with it for now, so I'm just going to shelve it for a while and work on other things. I remember I did a rough version of a Zenith STOL a while back and it had this very same issue as well. I fixed it somehow, but for the life of me I can't remember what I did. I'm going to put all of my efforts towards the RV-4 for now. Also, Goran if you ever feel like you need some extra artistic hands to help with your projects, don't hesitate to ask. I'm a professional freelance motion artist. I've been working freelance for nearly 3 years since graduating with a BA in Applied Science for Motion Graphic Arts. I primarily work in Cinema 4D for modeling and animation work, but I've figured out that exporting as an Alias Wavefront object to Blender works quite well. Perhaps if I helped save you some time on your work, we could chat about my RV-4 animations? Just a thought, hope things are going well and we get to see the Saab very soon. I also can't wait for the DC-3 to come out. I realize it's a long way off, but it's exciting to finally see a detailed simulation of the venerable DC-3 finally come to X-Plane. Airbus I don't think that it has anything to do with Panel lighting, but I honestly don't know for sure. I still have much to learn about PlaneMaker.

It would be greatly appreciated, but no need to take away from your work. I'm sure when your this close to a major release the hours fly by and you feel like you're computer chair is permanently attached to you after a while. I know what it's like from experience in my own work. I've attached a couple of screen grabs to show my current Planemaker file for the Deperdussin. All the dots make perfect sense except for that nasty looking red one. I was thinking that it could be the general reference point for the rest to move in relation to, but I have never seen that red dot in any other ACF file that I've looked at.

Thanks for the reply Goran. I definitely realize that developing a quality aircraft for Xplane is by no means an easy task. The Saab that I believe you're working on is really turning out fantastic from what I've seen so far. I'm sure that it's been a long road to get to where you are now with the project. I'm probably going to end up getting that one right when it comes out. It's going to be sold at X-aviation is it not? I've purchased almost all of the aircraft available from them so far. For me the real issue is not having any experience or for that matter, real understanding of programming. I'm actually a professional Motion Graphics Designer, so the artwork isn't a problem. I believe that I have been able to develop a good understanding of much of the technical aspects of X-plane aircraft however. I don't think I would need someone to do a lot of the work for me to finish these aircraft, just some advice and answers to help get over the hump I've been stuck at for a while. As to the fantastic flipping Deperdussin, the first thing that I looked at was the Weight and Balance tab. Even though I haven't figured out the problem yet, I'm sure that that is where it will be. I moved the C of G back and forth and played with the settings for the range to no avail. If you do end up with some extra time, I'd certainly appreciate any help you could give me. Thanks!