OK, let's have a brief summary of what I've got so far ... I started the development in 2011 with great enthusiasm. I had got the model in PlaneMaker put together pretty quickly, although I will probably be doing some more fine-tuning at this area in the future. It only had some basic painting from PlaneMaker, not so much to look at, I guess, and I will be redoing the exterior model in Blender when I'm done and happy with the interior.
Anyway, I had got it up and flying in X-Plane 9 back then with 2D cockpit (not gonna show you - that was just too bad ... :))
After that, I jumped at modeling 3D cockpit in Blender, I was a complete novice in Blender, but thanks to many great tutorials on the Internet - Dan Klaue, Blender guru (thanks guys - you've really done a great job) and many others, I managed to propel myself on the steep Blender learning curve and I have learnt a great deal since then. Here we can see a few stages of interior (and my :) ) development:
After that, there was a break - about a year long - when I didn't do any work on the modeling at all - I think it had something to do with me being pretty bad in time planning and managing my long term projects. I do other things, for sure, but I just need to work on my time management ... Nevertheless, enough of boring you with my personal reflections - I've got back at working on this project about 2 months ago and hopefully this time I will get it done ... :) After getting back with the development process, and perhaps as a result of certain time distance I've got from my initial enthusiasm and excitement of seeing some results - when I looked at it again - I was happy with it, certainly started to look like the real thing, well sort of ... :).
Reality check: still a long way to go, but at least it doesn't look like an arcade game plane from the 80's any more. Sorry about that dirty canopy - I think we washed it afterwards ... :)
but as you can perhaps see using the photos of the real thing for making the instruments was surely not such a good idea, it has too much of sun reflections, sometimes it's taken from a bad angle and it generally does not look good. My more experienced friends were advising me against this approach, and they were right, photo textures just look too greasy. So, what came next was making the textures for the instruments from scratch in some (preferably vector) graphic editor - I will write about it in the next post. Also - you see that I did not pay much attention to the materials so far, so they only have some basic colors and textures, so that's what will also come next, after I am done with the instruments ...
I have been a computer flight simulation lover ever since I've got my first computer at the age of ten. Of course back then, flying on my 8-bit Sharp MZ-800 twenty five years ago, I would never dream that flight sims will look the way they do today - photo realistic, simulating advanced and complex systems - just a few clicks away from the real thing (more or less ... :) ).
Some ancient history: Flight simulator Tomahawk on 8-bit computer in the mid 80's
During the PC era, the looks and quality of flight simulators improved every few years, along with rapid hardware development of new powerful hardware which was very exciting for the gamers and lovers of every imaginable kind of flight simulation - from train to spacecraft. It was back then in the mid nineties when I also started my first glider training - the real thing this time. During that time, Microsoft Flight simulator became established and stable star on the PC flight sim market. As I am not really a very big fan of Microsoft (well that's actually and understatement :)) I have to admit their flight simulator was one of their finest products (maybe because it wasn't really a Microsoft product in the beginning, it was started by programmer Bruce Artwick and his companies - anyway, it was a good simulation at that time) - certainly better than Microsoft mainstream operating systems of that era which just sucked so badly that it was driving most of intelligent and sensitive people crazy.
Somewhere in the middle between ancient history and amazing today: Microsoft flight simulator 98
Anyway, I've spent a great deal of time with MS Flight simulator, had a lot of fun with it and learned a great deal of things, which I've even put in use in my real flight training, my instructors have noticed, I can tell you ... However, most relationships come to an end eventually, so it was around the year 2009, when I first stumbled across X-Plane. It featured an exciting flight engine which actually attempts to calculate the real physics. This property sets it aside from other similar products such as already mentioned MSFS or Flight gear which use pre-calculated values obtained from some other numerical simulation source for flight physics. It had already been quite known around the flight simulation community at that time, and of course an ongoing, intense, sharp and sometimes even violent never ending dispute "Flight simulator sucks and X-Plane rules and vice versa" and "This ultra realism thing X-Plane guys are feeding us is a total bullshit" was going on in the internet community. Nevertheless, as almost all things in life aren't black and white, I decided to switch to X-Plane. Subjectively it was love on the first sight, it felt more free and the small general aviation airplanes just felt more real and alive, so I had to say there was something to the claims of the developers. I know some people would disagree with me, but that's not really the issue here. I have made my decision. In some aspects, X-Plane was nowhere near MSFS, for example the lack of quality payware addons was a bit frustrating, but on the other hand, in some other ones it was ahead. It still had a long way to go, but I decided to stick with it anyway. Of course, today, in 2013 with the new X-Plane 10, it's wonderful new rendering engine, X-Plane is definitely one of the most realistically looking flight simulation on PC market. It still hasn't surpassed the Flight simulator in all aspects, but considering the fact that MSFS development ended 7 years ago, it's definitely getting there.
X-Plane 10 - one of those pictures which makes you wonder: Is it a reality or a simulator?
Especially with more and more addon developers coming to XPL every year, its future looks bright. OK, going back to 2011, it's when I also started my training in ultralight flying. Started on popular P-92 Echo, I quickly changed to P-96 Golf from the same manufacturer, which I somehow liked better. I quickly started to really love that plane as it has very nice flight characteristics, it is very forgiving and fun to fly.
A taste of the real thing: P-96 Golf on the ground in nice summer weather
The beauty of flying: P-96 Golf in flight ...
So, being an X-Plane user on one side and a pilot on the other, it didn't take long for me to really start missing my plane in X-Plane (there is a model of Echo for X-Plane from Dmax which flies nicely but due to the mediocre interior the flight experience is just not what it should be. Anyway - no Gold in Xplane whatsoever).
Thanks to Dan Klaue's great Planemaker and Blender tutorials, I quickly found myself deep in the development process. Working in Planemaker, Blender and Inkscape on my favorite plane quickly became a passion for me, sometimes a weekend would pass without me noticing. My social life also began to suffer a bit ... :) Hit by occasional detours and breaks in favor of other activities which lasted even months sometimes, I still managed to stay on course and hopefully one day, I will reach my goal of finishing it ... :) Here, on this blog, I would like to share my progress with you and also the passion of working on this plane. I hope you will enjoy reading it ...
More posts that map the current development will be following soon ...
A taste of the what I have so far: Look into my model of P-96 Golf in X-Plane 9. Some things I am redoing currently. Here you see textures for instruments taken from a photograph. It doesn't look too good, so I am redoing the instruments texture in Inkscape and Blender. Also, new materials and textures for some objects in cockpit will be added, so this is really work in progress ... :)
