Kitty Hawk Class Aircraft Carriers

[Hooky722]

Hooky..

Had a look at this model in MCX and notice the hangar is platformed too. While this is completely unnecessary at the moment.. I get the feeling that Warren was hoping someone would 'pick it up' and make a full-blown animated model out of it. I don't know what overheads these platforms make but they must impact somewhere.

ATB
DaveB

Agreed mate, sorry BTW I missed your edit earlier then my internet failed just when I was in the middle of the reply! It's been up and down like a yoyo recently but anyway, I'm going to get onto the Developer of MCX and see if they can integrate a bulk platform select if I can figure out how to submit a request on there site as looks a bit technical atm, but in reference to your point about the Payware Kitty Hawk 305 and 2065 is still a big leap I think we should start on the flight deck and work down that way we maybe able to leave the hanger alone for the most part and Warren can still have the possibility of an Animated model if someone picks it up. Btw, did you notice a frame rate hit in MCX when you looked at it It nearly caused my rig to keel over, no pun intended

Cheers

Hooky

 

[Bjoern]

Hammered the "Remove" button about 170 times and gave up. The awful thing is that MCX always needs a few seconds to catch up.


Exported as .x and tried to remove every entry for "mesh platform[number]" gave up after about 200 entries.


I'm angry and disappointed that this is basically an unsolvable issue. Stupid Sketchup crap.

 

[fsafranek]

Those textures BTW are:
A7_1_t
A7_2_t
F14_1_t
F14_2_t
Airwing_1_t
Airwing_2_t

and the spec, LM and hanger (hangar) versions...

Two screenshots attached.
First and second pictures are partially completed Air Wing for Connie (CVW-9- NG)
Last one is Connie with new textures substituted - but still Kitty Hawk Air Wing (CVW-11 - NH) aboard...

Nice repaints but I'm a little concerned as I look at these images.

I just wanted to make it perfectly clear that all of the deck eye candy (aircraft, people, vehicles, tow bars, etc.) on the USS Kitty Hawk included in the Aerosoft F-14 package belong to Team SDB. Slightly modified by Mark Harper they are from our original 80s-90s Enterprise and the upcoming Vietnam era version. We allowed Mark to use them for his USS Kitty Hawk. This a commercial package that shall not be reverse engineered in any manner. Repaint them if you like for use on that ship but under no circumstances shall the "deck_statics.mdl" nor "hanger.mdl" be separated from the package and reused in any form anywhere else.

For folks not wanting the entire F-14 package, Team SDB has agreements in place with Mark to release the USS Kitty Hawk as a standalone package of three ships with appropriate texture (and tower number light modeling) changes for the USS Constellation and USS America. We're waiting on further development of the Enterprise to see if we will be able to include in a timely manner the option of F-4s rather than F-14's for optional earlier versions.

 

[Bjoern]

Exporting as .x from MCX (resulting file size: 29 MB and 1.5 million lines!) and importing that into Blender made it not respond.

In case anyone wants to give this a try:
https://github.com/Littleneo/Directx_Blender/wiki

 

[fsafranek]

For using the CV-64 with CCP, add these lines at the end of the "PA.cfg"

[VEH_CV64]
path = VEH_CV64
VEH_CV64 = 57X
Pos1 = 7.50, 40.00, 17.65, +1.0
Pos2 = -15.50, 40.00, 17.65, -4.0
Pos3 = 20.00, -65.00, 17.65, -4.0

Spawns user's plane at the 3 working catapults. Only the "clean" version of the Carrier is supported
due to the way it is modelled.

What is CCP? Sounds interesting.

 

[DaveB]

Frank..

there are 2 lots of stuff going on in this thread.. the original stuff which is Warren's Kitty Hawk model (which comes with variations on deck loading) and running concurrently.. stuff about the Aerosoft/Mark Harper Kitty Hawk which again comes with variations of deck loading. AFAIK.. the deck aircraft that come with Warren's freeware model are not the ones off Marks model.
Deke.. navy81 set about doing repaints for the freeware models deck aircraft and it kinda ran into him thinking about doing repaints for Mark's model two. Deck/island repaints have already been done (as you can see by the out of place island lights) and it seemed like a good idea to have the correct aircraft paints too. I don't think there's any intention to physically remove the aircraft off Mark's model and put them onto Warren's.. there'd be no point. Why re-invent the wheel??
IF the aircraft on the freeware model ARE off Mark's model.. then that's a different ball game but I don't think they are.

What say you?

[EDIT]

For folks not wanting the entire F-14 package, Team SDB has agreements in place with Mark to release the USS Kitty Hawk as a standalone package of three ships with appropriate texture (and tower number light modeling) changes for the USS Constellation and USS America. We're waiting on further development of the Enterprise to see if we will be able to include in a timely manner the option of F-4s rather than F-14's for optional earlier versions.

Frank.. will there be any consideration for those who already have the F-14 (especially those of us who bought it to get Kitty Hawk). Much as I don't mind throwing money about.. I really don't want or need another Kitty Hawk?
ATB
DaveB

 

[Hooky722]

Hammered the "Remove" button about 170 times and gave up. The awful thing is that MCX always needs a few seconds to catch up.


Exported as .x and tried to remove every entry for "mesh platform[number]" gave up after about 200 entries.


I'm angry and disappointed that this is basically an unsolvable issue. Stupid Sketchup crap.

Hopefully this will cheer you up I asked Over at the MCX forums if they would consider adding a select all/remove all platforms option to MCX just heard back from Arno and he's added a remove all platforms button which will be added to the development release as of Tomorrow let's see where this gets us.

 

[DaveB]

Talking of which.. I haven't had a new development release in longer than I can remember. It's setup to check too!

ATB
DaveB

 

[DaveWG]

Had a dev release last night Dave.

 

[DaveB]

Cheers Dave I used to get one every time I opened the program (not that I use it all the time.. more a case of lots sometimes then not at all for ages) but they suddenly stopped. Lets see if I get one one...

No.. nada. My Update settings for check for update at startup and check for update unstable are both TRUE so WTH isn't it checking?

ATB
DaveB

 

[Bjoern]

Changelog says the button is in, but I'm too dumb to find it at the moment.

http://scenerydesign.org/mantis/plugin.php?page=Source/list&id=1

 

[Hooky722]

Changelog says the button is in, but I'm too dumb to find it at the moment.

http://scenerydesign.org/mantis/plugin.php?page=Source/list&id=1

He did say to me 'from tomorrow' and that was at 8:30 GMT this morning so we may not see the revised version uploaded for another day or so but I can wait, TBH i'm just stoked the chap got back to me so quick I wasn't expecting a reply that soon, least of all to have what I asked for put in the same day!! fantastic!

 

[Hooky722]

IT works!!!!!!!!! Only tried it with Forrestall and Oriskney (and had to rebuild the deck polys by hand) but the frame rate issues are gone going to try Kitty Hawk and Midway now will report back just to check my findings but the Bulk platform removal tool really did the trick!

Second though I'd better not I've got work in the morning but I'll have a play tomorrow afternoon. Midways a bit of an issue if you leaving it up to Auto-platform I'll try it manually tomorrow

 

[DaveB]

Well done that man

ATB
DaveB

 

[Bjoern]

IT works!!!!!!!!! Only tried it with Forrestall and Oriskney (and had to rebuild the deck polys by hand) but the frame rate issues are gone going to try Kitty Hawk and Midway now will report back just to check my findings but the Bulk platform removal tool really did the trick!

Second though I'd better not I've got work in the morning but I'll have a play tomorrow afternoon. Midways a bit of an issue if you leaving it up to Auto-platform I'll try it manually tomorrow

 

[Hooky722]

Well, that's confirmed Its definitely worked! Midway is still giving a little bit of hit on Frames but I think thats more my rig that anything (It seems to jump between perfectly reasonable to slug GP from one day to the next but anyway!) so far I've identified what I believe to be a few minor Issues:-

1) You cant leave it up to Auto-Platform in the attachment tools to redraw the Platforms for you. It draws dozens more than is necessary and Links some of the more Vital ones with redundant platforms so you can't just delete the ones you don't need. (for example: removing some of the platforms from Midway's Island also lost the catapults and half the deck markings!)

2)You have to lay platforms yourself, Not an Issue necessarily but Very time consuming (I got home from work at 4:00pm, I've just finished Midway and I'm knackered. and I only did the flight deck!) Plus with the above method, even though I was getting 50 or so platforms as opposed to 3050 platforms, it still ran like sludge! although It may have been not compiling properly out of MCX I'll do more tests... but for right now I do it manually.

3)In order to cover the decks with as few Platforms as possible I've had to Sacrifice the potential for future usability of both the Lifts and Hanger decks on the models I've experimented on, Although this could be done with more careful 'platforming' I suppose

Aside from that its all gravy...

Here's a summary of the procedure i used:-

1)First make sure you have the lastest Development Release of MDLConverterX

2)Import model and head straight for the Attached Object Editor and click the new 'Remove All Platforms' Button (kindly put there by Arno for us over at FSDeveloperland!) This gets rid of all platforms but leaves all other attached objects in place (smoke, catapults, wires etc)

3)Start creating platforms (go to ADD - platforms) and start laying platforms. (You can copy and paste the co-ordinates for the deck height from one of the catapult Attach points) Depending on how defined you want your flight deck to be you can get an accurate outline of the FD using about 20 platforms (I think I got Midways down to 19 or so)

4)Then compile separately (Don't overwrite existing models I think it causes problems!) swap the original with the new one and that's it

There's probably an easier way but this how I've done it on the three I've tried so far.

 

[Hooky722]

Happy to Help guys, Nice to see another one of FSX's great mystery's solved. I've been wanting use the Oriskney BETA for ages now lol.

I think form now on with sketchup\3D mesh models we should recommend/adopt this procedure because I don't know what program was being used to make all these 0000's of platforms but the more i used it the more i don't think it was MCX. The maximum I could get it to Auto generate was 54, And there's no way in hell anybody did that many thousands manually, So its a side effect from some part of the conversion process I guess? Just a thought.

 

[DaveB]

It may be possible that MCX is falsely reporting platforms too. I know that DG recently converted a carrier to import into Max where he removed all the platforms and made one big one. On completion, he ran it back through MCX and it reported more than one there.. quite a lot more than one actually! Whatever.. he didn't get over 2000

ATB
DaveB

 

[navy81]

Frank..

there are 2 lots of stuff going on in this thread.. the original stuff which is Warren's Kitty Hawk model (which comes with variations on deck loading) and running concurrently.. stuff about the Aerosoft/Mark Harper Kitty Hawk which again comes with variations of deck loading. AFAIK.. the deck aircraft that come with Warren's freeware model are not the ones off Marks model.
Deke.. navy81 set about doing repaints for the freeware models deck aircraft and it kinda ran into him thinking about doing repaints for Mark's model two. Deck/island repaints have already been done (as you can see by the out of place island lights) and it seemed like a good idea to have the correct aircraft paints too. I don't think there's any intention to physically remove the aircraft off Mark's model and put them onto Warren's.. there'd be no point. Why re-invent the wheel??
IF the aircraft on the freeware model ARE off Mark's model.. then that's a different ball game but I don't think they are.

What say you?

[EDIT]
Frank.. will there be any consideration for those who already have the F-14 (especially those of us who bought it to get Kitty Hawk). Much as I don't mind throwing money about.. I really don't want or need another Kitty Hawk?
ATB
DaveB

Dave,
Thanks for the "top cover" in reply to Frank - i have been on vacation and just returned last evening. Frank - Dave is correct in stating that i have not nor will not move Mark's aircraf to another deck - was just trying to repaint the existing air wing to go with the different carriers being created from the Mark's Kitty Hawk - an absolute treasure.

ATB and cheers to all.
Deke

 

[TARPSBird]

In the last couple pages this thread has gone to a tech level a bit over my head (easy to do) but let me throw this in...
Hooky722 mentioned tweaking the platform count on Oriskany and I assume he's referring to the beta uploaded by Gary (gp183601) last year. Gary also uploaded a 1970's Midway which has the same problem with frame rates dropping off to almost a standstill as you taxi out of the wires and move forward past the island and the "crotch" (where the angle deck and forward flight deck intersect). This deck would also be a good candidate for whatever MCX magic can be worked to resolve the FR drop.