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AERONCA 7 Champ Beta release for tests

Well, I can confirm that the latest version starts up just fine in 2020. I can also confirm that she's an absolute beauty! I took the time to throw a little paint at her, and she's going to get A LOT of flight time from me. She looks spectacular, and she flies very believably.






Thank you, lagaffe, for all the time and effort that went into this. It really shows, and it's much appreciated.

I did notice one thing that makes navigating difficult: the compass doesn't seem to work correctly. Sometimes it seems close, but most of the time it's way off. See below.




Other than that, I can't find anything wrong with her. Thanks again.

Side note: I like how excited my passenger is to board the plane. ;)
 
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Oooh, @Killbilly, are you going to share that paint? Looks great!

@lagaffe Thanks for the quick fix! I can confirm she's started up and flying well now! I can confirm the compass issue. Fly a heading of 30 degrees, then turn the plane to the left. As the plane passes through North, the compass will immediate shift 180 degrees and show South. There seems to be an issue with the animation. (Tested in the floatplane.)

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 6_30_2025 10_46_23 AM_upload.jpg

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 6_30_2025 10_46_55 AM_upload.jpg
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 6_30_2025 10_47_28 AM_upload.jpg
 
Hi,

Your repaint is fabulous, I like it :p
For the compass, it's strange because it's a compass taht I have copy/paste from one of my old creation and it was Ok before.

I just checked and indeed there is an issue. Yet the code and animation are the same as on the Stearman so it shouldn’t do that.
That said, if I remember correctly during the change of Blender (2.83 => 3.6.18), I had to delete all the textures to recreate them in the new format and I had to re-create the UV mapping of 2 elements ... probably is-simply that the texture in several parts is not well assigned to the compass ball.
Here a snapshot of the same ball see under the same perspective (rear to front) with the Stearman at left and the Aeronca at right side.

1751352414546.png
Solution:
The UV mapping was shot 90° counter-clockwise. It’s very simple to correct but I have to recompile everything, with at least 6 exports: 2 LODs for the interior model of each aircraft.

Thanks for the test: before nobody has seen this "small detail" during the first tests ... :p This clearly demonstrates that despite 10 or 20 people looking at a new addon, there are sometimes things that go unnoticed... except with a "fresh eye" (french expression).

For the passenger, currently the sound is linked to a LVar which change of value (0 => 1) so the sound has a very short time to be played. I will cahnge this to link it with a factice animation of which I could modify the rendering duration via a tag <ANIM_LAG>.
My mind was to "copy" the Piper Cub of A2A for FSX :geek:

Question: are you interested in the design details or am I too talkative ? If people are interested or if they are tempted to create addons, I would continue otherwise I would understand very well, no problem.
 
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I just corrected the mapping by improving it a bit so that the graduations are more readable but the issue persists under FS20 and FS24.
I clearly visually isolated the fact that when flying towards the North, suddenly the compass ball abruptly turns by 180° ...

I modified the animation code to specify that it is indeed on 360 keys but this persists.

Therefore, I have just added the two animations and they seem to be identical, both are on 360 keys with intermediate keys for East and West. It cannot be the behavior models that changed between FS20 and FS24 because the issue appears on both simulators (I think I will keep FS20 for a very long time still ...).

In short, I just have to redo the animation completely, I don’t see any other solution. Finally it will be for tomorrow because there it is already 30°C and they announced more than 38°C this afternoon.
 
"Question: are you interested in the design details or am I too talkative ? If people are interested or if they are tempted to create addons, I would continue otherwise I would understand very well, no problem."

I also find it very exciting and am very interested in your explanations.
It's encouraging to get involved with Blender and developer tools, so please keep up the good work.
Thank you very much for your tireless commitment.
 
Agreed. I enjoy reading about the details of the design and development. It actually makes me appreciate flying the plane more (knowing a little of the effort and thinking behind it).

I hope you're doing something to beat the heat. It's supposed to be about 100F (almost 38C) here in Utah, USA today, too.
 
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Killbilly said:
Agreed. I enjoy reading about the details of the design and development. It actually makes me appreciate flying the plane more (knowing a little of the effort and thinking behind it).

I hope you're doing something to beat the heat. It's supposed to be about 100F (almost 38C) here in Utah, USA today, too.
Click to expand...
It's 38 celcius here too.

Cees
 
Okay, then.

I've uploaded "Joyride" into the library here at Sim Outhouse (pending approval). If you notice any major flaws, let me know.

I put some "INOP" stickers on the lights and avionics switches, and redid the compass deviation card and the two lower panel placards to make them a bit more readable. I put a label on the fuel barrel and a new label on the fire extinguisher in English (no offence intended, lagaffe, it just makes more sense for where I fly). Anyway, DennyA, I hope you get some enjoyment out of it, fictional though it is.




 
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A little comments: you forgot the Aeronca logo on the main part of the rudder of the amphibious model ;) but It's very nice, simple but beautiful. God idea the red belts :cool:

On Facebook there is a pilot of Aeronca who publish some videos of his plane: Scott Stebbins, if you want to try a repaint.

Compass solved:
For the annoying bug which disrupts the compass, I have change the animation and add a other texture on the graduations. The sphere is smaller than before but the graduations are more lower so I think more readable.
Tested under FS20 SU16 Beta and also FS24.
An anchor has been added to the amphibian variation which is coupled with the parking brake.

You can use always the same link to download the last version (I just upload the last revision) : the release notes include in the archive is the v0.885b.

1751479993547.png
 
lagaffe said:
A little comments: you forgot the Aeronca logo on the main part of the rudder of the amphibious model ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was too lazy to figure out the mapping on the floats rudder. I think I have it now, though. Maybe tomorrow I'll add it to C-FOUT and upload a new version to include it.

20250702143503_1.jpg20250702143535_1.jpg20250702150705_1.jpg

By the way, I can't figure out how to remove the pitot cover on the floats model. I can't find the click spot (it doesn't seem to be in the same place as on the wheeled version), so it just stays on during the flight. Any help?
 
For those who cannot find the link, I am giving it back to you, this is this one:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ipvb...0.885.7z?rlkey=2b5xtxxf7zu7m3fslsyisxi17&dl=0

For the pitot cover, nothing has changed.
When I create an aircraft with several variations, all the parts are in a only blender file but separated in various collection (folders inside the Blender file), so when I export a variation, all I have to do it's simply to select the desired collection and export.
By doing so, a certain number of objects and XML code is shared between all the variations, which allows me to save my time. In case of bugs, a single correction is enough for all the variations.

For elements that are clickable, I have two methods:
- either it is the element itself that serves as a zone to click or
- I add a specific cube around this element. In the case of the pitot, it is the element itself that serves as a zone for clicking.

1751526646326.png

Even by doing so, it sometimes happens that from the pilot’s seat we can see them appear through transparency. For example, sitting on the seat one must not be able to click on the mouse zone that causes the chocks or wheels pants to disappear.
The SDK has planned materials (orange plane and green cube above) to be able to occult these areas by assigning it to an invisible plane/cube that will serve as a mask, but this does not work in some cases.

So like most other developers, I set up additional conditions that allow these areas to be displayed only if we use a specific camera (XMLVAR which are defined in some cameras in camera.CFG).
From this part sitting in the seat, we do not note these areas which will only be visible if we are in a pre-flight camera as in the screenshot below.
While making this capture, I just noticed several problems:
- in the amphibious version there are views that should be removed (wheel pants and chocks)
- the oil tank cap does not appear

1751525692705.png
I just tried with the amphibian and ... it does not work indeed. I must have made a mistake when exporting this version yesterday afternoon.
I also just noticed that the metal protection of the tube probe which is supposed to be animated and get up according to the speed of the plane does not work: I will look at it this morning.

[EDIT] Thanks for your comment, I just find the solution.
As the amphibian don't have chocks and tiedowns, I have remove some unnecessary tests ... but the pitot cover code which was in the sequence of XML was also removed by error => Solved!
 
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Excellent. I can confirm no more pitot cover in flight. Thanks! This is truly remarkable work and much better than many payware planes in my hangar.

For those who downloaded C-FOUT, I have posted an update to v1.1 (again, pending approval) that adds the missing Aeronca logo to the rudder of the floats version.

20250703112039_1.jpg
 
I split everything from the public release notice and after to a new thread, currently up in the stickies section!
 
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