Aeroplane Heaven Lancaster available!

bazzar said:
" yes that glossy part on the static tires...why?."

The "gloss" on the tyres is oil. It is only on the top surface of the tyres. It came from the engines when the aircraft were parked. If you look closely, you will see that we remove the oil stain as soon as the Lanc moves off and they become matt. We have spent time coding this to replicate what happened in real life as part of ground crew duties was to wipe off the oil before a mission. There was usually little time to use tyre covers as they do today. It is just part of our "diorama" extras.
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It's possible too get too dark of grey in the green channel, it happens. Sometimes, ambient occlusion does funny things to your rendered complete textures too. So, no problem. It really was a personal choice to make that spot a lighter grey. Thanks for explaining the history of that Baz. I just love when a model is released we talk about the aircraft, there is always new history to learn. We all love the historic details. Regarding what the oil stain would look like, I don't really know, but I can say from personal experience, the Lancaster tires I've seen up close were spotless. The big question for me is, why is it spelled tyre and not tire?
 
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Fnerg said:
It's possible too get too dark of grey in the green channel, it happens. Sometimes, ambient occlusion does funny things to your rendered complete textures too. So, no problem. It really was a personal choice to make that spot a lighter grey. Thanks for explaining the history of that Baz. I just love when a model is released we talk about the aircraft, there is always new history to learn. We all love the historic details. Regarding what the oil stain would look like, I don't really know, but I can say from personal experience, the Lancaster tires I've seen up close were spotless. The big question for me is, why is it spelled tyre and not tire?
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We used a difference filter on the oil patch to give it that multi-coloured oily look. You will have seen Lancs as they are today - block tread tyres and more than likely, modern oil-seals in the engines. My M.G. drips oil on the floor. Yes there is a modern seal replacement but I like the original British classic oil-drip! I spell Tyre because I am British - like the Lancaster. We say colour not color, aeroplane not airplane and much more.

BTW when we worked on the Boeing Stratoliner, we learned that buckets on strings were hung underneath the engines to catch drips when parked up. I think the practice was also used on the DC-3.
 
Thanks Baz, I figured it was that simple. We're still somewhat under British influence over here, we say colour too! Usually the computer thinks it's a misspelling, and tries to correct us!
 
Reading "both feet in the air" an autobiography of a WW2 and post-war airline pilot who flew Avro Yorks (basically a very fat Lancaster) across the South Atlantic, there is a section on flying into Rio De Janiero - "Our aircraft were equipped with the old RAF 'twitcher' twin needles for homing on a beacon and great care had to be taken to check whether one in fact had not already flown past it".
To fly an instrument descent into Rio they had to fly a much wider box than the more modern aircraft with RMI that could fly a tighter race-track circuit, and were thus unpopular with the authorities who tried to ban them...
I've tried this with the Lanc, which allows easy switching between the RMI and the twitcher gauge - RMI is easy but twitcher impossible... I think this is because the Lancaster twitcher only works on a forward arc of 90 degrees and, as suggested in the initial quote above in real-life it worked in reverse too, i.e. the needles would touch pointing forwards when the aircraft was heading directly away from the beacon, and deflect appropriately.

To get to the point (finally) any chance we could get the twitcher code modified to work when the beacon is behind too :)
 
bazzar said:
" yes that glossy part on the static tires...why?."

The "gloss" on the tyres is oil. It is only on the top surface of the tyres. It came from the engines when the aircraft were parked. If you look closely, you will see that we remove the oil stain as soon as the Lanc moves off and they become matt. We have spent time coding this to replicate what happened in real life as part of ground crew duties was to wipe off the oil before a mission. There was usually little time to use tyre covers as they do today. It is just part of our "diorama" extras.
Click to expand...
I never would have noticed this. Congratulations on the attention to detail.
 
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