Arado-234 freeware?

BorekS said:
ok guys, the pilot is replaced.

full screen link for those who are lazy to rip it from the image urls above: the image #1, image #2 and the image #3
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hi Borek, further to Led Zeppelin's question, is there any way you can provide the pilot model separately so we can add it to the list of characters for CFS3? Then we could spawn a series of new characters.

D
 
hi Daiwilletti,
this is a pretty interesting question and I am sure someone tried it already, I never installed WOFF, BOB, MAW or such big CFS3 game overhauls, maybe there is it solved.

the stock pilots are loaded from a CFS3 "library", if the airplane gmax project contents a Pilot node (which is basically axis point where he should be placed). but our own airplane pilot character means it is simply another 3d object hardcoded into the external airplane model interior, it is unmountable.

by my guess it could be theroethically possible to globally replace or to add new character m3d file (see the "Combat Flight Simulator 3\characters\" content and/or to edit the related xml files (unlimitedpilots.xml, country.xml). they seems are the in-airplane sitting static figures.

I dont know from where are loading the ingame motion catpure rigged (animated) characters, but such ones we really cant do I suppose.
 
it could be theroethically possible to globally replace or to add new character m3d file
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lol, quoting myself... ok, a quick test says it would work.

stock CFS3 airplanes mounted with a german pilot Preussen, replaced character m3d file:



 
Great! So it can be done. Did you make that character yourself? I think it's less important to have the moving guy that's there when one starts , than to have good characters in the aircraft; pilot, navigator and gunners.
 
mongoose said:
Great! So it can be done. Did you make that character yourself? I think it's less important to have the moving guy that's there when one starts , than to have good characters in the aircraft; pilot, navigator and gunners.
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yes, it can be done, but you lost all the ingame motion capture animation, eg. the bail outs.
also needs to note you can "plant" the airplane with one single character type only. when used the gmax nodes, the pilot, navigator and gunner would be same object m3d source.

the new Ar 234 pilot character is a scratch made model, where Ive used the head I did for the CF3 Me 163B Komet add-on and this time Ive used a very low poly body parts which are our old CVA Design resources origin (we founded it with a few friends by past, home page here). the reason is it is MSFS/gmax animation logic ready, if needed. if I good remember you could see such similar pilot body fully animated in FS airplanes made by a friend of mine, Milan Lisner aka MLK.
 
1. FS airplanes made by a friend of mine, Milan Lisner aka MLK not linking.

2. I've always thought than when one in the normal VC pilot and gunners' views, it would be nice to see a pair of arms actually on the controls as if they were one's own hands; also for any gun. I always think it odd to see an entirely empty pit. One could effectively have a body with feet on the pedals. Would that also be part of the aircraft gmax?
 
the stock CFS3 pilot characters mountable into the aircraft interiors are static objects, but if you place the pilot node to be visible in VC, you will see it there too.

anyway to see pilot body in MS FS virtual cockpits is not so unusual, yet such body parts can be relativelly easy animated with gmax joystick and pedal tags. but very often the result looks bad, if the creator lacks some body part modeling experience. I dont mean it needs to create every finger on the hand, but it needs to keep decent body proportions to do not look it all ridiculous.

btw, Ive personally played with such feature at my own game programming "stone age", just check a few videos on YT here from a project called Komet Fighter, 9 videos. but the presented pilot animations there are not achiavable in CFS3. it is a different kind of animations, not MS FS series supported.
 
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That is really some amazing work, Borek...
I know I am dreaming when I imagine pilot's head looking down/over with landing gear down (?)
Beautiful VC !! I look forward to seeing if I can get this AR-234 up in the air and then back down in one piece! :jump:
 
Glad you like it, thank you ;)

You are right, the pilot head is tagged as some airplane moving parts, which causes the effect noticable on the attached screenshots.
 
just letting know the project is now finished in base and under issue fixing.

what I am not sure if to implement the rocket booster (RATO) payload items into the final public release pack. they are just eyecandy items with fuel tank properities.
 
yeah, thank you :)

mee to - Ive finally installed the CFS3 on Win7 and even on Win8.1. a stock CFS3 with Ankors (january 2018 release). except the common configoverride edits / checks (no intro, higher tex resolution rendering, dual shadow and dualpass fixes) which I know from running CFS3+Ankors on WinXP, Ive enabled the specularity feature as gecko describes at his PDF tutorial, means a few edits at shaders.xml file. that was all I did. results below.

note: I did NOT needed any specular texture changes for the Win7 Arado add-on comparing to my WinXP sources. I mean no image darkening. the Bravo/4s original specular textures for his skins caused too matt body results ingame on my WinXP, so I did +90% brightness and +65% contrast fix. now, for the Win7 I was awaiting I will need to use the Bravo/4s dark ones, but no, not all.











 
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BorekS said:
Bravo/4s original specular textures for his skins caused too matt body results ingame on my WinXP, so I did +90% brightness and +65% contrast fix. now, for the Win7 I was awaiting I will need to use the Bravo/4s dark ones, but no, not all.
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One "problem" of the shaders is that they can be configured differently for everyone. There are these two entries about halfway down the file:

; Tweaks strength of environment reflection. 0 - off. 1 minimum, 9 maximum.
EnvReflection=5

; Tweak sharpness of sun and environment reflections. 1 dullest, 9 sharpest.
Glossiness=3

I believe they're 5 and 1 right out of the box. However, as you can see I use 5 and 3 because I found it to be the closest to the native Windows XP look which in turn is what CFS3 was originally made to look like. Having glossiness at 1 gives a very dull finish as you've already found out. Now if you set it to 3 and take a new look at the brightened texture you'll see why it's a bit of a problem that people use different values.
 
thank you for letting me know ;) ok, Ive found such settings at the d3d8.ini.

having not touched this file, so assuming my values are the default ones and they are as you mentioned:

; Tweaks strength of environment reflection. 0 - off. 1 minimum, 9 maximum.
EnvReflection=5

; Tweak sharpness of sun and environment reflections. 1 dullest, 9 sharpest.
Glossiness=1

as Ive already said a few times, I would ban all some such user made tweaks. then the airplane add-on development would be a lot easier ;)
 
greycap.raf said:
Now if you set it to 3 and take a new look at the brightened texture you'll see why it's a bit of a problem that people use different values.
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I did the test to set the Glossiness to value 3 and voiala, ugly results.
well, I hope you all understand anything off the default config can easy cause unwelcomed results and is just the users fault.
 
That brings another question, what is default? As far as I know, when AnKor made the shaders, he intended 5/5 as default values. Then when MajorMagee put them together he tweaked quite a few things in them to his liking before uploading the set and that's why we have the 5/1 values. Then there's the good old XP which is a lot shinier then 5/1 but less than 5/5, and that's why I use 5/3 as it's the closest replication of that and the majority of skins available were made with XP in mind.

There's three defaults, none of which are actually wrong. In a perfect world AnKor would have made the shaders so that the default values would exactly replicate those in XP (but I understand fully well why he didn't), MajorMagee wouldn't have touched anything in them and uploaded them exactly as is, and nothing would be user configurable... but we got what we got. The positive side is that anyone who can tweak the shaders is capable of adapting most anything to their needs so you can disregard them - they'll find a way anyway.
 
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