Areoplane Heaven's FS2004/CFS3 P-47D

The deeper I go the more little things I find. In working on the flaps I discovered that they only extend to two positions, and not the four listed in the aircraft.cfg and air files. Evidently the model animation was never completed to support all of the intermediate extension angles.
 
I've just gotten through all the seams, lines, and rivets for the moving surfaces. This is taking a lot of hours to get things lined up precisely.

I was originally making the layers as they would eventually be used to make the final print (transparency levels, blending methods, etc.), but that kept leading to issues as I copied and merged various reusable parts. I had to go back this morning to building everything at 100% nominal, and once everything is finished, I'll set the layer properties to get the final effect.

For those who might want to do other skins using the paint kit, should I have everything set back to nominal, with notes about the various final layer settings I used, or just leave them set as for making the final print?
 
MajorMagee said:
... For those who might want to do other skins using the paint kit, should I have everything set back to nominal, with notes about the various final layer settings I used, or just leave them set as for making the final print?
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My vote would be "Let the skinner decide for him/herself". Depending on the paint job they want to depict it might be necessary to change your values anyway. A note on what your choices are, would perhaps be helpful as a starting point. Good job with this! :encouragement:
 
The silver lining of having to work on five 2048 x 2048 files is that the small aircraft utility text that is unreadable on most of our aircraft textures can actually be properly depicted.

E4q93AN.jpg
 
Ah, riveting and stencilling - we do like :biggrin-new:.

(Actually, no - painting is much more fun. Good thing is you have to do this only once. BTW, since there is a razorback with a Malcolm hood, any chance of doing 'Tony' or another bird from the 5th ERS? I got a droppable dinghy model somewhere...)

PS. you got a PM.
 
I'm starting with redoing Silver Lady as an example for the paint kit, but creating other renditions should be pretty straightforward once that's finished.
 
Slow and steady progress. Every time you think you've got an area ready to move into the finishing steps like weathering, you see the next thing about the base layers that needs a go-back to improve. Clearly I'm not going to achieve anything like what our texturing legends have produced for CFS3 over the years, but it should end up somewhat better than what we started with. My design intent for the paint kit is to at least let the texturing pros see where everything maps out to on the model, and they can take it from there.

Today I was discovering what might be accomplished through the normal map file. This has the potential to really add the appearance of a lot of details in the model that are not really there.

QTXpHjf.jpg
 
Three out of five of the basic textures are done. Once the two wing textures get caught up to the others, I can take a look at applying some localized tarnish, soot, and grime.

grsV0AL.jpg


She's come a long way from back where we started.
1JkNkmv.jpg


p.s. The full length Invasion Stripes and Kill Markings are from D-Day when this A/C still had the traditional canopy frame. I believe that by the time the Malcom Hood mod was made the upper part of the stripes had been removed, along with the Kill Markings. These are on different layers in the paint kit so you'll have all the different texturing options to choose from.
 
OMG MM,
That's just stunning, to think that's on a sim model and in CFS3 is amazing! I like the before and after pics, really shows your hard work.

All this talk of P47's got me thinking about Lanny Lanowski and the 56th FG. I used to live in Colchester, Essex, which is where Boxted (Langham) airfield and the 56th FG were based. Back in 1992 with the 50th anniversary of the USAF coming over to the UK, there were a lot of celebrations throughout East Anglia (the general name for the counties in the East). Like most of us here at SOH I have always been a huge WWII aviation fanatic. I found out that the 56th FG were having a mjor get together in Colchester and managed to get an invite to their first gathering(!). I had always been interested in the 56th, so well read etc. Saw, but didn't meet, Gabby Gabreski, Fred Christiansen and Walker 'Bud' Mahurin. I met and made good friends with Dick Warboys, who was a pilot in the 63rd Sqn, and his wife Carol. We stayed good friends with them and met up whenever they came over for quite a few years after.

And Lanny Lanowski. I used to work from an old USAF airfield also in Essex, and through a colleagues contacts, I got in touch with Lanny, who also lived in Essex. I invited him and his son Krys to visit the airfield, this would have been sometime in 1990-93. Good to meet him, and have a copy of a painting that he had commisoned of his P47 M HV-Z. At the time I didn't know about the 'Silver Lady', and he didn't mention it, so this CFS3 project is very interesting.

He had talked then about a book, but I only bought his book 'Out in Front' recently, and have just finished reading it (he talks about 'Silver Lady' in it). A good insight into his history, but as with talking to him in the 90's, he was still quite bitter both towards the Polish Airforce, for not supporting him; and the USAF who owed him a lot of pay. Having read it I see why he felt like that. The other thing from the book was that I discovered he was born in Lviv, which at that time was Polish, but has been thrust into the headlines recently as it's now part of the western Ukraine.

Cheers

Shessi
 
Coming right along Andy. Looking great ! Maybe some time someone will have the rest of the AH P-47 series and come forth. Nice to have what we have though. Added some AvH 1% Flight model files to it and handles more accurately now. Thanks for the work. Regards,Scott
 
Lots of progress on the wing panel lines, fasteners, and rivets this weekend. The more research I do the more features I discover that need to be added. The latest new additions to the textures were the landing light lens, gun camera window and cockpit air intake. I'm using the reflectivity file to simulate the glass effects, and gradient shading along with recessing the normal map to give the impression of an opening that's not really there.
 
Cuttles said:
Wow, the detail! Very nice:)
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Sometimes achieving that level of detail was beyond annoying. I spent three hours this morning chasing down the texture location behind a pair of valves on the top of the engine. Every time I thought I had zeroed in on the right spot, they would display as some color other that what I had painted. After finally deciphering the logic behind the color shifts, I came to the conclusion that it was accessing more than one location, and blending them together to present the final result. It turns out that the four single pixels in the extreme corners of the 2048 x 2048 texture needed to all be the same color to get those two valves to display the same as all the other valves that were textured directly from the engine part of the image. :banghead:
 
With tonight's addition of a couple of cockpit texture items, and finding the right paint location for the longitudinal stabilizer keel the paint kit is now fully compatible with both the Malcom Hood and Bubble Top versions of the AH P-47.

Unfortunately the Machine Guns, Waste Gates, and Landing Gear Torque Links all share the same hard coded color in the m3d. Each really should be their own color and brightness, but alas I've had to pick one and let the others be what they'll be. In this case I've optimized for the Waste Gate, consigning the Guns to be in their darker variation instead of the more common bright finish, and the strangely unfinished looking Torque Links are hidden in the wheel well most of the time.
 
Hopefully there will be some nice standalones to come about from all the work put in. Will be interesting to see ! Regards,Scott
 
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