Conspicuous by Their Absence

[Ivan]

Hello All,

Here are a few screenshots of a Me 109E originally designed by Richard Osborne.
I found the AFX and made quite a few little modifications which hopefully improved the model.
I also reworked the pilot a bit. As you can tell, this isn't the same pilot I use on my own aircraft because the current pilot didn't exist at the time I was messing with this project. I think he looks a bit like Adolf Galland which was my original intent.

I used this project to test the SCASM processing of a virtual cockpit for which I received notes from Hubbabubba many years back. I thought it would look better than my own aircraft for the v-cockpit because it has an internally viewable canopy frame and my own aeroplanes didn't at the time.

I was wondering if anyone thinks this is worthy of a release. There really aren't too many good Emils out there.
It is at best only about 20-25% my work. Credits go to Mr. Osborne of course.

- Ivan.

 

[smilo]

a couple comments;

first, the Blohm & Voss BV 141B.
i can't help but wonder,
what the hell were they thinking?
i'll leave it at that.

now, for the 109e.
this would be a welcome addition.
personally, if it is up to par,
i would use it to replace the default 109e.

as you may recall, one of my many projects
is the replacement of the stock cfs aircraft
with improved visual models.
several months ago, i did some 109e searching.
as i recall, i had satisfactory results.
when i get the time, i'll fire up my cfs machine
and revisit the subject.

 

[Ivan]

Hi Smilo,

The BV-141 actually isn't as goofy an idea as it appears to be.

Hopefully this discussion isn't too long-winded.
Especially with Tractor propellers and a little less so with pushers, the spiral slipstream from a turning propeller has a very asymmetric effect on the airframe. The engine torque also produces an opposite effect to the spinning propeller. When the propeller axis is not aligned to the direction of travel as with a tail-dragger on take-off, we also have P-factor. There is also gyroscopic effect when the direction of the aircraft changes which is even less intuitive.

The bottom line is that a symmetric aircraft doesn't tend to fly in a symmetric manner.
This is why most aircraft have some kind of aerodynamic asymmetry built in.
The fin often has an angular offset as on a P-51.
The fin may have an asymmetric airfoil shape built in as on a Me 109.
The engine thrust line may be offset as on the Bloch radial engined fighters.
The wings may be of unequal lengths as on the Macchi fighters.

The BV-141 with a lateral offset (!) of the thrust line is intended to counteract the effect of a single high power engine. I doubt my model is completely accurate, but the offset thrust line appears to overcompensate for the normal pull to the left we expect at take-off. In the air, I haven't checked out the trim, but it doesn't handle all that badly either.

The view without a canopy frame is quite excellent and even with a canopy frame as on the real aeroplane, it should still be quite good and much better to starboard and down than just about any other aeroplane.

By the way, if you think THIS aeroplane looks messed up, check out Dr. Richard Vogt's asymmetric version of the BV 138 flying boat.
Now THAT aeroplane is definitely messed up.

Regarding the Me 109E, can you post a screenshot of what you have now? I am curious whether or not this Emil is any better.

- Ivan.

 

[smilo]

as it turns out, i have a few reworked Osborne afx 109e's.
two by a.f.scrub, one by corrado la posta of the IS4G group,
and one titled UBF 109E with no documentation.

the scrub and posta readme's say
they have been "modified for cfs"
or have "new scasm features".
to be brutally honest,
both have many bleeds and need more work.

the IS4G textures are by Akemi Mizogychi
"derived from a CFS2 model"
which, btw, i prefer.
i would like to know how that was accomplished.

ps,
i forgot to mention the IS4G 109E/Trop.
the readme says it is a Osborne "rework" by posta.

 

[papingo]

papingo here
I totally agree the default 109 sometimes seems to flutter in an odd way
wings look narrow , and the tail looks spindly (I dont like the stock props
either)
As to Ivans comment about tuning up others work --either looks or performance
perfectly valid if you acknowlege original maker --maybe your mods greatly
improve the plane.

 

[Ivan]

Hello Papingo,

Glad to see you back!

While some folks mod the heck out of others' work and re-release it. I have never done this before.
I have collected quite a few AFX files from many places and modified the heck out of some for my own use.
Most of the time, they are for aircraft that I would never build such as the Messerschmitt 109E. It was a great aircraft in its time, but there are many more I would prefer to build. I actually even have some good dimensional drawings for this aircraft if any of you care to try it yourself.

Although these other AFXs are others' work, I believe I know enough to make significant improvements and have been doing this for years. In some cases, what I have is better (IMO) than what is publicly available and I have been debating on making them available so others can use them also. I just don't know what is a reasonable way to release one of these without offending the author while still claiming my own additions to a project.

Here is a thought I had when I was looking around for aircraft schematics:

This is an interesting hobby. We create things out of nothing. There are no resource limitations other than time and the will to build something. We don't need aluminum or steel, workshop or hangar space, or anything else other than a running computer and enough time to spend on the computer. For the most part, we don't represent the internals, so there is no real engineering involved. A huge aeroplane costs no more than a little tiny one.

- Ivan.

 

[smilo]

i maybe wrong, but, it seems to me
that if an author releases an afx,
he is, basically, giving said afx for modification
by anyone who wants to spend the time
and energy to make "improvements" they deem fit.
as papingo said, just give credit to the original author.

over the years, i have downloaded numerous aircraft
that are scasmed or reworked from another creator.
i could go so far as to say, there are a few out there
who made a habit of reworking others originals.
i have no problem with that, although, sometimes,
it seems that the reworkmanship is marginal at best.

getting the visual sequencing of parts is no easy task,
as can be seen from, nearly, every cfs aircraft.
building the parts is one thing,
putting them together without bleeds is quite another.
there are only a few builders who have the patience
and skill to pull off a high quality build.
i wish i had the patience and those skills.
fortunately, Ivan is still at it for us.

in lieu of an email expressing my appreciation
for the copy of your reworked Osborne afx 109e,
that you sent this morning,
i'll say, it's the best of the lot...little or no bleeds.
i'll also say, ship it.

 

[Ivan]

Thanks Smilo, I also emailed this to Papingo early this afternoon.

Lemme know if there is anything you want changed. I can change just about anything as long as it doesn't take too much effort.

The 109E is hardly what I would have done with the aircraft, but I believe it was done before AF99.
I did some SCASMing to move the V-cockpit viewpoint and also to put the cockpit aft wall in place to hide the tail.
The cockpit frame is kinda ugly looking because it isn't textured but at least it shows from the inside.
The scaling of the texture files is all kinds of inconsistent which is why I got fancy with some screens on the sand filter.
I would never paint a single air filter with an entire texture file which is why I can never do this with one of my own models.

I don't like the AIR file too much. I had no idea it was hopping around and shivering. I can hopefully fix that.

Last things I did last night were to change the collision bubble from a 5 to a 2 and alter the firing rate of the cowl guns.

I still need to write a "ReadMe" file and edit the AIR file a touch for descriptions along wih the shivering.

Hopefully it will be done soon.
- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Bouncing and Shivering

The wobbly bouncing and shivering turned out to be fairly easy to fix.
I entered the numbers into my spreadsheets for landing gear parameter calculations and the new numbers were not very different. I changed them anyway. The bounce seemed to get a lot worse.
When I entered the dimensions of the aircraft and its weight into the spreadsheet to calculate moments of inertia, I found that the MOI for Pitch from the spreadsheet was much higher than in the AIR file. I entered those and the bounce was gone.

Because I had changed the spring rates with the landing gear parameters, the tail wheel was now about 2 inches off the ground. That was obviously a simple fix. In theory, I should enter the new contact points into the spreadsheet to recalculate, but the reality is that these numbers aren't all that precise and the change is likely to be negligible.

The new 109E AIR file is very well behaved as far as bouncing and wiggling. When dropped from several feet up, it bounces once and settles down. I wonder if the real aircraft was so well behaved?

Just for amusement's sake, I reduced the spring damping down to about 1/10 of the numbers from the spreadsheet and called my son over to watch.
Once the aircraft loaded, I paused it and went immediately to an exterior view. Then as soon as I unpaused, the aeroplane started to wiggle and then bounce. The bouncing became more serious until the aircaft finally exploded. We repeated this a few times just for grins.

So far, these two spreadsheets I wrote seem to do pretty much what was intended..... Except in the case of the FW 190A, they don't seem to work well at all. Obviously they still have issues but work well enough in the general case.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

After that little bouncing episode, I realised that I had never actually explored the relationship between the spring rates and the damping factors. I had just arrived through very quick experimentation that a value of between 0.10 X and 0.20 X Spring rate worked pretty well for a combination that settled down very quickly and didn't behave badly. In fact, 0.20 X is about ideal if you were actually building an ideal flight sim aircraft instead of trying to simulate the behaviour of an actual aeroplane.

Real aeroplanes often have objectionable behaviour such as a bit too much bounce in the landing gear or a springs that compress so easily that engine torque might cause a ground loop if the wheel track were narrow. Also, on occasion we might want to simulate something other than an aeroplane (!) and want to be able to set up specific effects.

As I mentioned in the last post, my spreadsheet calculates the spring rates based on the load on each wheel. It then gives 0.10 X the recommended spring rate as a low limit for damping and 0.20 X spring rate for a high limit. I already knew that 0.020 (1/10th the recommened value) would cause a quickly divergent bounce and the aeroplane would self destruct. I also know that a value much above 0.20 would cause the aircraft to shiver nervously on the runway. I don't quite remember what the high value is, but for practical purposes, there is no reason to go higher than 0.20.

Here are the results of a few quick checks:
0.0200 - Horribly unstable. Explodes in seconds.
0.0500 - Unstable. Bounces quickly amplify and aircraft explodes in a few seconds.
0.0600 - Neutral. If not bouncing, aircraft will not start. Small oscillations go away. Large bounces multiply until explodes.
0.0625 - Stable. A bounce will dampen but very slowly.
0.0750 - Stable. Many bounces.
0.1000 - Stable. A few bounces.
0.2000 - Stable. One bounce.

This was not an exhaustive test, but is sufficient for me to enter into my notebook.
As usual, YMMV, so use this at your own 'Risk'.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Here is a little issue I ran into a little while back starting with the P-40 Warhawk.
I had photographs which showed the aircraft with personnel around it.
I wanted to use these photographs to determine the wartime aircraft height and ground angle, but had no easy way of doing it.
With the BV 141, I have a few photographs of the boarding ladder, but no dimensions for it.
Some of these photographs show personnel near the ladder.

Here is an attempt to generate a little template to compare.
The AF99 part is named "Human.afp" and represents a 6 ft man.
The top half was gotten as reference from my ubiquitous pilot figure.

I think it looks cool.
- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Hello Papingo,

I got your suggestions regarding the Me 109E.
I am trying to figure out how much I actually want to do on an aeroplane I don't own.
Re doing textures is definitely out. I hate doing textures which is why so many of my own projects get stuck in the paint shop.
The scaling of the textures on this project are all over the place for size which makes matching things very difficult.
I might texture the Spinner because it looks like this bird could use it and maybe do the canopy frame also which should not be difficult.

Thanks for the suggestions. Let me know if there was something more that I didn't understand.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Hello All,

I took a look over the AIR file for this beast. It's original release date was January 2003.
The Landing Gear animation didn't work back then either.

Attached is a specifications sheet I found in the aircraft manual which confirms the numbers in the AIR file.

For the Aufklarer (recon) mission, equpment weight is 80 kg for a total weight of 11,299 lbs (4780 kg equipped + 300 kg crew + 45 kg oil) without fuel and ammunition.
If I follow my standard practice of only including 1/2 of the 45 kg oil weight, the AIR file weight should be 11,249 lbs.

I am fairly certain this was not my data source because if it were, I may have noticed that the weight of machine gun ammunition is slightly less to around 1 ounce per round. It seems to vary depending on the gun even though all the machine guns on the aeroplane take the same ammunition. The stock aircraft use 0.4 ounce and I am now using 1.22 ounce.

Each of the fuel tank volumes for my AIR file are also about 1 Liter lower than this table shows.

Whatever the other data source was, it appears to be quite accurate. The only AIR file changes thus far are for Propeller animation.

- Ivan.

 

[smilo]

Hello Papingo,

I got your suggestions regarding the Me 109E.
I am trying to figure out how much I actually want to do on an aeroplane I don't own.
Re doing textures is definitely out. I hate doing textures which is why so many of my own projects get stuck in the paint shop.
The scaling of the textures on this project are all over the place for size which makes matching things very difficult.
I might texture the Spinner because it looks like this bird could use it and maybe do the canopy frame also which should not be difficult.

Thanks for the suggestions. Let me know if there was something more that I didn't understand.

- Ivan.

unfortunately, imo, other than the bleeds,
the texturing is the main problem with this model.
do you have any suggestions as to where one might go
to get information how to solve the problem?

a comprehensive tutorial would be nice.

as i see it, this could come in handy
when working with many afx projects.

 

[Ivan]

Hello Smilo,

As for information, I believe I know enough to lay out textures in a more reasonable fashion on this model.
The issue is that I don't want to spend the time to repaint the aeroplane afterwards.
For me, building the 3D model is easy and quite enjoyable.
Laying out the textures on the model also isn't that difficult.
Painting the model, especially with an irregular camouflage scheme is VERY difficult.

For others, this last part may not be so bad, but although I know how to do it, my method is very time consuming and not a lot of fun.

This explains why I have:
Albatros D.Va
Junkers Ju 87B Stuka
Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless

all awaiting texture files to be applied to the 3D model.

I also have the following:
Macchi C.202 Folgore
Macchi C.205 Veltro
Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IXc
Kawasaki Ki-61-Id Hien
Curtiss-Wright CW-21B Demon
North American B-25C Mitchell

waiting in the paint shop for camouflage.

As for a tutorial, I can probably pick one of the untextured models to demonstrate my ideas on how best to lay out texture files.
The paint jobs should be done by a better artist than me.

- Ivan.

 

[smilo]

a most impressive list of unfinished projects.

Dave is probably wetting himself in anticipation.

i, for one, would welcome said tutorial.
being the self serving *** that i am,
i would suggest the 109e, SBD-3, or B-25C as subjects.
although, the Albatros would be very interesting.

 

[papingo]

what does(imo) mean?

papingo here
this textures bottle neck bit --is it positioning the
textures or the artistic bit?
If it's the artistic bit-well we can't all be leo decopro
by the way there are no eyebrows on his moanin lisa!
is it a question of drawing diagonals without the
staircase effect--may have a 'cunning plan' for
that --define the problem---willie

 

[smilo]

hello willie,
imo = in my opinion
then there's, imho = in my humble opinion
*** = i think everyone knows that one

i maybe mistaken, but, i believe we are talking about
texture mapping of the model.
i'll leave the explanation and solution to Ivan.
i could easily confuse the issue.

i would be interested in hearing about
your "staircase effect cunning plan"

 

[Ivan]

Hello All,

Been bizzy in my house lately. First one thing breaks then another, then we each (except for Anna Honey) take turns getting sick.
Smilo, Check your email.

As for texturing aeroplanes, I find laying out textures in a reasonable fashion to be a fairly easy process.
This is a subject I can easily do a tutorial on. Perhaps with a SBD Dauntless, Perhaps with the Stuka, or even the Albatros.

Doing the panel lines is generally VERY time consuming and I find that to be quite tedious but isn't the worst part.
Picking a decent camo pattern and actually applying it under the Panel Lines is the part I hate the most, especially if it is not a simple camouflage pattern.

The three colour scheme (Gray, Brown, Green) for the AVG Hawk 81 was a serious pain for me.
The Macchi fighters tend to have a small mottle or smoke ring pattern which is even more difficult at least for me.
The irregular splotch pattern on most Ki-61 fighters is also difficult for me.

It isn't that I don't know how to do it. It is more like I hate getting into tasks where I see no results for several days.
My process here is to use multiple layers with different opacity and then taking the result and moving it back to a FS5 palette if possible.
That is now the AVG Hawk 81 was done. Creating the layers is just plain tedious work for me and after having done it once, I dread doing it again.

As for the step effect (anti-aliasing), I have a method that seems to work, but it is still a pain to do:
First, expand the basic stepped camouflage pattern to about twice its original width and height. Sometimes you might want to go even larger.
Pain the demarcation line and ignore the step.
Change the BMP to a 24 bit per pixel (8R, 8G, 8B) bmp.
Use GIMP to reduce the image size back down but use "Linear" interpolation. This produces the "Half Colours" which hide the steps.
Use ConvR8 utility to bring it back into the FS5 Palette,
If you don't care about the FS5 Palette, there are other tools to convert from 24 bits per pixel back down to a 256 colour palette.
It has worked pretty well in the bast though I have never released anything with this kind of paint.

After you have the basic paint, you can overlay it with the Panel Lines BMP at low opacity just to darken the paint on the lines.
I don't know how to do this if the panel lines are not all the same colour which is why I don't even try to anti-alias panel lines.

Next, overlay with the "Objects" layer at 100% opacity where the objects (Wheel Wells, Control Surface Lines, etc) are locate.

one of the problems with my method of building is that often the areas on the aircraft where there are emblems have a very low pixel count.
Doing a squadron or unit emblem in 50 x 50 pixels isn't easy. Thats one of the resons my Disney Tiger looks so poor.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Here are the three projects that need their original textures applied.
As you can see, I already started on the Top Wing of the Albatros with Rib Tape.
The crew of the Dauntless has also been textured but that is about it.

- Ivan.