Conspicuous by Their Absence

Hi all, hi Ivan,

After trying again despite the dimensional confusions, I have resumed the conversion of the L-188 Electra I had upgraded from FS5 to FS98 in 2005, into a CFS1 P3-Orion.

Thanks in advance, Ivan, for your help in the CoG shift! It will be vital for clear building.

There is one interesting thing I discovered about Wing-Nose templates:
The inner spinner/prop was bleeding through the outer engine-nacelle when viewed from slightly aft, so I made a Nose-Wing template as per AF99 Instruction Manual: A long triangle starting at the fuselage and the point ending near the wing-tip, intersecting the nacelles just behind props and spinners.

Well... it didn´t work: The inner prop/spinner bled throught the outer nacelle when viewed from slightly forwards, although the aft bleedthrough did disappear. So, I tried a different sized, shorter triangle (see attached screenshot), just covering the nacelle area. And.... it works!!!

I thought this was cool!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 

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Bleeds

Do the Propellers and Spinners now bleed through the opposite side of the Fuselage?
That is what I would expect to happen with the templates the way they are now.

I will download your AFX tonight and see how well the shift works.
Keep in mind I will likely shift the CoG to around 1/4 of the Wing Chord because this has a nose gear and CoG must be between the Nose and Main Wheels.

- Ivan.
 
Hi Ivan,

There´s only one small short bleed: the outer spinner through the inner engine-nacelle front seen from the opposite side underneath, but it´s hardly noticeable.

Luckily there´s no bleedthrough through the fuselage from the opposite side, neither seen from above nor below, slightly forward or backwards. I´d have to understand a little more about the templates to visualize exactly what they do...

Your suggested CoG shift to the position you say sounds perfect, thanks very much!

Meanwhile I have been planning and found ways to reduce the 5 fuselage textures so as to have some for the pilots, and also ways to free another two components, to have 4 of these for the transparent cockpit. This way the model will gain a lot if everything works.
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp.
 
Ambitious

Hello Aleatorylamp,

I believe you are getting way too ambitious with trying to build a Transparent Cockpit and PILOTS on a 4 engine bomber within the limitations of AF99.

- Ivan.
 
CoG Shift

Hello Aleatorylamp,

I just had a look at the P3-Orion Project.
Per our discussions via email, I understand that you want the CoG shifted 12.00 feet Forward and 0.50 feet Up.

I recommend that the numbers be changed a bit.
12.00 feet forward puts the CoG entirely ahead of the Wing.
Considering that the Wing is the primary lifting surface, I believe the CoG should be very near the Center of Lift.
Ideally, I like the CoG slightly behind the Center of Lift so that the Tail Plane is supplying a slight amount of lift.
Usually on actual aeroplanes, the CoG is slightly AHEAD of the CoL for better stability.

In this case, the CoG needs to be ahead of the Main Gear and SHOULD be somewhere on the Mean Aerodynamic Chord.
That doesn't leave a lot of room for choices.

I recommend moving the CoG about 9.5 feet forward.

This would still have very little weight on the Nose Gear and hopefully the Fuel Tanks are not behind the CoG or it may sit on its Tail when fueled.
You might want to look at where the fuel tanks are mounted. (I am guessing most likely it is in the Wings.)
They should be near the CoG if the Designers were doing their work properly.

A for a vertical shift, Where the CoG is now actually looks to be a touch high, not low.
Keep in mind that although we can see the shape of the Fuselage and guess where its center of form is, we don't know where all the heavy equipment is located.
Most of the aircraft structure is pretty light with the exception of Landing Gear, Engines, and perhaps Electronics.
I am guessing most of the significant electronics will be under the Floor of the Fuselage in what would normally be the Cargo Bay.

I will set up the shift as I described and if you want something different, changing the scripts will be pretty easy.

- Ivan.
 
Changes

Hi Ivan,

How diplomatic of you! You are very kind.
CoG: Yes, you are (of course) absolutely right. Thank you very much indeed.
I was silly enough not to check that the previous CoG correction by the original author had placed the point ahead of the leading edge, but the engine nacelle lines disguised the lines and I stupidly never noticed.

So, 9.5 ft forward will be perfect indeed! If you would like to lower it too, it will be fine, as there was a bomb bay with a capacity for 20000 lb load - bombs, depth charges, whatever, the doors being in the belly just forward of the leading edge. And: Yes, fuel was only in the wings - slightly over 10,000 USG (62,500 lb).

As regards transparent cockpit and the pilots: Oh dear! I was getting really over-ambitious! I´ve just added up the free parts left, and the shapes of all I want to add would have to be far too rudimentary, so I may leave it at the shaded cockpit windows.

Update:
Things are not easy: As regards under-wing torpedoes or missiles, there would be parts left for two on each side, with hardpoints, but bleedthrough with the outer wing is proving to be a tremendous problem.
It appears that the best and cleanest building solution here is a conservative one - i.e. to leave the plane more or less as it is now, just more finely adjusting the textured cabin windows.
As you feared, anything else seems to complicate matters considerably, but I´ll see where to use the parts that I still have left over to further improve shapes here and there.


Cheers,
Aleatorylamp.
 
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Diplomatic? Hmmmm.... One of the few times someone has said that of me.

As for refining shapes, you might want to take a look at the Nose / Cockpit area.
I didn't observe if the Nose was a Structure but suspect it probably is.
If so, you might want to change it to a Component.
At the moment, the contours of the Nose look very much like those of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules rather than a P-3 Orion.
If it is a Structure, you really can't improve its shape as you could with a Component.

- Ivan.
 
Nose shape

Hello Ivan,
Yes, in fact the whole fuselage is a set of structures - at least this avoids the hairline cracks when joining a structure to a component - but I see what you mean about the C130 nose.
Being a structure, the circular cross-section joint or bulkhead at the windshield creates a funny effect that can only be eliminated using components there.
A good suggestion, thanks! As there are quite a lot of parts left over, I´ll try for that then.
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
If you have ONE Component left over, use it for the Nose and then either close off the Nose Component's back with a bulkhead or have a Forward Bulkhead / Wall on the following Structure.... Or Both. You may still have a slight mismatch but it won't be noticeable.

I am guessing you probably don't have enough Components to do the entire Fuselage.

This is a good illustration of the design choices we each make. I would rather get the better shape at the cost of less detail and favour the areas of the aeroplane that are most noticeable to me. I also spend a ridiculous amount of time refining shapes as can be seen on the Warhawk Project.

I am still convinced that there are not enough resources in Aircraft Factory 99 for me to build a 4 engine bomber using the methods I currently use. That was shown pretty well by the Mitchell and Lightning....

- Ivan.
 
enough parts, enough components

Hi Ivan,

Thank you for your consideration and counsel! I definitely agree with you that shapes are more important that other secondary details. Actually, I think shapes are vital and make all the difference. It will be quite tedious, but it will definitely be worthwhile and probably possible.

As it is, at the moment there are only 3 components free, but as the wheels are all in components, I could free 4 from the main wheels, reverting these into structures again, and then I´d have 7 free in total to make the whole fuselage out of components, including MAD boom.

I think there will just be enough parts left for this, as 4 wheels mean 48 parts more than before, although the fuselage components will save a couple.

At the moment parts count is 1066, with 134 free.


For a start, I´ll do 2 components which comprising nose and cabin sections only, and cover the last bulkheadlike you suggested, and see how it goes just out of curiosity, and then I´ll do the restly 3 (2 for fuselage "tube", 1 for tail-fuselafe and 1 for MAD-Boom).

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Hello Aleatorylamp,

I tried to do the CoG move this morning and ran into a bit of a problem.
Moving Structures and Parts was no problem at all. It took about a half hour to get the scripts in order but there were no issues.

The remaining task is to move the Texture mapping to agree with the new locations of Parts / Components and Structures.
The problem I am running into is that while regular mapping uses four numbers, the corresponding moved pieces have eight numbers.
I need to figure out what those eight numbers mean and alter the program to read and process them properly.
Luckily, it appears that some of the numbers are blank, but the parsing section still needs to recognize that there are spaces for eight numbers even if it will only use four of them.

By the way, regarding design philosophies, you are not REQUIRED to use up all 1200 Polygons in a model.
My Warhawk is getting pretty complicated at this point and still only uses 1125 or so.
Use them if there is a reason to do it and if it really improves the model.

- Ivan.
 
P-3 Orion Update

Hello Aleatorylamp,

This P-3 Orion project is really starting to look strange.
I just did some poking around in the AFA file to try to figure out what the 8 numbers instead of 4 might mean.
I wrote down the numbers to compare to what was shown in the texture mapping values in AF99.
That is when I noticed that the texture mapping DIDN'T HAVE any reasonable values.
When the values from one end to the other are both zeros, one can come to no reasonable conclusion.

I thought that perhaps I had corrupted the AFA file, so I unpacked the AFX again but there was no difference.

The place I looked to confirm this was on the Right Wing.

So Where do we go with something like this?

- Ivan.
 
Well OK, not all then!

Hi Ivan,

Ha ha! Yes, but if I need parts for some extra improvement, I have to scrounge around to get as many as I can.

Sorry to hear about the problems you had with the CoG shift. If I knew where to look, I´d un-texture the parts that were problematic.

Well, after a lot of exact shaping, I re-built the whole fuselage including MAD boom as components, and parts count is at 145.8%.

In order to get rid of the C-130 cheek-nose aspect under the windshield, I made the joint less circular and more like an inverted oval, i.e. wider at the top, and it´s looking better, but not quite right yet. I also have to fit the windshield parts better. Anyway, I´m getting there! I even had some parts left over for prop-blurs and glue, and to split the spinners in two so as to improve the propeller-blade bleeds.
The screenshots show the nose and the cabin where the nose just fits in. Perhaps I made the nose a tad too wide at the top. Now it looks like a CRJ-900... I have to get iit better!

I´ll keep you posted!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 

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No textures for the shift.

Hi Ivan,
Strange - and only on the right wing.
Well, there´s no doubt about it. I´ll take out all the textures and send you the Orion again with just the AFX for the CoG shift, and then I´ll put the textures back in again. That is the easiest solution and should be no problem.
I´ll do that right away.
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp.
 
I am wondering how the AFX / AFA was textured so that the file appears in a way that even AF99 can't read it.
I can probably figure out how to fix things, but it would be a fair amount of hand editing the AFA file and I can't be sure I will get it right. That is why I do as many things as possible via programs: Less opportunity for human error.

I think the nose actually looks a bit like a DC-9. The actual P-3 Orion's nose is fairly elegant looking for the huge thing that it is.
Perhaps the famous EP-3 that "invaded" China back in 2001 would be a good subject.

- Ivan.
 
Hello Ivan,
Look in your e-mail! I´ve just sent off the textureless AFX and plane. I wish I could write programmes that did cool things - e.g. extract parts from structures to save hand-building parts for components... but anyway, it went quite easily. Now I´m busy looking for pictures to get the nose better. The drawings I have are all different, so I´ll go by photos. I´ve just re-adjusted the "face" a bit and made it less wide at the "cheeks", and again, I have to adjust the windows.
I´ll look up the "2001 China invader" and see what it looks like to do the textures.

Update:
I´ve just seen it - this particular plane has a long ridge on the back, and does not have the whole MAD Boom, but the colour scheme is fine - it´s on other models without that ridge.

I´ll try another thing for the nose adjustment, i.e. incorporating the windows into the cabin shape itself instead of just sticking insignia windows onto the cabin. Let´s see.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Shifting the Center of Gravity

Hello Aleatorylamp,

I just sent this as a reply to your email, but this hopefully will also help others follow along with this thread.
You really didn't need to do anything to the AFX / AFA. I CAN work around the issue and you will still have a textured model.

The process I am using is this:
1. Move all the Parts. This takes care of Components because they are just made up of Parts.
This also takes care of Glue and Structure Templates.

2. Move all the Structures Fore or Aft. There is no Vertical or Lateral shift on a Structure FILE because it is covered by moving the Templates.

3. Move the Texture Mapping in the AFA file. This was the last of the programs I wrote and it was having issues with the weird formatting.

At worst, I was going to remap some of the textures by hand as soon as I figured out what the original author's intent was.
I may get a few wrong, but there will still be less cleanup than if you had to lay out all new textures.
Send me the updated AFX with textures. It will work to some extent. At worst, I can have the program ignore the eight number texture mapping.

The way I actually execute the steps is to get a listing of all the .AFP files and then use MS Excel to modify the list into a script that calls "MoveIt.exe" for .AFP Parts Files and "StructMoveIt.exe" for .AFS Structure Files. Creating the scripts usually takes around 30-45 minutes. It SHOULD be faster, but I often make mistakes on hand editing the scripts.
As I do this more often, scripting is getting a bit faster.

- Ivan.
 
Origin of the problem

Hi Ivan,

It was late and I went to sleep, so I missed the last message until now.

First let me explain:
I´ve discovered the origin of the texture mapping problem. I´d forgotten that I was having it for years until December last year. I was having great difficulties with AF99 textures and Windows XP because of the Spanish keyboard, that uses decimal commas instead of decimal points.

AF99 uses decimal points, and the separator for each texture coordinate entry is a comma. After the third comma in the 4-coordinate entry line, AF99 ignores the rest and puts in zeros, as it does if nothing is placed between commas. I only discovered the origin of the problem in Summer last year, and until I discovered how to make WinXP to use decimal points and comma separators it was December.

For the moment I have looked at the wings and the horizontal tail, where the biggest problems are. I hadn´t re-worked them this time, so it went unnoticed. Then, inexplicably, somehow, sometimes, AF99 manages to spread textures conveniently despite incongruent texture-coordinate entries, so by bashing the +10% button in the texture window 5, 10, 15 or 20 times, textures sometimes seemed to fix themselves at the time.

Of course, the solution is now to simply make AF99 re-distribute the textures by re-spreading them correctly in the texture window.


So in the .afa file, where it reads:
0,"rwing(49,,,,11,,-7,)1
1,"lwing(,,-49,,11,,-7,)1

1,"h_stab(19,,-19,,-37,,-51,)1
0,"h_stab(19,,-19,,-37,,-51,)1

These should then read:
0,"rwing(49.46,.94,11.91,-9.17)1
1,"lwing(-.94,-49.46,11.91,-9.17)1

0,"h_stab(19.52,-19.52,-37.98,-50.75)1
1,"h_stab(19.52,-19.52,-37.98,-50.75)1

How stupid, idiotic, and what an utterly useless pain. I´m terribly sorry for the problems I have caused you.

Well, now I can put all the textures back in again and this time they will be all OK, so I´ll send you the AFX again as soon as they are done.
I´d jumped the gun with the textureless plane...

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
fuselage Maximum Width

11 feet 4 inches.

....in reply to your post in Warhawk Thread.
i can supply a lot more information if you need. P-3B Orion if it matters.
Message will be short cuz this is being typed on an iPad.

-Ivan.
 
P3 Orion

Hello Ivan,
The new AFX you CoG-shifted and sent back are working really fine now!
With the rather intense back-and-forth of one AFX after another, eventually getting it clean of further left-over garbage from deleted propeller textures in the script, I had failed to answer your post on the additional P-3B Orion information you have. I´d definitely be interested, if it´s not too much of a bother to send.

Thanks for the 11.4 ft fuselage width info. I´d been looking for ages without finding that! The new drawings I had were giving me 11.8, and that was rather a lot. At the moment the model is a bit below 11.4, but I may leave it at that. I´ll see.

Is the information you have in a text-file or on a drawing with technical info like with the Fledgeling? It would be great to have more details. Of course, if you have to type it out on your Iphone, better not! I won´t put you through that.

I think I´ll try putting back the propeller textures - extending the front/back spinner textures over them if they don´t get too blurry.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
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