Hello All.
I have been building 3D Models for Combat Flight Simulator for many years.
Only recently however have I been adding fairly simple Virtual Cockpit Pieces to hide bleeds and show the interior of the Canopy Frame.
In adding the Interior Canopy Frame, I came across an interesting situation:
I started by taking the exterior Canopy Frame and just flipping the orientation of the Polygons within SCASM so that they face inward rather than outward.
After a few tries, from a technical standpoint, I had a solution.
The problem was that in appearance, nothing quite looked right.
All the Canopy Frame bars seemed MUCH TOO WIDE; They were blocking too much of the view from inside the Cockpit.
The width of the Canopy pieces had not changed. I could verify that by comparing with the exterior model and yet they looked way too wide.
My solution was to take the vertical pieces and narrow them down by around 50% which corrected the appearance in both the A6M Type Zero and the P-40s.
This begs the question as to WHY this change is necessary.
Another interesting phenomenon in real life is that typically visibility from the Cockpit is said to be improved when the rear fuselage of a fighter is cut down and a Bubble Canopy is fitted.....
Even though a sheet of armour plate is often added behind the pilot.
In playing with the P-38 Lightning model and in comparison with the P-47D, and P-51D, one can see that this armour plate is fairly substantial and at least in our flight simulator models, blocks about as much rearward visibility as a high fuselage deck would.
So.... Again, WHY is there a perceived difference in the real aircraft?
???????
My belief is that it is because our virtual pilots are one eyed and real pilots typically have two eyes.
With two eyes, the slightly "Differing Points of View" mean that if the obstruction is narrow enough, what obstructs one eye may still allow vision from the other and the pilot's brain does not perceive it as an obstruction.
I believe that with armour plate versus a fuselage deck, the difference in perception is because unlike our virtual pilots, a human pilot can shift his / her head to look around a sheet of armour but shifting the head would not help much with a rear fuselage that extends quite a ways back.
Your Thoughts?
Next Question:
What is the best way to handle this in Combat Flight Simulator?
- Ivan.
I have been building 3D Models for Combat Flight Simulator for many years.
Only recently however have I been adding fairly simple Virtual Cockpit Pieces to hide bleeds and show the interior of the Canopy Frame.
In adding the Interior Canopy Frame, I came across an interesting situation:
I started by taking the exterior Canopy Frame and just flipping the orientation of the Polygons within SCASM so that they face inward rather than outward.
After a few tries, from a technical standpoint, I had a solution.
The problem was that in appearance, nothing quite looked right.
All the Canopy Frame bars seemed MUCH TOO WIDE; They were blocking too much of the view from inside the Cockpit.
The width of the Canopy pieces had not changed. I could verify that by comparing with the exterior model and yet they looked way too wide.
My solution was to take the vertical pieces and narrow them down by around 50% which corrected the appearance in both the A6M Type Zero and the P-40s.
This begs the question as to WHY this change is necessary.
Another interesting phenomenon in real life is that typically visibility from the Cockpit is said to be improved when the rear fuselage of a fighter is cut down and a Bubble Canopy is fitted.....
Even though a sheet of armour plate is often added behind the pilot.
In playing with the P-38 Lightning model and in comparison with the P-47D, and P-51D, one can see that this armour plate is fairly substantial and at least in our flight simulator models, blocks about as much rearward visibility as a high fuselage deck would.
So.... Again, WHY is there a perceived difference in the real aircraft?
???????
My belief is that it is because our virtual pilots are one eyed and real pilots typically have two eyes.
With two eyes, the slightly "Differing Points of View" mean that if the obstruction is narrow enough, what obstructs one eye may still allow vision from the other and the pilot's brain does not perceive it as an obstruction.
I believe that with armour plate versus a fuselage deck, the difference in perception is because unlike our virtual pilots, a human pilot can shift his / her head to look around a sheet of armour but shifting the head would not help much with a rear fuselage that extends quite a ways back.
Your Thoughts?
Next Question:
What is the best way to handle this in Combat Flight Simulator?
- Ivan.
