Ito's Aircraft

djs1

djs1

Charter Member
I realise that I am possibly not going to make any friends with this question, but nonetheless I have to ask it if only out of pure frustration.
Why do Mr Ito's aircraft appear to be so highly regarded when, in my own experience over quite a few years, the things always fly like pigs "straight out of the box". I am far from being an expert at tweaking flight dynamics etc, but then again, should any of us have to be given the vast amount of freeware aircraft available which are spot on first time out.
With very limited knowledge and a certain amount of trial and error, I have attempted to carry out various "home made" tweaks but with only partial success.
Let me say that from a graphic point of view I can not and will not fault Mr Ito's work which makes their inability to perform all the more frustrating for me because he continues to produce aircraft which I would dearly love to keep in my hangar but if the damned things will not fly, what is the point.
 
djs1 said:
I realise that I am possibly not going to make any friends with this question......
Click to expand...

Actually, i think you are safe djs! :icon_lol:

I think it's pretty much acknowledged that Itosan was not a master of the FDE; to be honest, he said so himself & on more than one occasion released models WITHOUT them (his U-2A/C springs to mind). Why he is so "highly regarded" is because he produced nice looking models of subjects nobody else seemed to touch (well, nobody else after Mike Stone 'retired') - I won't bore you with the list, but I have a lot of his models on my system!! And he never asked a penny for them (I can think of one other developer of the quirky who seems to have gone donationware only of late), just that his wishes were respected and that the planes were kept out of CFS2.

For a long while he used to get roasted here on a regular basis; but eventually we got our collective heads around his modus operandi & started appreciating the good points - and there are enough talented people on site that often people were tweaking the suspect airfiles almost as soon as the model was released. So models such as his Black Widow, Me 410 and Fi 167 (which are the only game in town for all of those instances) got sorted; and in many other cases there were suitable alternative models around which could 'donate' and airfile to improve things.

The sadness is that it looks as though ill health may finally have brought an end to his modelling days. Like you I'm no flight dynamics expert but one of Itosan's aircraft has actually prompted me to learn a little more, so I can bring a nice model up to a better standard, just my way of celebrating a man who has given us so much pleasure over the years. :salute:
 
Well said, Andy.

To elaborate just a bit, one big reason Ito-san didn't bother with flight models is that he didn't care about flying his planes! All he cared about was making nice 3D models and looking at them on screen. I don't even know if he ever really booted them up into the sim; he may have just admired them in the Select Aircraft window. It was kind of like building plastic models, but without the messy paint and toxic fumes and need for shelf space. On more than one occasion he was offered help with flight models and he declined, saying that he just wasn't interested.

The only minor mystery about his attitude is why he started making VCs. Since he didn't care about flying, he didn't care about having a VC. I think his addition of VCs may have been his way of catering to his fans, despite his repeated statements that he didn't much care what anyone else thought about his work. We know he did care, at least to some degree, because he sometimes showed his hurt feelings when people would write to him and criticize his work.

I have a lot of his planes, maybe most of them, and in many cases the only way to get a model of a plane was to use his, and make or adapt a flight model to use with it. Even when there was an alternative available, Ito's model was often the better 3d model. A bit of mixing and matching would give us the best of both planes, Ito's 3D model and the other modeler's flight model.

Ito's planes are great for AI use, too.

It's a shame that his deteriorating eyesight forced him out of the hobby, and into early retirement from his profession. (He was a veterinarian.)
 
Gentlemen,
Your comments are well received and, I can assure you, taken on board. The main reason for my frustration is exactly because these aircraft leave nothing to be desired from a visual point of view, not to mention the fact that he gives us something other than "mainstream".
Take the Beaufighter, for example, to the best of my knowledge a comparable model does not exist for FS9 and would love to have this permanently installed. I was reminded of it this morning and tried again and again to pinch a bit from here and a bit from there in an effort to make it perform and all I succeeded in doing was crashing the sim on several occasions.
I suspect that I shall have to try and find a little more patience if the only alternative is consigning some good looking aircraft to a scrapheap they definately DO NOT belong in.
Thank you for the comments
David
 
djs1 said:
Take the Beaufighter, for example, to the best of my knowledge a comparable model does not exist for FS9 and would love to have this permanently installed. I was reminded of it this morning and tried again and again to pinch a bit from here and a bit from there in an effort to make it perform and all I succeeded in doing was crashing the sim on several occasions.
Click to expand...

Ah, the Beaufighter! There are two options for you; purchase the Alphasim/Virtavia Beaufighter for a very reasonable 13 Euros; or download the older Alphasim Beaufort (which you should do anyway, it's a lovely model) and use that airfile as the basis for your tweaking. Happy flying.
 
Hello-
For my money, Andy and Mick are spot-on in their appraisal of Ito-San's work. I also have plenty of them, and have put in plenty of time rolling up my sleeves, opening my (virtual) tool box and wrestled with his flight dynamics. To me, it is by no means a waste of time- not only do you learn quite a bit about what makes the planes tick, your efforts are also rewarded by a model that is as beautiful to fly as it is to look at- that you helped make possible yourself. Patience truly is the key- in addition to looking at them in the spirit in which they were created by someone whose work will be missed.
-Mike
 
Jamie

Funny you should mention Bismarck's Beaufighters. I just downloaded them today and have them installed in FS9....well, two aren't in yet but will be soonish. One model crashes FS9 every time....need to figure out why...but the rest work great. Need the config file tweak to include the manufacture, type, variation info. Need lights and such added, FS9 GPS and radios and such. They don't have pilots as part of the models....only noticable from external view.

The models look really good, the VCs aren't super detailed and not up to snuff with FS9 current standards...but are very usable, look good enough for vintage war birds.

There is a nice selection of Beaufighters to enjoy in Bismarck's collection. And it well worth looking at his other CFS2 stuff..most of which was tested in FS9 by Bismarck himself as he was developing it.

OBIO
 
Obio,
Bis's Beaus look good but unfortunately he added the pilot/radar op/gunner with a good ol' DP in CFS2, so they're ghost ships in FS9/FSGW......

IIRC I think he hard-wired in crew into one of his Beaus, specifically for FS9, can't remember which one or if he uploaded it??

Shessi
 
Bismarck uploaded an FS9 Mk. II with the pilot modeled in place. Overlooking the lack of the pilot and gunners and such, Bismarck's Beaufighters are well worth having in FS9. You only notice the missing bodies when looking at the planes from outside...but when you are inside the VC flying the planes, you never notice they are not there.

To get this back on topic: Mr. Ito blessed us with a wealth of aircraft. There are few other modelers who have blessed the sim world with as many freeware planes are Mr. Ito. Yes, his flight dynamics are not all that great....but he never claimed to be a guru who could dial them in....his passion was not in flying the planes, but in making them. And make them he did....with great detail, excellent texture mapping. I hope that Mr. Ito is save and sound in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami and nuclear meltdowns that followed.

OBIO
 
Not to step on anyones toes, but it seems that the black art of making a great FDE is quite often less appreciated by the folks getting a great visual model for free from folks like Ito while the designers of a stunning visual model are showered with virtual laurels.The most talented folks in the Gmax and FSDS crowd can knock out impeccable visual models by themselves with "relative" ease. But turning this model into a virtual aircraft that flies true to it's real world counterpart can be a real PITA. And the more accuracy the flying public demands from the product they got in exchange for a few minutes download time the harder it becomes.A team effort then often becomes the only way to go...worked like a charm for the Connie series.I for one am very grateful for every one of the gifts I have received from so many. If the airplane is visually appealing enough and represents an airplane I want to have in my hangar it seems there is always a way to make it work right. If nobody else has touched it yet I start with AirWrench and a bit of Google research and can usually get it close enough.Stefan
 
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