• Warbirds Library V4 (Resources for now) How to


    We just posted part one of the how to on uploading new files to the Library. Part 1 covers adding new files. Part 2 will cover making changes to your the uploads you own.


    Questions or comments please post them in the regular forums. Which forum is that... Well it is the one you spend the most time in.

    Thanks the Staff

    Library How to

Lancer VC-Update

falcon409

falcon409

SOH-CM-2022
A nice Virtavia B-1B Lancer that had been payware at one time. Found on Simviation and immediately I decided to put future scenery on hold and upgrade the interior textures. The one area I always enhance is the main gauge panel but in this case that wasn't possible. The working gauges are not set into a bezel I can redo at better resolution, these are all a combination of bezel and gauge in one so I had to move on to the other interior textures which were mostly 512x512 or lower. I found an excellent website "The National Museum of the Air Force" which contained 360 degree, hi res views of the various compartments for the B1 Bomber. It afforded me some excellent views in detail of every area of the cockpit. I was also able to get excellent screenshots of areas to copy and reproduce to enhance the blurry textures and make things easier to read and a bit more realism than the original.

I'm going to upload what I've done so if anyone is interested, it'll be available in a day or so.

Lancer-2022-nov-14-001 by Ed Wells, on Flickr
 
This must be an old, old version of it! (Maybe FS9?) I've had my Virtavia B-1 they did for FSX for a long time and the VC doesn't look like this. It does seem like they constantly update stuff though. Heck, they just finished their FSX B-24 series off last year with early and naval versions including the Privateer. (Which I've wanted for a long time!) They may not be study level sims but their attention to their product and the out of the ordinary aircraft choices is probably why I have more Virtavia add ons than any one else's in my hangar!
(In fact the Aphasim F-89 was my first add on ever!) I do wish they'd update their TSR2 though.

Good luck on the VC Falcon for this one Falcon. It'll be fun to watch the progress and to see what you can do with it!
 
Josh Patterson said:
This must be an old, old version of it! (Maybe FS9?) I've had my Virtavia B-1 they did for FSX for a long time and the VC doesn't look like this. It does seem like they constantly update stuff though. Heck, they just finished their FSX B-24 series off last year with early and naval versions including the Privateer. (Which I've wanted for a long time!) They may not be study level sims but their attention to their product and the out of the ordinary aircraft choices is probably why I have more Virtavia add ons than any one else's in my hangar! (In fact the Aphasim F-89 was my first add on ever!) I do wish they'd update their TSR2 though. Good luck on the VC Falcon for this one Falcon. It'll be fun to watch the progress and to see what you can do with it!
Click to expand...
Yes, this is an FS9 version (1.2) and the image I posted above is the end product, not the beginning, lol.
 
Thanks! Got it... Very nice...

7H7DLBH.jpg


B4sq35z.jpg


Hl6tKSA.jpg


For afterburner effect, I'm using "fx_iris_f16_aniburner.fx" instead of "fx_ALPHA_B1B_AB.fx". Works fine...
 
Nice shots thanks!
Also, for any FS9'ers reading this I converted the "dds" textures to extended bitmaps and reduced the oversized textures to 1024x1024. Replacement textures have been uploaded to the Warbirds Library.
 
falcon409 said:
Yes, this is an FS9 version (1.2) and the image I posted above is the end product, not the beginning, lol.
Click to expand...
Well the important thing is the price! If I didn't have the B-1 I'd get yours. Some of the freeware in my hangar is pretty obscure stuff that's been ported. On a rare bird I'm fine with a rudimentary VC and the main six gauges (and your VC looks better than some in my hangar) and I don't complain because I can't do any better. (More like at all, and now we're on another sim!) I have been working with MCX and have learned how to get the Shockwave lights in animated models, fixed two planes that would disappear in tower view and fixed the flap animation on Project Tupolev's Il-62. (Extra entries in the flap animation were corrupting the inboard flaps.) So I feel like I'm making headway. I just wish I could have a month long crash course with someone like you, Milton or Duckie (for textures) looking over my shoulder to help me learn the ropes a bit quicker actually making stuff from scratch. (At least Milton put out the YouTube series and made this page https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/p...9(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN#FoldingWings which I constantly refer to and is almost as good as having him there.) The nice thing is that almost everybody here in the forum contributes ideas and 99% of what I do know I learned here. This year was the first year I actually uploaded stuff to the site with two modified VC to eliminate see-through sections and two views for runway seating at EAA. Small potatoes but it made me feel good to finally contribute something to the site!
 
Josh Patterson said:
Well the important thing is the price! If I didn't have the B-1 I'd get yours. Some of the freeware in my hangar is pretty obscure stuff that's been ported. On a rare bird I'm fine with a rudimentary VC and the main six gauges (and your VC looks better than some in my hangar) and I don't complain because I can't do any better. (More like at all, and now we're on another sim!) I have been working with MCX and have learned how to get the Shockwave lights in animated models, fixed two planes that would disappear in tower view and fixed the flap animation on Project Tupolev's Il-62. (Extra entries in the flap animation were corrupting the inboard flaps.) So I feel like I'm making headway. I just wish I could have a month long crash course with someone like you, Milton or Duckie (for textures) looking over my shoulder to help me learn the ropes a bit quicker. (At least Milton put out the YouTube series which is almost as good as having him there.)
Click to expand...
I have never been able to get my head around converting FS9 to native FSX. . .if I could I'd most likely go from scenery design to full time conversions as I have always come across airplanes that I enjoy flying but have minimal function in the VC due to coding issues that could be rectified by doing such a conversion.
 
I tried a quick McX conversion, and it doesn't look good... Missing flaps, inversed elevators, funky rudder, transparency issues... But nothing out of the ordinary. For some experienced converters, it's easlily fixable. And there's some good resources too, like this wonderful tutorial at CalClassic. But it takes time, and a lot of patience... which I don't have...

h38FfTh.jpg
 
vonstroheim said:
I tried a quick McX conversion, and it doesn't look good... Missing flaps, inversed elevators, funky rudder, transparency issues... But nothing out of the ordinary. For some experienced converters, it's easlily fixable. And there's some good resources too, like this wonderful tutorial at CalClassic. But it takes time, and a lot of patience... which I don't have...

h38FfTh.jpg
Click to expand...


Yeah, some of the parts have non compatible names. Also you have to make sure you have the control surface parts renamed to the name that doesn't have the word percent in it. Also had to add alpha to the glass texture to allow transparency.


Soon as I flight test it, I'll have one converted that also has hardware nav lights that swing with the wings.
 
Native Model

Here we go. Quick and dirty FSX Native Alpha B-1B model and VC.

No real changes from Milton's work except what is needed to the model.

Things I did:

Native materials, hard coded wingtip nav lights that swing with the wings. Taxi light goes out when the gear retracts. Added alpha to the glass texture to make it transparent and also made it reflective. All exterior textures made reflective if an alpha channel is added to the texture.

You should comment out the first two entries in the lights section of the aircraft cfg so you don't have phantom nav lights when the wings are forward.

If Falcon want's to integrate this with his file Go for It!

P3D3-2022-nov-20-001.jpg
 

Attachments

  • Alpha B-1B_native_upgrade.zip
    704 KB · Views: 42
Bloody Brilliant Brian!! Just took a trial run to Nellis from North Texas. . .nice to have full function VC click spots now. Since the initial upload has been in the Warbirds Library and accumulated a fair number of downloads I plan on uploading this update as a separate download for those who already have the airplane and as a second download for those who have yet to get the airplane. Thank you very much Brian.
 
Okay, I could use some clarification on the various updates.

I have the FSX version of the Lancer from Virtavia, version 1.1 according to the notes.

If I understand what's going on, the changes from Falcon are primarily for the panel textures? Or should I start from scratch with Brian's mods?

I haven't flown it for a while, but curiosity is getting the best of me. :untroubled:
 
WarHorse47 said:
Okay, I could use some clarification on the various updates. I have the FSX version of the Lancer from Virtavia, version 1.1 according to the notes. If I understand what's going on, the changes from Falcon are primarily for the panel textures? Or should I start from scratch with Brian's mods? I haven't flown it for a while, but curiosity is getting the best of me. :untroubled:
Click to expand...
If you already have the "payware" FSX Lancer from Virtavia (they released a Native FSX version) then you don't need any of this. The one in this thread was the FS9 payware version (V1.2) that Virtavia released as freeware. I made texture updates to the VC and Brian was nice enough to convert the FS9 version to native FSX. On the other hand, of you have the B-1B that I recently uploaded with the VC updates, then all you need will be the Native FSX update that Brian posted a link to here.
 
Thankyou Ed and Brian for these great mods. Flying her right now in P3Dv4. One issue I have is the flaps cannot be independently of the swing wing. The normal button/key control for flaps move the wings but the flaps stay partly down in all wing positions.
 
expat said:
Thankyou Ed and Brian for these great mods. Flying her right now in P3Dv4. One issue I have is the flaps cannot be independently of the swing wing. The normal button/key control for flaps move the wings but the flaps stay partly down in all wing positions.
Click to expand...

On my P3D V3 set up the wings sweep forward then start dropping flaps. I didn't mess with the animation timing as that is beyond my skill set and probably the original programming. I used the FSX SDK
to compile so it would be more compatible with the older sims. If someone has MCX with the V4 SDK, perhaps they can get it working properly since it sounds like a difference between V-3 and 4.
 
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