P3D V4.5 Bell 412 Project

Scorch00

Scorch00

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A ways back I undertook the complicated task of getting Jordan Moore's great Bell 412 into P3D v4.5. As many know. P3D as a whole lacks any kind of freeware Huey variant. Me, focusing mainly on military and firefighting operations took it upon myself to not only convert these birds to P3D native, but to also modify them into firefighting helitankers. No, not the bambi bucket versions. The actual tanked versions. I grew up in Southern California and saw the 412s from various city agencies work wildfires. This project started several months ago as more of a pet project. But after a lot of interest grew, the project attracted the eyes of much more experienced modelers than I. In particular, George Arana. Who provided me with numerous fixes and updates to the 412 to bring it up to date on top of my conversion and external modifications. Originally, I had posted this project here as being a joint FSX/P3D project. But as the project progressed it was clear FSX was too limiting to what I wanted to do with this helo. So it has become a P3D only project now. After several months it is near the end of re-development. As of this morning. I am planning on releasing the updated and modified Bell 412s by next weekend (May 22nd/23rd 2020) time frame. Baring any major issues that appear. These will cover not only US operators, but will also cover Canadian and Australian operators. These will come with 5 model variations of Helitankers, and 11 liveries. It's been a long time since I updated the old thread. But decided to make a new one devoted to the P3D only version. I am compiling these models for P3D v4.5. They will be untested in v5. But if someone does try them in v5 after I release them. I'd like someone to touch base with me so that I can update the compatibility to v5 as well. (Which I hope happens by default) The only limiting factor of these is that I do not have the ability to apply PBR to them. So the textures do suffer a bit from that.

11 liveries are from:
Alpine Helicopters
Carson Helicopters (Fictional)
Cal Fire (Fictional)
Kestrel Helicopters (2 liveries)
Wildcat Helicopters (2 liveries)
Los Angeles City Fire Dept.
Los Angeles County Fire Dept.
Orange County Fire Authority
San Diego Fire Dept.

Things I've added:

External water tank/snorkel
Working FLIR Camera
Working Rescue Hoist
and numerous other external modifications to represent the operators that operate them.

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Late Development Video Update:
 

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Scorch00 said:
A ways back I undertook the complicated task of getting Jordan Moore's great Bell 412 into P3D v4.5. As many know. P3D as a whole lacks any kind of freeware Huey variant. Me, focusing mainly on military and firefighting operations took it upon myself to not only convert these birds to P3D native, but to also modify them into firefighting helitankers. No, not the bambi bucket versions. The actual tanked versions. I grew up in Southern California and saw the 412s from various city agencies work wildfires. This project started several months ago as more of a pet project. But after a lot of interest grew, the project attracted the eyes of much more experienced modelers than I. In particular, George Arana. Who provided me with numerous fixes and updates to the 412 to bring it up to date on top of my conversion and external modifications. Originally, I had posted this project here as being a joint FSX/P3D project. But as the project progressed it was clear FSX was too limiting to what I wanted to do with this helo. So it has become a P3D only project now. After several months it is near the end of re-development. As of this morning. I am planning on releasing the updated and modified Bell 412s by next weekend (May 22nd/23rd 2020) time frame. Baring any major issues that appear. These will cover not only US operators, but will also cover Canadian and Australian operators. These will come with 5 model variations of Helitankers, and 11 liveries. It's been a long time since I updated the old thread. But decided to make a new one devoted to the P3D only version. I am compiling these models for P3D v4.5. They will be untested in v5. But if someone does try them in v5 after I release them. I'd like someone to touch base with me so that I can update the compatibility to v5 as well. (Which I hope happens by default) The only limiting factor of these is that I do not have the ability to apply PBR to them. So the textures do suffer a bit from that.

11 liveries are from:
Alpine Helicopters
Carson Helicopters (Fictional)
Cal Fire (Fictional)
Kestrel Helicopters (2 liveries)
Wildcat Helicopters (2 liveries)
Los Angeles City Fire Dept.
Los Angeles County Fire Dept.
Orange County Fire Authority
San Diego Fire Dept.

Things I've added:

External water tank/snorkel
Working FLIR Camera
Working Rescue Hoist
and numerous other external modifications to represent the operators that operate them.

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Late Development Video Update:
Click to expand...


Looking forward to this :encouragement:
 
Great to see the work on this as Jordan did an outstanding job on this freeware 412 from the start. It's so good I didn't purchase the payware Cerasim version as JM got it done on his.
 
Thank you all for the support! The HC412 is a great helo. The fact P3D lacks freeware Hueys as I said, I thought this great bird deserved to live on. Especially after Hovercontrol's demise and the community was left with a void that is very hard to fill. CeraSim makes great helicopter models. I own their 212 and UH-60s. Luckily people here were able to mod the UH-60 into a Firehawk. Which I love, as I've uploaded a repaint pack for them here. But I wanted to do these birds justice after seeing them in operation for so many years in real life in the various city / county agencies. Soon they'll be in P3D v4.5 and v5 hopefully as well.

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Very nice project !
I agree with you when you say P3D lacks some freeware Hueys. This was in fact also the case with FSX, since as far as I know, that 412 was more or less the only nice looking model with a virtual cockpit (from hovercontrol, right ?)
It will without doubt look fantastic in P3D.

One thing though: if I remember correctly, this copter had a little bit frustrating limitation: the virtual cockpit switches were not clickable, so the pilot was forced to use the 2D panels to perform a cold&dark startup. At least, that was the case back when I tried this beast in my FSX days. How about your model ? Any chance you make this bird fully controllable from the virtual cockpit ?
 
Daube said:
Very nice project !
I agree with you when you say P3D lacks some freeware Hueys. This was in fact also the case with FSX, since as far as I know, that 412 was more or less the only nice looking model with a virtual cockpit (from hovercontrol, right ?)
It will without doubt look fantastic in P3D.

One thing though: if I remember correctly, this copter had a little bit frustrating limitation: the virtual cockpit switches were not clickable, so the pilot was forced to use the 2D panels to perform a cold&dark startup. At least, that was the case back when I tried this beast in my FSX days. How about your model ? Any chance you make this bird fully controllable from the virtual cockpit ?
Click to expand...


I guess you're right, that is pretty true. I haven't used FSX in close to 7 years, and really glossed over that I guess. But I was a heavy user of Hovercontrol back then. Which had a lot of great options on there. Yes this is the Hovercontrol 412. Just updated and remastered a bit if you will. I worked with George Arana, whom I believe worked with Jordan Moore on the original project. Him and I are also working on the Bell 212s as well. But this will come later down the line. I am particularly working on the firefighting versions like these. But they too will get the same treatment as these did. George worked on some of the interior bits, some of the external stuff like the rotors, and updated the Sounds and AIR file for these. He is also looking into reviving his versions of the 412 for P3D as well.

In regards to that limitation. Unfortunately, it still has that. It was outside of my area of expertise. It would have meant a complete redesign of the interior model as the original didn't have the switches coded to work. Flipping switches and control aircraft systems and animations weren't part of the original I guess. This was something I looked into once I got my hands back on these. BUT, George did update some aircraft systems to work a bit better with P3D. This makes it so you don't have to use the 2D panel, but you do have to use the window shortcut keys to bring up the important panels to start it up though. So it's "sort of" better. Maybe it's a mod someone or I can do at a later date (IF my skill set improves in modeling) to truly update the interior.
 
I'm looking over liveries the next few days and fixing the small things that come up. But the main bulk of work I think is pretty much done now. This is the full aircraft livery lineup. The 5 model variations cover mainly the 412EP models, but there are some other versions. I believe SP and HP versions are technically represented in some form. Or at least based on their real registration numbers of the aircraft I decided to represent in this. All versions will come with a 360 gallon (1300+ liter) belly tank, snorkel, and working rescue hoist. The model variations will differ based on their external accessory packages.
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These helicopters work in P3D v5. The only problem I have is that the cockpit is all black except for the guages. Am I supposed to download something to get the cockpit textures? I am not sure if I have black cockpit textures because I am miissing textures or because I am using it in v5.
 
Hmm...that's strange. I'm not sure though. I built them in V4.5. So I was wondering how they'd actually display in v5 since it doesn't have PBR. Is it just on one model or all of them?
 
Okay this is odd. I'll have to look into this. I'm not on the newest hotfixes on 4.5 and they display fine. As far as V5. I'm not sure what that would be. Maybe the newer sim doesn't support bmp files at all? I've had one other person note a similar black cockpit in V5, but only on a single model. The Wildcat NSW version. So I'm looking into that. It may be that these don't like V5 for whatever reason.
 
First of all, thank you all so much for effort bringing this great freeware back to where it belongs :applause:

Unfortunately, after installing today I got the black textures too - not everywhere, but the seats, and some of the right indoor textures.

Furthermore, I noticed that in flight the rotor disappears on the helicopters body when you look from top view. That's a little weird, because everything else appears well, even the rotors in front of the clouds, which was a big issue those days when you used FS9 helicopters in FSX.

Good luck and don't get discouraged! It's a fantastic project and I am sure you will bring it to a successful end! :very_drunk:
 
Manschy said:
First of all, thank you all so much for effort bringing this great freeware back to where it belongs :applause:

Unfortunately, after installing today I got the black textures too - not everywhere, but the seats, and some of the right indoor textures.

Furthermore, I noticed that in flight the rotor disappears on the helicopters body when you look from top view. That's a little weird, because everything else appears well, even the rotors in front of the clouds, which was a big issue those days when you used FS9 helicopters in FSX.

Good luck and don't get discouraged! It's a fantastic project and I am sure you will bring it to a successful end! :very_drunk:
Click to expand...

Thank you for the support. Fixing bugs is part of development, it's frustrating, but part of it. I'm just glad we have an open community to be able to work on the issues.

Are you using V5 as well? If so, I think this probably has to do with the files being old bmp files (but I'm not 100% of that as of yet) as I didn't convert them over since 4.5 still is able to use them. I know V5 uses PBR, but maybe the graphics engine uses DDS only files now (again I don't know for sure). I'm actively looking into this. As the other reports I've got have also noted issues with V5, and none so far in 4.5. To be honest, this sounds like a texture issue with the sims and not a model related one for the time being.

As far as the cockpit issue is concerned. I've located that problem. So I'll be doing a patch for that. A number of aircraft I forgot to copy over the updated Cockpit files and it looks like some of the other files may have been corrupted or something else during file compression so I'm overriding those with the development ones to hopefully fix those problems. As I can't even open them, so that likely means the sim can't either, resulting in black textures But I am still looking into the textures for V5 users. If that's not the issue.
 
Shame on me, Scorch - forgot to say I am still using P3Dv4.5 - so these issues seem to affect both sims.
 
Manschy said:
Shame on me, Scorch - forgot to say I am still using P3Dv4.5 - so these issues seem to affect both sims.
Click to expand...

No worries. I've discovered several issues with the file I uploaded versus my development version. Some files were somehow corrupted, as well as I left a few of them out of a couple versions in my haste of doing different operators I forgot to add the updated cockpit textures to the proper folders. So the patch I'm working on should fix the cockpit and the other problems in v4.5. As far as V5 is concerned. I haven't found out if it's the same issue of the corrupted/missing files or not. At minimum the patch will hopefully fix the cockpit issues for now in 4.5. I'll probably have it tested and uploaded here tonight.
 
Hotfix 1 uploaded.

Thank you all for your feedback on the release. I have addressed what I think is the main culprits in the display issues on the 412s. I opted to replace all the textures in case any parts were missing or corrupted. I also added the missing updated cockpit textures. I also recompiled ALL the models for the addition of specular and bump maps. This will help with the visuals of the models as well hopefully. I also added another helicopter to the pack. It's listed as "HRT" in the textures and a "Test" model in the aircraft list. I added this as a "blank" training platform and it doubles as a pseudo-paintkit as it is an all white bird. It was the best I could do in terms of this as the 412s never had a true paint kit. But it should make it usable I think for most repainters. The hotfix is up in the downloads section for P3D aircraft. This should at least address the issues people were experiencing in v4.5. Hopefully it does in v5 as well. But another hotfix may be needed if the problem persists in V5.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforu...j9BRCNMyNZWz08iau9IIKYtRAoOoag-k8AUS1TY4zjO5I

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