Well, dash it all!
SlipStream: hairy, whats your situation with the tempest dash?
If only I was as far as the dash! I started to the VC and got in all sorts of knots, plus in the sim the thing looked like Brunel built it with girders and twisted wrought iron. I know Bravo/4 does all sorts of wonderful things with paint, but this would have needed a roller, not a brush!
So I let it lay for a while, gathered more info and have recently started again. The problem is one of scale - for the external model a curve can be smoothed from 3 or 4 polys, but close up in the VC it just looks clunky however much you try to smooth it. So I divided up the cockpit shell some more and did some fine adjustments so it now looks like the inside of a cylindrical fuselage. The canopy frame was clunky, too thick and wrong anyway, so I started again.
The windshield I had tried to build from the outside in - big mistake - and this is where the twisted wrought iron came in. This time I'm working from the inside out, extruding polys outwards to form framing edges. It was nearly there, but not quite. Thankfully Gerard (may he rest in peace) pointed to the Transform Type-In panel in his low-poly tutorial (
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=16418 ) and it's been a lifesaver for fine adjustments as well as checking symmetry. The pics show the windshield and canopy frames as they are at present - as yet unsmoothed - and I'm reasonably pleased so far.
I should be able to put a seat in the thing shortly and start on the flight controls and gauges, but the disappearing polys in front of the windshield will need addressing - someone (seacondor?) advised attaching a rim of polys around the VC to blend in to the main fuselage - I may need more polys.