Short stirling wip

[johnny_303]

Hi guys. Joao here, from Portugal, lisbon.
Nearby airports are lppt and lpst. I got into flight sim,
in a more serious way recently, and I am doing and sucessfully
completing my first flights. I use p3d v3, and bought some planes,
also got plenty of freeware, and some of it is very good.
Since I know some 3d, programming, and alikes, I decided to create
my own aircraft for fsx / p3d ( and offer it as freeware / donationware ).
After some research, I decided to recreate ww2 uk's first heavy bomber,
the short stirling. I have so far have created the airplane in 3d,
with blender, which is roughly based on a free model from the web.
I still have to do some improvement on the model, as to make it as similar
to the real aircraft as possible. I contacted the stirling project in the uk,
( http://stirlingproject.co.uk ), to tell them about my project, and ask for their
help, and also the contact for a 3d artist that had created a detailed stirling
cockpit for one of their projects. I contacted him ( James Harris ), and told him
about my ideia, asking him to donate the cockpit to the virtual recreation of the
aircraft, and he gracefully agreed. So, now I have the cockpit 3d model, highly detailed,
with nice custom gauges. I still have to do some to work on it, assign materials, textures,
and then port it into the game. I will leave some screenshots here, so you can take a look
at the model. As I said, it still needs a lot of work, but at least some of it is done,
and it is already more detailed than the previous existing short stirling for fs9 / fsx.

I hope that people will enjoy this aircraft. Maybe it's not a very common or
the most sought after one, but I thought of doing something different, and somewhat
historic. Altough not being a very good performer, it has is place in history,
and it is a unique piece of airplane engineering on it's own.

Cheers,

Joao G.

 

[Josh Patterson]

This looks just sterling! (If you'll pardon the pun!) I put a flight on Ted Cook's Sterling every now and then and have been happy with it as it works in FSX. (It is free after all, so who can complain?) I have always wanted a better version and your's looks well on the way. (And since I do 100% (for flybys and external views I open a window on my second screen) of my flying from the VC that's where I like the highest fidelity. The one the Sterling Project has donated looks fantastic! I've been to their site in the past but cant remember if they were recreating the entire plane or just the fuselage/cockpit section. I'll have to go back and check out their progress! As for your project I (and probably more than a few others here) will be on the lookout!

 

[SSI01]

Very promising indeed, and looking forward to progress and the final finished product.

With this bird we will have all three of Britain's heavy bombers to fly in FSX, the Lancaster and Halifax and last but certainly not least the Short Stirling.

The wing design and dimensions are, I believe, the same for the Stirling as for the Sunderland flying boat.

I read somewhere Lancaster and Halifax crews were always cheered when on raids against the Continent to be told the Stirlings would be accompanying them, since they didn't have quite the operational ceiling the other two aircraft did, hence they would be the first to attract the attention of the night fighters, and then the German flak over target. As the war went on most Stirlings were converted to glider tugs or paratroop transports, or were used on "gardening" (aerial mining) ops against German and other European waterways and ports.