• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.

    Post 16 Update

    Post 17 Warning

Veneaviones Rockwell Turbo Commander 690B VC Upgrade

E

expat

Charter Member
This one never leaves my active aircraft folder. Just a beautiful model. Great short field and IFR performer AND will do 300 kts over the ground. I actually think this is faster than the Turbine Duke which has a lower airframe speed restriction.

It works well in FSX and am trying to update the VC a bit. I have imported some payware gauges e.g. from the Flight1 Pilatus PC-12 and have the "repair kit" if anyone is interested to fix the windscreen and air.cfg changes to make it fly right in FSX. Inspired by the work of others here, I was wondering if the VC textures could be sharpened up a bit. I would in particular like to make the surface texture "cowling" around the panel (see red circles) more smooth and less mottled looking, but I am confused about which textures to change. If anyone can point me the right way or might want to take a crack at this themselves that would be most appreciated.

expat
 
One of my real favorites for all the reasons you mentioned expat, but I lost it many years ago after a series of HDD crashes and virus attacks. Is that airplane even available any more? I know it used to be on Avsim, but after they were taken down several times by attacks I think it also disappeared.
 
Howdy Ed. Hoping you might see this.

The original a/c is indeed on Avsim. Also posting my FSX fixitkit (need to mod the flight tuning to stop her wanting to pitch up).


Category: Flight Simulator 2004 - Original Aircraft
Veneaviones Rockwell Turbo Commander 690B (Wingleted Version)
<!-- -->

<TBODY>
</TBODY>

sendfile.php

File Description:
Veneaviones Simulations Group is proud to present the Rockwell Turbo Commander 690B. This package includes two models (with and without Virtual Cockpit), and features full moving parts including ailerons, trim tabs, rudder, elevator, spoilers, accurate landing gear retraction and extension, lights at all effects. Full details like: pitot tubes, stall warn vanes, air intakes, antennas. FDE mastered with first factory hand information, customized sounds and panel.

For further information please read documentation attached to this package and consult our web site and forum at [URL="http://www.avsim.com/veneaviones"]www.avsim.com/veneaviones[/URL]

<TBODY>
</TBODY>
Filename:
veneaviones_rockwell_turbo_commander_690bwl.zip
License:
Freeware, limited distribution
Added:
14th January 2010
Downloads:
64503
Author:
Veneaviones Simulations Group
Size:
18038kb

<TBODY>
</TBODY>

<TBODY>
</TBODY>
 
The texture you're looking for is "vcpan_690". It's the rectangle in the upper left of the texture sheet. I have also been playing around with this plane, and have cleaned up some of the interior textures as well as replacing the non-working gauges with default FSX gauges. Nowhere near perfect, but it works for me. I found that making the texture a solid color, rather than the "grainy" texutre in the original is the only way to remove the stretching in the vc.
 
Ah, got it. . .thanks expat. Looking at the textures, it is "vcpan_690" and at the top of that texture is a strip that I believe is the texture used on the glare shield. That's the problem with using a "mottled" texture on some areas when the texture is going to have to stretch to cover the surface. . .you get that unrealistic look to it. Easily corrected though. The actual VC textures are in the panel folder "panel.vc" and there are 4 main textures and all of them are pretty fuzzy, so that might take a bit to get everything sharp again. It would sure go a long way to making an excellent airplane that much better though.
 
I'm going to tackle the VC as well. I like to use shadowing around the gauges and under the glare shield to add some depth and reset all the labels to sharpen them up as well.:salute:
 
That sounds great! Found this one with a Beech style tan panel surface that looks nice.
 
Coming along pretty nicely so far. I will not be adding the normal shadow effect under the glare shield and the reason is that the VC panel is 4 separate panels and all of them overlap each other at the top and sides. Trying to get a shadow that follows the contour of the sides and then matches exactly the upper left and upper right sections as well as across the top would be more trouble than it's worth. . .doable, but not really, lol.
 
expat said:
Howdy Ed. Hoping you might see this.

The original a/c is indeed on Avsim. Also posting my FSX fixitkit (need to mod the flight tuning to stop her wanting to pitch up).
Click to expand...

Expat,

I took the liberty of modifying the FM to improve some of the issues.

If you wish to try it in FSX, let me know how it does. It had the same issue in FS9 and I have that and a few other things corrected.

Preserve your original air and cfg files before trying this.

For takeoff, no more than 1/2 degree of nose up trim, rotate gently at about 90 kias. Retract gear and flaps at 300AGL.

EDIT: Updated to correct Cruise Speed.
 
Ed - looking really nice there on the VC textures!

Milton - many thanks for your FM file. Will try her out and report back.:salute:


Great to see the interest in this very underated aircraft!
 
This thread got busy while I was away at work. Here are some more shots of the updated textures I worked on. If anyone is interested I can upload them here, along with the modified panel cfg file.
 
Nice work there "paiken". . .should give folks some good alternatives to the original interiors. I still have to change the glare shield color a bit and add matching textures to the throttle controls and a few other areas so it matches the panel. Also need a different carpet with better detail.
 
Milton,

I am A-B testing your flight model with the default in FSX. Your FM seems more stable in cruise and less twitchy and therefore an improvement. However, somehow with it I am way down on top speed - can't get to the target 240 knots indicated cruise or fast cruise 300+ knots over the ground which I can get with the default FM. Also, note some big differences in the airplane geometry, e.g. wing area 280 vs 560. Will add your changed entries one at a time and see which ones are cutting the airspeed. Also, in FSX it has been a known issue that the aircraft pitches up strongly under full power at takeoff and climbout. The fix is to change this entry to: htail_incidence = 0.500. Thanks as always for your input.

expat
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top