Xf-90 !

[Mick]

There's a Lockheed XF-90 over at FlightSim:

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib....-90_fs2004.zip

It's by David Allan, a modeler I'm not familiar with. The ReadMe says it's an FS9 version of an FSX model, but I don't recall seeing an FSX model on the download lists. Maybe it was a while ago and I just don't recall, since I'm not interested in FSX.

It comes in versions with and without tip tanks, in prototype and in-service markings, and of course as the Blackhawks' plane.

This has been on my wish list for a long time!

HAWKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Blackbird686]

Looks like a close cousin to the F-94 Starfire. That was always one of my favs and I believe Master Ito was the only one who produced an F-94 for FS9. Thanks for the HU, Mick.

BB686

[srgalahad]

So now there's an F-90 to go with Garry and Edward's Blackhawk Scenery Project
http://www.ford-tri-motor.net/Blackhawk-Project.htm

[napamule]

The 'XF-90.zip' is the FSX version (June 2016). The FS2004 version (Jan 2017) is 'XF-90_2004.zip'. The original came out in 2000.
Chuck B
Napamule

[Mick]

The 'XF-90.zip' is the FSX version (June 2016). The FS2004 version (Jan 2017) is 'XF-90_2004.zip'. The original came out in 2000.
Chuck B
Napamule

Yeah, he mentions the file names in the ReadMe, where he says this is an FS9 version of an FSX model. I don't recall seeing the FSX version, but then, I don't pay much attention to FSX stuff. I probably saw it, envied it, ignored it, and forgot about it, all within a few minutes.

I don't think FSX was around in 2000 though! Or FS9 either.

[Mick]

The textures could use a few tweaks. Lemme see what I can do...

[Mick]

OK, I did some fiddling with the textures and I came up with a couple skins.

One is an enhanced version of the stock skin that depicts the first prototype; the missing Lockheed logo is added to the nose, the fuselage markings are redone in the standard Air Force style of characters, and there are a few minor detail tweaks.

In the sim you can hardly see the Lockheed logo on the nose of the prototype, but that's how it was on the real plane. Light yellow on a silver background, it's almost invisible in even high quality color photos of the real airplane. No contrast at all! I tried to make it more visible by adding a black outline and using a darker shade of yellow, but it's is still almost invisible on the plane. Well, at least it's authentic! Otherwise all I did was change the markings to the standard Air Force style and enhance a few small detail items.

The other skin is a fictional representation of a production F-90 strategic escort "penetration fighter" in the markings of the 559th Fighter Escort Squadron, 12th Fighter Escort Wing, Strategic Air Command, a SAC fighter unit that flew Lockheed F-80s in the early 1950s.

The SAC skin started as a minor enhancement of the stock operational "F-90B" skin but turned into something else entirely. First I made the same tweaks as I had on the prototype. Then I changed the F-94 "FA" buzz number to one starting with "FZ" since the letter Z was unassigned and available. I moved it to the rear fuselage and made it bigger because buzz numbers were meant to be seen and read from a distance on fast moving airplanes. I changed the "United Stated Air Force" lettering, more often seen on large aircraft, to "U.S. Air Force," a presentation more often seen on fighter-sized planes. I colored the radome black just to make it look different from the prototype. Since the F-90 was meant to be an escort fighter for SAC's bombers, I add the the SAC sash and unit insignia from a real SAC escort fighter squadron. Finally I couldn't resist adding some color, presumably the squadron color, though I have no idea what the 559th FES's squadron color really was. So now it doesn't look anything like the original skin that I was just going to enhance a bit; it's a whole new paint job.

I tried and failed to get rid of the blue tint to the canopy, since color photos show that there was no hint of tint of any color on the real XF-90. I changed everything I could in the canopy glass texture, and the blue tint remained. I deleted the texture and the canopy still remained blue! Apparently one of the changes in the adaptation from FSX to FS9 was that the canopy tint was put into the model and that texture file no longer does anything on the FS9 version.

I didn't make any changes to the Blackhawks skin.

When I loaded at the plane in the sim it appeared so high off the ramp that it crashed when it dropped to the ground. The fix is to make the following edits to the Contact Points section of your aircraft.cfg file and the plane will appear sitting on its gear as it should:

static_pitch = 0.5
static_cg_height = 0.75

Here's the SAC skin:

[Blackbird686]

Looks pretty darn good to me Mick. One thing I also noticed about this plane is that she's "a tiny bit shiny". I've been tinkering around as well but nothing of any consequence.

BB686

[Mick]

Looks pretty darn good to me Mick. One thing I also noticed about this plane is that she's "a tiny bit shiny". I've been tinkering around as well but nothing of any consequence.
BB686

I noticed that the alpha channel wasn't the same from texture file to texture file, and one of my tweaks was to rationalize them. I used a gray that was maybe a little lighter than an average of them all. How shiny that looks on anyone's screen depends on what enviro.bmp they have. What I used looks pretty good on my monitor, but it might look very different on yours. That's a downside of sharing reflective textures; you can't account for what anyone else sees when they use them.

Something I didn't account for in my painting is that pictures show that the prototype was very shiny, and a service airplane would be much less so. I just didn't have the patience to come up with a different alpha gray for each skin. I probably should've done that but I didn't.