DC Designs Northrop P-61C Black Widow RELEASED

[MrZippy]

Great paint, as always, Jan! Dean, your plane flies like the proverbial "Bat outta Hell" More fun than a barrel o' monkeys!

[DC1973]

Does the model work with spec files, I did not see any in the package?

The main texture folder contains a single specular that was applied to the fuselage, wings and booms, plus two Fresnel ramps: fresnel_ramp_2 is for the body work, the other is for the canopy glass and gunsight. Reflections, metallicity and other visuals are created using these and texture sheet alphas. Easy if you say it quickly enough

[DC1973]

Dean, your plane flies like the proverbial "Bat outta Hell" More fun than a barrel o' monkeys!

Thanks!

[jankees]

The main texture folder contains a single specular that was applied to the fuselage, wings and booms, plus two Fresnel ramps: fresnel_ramp_2 is for the body work, the other is for the canopy glass and gunsight. Reflections, metallicity and other visuals are created using these and texture sheet alphas. Easy if you say it quickly enough

so if I were to make individual spec files for all textures that would not have any effect?

[DC1973]

Replied to your PM Jan

[warchild]

Here ya go Jan..

[jankees]

still playing with the paintkit:

bit more dirt on the wings, and bare metal fuel tanks:
jk4216

jk4217

[docjohnson]

Outstanding!

[huub vink]

You know I like them dirty

Cheers,
Huub

[MrZippy]

Hey, Jan, I'm still flyin' the "black" one. You know what they say about that, Right?

[DC1973]

still playing with the paintkit:

bit more dirt on the wings, and bare metal fuel tanks:

Awesome work Jankees!

A small note: another texture artist contacted me to tell me I had neglected to map the control surface lowers to a separate texture. This was an oversight on my part, due to neither the Reporter or the P-61C carrying anything other than one-colour paints during their service lifetime. The P-61B was the airplane that bore many different schemes.

I am hoping to update the model in the future to give a broader scope to repaints, and will post a notice here when I get the work done. Hugely busy at the moment though so I'm not sure when I'll get around to it.

[jankees]

another suggestion could be to map all cowl flaps. Some P-61B's had different colors on different flaps.
Uploading a few more paints..
"Night Take-off", of the 548th NFS, based on Iwo Jima:
jk4360

"Cooper's Snooper", also of the 548th:
jk4347
I've added bare metal tanks, and darker interior textures.

and "Little Audrey" of the 422nd NFS, based in France and Belgium in 1944.
jk4349

I know, they're all P-61B's.

[DC1973]

another suggestion could be to map all cowl flaps. Some P-61B's had different colors on different flaps.

They're mapped Jankees, inside and out - GearandDoors texture I think

[K5083]

I know that this is a dead thread, but I only recently downloaded the P-61C and encountered the "bouncing" problem discussed here a couple of years ago. As I don't see any reference to the fix that I found, I am posting my experience here for future visitors.

I installed the P-61C in P3Dv4.5. When parked, it would skitter and slide around the ramp. It was even worse when I had it parked using Where Are My Aircraft and viewed it from another aircraft. It would launch itself hundreds of feet into the sky and gyrate wildly. Quite annoying. It happened with no other airplane.

Having heard that this kind of thing can be caused by a contact point error, I opened the aircraft.cfg and checked it. One value in the contact points jumped out at me as being obviously wrong. The damping value (10th parameter) for the nose wheel is set to 12.980. The actual allowable range of this parameter is supposed to be from 0 to 1! Since damping relates to how much the airplane bounces when landing, I reasoned that such an outsize value might be bouncing the plane violently into the air, or at least causing it to jump around.

So I reset the value from 12.980 to 0.980, which is consistent with the values for the main landing gear. Specifically, go to the first "point" line under [contact_points], which in the stock aircraft.cfg is:

point.0 = 1, -7.261, 0.000, -7.400, 2000, 0, 2.75, 45.000, 0.148, 1.863, 12.980, 6.000, 2.500, 0, 175.0, 190.0

and change that 12.980 to 0.980.

So far this seems to have completely cured the problem and the P-61 sits nicely on the ramp like any other plane.

It's hard for me to believe this wasn't spotted during the work that was done to cure this issue a couple of years ago, but I don't see a reference to it in this thread, and the latest version of the P-61C available in the Library appears to still have the incorrect value in the contact point.

Anyway, I hope this helps other late-to-the-party downloaders enjoy this excellent airplane.

August

[FlyingsCool]

I know that this is a dead thread, but I only recently downloaded the P-61C and encountered the "bouncing" problem discussed here a couple of years ago. As I don't see any reference to the fix that I found, I am posting my experience here for future visitors.

I installed the P-61C in P3Dv4.5. When parked, it would skitter and slide around the ramp. It was even worse when I had it parked using Where Are My Aircraft and viewed it from another aircraft. It would launch itself hundreds of feet into the sky and gyrate wildly. Quite annoying. It happened with no other airplane.

Having heard that this kind of thing can be caused by a contact point error, I opened the aircraft.cfg and checked it. One value in the contact points jumped out at me as being obviously wrong. The damping value (10th parameter) for the nose wheel is set to 12.980. The actual allowable range of this parameter is supposed to be from 0 to 1! Since damping relates to how much the airplane bounces when landing, I reasoned that such an outsize value might be bouncing the plane violently into the air, or at least causing it to jump around.

So I reset the value from 12.980 to 0.980, which is consistent with the values for the main landing gear. Specifically, go to the first "point" line under [contact_points], which in the stock aircraft.cfg is:

point.0 = 1, -7.261, 0.000, -7.400, 2000, 0, 2.75, 45.000, 0.148, 1.863, 12.980, 6.000, 2.500, 0, 175.0, 190.0

and change that 12.980 to 0.980.

So far this seems to have completely cured the problem and the P-61 sits nicely on the ramp like any other plane.

It's hard for me to believe this wasn't spotted during the work that was done to cure this issue a couple of years ago, but I don't see a reference to it in this thread, and the latest version of the P-61C available in the Library appears to still have the incorrect value in the contact point.

Anyway, I hope this helps other late-to-the-party downloaders enjoy this excellent airplane.

August

Nice catch

[Dev One]

Interesting....all my versions of the aircraft.cfg show that value as 1.98.
Keith

[FlyingsCool]

Interesting....all my versions of the aircraft.cfg show that value as 1.98.
Keith

I just downloaded it from here, and it was set at 12.98