Frosted Canopy Glass

[Johnny]

~S~ All,

smilo, I know how you feel, I am almost what 9 mph faster then you are. But in fact you are catching up. Lets say you were born and spent a day in the hospital. It took your father a hour to drive you home. 96 % of your life was spent in the hospital and 4 % in your dads car. Now when you drive home, if it takes an hour, it is only .00018561829 % of you life and .0001826484 % of my life and that my friend is why you should always let the oldest person in the car drive. Or, in your case truck.

I guess when it gets to zero you are at light speed, when I get there I will turn my flashlight on and see what happens.

Later,

Johnny:isadizzy:

[smilo]

w33,
I am wondering which A-20 you are using.
I was able to find two, but settled on the RAAF version with the narrow fuselage.
granted, the one pictured above has opening bomb bay doors, but the "frosted" windows and the out of proportion fuselage are, shall we say, distracting.

Hubba,
...redo Taifun, build a Harvard MkII and IV, fine tune the Jeep, not to mention all of the other unmentioned Projects before the A-20 sure looks like over a year to me. but I've been wrong before.
BTW, just to torment the others, beta testing the Jeep yesterday was a treat. she definitely puts Vehicles on a whole new level.
I am anxious to see the model with the 50 cal mounted.
thank you for the opportunity to beta test.

Johnny,
I heard that there was a mathematical explanation for the speeding up of time with aging, but I don't know the formula.
your explanation puts it into perspective. thanks
I guess that's why those slug bait raisins behind the wheel seem to be going so slow....they think they're going like a bat out of hell.:costumes:
careful with that flashlight, it might implode.

[winslow33]

I can't really remember what plane it is or where I got it, but it has opening bomb bay doors and frosted glass.

[smilo]

look here for A-20.zip
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/master_f.../cfs-aircraft/

it is painted for the Pacific Theater
change the sound.cfg to alias P47d for the time being
the panel bites, but you can Alias to a P47d until you get something better.
I just finished changing the textures to the European Theater and renamed it A-20C Boston
I'm still working on the panel.

[Ivan]

Do you all consider opening bomb bay doors important? I was debating on putting those on the B-25C. Problem here is that properly done, it takes me MUCH closer to the AF99 limits and also Aircraft Animator can't seem to handle 90 degrees of bomb bay door movement (Via Spoilers).

I was working on it earlier today and gave up on version one for lack of information!

- Ivan.

[smilo]

Do you all consider opening bomb bay doors important? I was debating on putting those on the B-25C. Problem here is that properly done, it takes me MUCH closer to the AF99 limits and also Aircraft Animator can't seem to handle 90 degrees of bomb bay door movement (Via Spoilers).

I was working on it earlier today and gave up on version one for lack of information!

- Ivan.

personally, it is a nice visual touch, but it is not that important.
frankly, when I am making a bomb run, under fire, the last thing I am looking at is the bomb bay doors. needless to say, I've got more important things to do.
I rarely use spot/chase view, especially in combat. it's great for stepping back and having a look at a formation, a parking location or taking a screen shot, but that's about it.
IMHO, save your resources for something more important.

[humbles]

The usual etiquette of a bomb run was always to say to players bomb doors open while playing in a multi player game.This did not always mean that bomb bay doors did open . I know in other flight simulator games we have been using the slash keys now for a number of years to open and close these doors , the most recent flight sim has a mission what has been converted to drop large bombs

[Ivan]

I just finished putting bomb bay doors on the Mitchell. Problem is that it screws up some of the default AF99 gluing so that there is now a bleed in the cockpit area, so maybe this was not such a good idea.

AF99 default glue (viewing planes) uses the "Center of Gravity" of components to determine the axis between the pieces in order to create a plane separating them. The problem is that when I added about 8 more polygons to the mid fuselage, it threw the CoG of the middle fuselage down a bit further which inclined the viewing plane.... (By my best guess.) Perhaps I can balance things out by adding some more detail to the nose landing gear which would also move the CoG of the nose lower. (Really! No kidding!)

:costumes:

In order to get the spoilers to have an effect, I had to modify the AIR file so that spoilers actually would work. (For anyone who is interested, the controlling variable is in Record 320 - The Spoiler Angle. It doesn't matter what else is set elsewhere in the AIR file.)

It took me quite a while to find a good picture of a B-25 with its bomb bay doors open to check the angles. This morning, I found that the bomb bay doors had 4 rows of large circular perforations and not the simple average framing.... The doors just got retextured! ....But in order to put circular textures on an angled door, you need to change the ratio of vertical to horizontal scaling, which means that the textures need to be remapped again. Also, the choices of scaling are limited because circles can be 5 pixels in diameter or 7 pixels in diameter but not something in between. Same applies to spacing between circles. Either 2 or 3.



I also found that it took me 16 extra polygons instead of 8 because the doors span two components. The dividing line I picked for the aft fuselage did not take the doors into account. In order to move the component boundary, I need to recontour the aft fuselage (probably about 60-80 polygons and make sure all the other stuff such as the stabilizers and such still line up!

:isadizzy:

I think I will be taking them out for simplicity's sake. For resource limitations, I can't put in bomb bays anyway. I am already at 1178 out of a possible 1200 polygons, so there is not much room to adjust things. I wanted to use the left over polygons to adjust the shape of the engine cowls.

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

Hey Smilo,

If you are working on a A-20 panel, what are you using for instruments? I have a couple issues with panels at this point:

1. My SBD has a total of 5 fuel tanks, and there isn't a proper selector among the stock CFS gauges.

2. The Corsairs have one HUGE main tank and there isn't a gauge that registers that high that looks right.

3. The manifold pressure on Japanese fighters is measured in millimeters of boost, and there obviously isnt a gauge for that.

4. Does anyone use a WEP time gauge for those engines the blow up if WEP time exceeds 310 seconds???

My daughter want some smilies so here goes:
:costumes::redf:

- Ivan.

[smilo]

hello Ivan,
at present I am modifying a P47d panel and using stock gauges, just to get it going.
1.don't know about a 5 way selector, but I will look. got a pic?
2.same with the Corsair. have you seen anything close? got a picture?
3.I have a metric boost gauge, but it is in German. could always clean up the face.
4.I am not aware of anyone using the WEP Timer. heck, we can't even get WEP to work in the stock 190.

---------------------------------
nice group of smilies

[Ivan]

Hi Smilo,

Regarding the SBD, I am not concerned what the gauge looks like as long as it allows me to select between two wing tanks per side and a fuselage tank. My guess is that I will be forced to reduce it to one wing tank per side and pretend there is an automatic fuel transfer pump.

The Corsair has a 237 gallon fuselage tank. I believe the gauge for the Thunderbolt is about the same capacity, but it also reads for the reserve tank and there isn't one on the Corsair. Corsair only has a gauge for the Fuselage main tank. The wing tanks if installed have no gauge.

The German gauge isn't really metric. I have a discussion going at another board regarding what exactly one "ata" really means. Near as I can tell, 1.42 Ata is a pretty common limit on German aircraft. This works out to about 41.0 to about 41.7 inches of Mercury.

The WEP gauge is only useful for those aircraft that have "supercharger" WEP. With water, it runs out in 5 minutes. With water-methanol, it runs out in 10 minutes. Both have no ill effects when the additive runs out. With supercharger WEP such as on the P-51D, after 310 seconds cumulative time, your engine gets toasted. This is not realistic. Using the B-25 as an example (I wonder why ;-), Take-Off power is available for a nominal 5 minutes (300 seconds), but as long as the Cylinder Head Temperature can be kept below 500 degrees, no damage is done. If the limit is reached, power is reduced until the CHT falls. At that point WEP may be used again until CHT temperature rises to the limit again.

Regarding the FW 190A, I believe that folks simply did not do their research completely. Water-methanol WAS tried on mid-production A models. Power for a BMW 801D-2 was 1700 HP Military and 2100 WEP with MW-50. On a late BMW 801D-2, Military power was 1700-1750 HP depending on source, but WEP with direct fuel injection into the supercharger as an anti-detonant allowed for about 2050-2100 HP "for as long as the emergency lasts" at 1.65 Ata boost. In other words, "C-3 Einspritzung" as this was called, was useable as long as the aircraft had fuel. It would raise the fuel consumption to a ridiculous level, but was useable as "maximum continous power". The Germans actually tested this system on a few FW 190As for HOURS of continuous use. They could not guarantee that every aircraft was capable of this level of power and its duration, but every aircraft in the test achieved 2050 HP or better and lasted the duration of the test.

The FW 190A-8 carried either an MW-50 tank behind the cockpit or an extra fuel tank in that location. The folks at M$ put in the extra fuel tank but apparently plumbed the aircraft to use MW-50 which isn't there....
:costumes:

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

Darn, I forgot to comment about the screenshots.

The first shows the bleed of the cockpit floor through the roof from slightly aft. The second shows the angle of the opened bomb bay doors. The third shows the pattern of lightening holes (?) on the door.

The hole pattern makes for an interesting discussion:
The size of the door is the same as the bottom of the fuselage of the aircraft or reasonably close to it. The rotation angle should be greater than the 68 degrees I used but I wanted to avoid bleeds from the top through the wings.

I found there was space for 4 rows of 14 holes each in the door. The spacing isn't quite constant, but it's close. When I first textured the door, I just spaced them evenly and found the length of the door required 17 holes. When I reduced this down to 14 holes per row, I found that the door wasn't quite as long as I originally drew. Even when I added some spacing between the holes, it was still short. It did not need to span two components, so I was able to save 8 polygons by removing the aft parts of each door section. I left in the original Bomb bay outline but changed it to gray.

- Ivan.

[Johnny]

~S~ Ivan,

I am just a little confused. Are you working on a Silent But Deadly "AIR"-craft? I hope it is Allied, I do not think I would like to go on a bombing run in it.

j.:isadizzy::greenf:

[Ivan]

Actually, it is sposta be a "Slow But Deadly" or Scout Bomber Douglas. It is another one of my partially completed projects. (SBD-3) This aircraft actually uses about 1195 of 1200 possible polygons in AF99.

- Ivan.

[Johnny]

~S~ Ivan,

Boy, am I relieved. How about a STOL fighter and maybe I can use it on an aircraft carrier?

J.:isadizzy:

[Ivan]

I believe that the FM-2 qualifies as a STOL and is usable on a Jeep carrier. If that fails, try a Gladiator or a Sopwith Camel!

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

A funny thing happened on the way to the computer:

Earlier this evening, I was testing full power dives with the B-25C from 35,000 feet. Nevermind that the plane can't get that high. Initial tests showed 740+ mph TAS and dropping slightly before collision with terrain.

I did my changes to the AIR file and retested. The new terminal velocity was about 550 mph which to me is reasonable. I then did a check to make sure that the maximum level speed had not changed as a result. 313 mph at 12,500 feet. Nothing changed.

I then throttled back to see if I could reproduce the cruise output from the SEFC I found on the B-25C. Power was too high as was fuel consumption. The family had to go out, so I left the plane cruising and went out. Several hours later, I came back to the machine and the B-25 had bellied in on the ocean (which is landable). Total distance flown was somewhere around 150-180 miles. I haven't done the exact math to be sure. I guess trim settings are pretty neutral....

- Ivan.

[Johnny]

~S~ Ivan,

I am sure smilo will say that is close enough for him.

j:costumes:

[Ivan]

Hello All,

I was doing a search earlier today and came across this thread.
I did not find what I was looking for, but the content was still interesting.
So many things have changed since the last post in this thread.
A few of the old timers are still here. Some folks were just passing through.
Some of the old folks have left but hopefully not gone from this world
The Little Girl who wanted me to add Smileys to one of the posts is now on a college visit.
She will graduate high school this year and go off to college in the Fall.

My projects described here have evolved very little though.
The B-25C Mitchell has finally gotten a paint job and is now about to get some custom built Gauges for its instrument panel.
It is progressing very slowly toward its release.
There have been many other intervening projects that were not even a thought back then that have gone the full cycle from concept to release.
I now know how to do more things and perhaps because of that, projects take longer to complete and I am often less satisfied with the results.

One of the unfortunate things about being in the CFS Forums is that screenshots tend to disappear with regularity.
Here are a few screenshots that illustrate some of the things that were described in the old posts.
Some things have changed. These have pretty much stayed the same.

- Ivan.