SOH A-26 Invader FSX Converted Files Download

[Bomber_12th]

Many thanks John for more great work on something other than a Mustang!! I shall now go and play with the paint kit.....!

BTW, you said it is now FSX-native; is it possible for me to make bump maps and specular shine files?

DaveQ

Hi Dave,

It is FSX native, but there are no bump maps or spec maps assigned to the materials, so right now there isn't support for those, even if they were to be made. My plan was to wait until larger-resolution textures could be made (doubling the size of the original texures), and then bump and spec maps would be made/assigned then. That is something I set out to do, almost from the get-go several months back, but I could never get that work finished, so I finally set my sights on just doing the most basic FSX conversion, for now, so that everyone would finally have a true FSX version (despite no bump maps or spec maps). Unfortunately it could take me a while to complete something like that.

So...

I'm thinking that between taking some time today and some time tomorrow, I will try and create some good bump and spec maps from just the existing resolution textures/templates and assign those options to the exterior materials. I'll make the spec maps "neutral", so that they can be used with any repaint, without any side-effects that comes with making spec maps unique to one individual paint scheme. Of course everyone will also be free to make their own spec maps using the already existing paintkit, if they wish.

Still, for the time being, if you're interested, please do still download the above files, in order to fly the aircraft, problem free, in FSX. When I do have the specular and bump mapped versions ready, the files will just be updated and will be able to be installed over the existing files, again. If I can get that done within today/tomorrow, those will be the files I upload to the library.

[danyboy21]

Fantastic

Many Thanks John

[Fireball6]

Thanks for your efforts John - very well done, like to fly this great addon in FSX in all her beauty

[Bomber_12th]

Unfortunately I had forgotten just how many texture files there are that cover the exterior surfaces, and why I got bogged down in the first place, months ago. Between the aircraft's fuselage, wings, tail, cowlings and nacelles, there are 7 textures in all. That means that in order to have both spec maps and bump maps, the aircraft would have 21 textures, just to cover the surface of the aircraft. The only way to alleviate that would be to re-map the aircraft, but then of course old repaints would no longer work.

I figure I still will go forth with the bump maps, but will leave the spec maps out, with the specular remaining in control through the model.

[italoc]

Thank you very much, Bomber_12
Italo

[Bomber_12th]

Also, I was reminded that a couple of the most amazing repaints produced for this aircraft in FS9, by Damian Radice, were made to be applied to the early gun nose variant that I released with the "Margie" repaint I did, so it is important to me to get that early gun nose variant reproduced for FSX as well.

Enjoying some time with one of Damian's repaints:

[Dimus]

This looks great John.

We have one of these in Tatoi, my club's base, owned by a local shipowner and TV channel owner. It is in flying condition but rarely flies. I might try a repaint for this. Does this model also include a multigun nose version like this one? Correction: I now see in your first post that indeed a gun nose is included.

[bushpilot]

Oooo it's so purty! Thank you for an amazing job

[TuFun]

Thanks a bunch John... awesome work!!!

[Daube]

Thanks a lot for this conversion John !!

[DaveWG]

Thanks for doing the conversion John, much appreciated.
And thanks to Milton & everyone else involved in the original release.

[langereis]

Hi,

Very beautiful plane, but I can't stear it while taxien on the runway.

What to do?


Kind regards,
langereis

[Ferry_vO]

We have one of these in Tatoi, my club's base, owned by a local shipowner and TV channel owner.

Guns and passengers..? interesting combo!

The (Formerly?) Swedish 'Sugerland Express' has a similar configuration.

Anyway, thanks John!

[Ferry_vO]

Very beautiful plane, but I can't stear it while taxien on the runway.

What to do?

Try the differential brakes or using seperate throttles as the plane, like the original, has a castoring nosewheel.

[Daube]

I have just made a test flight. I have to confess that I didn't remember this plane being so good. Perhaps I had tried an early version or something like this, but in my memory this plane had a basic and non-interractive (not clickable) virtual cockpit.
Here instead, I got into a fully (almost) functionnal VC with everything I needed ! What a pleasant surprise !

The flight around Bowerman was great and the plane behaved quite nicely. I would simply have five remarks:

1- I could not start the engines. Perhaps I need to RTFM, but basically I tried to switch them on exactely like in the B-17 or P-47 Accusim
- Batteries ON
- Props RPM 70%
- Mixture full rich
- magnetos BOTH
- Enegizer ON (here I get no sounds or anything like that, so I don't know if it was really working or not...)
- Starter ON (no noise, no reaction, just like if I had no more batteries... nevertheless, I had Volts and the nav lights were still working...
I had to cheat and use the keyboard Magnetos commands: M key, then '+' maintained. Both engines started successfully in this way.


2- On final, the last crank of flaps seemed to disrupt my lift... but this one I'll have to check again, perhaps it's just my speed that dropped a bit too much.

3- Cabin lights (not istrument lights) didn't work, but perhaps they work only at night ?

4- taxying was fine once I understood how to use the separate throttles. Was it like this in the real plane as well ? (no front wheel steering and no differential brakes?) EDIT: ah ok, answer is right above my post :D

5- the windows are a bit too milky, as you can see in the screenshot below. Are the INSIDE windows linked to a texture or not ? If yes, then I can solve it simply by editing the Alpha Channel myself. If not, some material edition would be needed.



A great plane in any case, I think I'm going to fly this one quite a lot. Also, I think I will add the freeware 3D landing lights too, that should be fun
Thanks again John for the conversion, and thanks to the SOH team who did the original plane