Static Aircraft Model Maker

[Mick]

Has anyone tried Static Aircraft Model Maker on CFS-2 aircraft to see if it works on them?

For that matter, has anyone tried it on FS8 or FS9 aircraft? If so, are you pleased with the results?

[ian elliot]

It can be a bit hit or miss, most FS9 aircraft convert fine, i used Kirk Olssen's F86 in my Wittmund scenery as a gate guardian, showed up fine but the tailplane was missing, but you have to look real close to see. FS8 aircraft can be more problematic, not much success im afraid, have'nt try'd CFS2 so i could'nt comment. have ago and see what happens.
Its an ok program for personnel use, but if you want to release the scenery to the public, its good manners to ask permissino from the original designer, and with the great dedicated ai from John Young, Mike Pearson ect, im using it less and less.
just my thoughts, cheers ian

[Mick]

Thanks Ian,

I'll definitely give it a try. I want to drastically reduce the amount of AI when I rebuild my sims, but I still want to see airplanes parked at my favorite airports. AI is such a resource hog, especially if most of it uses planes that weren't meant for it, like the majority of my late-40s and early-50s traffic.

The developer mentions some possible issues with FS8 and FS9 planes and suggests some possible remedies. No mention is made of CFS-2 planes, and the documentation refers specifically to FS8 and FS9 aircraft. But so many CFS-2 planes work so well in FS9 that I thought the program might work on them.

I still think it might, so I'll experiment. First, I thought I'd see if anyone else had already done so.

CFS-2 planes interest me for this purpose because in my Golden Wings there's been a bit of a time shift in certain parts of the world, and World War Two is in progress. Bill Lyons' Marivellas Islands that came with the Classic Goose package is one such place, as are the Battles of Midway and Coral Sea sceeries. The Solomon Islands is another, where the scenery that came with the Corsair package inspired me to backdate Henderson Field on Guadalcanal (I will never think of it as Honiara International Airport!) and to add some very basic Japanese bases at Buka and Choiseul. I also put a couple carriers and battleships in or near The Slot - Paul Clawson's CV-2 Lexington disguised as CV-3 Saratoga (since the Lex was at the bottom of the Coral Sea by the time the Solomon campaign started), his CV-1 Langley posing as a flush deck Japanese light carrier, and his BB-42 Idaho in dual roles as the USS Washington in one place and elsewhere a Japanese battlewagon. It's all very basic, almost crude, but it was fun to set up and fly in.

I have no plans to release anything. I haven't done and don't intend to do anything so elaborate or detailed as to merit release. Otherwise I would've released it back when I made it, before my recent hiatus from the hobby. And I haven't kept track of what scenery libraries I've used, so at this point I couldn't write proper documentation if I wanted to.

[Butcherbird17]

Mick,
If you want a true Uss Washington, you might want to download NCGent's Uss North Carolina.
It would need to be converted to a scenery bgl file, but would really look the part.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...North+Carolina

I'm using her in FSX and painted her up as Washington to be used in the Solomon's scenery for that sim.
As for using cfs2 aircraft I couldn't help you there, but as Ian posted do a search for John Young and Mike Pearson.
You will be quit surprised as to what they have done for the AI world. There AI models are very detailed and good
on frames.
Another option to convert some older models to scenery bgl files would be ModelconverterX. I have used it to convert
FSX's Edwards AFB to be used in fs9. I have some pics of Edwards in fs9 posted here:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...-Here!!!/page5

Hope this helps.


Joe

[ian elliot]

One thing to consider when using non-ai aircraft as ai is how many texture sheets are in the aircraft texture folder, loading up textures can be a cause of slowdown in your system. Some designers like Ito and Mike stone only use three or four textures in their models that makes them great for ai, even though they wer'nt designed for that use originally. You can also remove textures for an aircraft you want use as ai, textures you cant see from the outside like cockpit, gear well and engine textures ect, that will load it up a little faster also.
cheers ian

PS, let us know how you get on, i'd be intrested myself as to how CFS2 models convert.

[Mick]

Thanks Joe & Ian,

Joe, that's a good idea about the North Carolina. Not familiar with ModelconverterX, but I'll check it out.

Nice Edwards scenery! In my time frame I have many of the early rocket and jet experimentals on the ramp at Edwards, and a few test examples of some of the then very latest service types like the F-100 and F-102.

I've been looking at Mike Pearson's recent AI planes and they might just inspire me to set up a third, ultra-modern installation with a time frame around the early sixties. Planes like his B-52s and F-104s don't quite fit into my "modern" sim's time frame of the late 40s and early 50s. I think I just might do that once I get my pre-WW2 and post-WW2 sims set up and running properly. I'm not familiar with John Young's planes. I guess I'd better get familiar with them!

Ian, I've long favored Mike Stone's and Ito-San's planes for AI for exactly those reasons. I have also made AI versions of some more complex planes and stripped the VCs from them, though there are conflicting theories about whether that really does any good. Some say it saves the sim from loading the VC, and others say the sim wouldn't load the VC anyway because it doesn't get called up until the first time you cycle through the views, which never happens with an AI plane. I have no idea who's right.

I'll let you know how the CFS2 planes convert, but it won't be right away. As always, time is a factor, and my hobby time is very limited.

[expat]

Planes like his B-52s and F-104s don't quite fit into my "modern" sim's time frame of the late 40s and early 50s.

LOL! I have these set up - using both static and AI - but under the heading of "Cold War Nostalgia". I am 55, so what is considered to be "modern" etc I guess is all relative. There are quite few youngsters here who would, born in the 1990's, could only regard the '60 as "ancient" and who would naturally expect an "ultra modern" sim to include e.g. F-22's, F-35's and B-2's !

[Mick]

Heh heh,

I'm 65 and my "FS1954: A Half Century of Flight" depicts the world more or less as it was during my childhood. It lets me watch and fly the planes I saw going overhead as they arrived and departed Bradley Field (now Bradley International Airport), Westover Air Force Base (now Air Reserve Base), Barnes Airport in Westfield and the late, lamented Springfield Airport (home of the Granvilles and the Gee Bee racers.)

Golden Wings gives me a taste of the days I was born too late for, when wings were upper or lower, engines were round, and tailwheels were in the back where they belong.

I still live in the middle of a small triangle with its points at Westover, Barnes and Northampton-LaFleur, with Bradley not far away, so if I want to see the boring and soulless aircraft of today, all I have to do is step outside and look up.

But there is that gap around the sixties when the Century Series and their contemporaries were active, so a third sim built for that time period might be in order. But first I have to get GW and FS54 properly established in my present confuter, and that looks like it will require rebuilding them almost from scratch. I copied them from my old rig, but they didn't handle the transition very well.

Alas, that seems more like work than fun, which is what drove me away from this hobby for the past couple years. I think it will happen fairly slowly, lest I burn myself out again.

[expat]

I am with you. I often forget that one of the many key attractions of FS for me is the history. Though I have lived in England a long time I grew up not too far from you in Litchfield County CT (college in Worcester MA) and as a kid remember the ANG Delta Daggers at Bradley and my dad (an aviation nut) taking me to the Bradley Museum and crawling up as far as I could into the guts of a weathered B-47 - before the hurricane wrecked a lot of the collection.

All things nostalgic seem to revolve around one's childhood years. My own military aviation interest (as a student pilot IRL I do enjoy simming current GA) starts in the very late '30's and starts to fade after the end of the Viet Nam war. Fabulous 50's and 60's are so rich in variation, technological evolution and color. Right now I am on a heavy Korea War kick (FSX) flying F4U's, Spads and Panthers on and off moving straight deck Essex boats. Wow.

[Mick]

Ah, yes! I've had many interesting moments at the old Bradley Air Museum, now the New England Air Museum. I fondly recall one day back in the 1970s when a friend, since gone west, and I stopped our motorcycles by the storage yard and crawled inside the hulk of a Burnelli Liftmaster, where the thicket of ribs, struts and braces showed us why the lifting fuselage concept never caught on. (If you ever had to fly a load of anvils, the Burnelli was your plane, but for anything bigger than the proverbial breadbox, you'd be better off with a Twin Beech. And forget about passengers unless they were a troupe of dwarves.)

I remember the tornado - it was a tornado, and a big one, not a "mere" hurricane! - and the devastation it wrought to the collection. Some of the planes that were wrecked can never be replaced.

If you went to the museum today you wouldn't recognize the place. Heck, if you'd gone there twenty years ago you wouldn't have recognized the place. And if you went back now after being away since that visit, you wouldn't recognize it again.

http://www.neam.org/

We had significant help from the good folks at the museum when David and I were researching our Springfield Airport scenery and Granville Brothers Gee Bee aircraft.

[Mick]

OK, the experiment has been done and the result is in. Static Aircraft Model Maker will not work on CFS-2 aircraft.

Finding out was easier than I expected. If you select a CFS-2 model, a box pops with an error message: "This is not an FS8 or FS9 model."

I'd thought that I might have to make the model, select a paint, make a BGL, place it in a scenery, then find that it didn't display properly in some way. But no - just an immediate error message right at the beginning of the process.

So far I've just learned how to make static models and I've been making up a selection of them. I haven't made up and BGLs yet or tried placing any static planes in the sim. But those parts seem simple enough.

[Mick]

Here's another update for those who asked. I've done some fiddling, made a few static aircraft models and learned a few things.

As mentioned above, Static Model Maker won't process a CFS-2 model. The attempt just produces an immediate error message, "Not An FS8 or FS9 Model."

Missing parts can be remedied. According to the instructions, the program is coded to utilize only the important animations as they are set up in stock FS9 aircraft. If a model shows up with parts missing, that supposedly means that the modeler set up some animations in a non-standard way. There must be a bit more to it than that, because so far, the only plane I've had show up with missing parts was a stock FS9 aircraft; the Ford Trimotor showed with its elevators and rudder missing.

The fix is easy. Junk the failed model and start over. For the Animations Included selection, instead of the default "Auto" button, check "All." (Or of you're up for some trial and error, check "Custom" and do some trial and error testing.) I just checked "All" and the Ford appeared with all its parts intact.

I also found that some static models will lock up FS, requiring that he program be closed with the Task Manager. This happens as soon as the offending static model comes into view on the monitor. The instructions mention that this will happen with some aircraft, and that no harm is done other than the need to close and restart FS. What the instructions fail to mention is that if you don't delete the offending static model, the same thing will keep happening until you do.

This glitch means that you should test each static model in the sim immediately upon creating and placing it. If you make a bunch of models for a scenery location and then check them out in the sim all at once, and one (or more) of them freezes up the sim, you'll have a lot of tedious trial and error to figure out which one(s) caused the problem.

I also found that making a library and using Object Manager to create and place static models didn't work out. There isn't a way to make thumbnails for the library (at least I couldn't figure out how to do it), and selecting a particular aircraft by its file name didn't work out at all - I would select a certain plane from the list, and find that Object Manager had created the static model from a completely different aircraft, apparently chosen at random.

Fortunately, there's no need to make libraries or to use Object Manager (or EZ Scenery or anything else) to make and place static models, because the functionality built into Static Model Maker is simple and precise. I should've just gone with that to begin with.

So that's what I've learned about Static Model Maker. I seem to have the hang of it now, and while it's not perfect, it's very good indeed and I'm happy with the results I've achieved so far.

[ian elliot]

Glad your getting the hang of it Mick, sounds like your having fun, i cant see why you cant make a library, it sounds like each model isnt given a unique GUID number, every object used in placement programs needs one. not sure what proggie your using to generate a library but most placement programs have there own, Im spoilt, i use EZ which is payware so i dont have these problems, once you've used it you never look back , as for thumbnails, just take a normal screenshot, as if your posting here, usurally BMP format, just resize it to the required dimensions, again your placment program should tell you what dimensions and where to place the BMP.

I did get your PM from last week , hope you didnt think im rude in not replying but this is the first time for what seems like age's iv been able to sit down with a mug of coffee and see whats going on.
cheers ian

[Mick]

As it turns out, making and placing static models directly with SMM is so simple that making libraries for other programs would just add an extra step. Actually, several extra steps - first, creating the library in SMM, then importing it into another placement program, then using that program to do what could've been done in one step with just SMM.

Besides being less demanding of resources, it's even easier than adding AI, and since most AI is just sitting there most of the time, it looks just as good. Of course, one might still want some movement in the scene, so there's always a place for AI.

Alas, this is easy and fun, and therefore it's distracting me from the main task at hand, which is to re-install my two FS9 sims, and perhaps a third one, and get them set up and running properly. (sigh)

[Mick]

If you're placing static aircraft at an airport scenery that includes an exclusion, the exclusion might exclude your static aircraft. This can happen even if other kinds of static objects can be added and not get excluded.

The solution is simple - make a scenery folder for Static Aircraft and keep it on a higher level in the scenery hierarchy than the airport is. One Static Aircraft folder can serve any number of airports, so long as you give each static aircraft bgl file a unique name.

One feature that I suppose is common to other scenery object placement programs is that the location parameters you can set include altitude above ground level. So, for example, you could park a helicopter on the roof of a building that isn't hardened for aircraft landings. I used this facility to place a hang glider (in the colors of my old U.P. Dragonfly II) a thousand feet over the ridge that overlooks my home, where I spent many a pleasant hour soaring back in the 70s.

Now I'll really have to set up a sim that's set in the 1960s and 1970s, since hang gliders are anachronistic in both Golden Wings and Flight Simulator 1954.

Seems like every new discovery leads to a new project. When will this hobby start to feel more like fun and less like work? (sigh)

[leuen]

Your solution seems to be interesting. Unfortunately it doesn't work for native CFS2 ships. SMM doesn't recognize the sim.cfg file. However if it's replaced by f.i. ship_big.cfg file out of FS9 it will be converted correctly.

Bernard

[mmann]

Rather than using Static Aircraft Model Maker, I use ModelConverterX. I tried it on the Mitsubishi A6M2 Model 21 fighter for CFS2 and ModelConverterX was able to import the aircraft. After importing the CFS2 aircraft model; ModelConverterX allows you to export it as a FS9 scenery model.

[Mick]

Rather than using Static Aircraft Model Maker, I use ModelConverterX. I tried it on the Mitsubishi A6M2 Model 21 fighter for CFS2 and ModelConverterX was able to import the aircraft. After importing the CFS2 aircraft model; ModelConverterX allows you to export it as a FS9 scenery model.

Very interesting! Thanks for the tip! Since I've been fiddling with static aircraft models I've been surprised to find how many warplanes are available as FS8 or FS9 models, but here are still a few that I could only find as CFS2 aircraft. Next time I want one of them as a static plane I'll use this method.

[Desert Rat]

If MDlconvX preserves the LOD's (I don't know if it does), the CFS2 planes would be good for statics and good on frames. I would suggest you search the downloads here and get the B24 guy overhauls as he de-mirrors the textures allowing for better repaint, search here also for de-mirrored paints. He also did a nice pack of Corsairs, etc which might work, engines on/off, wings folded/unfolded, etc.

Jamie

[Mick]

If MDlconvX preserves the LOD's (I don't know if it does), the CFS2 planes would be good for statics and good on frames. I would suggest you search the downloads here and get the B24 guy overhauls as he de-mirrors the textures allowing for better repaint, search here also for de-mirrored paints. He also did a nice pack of Corsairs, etc which might work, engines on/off, wings folded/unfolded, etc.

Jamie

Thanks for the tip.

Since I started looking around, I've been pleasantly surprised to see that almost every significant WW2 type has been done as an FS8 or FS9 model. (I guess that really shouldn't have surprised me.) I may not have to convert any CFS2 planes at all. At most, only a few.

Before I found out that I couldn't convert them with SMM I downloaded all of the B24 Guy's overhauls,and a lot of repaints for them. Now I won't need them for scenery but I will probably fly them! They will fit right into some of the WW2 bases I plan to populate with static aircraft.