Released! Spitfire Mk IXc for Microsoft Flight Simulator - Page 11
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Thread: Released! Spitfire Mk IXc for Microsoft Flight Simulator

  1. #251
    Hey Doug,

    Here are some stenciling photos which may be of use:

    Different restoration (N959RT), but shows the types of stencils. Details like this are always slightly different from restoration to restoration (stencil design/placement).









    Not sure if you've seen this photo, Doug, but it shows some stencils on the rear fuselage/tail of the one you're doing, C-GYQQ, in particular: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kurtsj00/40286356453/

  2. #252
    Brilliant John, thank you!


  3. #253
    Quote Originally Posted by warchild View Post
    It;s an easy mistake to make.. Most flaps provide lift. Barn door flaps also provide lift, till you drop them straight down and increase their drag to ungodly levels. At that point the plane pitches forward and nose down and your headed into the ground.. usually, this can be adjusted by giving your flaps the correct pitching moment and in the correct direction. I feel in an awkward space as I really want to see these guys succeed, but I want to see THEM succeed. I dont want to grandstand on their hard work.. but yeah, their pitch moment flaps is pointing in the wrong direction..
    I think those are very admirable sentiments Pam. The brothers of Flying Iron have said they're committed to Updates and improvements.

    It's so much fun to fly as it is I'm happy to wait and not pester for 100% accuracy.
    Jim
    NAVIGATION; The art of knowing where you are without having to crash into it first.

  4. #254
    The final paint is drying, all the details in place. After the discussion of weathered and new liveries, I opted for a cleaner livery, as in the restored look. I'll be uploading today after one more final adjustment. Happy to get this out.

    new paint blue reflection by Doug Smith, on Flickr

    new paint belly by Doug Smith, on Flickr


  5. #255

  6. #256
    I'm very excited to get my hands on that one, Doug! I've watched every video uploaded on Youtube by Dave Hadfield, flying that very Spitfire, and it has been one of my favorites among the restored/rebuilt Spitfires. I like what you've done with the exhaust stacks too!

    Here is the latest video, of several, published by Mr. Hadfield of flying the VWOC Spitfire - this one features start up, takeoff, aerobatics and landing:



    Dave Hadfield shared recently that he conducted the first taxi tests of the Vintage Wings of Canada's newly restored Hawker Hurricane Mk.XII in late March, and he is expecting to test fly it in May.

  7. #257

  8. #258
    Absolutely fantastic, Marcel! Thank you so much for sharing your work, it is very much appreciated - I just downloaded it and cannot wait to start flying it in that scheme.

  9. #259
    Beautiful, outstanding job Marcel!
    You can find most of my repaints for FSX/P3D in the library here on the outhouse.
    For MFS paints go to flightsim.to

  10. #260

  11. #261
    Quote Originally Posted by Fnerg View Post
    The final paint is drying, all the details in place. After the discussion of weathered and new liveries, I opted for a cleaner livery, as in the restored look. I'll be uploading today after one more final adjustment. Happy to get this out.

    new paint blue reflection by Doug Smith, on Flickr

    new paint belly by Doug Smith, on Flickr
    It's up at Flightsim.to and soon to be here as well. Safe landings!

    https://flightsim.to/file/12402/no-4...-spitfire-y-2k


  12. #262

  13. #263
    Continuing to make progress on the "Russian Spitfire", PT879 (G-PTIX). After doing a lot of trial and error this morning, I finally figured out how to properly edit and properly re-save the Normal Maps, so that I could add the wing walkway non-slip tape on this particular restoration (adding the height/volume detail). On this restoration, part of the non-slip tape is black, where it was original during WWII, while the other, narrower area of non-slip is modern and painted over in the same paint as the airframe camouflage to hide it a bit. I am still working on the Complete Map (PBR) for the fuselage/tail, and haven't started on it for the wings yet. Lots of other little tasks still to do too. Once all that is done, then it will be a matter of finally adding all of the stenciling, and then onto the Russian markings. There are still a few details to be painted on the real aircraft, which I'm also waiting on to see how they are applied.










  14. #264
    Quote Originally Posted by Bomber_12th View Post
    Continuing to make progress on the "Russian Spitfire", PT879 (G-PTIX). After doing a lot of trial and error this morning, I finally figured out how to properly edit and properly re-save the Normal Maps, so that I could add the wing walkway non-slip tape on this particular restoration (adding the height/volume detail). On this restoration, part of the non-slip tape is black, where it was original during WWII, while the other, narrower area of non-slip is modern and painted over in the same paint as the airframe camouflage to hide it a bit. I am still working on the Complete Map (PBR) for the fuselage/tail, and haven't started on it for the wings yet. Lots of other little tasks still to do too. Once all that is done, then it will be a matter of finally adding all of the stenciling, and then onto the Russian markings. There are still a few details to be painted on the real aircraft, which I'm also waiting on to see how they are applied.









    wow! Have you seen these pictures, John? They might be of some use for when you tackle the Russian markings. https://www.facebook.com/12528232083...763485562/?d=n

    Brad

  15. #265
    Quote Originally Posted by Brad617 View Post
    wow! Have you seen these pictures, John? They might be of some use for when you tackle the Russian markings. https://www.facebook.com/12528232083...763485562/?d=n

    Brad
    nice pictures, though I still think bombs on a Spitfire are not looking quite right...

    John,
    how did you do it with those normal files, I tried, but could not get them to work?
    You can find most of my repaints for FSX/P3D in the library here on the outhouse.
    For MFS paints go to flightsim.to

  16. #266
    [QUOTE=Bomber_12th;1258667]Continuing to make progress on the "Russian Spitfire", PT879 (G-PTIX). After doing a lot of trial and error this morning, I finally figured out how to properly edit and properly re-save the Normal Maps, so that I could add the wing walkway non-slip tape on this particular restoration (adding the height/volume detail). On this restoration, part of the non-slip tape is black, where it was original during WWII, while the other, narrower area of non-slip is modern and painted over in the same paint as the airframe camouflage to hide it a bit. I am still working on the Complete Map (PBR) for the fuselage/tail, and haven't started on it for the wings yet. Lots of other little tasks still to do too. Once all that is done, then it will be a matter of finally adding all of the stenciling, and then onto the Russian markings. There are still a few details to be painted on the real aircraft, which I'm also waiting on to see how they are applied.









    [/

    The ex plastic modeller in me has to mention how much I prefer the softer demarcation line between upper camouflage colours as seen above. Some skinners use a sharp line which was only seen on early Spits. Very nice.

    Geoff

  17. #267
    Quote Originally Posted by Brad617 View Post
    wow! Have you seen these pictures, John? They might be of some use for when you tackle the Russian markings. https://www.facebook.com/12528232083...763485562/?d=n

    Brad
    Thank you, Brad! Yeah, through my work for Warbird Digest I've been fortunate to be acquainted with George and Facebook friends. I've collected every photo and video of PT879 from all of the corners of the internet that I can think of in order to reproduce the paint scheme accurately, and always on the lookout for more.

    I've also been in communication with my friend Steve Atkin, of Warbird Colour, who managed the research of the paint scheme and paint application on the real PT879. Through him I was able to get the specifics on the Russian-spec paint used (not yet seen on the repaint of course) and some further insights about certain details. As can be seen on the restoration, and will be reproduced on my repaint, are a number of small yellow 'PT879' stencils on each of the fuselage/wing fillets, wing tips and armor plate. According to Steve, more of these are still yet to be added to the restored PT879 soon, including on the wings, tail surfaces and antenna. Those particular stencils were common to the majority of Spitfires that were packed for shipment abroad.

    It will be great to see PT879 out and about this flying season! Peter Teichman has said that he will definitely have it at one of the Shuttleworth/Old Warden shows this year, but hasn't provided any specifics on which one yet.

  18. #268
    Quote Originally Posted by jankees View Post
    John,
    how did you do it with those normal files, I tried, but could not get them to work?
    Yeah, I searched the internet for a good hour, and read a number of forum posts on FSDeveloper and the MSFS site and it never really got me anywhere.

    After finally getting things to work, these were my findings:

    Problems:
    1. - Gimp does not open the Normal Maps properly, and renders them in a weird, unusable way.
    2. - I couldn't open them properly with my copy of Photoshop either, as they just display all black.

    Solutions:
    1. - The freeware software, Paint.net (which fortunately I already had installed in order to open the Complete Map files), opens the Normal Maps perfectly.
    2. - In order to create a proper normal map for MSFS, you can use Photoshop with the Nvidia Tools plugin, though the followup steps are different than they were for FSX/P3D...

    For MSFS Normals:
    - Create the grayscale texture file you want to have turned into the Normal Map.
    - Process it through the Photoshop Nvidia Tools Normal Map Filter.
    - After you get the purple texture from the Normal Map Filter, isolate the Blue Channel and make it all a solid Gray with the RGB values 128, 128, 128.
    - Further tips: MSFS Normals are meant to be 16-bit color, and they do not use alpha channels.

    To save them properly, I couldn't get any of the common DXT5 or 32-Bit .DDS options to work (it results in the file not being read properly in the sim). However, using Paint.net again to save the file, when saving it as a .DDS with the R8G8 settings option (last one on the list), it saved it properly so that MSFS displays it correctly. I'm going to do a bit more trial and error in this regard to see if there are any further save options that work that might make the file a bit smaller in memory footprint.
    Last edited by Bomber_12th; April 12th, 2021 at 07:05.

  19. #269
    Quote Originally Posted by shotgunshack View Post
    The ex plastic modeller in me has to mention how much I prefer the softer demarcation line between upper camouflage colours as seen above. Some skinners use a sharp line which was only seen on early Spits. Very nice.

    Geoff
    Thank you, Geoff! It's not perfect, but I tried to match the same level of "scatter" around all of the lines of demarcation, and how you can tell that the Dark Green was applied last, with the demarcation between it and the Sky Grey being slightly lower than the Medium Sea Grey/Sky Grey demarcation. There is paint spray/scatter along the leading edges of the wings, horizontals and along the rear base of the wing/fuselage fillets as well, so none of those areas have any straight edge demarcation either. There is also green over-spray on the base of the radio mast, as seen on the restoration. When doing camouflage like this, adding the green pattern, it is always a three-step process for me. First I just use the paintbrush/airbrush tool, with a hard edge, and then rough-in the design of the green pattern across the aircraft, making sure everything lines up, pixel to pixel, from part to part. Then I come back and I trace it all by vector-drawing it, making sure everything still remains aligned. Once the vector drawing is completed, then I drop a shadow from it, with the right amount of scatter/feathering that I want, which results in the paint layer I ultimately use. After that, I used a number of masks to create the scattered/feathered demarcation between the green paint and the lower-surface grey paint.

    In this shot you can see I still need to work on the textures for the pitot tube as well as removing the paint chips from the wing PBR Complete Map. The inside of the carburetor scoop being painted the British pale green is accurate to the restoration. The RAF roundels on the bottom of the wings were drawn to the same size as the product paintkit's and these will need to be redrawn to be a bit larger, though I have re-positioned them to where they should be. I redrew the yellow leading edge markings to be more accurately narrower and to have them look better than what is provided in the paintkit - they all now line-up, top and bottom as well. Some Spitfires have those yellow makings stop before the nav lights, and some have them going past the nav lights, as in the case with PT879 (this is accurate to both how it looked during WWII, based on photos of the recovered airframe, and how it is also painted now). When the Russian colors/markings are added, the topside of those yellow wing leading edges are painted over in green. All of the fuselage insignias/markings and fin flash were also redrawn and done using photos of the real aircraft as an overlay for proper size and positioning.


  20. #270
    Hi John,

    Amazed by your work (and research) so far on the PT879!!

    About normal maps in MSFS, best way to convert the normal "blue/purple" ones, is to remove all the Blue in the image so you get a yellow/orange texture.

    Cheers,

    Marcel

  21. #271
    Quote Originally Posted by Bomber_12th View Post
    Thank you, Geoff! It's not perfect, but I tried to match the same level of "scatter" around all of the lines of demarcation, and how you can tell that the Dark Green was applied last, with the demarcation between it and the Sky Grey being slightly lower than the Medium Sea Grey/Sky Grey demarcation. There is paint spray/scatter along the leading edges of the wings, horizontals and along the rear base of the wing/fuselage fillets as well, so none of those areas have any straight edge demarcation either. There is also green over-spray on the base of the radio mast, as seen on the restoration. When doing camouflage like this, adding the green pattern, it is always a three-step process for me. First I just use the paintbrush/airbrush tool, with a hard edge, and then rough-in the design of the green pattern across the aircraft, making sure everything lines up, pixel to pixel, from part to part. Then I come back and I trace it all by vector-drawing it, making sure everything still remains aligned. Once the vector drawing is completed, then I drop a shadow from it, with the right amount of scatter/feathering that I want, which results in the paint layer I ultimately use. After that, I used a number of masks to create the scattered/feathered demarcation between the green paint and the lower-surface grey paint.

    In this shot you can see I still need to work on the textures for the pitot tube as well as removing the paint chips from the wing PBR Complete Map. The inside of the carburetor scoop being painted the British pale green is accurate to the restoration. The RAF roundels on the bottom of the wings were drawn to the same size as the product paintkit's and these will need to be redrawn to be a bit larger, though I have re-positioned them to where they should be. I redrew the yellow leading edge markings to be more accurately narrower and to have them look better than what is provided in the paintkit - they all now line-up, top and bottom as well. Some Spitfires have those yellow makings stop before the nav lights, and some have them going past the nav lights, as in the case with PT879 (this is accurate to both how it looked during WWII, based on photos of the recovered airframe, and how it is also painted now). When the Russian colors/markings are added, the topside of those yellow wing leading edges are painted over in green. All of the fuselage insignias/markings and fin flash were also redrawn and done using photos of the real aircraft as an overlay for proper size and positioning.

    Excellent John. Is it too late to request a copy of the above scheme before squadron markings etc are applied? Purity of form and function.

    Geoff

  22. #272
    Quote Originally Posted by Bomber_12th View Post
    Thank you, Brad! Yeah, through my work for Warbird Digest I've been fortunate to be acquainted with George and Facebook friends. I've collected every photo and video of PT879 from all of the corners of the internet that I can think of in order to reproduce the paint scheme accurately, and always on the lookout for more.

    I've also been in communication with my friend Steve Atkin, of Warbird Colour, who managed the research of the paint scheme and paint application on the real PT879. Through him I was able to get the specifics on the Russian-spec paint used (not yet seen on the repaint of course) and some further insights about certain details. As can be seen on the restoration, and will be reproduced on my repaint, are a number of small yellow 'PT879' stencils on each of the fuselage/wing fillets, wing tips and armor plate. According to Steve, more of these are still yet to be added to the restored PT879 soon, including on the wings, tail surfaces and antenna. Those particular stencils were common to the majority of Spitfires that were packed for shipment abroad.

    It will be great to see PT879 out and about this flying season! Peter Teichman has said that he will definitely have it at one of the Shuttleworth/Old Warden shows this year, but hasn't provided any specifics on which one yet.

    With all this detail and inside knowledge it’s clear that this will be the best repaint yet for the FI Spitfire

    I had the privilege of a close look around Peter’s PRXI a couple of years ago and to describe it as immaculate is an understatement...


    Brad

  23. #273
    Geoff, I will be releasing it in two versions, both with and without the Soviet markings. I too really like the unadulterated look of the factory-fresh scheme.

    BTW, I want to correct something I wrote earlier. I had been under the impression, given statements written by the very enthusiastic owner of PT879, that it was the only known surviving Spitfire to have served with the Soviet AF. However, that is not the case, as there is also Spitfire Mk.IX RK858, which was recovered out of Russia in 1992. Owned by the Aircraft Restoration Company (ARCo) at Duxford, we will hopefully see it flying again down the road too. Some of the research into details of the paint work on RK858 was also utilized in the painting of the restored PT879.

  24. #274
    It's getting closer. My list of items remaining to be done on this factory-delivery version of PT879 is short enough now that I think I'll have it done tomorrow or Tuesday. Then it will be onto the Russian markings being painted on top. A lot more work put into this than I was expecting to when I started.














  25. #275
    beautiful work!

    In the mean time, I uploaded MH434. Not as detailed probably, but I hope you'll like it anyway.
    You can find most of my repaints for FSX/P3D in the library here on the outhouse.
    For MFS paints go to flightsim.to

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