P3D v4 Nanchang CJ-6A

[joshwagstaff13]

I figured 'hey, there hasn't been one of these made before', so I've been working on it for the last few days. No textures on anything but the prop yet, but it's still early days.

In Blender:

On the ground:

In the air:

 

[CypherSimulations]

Great work for a few days! Stay developing

 

[scotth6]

Very good job on the model so far. I have seen quite a few of these around surprisingly. There is one that does joy flights at Tooradin Airport in Victoria (Aus) and I'm pretty sure there was also a run down one at Melton Airfield. I did a scenery of Melton a few years ago, and was just trying to locate the photos I took showing that plane.

http://www.combatflightsmelbourne.com.au/fighter-plane-melbourne/

http://www.waggawarbirds.com.au/

https://www.adventureflightco.com.au/aerobatics

http://warbirdswa.com/index.php

Cheers,

 

[caleb]

Very nice. My father used to own one of those a few years ago:

 

[F747fly]

Really nice work! Just curious what the thing with left gear is in the in air pic? Is that a part of the gear?
Fascinating aircraft btw, used by a few nations still and the two I recalled most were Chine (obviously) and the DRPK (reported) but I just learned Albania also uses them.
Looking forward to seeing more!

 

[Roel]

Really nice work! Just curious what the thing with left gear is in the in air pic? Is that a part of the gear?
Fascinating aircraft btw, used by a few nations still and the two I recalled most were Chine (obviously) and the DRPK (reported) but I just learned Albania also uses them.
Looking forward to seeing more!

The Yak-18 has it's gear sticking out of the fuselage too when it's retracted. I recall this was because belly landings wouldn't be as destructive as they normally would be, since it's a trainer after all. Also, when the gear is up and the pneumatic system wouldn't work, the main gear can be dropped and be locked into place by the aircraft's slipstream. On the CJ-6, the main gear are fully inside the fuselage except for the nose wheel. I suppose this is because of the roots of the CJ-6, which is the Yak-18. (Although the CJ-6 is all Chinese, it's predecessor, the CJ-5, was a licence-built Yak-18. So I bet they carried some of the knowledge from that plane)

But please, someone correct me if I'm wrong, it's just a thought!

 

[joshwagstaff13]

Very good job on the model so far. I have seen quite a few of these around surprisingly.

Thanks mate. And yeah, they're everywhere. I got to see a static one at my local airfield (NZNE) a couple of years ago, and there's a group that does formation flying with them based out at Ardmore (NZ), I think.

Really nice work! Just curious what the thing with left gear is in the in air pic? Is that a part of the gear?

The pic might be a bit misleading - I blame the shadows! The angle the pic is at makes it look like the nose gear (no door) is coming from the left wing, right next to the left main gear leg (with doors).


So, I roughed out the textures and fired up P3D to see how they looked. It also gave me a chance to see if the 3D prop I made for it was working. And good news all around in this case, nothing had broken. But the textures do still need a bit of work.

On the ground, engine off, with one of the P3D avatars for scale. It's still missing details, like an engine or the gill shutters.

Engine on, showing off the 3D prop disk.

In the air over Norfolk NAS.

 

[F747fly]

I see, well good work and I love the livery! Keep us updated!

 

[joshwagstaff13]

As it turns out, high-res images of the instrument panel are hard to come by. And not only that, but with those that you can find, each of them is unique! Which, as you might understand, poses a unique challenge. So I'm going for a middle-ground solution to the problem - using the general layout, and a certain amount of leeway to create something that looks usable, so as to not exactly replicate one aircraft in particular.

But the instrument panel isn't the only thing new. There's also now a basic interior and animated canopies, among other slight developments.

Plus - it's a little hard to tell - the textures now have a basic AO pass applied to them, which definitely helps to break up the otherwise smooth (currently) skin of the aircraft.

 

[joshwagstaff13]

So, it turns out that even textures baked with even a basic AO pass make a world of difference in P3D. Case and point, before:

...And after:

 

[F747fly]

turns out that even textures baked with even a basic AO pass make a world of difference in P3D

It especially does for details you modelled.
I really like thosd levers, looks great!

Just one small question, why it the artificial horizon upside down?

 

[joshwagstaff13]

Just one small question, why it the artificial horizon upside down?

Good question. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure, but it does look like that on the real aircraft. Also note the metric instruments - those are the original Chinese ones:

 

[Noel Spett]

The horizontal gyro is probably upside down on the real pic because the airplane has no power to it, when the plane is powering up the gyro is returning to its normal position.

 

[F747fly]

The horizontal gyro is probably upside down on the real pic because the airplane has no power to it, when the plane is powering up the gyro is returning to its normal position.

But why is the number 20 the right way up then?

 

[Noel Spett]

Yea. Well that's weird then.

 

[joshwagstaff13]

So, after putting together a few basic textures (colour, then an AO multiply layer for depth), it looks a lot better than the medium grey it had been. And now a decent amount of the functional instrument panel is there.

Plus, custom animations and visibility tags are annoying to debug. It just gets worse when 90% of the things in the cockpit use them; who'd have known a three-position gear lever with a locking slide could be so frustrating?

 

[caleb]

Incredible work! It will be great when this is released.

 

[AerobaticsFS]

But why is the number 20 the right way up then?

Maybe it is one of the most basic gyros, because now you only need a sphere with a bit of weight at the bottom and it shows the right info

But she looks great @joshwagstaff13 !!

 

[joshwagstaff13]

Maybe it is one of the most basic gyros, because now you only need a sphere with a bit of weight at the bottom and it shows the right info

It's actually an electric gyro (you can see the power switch for it in some cockpit shots), specifically a DP-2B (for the Chinese version) or AGI-1 (for the original Soviet instrument). It was used in aircraft like the MiG-15 and MiG-17, as well as the CJ-6.

And on the CJ front, there hasn't been much done on the model - only switches have been added, along with a few new gauge textures - but there has been a lot of activity in regards to my modeldef.xml; there are now no less than 46 custom animation and visibility objects, with more on the way.

There are even little gems like this, which specifically controls the landing gear lever:

    <PartInfo>
        <Name>lever_gear_cj6</Name>
        <AnimLength>50</AnimLength>
        <Animation>
            <Parameter>
                <Code>
                    (L:GearToggle, number) 25 *
                </Code>
                <Lag>200</Lag>
            </Parameter>
        </Animation>
        <MouseRect>
            <Cursor>Hand</Cursor>
            <TooltipText>Landing Gear Lever (%((L:GearToggle, number))%{case}%{:0}Lower%{:1}Neutral%{:2}Raise%{end})</TooltipText>
            <MouseFlags>LeftRelease+RightRelease+LeftSingle+RightSingle</MouseFlags>
            <CallbackCode>
                (M:Event) 'LeftSingle'  scmi 0 == if{ (L:GearLock, bool) 0 != if{ 2 (>L:GearToggle, number) 1 (>K:GEAR_UP) } }
                (M:Event) 'LeftRelease' scmi 0 == if{ (L:GearLock, bool) 0 != if{ 1 (>L:GearToggle, number) } }
                (M:Event) 'RightSingle'  scmi 0 == if{ (L:GearLock, bool) 0 != if{ 0 (>L:GearToggle, number) 1 (>K:GEAR_DOWN) } }
                (M:Event) 'RightRelease' scmi 0 == if{ (L:GearLock, bool) 0 != if{ 1 (>L:GearToggle, number) } }
            </CallbackCode>
        </MouseRect>
    </PartInfo>

 

[PClkaviator]

Great work! Is this project still a go? In my country, the CJ-6/PT-6 is a very famous plane in our Air Force, and also the aerobatic team.