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I was thinking back to the tools of the 90s

B

bob5568

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I remember using a tool called VOD by Rafael Garcia Sanchez...you created objects using primitives, and you had to keep track of the details of the object on your own...I drew mine on paper. Just for kicks I went out and downloaded the tool. You can still get it a Simviation, probably other places also. It installed just fine and booted without a problem in windows 7. And I find myself returning to an interface that was my start at creating original objects. Its basically just a list. We created .api files to place via Airport for Windows program by Pascal Meziat.

I appreciate that without today's tools, we couldn't create the masterpieces of design that are common, but there was something about creating something from nothing that gave me immense pleasure back in the early days.
 

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I came in a bit later, same guy though (Rafael G. Sanchez) with "Nova v1.6" which according to the registration email I have on a backup disk I purchased on 6/18/2002. With Nova you had an actual graphical interface similar to the gmax UVW editor for mapping textures. My first texture sheet began life at 650 x 650 pixels because I didn't know anything about "powers of two" back then and 650px just seemed about right :) . I won't pretend that I ever mastered Nova but I did manage to build a few macro buildings and get them in the sim. IIRC FSSC by Derek Leung is what I used to put these macros into FS2002 and even FS9 in the early days.

The "Northern Air" building in this shot was one of my best attempts with Nova (no laughing):
65s_32.jpg


...so then in 2007 I finally had my first real success in gmax with the same building:
nrthn_air2.jpg


...and finally I built the stupid thing again in 2013, by now somebody's painted it green:
nrthn_air3.jpg


I think I'll try to move on to something else now :)

Jim
 
Jim, wonderful post....really cool to see you working on the same building while the tools environment (and your skills) co-evolve.
 
Yes, VOD was also the first modelling tool I used. It was better than hand coding the api file, what I used to do before.

Like you said I would usually draw my objects first on paper.
 
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