my DC-8 Project

[Mr.FaosFX]

Stunningly beautiful

Thank you, kind words!

You guys have seen my 3d modeling skills and on this last update, you now know that I can texture map, so if that brings a sign of relief, I am happy for you all.

I know a lot of guys that can model really good but cannot for the love of god texture map. Learning to texture map was a whole different learning curve in gmax that is in itself, completely different from pushing vertices and it took me a long time to understand how it really works.

PM the occasional question over to me and I will help you out as some always have.

Thanks to everyone for staying in tune with this project. I have not given up and even tho progress is slow, we are getting there and thanks to your firm feedback, we get what ever needs to be fixed...FIXED!

It appears that this is about to be the most VIEWED thread in FSDEveloper, only a few thousands away from the Look What I am working on thread, lol!

I didn't realize until now that its been viewed over 60,000+ times!! Wow guys, thanks so much for the great interests, its what kept me motivated.

 

[Michael2]

Thanks for that diagram Rafael. I did not realize that what you have labelled the "trim tab" rotates with the stabilizer. Have you made the flattened part of the fuselage (on which it will rotate) perfectly vertical, or angled in towards the top a little? I haven't been able to find any photo or drawing that shows the orientation clearly.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

This photo was taken by one of the members; Martijn Denecker

It shows that the trimtab is oriented flat but follows the path of the fuselage to align itself with it. The fuselage shape bulges around it to accommodate the structure.

Perhaps it will help you draw a clearer picture!

 

[Michael2]

Thanks again -- a perfect photo to show what I need to know. The lamp post gives a reference for what's vertical and it looks like the flat fuselage area is in fact vertical.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

Thanks again -- a perfect photo to show what I need to know. The lamp post gives a reference for what's vertical and it looks like the flat fuselage area is in fact vertical.

Glad I could help out!

* If you import the image as a background in one of the view ports. You can orient your model to match the picture frame and make adjustments, that is what I do sometimes.

 

[MKA742]

Great to be a help

On a side note, check out this guy's Comet 4 project for X-plane. It is simply stunning! http://www.dh-aircraft.co.uk/news/news.html

Wouldn't it be great to have such detail in the DC-8, wow!

 

[Heretic]

on a side note, check out this guy's comet 4 project for x-plane. It is simply stunning! http://www.dh-aircraft.co.uk/news/news.html

0.00000000001 fps.

- Edit: That thing has 1.2 million polys! *Faints*

 

[guym-p]

Thank you, MKA742. I am the creator of the Comet for X-Plane. Heretic is wrong, I get 35-45 FPS with the Comet in X-Plane 9, and 25 FPS in X-Plane 10 using a very old Mac Pro (2007 vintage). This won't mean much to you, but the guts of it is 2x Xeon 2.66 with an ATi 5770 graphics card. It runs 60-70% faster on a new Core i7 with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M.

I know I am flying the Comet in a totally different simulator environment, but what TommyXKk wrote is true: with the power of today's computers and graphics cards, polygon count only matters when you get into millions. With X-Plane, each point or vertex requires 4 bytes of information, and my Comet's meshes use approx. 95MB VRAM. I imagine it must be similar in FSX. It's a large amount, but a seriously detailed model will use even more than that for texture files, bump maps, etc.

If you had lots of aircraft this detailed in the air at the same time, that would be a problem, obviously, but then one can make special low-poly versions to represent networked or A.I. traffic.

I'd also like to congratulate Martijn and the team on the DC-8. I know how long these things take to make ...

 

[Heretic]

I imagine it must be similar in FSX.

From personal experience, a ~150k poly aircraft with a HUGE, 1000 keyframe animation takes up around 16 MBytes.

I've seen, or heard of, aircraft models for FSX with 600,700k polys and they always come with a framerate hit, since with many polys come many texture vertices (limit: 65k per material) and thus many materials and drawcalls - and that drags down performance in FSX. Maybe X-Plane is more forgiving in these regards.

Personally, any aircraft that incurs a framerate hit worse than 10, 15% in FSX is automatically off my radar (especially when it's payware).


Whip aside, sugarcubes out:
I've read every news related item on your website and it kept me glued to the screen for over an hour (that means something!). The development documentation is very, very interesting (historical tidbits, flight dynamics analysis).
Also, the model looks really good in its millon poly glory and baked textures. And it makes me want to fly Dave Maltby's Comet in MSFS.


Philosophy:
I prefer more of a KISS approach to plane making that leaves room for some easy end user related modifications and keeps FPS at big airports up. Hence, I don't really like to commit to modeled cabins, punched out windows, ultrasmooth small or secondary stuff or even 3D instruments, as they'd all more or less compromise both of these elements.
It might work for a rather exotic plane like the Comet, which (apparently?) came in fairly standardized but a mass-produced plane like a 737 or A320 would turn into a configuration nightmare!


Anyway, congratulations on your perseverance with this project and the best of luck for it!

 

[guym-p]

Thanks, Bjoern. In other circumstances, I am a vehement supporter of keeping things simple, too; but the incentive for me with the Comet is to produce a virtual aircraft. The fact it flies in X-Plane's World is coincidence. I have a low-poly version in development, too. Well, relatively low!

I don't want to hijack this thread, though, so I'll try to keep things helpful for the DC-8.

I think the measure of acceptable frame rates is different for different types of aircraft. For the ponderous handling of an airliner, a typical movie frame rate of 24-25 FPS is perfectly acceptable. For an aerobatic or combat aircraft, it might have to be 50 FPS.

There is something else though. Again, I don't know whether this affects FSX in the same way: "Glass cockpits" are a serious draw on frame rates in X-Plane. Traditionally, glass and analogue cockpits were made the same way, by adding gauges to a "live" texture, and the simulator would animate needles, lights, and other graphics. Now it's possible to animate gauges in 3D, using a standard, passive texture, and it is much more efficient.

On my computer, any aircraft from the 1970s or earlier starts with a 6 FPS advantage. I found that aircraft with 100,000 polygons or 500,000 polygons performed about the same, but above that threshold each additional 100,000 polygons "cost" 1 frame per second. So a Comet or Boeing 707 or DC-8 can have twice as much modelled detail as an Airbus A320 or Boeing 757/767 without affecting on-screen performance.

If this is the same in FSX, it might give Martijn & Co. greater freedom with polygons.

Guy.

 

[Heretic]

There is something else though. Again, I don't know whether this affects FSX in the same way: "Glass cockpits" are a serious draw on frame rates in X-Plane.

Well, there's the XML-based "gauge with different elements" method and the C++ vector graphics method, with the latter being better, but performance hungry.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

That comet is beautiful indeed but it is for X-PLANE which, is much more stable than FSX and actually uses your GPU to accelerate graphics as opposed to dumping it all on the CPU like FSX does but now a days with multi-core systems that isn't a problem but oh I almost forgot, FSX doesn't know how to take advantage of multi-core systems!!

The problem with such LARGE polygon count projects is specially how lOOONNNNGGG they take to load into gmax. I know because I had a fictional aircraft I had created with about 600,000+ polys and it took a considerable amount of time to load and guess what, I never really got around to texturing it or even exporting it, I kept getting export module failure messages because there was one component that was causing a problem but I had thousands of components, even looking at the log, I could not find the problematic part and I just gave up on it.

 

[guym-p]

I've not used gmax. I use either AC3D or Blender. Each of them can handle the full 1.2 million polygon model, but, since it is broken down into separate object files for the simulator, I tend to work separately on the wings, empennage, undercarriage, fuselage, etc. If I need the fuselage shape as a reference, I just copy and paste the fuselage skin into the wing file, not bothering with glass, doors, fittings, etc.

Blender is free, but has the steepest learning curve of any software I've ever used (worth it in the end, though). AC3D costs money, the interface is a bit rough, but what it does it does very well. I work faster in AC3D, so I tend to model in AC3D, then export to Blender to perform operations like rendering to texture (baking).

If money was no object, I would buy something with a refined interface and industrial-strength render engine. Meanwhile AC3D and Blender do just fine!

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

I actually know Blender 3D from experience I can say it is much more powerful than gmax 1000 times. However, the interface is NOT very user friendly where as gmax seems easier to manage.

I say that I know Blender 3D but I have not touched it in 2 years so its a fair bet its been upgraded and improved and what I still resides in my mind is old-school stuff from the old version.

It does have a VERY STEEP learning curve but once you get into it, everything begins to make sense.

I never really got into it 100% after I realized there was no way I could export any of my work out in to FS9 at that time so maybe perhaps now, someone has made a plugin to export Direct X object files.

 

[Heretic]

FSX doesn't know how to take advantage of multi-core systems!!

Not surprising, considering that, in 2006, multicore technology was still in its infancy, albeit there being dual-CPU boards as far back as 2000-ish. But they never really caught on with the end-user.

Be glad that FSX at least uses every core other than core #0 for scenery loading. It's an improvement. Also, you can run extra stuff like Active Sky, RC4 or so on the "free" cores and take some load off the primary one.

The problem with such LARGE polygon count projects is specially how lOOONNNNGGG they take to load into gmax.

Even a 30k poly aircraft is a PITA to handle on slower hardware.

But then again, GMax has been out for nearly a decade. No one really anticipated having to handle 3D models with a polycount well into the hundred thousands back then.

If I need the fuselage shape as a reference, I just copy and paste the fuselage skin into the wing file, not bothering with glass, doors, fittings, etc.

So X-Plane handles models similar to Strike Fighters. Interesting.
And, I'm sure, easier for maintaining a model.

Blender is free, but has the steepest learning curve of any software I've ever used (worth it in the end, though).

Ten minutes and I gave up. The interface is just...urgh!

If money was no object, I would buy something with a refined interface and industrial-strength render engine.

3ds Max is one alternative for doing models for MSFS, the other being 3D Crafter, which is cheaper but has a fan-made exporter/importer for MSFS with reduced functionality (no bones/skinned mesh).

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

I'm thinking about re-installing Blender 3D to have it around but its been a while...I may have to re-learn it.

With any 3D modeling program, the most important things to learn first, are; 1. how to rotate and switch between different views 2. become familiar with the preset of 3d geometry or primitives, stuff that you can do easily, like a box, a cone or sphere 3. become familiar with the modifications you can do to that geometry with the software, how to make it bigger, smaller, change it etc. 4. how to transform the mesh, move its vertices, faces, etc.

After that you start reading tutorials....to learn how the program works, not to learn how to MAKE something...that is where most make mistakes. They see a tutorial for an airplane and then they fixate on the completion of the airplane and not what the tutorial really offers, to use the various features of the program to create something.

That is how I learned gmax but I'll admit, the learning curve was very steep...there are things about gmax that I don't even know what they do yet...I'll die and still not know what all the options do...its just such a massive program and 3ds max tops them all, theres probably enough lines of code that it would stretch from earth to the moon.

 

[hairyspin]

...there are things about gmax that I don't even know what they do yet...

You and us all, Raphael! Good to see you understand enough of it to build this lovely model.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

You and us all, Raphael! Good to see you understand enough of it to build this lovely model.

Thanks to FSEdge and the DVD I bought from him some years back. FS Alpha Design Group, lots of good stuff in it. I definitely got my money's worth. :-]

 

[robcarly]

Hi All,

Just joined up here. Really looking forward to flying this bird. I work for National Airlines as we currently have 2x stored DC8's (1x -71F and 1x -73F).

N-155CA and N-N-872CA

If i can be of any help with ifno please feel free to ask.
Cheers
Rob

 

[Michael2]

Any chance I could see MKA742's photos for my 50 series project? Everytime I think a part is finished I find better photos or drawings and have to redo it, so I would really like to be able to have access to these pictures as early as I can if possible.