my DC-8 Project

[Tejal Bernardo]

Regarding to reversers, take a look if could be of help
http://www.google.es/imgres?q=cfm56-2+thrust+reverser&um=1&hl=es&sa=N&rlz=1T4GFRE_esES387ES387&biw=1680&bih=940&tbm=isch&tbnid=_3kS2iAjG97XXM:&imgrefurl=http://www.flickriver.com/groups/791825%40N25/pool/&docid=VSII_lEQrkOjjM&w=500&h=333&ei=X1B8TtWtFa354QSO8onxDg&zoom=1
the last one is another reverser system
(the picture below)
And about virtual cockpit, I'm an obsesed of the VC, I say so, because how many good aircraft model I have seen which VC not match at all? , It's something I always ask myself, so hard is to make a regular VC?

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

Regards to reversers, take a look if could be of help
http://www.google.es/imgres?q=cfm56-2+thrust+reverser&um=1&hl=es&sa=N&rlz=1T4GFRE_esES387ES387&biw=1680&bih=940&tbm=isch&tbnid=_3kS2iAjG97XXM:&imgrefurl=http://www.flickriver.com/groups/791825%40N25/pool/&docid=VSII_lEQrkOjjM&w=500&h=333&ei=X1B8TtWtFa354QSO8onxDg&zoom=1
the last one is another reverser system
And about virtual cockpit, I'm an obsesed of the VC, I say so, because how many good aircraft model I have seen which VC not match at all? , It's something I always ask myself, so hard is to make a regular VC?

It's not that hard it is just time consuming, some developers get so anxious to release an aircraft that they just rush through this and even use static bitmaps for the gauges! This is ok on the exterior model if its a really big airplane and you can't use an exterior cockpit anyway.

FlightSim does double the wark in VCs, it has to not only redner the cockpit it also must take into account the logic of all of the instruments working as well and it must proccess any animations that were defined for each said component, I believe captain sim made the VC of the 757 fully functional...i'm not 100% sure it was fully fully functional but I do remember that that they even modeled the glas covering for some switches...such that you could click it, see the animation of the glass covering moving back and then you could click what ever was covering, that was insane detail but it sure looked cool.

Standard gauges like altitude, speed, pitch an attitude you can implement easily into the VC other gauges like Horizontal Situation Indicators that show the ILS glide slope and the AP and other things are much more involved and require more parameters to bet set ..... areas where you might use logic is a fuel control transfer panel, where say you click here to activate this pump and you click here to transfer fuel from this tank to that tank ... then logic would have to figure out if the pump was on or off and then you have take into the account the rate at which the fuel flows and how many updates per second to send to each component to update the new fuel quantity ... lots if if else conditions in a situation like that but I've never done any of it and before I do it, when I fully complete my DC8 ... I may take a break and start experimenting with this build crappy VCs and slowly increasing the amount of detail before I attempt to implement something VERY complex into the DC8.

I have the manual for the space shuttle there are approximately 1,000 conditions that can prevent you from flipping a few switches in the cockpit ... imagine trying to write a logic for that ... you would have millions and millions of lines of code ... aircraft software have millions of lines of code too so you really have to think about what it is you want to implement into a VC because if you go tooooo crazzy you'll be overwhelmed ... I admit I wont be able to pull it off alone.

 

[Tejal Bernardo]

Yes,really frightening , and yes that was my first impresion about the VC, in some airplanes, the people at that stage of work are fed up and give up a little of course I can understand all this I admire anyone who struggle with all this matter

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

Yes,really frightening , and yes that was my first impresion about the VC, in some airplanes, the people at that stage of work are fed up and give up a little of course I can understand all this I admire anyone who struggle with all this matter

Giving up is not in my vocabulary. People who quit are cowards, when you run away from something because you can't do it, that's your best opportunity right there to learn something from it. Nobody is born knowing everything, we learn by doing, observing others and listening.

There are people out there who are so focused on being the best of the best who eventually think they are invulnerable, nobody can beat them but this is pride and pride is what causes you to destroy yourself. I laugh when companies want more and more and more and eventually they want so much that they start making people work massive overtime up to a point where employees either fight back or the company shuts down because nobody wants to work for them ... too much as always can and WILL work against you.

 

[Tejal Bernardo]

yes, we are seeing that nowadays, the ugly face of the capitalism, a little bunch of people want to neutralize the rest.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

Thanks for the thrust reverse pictures link, that helped a lot. I observed something today and will implement it into the engines. Today I will be doing mostly inlet ports work, so I
grabbed the first picture I could find and slapped it into gmax, well...

That pretty much covers it for the nose being accurate, lol! Picture is copyright [Lutz Lehmann] from planepictures.net Absolutely no modifications done to the 3d mesh, I just scaled it
to size of the image to work on the ports and this is how it ended up, amazing.

The scaled up picture is a mirrored copy of the left side of the DC8 nose, you can see it on the center if you look for it. Anything I do to the big one happens to the little one. :-]

Is it me or is the new Firefox locking up on occasion and then unfreezes it self? I'm sick of this Firefox already.

Off to eat I go.

 

[n4gix]

From what I've read so far, XML is just a mark-up language which lets you describe what data is. Most of the functions to design a gauge are already implemented into the flightsim architecture ... so if you wanted to create a gauge to display knots ... you only need to describe in XML what the gauge looks like, background bitmap, the bitmap to use for the needle, the variables to use, etc and then flightsim takes all of this data and uses it approrpriately making use of which ever variables were described, this doesn't mean its easy, I'm just saying it is a bit more involved.

I'm not saying that it's all that difficult, but that it is incredibly time consuming.

Where it becomes more involved though, is that if one wishes to have a model that is both functional as an "offline" model as well as one which is fully "Shared Cockpit" compatible, then it is required to smoothly integrate and coordinate three completely separate sets of "code":

1. Embedded XML script in the model for the 3d cockpit
2. Separate but equivalent XML script and/or C gauge code for the 2d panel
3. C++ gauge/logic system that will allow for intercepting/decoding custom EventIDs and passing back control and display L:var data values to the XML system.

What makes the 3d XML portion of the exercise so "interesting" is that you are effectively having to design and integrate several hundreds of individual "snippets" of script. Just the overhead panel on one of my projects has thus far taken 14,000+ lines of XML for the model, 2692 lines of C++ for the custom event-handler, and nearly 12000 lines of XML for the 2d panel version...

...all of which has already consumed over 500 hours of time, and the debugging hasn't even begun yet...

I'm just trying to put a bit more perspective on the process.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

I'm not saying that it's all that difficult, but that it is incredibly time consuming.

Where it becomes more involved though, is that if one wishes to have a model that is both functional as an "offline" model as well as one which is fully "Shared Cockpit" compatible, then it is required to smoothly integrate and coordinate three completely separate sets of "code":

1. Embedded XML script in the model for the 3d cockpit
2. Separate but equivalent XML script and/or C gauge code for the 2d panel
3. C++ gauge/logic system that will allow for intercepting/decoding custom EventIDs and passing back control and display L:var data values to the XML system.

What makes the 3d XML portion of the exercise so "interesting" is that you are effectively having to design and integrate several hundreds of individual "snippets" of script. Just the overhead panel on one of my projects has thus far taken 14,000+ lines of XML for the model, 2692 lines of C++ for the custom event-handler, and nearly 12000 lines of XML for the 2d panel version...

...all of which has already consumed over 500 hours of time, and the debugging hasn't even begun yet...

I'm just trying to put a bit more perspective on the process.

It would be nice if those scripts could be grouped by category, that doesn't sound very object oriented to me, sounds procedural but this is XML anyway.

This all sounds very exciting to me because I love programming, it is one of my biggest hobbies. Like I once said before, anyone can make a robot but can you make it walk and drink a glass of water? lol

This also reminds of Garry's Mod using Wiremod, where you created several components together and wired them according to data inputs, then you would write code so that certain components or data would react to certain conditions, it was really really cool, still is actually. You should see the amazing things people have done with wiremod, doesn't even compare to FlightSim ... flight simulator is a joke when you compare its logic to Garry's Mod + Wiremod but this game uses a very complex Physics engine and well cant compare that game to flightsim, two totally different things.

I can't wait to get started on XML I'm planning on purchasing some books.

 

[inka]

Mr.FaosFX:

Thanks for such a great proyect you are doing, you are a Master.

About the reverse trust in the DC-8 I Found this picture of a ATI DC-8-73F N602AL, Taken by Tom Bukowski

A Bigger image size is available at:
Here

Original Link to the site where is posted is: Smugmug

I hope this finding will be usefull to you

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

Mr.FaosFX:

Thanks for such a great proyect you are doing, you are a Master.

About the reverse trust in the DC-8 I Found this picture of a ATI DC-8-73F N602AL, Taken by Tom Bukowski

A Bigger image size is available at:
Here

Original Link to the site where is posted is: Smugmug

I hope this finding will be usefull to you

Wow what a huuuggeee picture. I saved it thanks! It will help but what I was really looking for was a rear view of the thrust reversers deployed.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

Well the inlet AC ports are proving to be a royal pain in the @$$ to model, so I'm taking the spline route with these things. Can anyone find a goood close up of the inlet ports? And when I mean close up I mean a REAL GOOD CLOSE UP, sort of like sticking your head inside and looking down to see what is in there. I know whats at the end of the two smaller openings but the one at the middle seems to swoop down, I don't know whats down there...maybe another turbine with blades?

 

[Tejal Bernardo]

More photos,
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/98511/
Click on the default picture..the most interesting is the last one at botom At first was a turbocompressor and afterward they changed to air cycle. the air inlet had to be reduced.
this another link to the same site, very interesting talk
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/79711/

 

[n4gix]

It would be nice if those scripts could be grouped by category, that doesn't sound very object oriented to me, sounds procedural but this is XML anyway.

I can't wait to get started on XML I'm planning on purchasing some books.

Actually, there aren't any "books" for XML gauge scripting. MS/ACES have essentially created multiple -and not always identical- schemas that are fed into their parsing engine...

Assuming only an FSX development project:

1. XML schema for 2d gauges can use either FS9 schema or new FSX uber-verbose ACE schema. Totally different of course!
2. XML schema for modeldef.xml (embedded model script), completely different from the 2d version.
3. XML schema for <String> and/or <FormattedString> statements, again completely different from either of the above!

This is one area where one really needs to spend some time in "pre-planning" and develop a really well-designed -and debugged- flowchart!

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

Actually, there aren't any "books" for XML gauge scripting. MS/ACES have essentially created multiple -and not always identical- schemas that are fed into their parsing engine...

Assuming only an FSX development project:

1. XML schema for 2d gauges can use either FS9 schema or new FSX uber-verbose ACE schema. Totally different of course!
2. XML schema for modeldef.xml (embedded model script), completely different from the 2d version.
3. XML schema for <String> and/or <FormattedString> statements, again completely different from either of the above!

This is one area where one really needs to spend some time in "pre-planning" and develop a really well-designed -and debugged- flowchart!

Was not referring to Flight Simulator, just XML in general :-] Now if only they could start using LUA on the next version but this would piss several developers off, lol.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

export test of the week, you guys get to see the DC8 again now!

Ignore the elevators, the pivot point is all out of wack.

I am still working on the inlet ports and mostly just the nose area. The nose underwent massive work before, just some slight finishing touches here and there to finalize it (at top) of nose.

In this picture you can see the newly added wing tips I mentioned before, not much of an addition but it finalizes the construction of the main wing, so now control surfaces can be cut when that time comes.

So what will I be doing next? Complete the nostrils on the nose, finish up nose area, add pitot tubes, vents, add antennaes to fuselage, attach wing root to main fuselage, go to tail, finish up tail, model an object that is under the aft fuselage (some sort of tail strike thing, I have no idea what it is) finish up elevators and rotors and then do another export ... go back and check everything over. [That's going to take a while to complete] as usual, stick to the thread for updates.

Next update will be the DC8 nostrils [AC inlet ports] when completed.

Later folks.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

After several hours, the inlet ports are completed [some what] I think they could probably use a little more detail but this component is so small it doesn't merit it, it looks good from far away and up close but its got sharp edges at the front, it still doesn't look bad but I can smooth these up, if I want too, I'll probably end up doing it if it bugs me too much.

Here is a peek at the spline work inside. This took hours...urrrr, am I glad that's over! but then I had to skin it of course, with planes.

Note the inlet ports at bottom, look ok? Remember, this is a 73F, so these will get covered up when I am fully satisfied with the results of the inlets.

From the bottom.

I only posted this one because it reminded of those models they sell that come with a stand. This is how they position them, lol.

I will continue to mess around with the inlet ports and adding more detail around the nose area before I move on to other parts but that is it for today.

Later folks.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

Let me just put this out there in the wild, because a lot of people seem to have their facts all wrong about this project and my motivates.

1. I have not claimed anywhere that my offering is better than any one else s, this is a project of my own and I am not competing with anyone, please understand this. If I choose to spend 2 years making this project, so be it.

2. Thanks for the e-mails telling me I'm a mister know it all who thinks he can do everything on his own. Hey come on guys, if I think I can pull something off on my own, I aim for that but if I need help, I ask for it. Usually I can always figure things out on my own, it's just who I am and how I function. The people who are senior developers here have already laid out their seeds, all you have to do is find them and plant them and learn form the roots.

3. For christ sake stop asking me to go payware with this ... it will be freeware and I will incorporate as much detail as I like, again if I have to spend 2 years making this project so that it looks stunning, I shall spend two years on it.

This is one of the reasons why I stuck to making fantasy planes and I created over 33 of them, all textured, all with 2d panels, some had crappy VCs and the like, I am not knew at what I'm doing, I'm only taking what I've learned through the years to the next level to see what I can ultimately achieve if I aim for the highest of quality.

Finally, if anything ... I would have joined HJG by now assuming they would take me in and I would release the DC8 under their name ... of course if this does happen, I am keeping absolutely quiet to avoid system overload.

Thanks again all for the great support, the DC8 would not be where it is now if not for the help some folks have offered here.

--- Rafael

 

[Tejal Bernardo]

Great FaosFx, the detail of the nostril is amazing, and feel free to do with the aircraft what you want ¡, all we know this proyect take a long time , so little by litte and without pressure, learning in the process, though as can be seen you know a little of gmax. I guess the VC will be your challenge, though there are a lot of other things (and my english is excellent, of course) regards

 

[Heretic]

Finally, if anything ... I would have joined HJG by now assuming they would take me in and I would release the DC8 under their name ... of course if this does happen, I am keeping absolutely quiet to avoid system overload.

Actually, keeping in contact with HJG might not be the worst thing. They, after all already have a working set of gauges, sounds and airfiels for the DC-8s, which, in the end could prove a time saver.

 

[Mr.FaosFX]

Thanks guys. :-] I did see the new 2D panels they released, I even saw my thread posted over there just now!! They have links to both the flightsim.com thread and this one, the project's gone viral I see, lol.

I plan to take some time off after I am done with the DC8, I am already working on a test aircraft "a small fantasy craft" that will be used to test out VCs that use complex logic and other stuff. I'll have some previews when it is all completed but not here on this thread.