Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Dusting off some very old skills...

Well, I've decided that I've reached the point where I must dive into my only remaining unexplored bay in the great ocean of content that is FSX. I've made scenery, made movies, edited just about every damned thing in FS that can be edited, gone to great lengths to improve the flight modeling and performance of planes made by others, and so... I'm making a plane of my own. :)

This plane: the Czech Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatros, the world's most popular jet trainer, in use by some 30 air forces.

As Bilbo Baggins said of his departure for Rivendell, "I've put this off for far too long." ...and I have indeed.

The modeling and texturing are second nature to me, just have to dust off the synaptic connections formed during seven years of game art creation. The gauges however, well, that's going to be a big adventure as I'm starting from pretty much zero there.

Here's where I'm at after the first night of work... (clicky)




Why the L-39? Well, a couple reasons for that. It's a relatively simple plane, mostly steam gauged, it's light and nimble which are traits I enjoy, and lastly no one's made a decent one since FS2002, which is a shame. I'm pretty sure ACES planned to include one in the Accel pack, but they just ran out of time to do it.

And just in case those reasons aren't sufficient: the French rapper MC Solaar flies one, and that makes it bloody well cool by default, haha. :)

Enjoy...



And worry not, I haven't abandoned the Rafale vid, not by a long shot, it *will* get done. I am however rather brain fried on several parts of it and need a mental distraction, in this case a monumental one.

-lotus out

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

that's cool man. Will this be payware? I'm sure it'll look good with your experience from gaming development. oh yeah, you're the only person I know who actually knows about MC Solaar, hehe. My personal favorite song of his, Today's a Good Day

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the update on the video. ;)

Sundowner said...

Good luck! I'm beginning to work on my S-61N today, no 3D modeling experience except of CAD designing... it's going to be interesting ;P

Anonymous said...

Wow Lotus, that is very cool! Does this explain why I haven't seen you in FSX lately? I've been lurking about...I have "flying needs" you know :P

Anonymous said...

What hppens when you get to the point where you will have taken "one step further than youhave ever been before" ... ? (said the fat hobbit)

Lotus / Ramasurinen said...

"Stuuupiid faaaat Hoobbbiitt!!"

My favourite line from Gollum by far. :)

Jet, been flying quite a bit lately actually, dunno why we haven't bumped into each other. Hmm.

Sundowner, good luck to you as well. Check out some of the Aces blogs as you work on it, especially Torgo3000's, there are some good tips in there.

And Mugar, whether it'll be payware or freeware depends entirely on whether it turns out to be good or crap. But considering I won't release it at all if it sucks.... ;)

Anonymous said...

Scizo Golem is the only part where anyone laughed though...

For the gauges I have a tip.
There should be a big bar at the top, and if you look there should be an edit tab, and under those there should be your friends Mr.Copy and Mr.Paste.

Lotus / Ramasurinen said...

Haha, Dougie. If by copy and paste you mean 'borrow' gauges from others, no can do. Gotta make them all from scratch to call them my own. :)

d0ugi3 said...

Plagiarism is the way of the future.
Do you reckon David Brice owes you any favours?

;)

Lotus / Ramasurinen said...

Well David Brice is not only a client of mine, and I of him, but he's an all round great guy, so if I use anything from any of his planes in mine it'll be with his explicit permission, nothing less. Besides using stuff from others on this would be a cop-out and I enjoy learning things the hard way.

Anonymous said...

I get your point, I wouldn't like getting the full force of EULA where it doesn't shine :{

Lotus / Ramasurinen said...

Haha, not so much a question of EULAs, more a question of respect, for others and myself, not to mention the satisfaction of conquering something quite difficult. :)

Anonymous said...

Yeh, it's a great feeling.
More relief for me than anything. I've tried learning to make gauges a few times but the SDK is unbelievably long. It takes a lot of will power to continue reading.
An very complicated aswell. 3DSMax isn't much easier either.
You have a lot of grit to keep working with these things. Salutations to you.

Sundowner said...

Yeah... it's day 4 for me and I already started to chew the 3ds max bible... not very healthy, but keeps me from thinking about hitting the wall with my head :P

Thanks for the heads up on the Torgo3000 blog, very important read indeed.