rox

Happy birthday Jim, hope you're having a grand time, where ever you are...

A place to post those pretty pictures of your pretty birds and interesting adventures. Here's two from my bimble around with Fenrir today: Fen having a little low level accident on the airfield and losing this landing skids, thereby converting the Huey into an amphibious helicopter. Myself landing the chopper on a 2000m+ mountain peak and first landing on an incline, as you can see it didn't go as well as planned.

No FT, I'm serious, especially about the part where they chase each other with 10 meters of clearance and jet airplanes sounding like electric cars.

Yeah, while (dog)fighting is also cool if we can organize it due to differences in modules and eras, just getting together and having our own little "airshow", basically hanging around in different aircraft, is good enough for me.

Quite possibly the most realistic airplane film ever made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9wpeg9q5C4

1. Yes 2. Yes 3. Yes 4. Yes 5. Yes 6. Yes 7. Yes Helicopters, 60/70's jets, and of course warbirds for me, but I'll fly anything I can buy really.

I've seen that thing fly in person. 10 minutes after the flyby, it's still in the flyby.

Same reason I picked the Mig-21, my country actually flies these so I find it kind of cool to be able to point at things in the sky and say "Hey I can fly that too, in theory...in the widest possible sense of the word" I will pick the Huey up too, eventually.

...and happy to say that despite a PROLONGED "OMG WHAT'S GOING ON D: " moment, the end result was a bit less dramatic than I anticipated, as in, instead of ending up as a smoldering wreck, I emergency landed into a nearby field after the automatic onboard warning voice computer lady repeated several dozen times that generators one and two failed, which sounded as the right time to be on the ground. I think I made a tail strike, but there's this protective metal thing sticking downwards and I saw no visible damage to the tail or gear, despite the landing being somewhat violent Basically I never flew a helicopter simulator, and my knowledge of how they work and the aerodynamics in question was next to zero before I read parts of the 250 page manual for the DCS Mi-8. When I read on the aerodynamics-related stuff, this effect, that effect, this vortex, that vortex, air flows this and that way and pressure here and pressure there on the rotor, I think I had a small stroke. It seems about a million times more complex than flying ariplanes, counter-intuitively, as I always thought helicopters were just "fly up and then forward without caring". I started this submarine with an airplane tail and propeller on top as per manual instructions, easy enough, and without the manual telling me where to keep the stick and pedals during early static takeoff/hover and transition to forward flight I'd likely just twirl away to a quick death. Instead I at least managed to face vaguely the same direction while I hovered and took off, despite pitch and roll being all over the place, and this thing even has an autopilot that makes it easier to fly, can't imagine what it's like to fly without it turned on (not that I thought I'd try, not yet anyway). Then I transitioned into forward flight and got a few hundred meters of altitude, then my generators apparently died (probably forgot to switch something on or off during start-up), then went into a shallow dive towards the ground to save my life and in the process went too fast and started stalling the rotor (because, completely intuitively, apparently helicopters stall if you go too fast!), then slowed down by pulling up so much it's a wonder that the the rotor didn't just break off and fly away, and then somehow landed with a little bit of forward speed and nose up, with minimum pitch. Anyway, quite the adventure, I cannot say I've ever had to learn something so completely new and challenging ever since I started flying airplanes in the first place. So many new axes to think about, half a dozen airflow and pressure effects to consider, pretty crazy. I even had no idea that helicopters with wheels actually taxi and can (and indeed it's easier to) take off and land moving forwards on the runway!

Made the shack into a 3 second video as well Three seconds because after that the roof starts doing crazy things like inflating uncontrollably to over the size of the shack itself, I have yet to refine the whole soft body physics responsible for its bending. I will tweak this scene more over time, add some glass to the windows and a hinged door as well...

I wish I knew a bit more than absolutely nothing about planes of the interwar period.

Reminds me of Top Gear's Geoff.

So I made a video of the bayonet:

Still work in progress. Built a shack and then dropped a rock on it using features of C4D's built in dynamic physics engine. Sub-polygon displacement for the broken wood effect and soft body physics for the bendy roof. This is SO much fun.

Ah, well I only started with DCS half a year ago and stopped 3 weeks later (as I went away to work for 5 months elsewhere and will resume now that I'm back), so Caucasus is quite nice for me still. Plus there's kind of a bond as I've been to Georgia.

I look at it this way - if I didn't do it the way I do, I wouldn't buy the real thing anyway as I don't have money, so no one is at a loss really. It's very fun to learn this, if also very time consuming. That being said, from what I've read on 3D forums, C4D is preferred over Maya, its chief competitor, especially for single artists (not sure if artist is the right word but oh well) as the workflow is a lot more streamlined and less time consuming in some cases, and it's a bit easier to get a hang of while being pretty much just as powerful as Maya. Maya is still the industry standard though, more out of the industry's conservativeness (C4D is a lot newer than Maya) than out of actual merit.

What's so special about this map that makes it better or more interesting than the Caucasus one? Just asking, as currently I don't see the point in buying this over a module.

Back in February I started learning Cinema 4D. The scope of this program (and others like it) and its possibilities are insane, I still cannot believe that human beings made something like this. Anyway, after the mug I made in February, which was my first ever 3D project... ...today I finished something much more complicated. It's a replica of the Yugoslav M48 bayonet that I own. Took me a good 1-4 hours per (most) day(s) of modeling and tutorial watching for the last three weeks. Anyway, this is it. A few small modeling mistakes in 2-3 places, but nothing that most people not into the field would notice. A few more models and then I'll start working on my first big thing - I want to model a Polish PZL P.11 plane.

There are times when I only use MG, such as for example the P-39 due to very limited and hard to shoot with cannon ammo that I only fire when I think I'm sure to hit.

Currently my biggest dilemma is whether to place: 1. Machine guns on the main trigger, cannons on the side thumb button, bombs on pinky button and rockets on pinky trigger, or 2. Machine guns on pinky button, cannons on main trigger, bombs on side thumb button and rockets again on pinky trigger Option 1 makes more sense visually, but option 2 seems to be more ergonomic, as during maneuvers when I would have to take pot shots with cannons, the thumb button is somewhat hard to press when gripping the stick while applying yaw and roll, and sometimes I even press it accidentally or don't notice that I'm still pressing it after I should have stopped. So I'm leaning at option 2. The only thing I miss on the stick is a thumb button in/near the center of the top part, instead of one of those hats..

A big year for my v-flying career. First in spring I finally ditched mouse looking for an imperfect but good enough Freetrack rig, and then today I went from six problematic years of this... To this... I wanted to buy an X-55 for a few months now, but totally didn't plan on buying one today. That is, until I saw a guy selling it for 130 pounds. Considering that the cheapest new X-55 in Croatia costs 175 pounds (and that's supposedly discounted from 190), that's a pretty damn good price for a practically new HOTAS, with warranty, and the extra shelves for the joystick and throttle that attach to a table that you can see in the pictures, which the previous owner crafted himself (won't be using them for a while though, they don't really go with my table). So I pretty much instantly called him, sat in my car and drove 50km to Zagreb to pick it up. First impressions: what the hell am I supposed to map to all these buttons, spinny things, toggle and hat switches.

I'm up for CloD though I don't know if I have to update since 5 months ago...

Thanks! Looking forward to buy an X-55 as well and finally ditch my ancient Saitek Aviator (or rather, butcher it into a button bay).

I'm arriving back home on friday evening, that's the 11th. If at all possible I'd like to participate, although I will be away for the weekend of 17-20th and again from 26th sep to about 7th oct. Otherwise I can put in most nights.