Bell-412 / Blog: Recent posts

Redesigning some parts ; here the new collective in progress:

Previous version used a real photo, but as every smart designer known, it was not good at all. So, a new 3D meshes, new uvmap and new textures. Results are more accurate and realistic.... read more

I received a message recently from a teammate I'm working with on slack. He asked me if I had any copyright infringment with the model I make since 2 years because a guy - named here CO - tell him my model was a complete copy of another product. I answered him very quickly on what I used and how I make my model.
The whole model - ie 95% - has been the product of my own work as anybody knowing my work on slack could witness (and, I think, any real model developer)
The 3D meshes are a compoung of different things (anybody can now easily get them for free on the internet and legally share under some conditions).
Anyway, beside this, I asked to the author who charge me - named here CO - why he didn't ask me directly at 1st. My question was very simple. I have been very surprised by his answer: he charge me, told he had evidences, he proceed his own investigation, deduce its own conclusion, with such arrogant and infamant remarks I had never seen in my career before. He was a cop and a lawyer at the same time. Furthermore, he threaten to denounce me if I still continue to use the Flightgear forum in order to share my work. Woaw !
It seems that CO don't like project that are not GPL, and above all he don't like project he cannot control himself. I don't know why flightgear is GPL and why they choose this license form, because the whole core team see as an hostile act any project that are outside their power. In fact, they have no right to do so. The only thing they can do is to ban people from the flightgear forum.
Well, here's the last exchange I had with this twisted guy. You'll see how he really rules its own fantasy. ... read more

I'm happy to provide this new version, many new features including a new FDM, a fuel manager and more:
** FDM **
- new FDM :
complete re-design from scratch
CoG now Ok.
Better inertia tensors
very nice stability at hover (pretty good w/o any afcs)
near real performance/limitation at hi/low speed (eg difficulty to go over 140 Knots)
near real performance/limitation at takeoff (real max takeoff = 12000 Lbs)
engine vibration (with Yasim feature, no scripting/camera)
Bell412 fuel tankers now complete like real ones (331 US Gals)
passengers weight, luggage, load
Yasim bug (auto-slice/jitter problem) : solved via nasal !... read more

This new version greatly improve the previous one:
FDM v2: ballast/weight/rotor change, CoG is near to be the real one. Flying AOA at 0°
aircraft is more stable at 0Kt (stationary) ; notice that collectiv behaviour has changed too.

NASAL/ENGINE MODEL
- electrical system redesigned (event driven, all user triggered, Nasal timer() thread removed)
- engine system redesigned and pretty done
- warning system monitoring

MODEL:
- airspeed indicator (needle) rotate well now and is well calibrated.
- main pilot instruments with 'console-spot' lightning is pretty done now.
- engine panel texture updated (labels/tags)
- engine instruments needles done at 90%
- engine instruments updated (E1/E2 id., xml)
- copilot meshes instruments done (still not operational)
- Annunciators/caution lights: (Models/Instruments/Cautions/cautions.xml)
- all Bell412 caution lights designed and functionnal
- Engines/Master/CYCCTR
- logic: all done (except for fire caution which needs a featured nasal)
- better texture management (remove some dupli overload)
- all glasses done.... read more

Release 27 of the B412 is ready to fly.
What has been done:
- fuselage : 90%
- cockpit : 90%
- instruments : 40%
- fdm : fake (todo)
- virtual power : 60%
- virtual engines : todo
- consumable : todo
- radio : todo
- animation : rotor/blade only (no blade twist)
- sounds : pretty good
- lighting : pretty good
Rembrandt and ALS compatible.

What important things are coming soon:
- rudder/cyclic/collectiv animat
- radios
- virtual engines
- fdm
- real governor
- flight director and autopilot (dafcs ...)... read more

Lighting is one of the the most important part of immersive game. Especially with flight simulator.
I spend a lot of time with that, but results are as expected.
Flightgear-2016 uses 2 different engines to render lights: Rembrandt and native + ALS.
With Rembrandt, you get shadows computed by the engine itself. Cockpit lighting is more natural, with shadows inside you own airplane 'automagically' mapped (and outside too).
Without Rembrandt, you'll get ALS - a name standing for athmospheric light scattering - the athmosphere lighting is beautiful, but no shadows effect - ie you must map your shadows yourself. It depends on user choice what engine will be used.
Both engine use the same lightmap shader parameters, so you can design a lightmap once and for all.
But rendering is different whether you use Rembrandt or not. So it is difficult to design a good lightmap,
it will be a trade-off - not too bad for one, but not enough good for the other.
I fought with the Flightgear lightmap parameters two days long, and finally I get a nice result: the best
way is to use a multimaped light map, not a single mapped one as suggested in the Flightgear examples.
Results (same time/location: tfff at 05:42):
Without Rembrandt:
... read more

I have the chance and the time to modelize the Bell-412 for the Flightgear flight simulator. It's a way to keep my mind up during a jobless time. Making an aircraft for a flight simulator requires good skills in many fields: 3d/2d design, programming, aerodynamics, and a lot of patience. But this job is unexpected very funny.
I start this blog to share my experiences on the project and some materials. It's a bit lately, the project is well advanced (I started it 1 month ago), but better now than never.
For a good intro, some discussions here: jabberwocky forum
And the current state of the chopper: