Brewster B339 Buffalo and Spitfire Mk1a Project

  • I thought you might like to see a couple of models I've been working on in AC3D that hopefully will one day find their way into Aerofly FS2. Let me say at the outset they will in all likelyhood be payware as I'm not retired and its difficult to justify the amount of time these creations take otherwise. Other than that my plans are fluid at this stage. I work on them as and when I can. External meshes are done and I'm now working on textures and materials. After that Pilot and VC are then on the agenda.

    Buffalo

    Spitfire Mk1a

  • I reached the point today with the Buffalo where it's ready to put the exterior model into the SIM to see what it looks like. I gather i need to create Tmc file and a tmd file to do this. What is the most basic i can get away with here? Do all the objects for example have to have all matrix xyz data at this stage? If so what is it looking for.... the centre of the object in relation to the xyz 0,0,0 ?. Oh my... job for another day I think when less tired.

    Matt

  • Hi Matt,

    First, no worries, you don't have to add every pivot to the tmd to get started.

    For the yourplanename.tmc; Copy one from an existing plane and modify it for your needs.

    For the tmd have a look here:

    https://www.aerofly.com/dokuwiki/doku.php/aircraft:tmd

    The absolute minimum to start with should be this here. Copied from "TMD files again", post 2 by Jan

    Put all your objects into the geometry list of the fuselage. Later, when you build up your tmd, you can take them out and place them in the right place.

    What I do before putting the plane into the sim, is building up the rigidbody system and the landing gear, so the plane will stand right away on the own wheels (if everything goes right..). A good practise is always to take the appropriate sections from an similar plane and modify them to the own one.

    Hope it helps a bit..

    Kai

  • Hi Matt

    Payware....most certainly.. We spend many hundreds of hours working on these addons, many of those hours end users don't realise. So far my Lynx is up to 8500 lines of TMD code and I'm probably only half way or less ( no engines, fuel system, transmission and radios etc) TMD's are like a ball of wool, you pull one strand and it just keeps getting longer and longer and longer

    Steve

  • thanks Kai... Ill try that out this week if I get time.

    Ain't that the truth Steve!

    I've been parousing what's been written about the config files and I'm wondering where all that data comes from.... for airfoils for example or the masses of the individual parts... I'm sure I can find the weight of the Buffalo overall but im blowed if I know how to find that out for say just the wing😀 I don't know how you did it all with your models. I have no training in advanced aeronautics😀

    Matt

  • I've spent a very frustrating day (as have others I gather with their projects) trying get the buffalo to materialize in AF2 without success. Here are text version of the tmc, tmd files I'm currently using, and the tm log, in case anyone can see what I'm doing wrong... but generally I'm getting no preview image and when I load the Buffalo into a flight AF2 either crashes or loads the C172. At this point I just want to look at the artwork to see if it looks ok not get a finished configuration but at the moment I'm ready to throw in the towel.

    I understood from the SDK that the sound and physics sections could be copied from a similar aircraft so I tried the F4U but then the report just has a the unreferenced geometry messages for all my objects. I take those sections out and then the report is just left with the ugly names warning. but either way it don't work for me

    Matt

    • Official Post

    Hi Matt,

    your DynamicObjects is completely empty, that is why it fails to load the dynamics section and crashes.

    296.82-tmimage: loading dynamics begin 'C:/Users/Matthew.DESKTOP-CPB4G3T/Documents/Aerofly FS 2/aircraft/buffalo_raf///buffalo_raf.tmd'...

    -> no next line means it crashed during that operation

    Copy the entire f4u tmd file, then remove all "collisionhull" objects but leave the rest of the DynamicObjects section as is; and remove the entire content of your GraphicsObjects section, then add in with a simple rigidbodygraphics object with the GeometryList only containing your fuselage geometry. (Similar to what you did)

    You seem to have some unnecessary empty lines in your code as well, maybe from copy pasting it?

  • thanks Jan for advice.... i will give it a try when I get a chance.

    Matt


    Well it worked after a fashion. It way to shiny, and the exporter is not generating a preview image and I don't know what's up with the object "PropellerDisk" but that's a problem for another day. Thanks Jan.

    Matt

  • Great work Matt....Been there many times throwing in the towel but it still hangs in the corner..It's as frustrating as hell but Master Obi Jan Kenobi is there to help.. Hopefully I will be able to help too at some stage, my TMD'ees is gradually improving

    Steve

  • Been playing about with the colours, shine and I've taken the propeller disk off for now so you can see the engine. The model is efficiently built so the detail doesn't mean it has a huge vertices count... it may all come in at less than the SDK DR400 depending on my work on the pilot and VC. The Spitfire is even less.

    Matt

  • In Aerofly, planes, especially trikes can be a son-o-gun to control on liftoff. I hope you can keep yours a bit more...... sedate.

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

  • I sign up for the Spit ;)

    X-Plane 12.x | DCS 2.5.7 | War Thunder | Aerofly FS4

    Win11-x64 | Lenovo Legion T7 34LMZ5 | Intel i7-10700K @3.6GHz | Kingston FuryX RGB 32GB DDR4 PC3733 | 6TB SSD Samsung 850 Pro | 3TB M2 PCI 4x | Gigabyte RTX 3070 Ti Vision OC | TM Hotas Warthog | Saitek Combat Pedals | Reverb G2 V2 | Lenovo Legion Y25g-30 360hz

  • Sorry for not posting for a while but progress is being made behind the scenes.

    Firstly... Jan has got the Brewster functioning at the current level nicely just needs some tweaks to the Prop sync and then I will show some more pics of that.

    Secondly the Spit... External model is mostly complete and at the moment I'm working on the texture art. Panel and Rivet lines take a long time... they wont be this prominent in the end … I just need them to be so at the moment so I can see what I'm doing. Done some internal details in readiness for the Pilot figure which I've also started on but too early to show any of that. That's all the news for now.

    Matt