Posts by ussiowa

How about the runway lights?

More great videos of the Kai Tak approach:

Oh I so miss the old 1980s Hong Kong, all of it.

Don't forget the essential landmark for landing there (see bottom left quadrant of the pict), checkerboard hill.

It also was lit up at night.

Fun stuff, landing jumbo jets like fighter aircrafts.

More info (not talking about me here). Lots of great info and anecdotes in the comments of the video.

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I was a tower controller in this era at Kai Tak. The ILS was based at the checkerboard and called an IGS (instrument guidance system). When you got to minimums on the ILS, you either turned and landed if you had the runway in sight, or you turned and started a go around if not visual. Not turning was not an option! Due to the crazy weather in the harbour, landings turned into go arounds often. Cathay Pacific pilots always made this landing look easy because they developed the habit of moving left off the ILS when they were visual and then had more space to do the turn.

Complainers are people that are strongly asking to keep doing business with you. Others move on silently.

Anyway just saying. I'm not here to defend IPACS by any means, but we still have to understand that they're doing things the way they think is right for them, whether it is so for us individually or not, and it must be very tiring to get constant criticism (even constructive), and many time the same one over and over. Lots of people (not people here necessarily) claim that what they want is what "everyone " wants and any other preposterous message to justify their own personal agenda or demand.

There is also I suspect cultural issues at play, we're a bunch from all over the world here, cultural differences and sensitivities play a role in how we see things.

Bottom line is none of us are IPACS, nor do we have ownership, therefore a say in company strategy. We are all welcome to create our own "better" product and market and sell it.

In the alternative, we can accept what is, be patient, go along or not, contribute or not, and complain or not knowing that there is definitely some censure at play. They have a tough skin though, because a lot of the complainers would have thrown in the towel already if they had been on the other side.

Again, I'm not defending IPACS, far from it, I have the same frustration with what is happening. I absolutely despise the censorship that is happening, but it's not my company, my product , my forum to manage. They make their bed, they lay in it, they most likely believe that is the best way for them to do so, so be it. Is there a LOT of potential lost of overseen, in my opinion (professional at that) yes there is, but again they're not asking me, and I have no skin in the game.

We can take a horse to water, we can't force him to drink.

A lot of it I wish they would listen, and I firmly believe it may be in their strong interest. But that being said, it's their show.

And I'm still here, still contributing somewhat, although not flying much if at all, because of people like JetJockey, Tomsimmuc, Zosochile, and others that I've come to interact with (Even Jet-pack and I let him be )

I'm sorry we lost Larry and his great contributions (and many others who have very likely silently disappeared). I wish I could help, or take over (even though Helos are not my thing, still fun though) but to each his own and I understand.

Carry on!

And I don't know much about airports, but for Apollo stuff and others I created quite a few objects that "go underground" so the blending is nice.

Bottom line I created objects that extended below ground level so that the blending would be the ortho intersection (controlled by Z positioning). It looks great, blends textures, and if we were to ever have dynamic water for example then the shores would automatically be dynamic as well.

Maybe similar issues on airport can be solved that way or with other methods. Again I'm not familiar with what the issues are with airport building versus general scenery, or objects (3D buildings).

Take a look at the locks, or the Port canaveral Cruise terminal, both are big objects including ground around that sink into the ortho because of volume necessities. Airports should not be too different I think, and since it's almost always pretty flat, to create an entire airport in Sketchup would be really fast.

I assume the biggest issue comes from interaction/collision with the planes and the ground features. Since I don't know how that is implemented I don't know what are the potential issues and solutions.

Not sure I understood everything you said, but I think I got the gist of it.

Anyway here is test 3, in the left vertical bands I created different weights to see if they do anything.

Most left "column" is smooth and soft, then soft, then smooth, then "hidden" but solid. Let's see if that does anything.

And don't forget that Sketchup is fully customizable in Ruby, so we could if push comes to shove create and export pretty much anything providing we program it.

One more info, there are 3 standard "weights" for vertices in SU, solid, soft and smooth. If that were to be used instead of red/black, then it makes it super easy to work with, there are tools that help and we can definitely do more with programming.

Solid is solid, soft is hidden but still solid, smooth is hidden but applied a gradient for rendering purpose.

Vertices can also be "hidden". Solid can be hidden or not, smooth and soft are hidden by default.

It's a bit confusing I know, but it gives us options.

Here is a screen cap, that shows the red, and a collada file

As for CDG I was going to build the terminals, but so many things to do, so little time. I started though.

OK Antoine, it seems you have a good grasp of where we need to be. Sketchup can easily create mesh, flat or not, and I can select any color for the vertices. See test below created in like 10s (Ignore green fluo color). I can import pictures and thus create any patch that matches them easily, with lines, polys, beziers, etc..

Once I have a mesh I can give it volume with sculpting tools if I need to and work on the mesh various ways.

Wouldn't that work? Now on the weighing of the vertices, that is what I heard before, but I can create any color for any vertices. Would that satisfy the "weighing" process or is it a different parameter than pure color?

A toi de voir, on peut faire des essais si tu veux. Et en plus j'utilise Sketchup 8, un vieux soft.

First interesting issue. When exporting to jpg, the edges that were red, are now a combination of red and black at the same time, so they're hard to see, it's a few on the right bottom and one isolated int eh center. I should try exporting collada, or other 3D or vector formats. Anyway more testing is probably necessary.

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Here you go, let me know where you guys want it?

Quote from Jetjockey10

the Super Connie should probably be a Just Flight project for all the gauges and cockpit details.

Not that I'm building aircrafts on demand (or otherwise for that matter), but that one would be way down on my list just FYI.

That said, I can crank up a general shape pretty quick if needed (no texture, no interior, etc..) just one solid volume.

Quote from Jetjockey10

Michael, you can warm up with the library building with the columns and iconic dome at MIT, then move over to some terminal buildings at Logan airport. I bet you could then knock out the Kresge auditorium with the swooping roof.

Here is the "warm up", always got to do different than you anticipate All it needs now are textures.

What? an IPACS developper convention! Where? In Germany on top of it with great food and fun for all.

Where we'd share latest techniques to create scenery and aircrafts, with workshops and all.

Where we all fly together as designers to show each other what we made, (and create a collaborative flight engine)

Oops sorry, back to reality.

BTW Boston team, if you need some specific 3D design in Sketchup (you do the conversion though) you can always ask here, I may have the time, inclination.

What I'd really like to work on now though is collaboration with some aircraft developpers to build more aircrafts, like A10, SR71, C130, OV10-bronco, F18 Superhornet, A-1 Skyraider,...

Not my kind of airplane, but an absolute bravo et congratulations, because to build a model like this is a tremendous effort and work. It has to be praised.

Superbe, Merci Sylvain!

Join the Navy, then no worries!

I tell you what, Alaska shouldn't be too demanding in extra structures and cultivation apart from trees. Yet what a beautiful scenery to fly around with the SR 71 or the A10.

Quote from Rodeo

Excellent choice!

My son will go to Amherst for a year, so we will most probably fly to KBOS.

Perhaps we can extend the scenery a bit to the West.

Yes could it be extended to the West to Alaska?

Arghhh I like this, but I still feel like they have it backwards. The "controller" should track fingers, but not have a "body" so to speak, the body (trigger, etc..) should be virtual, or at least optionally virtual.

The idea is to be able to use HOTAS and yet to track fingers for dashboard interaction. Right now the only options are to go fully virtual, dashboard and controller controlled virtually, or full hardware (HOTAS) and use some form of controller grabbing (mouse or others) to control the dashboard and systems.

Even better for people like Ray who use a hardware dashboard, would be to have either hardware priority, or both equal priority but mapping selection: anything that is hardware controlled (HOTAS, switch, display, buttons, knob, etc..) is prioritized over virtual (or toggled through interface mapping), anything that is not hardware wired, is controlled virtually.

The "knuckle controller" should be a glove or something similar not intrusive to use hand with other systems (HOTAS).

I want to develop such controller, but haven't had time to mess with it.

Anybody has a solution? I tried leap motion but not much success so far.

Thanks for the info, filed it.