de Havilland DH-106 Comet for X-Plane

[TSR2]

Hi Guy,

Its a stunning model, but the thing I love about it most is the time and effort that you've put into doing her properly. Really well done.

[guym-p]

This is something of an intermediate update, and a bit of news about X-Plane. X-Plane 10 has been causing some excitement in the community with screen shots of cars and trucks driving along at dusk with headlights lighting the way ahead. Not that this does anything to help flight simulation, but it certainly adds to ambience. This obsession with moody dusk scenes continues to the demo download, which opens at Seattle-Tacoma with great storm clouds overhead, quite a large amount of ground detail loading by default, all of which punishes frame rates.

On one hand, great: clouds were weak in 9 without special weather add-ons, and they want to show off the new toys, but what everyone's really worried about is having to buy a new super-computer to run it all. The first few seconds of the demo do nothing to dispel the concern; on the contrary: I could almost see the sweat coming off my poor old 2006 computer as it struggled to keep it all going.

I let the red-hot servers settle before downloading the demo. The demo is "full" in every way, just with a tiny puddle of scenery around KSEA and a 10 minute time limit before you lose control of your aircraft and are forced to quit and reload. Keystroke shortcuts have been revised, which is a little confusing at first, but I found what I wanted, made it daytime, loaded the Comet, and took off. I should have spent more time configuring pretty clouds, but there it is!

The relief is that if you configure it sensibly, frame rates are OK. Lower than 9, but then there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. X-Plane 10 rendering is in a different league to X-Plane 9. X-Plane has never been such a refined, polished product as the Microsoft ones. As always, big updates trigger a tsunami of posts, but the crew can be relied on to work furiously to put out all the fires. I've ordered a copy and will start converting the Comet to 10 when it's settled down. I used those first 10 minutes to take a few screen shots and I've posted them here:

http://dh-aircraft.co.uk/news/files/eca ... d7-87.html

Guy.

[guym-p]

More updates: I've spent a considerable amount of time tuning the Comet's performance with a Rolls-Royce Avon engine plug-in by Smellybeard (from the UK X-Plane Development Team). Also in preparing a paint kit. This is as much for me as anyone else: the master PSD files with all the metal, shadow, seam and rivet details were several gigabytes each, which is simply not practical on a day-to-day basis. The first livery to trundle off the line, using the paint kit, is for Middle East Airlines. Screenshots here:

http://www.dh-aircraft.co.uk/news/files ... d1-90.html

Guy.

[guym-p]

Comet 4C, LV-AIB, at Paris Orly Airport (LFPO). Aerolineas Argentinas ordered a total of seven Comets from de Havilland, operating between South America, North America and Europe between 1959-71. Paris Orly was one of their destinations.

This screen shot was taken using X-Plane 10.04r2. A recent and very welcome upgrade is the inclusion of many Aerosoft sceneries for major European airports, which were delivered only recently to license holders via the free on-line update.

Progress with this livery was slower than expected because I had not reckoned on the airline lettering wrapping so far around the nacelle tanks. I was stupid for not checking in advance, and had made the UV seam too low so the lettering was broken in two. This was annoying, because it meant baking the metal textures, shadows and lit textures for the tank and winglet again, and re-drawing the graphics for the already completed liveries. Hey, ho; but it's all fun ...

More information, as always, is available here:
http://dh-aircraft.co.uk/news/files/897 ... 5a-91.html

[guym-p]

Kuwait Airways (screenshot in the old X-Plane 9.70). Next: United Arab Airlines ...

[guym-p]

There was a slight hiatus in the project while I dealt with a couple of photographic assignments. I've since returned to Blighty and polished off Misrair and United Arab Airlines paintwork. At first, I did not understand which name I should use, or why it had changed. If you flick through a book on the Comet or photographs on the internet, United Arab Airlines is in the majority, so it seemed more "correct", but I found a number of places to read up on the subject. I wrote a potted history in the blog:

http://dh-aircraft.co.uk/news/files/78a ... fe-94.html

In the end, my decision was to create a livery for both Misrair and United Arab Airlines. It's been the most challenging design so far, requiring a high degree of precision, the multiple stripes leaving me nowhere to hide.

My self-imposed rule is to make one of each of the liveries when the Comet 4C was brand-new, ex-works; preferably the first example delivered to each airline. While I might eventually draw some of the repaints, it certainly won't be for first release, or I will publish a paint kit so other people can join in. The obvious exception is Dan Air, which I wanted to do because they were such an intrinsic part of the Comet's history.

The following screen shots were taken from X-Plane 9.70, which has crude weather and lighting compared with v10. The only add-on (apart from the Comet) is Cairo International Airport (HECA), originally by Ahmed Hussien (Vateg) for Microsoft Flight Simulator, converted by Ahmed Akram and distributed as freeware by X-Plane.Org.