WW1 Freeware line-up rationalised

Due to delays caused by personal factors, the desire to create aircraft for other eras, and the desire to create payware aircraft I'm reducing my WW1 freeware lineup for 2008 to just the Sopwith Snipe and Fokker D.VIII. I still hope to create a freeware F6F-3 and F-84, mainly as learning experiences before creating payware aircraft of these and later genres.

I may move forward on creating low cost payware WW1 aircraft (for FSX) once I formulate a strategy that I am happy with. Unfortunately health issues are still a bit of a wildcard, however I plan to move forward on the creation of a couple of aircraft, most likely WW1 or pre WW2.

cheers

Rob.

(EDIT - 20 August 2008 : As mentioned in later posts the Fokker D.VIII has, for now, been dropped as a freeware project and replaced by an all new Sopwith Baby, which should appear sometime during 2009).

Fokker D.VIII

I've mentioned this aircraft in previous blog posts. Anyway today celebrates my return to aircraft modeling after radiotherapy (I've been busy on CFS3 terrain work for a couple of weeks). Today I refreshed my memory on where I was at with the Fokker D.VIII, created new wheels and refreshed some minor smoothing issues on the prop. Most of the work so far is in the Oberursel and prop - about 2 1/2 days so far - less than 20 hours work including the prop and new Oberusel/Le Rhone.



The current delaying issue is the Spandau which I want to make as detailed as I can, for use in many other aircraft. These days I generally create an aicraft shell and then work from the inside out, hence the lack of struts at the present moment.

Cheers

Rob

PS: As per my earlier posts the Fokker D.VIII is only for FSX at the present moment. I'm not sure whether OFF Phase 3 for CFS3 will allow third party aircraft. If it does, and I receive enough requests I may consider a CFS3 version. If I did it may take a while for the CFS3 version to appear.

EDIT - August 20, 2008. As mentioned in subsequent posts the Fokker D.VIII is tentatively pla nned for a possible future payware release for FSX.

A Month's break

I've been having a bit of a break from modeling this past month. After radio therapy in February and a computer upgrade I've been finding it difficult to get back into modeling in 3DS Max. I suspect there may be further interruptions coming up on the health front. :(

I have spent a bit of time flying in FSX these last 4 weeks especially with some great recent releases such as FTX AuBlue, the RealAir Spitfire and a few other aircraft.

I have also been playing around with the CFS3 scenery SDK and CFS3, testing the boundaries and finding the bugs in CFS3 and it's terrain engine. I have a preliminary Eastern Front theatre mapped out and being tested before further developing. Whew!! talk about an ordeal.... the CFS3 SDK documentation is lacking to say the least. The only way to check it out is by endless testing and flying. I have found one possible major bug in CFS3 which will probably prevent any theatres which straddle the meridian W7°, such as Spain, parts of the British Isles and the Faroe Islands. The problem appears to be hard coded into CFS3 :( I'll investigate further.

Anyway I'll post more on this on my CFS3 scenery blog, now re-named CFS3 Worlds.

Hopefully I can resume modeling soon.

cheers

Rob

EDIT: Stop Press - I successfully managed to resolve the issue with meridian 7°W on the Spain mesh. So the prospects of a Spanish theatre and a Scotland Norway theatre look good. There still appears to be a bug in CFS3 which causes theatres larger than 1835km to crash in the NE corner of the map.


Rob