[Getter Robo G]

Ahem... I believe this is what you were looking for, Nico/Venom's rar, I repackaged:

http://www.4shared.com/file/63705674/c0077f89/AFtest.html

[ShadowGorrath]

Ahem... I believe this is what you were looking for, Nico/Venom's rar, I repackaged:

http://www.4shared.com/file/63705674/c0077f89/AFtest.html

Thanks

GOOD NEWS:

I've gotten a reply from Daniel, and we've thus now recieved the green light for using his ships!

As part of my agreement with him, we'll share any optimizations to the ships with him for X-Plane. This should thus benefit both this project and the X-Plane community. I'll try to start working on the ships this weekend. 

Those are excellent news 

[Col. Fishguts]

The models look very unoptimized and in some parts not very detailed for the poly-count you've given (especially the QE). I guess he wasted many polies on small things like the CIWS and rails, which could probably made more efficient.

You mind posting the models here, or are you not allowed to do so? I'd like to have a closer look at them.

[Thaeris]

This might not be untrue. I've found most of Daniel's models to be made with double-faced surfaces. I've actually talked to him about this before as well. Still, it's an easy fix.

".obj" file format for X-Plane is different than the common ".obj" file format that you're familiar with; you'd probably need a plugin for your CAD program to load the base files. When a model is converted for X-Plane, it seems all the vertices are then "unwelded," thus producing a HUGE amount of vertices. This isn't a problem for X-Plane, but it makes a simple model which is just fine for use in the sim seem really unoptimized to anyone else. A simple "weld" performed on the entire model removes thousands of duplicate vertices. So, that too is an easy fix.

Uploading the ships here shouldn't be an issue. What I'll do is delete the lights, perform a quick weld on each model and compress them to a .7z file on this thread. And you're right, they'll need a good bit of optimization. Furthermore, adding more detail/removing detail should be quite easy. I'm personally thinking of adding a vertical launch system to the "XUV" (the "stealth ship") and making a heavy cruiser version of that as well. There's a few other ships I've got on file as well. Once these are good to go, I'll see if any of them are worth the effort. I'll put the files in standard .obj format unless there's a need for something else.

[starlord]

Didn't a modder from the X plane once make an alien attacker from ID4? Now that would be a blast to fight against... that and 50Km diameter long city destroyers!

[Thaeris]

I've never seen that one, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Keep in mind that there's quite a few X-Plane hubs, but the main one is X-Plane.org. Which just so happens to be my original forum home!

Actually, I think a good source of aircraft might be from YS Flight Sim, believe it or not, namely in terms of add-on aircraft. There's two problems involved: YSFS has a file format I'm not familiar with, so ripping models might prove to be a little tough. Second, I'd have to find the original authors of those planes to be able to justly be able to offer them to the project; the latter would probably be the hardest part.

Seriously, check out this MiG-25 and this SU-47 - this might just be the best solid-color polygon modeling you'll ever see. EVER.

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[ShadowGorrath]

Already got a modified Su-47. And the MiG-25 might be a little too "old" for the campaign

Su-47MK2 Berkut-F

[Dragon]

You can always reskin the Foxbat and call it a MiG-50 or something.
Of course, this model may be too accurate to pull this out.

[Thaeris]

I was thinking the '25 might be useful as it has great high altitude performance. But then, I don't know too much about your mod or its setting. 

[Thaeris]

In response to the request filed earlier, here are the ships I promised to upload. Except the "stealth ship." I'm personally playing with that at the moment; I'll upload my optimization and the base .obj when I'm done. I've uploaded the file to my SkyDrive as it's about 2MB... too large for a direct post. I really hope this works... If there's a problem, please inform me.

<iframe title ="Preview" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" style="width:98px;height:115px;padding:0;background-color:#fcfcfc;" src="http://cid-649fdf15ca62becf.skydrive.live.com/embedicon.aspx/.Public/Ships1.7z"></iframe>

These ships are unoptimized apart from (a.) merging the model elements, (b.) removing animations, and (c.) welding verticies. Apart from that, they might be in... sort of an ugly condition. If you want to start playing with them, though, you'l just have to work with it. Furthermore, I'm not going to leave a non-password protected file on the "drive" for much more than a week, so if you need these, now is the time to grab them. Finally, if you're not doing anything for Shadow's project, please leave these files alone - or at least keep them to yourselves. Integrity, people!

[Col. Fishguts]

OK, I had a look at the QE, and by removing the F-35 and doing another weld brought down the poly count to 16898, which isn't bad. The modeling isn't as ineffecient as the first pic made it look like, it's just badly UV-mapped with very different pixel destiny throughout the model, which makes it look bad in some places. He used more UV space for the F-35 plus pilot than for the whole carrier!

But (and this is a big BUT) there are numerous holes in the mesh, one sided polygons hanging freely in the air and a ****load of duplicate polygons/edges on the flightdeck (the ski jump in particular is one horrible mess). While those are all fixable quirks, the time needed to correct the mesh would better be spent building it up from scratch properly.

[starlord]

Might you consider the f-22 and Yf 23 in your arsenal?

the latter especialy is quite interesting looking...

[Dragon]

F-22 is already in.

[ShadowGorrath]

Yeah, but "modified" to fit in with the era. Model's the same though. Dunno where to get the YF-23.

[Thaeris]

As I've said, I'll happily play with the ships. If all goes well, I might have a refined mesh ready by next week.

As you've seen by looking at the ships themselves though, there's two versions of the British aircraft carrier. If you had to choose only one, which one? I ask as if I start working on one at some point, I'd like to know which one to give priority to.

[ssmit132]

Actually, I think a good source of aircraft might be from YS Flight Sim, believe it or not, namely in terms of add-on aircraft. There's two problems involved: YSFS has a file format I'm not familiar with, so ripping models might prove to be a little tough. Second, I'd have to find the original authors of those planes to be able to justly be able to offer them to the project; the latter would probably be the hardest part.

Me and Dysko were going to do this once with Ys Flight models to make a mod using aircraft models. It didn't really go that far, though, since Dysko had RL stuff to do and I lost interest. I have a tool on my old computer to convert YS Flight models to VRML, which you could convert to a more usable file type. I could try and dig that out if you want it, but yes, we didn't really have any luck getting permission to use the models if I recall correctly. I also have a few missile models that do work in FSO that I converted from addon weapon packs that may be useful, but you'll have to ask the creator (TaskForce 58, whose webpage can be found here) if you can use them, and they'll need some work done to them.

[Col. Fishguts]

As I've said, I'll happily play with the ships. If all goes well, I might have a refined mesh ready by next week.

As you've seen by looking at the ships themselves though, there's two versions of the British aircraft carrier. If you had to choose only one, which one? I ask as if I start working on one at some point, I'd like to know which one to give priority to.

It appears that one is the CATOBAR variant and the other the STOVL variant. It's up to you which one you want for the mod. Apart from the flight deck, the models are identical.

[Thaeris]

@ ssmit132: Sounds good. I wouldn't mind having a tool to crack into YS Flight models, if only to fix a few of the ones I've downloaded that have a missing polygon or two in the mesh. And yes, I've been to the TF158 page.

In terms of TF158 aircraft, the advanced Tomcat might be a neat fighter to implement into the game... if only because it looks cool.  

@ Col. Fishguts: That's pretty aparent - I was curious as to which you'd like to see first.  

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[starlord]

theris, I think I saw a Yf-23 somewhere in the xplane forums, might you confirm?

[ssmit132]

@ ssmit132: Sounds good. I wouldn't mind having a tool to crack into YS Flight models, if only to fix a few of the ones I've downloaded that have a missing polygon or two in the mesh. And yes, I've been to the TF158 page.

Thaeris, I've attached the tools here that I mentioned.

The executable you'll want to use is surfview (either with or without the 'o', that only determines whether OpenGL is used to render the model). Once you're in the program, locate the .srf or .dnm file you want to convert:

This is then displayed in the window (this is a Harrier from Oranleed's pack):

To create a VRML file from the model, select the File drop-down menu, click SaveVrml 2.0(V), and then save it:


You should be able to then convert to a better model format (3D Exploration is good for this) and then do whatever to it. Note that you can't do any modeling with these tools if I remember correctly.

Seriously, check out this MiG-25 and this SU-47 - this might just be the best solid-color polygon modeling you'll ever see. EVER.

Incidentally, how were you going to handle these extra polygons? Since you could probably UV map the models once you've converted them, and then many of those polygons would be superfluous, would they not?

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