Plane Graphics for adding FT planes to any sim? (picasim specifically)

[jtrops]

I see that there are a lot of people making graphics for various FT designs. I was wondering if anyone would make the graphics available to be adapted to other sims.

We are using PicaSim for our school club since it is one of the few sims that run on Mac. Someone generously donated an Aerofly USB controller, but the software was too old to run on a current Mac (I think it was Aerofly Gold Premium). The controller works perfectly with PicaSim. We have no budget, and it would be nice to have the planes that the students are building available on the sim we are using.

I don't know if the graphics files are compatible, or if they could be made compatible; however, if they could it would be a cool winter project for the club to work on getting them to fly correctly in PicaSim. From reading the tutorial on the site it sounds like it would help the students learn a lot about the physics of airplanes.

This is what it says we need for graphics:
"First, create a 3D model. If you can export in metres, that is perfect. I find my models get exported in inches, but you can use modelScale in Aeroplane.xml to convert."-from PicaSim "Customize" page.

Any ideas from the community would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jerry

 

[PsyBorg]

I started to make models on the Reflex Sim I used to fly before I got into quads and FPV Freerider came out. I know there was a whole section in the reflex help section that lined out how to incorporate your own model into the sim as well as a short tutorial how to shoot panoramic scenes to use as well.

I assume there should be the same in your sim files some where if not I am sure a web search will surely uncover someone who has done it specifically for your sim. All Reflex wanted was a top, a side, a bottom, a front, and back, as well as a few detail shots for where the engines and exhaust or for special cockpits all on one "Sheet". After that you had to mark a bunch of points at the edges of the pictures for front side top and bottom so the program knew where the edges are when moving with in the scenes. Its not hard just time consuming. I am sure if you are a teacher it would be much easier for the kids to do as they are more then likely more quick and computer savvy then us old guys.

Basically what you are doing is importing several views of what ever model you want in a way that the software can interpret it into a 3d model. You then just use that to re-skin a similar flying model in the simulator and adjust parameters to suit how you want it to fly.

 

[jtrops]

That makes sense. I'll open a plane file to see what's in it. If it is like you describe it should be doable. I think we could even just take the plans from the FT pages, and adapt the different views directly from them.

I'll bounce it off of the club to see if anyone wants to tackle it. This year we have quite a few students who are "quad-centric," so it might be a push to get them onto planes. Maybe they could do a couple of racing quads.

Still, I thought it would be cool if there was a library of 3d graphics for the FT planes that anyone could use to kickstart a project like this.

 

[PsyBorg]

I started to do the profiles for my Runner 250 in Reflex but it was right when FPV Freerider came out so no real need to finish. There are several threads going. Wisonman has one where he started doing this for Real Flight. That has generated interest on and off over time. I think I saw others for different flight sims as well.

 

[jtrops]

I looked into the file for one of the planes today, and it is a .ac format. It looks like it is the native format for Ac3d, but Blender imports/exports that file type. Since Blender is free, and Mac compatible it looks like the way to go. It's gonna be a bit of a learning curve to make a plane graphic. Still, it could be a good winter project.

 

[jtrops]

I have been working on Blender, and it's going to be a bit slow going before I can do anything with it. Still, it is encouraging that some of my students are already versed in it.

If we make any headway with this project I will share the 3d files for anyone who wants to adapt them to another sim. Blender supports a large variety of 3d file types, so it would be easy to convert the files to just about anything needed for various applications.