Bullethead

I love free online translations. They remind me of all the Monty Python skits where some Eastern Euro tourist would come into a shop, pull out an English phrasebook, say something completely inappropriate, and get hauled off by the police. Here's a great example of what such translation "services" will do to you: http://translation2.paralink.com/ I have a feeling the real meaning is more along the lines of "If you can read this, you're a worthy adversary."

The admins are willing to set things up however we want, but they will only do it once, so we'd better be sure of what we want before we do it. When I put the poll up some months ago, there weren't but a handful of opinions raised, which I considered too small a fraction of the forum to be representative. Thus, I let the matter fizzle.

Yup, build everything 1:1 scale in Gmax. If the gun is 904mm long in real life, make it that long in Gmaz. If the plane is 8.34m long in real life, make it that long in Gmax. Then, when you merge the gun object into the airplane model file, both will be to the same scale.

Thanks. I'm kinda proud of it. I had been worried about how I was going to arrange the cylinders radially because I couldn't figure out the array function. So what I ended up doing was putting the 1st one's pivot point at 0,0,0, clone, then rotate by 40^, repeat. Very simple. Yup, you sometimes need these detail parts before you can do the major structure. I was lucky I'd made the Vickers some time back for the M1c, so could slap them on the MS AI immediately when I needed them to work out the fuselage decking. And I was pleasantly surprised when they were exactly the right size. Until I put them together, I was never 100% sure I'd done the scaling correctly on either or both models . BTW, you'll be needing to make some guns. I found an excellent site for dimensioned 3-view drawings of all the main WW1 MGs: http://www.arizonamodels.com/index.php/cPath/29_39. This is a model company and this link is to their page for scale MG kits. What you do is, you download the PDF assembly instructions. They've got the drawings in them.

I appreciated it. I'm pretty sure the mesh is all closed. I made it out of a box that I just moved vertices around on, made some edges, and extruded from. Never deleted any polys.

Well, I got the deck all smoothed out, cloned, and mirrored. Then it was time to mount it on the fuselage. That's where I ran into a problem I can't figure out. I selected the Fuselage, Create Compound Objects, Boolean, Reference, Cut + Refine. This worked great on the front and side edges, but not on the back. See attached pic. Where the rear decking meets the fuselage, it's a complex intersetion of compound curves that Gmax has trouble just rendering even in Perspective view. In User view, it's just total trash. In any case, it doesn't create any new edges in that area and only a couple of vertices on existing edges. The missing cuts are shown in the yellow outlines to the right side of the top view in the pic below. I really don't care much what it does with the square, inner part of the rear decking. That's all just excess material that I'll cut away later when I make the cockpit hole. However, the joint between the outer rear, sloping part of the decking and the fuselage is of critical importance so I'm pretty mad it's not cutting there, especially since I can't visualize it any better than Gmax, so cutting it by hand will be a pain. But I guess I could do it. The problem there is, I still haven't cut the decking to match the fuselage, and I figure any half-ass hand-cutting of the fuselage will hose that operation up. Here's an interesting tidbit that seems related to this problem...... When I cut the fuselage, there were ZERO co-located vertices--each blue dot was 1 single vertex. The only "extra" vertices created by the cut were all on the cut where the angled, flat face of the decking comes up through the top of the cylindrical fuselage. In the top view, this cut makes an arc across the front of the fuselage top. In the side view, this cut is a straight line. Anyway, the "extra" vertices were on the new edges of this cut, perfectly in line between where this cut crossed the existing edges. I've already gotten rid of them in the pic, but I've marked where they used to be in the front view. As you can see, they were right in line where the edges of the curved, rear part of the decking crosses into the polys of the fuselage. IOW, the cut made the correct number of vertices, but put the rear ones up at the front on the wrong edges instead of further to the rear and making new edges for them. Anybody know how to get around this problem? Thanks in advance.

Actually, that cannon-armed pusher IS the escort. It's most likely a Voisin 4, or possibly a 6 although they made only a few of those. I can't tell them apart, myself. Anyway, the 4 was the escort version of the 3, and the 6 was the escort version of the 5. In the Groupes de Bombardement, they had several bomber squadrons equiped with 3s and 5s, and 1 squadron equipped with the cannon-armed 4s or 6s. The 4s and 6s were supposed to escort the bombers and defend them from attacking fighters. This didn't work well, so they switched the cannon-armed planes to bombing themselves. You can see the bomb racks in this photo. The cannon was intended to keep attacking planes out beyond the range of their machineguns. It didn't work for a number of reasons: 1) very low rate of fire, 2) difficulty in aiming at long range, 3) limited traverse meant the "fighter" had to point at the target, which it wasn't maneuverable enough to do well, and 4) the "fighter" was no faster than the bombers, so any maneuvers it did to engage interceptors, especially turns to attack enemies coming from behind, naturally got it out of formation with little hope of catching back up. However, the cannon did prove useful in ground attack, so the French kept building cannon-armed Voisins. The 3s - 6s were 1915/1916 planes, but they Voisin 8 was used in large numbers all through 1917, in both conventional and cannon versions.

I knew I'd get some when I cut polys--that's a given. I just wasn't expect to get more when I converted from editable poly to editable mesh and vice versa. After all, you don't get any when you convert from a standard primitive to an editable poly. Then you also get more when you flip normals. Most of these tend to be on 1 particular corner of the object and each such operation duplicates more of them, so you can end up with a huge clot of them if you don't get rid of them after each operation.

That's pretty much it. You switch between view modes. You program stick buttons to swich you back and forth between "snap" and "panning" view modes. You need 2 buttons, 1 to switch to from "snap" (the default) to "panning" mode, then another to switch back to "snap" mode. When you're in panning and you hit the "snap mode" button, POOF, you're looking back forward again. That's how I did it before I got TIR. CFS3's view system is one of the worst ever created, especially considering far better keyboard view systems had been around for 20 years or so before. I continually sacrifice goats to the Dark Gods in hopes that when P4 rolls around, it has its own engine which uses the universally approved keypad system along with TIR support of course.

One of my favorite WW1 planes. This is one of those specialized bomber "escort fighters" the French had. The R.11 came out in early 1918 but engine problems delayed the program so they only built about 370 by the end of the war. They were also used as long-range recon planes. Strangely enough, they couldn't carry bombs. I disagree with armament shown on the photo. Most of them had 4x Lewis guns, 2 on each end. Some had a 5th gun in the nose compartment firing under the tail, operated by the nose gunner. I never heard of any of these having 37mm cannons--the French had quit doing that by this point in time.

Breaking rocks and sauerkraut? No problem. I'll make a deadly flint knife while out breaking rocks, then use the sauerkraut to dissolve all the chains, locks, and bars between me and freedom. Plus, it'll ruin the noses of any bloodhouds on my trail.

Well, I got the gun notch cut out. This was more of a pain than it looked going in, because I wasn't aware that when you convert between ediable poly and editable mesh, AND flip normals, you tend to create a lot of extra vertices each time. I figured extra vertices only showed up on the cut so they took me by surprise later on. I even got to a point where I had like 10 vertices in 1 place and trying to weld them crashed Gmax. I gradually worked this clot down to 2 that still would crash Gmax, so I deleted one and redrew some polys. That was with the 1st, round cut for the cooling jacket. So when I cut the breech, I didn't change things as much as I had before and had fewer problems. Now, tons of smoothing work to do before moving on......

Well, it was easy to google the quote. Yup, it was LvR. Strange, I don't recall ever reading his book, and am actually unsure if he even wrote one. Coulda sworn that was in MvR's book.

Thanks. Guess I'll get on with it then. All I'm doing to the cockpit right now is cutting the hole. No details. The guns are pretty plain right now, too.

By the latter part of 1917, most bomber/recon 2-seaters do an "Indian run" defense. The main mass continues forward weaving while the lead guy circles around to the rear of the formation. Once he gets there, the new lead guy does the circle. Such formations are difficult to attack, so what you want to do his hang back and nail one of the guys off by himself circling to the rear. You can usually get him from his low 10-8 and escape without damage. Then he's maimed and drops behind so you can have him to yourself while your buddies work on the rest of the formation.

In his autobiography. There's the line, "My Fokker triplane suddenly became a biplane." He kept it rightside up and crashed painfully.

I'm pretty sure it's a wind-driven generator for onboard electrical systems. I can't tell you what it's for, but not all Voisins had them so it was probably for something mission-specific. I'd be surprised if it was for a radio because they didn't use these cannon-equipped planes for arty spotting, just bombing and escort in speciallized bomber units. Besides, pusher props don't go well with the trailing wire antennas of the day. I've seen pics of other French planes using such generators to power searchlights, but this plane doesn't have one (at least when the pic was taken).

That's a subject for another thread I plan on doing a lot of that. If for no other reason than I'm lazy. I extrude everything I can, especially tapered things. Extrude a segment, resize the new end, extrude again, resize, until you get it down to a point. SO much faster than whittling.

This sounds like a smoothing group problem. When you deleted the poly and replaced it with a new one, it got worse because the new poly probably isn't in the same smoothing group as the rest of the fin. I suggest you play with smoothing groups some, using the general theory shown in this video. This is how I iron out such wrinkles. http:// Another thing Hairyspin turned me onto

I think that's too broad a generalization and based mostly on a Brit perspective. They (especially the RNAS) didn't have many planes to start with so had to use them multi-role in the early days (although the RNAS did have a dedicated bomber force for a while back then). The French, OTOH, had large groups of dedicated bombers from the beginning, and also dedicated arty spotters. And everybody had dedicated recon units from the get-go. The thing is, the bulk of squadrons on both sides were attached to ground units: armies, corps, divisions, and even artillery regiments. This might sound strange from today's perspective, but it really isn't--the USMC still does things that way. After all, ground commanders have been handling the 3 classic arms of infantry, arty, and cavalry since the Bronze Age at least, and airplanes are just another arm in this regard. Anyway, the ground commanders told their airplanes what to do, focused on immediate tactical and operational concerns at the front: recon, arty spotting (offensive and defensive), bombing of enemy rear areas if possible, close air support during offensives, and prevention of the enemy from doing the same. This arrangement naturally leads to squadron specialization, first between fighters and 2-seaters, and then subdividing 2-seaters between the various jobs they did. It's a matter of not just the aircraft (which might be pretty generic or even all the same type), but also of specialized equipment and the training of the personnel. Arty spotting, for example, required a radio and an observer who not only was a trained aerial arty observer (NOT a trivial skill) but also knew how to use the radio. Neither of these was in large supply, so you didn't expose them to unnecessary attrition on other jobs that less-specialized squadrons could perform. Besides, the radio's weight precluded carrying equipment or ordnance for other missions, and was time-consuming to remove or install. Thus, while the airframe might be generic, arty-spotting planes wear pretty much stuck with their mission, and their observers were, too. Hence, dedicated arty-spotting squadrons. The French (escadrilles with 200-series numbers) and Germans (all the FA(A) squadrons) had many of these, as did the Brits. The rest of the 2-seater squadrons might be considered as specialized recon units, with some (but by no means all) doing the odd bombing or CAS mission occasionally as need or opportunity arose. Bombing for its own sake wasn't very high on the priority list of the ground commanders, whose primary concerns were recon and arty spotting. To them, bombing was langiappe. And ground commanders carried a lot of weight in political circles, so aircraft production and crew training were largely geared for their requirements. Specialized bombing squadrons therefore mostly arose under the impetus of air commanders who had friends in high places. This was easier for the French, because their air force was an independent service before the war started. Hence, they had a huge dedicated bomber force from the get-go. The others eventually followed suit, but only after their aircraft production had increased to the point that they had excess capacity beyond the frontline ground requirements. And with dedicated bombers came specialized, trained bombardiers, who again were mostly employed to use their training. Eventually, this process led to the formation of dedicated CAS squadrons, as well. Exactly! This is why we need specialized 2-seater squadrons. Right now, with generic, jack-of-all-trades 2-seater squadrons, almost all missions are recon or arty spotting (which have exactly zero difference in gameplay as currently modeled), and are quite uninteresting. Only occasionally do you get to bomb or do CAS. This is why few folks fly 2-seaters very often. However, if squadrons were specialized, then you could join the type of squadron that does the type of mission you want to do and only occasionally, or pehaps never, have to do the other types. I imagine it was a real kick in the nuts. The gun had its own hydraulic recoil absorber, but the beefiness of the whole fuselage framework (truss of steel tubing) indicates that considerable recoil was transmitted to the aircraft. In the Breguet-Michelin pushers, the gun had only limited traverse left-right but could elevate and depress a fair amount. I imagine that firing it at much of an angle would have really pushed the nose up or down a lot. Needless to say, a manually loaded cannon like this wasn't much use in air-to-air combat. However, they did prove rather useful for night bombing in the anti-searchlight role. That would be fun. Or just spotting enemy arty positions to mark down on the map for barrage fire later

The outlines of the objects look great, but the process seems to have wrinkled the surfaces of the fin and rudder a bit. Is that unavoidable or can you iron that out? It might be something you could fix with smoothing groups. The gear certainly looks quite professional. One of my favorite things about WW1 planes is that they used model airplane suspension systems. Just tie some rubber bands around the ends of the axle so it could bounce a bit in the V frame .

I'd rather see LESS variety and more specialization. Most 2-seater squadrons were specialized for 1 specific job: recon, arty cooperation, bombing, close air support, etc. Quite a few squadrons never did anything else, and while most of them did have some variety, the majority of their missions were still within their specialty. Now at present, with so few 2-seater planes in the game at all, the current mission variety makes sense. But once we fill out the 2-seater ranks, IMHO we should also change to having specialized squadrons.

Actually, at least by early 1917, they did. The escort missions we have in OFF were really very rare, due to the difficultly of coordinating between units on the ground, let alone in the air. Thus, the RFC fighters flew "offensive patrols" trying to keep some area of airspace free of Huns, without any tie to any particular 2-seaters, although this could be considered a type of escort mission. However, OPs having been shown not to work very effectively, the 2-seater squadrons provided their own escorts. For example, an RE8 squadron might send out 5 planes on a recon mission. 1 had the camera, which slowed it down and kept the observer from looking for planes or using his gun. The other 4 were there to defend the photo machine. This worked about as well as you'd expect, but I suppose in the long run it was better than just sending a lone RE8 out. This was for recon of the front and immediate rear areas like where arty and supply dumps might be. Deep recon was usually done solo at extreme altitude. The French took this concept a step further. They had specialized "escort fighters" for their 2-seaters. Originally, these were "fighter" versions of the same 2-seaters (usually pushers) the squadron had. The "fighter versions" often had 37mm cannon instead of MGs, but this proved ineffective so they often used regular 2-seaters as the Brits did. Then they developed specialized twin-engined, 3-seat "escort fighters" of several types. To begin with, these were part of the 2-seater squadron, and were also used for sole, long-range recon. But later in the war, they had whole squadrons of these things paired with conventional 2-seater squadrons (often at the same base).

Good to see somebody else getting into this. Bravo How does the cowling fair into the fuselage upper front corners, or does it? I'm not familiar with this bird.

Yup, but this apparent z-buffer issue in "User" never goes away there, unless you have nothing overlapping at all. "Perspective" and "User" do things quite differently. In "Perspective", when you rotate the view, the pivot point is like 1/2way between you and the object so when you're up close, it appears to move the object left-right more than rotate it. And when you zoom in , everything closer than "arm's length" to your POV disappears. In "User" OTOH, rotating the view happens about the center of the selected object and when you zoom in, you can never get closer than its outer surface, and nothing disappears. It also appears that "User" and "Perspective" do the z-buffer differently. "User" has horrible problems with it when you have polys that overlap or are even just close together. I suppose this is helpful for finding problems, but because only "User" has the useful pan and zoom features, this can be a real problem when you stick 1 object through another to make a cut.