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Van's Air Force

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Professionally produced RV-7 for X-Plane

Panel Builder?

Sweet, can we install panel elements like our real plane? It would be great for some IFR practice. And . . . some aerobatics too!!
 
Interesting. What would be neat too is if you can do your own paint schemes? Could be an amazing visualization tool. Anyone know how hard it is to do your own paint in xplane?
 
Having a virtual RV professionally built is clearly in violation of the virtual FAA regs governing homebuilt aircraft.

</sarcasm> tag just in case...

This is cool; I'll probably buy it when it's released.
 
Having a virtual RV professionally built is clearly in violation of the virtual FAA regs governing homebuilt aircraft.

</sarcasm> tag just in case...

This is cool; I'll probably buy it when it's released.

Well. It could be that you will need to write 51% code to finish it off ;)
 
Paint

FSX (Flight Sim 10)/ P3D allows you to create your own liveries, but I'm not sure about X-Plane. 10 years ago, that's how I did development on my own paint scheme, worked great, but it did take some skills with photoshop and knowing the process for textures on 3D models.
 
Alright, sorry for the side track guys, but I gotta ask because I am an older guy that never had a computer until about 15 years ago and never had video games.

That said, is Xplane worth while as a flight sim for different scenarios or just for gaming fun? I would like to be able to practice some things in a sim for the cost benefit, but I know nothing on what you need for equipment, or if is even worth it. If it is just a game, then I would probably pass. If it is realistic flight sim without movement, and there are gains to be had as a pilot then I would be very interested. I am interested just because there is an RV7.:D


Help a guy out and let me know what it should cost to set one up what I need to get going. Or let me know why I should just pass.

Thanks, Ben
 
Alright, sorry for the side track guys, but I gotta ask because I am an older guy that never had a computer until about 15 years ago and never had video games.

That said, is Xplane worth while as a flight sim for different scenarios or just for gaming fun? I would like to be able to practice some things in a sim for the cost benefit, but I know nothing on what you need for equipment, or if is even worth it. If it is just a game, then I would probably pass. If it is realistic flight sim without movement, and there are gains to be had as a pilot then I would be very interested. I am interested just because there is an RV7.


Help a guy out and let me know what it should cost to set one up what I need to get going. Or let me know why I should just pass.

It's a realistic simulator ... https://www.x-plane.com/
 
reviving old thread

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=64609&page=3

so Danny Maher made a nice looking RV7/7a for MS flight sim X it seems, then both his site
Baytower.ca
and flight sim itself seem to have gone into some other dimension!

anyone know what's up? seems a shame if his model can't be used in the 'new' MS FSX, or whatever it's called now!
I haven't flight simmed for ages, mostly because I wasn't willing to invest the hundreds of hours to get the @#@*(&^#$(%^ things working right! :(

old grumpy guy signing off!
 
Alright, sorry for the side track guys, but I gotta ask because I am an older guy that never had a computer until about 15 years ago and never had video games.

That said, is Xplane worth while as a flight sim for different scenarios or just for gaming fun? I would like to be able to practice some things in a sim for the cost benefit, but I know nothing on what you need for equipment, or if is even worth it. If it is just a game, then I would probably pass. If it is realistic flight sim without movement, and there are gains to be had as a pilot then I would be very interested. I am interested just because there is an RV7.:D


Help a guy out and let me know what it should cost to set one up what I need to get going. Or let me know why I should just pass.

Thanks, Ben

Well you need a decent computer, that's the main cost. The Xplane website has some recommendations regarding computer specs. A 64 bit machine is pretty standard by now, I bought my existing one in 2015. You'll need a good graphics card which should be in the Xplane specs. I have a CH products 568 Combatstick joystick which works very well. It has a throttle wheel. You don't really need rudder pedals.

Xplane itself is not very expensive, around $60. It comes with a variety of planes, including (Xplane 10, not sure about Xplane 11) several RVs. The RVs are very sensitive to power inputs and need lots of trimming during speed power changes. They come with a very basic instrument panel. My understanding is you can change the flight characteristics and the panel but I haven't tried this.

I bought a few Caranado airplanes, PC-12, TBM 900, Bonanza and Mooney. I found the PC-12 fun to fly and it has dual 430s so I was teaching myself (with a little help from my instructor) to fly GPS departures, enroute and approaches. Very realistic (of course you should also have approach plates and low altitude IFR charts).

Well worth buying and especially great for those bad weather days when you don't want to fly a real plane. Great for keeping VFR/IFR skills polished. Oh, yeah, the scenery is excellent too. Keep an eye out for railroad trains, and highway trucks and cars.
 
I have a very rough RV-8 started in FSDS so it can be imported into multiple sim platforms at some point, primarily for the FS9/FSX/P3D sims.

beetqw.jpg


It will get much much better as my time allows. I fully intend to use it to try out various paint schemes and designs.


If there is enough interest I could probably do most of the RV line because I find it very useful to try out ideas virtually before committing to them in real life.

This goes for exterior paint, interior paint, graphics, mods, etc.

If you use, FS9/FSX or P3D a simple paint program can get you started designing your own scheme. I can set the files up to make it easy to paint the individual parts on a flat "sheet" that then gets mapped to the 3D model.

I've been making models for FS9 for many years now. Not hard to do just time consuming.
 
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Development of our own

I have fantasies of using Plane Maker (the CAD software that comes with X-Plane) to replicate my RV-8 and putting it up on GitHub to allow others to tweak and modify.

I did some research and found a guy who recently live-streamed himself building a 172 in Plane Maker. I watched his review of the process and it was pretty informative. It's certainly a time-consuming process but not particularly difficult.

The process is essentially split into two parts: 1. Creating the aerodynamic model for X-Plane and optionally 2. Creating the picture-pretty 3D model in a program like Blender. Unlike Microsoft Flight Sim, the X-Plane model simulates particles of air over the airframe and prop. This is what you end up creating in Plane Maker. You can stop there and create a livery. This involves taking the generated .png file and filling in the boxes in a paint program.

The second step is what you need to do to make a realistic looking model. If you have this second model X-Plane uses the first model for the simulation but doesn't show it. So if you want to be funny you could use a 3D model of a bathtub over the RV-7 aerodynamic model and it would fly as if it were an RV-7.
 
Thank You bkervaski and Terrye for the response and the info. Very much appreciated. I am going to look into putting together something to run it on and use it to help my education into the IFR world. Sound fun!
 
I have fantasies of using Plane Maker (the CAD software that comes with X-Plane) to replicate my RV-8 and putting it up on GitHub to allow others to tweak and modify.

I have access to a high-quality 3D printer. If we did have accurate models (anybody know if Van's would share?) it would be interesting to see how they look on our desks at work!
 
Interesting. What would be neat too is if you can do your own paint schemes? Could be an amazing visualization tool. Anyone know how hard it is to do your own paint in xplane?

Paint schemes are easy in x-plane. Most vendors provide a blank (white)texture file that can be edited as needed. Even if they don't give a blank you can copy the origin and edit it. The tough part is sometimes figuring out which part of the texture file is mapped to which lart of the model. (oh, and having any artistic talent...that's the really tough part)
 
Sweet, can we install panel elements like our real plane? It would be great for some IFR practice. And . . . some aerobatics too!!

You can but the stock panel elements are pretty limited. X-plane 11 comes with a very good simulation of the G430/G530 units and basic steam gauges (along with some airliner like clunky EFIS stuff), but most modern avionics don't have simulations for x-plane--a major need in my opinion. There are some 3rd party vendors that sell a GNS650/750 and another with a G1000, but if you are looking for a Dynon, AFS, or GRT model (or a G3X), you are out of luck at the moment.
 
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