First, lets compare the aircraft with and without normal/spec maps.

In the first set of images, focus your attention at the specular highlight on the nose and at the one world logo. In the second set of images, focus on the detail in the specular highlight and on the rivet lines. In the third set of images, focus on the oneworld titles.

In the next image, focus on the specular highlight paying particular attention to the window surrounds, the skin, and the panel lines. The specular effect is best seen on the window plug inside of the large e of one world.

In this image, the diffuse texture map has been removed completely. This allows you to see the normal map and the diffuse map directly. Due to the time of day, the LIT texture is also visible. Eventually we would like to control the cabin lighting via plugin.

And just because we’ve shown you all of this, another full shot of the aircraft on climbout.

Do note though that screenshots don’t really do these effects justice. They are best viewed live when the conditions that you are viewing the aircraft change…ie, time of day, angle of the aircraft to the sun, camera placement etc.

Cheers

Cheers!

Alex

Normal / specular maps!
Thats it…nothing more to say…except that my fun with the exterior is about done for now. Back inside.

And the requisite pics of course.
Just a note, we’ll be posting updated pics of liveries as we get ‘em done in the exterior gallery. Look for DL, KLM, and ANA shots soon. I’ve got to get my sim reliable again…weird directory issues.

Cheers

Here is a nice list of the things that we’ve just crossed off of the list.
• New high resolution fuselage and vertical stabilizer textures are complete
• UV maps are now all compatible with normal maps without producing artifacts
• Ram Air Turbine is complete and awaiting plugin controlled animation commands from Sven
• Initial exterior lighting framework is in place. This gives us control over the logo lights on the tail, control over pax window brightness etc. We’ve got alot built into it already and I must say, the results are quite lovely.
• Exterior geometry and textures have been finalized. We’ve included a couple of extra goodies in the fuselage and remodeled a couple of the areas that we still felt were giving us problems.

Needless to say, we’re very happy with where we are at. At this point, we’re all ready to buckle down, leave the exterior save a few last minor details, and punch out the last of the cockpit and begin serious implementation of the plugin.

And some pictures because well, we all like pictures (and yeah, I got overzealous. These expand to a higher res than our normal pics.)
Cheers!

“I love my mac, hasn’t given me an ounce of trouble since I’ve had it.”

Because invariably, as soon as you’ve said it, something catastrophic will happen and well, let me just say that I’m eating my words. iMac blew its video card over the weekend, quite literally not one day after I had said conversation with a couple of my friends at our local coffee shop. Needless to say, I’ve taken the iMac in, factor a day or so to look at it and order the parts, a day or two to get the parts, and say a day to install. If I’m lucky, I should have my machine back by weeks end…if not, early next week. Must say that I’m relieved that I’ve still got Apple Care on my machine for another year.

Long story short, consider Alex on vacation until further notice. Note that Sven is still hard at work…Dhruv is still hard at work, so we’re probably more or less okay.

Also keep your eyes open here in about two weeks

Cheers

Alex

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z98qptrnLME

We hope that you enjoy the film and a happy 2010 from XP Jets!

Cheers

I think that I may owe explanation on a few new features. The brake status indicator lights just below the landing lamp housings are functional. Green means that the brakes are off. Red indicates that the brakes are active above 1300 or so psi. Yellow indicates that the parking brake is set. All of the lights are functional as you’d expect them to be. The complete P40 panel is also something new. I’ll be working with Sven later to hopefully achieve some functionality through the panel including the annunciators, the ability to set off the APU extinguisher in case of APU fire, and if we’re lucky, an audible APU fire horn. Obviously, APU fire doesn’t exist as a failure yet in the sim so there will be some work to do first.

As for the rest, I’ll let the screenshots do the talking. Next up on the external agenda is the RAT, but first, I’ve got an overhead to start work on.

Cheers

Yeah, we miss us too. We know thats its been quiet around here. A little development from Sven, and my announcement of the Pratts several months ago is about all that any of you have to go on. Needless to say, its too quiet for us as well. Back in May, Dhruv and I entered into a preliminary agreement with an organization for some high end X-Plane 3rd party development work. The project has been hush hush which is why we haven’t been able to post any messages regarding it. A long story short, business relations wore down to the point of making progress impossible. At the moment, the project has a solid 4 month period of time buried in it. It remains largely unfinished on our hard drives. After much careful consideration over many circumstances, we’ve decided to end the relationship and are back in full force (good news for you). To maintain privacy of the organization’s identity, we’ll be keeping any information regarding the unfinished project under wraps until such a time when its kosher to do so, so please don’t ask

We know that we’ve been out of touch for a while. One thing that we’re going to try to do is to reconnect positively to the X-Plane user base. There is a lonely forum with our name on it at x-pilot.com that we’ll be using extensively. We’ll also try to be posting weekly in our blog. If there is one thing that we’ve learned during our business experience is that communication is crucial to success. Lets face it, because of our absence, many of you are thinking that XP Jets is incapable of finishing anything. We’re the vaporware experts (and we have a track record to prove it….) Believe us, we’re not trying to be. The introduction of Sven, our resident programmer, to the team many months ago is adding a whole new dimension of possibility to the 777 and is going to open exciting avenues for the future. He’s told me that after the 777 is finished, he would love to get in and start coding systems for the 757. This should be exciting news for everyone. We will be extensively revisiting the old bird when the 777 is finished. We’re also interested in adding some older metal to our inventory later on. Possibilities discussed include the DC-9 series among others. No official word on where we’re going to be after the 757, but you’ll know shortly after we do.

I think that this should suffice for now. We’ve got some goodies waiting in the wings. Some of you may have noticed shots of freshly textured nose gear on x-plane.org. I’ll be putting up a post about the new 777 nose gear here later today. There are some pretty fun features and toys that we’ve been messing with. Sven is making steady progress with the plugin work and he might say a few words later this week. I’m not putting words in Dhruv’s mouth here, but watch out for fuselage texture news before too long. Keep your eyes and ears open and those RSS feeds current. We do feel that we owe it to the community to stick around…believe me when we say that we’re not going to abandon you again. We’ve had our visions of grandeur and have had our fun. Its time to get back to what matters.

Without further ado, it brings me the greatest pleasure to say, “There’s no place like home!”

We’re back! (and we’re never running away again…)

i think it’s time to give you an update. Not too much to tell. Most work is “behind” the visuals. However, i thought that it would be a good idea to show you a new video. Youtube videos only can give you a hint of how these displays are looking. Vector graphics, as good as they are, have their limits, but we are working around most of the issues. Most of the displays will also be “undockable” so that you can view them at larger sizes. The size of them will be configureable (up to 512x512 px). Also it might be possible that the panel layout will change, you know we’re at e really early state with the project

So what’s next? The basics on the code are almost done (except of fixing bugs or something to improve). We use a lot of threads now and we’ll add some more (you have a multicore CPU, right?). This will help to keep X-Plane’s performance as high as possible. The displays don’t affect fps at all (on my machine). But there are much complex things to come. One of these things is the fly-by-wire system. Work on that starts tomorrow. Expect at least 3 months until it’s usable. Why 3 months? Remember, we’re on X-Plane . A lot of control surfaces to steer. But i’m really sure it will be fun to fly that bird.

Ok, here’s the video. Please don’t comment my approach, it was a “quick & dirty” run to bring her down. And you might notice: no AFDS And if you can, go to the youtube website and watch in HD!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=slVWL0tks9o