A4 Skyhawk

[JazAero]

Greetings fellow DCS pilots and mod makers. I would like to direct your attention to my A4 Skyhawk project that was originally started as an add-on to X-Plane 10, but I have been asked repeatedly if I could port this to DCS.

 

I've been working on this on And off for 6 years.

Time to make an announcement.

 

A lot of people thought this project was dead. Many more thought we were the "other guys" And I am not taking anything away from them. They are doing great work.

 

This model is completely scratch built every single pixel every single vertex. It has been a Labor of love to model one of my favorite most iconic aircraft. We now have It flying DCS.

 

So I present to you one of many models. We Have the A4 C, E, F, M, K,, T-A4 J All being worked on simultaneously.

 

So here is our first teaser you seen it before. Now here it is In game.

 

Edited July 12, 2017 by JazAero

[SkateZilla]

Adjusting and Exporting the 3d Model would be the easiest of tasks..

 

With the Flight Model and Cockpit Systems being the most difficult.

[SkateZilla]

Systems and Flight Model coders are the ones that are the hardest to find it seems.

[Highwayman-Ed]

Oh dear god, please let somebody partner up with you and bring us this thing of beauty :)

[-Rudel-]

DAT ENGINE! Very nicely done

[JazAero]

Thank You, I was a jet engine mechanic in the Navy in the late 70s and actually had a chance to run one of these puppies up. It was so hard to resist the temptation to just punch the throttle and take her out for a spin. :-)

[assafm25]

Well done job mister. One of the most great aircraft in all times

 

Cant wait to see it in dcs.

 

If u look for some test pilot i am here fore duty :)

[chaos]

Oh now you've done it!

 

This project has to succeed. I played around with the idea of creating one for DCS but went with another type instead. I would back this project... no questions asked!

 

Git 'r done!

[badger66]

Oh ..... a little Skyhawk ..... how interesting .

 

Now , whose gonta do a Vietnam map and a Skyraider , and a jollygreen or super jollygreen .

[nick10]

Would love to see the sky hawk

[badger66]

Its supposed to be a little sportscar to fly . Im having this too when it comes out .

 

Its first designs were drawn onto a fag box in a hotel room .

[JazAero]

here is some more photos with various versions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

and finally 3 versions side-by-side A4-M, A4-E/F, A4-C (edit had to recheck the filenames)

 

 

 

Enjoy, feel free to comment

Edited April 25, 2014 by JazAero

[Strut]

What a nice little "Beastie" !! Hope you succeed.

[badger66]

Are you modelling an E , F too ?

[JazAero]

yes, they are both already done. except for the cockpit instrumentation differences.

 

When we started the project. The idea was to build the aircraft out in 3-D, the way they are in real life so we can just plug parts in as needed to change the models.

 

that render it is actually all 3 models side-by-side in a single render from 3DS

 

another interesting fact is that our models do not use bump maps. What we did instead was model the geometry and then simply paint it the way a real aircraft would be painted and allow the light to do the rest. We feel that using bump maps and texture maps to simulate things like panels and complex geometry lends itself to making an aircraft feel almost cartoony. When you look at our models in screenshots from X-Plane . There is a fullness and realism to the model that we felt that at least at the time you just couldn't achieve otherwise.

 

the hope is that we can continue this and that it will carry over to DCS. It's going to be a matter of how DCS handles lighting and shadowing

 

Another interesting tidbit that not a lot of people are aware of is that X-Plane is much more efficient at rendering geometry than it is at rendering texture maps. This makes for some interesting possibilities with regards to model complexity. Instead of simulating a panel line we can actually create outline by creating the panel itself. When you see a shadow cast on our model is because there is geometry creating that shadow. A good example are the panel lines that you see from the oval wing inspection panels of which there are a lot of them, they are not not baked in to a flat surface with a bump map or normal map simulating the geometry. there are actual individual and removable panels. This is especially useful when aircraft changes orientation in the lighting shadows fall where they are supposed to. and also because panel lines tend to be too thick and baked on textures losing a lot of realism. We tried to avoid that.

 

there are of course exceptions to every rule, and even on our model we use some painted textures to simulate things like rivet heads in the flaps and under the leading-edge slats, the model does not suffer because of that so we left them alone. there's a few other areas.

Edited April 25, 2014 by JazAero

[joey45]

What's the texture sizes you are using for the templates?

[JazAero]

2048 square

[joey45]

How many?

[Silver_Dragon]

very very interesting, some plans to convert them on a official add-on on a far future?

[nick10]

Mate - you have to make this as a proper paid module for DCS World

[JazAero]

How many?

 

we are currently using 6 but they have not yet been optimized. Since we do this in X-Plane X-Plane allows multiple liveries by simply swapping a set of maps on-the-fly. We could probably do it in 4,

 

texturing is not my strongest area.

[joey45]

6 is fine, the A10 has 12 2048x2048 maps

[SkateZilla]

here is some more photos with various versions.

 

 

OMG, THAT ENGINE!

 

DCS: Turbine!

[badger66]

Super ..... cant wait . Looks great .

[rubblebeam]

YES! Please