Must be close to the ultimate in "airports" - but who can model it ?????

Well a number of people have built fictitious aircraft and airports and of them, to those who have built a number of fictitious stealth fighters I am very grateful. Now, is there anyone on this forum who would be prepared to have a go at this one, which I understand is a creature from the Disney organisation?

http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2014/11/12/1227120/173484-shield.jpg

http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2014/11/12/1227120/173547-clouds.jpg

Steve from Mudgee

Would that configuration work? Aircraft taking off have to pass right over that huge fan - wouldn't there be severe turbulence and down-draft?

Anyway, cool model!

Sascha

Would that configuration work? Aircraft taking off have to pass right over that huge fan - wouldn't there be severe turbulence and down-draft?

 

Anyway, cool model!

Sascha

Details! ...... Details! ............

Hard left on wheels off the deck?

Be a fun thing to try out on :)

Maybe the runway pointed at the fan is for landings only, and missed approach requires hard lefts? Maybe the other runway is for take offs....?

NO touch and goes!

Pat☺

Most likely the aft runway is used only for landings, and the forward only for take offs. It makes the most obvious sense as why else would there be two runways and obviously small planes can't fly right over those huge fans.

I don't think something like this can be modelled for FS9 (at least not moving and animated?)

Most likely the aft runway is used only for landings, and the forward only for take offs. It makes the most obvious sense as why else would there be two runways and obviously small planes can't fly right over those huge fans.

 

I don't think something like this can be modelled for FS9 (at least not moving and animated?)

Why couldn't it be modeled for FS9? It has lift fans for vertical positioning (same principle as helicopter lift). Wouldn't really have to move horizontally to be effective model in FS9.

Some "unusual aircraft" modeled in FS9":

1REPTILIANGA-GUZMAN_ARTES.zip

HarkHH-1.zip

TB2MOLE.zip

gsh01.zip

1rcbsc1-9.zip

2004_Chicago_TrolleyCopter.zip

ID4_2004.zip

Globeamphi.zip

VtolPLA.zip

flyingsubdemo.zip

Now I know that you're going to say that these "move" and you're looking for something stationary ...... well ....... one of these depicts the foreign invader's mother ships from the movie Independence Day over several cities. I think it can be done.

What say others?

Wow, thanx for all the replies. I hadn't expected so many. I am surprised that so many apparent difficulties have been raised. I don't see any. To answer questions in no particular order:

- The fans keep it "up in the air," yes, like a helicopter, but ... unlike a helicopter, the "engines" at the stern move the craft forward into the wind, and probably quite fast.

- Thus, you model it as an AIRPORT, and set the wind blowing down the deck (active runway) at high speed. Exactly the same as you do for a 20/21st century aircraft carrier! Except that you could anticipate a forward speed of say 50-100 knots.

- So yes, the aft runway is a landing runway. If the "carrier" is moving at 100 knots, your relative landing speed would only be 20-40 knots, giving you plenty of time to turn hard to port if you boltered, so you wouldn't get sucked into the forward port fan.

So, it looks like the question really is worth asking again: can anyone model something like this?

Finally, Glenn, thank you for the "unusual" aircraft which i will now check out.

Steve from Mudgee

So, it looks like the question really is worth asking again: can anyone model something like this?

I'm sure what you're seeing in the images is a model so if the question is "can it be done" then of course yes it can and already has, but Disney would guard those source files with their lives and even if you could get your hands on them you'd probably need $20K worth of software and someone within Disney to sneak the proprietary stuff out on a USB drive to make any use of them. Maybe one of the guys at Disney studios is an FS enthusiast and has the FS9 gamepack installed on his work computer, he'll export a model for us to use in our sims when the movie premieres :D .

A person could build the model (or a reasonable facsimile) in gmax. What to do with that model seems a bit of a puzzle. Also there are two tiny little photos to go on that I'm aware of and those wouldn't be sufficient without a lot of ad-lib. You ad-lib and then someone will say "the bridge is like 3 feet taller on the model than it is in the photo plus the landing runway is canted 1 1/2° more to the left than it should have been" and "I simply don't have the skills to do something like this" all in the same paragraph.

My initial reaction when I saw this thread was to fire up gmax and start in but on coming to my senses I'm afraid it's not something I'd be interested in, there's a couple months of modeling and texturing to be done there to make it look nice and I'm already butt-deep in unfinished projects as it is.

Have you checked the sketchup warehouse BTW? Chances are someone has or will give it a try at some point, I wouldn't even know what search terms to use. What is it called, what movie is it from? You're not even sharing all the information that you have on the thing, link the article in other words, give a prospective modeler a lead, something to go on, how long should it be, how wide? Think in terms of building a plywood mock-up in your back yard, a modeler would need all the same info. It's really an impossible scenario without more details.

Jim, thank you for your considered reply, which I have now read three times. Overall, I totally agree with what you say, but there are alternatives.

As to your "ad-lib" comment, the solution there is to do what Rich Hogan did with Carriers 2006 and make it modular, so if you don't like one or two specific modules you can replace it/them with your own. Noteably, none of the aircraft carriers that I have looked at, and that's quite a few, have on-deck static aircraft or anything else for that matter. That's a good thing, because as you said, everyone has their own ideas on such subjects; and fortunately, with MCX and ADE, making your own on-deck is trivially simple, and yet very satisfying.

As to not sharing the information, well, those two images ARE all that I have! They were credited to Disney, so that's where I got this information.

Finally, if I can find this "sketchup warehouse", I will see what is available there. I'm always on the lookout for unusual models, and despite your well-founded cynicism, I am usually happy with "off-the-shelf wierd stuff".

Steve from Mudgee

OK,a quick search has found that it is in the movie called Avengers, which lives in the S.H.I.E.L.D universe (one of the many wierd places that my wife inhabits), and is one of many Helicarriers. It is available as a plastic model, as an X-box something or other, and even in Lego. Various implementations are available in the sketchup warehouse (thanx for that info, Jim) where a seach for "flying aircraft carrier" found many relevant matches.

Steve from Mudgee

Steve from Mudgee.

EDIT: I guess you posted while I was messing around with this thing, seems you already found everything I found.

EDIT 2: The runway's too damn short, I couldn't even land the Skyhawk on it with full flaps!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry I think I should have said "3D Warehouse" rather than Sketchup warehouse, anyway it's a collection of models built in Sketchup. It seems they're calling this thing a "Helicarrier" and S.H.I.E.L.D. in connection with the filename of the first photo you posted apparently means "Strategic Homeland Intelligence Espionage Logistics Division", it seems this comes from a game rather than a movie, not sure if this is the same thing but here's some poop:

http://ironman.wikia.com/wiki/Helicarrier_%28film%29

It seems someone has already modeled it in Sketchup, this is probably the best one, however searching the 3D warehouse does turn up a few other variants:

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=uf56be2c1-4896-48b2-8d26-e59285fe69ae

I don't think it's exactly what your pics show but pretty close, I downloaded it, exported it from sketchup and loaded it into MCX. ...but - umm, 135,000+ triangles! so I couldn't export it as an FS9 model. Here's a couple from FSX though:

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/helicarrier1.jpg

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/helicarrier3.jpg

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/helicarrier2.jpg

I assume you must have FSX? Here's a .zip, puts the thing over NYC somewhere between the statue of liberty and the world trade center at about 1500' MSL. I included the FSX model and the textures should work in FS9 but I don't know how you'd go about reducing the vertex count in MCX so you could export an FS9 version, you might try making a lesser LOD with vertex clustering and then delete the main high-complexity LOD. If that doesn't work let me know, I can probably get it into gmax as a .3ds and clean it up a bit there.

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/heli_carrier.zip

Jim

Jim !!! Mate !!! What an extravagant reply !!! Thank you very much. I don't have FSX. I don't know why you would think that - I've never posted anything on the FSX forum and you know I'm the kind of guy who can't keep his mouth shut :D Never mind, I'm not really having a go at you, you are always very helpful.

I will download the links you posted, and see if I can't get the LOD down without too much blurring. Mind you, putting a dozen static aircraft on a carrier deck is 100,000+ triangles, so the performance might be OK as is. I would plan to have this up at 10,000 feet at 100kn, so there would be no other "scenery" around to speak of anyway.

As to your not being able to land even a Skyhawk on it, it seems to me de rigeur to equip the landing runway with either ArrCab or RCBCOP and trap a tail hook. Surely there would be no other way?

Steve from Mudgee

where it's been 40C (102F) all day whilst you 'Murcans are freezing your asses off.

I guess I just figured every FS9er had a copy of FSX installed just for sneering purposes if nothing else, otherwise how would y'all know FSX sucks?! :)

The poly count in the sim isn't the problem, the problem is the FS9 makemdl.exe has a ~65K vertex limit and the model won't compile without some smoke and mirrors. The LOD vertex clustering is about all you'd be able to do with MCX and it might destroy the model. Pretty sure it's the fan blades, I got the model in gmax and actually found the top surfaces of each fan blade is duplicated. Beyond those fans the model really isn't all that complicated. To me it seems like there are too many blades to begin with so I deleted every other one as well. I may even have a go at animating them so they spin :) .

Nope, no arrestor cable riggin' but the landing runway is only about 530' long (160m). I don't know what's typical for a carrier but that seems pretty short, overall length of the model is about 1050' (320m). Should I scale the model to 2x while I'm at it?

You're right about freezing my ass off, I've got 17° F (-8° C) on the thermo right now, last night it was down to 6° F so a veritable heat wave tonight. I stoked up the fire and went to bed, woke up about 3 hrs later and the SOB went out! I hate it when that happens! Holy crap, 102 F is downright uncomfortable though, I don't think we broke the 100° mark one time last summer here in beautiful N. Idaho, pretty disappointing, definitely short on beer drinking weather :) .

Jim, pretty scary, that you and I are thinking the same thing :D I had hoped to remove ALL the turbine blades, and simply put in a 20% transparent grey disk for a rapidly spinning turbine blade disk. In my FS universe, this carrier being nuclear powered is always in the air, and thus the turbine blades are always spinning, so there would be no need to model the blades at all.

I would like to see the superstructure as at least one and possibly two or three separate BGLs, because as you anticipated earlier, this is one area where everyone will want to do his own thing.

On a Nimitz class carrier, the landing runway is 230m. That's about 60 metres for the arrestor cables, then another 170 metres to decelerate. And that's for a "real" 60,000 lb Super Hornet, with a relative landing speed of say 100-120 kn.

For our fictitious Stealths, which are not as big as a Super Hornet or that fast, with a relative landing speed of 50kn, I'd say that 160m of landing runway would be about right. 2X would definitely be too big. However, if you're not comfortable with the current size then maybe split the difference and go to 1.5X, but certainly no bigger.

Probably more important is that with a separate runway for the catapults, that one doesn't need to be any longer than a shade over the cat length itself. And of course it's a (takes deep breath) plasma-magneto-hydro-dynamic catapult, not a steamer - that would be sooooooo 20th century :D :D :D

I think we're nearly done. One important thing that does remain is to give this carrier a name. I'm leaning towards the Charlie Sheen parody "Hot Shots", where the carrier was the U.S.S Essess, what a fabulous thought !!!!

Good luck with your fire, 6°F is indeed very cold considering it's only mid November. I'd like to post you a few cubic miles of highly compressed 102° air you could slowly consume over the next three months, but your Homeland Security would probably call me a terrorist.

Steve from Mudgee

OK, I gave up on trying to clean this thing up in gmax, the problem is exporting to .3ds and importing that into gmax gives you a bazillion tiny little triangles and it blows all smoothing away so it's like you're looking at a faceted diamond or something where every triangle is flat and joins the next one with a sharp edge. gmax can "auto smooth" which works pretty well usually but it is far from perfect especially on something like this. I ended up with a helluva mess.

So... Back in sketchup, I deleted all the fan blades and found a bunch of hidden crap which I got rid of too. Things went pretty well in MCX and I got an FS9 model out of it with 'powers of two' texture sheets although it crashed the drawcall minimizer. No worries, I minimized them manually - and did a better job because I threw out one texture that was identical to another but there's no way MCX could know that!

Tomorrow evening I'll have a go at making some semi-transparent disks to fill up the empty holes where the fan blades were. I scaled the model to 1.5x. I'm not sure I quite follow you on making the superstructure as separate BGLs, I can slice it off like this and export it as a separate .mdl that can be placed separately:

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/helicarrier4.jpg

Is that what you had in mind? It leaves an untextured rectangle on the deck though, or else I can delete it and leave an empty hole, but then what if your brand-X superstructure doesn't fit the hole?

Jim, mate, you're going to an awful lot of trouble, seemingly just for me. I do appreciate it, but if and when you've had enough, then say so.

Where the fan disks used to be, I think you'll probably need to leave a four-post support and central "boss" (for want of a better word). It won't really make sense to simply have the grey turbine disk spinning in mid-air. It will need some kind of context to join it to the main model.

You have in fact followed my thinking perfectly on the separate superstructure. Provided you leave the original superstructure available as a separate mdl, leaving an empty hole seems to be the go. Then whoever does his own superstructure (== me), can use the base of the original as his own base. With the original texture, it "should" be fairly seemlessly integrated. He says with a straight face.

To go off at a complete tangent, there was a simmer here a couple of years ago who was going to make a current era Atlantis. I wonder if he's still here. I think that this flying carrier would integrate perfectly with that - well at least as i mentally envisage it.

Steve from Mudgee.

OK here, give this a try. The bridge is separate but if you place it as another object placement at the exact same coords & heading as the main carrier body it falls together seamlessly. I filled in the hole with a flat plate and applied a texture so it sorta blends in with the deck if you want to add your own stuff. The fan disks came out so-so, there's a central hub for each fan but I deleted all the supports already unfortunately. I think the blurred fan disks obscure enough that it doesn't look terribly odd without them. Honestly the texturing on this thing leaves a bit to be desired so don't expect it to look like the one in the photos you posted, she's a little rough, lol. Should be all platformed up so you can land on it, I still can barely get the skyhawk stopped on deck even at 1.5x but that was with full fuel.

Same deal as the FSX version I posted earlier there's a sample placement included that puts this thing 1000m over NYC in the world trade center area.

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/helicarrier_fs9.zip

Jim

Jim, that's fantastic! So far I've only opened it in MCX, but it opened very quickly and I see you've got the MDL size down from 4MB to 770K so thhe performance/frame_rate should be OK on my FS-PC. You've done a fantastic job, especially considering that you said this was not really in your sphere of interest. I can fool around with the alpha on the grey turbine disk and make my own bridge, and can make my own texturing. With ADE, I can add a runway and runway lighting, and also various clearance Clarence lights all around for night flying. You're right, the lack of turbine supports is immaterial; and the texturing looks a little ... childish.

Being a tailhook man I will of course put RCBCOP arrestor cables and catapult areas on it. I can also add my own on-deck scenery - static stealths, maybe some rainbow guys, the odd helicopter, some vehicles, and other various "appliances" as our Fire Department calls them.

Looking at the original photos, this doesn't have the stern mounted "horizontal" engines, but there are two structures that look like engine nacelles suitable for some kind of effect lighting that will make them look like engines. Again, I can do that on my own.

Thanking you once again for an absolutely fabulous job. Please continue to enjoy your winter in your Own Private Idaho.

Steve from Mudgee.