AWESOME JOB on the 747 Mel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Arklight1 140]

Absolutely GREAT aircraft!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Thank you x infinity + 1 :)You did an AWESOME job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Shane

[Guest CharlesH]

HI Mel:Yes, just a outstanding job. Well done. Your work is truely fantastic. Thanks for making it and allowing all of us to use it.Charles

[Guest Lobaeux4]

Looking at the website now, they're looking great. Anyone making plans for a British Airways repaint?Lobaeux

[Guest]

Gorgeous!!She's beautiful.Excellent work,the attention to details is simply awsome.Thank you Regards,Steve :)

[Guest jase439]

She's a gem, but I have to ask...after all this work: why does this model employ the same FS2000 "epilepetic" style MDL style beacon/strobe lighting? The only thing I can think of is that he was avoiding the POSKY 'wing-flex' issue with the lights hovering over the wing tips when the wings are unflexed?My minor nitpick aside, she really is a gorgeous looking bird. Nicely done.

[Bill A 68]

YES, thanks you so much Mel...the best 747 out there....Regards,Bill

[Arklight1 140]

>>She's a gem, but I have to ask...after all this work: why >does this model employ the same FS2000 "epilepetic" style >MDL style beacon/strobe lighting? The only thing I can >think of is that he was avoiding the POSKY 'wing-flex' issue >with the lights hovering over the wing tips when the wings >are unflexed? >>My minor nitpick aside, she really is a gorgeous looking >bird. Nicely done. Hmmmmm, I don't see the "globe"(that's what I call them, lol) light effects that you are talking about. That is the first thing I checked for because I really don't like those huge "balls of light" on the wingtips, and this one doesn't have them. It has the lights on the tips but they sure aren't those huge round thingies from FS2000 aircraft.:)Shane

[Guest Coneman]

Stunning. Absolutely stunning.Todd

[Guest Jimbofly]

Where do I find this venerable 747?James

[Arklight1 140]

Here ya go!http://www.meljet.com/"Click" on the "Flight Simulator" tab.:)Shane

[Guest]

A W E S O M E JOB, Mel!! :-sun1 Thanks a billion for this wonderful gift!RegardsOlav M. R

[Guest jase439]

It's not the the globe lights I refer to - it's the fact that the beacon and strobe lights are built into the MDL (just as designers did in FS2000). MDL-embedded beacons/strobes don't work properly in FS2002. If you look at the aircraft in Spot View (when airborne), you'll see the strobes and beacons stutter and flash at odd intervals. Oddly, this problem does not occur while the aircraft is on the ground. Anyway, The .FX bases lighting in FS2K2 doesn't suffer from this limitation, and in general, looks better I think (purely subjective). The more I think about it though, the more I am convinced that the lights were built into the MDL so that they could flex with the wing structure. Given the choice, I think this was probably the best compromise. My chief beef with POSKY's wing-flex models (which use the .FX based lighting) is that the strobe lights don't reposition themselves when the wings unflex - so you get floating strobes in mid-air over the wingtips when the aircraft is on the ground. Anyway...this is much ado about nothing - I should not have even mentioned it. The detail is a trivial one and certainly no reason for not adding this gem of an aircraft to your fleet of heavies. J

[Guest MelvinRafi]

Thanks a lot guys - glad you like it!Yes, I had a big debate with myself regarding the strobes on the wings. It's a long story, but here it goes...I initially designed the model with whatever default units GMax was set up with. Turns out that the original MakeMDL (the one on the 2k2 CD) was fine with that. But it couldn't handle the strobes and beacons etc. It could only handle light_land and light_nav and... was that it?Anyway, I figured that I could just use the aircraft.cfg lights in place of the MDL lights. But then, I had flex wing - and the dreaded thought :-lol of emails containing "Your wings lights are floating in the air and don't follow the wing" came to my mind.So I found out that the MakeMDL that came with the MakeMDL SDK was a newer version and could handle all those lighting parameters. So I upgraded to the new MakeMDL.Then, I thought my problem was solved. Wrong answer! MakeMDL didn't like the original units and my plane became the size of a city. So, I had to try out several different methods of scaling down the whole plane. Some of them caused severe damage to the animations.Finally, I scaled it down with minimal damage to the animations. Then, I went to rework the affected animations.At long last, I managed to add those MDL lights in.End of story.:) Melvin

[Guest]

how well did the plane that was the size of a city fly? the future of travel! :)

[Guest jase439]

I figured it was likely something to this effect (didn't mean to diz the aircraft in any way, of course - you really outdid yourself on this ;-) I don't imagine there are any work arounds for controlling the timing sequences of the beacons/strobes? FS2K2 seems to cycle their animations in sort of a willy-nilly haphazard fashion.