P3D v4 A shiny "Red Bull" P-38

Rogen · July 19, 2020

Hi Folks,

Going through my aircraft archive and came across the illustrious MilViz P-38 Red Bull freebee.

I'd downloaded it some time in the past when i was running P3D v3 but never got around to installing it before moving on to P3D v4.

Of course the aircraft is not officially for P3D v4 but I thought I would give it a go given there is already a Milviz P-38 included in P3D.

First hurdle was the installer doesn't give an option to select a path, just radio buttons to select the sim (FSX/FSX-SE and P3Dv2/3), this was overcome by setting a dummy P3D registry key.

e.g.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v3]
"AppPath"="E:\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v3\"

The installer then unpacked everthing into the path giving me the folders of.

Effects
fonts
Gauges
SimObjects

This I placed into my add-ons Milviz auto discovery path under the title of H:\Addons_P3D\01.Aircraft\Milviz\Milviz_P-38_RedBull along with a custom add-on.xml

Spoiler

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="AddOnXml" version="4,0" id="add-on">
<AddOn.Name>MilViz - P-38 RedBull</AddOn.Name>
<AddOn.Description>MilViz - P-38 RedBull</AddOn.Description>
<AddOn.Component>
    <Category>SimObjects</Category>
    <Path>SimObjects\Airplanes</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
<AddOn.Component>
    <Category>Effects</Category>
    <Path>Effects</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
<AddOn.Component>
    <Category>Fonts</Category>
    <Path>Fonts</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
<AddOn.Component>
    <Category>Gauges</Category>
    <Path>Gauges</Path>
</AddOn.Component>
</SimBase.Document>

So far so good, Sim was fired up, the P38 was discovered and gave it a flight test.

And the usual "no cockpit sounds" was the first issue, plus the landing light was a tiny little light without any throw.

To fix the sounds required 3 changes:

Rename the Milviz_sounds folder in \MilViz P38 Lightning\panel.Restored\ to MVSounds.
Copy the MV3DSound.dll from the LM Milviz P38 into \MilViz P38 Lightning\panel.Restored\
Comment out the original sound gauge in the panel.cfg and add the following.
- gauge00=MV3DSound!MV3DS, 0,0,1,1,SimObjects\\Airplanes\\MilViz P38 Lightning\\panel.Restored\\Milviz_Sounds#19
- There are two places to add the above, [Vcockpit01] and [Vcockpit05]

At the same time I took the opportunity to add a shockwave light as a landing light plus make a few titling changes in the aircraft.cfg file and add precipitFX effects.

light.12= 5, 0.85, -20.45, 0.95, fx_shockwave_landing_light_narrow // Shockwave light

Results:

Not too shabby, it's a bit finicky on the start animations but follow the instruction in the quick start manual and it starts fine.

Be nice if Milviz could revisit the aircraft and make it fully compatable given LM's inclusion of another Milviz P-38 on P3D x64, doesn't seem that it would need much.

Is it perfect? nope, what it is though is pretty fun to fly and sure is *shiny*.

Cheers