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Steve Dra

Flight1/iFly RELEASES Expansion Pack for the P3Dv5 737

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4 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

If you're referring to the 200,300,400, and MAX....I can't say what future plans are, but I know they were considering the MAX in the past.  I have no info on that project...I just paint. 🙂 

As for the other earlier series, I agree you can't have enough 737s to fly...but at lest for the NG series, they pretty much covered it all!   I'm struggling to paint at least one livery for each of them, LOL...may eventually get to all the BBJ models, but starting a paint on a new model is a mini-project in itself, as I take a lot of time customizing my paintkit to match my painting methodology, 

Hello Steve,

Yes, I was refering to the older members of the family, anyway, as you've said they've covered the NG series.

Wishing you a speedy recovery and Thanks a lot for all your wonderful repaints, it really is a time consuming activity.

Cheers


Francisco Aguiar

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Thank you, Steve, for your excellent repaints. I bought the expansion last night and have already enjoyed flying the WestJet 736 from CYVR to CYEG.

Hope you’re feeling better soon.


Joel Murray @ CYVR (actually, somewhere about halfway between CYNJ and CZBB) 

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9 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Purchased, recorded some video but haven't had time to put together yet.  Snagged some of Steve's excellent liveries ... so far, really enjoying it.  Hop in and go flight ...

Cheers, Rob.

Great shots Rob!   Hope to see more from you and everyone enjoying this aircraft and the liveries I've created.  Painter's currency. 🙂  That TUI Yellow is one of my favorites....so much so I've painted it on "both" dev's 737s now. 😉   Hoping to get a few more liveries out for that one as well.....it all about time...of which I never seem to have enough. 😞 

Thanks for the well-wishes everyone, I seem to be getting better each day and hope to be back to full strength soon.

I'm packaging this one now for upload....I added the DHL logo to the pallets and the inside of the cargo door to spruce her up a bit. 🙂   Being a freight dawg, I think I'll like flying this one often (when I have the time) and may pop out a few more freighters now that I have my paintkit for this model all configured.

zcRDZv.png

 

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Regards,
Steve Dra
Get my paints for MSFS planes at flightsim.to here, and iFly 737s here
Download my FSX, P3D paints at Avsim by clicking here

9Slp0L.jpg 

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2 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

I added the DHL logo to the pallets and the inside of the cargo door to spruce her up a bit.

As always, incredible detail with your repaints.

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2 hours ago, rmeier said:

As always, incredible detail with your repaints.

Thanks Rob.   After painting for a while (longer than a portion of simmers here have been on this planet, hehe), you pick up a lot of tricks to both speed up the process and keep some good detail at the same time.

Some paints are much harder than others.....DHL was not bad at all....lots of good reference photos out there, so I got her done pretty quick.  

On trick I use a lot is to get a good photo and superimpose it exactly over the fuse and use it as a guide to get elements exactly where they are on the real plane. 

cP91Wd.png

Spent 5 mins or so getting this pic exactly in line with the parts on the paintkit....using it to align the text and match the angles of the Z stripe.  You can see I still have to do some adjustment to the TRANPORTURILE AERINE ROMANE but the tarom is spot on now.  After looking thru tons of pics on tarom....I landed on this livery, as I like retro stripes/colors, and its an interesting livery.  You'll see if you go looking...this plane wears a special tail that I think started at 55 years  I think they change it every few years...its up to 66 now....I choose 60, well..because I turned 60 last year. 🙂 

aUr1HC.png

 

I wish more folks would try their hand at painting....like everything...its hard at 1st, takes some determination and patience, but the rewards of seeing your 1st paint in the sim are well worth it. 🙂  I know you can relate Rob. 😉

 

EDIT:
DHL just showed up in the library. 🙂 
hGYPTa.png

 

Edited by Steve Dra
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Regards,
Steve Dra
Get my paints for MSFS planes at flightsim.to here, and iFly 737s here
Download my FSX, P3D paints at Avsim by clicking here

9Slp0L.jpg 

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Is the LNAV behavior better than PMDG? 


Eric 

 

 

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Mr stev, could you do a tutorial on how to make these beautiful paintings that you make. with the programs... then convert to P3D texture. hugs. Lnav , works perfectly, making RNAV approximation as in reality. It's a great aircraft to fly....

Codfranca.

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4 hours ago, B777ER said:

Is the LNAV behavior better than PMDG? 

Not sure Eric....have not compared....hoping someone who's up those things can respond.

In the mean time....Tarom is coming along nicely....Did not have as much trouble with the stripes as I thought I would.

4jvWZ0.png

 

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Regards,
Steve Dra
Get my paints for MSFS planes at flightsim.to here, and iFly 737s here
Download my FSX, P3D paints at Avsim by clicking here

9Slp0L.jpg 

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3 minutes ago, cod said:

Mr stev, could you do a tutorial on how to make these beautiful paintings that you make. with the programs... then convert to P3D texture. hugs. Lnav , works perfectly, making RNAV approximation as in reality. It's a great aircraft to fly....

Codfranca.

Hey Cod....thanks for the compliment.   Sadly any tutorial would take a huge amount of time as there are many parts of getting pixels from a paint program to eventually fly on your sim.  There are alot of good tutorials out there to get you started, but in the end every painter has his/her methods to get things done in the overall process.

I make it appear to seem "easy" with the pace I can pop them out when I get in a groove, but then again I've been painting over 20 years, so most of it is from pure muscle memory from doing it so long. 🙂  I'm closing in on 30 repaints just for this ifly 737....repetition is the best skill enhancer by far.

@rmeier could tell you how to get started from a new (ish) painter perspective and what's involved, and how you pick things up as you paint more and more....I've watched his recent paints get progressively better and he's branching out and really catching the painting bug, right Rob?

Make no mistake..."easy" is a relative term when it comes to painting, and at 1st it will seem daunting, frustrating, confusing, aggravating, annoying, impossible...so perseverance and dedication are absolute required traits to have a successful time at it. 

Start small and work your way up...look at other painter's texture maps for reference, learn by trial and error, join painter's forums and ask questions. 

I can tell you the rewards of getting good enough to proudly share your work, are worth it. 🙂  (Do it long enough and get recognized, devs may reach out to you to join their beta teams and paint for them....I'm currently on beta teams for 4 major devs, and a little embarrassed to say that I have not paid for a plane in a long time, hehe..but that was never the reason I got into it....I got into it to share my talents with the community, and from that, I got noticed by the devs, I never solicited to join them, they reached out to me. 🙂 )

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Regards,
Steve Dra
Get my paints for MSFS planes at flightsim.to here, and iFly 737s here
Download my FSX, P3D paints at Avsim by clicking here

9Slp0L.jpg 

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Got a lot done on Tarom (and didn't get that fatigued....maybe I'm getting better?) 🙂

A lot of little things on this livery to take care of....(not really difficult....just time consuming)

  • Added the romainia2019.eu logo....it wore it for a while (I imagine in 2018-2019)....found a good copy of it...and I think stickers make the livery interesting...so I added it.
  • Engines painted...gray matched and Tarom logo added
  • Doors are fun (time consuming) on this one...the front doors are easy...one color. The emergency doors and rear doors...lots'a stripes LOL.  Painter's tip...do not paint these until you're POSITIVE your main stripes are PERFECT...or you'll be painting them again. 😉 
  • Winglets...not too hard, but logos on the outside and text on the inside, just extra work as you can only copy/mirror - or - rotate once on each side.  If all logos, much easier.
  • Cut here in emergency placards on the roof.

All that is left is the wing and cockpit reg and the tail.  Should be done and have her uploaded tomorrow.

XXZtyB.png

 


Regards,
Steve Dra
Get my paints for MSFS planes at flightsim.to here, and iFly 737s here
Download my FSX, P3D paints at Avsim by clicking here

9Slp0L.jpg 

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Hi Steve,

 

Glad to see you're back painting once more and a tremendous effort to model YR-BGG. I have some photos of that specific aircraft at EDDF and you''ve nailed the livery I have to say.👍

A quick painting related question since I dabbled myself some time ago with some PMDG 747 repaints. How do your approach getting the airline titling on the fuselage correct? A number of airlines have selected very special custom-made fonts, so do you try and select the closest available commercial font and then modify or do you resort to real-life photos when that font is not easily available or do you have another approach?


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Mark Aldridge
P3D v5.3 HF2, P3Dv4.5 and sometimes FSX!

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1 hour ago, 787flyer said:

Hi Steve,

 

Glad to see you're back painting once more and a tremendous effort to model YR-BGG. I have some photos of that specific aircraft at EDDF and you''ve nailed the livery I have to say.👍

A quick painting related question since I dabbled myself some time ago with some PMDG 747 repaints. How do your approach getting the airline titling on the fuselage correct? A number of airlines have selected very special custom-made fonts, so do you try and select the closest available commercial font and then modify or do you resort to real-life photos when that font is not easily available or do you have another approach?

Thanks Mark....it's good to be back in the paint booth. 🙂 

As far as fonts....its completely hit or miss.  Sometimes you get lucky and they use either a basic font, or one you can find on the web.  Other times you score a good enough close-up pic to use with some touchup (most pics of a plane never show it in a perfectly horizontal plane (pun intended, hehe...so you have to rotate it to get it straight).  Sometimes its a combination where a few letters in the airline name are pretty standard and you only have to build a few letters.  Going to the airline's website can also get you some good results, along with the various vector logo sites out there.

Then there are times when you just need to build the font.  In the case of Skyservice, I had to pick a font that was close, then modify it.  Here you see the S needed some work on the ends, along with various things on other letters.  I started with a font that was close...converted it into a vector object, put on my patience-hat (LoL) and got to work....moving the various nodes over the very bad pic of the lettering, matched to the fuse using the door (and windows, as always) as a reference.

FJuury.jpg

 

When I was done....(I did touch up the y after this screen)

94hkY1.jpg

With Tarom...I could not find a great pic, nor was that vintage logo text available anywhere (that fact almost made me bypass this cool livery, but I persevered and as always...glad I chose to go ahead with this livery....I really like it) , so I got the best pic I could find and altered it.   It does not look perfect close up...but at normal viewing distances, it looks perfectly fine.

A big part of painting is getting good resources...and the search for locating them is like a scavenger hunt every time.  Sure...there are some go-to places I've found over the years, but they probably only get you exactly what you need about 30% of the time...then its more hunting. 
 

The good news about that, with me being an information junkie when it comes to aviation, is that you learn so much about an airline when you're researching it.  For example...this Tarom paint....when I saw the "60" years...I thought that was the only version when I stumbled on the pic on Flickr.   As I searched more after deciding to paint it...I learned they've been updating the year count every so often...last I saw was 66....bet there are very few who knew this....now I (and everyone reading this) knows. 🙂 

Here is another fact about the 737, and this paint...that if I didn't point out...probably most would ever notice....but you sure do when you have to paint her, LOL.

So when I paint, I typically do the left side 1st (top fuse in the pic below), then duplicate and flip the textures.  with the stripes....typically they are symmetrical 99% of the time, so a simple flip along the longitude'l  centerline gets you a perfect match.   I thought the same for this paint.  But when I flipped it to the other side, you can see that (if you never knew this before), that the right side door is smaller and more forward than the left.   This particular stripe's "Z" feature is more forward on the right side due to this (use the black guide line as a reference), and I had to spend time modifying it (that I normally never have to) to get correct....who knew? 🙂

MD1Pvs.png


Regards,
Steve Dra
Get my paints for MSFS planes at flightsim.to here, and iFly 737s here
Download my FSX, P3D paints at Avsim by clicking here

9Slp0L.jpg 

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@Steve Dra Thanks to your DHL, WestJet and Southwest repaints, I was persuaded to buy the expansion.
I mean, who wouldn't want cargo, baby Boeing or 'right-sized' SWA 737s in their hangars?

Hope you continue to get better and recover fully.


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Good to see you back Steve.

A minor..ish point. TUI Germany i.e. TUIFly ditched the banana colors a long time ago 😉

 

Norm, from you know where.

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For the people who own both the iFly and the NGXu:

What do you think each product does better than the other? 
 

I’m happy to get rid of PMDG and was gonna get the iFly once a Max is released but maybe I’ll switch earlier if there’s a good reason. 

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