posted 01-12- 08:12 AM               

see F14_up.jpg and F14_down.jpg to see for yourselves. This is a very cool animated dof that I'm very excited about with OpenPlane. Man, anything really is possible!

Just before turning in for bed I decided to try something. I have an F-14 picture as my desktop graphic in Win98, and in it the Tomcat is launching from a Catapult. It's nose is squatted down as to give it a "jacked up" appearance like a muscle car. Needless to say it looks great! So I thought, hmmm, I wonder if OpenPlane would let me do this to my model.

I created a translation dof along the Nose landing gear (NLG) strut. I let it operate for 3 seconds with a max distance of 1.5
IT WORKS! I'm soooo excited about this! I hit the same C key for the carrier catapult launcher I put on a ship (see my other F-14 thread for more info) and if you are in the plane the nose gear goes straight up... NOT retracting but lowering the entire front end to act as if the cat-bar is being attached to the catapult. It is so neat to watch.

But ultimately why this really excites me is this. The C-5 Galaxy "kneels" (we jokingly say it's the only airplane in the world that can get down on it's knees and take it from both ends. Ha ha! Meaning it kneels down (gears drive straight up on jackscrews) to allow either forward/level/ or aft kneeling so vehicles like tanks, cars, trucks can drive up the ramp on into the cargo compartment.

SO, yes, on my C-5 that I'll be doing next after the F-14 and F-15 are done, will be able to kneel! The key here is that it's animated and you watch it in real time, that's what's so great about it all. In MS Flight Sim a guy did a C-5 but it was either all the way unknelt, or all the way knelt, with no animated "in-betweens".

I'll shut up now, time for bed. Just wanted to share the great news.

posted 01-12- 02:20 PM               

So yes, I think the Crusader wing idea will work (I mean the swingwings work on the F-14, and that's an even better comparison).