Progress has been slow, mostly because of real work getting in the way, but the Wright Flyer is getting much closer to completion.
Most of the detail and animation is done. Here's a shot from the front with the elevator mechanism tilted up for initial ascent.: http://www.spiderbark.com/fgfs/wrightflyer-starting.png >From the earlier discussion and pictures available I took a guess on the wing warping. For now the animation is pretty crude (only three positions), but better than nothing. This is a shot from behind showing the wings warped for a roll toward the left: http://www.spiderbark.com/fgfs/wrightflyer-warp.png This is the startup line I'm using. The location and heading is based on a best guess from various accounts. Pictures of the Wright National Monument and a scan of a guide brochure from the Park helped a lot in at least matching reasonably close to the "best guess" that was arrived at in 1928 by a contingent of witnesses to the original event: fgfs --aircraft=wrightFlyer1903-v1-nl-uiuc --lat=36.020247 --lon=-75.669041 --heading=5 --disable-random-objects --enable-auto-coordination Crazy details left on my todo list: - Adding control cables/chains and blocks for all the control surfaces. - Animating Orville's hips and the cradle. - As soon as I figure out the exact shape, adding the foot stop that kept Orville from sliding off the back of the wing at startup. - As soon as I get some more information (a good picture or diagram), modeling the "instrument cluster" that was mounted just to the right of Orville's right arm. - Correct the elevator animation once information on its actual range is learned (anyone know this?) - Modeling the rail. - Modeling the rear skid (this is tricky because it gets dropped and left behind when the aircraft becomes airborn). I'm really not up to speed on scenery modeling, but if someone wants to it'd be great to have a tiny bit of territory covering just Kill Devil Hills, NC and the Outer Banks, that was simply covered with a nice beach sand texture as it was back in 1903. Another idea: if we had that little chunk of sandy scenery we might want to put together a special release (that included a binary and a tiny subset of the base package) for school teachers and whoever else to download during the centennial year. Might be kind of cool to release it next month on December 17th, the 99th aniversary of the first flight. Sounds like a potential promotional thing for the FlightGear project too, I'd think. Best, Jim _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel