Prop and engine in place...

[Wing Nut]

Ok, another big step completed.  This is not my engine, but a design I borrowed.  I found it more time saving than going through all of the hassle of making one, as I want to be done with it some time this century.  For the prop I created the hub and blades with cylinders the used the connect operation to join them.  Once textures are applied to them, they will look much better...

[Dornep]

Man this thing is really starting to come together.

How many faces so far? The engine looks very detailed, are those spark plugs and wires I see?

Coming along very nicely.  :)

[Wing Nut]

41288

Is that really high?  :o

The vast majority of these are going to be in the cockpit, I'm sure.  

     

Here it is with the edged faces on...

[DaveT]

excellent Kevin,keep up the good work mate

cheers
Dave

[Travis]

That seems like a good balance between visual smoothness and poly count, although you might want to check on the counts for the wheel boots, as they seem like they have more polys than necessary.  But that is only a matter of opinion, of course.

That engine is one I have thought about using a couple of times.  It's a very accurate design and very well thought out.  FFDS, right?

[Wing Nut]

Once the textures are in place, it's a beautiful thing.  It is FFDS, and much thanks to Felix and the crew over there for posting it.  I need to remember t send him an e-mail and let him know I snagged it.

When I put the wheels in it will eliminate a lot of the poly's on the wheels.  I'm not sure how many poly's would be too many, though I think I remember one guy coming in at over 100,000 and people were in shock about it.  That was back in FS2004 though...

[Travis]

Try not to go over around 100k polys, since that will annihilate some people's systems.

However, polygons are not the main mem-eater that they could be.  Textures will consume processor power more than anything, so you should concentrate on making the texture files as low as possible.  The fewer you have, the better.  1024 x 1024 for several parts is better than 512 x 512 for one part.

[Wing Nut]

Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it.  It's still a long way to launch...

I'm at 48k now on the poly's...

That shouldn't be a problem, as modeling is almost complete.  I really only have the vertical stabilizer and the interior of the cockpit to go.  I have the elevators done now, the wheels done, and all of the wires, so that's not a whole lot left.  Even the stuff in the cockpit is basic items like the seat and walls.  Fortunately, there's not a bunch of framework to show in this thing.

As for textures, again, not a problem.  The thing is two basic colors, red and black, with a few for the cockpit....  :D