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AlphaSim freeware F-84F-- This grainy photograph downloaded from the interweb (Google "thunderbirds f-84f." This will be one of the first images to come up.) was my starting point. The 1955 Edition U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds flying the Republic F-84F Thunderstreak.



This is what I ended up with. Not perfect, but pretty close. Compromises had to be made due to subtle differences between the AlphaSim model geometry and the actual aircraft and due to texture-mapping issues, but I mostly like what I did.



It took me much longer than I thought it would. I figured maybe a week of futzing around with it. What's it been... over a month?!



Real-life interferes with hobbies. That's the big one. But there was so much research to do in getting it right!



It's a pretty familiar paint-scheme, but when you start putting digital-paint to virtual-metal you find out how little you actually know about that paint-scheme. What were the flags under the canopy-rail and how were they laid out? All those different-sized stars on the tail. And each one cocked at a different wacky angle.



I'm not going to promise when I will publish these. Soon. I noticed a few color mismatches which I need to go back and correct. I need to figure out how to add airshow smoke to the .cfg file without losing the engine-exhaust effect. Look for a package in the next week or two, if you're interested.



It was fun. It was frustrating. I wanted a 1950s Thunderbird jet. I got six of them. Six jets, six unique texture sets. Hats off to the guys and gals who crank out so many wonderful skins for the toys we love. I don't know where they find the time!!!

Here is the same model and textures as above, but in FS9 rather than FSX.



Yup. It's a FS9-native model (and an old one at that!). Just dump the model and its 1024-square 32-bit textures into FSX (with the appropriate .cfg mods) and it flies just fine.



I'm not a game-designer or programmer and I have no clue how they get those electrons to line themselves up into pretty realistic-looking airplane shapes, but I'm glad they did it. It's interesting to see the differences and similarities between the two platforms.



Here you can see the biggest compromise I had to make with these textures. On the real aircraft, the red, white and blue fields on the nose taper to a sharp point on the belly ending back under the wing. But without a dedicated belly texture, that just wasn't going to happen. I tried. A lot. It's an okay compromise, I guess.



I think these turned out okay. It was a learning experience, which is good. It's good to have some new tricks in the tool-bag.



These are very shiny airshow jets. They look good in either sim. A little cleaner in FSX, I think. It doesn't show up much in these still shots, but it's fun in either sim to maneuver these jets and watch the light glint off their silver skin.

Wow thanks for bringing a new lease of life to older sim models and awaiting the release of your repaints.

GlobalHobo wrote:Here is the same model and textures as above, but in FS9 rather than FSX.

Here you can see the biggest compromise I had to make with these textures. On the real aircraft, the red, white and blue fields on the nose taper to a sharp point on the belly ending back under the wing. But without a dedicated belly texture, that just wasn't going to happen. I tried. A lot. It's an okay compromise, I guess.

I had to take a look at F-84F 3 views to sort out that statement, but seems to me like a "Poetic Licence" & "Murphy at Work" combo:

Jean Loup wrote:I had to take a look at F-84F 3 views to sort out that statement, but seems to me like a "Poetic Licence" & "Murphy at Work" combo.

Yeah, sometimes it's easier just to point to a picture than try to describe something. Everything I tried just ended up being a fuzzy squiggle as the pixels spread out. So I ended up just rounding it off. Seems like there ought to be some way to accomplish it, though. Maybe I'll go back to it at some point. I just ran out of patience.

Beautiful job with those paints.

Anthin.

Excellent work Globalhobo! Payware quality IMO. Keep it up!

Excellent job, both on the paintjobs and your formation flying!
I did something similar for the F-86, and the Minutemen, and finding out all the details took forever..
But I hever managed to fly them so close together

Have to join in with the others and compliment you on your work. Nice formation and the images are really top notch. Hope to see more