xljedi

CVN 74_AP

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Nimitz class aircraft carrier in 1/5 scale.

The focal point of the AP is the carrier object which just made it in under the 8000 polygon mark, so all surfaces are fully collidable without having to add a collision mesh. I set the default scale as 1/10th which is too small, but I wanted to make the math easy if converting to other common scales. I have this one set at 200% for 1/5th scale and it nicely matches the scale of most of the jets you'll find in RF 5.5 and the associated addon packs.

The skin for the model is a 4096x4096 tga file for CVN-74 (USS John C. Stennis). I also have a wireframe 4096 png file located here if you'd like to modify or reskin it.

There is a basic airfield in the mountains and the carrier is positioned in a bay nearby. The position of the carrier is such that you can stand on deck and use the mountain skyline to fly the pattern all the way in for a landing. It's hard to appreciate how much we rely on ground and horizon reference when flying a pattern approach until you stand on the deck of a carrier and try to land with nothing but flat ocean as a point of reference. Something to keep in mind if you are looking to create your own AP's with this carrier object.

There are 3 plane spawn locations and 2 helo spawns. One of the 3 plane spawns is setup up with velocity at 90fps to launch off the catapult! It actually works pretty cool. Just press the X button to toggle between cat positions. I've launched all sorts of stuff off the deck it's fun. I actually prefer to set the cat launch velocity at 74 fps (which is about 50 mph) because it allows most planes to have a nice (and scale looking) dip off the end of the ship before gaining altitude. I upped it to 90 fps so it could launch anything. I couldn't get an F-15 to launch at 74 fps; no surprise, right?

Landing is also fun. I set the carrier on a course to face into a 5mph headwind (the default wind setting for the AP). There is a 3x wind modifier on the ship, so as you approach it you'll notice that you'll bleed off airspeed a lot faster than usual. This is the closest approximation I could manage for somthing similar to arrestor cables and it allowed me to land the L39 on the deck and come to a full stop. Of course, the L39 tricycle gear with wheel brakes helps tremendously. I can actually land that one within the boundaries of the offset runway (as opposed to using the whole carrier deck).

Landing on it with a chopper becomes a little more challenging as the airspeed modifier makes it seem like the carrier is moving.

If you have any other ideas for ways to adjust the modifiers for takeoff and landing, let me know. I think these work pretty well.

Note:
Error on load has been reported related to the hi-res 4096x4096 tga file with an NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT graphics card. If you can't get it to work in hi-res, use the hotlink below to download the lower-res version.

2048x2048 version


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