Balsa Baby

doug schluter said:
technoid do any of your other similar EA's have this issue ? i was going to go and see if any do but thought i'd ask first.
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I'm thinking this issue is caused by the fact the "fuselage" is a transparent object so you can see the balsa build-up structure that's recessed about .050 inside it. The balsa build-up structure is "not" transparent but the fuselage "is" transparent. So when you look through the canopy at certain angles you end up seeing through the "fusalge transparent layer and see the balsa build-up layer below it without seeing the fuselage layer at all. Thus seeing the balsa without seeing the red tinted transparent layer.
 
technoid said:
I'm thinking this issue is caused by the fact the "fuselage" is a transparent object so you can see the balsa build-up structure that's recessed about .050 inside it. The balsa build-up structure is "not" transparent but the fuselage "is" transparent. So when you look through the canopy at certain angles you end up seeing through the "fusalge transparent layer and see the balsa build-up layer below it without seeing the fuselage layer at all. Thus seeing the balsa without seeing the red tinted transparent layer.
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okay thanks that makes sense , i guess you could make the fuse not have the balsa look but personally you do not see it just lfying it like a normal RC plane :)
 
thank you for including me in the testing. as always the balsa baby fly's very well. i am more comfortable in flying in safe or as3x modes. i did try manual as well just for the heck of it. it may be that i'm progressing with piloting but it seemed like safe mode the plane floated rather then flew, if that makes sense. it was very solid in as3x mode and reacted well. manual mode was challenging and will take more practice to be comfortable.

once again you have produced another excellent plane both in flight and appearance. i love the shadow of the plane wing on the runway. it looks very cool.

i look forward to what you create next!
 
BILLFITT said:
thank you for including me in the testing. as always the balsa baby fly's very well. i am more comfortable in flying in safe or as3x modes. i did try manual as well just for the heck of it. it may be that i'm progressing with piloting but it seemed like safe mode the plane floated rather then flew, if that makes sense. it was very solid in as3x mode and reacted well. manual mode was challenging and will take more practice to be comfortable.

once again you have produced another excellent plane both in flight and appearance. i love the shadow of the plane wing on the runway. it looks very cool.

i look forward to what you create next!
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Thanks for checking it out for me. SO, does the Safe Select mode float "more" than the Ultra Stick? I used the same settings from the Ultra Stick. I count on your thoughts for stuff like that because Safe Select feels so foreign to me it's hard for me to judge it.
 
I just finished copying the Balsa Baby code to a new directory and creating a test to play with. Hang in there with me on the explanation. When I created my first balsa buildup plane (long ago now) I thought I was told to create a rib cage separate from the wing and then recess it a little so the wing and ribcage would be separate parts. So that's what I did and have always done it that way. With that history in mind when I started on the Balsa Baby I was going to add cutouts in the fuselage too and even add bulkheads between each cutout. But later I decided to "not" add cutouts to the fuselage but I had already created the fuselage internal structure so I used it. So right now the fuselage is transparent with an opaque balsa layer recessed below it. BUT.. since I didn't add the cutouts to the fuselage I can make the Fuselage Opaque and add a Transparent Red Color on top of it in Photoshop. So I made a temporary directory with the Balsa Baby files and did that. So now the Fuselage is Opaque with a Transparent Red Color Layer on top of it in Photoshop. I just finished testing it and it seems to fix the problem. I need to tweak the Red Transparent Color I put on top of the Fuselage in Photoshop because the red fuselage color in RealFlight seems to be a "tiny" bit lighter than the other parts. I think the Opacity right now is set to 70% in Photoshop. Anyway here's two pictures of Balsa Baby in RealFlight for you to check out.

The First Picture is what's in the last Beta I uploaded. The second picture is the Test I just did. You can see the plain Balsa layer in the first picture on the front left side of the canopy but the second picture shows red balsa like it should.

Balsa Baby 33.jpgBalsa Baby 34 (test).jpg
 
I just finished updating the release files with the test version I did to fix seeing the raw balsa when looking through the canopy. There's still the issue of the ribcage looking muddy when shadows are turned on but I haven't been able to fix that so the plane will just have to be released with that issue.
 
I was playing around with Balsa Baby trying to improve the muddy looking ribcages in the wings when I decided to take a look at what Aerobat looks like in the balsa color scheme I did for it. And it had the transparency turned way down so you could really see through it. Here's two pictures of it, the first with shadows and the second without shadows. And you can see the same thing is going on with it. The transparency is set really low so you can really see through it but you can clearly see in the first picture (with shadows) that the wing ribcage is much darker than the second picture without shadows. Now Aerobat "only" had transparency "inside" the center of the wing where the ribcages are so the surrounding part of the wing isn't affected by the transparency setting. So I suppose this means Balsa Baby is doing what it's suppose to be doing. Even if it looks wrong. Or at least to me it looks wrong. Oddly the hstab and vstab are affected very little by the shadows. I'm wondering if the wing being rounded is causing that.

Balsa Baby 42 (test).jpgBalsa Baby 43 (test).jpg
 
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