Lazy Eight Mk II

technoid

technoid

Well-known member
The first Lazy Eight was created for exploring 3D fields it had a pusher design with the canopy up front to give you the best view of where your flying. Lazy Eight Mk II keeps all that but increases the wingspan to 10 ft. for a lower wing loading so you can fly even slower while exploring. The wing has been changed from a constant cord to a double taper and it has a totally new color scheme. To be honest Lazy Eight Mk II was created for RF-X so I could fly slow while exploring it's mountain ranges, valleys, and flatlands. I know this is an RF-8 forum but I have to plug RF-X for a minute because I like to fly around and explore and it has a lot of places to explore, and for me that's the best feature of RF-X. So with Lazy Eight Mk II's totally glass cockpit mounted on the front of the plane you see great while you fly around, whether in RF-8 or RF-X. The plane is basically finished I'm just checking out everything before I release it.
 

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I did a little work to the cockpit last night. I'm still just looking and flying it. Once I'm happy with everything I'll upload it.
 

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I've been working on Lazy Eight Mk II a bit more. I always thought the steering wheel and gauges was a little to large so I went back and reduced the size of the steering wheel and all it's parts and the gauges too. I also wanted to improve the look of the gauges so I remapped them to increase their pixel count so they would look a bit better. It's not a night and day improvement but if you saw a before and after picture the improvement is there. I still have a little work to do on the gauges to finish them up and after that I think I'll release it. One thing that's improved on the gauges is the color fringing around the edges is pretty much gone and the color used vary edge to edge and that seems to be gone too. I'd have to completely redo the gauges to get anymore improvement the gauges wasn't super high quality to begin with, but the changes I made did make them look better with better color purity. But don't expect miracles it's just a nice change. I don't have any pictures but I thought I'd let you know what I've been doing to it.
 
I thought I'd drop by and post a picture of the improved pilot view. I don't have a side by side comparision but what I did was make the steering wheel and all it's parts about 15% smaller and then reduce the size of the gauges to fit in the new space. Then I went back and remapped the gauges and made them larger in the CS TGA file so they have more pixels, that got rid of the discoloration and fringing on the gauges which made them look better and clearer. The gauges weren't high resolution in the first place so I went back and tweaked them by hand to improve their clarity. So the improvement is definitely noticeable but they're not photo quality but much improved from where they were. I think this is the last thing I'll do so I'll play with the plane a little more to be sure and then release it. It doesn't seem to be generating any interest here so it might not on the swaps either. But I like this plane and wanted it to be the best it could be before I release it, it's definitely an improved version in both looks and flying.. and is RF-X compatible too. I really like flying this plane in RF-X and exploring all the different fields.
 

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OPPs I had shadows turned off and there are some problems when I turn them on, they cast ugly shadows on the dashboard frame and the instruments. Is there a way to turn off the shadows in RF-8 per Object? I tried turning the shadows off in the 3ds properties dialog box that that didn't have any effect. What I want to do is turn off shadows for the dashboard frame and the dashboard itself. I also tried making the dashboard frame BLACK in the SPEC MAP RGB and ALPHA layers but the UGLY shadows were still there. Anyway any help would be appreciatied.
 
It didn't bother me at all. I expected the dash to dim when in a shadow. But I know what a perfectionist you are.
 
BrokeDad said:
It didn't bother me at all. I expected the dash to dim when in a shadow. But I know what a perfectionist you are.
Click to expand...

When shadows are off it looks great the gauges stay the same color over all the parts and the dashboard frame stays the same color. But once I turned shadows back on the shadows on the frame are really bothersome they constantly go in and out and really look ugly to me.
 
You can add ~CS_GLOW objects to add dashboard lights in RF. Look in the KEMax tutorials for the specifics. I can't recall offhand exactly what's involved.
 
A few of us were talking about what looks good on a model and the common answer seemed to be adding any or all of the RC parts that control the plane is always nice to see, both internal if you have a removable hatch and external parts, so I thought I'd add some servos. But of course then I need to go back and map all the servo parts because RF-8 doesn't support baked on colors like RF 7.5 did, it's one of the things that changed from a KEX export to a FBX export. So I need to go back and map all the servo parts and find room in the map for them. Here's a few renders for you.
 

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abaser said:
You can add ~CS_GLOW objects to add dashboard lights in RF. Look in the KEMax tutorials for the specifics. I can't recall offhand exactly what's involved.
Click to expand...

I've added ~CS_GLOW parts before but I'm not sure that would help my problem though.
 
There is a line in the rfvehicle files that says this. I don't know if it could be relevant.

EnableDaytimeLights=BOOL:No

If I change it to Yes the lights come on like the ones on the propeller.
 
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technoid said:
OPPs I had shadows turned off and there are some problems when I turn them on, they cast ugly shadows on the dashboard frame and the instruments. Is there a way to turn off the shadows in RF-8 per Object? I tried turning the shadows off in the 3ds properties dialog box that that didn't have any effect. What I want to do is turn off shadows for the dashboard frame and the dashboard itself. I also tried making the dashboard frame BLACK in the SPEC MAP RGB and ALPHA layers but the UGLY shadows were still there. Anyway any help would be appreciatied.
Click to expand...

A picture is worth a thousand words.
 
legoman said:
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Click to expand...

Actually a picture of the problem doesn't do justice to it because the discolored areas on the dash frame and gauges move and flash in and out as the shadows move and go in and out, but here's two pictures for you. The first is with shadows and you can see some discolored areas on the left side of the dash frame and also discolored areas on the gauges. The second picture is without shadows and what I want it to look like, and if I could disable shadows on objects I could get it to look that way.
 

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