Na-ah, They’re ‘Einkels.

Posted on 2nd April 20192nd April 2019 by Ian P

Silly-billy Author’s note: Yes, this page originally said that the He111H-3 was made by Aeroplane Heaven when yes, it’s Virtavia. The forthcoming AH model is a P and not out yet to use as AI for screenshots. I shall repeatedly call myself a Muppet on the reader’s and developers’ behalf.

Having seen it more times than I’d care to remember, I am more than aware that in the film Battle of Britain, they were actually Dorniers that had been spotted by the two boys standing on the muddy banks of the receded Thames. In this case, however, they really are ‘Einkels – or Heinkels – in the guise of He 111 H-3s made by Virtavia, operating out of Lille-Nord airfield in Northern France, which I have finally got sort-of-ready for release for FSX. It also works in P3D (including v4) and all the screenshots shown in this thread were taken using Orbx scenery.

It’s all Hunsdon’s Fault!

Posted on 14th March 201914th March 2019 by Ian P

Yep, I finally pushed the “Update” button this morning and the All in One downloads are finally up to date.

Yes. It’s been well over a year this time, but good grief is there a lot in there that wasn’t before.

The Bedford QLs and Morris trucks are in, the gun posts are in, the new hangars are in, there are goodness knows how many new ‘small buildings’ and Nissen huts and Nissen combos and… oh, yeah, there’s one absolutely tiny hut, the TB “Balloon Filling Hut”, an aerial… At least I think the aerial is in there. If it isn’t, it’ll be in an update, hopefully less than a year away. What else? Well, Hunsdon, for starters, in the IJP Scenery folder. It’s not complete, I haven’t done any trucks, anywhere near enough clutter or much else yet, but if you want a place to start to see a lot of what’s been added to the scenery libraries, X2HU is a pretty good place to start. Try not to crash while you’re laughing at the AA machine gunner models.

Oh, one last thing… I added the surface elements of a Battle HQ this morning (for Flippin’ Hunsdon again…) – it’s in the new “Defences” library. I’m open to suggestions as to how to improve this, as I don’t think it looks particularly good, personally. I’m not sure how I can make it look any better, though.

Download links can be found on the “All-in-One” page, here.

Bunches of Bedfords

Posted on 3rd March 20193rd March 2019 by Ian P

The Bedford QLs that I have discussed previously are now bundled together in a nice new library called “IJP_WW2_Bedford_QL” and now number 6 in variants, although if I ever add the other umpteen minor changes and a couple of new variants then this library is going to get quite big.

Getting me angry…

Posted on 7th February 20197th February 2019 by Ian P

… is, apparently, great for productivity. Even if I can’t give out any of the results just yet.

Last post, I showed images of a way-over-poly-budget Bedford QL and a slightly mysterious airfield which, if you zoomed in enough, you might have seen was RAF Hunsdon, from where Operation Jericho was launched. Things have moved on since then.

Going Nowhere, Slowly.

Posted on 15th January 201915th January 2019 by Ian P

So, after a lot of poking, prodding, cajoling and peeking, it appears that ALL the internal WordPress links are already relative, rather than full, links. As a result, it appears that there’s nothing I can do to actually fix this problem. I’m passing it on to local Tech Support (also known as “Mrs. P”) to contact the domain host and ask them to remove the bleeping redirect. I don’t need this site to be SSL and their implementation of the certificate has caused hours of problems for absolutely no benefit whatsoever.

Net result: FAIL.

So I did this.

And this.

Yes, I’m aware that the field boundaries and roads don’t quite line up… I had a choice between making the airfield remains match the historical photograph or making the surrounding area match the historical photograph, so I went for the airfield option. If you take off the old photo, the airfield sits perfectly on the modern day imagery beneath it. Lens effect maybe? Not sure. Whatever. I now need to try and find a Aerodrome Reference Plan or something to place all the buildings, because while they are clearly visible on the old photo, they’re far from identifiable on it, unfortunately.

Or I could just guess!

HMS Tern: A Question of AI.

Posted on 21st October 2018 by Ian P

Right. Dragging my head out of The Dark Corner and trying to actually achieve something again – other than tidying the dumping ground that was dining room table, which I achieved at about one o’clock this morning!

HMS Tern was a RN Fleet Air Arm Fleet Requirements station in the Orkney islands. The airfield itself was actually named after an adjacent village, but if I use the proper name the major search engines will decide that I’m an adult content site, so HMS Tern it is! If you want to know where I’m talking about, the other adjaent village is Isbister, which would have been a much better name, but someone at the Admiralty clearly had a sense of humour!

Anyway, this isn’t a discussion about the name, it’s a question… I need to set up some AI to test the layout and would be interested to know if there are any WW2 Fleet Air Arm models that people would like to see included? No guarantees can be given that anything will be included – I have a handful of commercial ones installed and can use freeware ones, obviously, but finances (or a complete lack thereof) say very clearly that I won’t be buying any more payware to do this.

Oh, one other thing, this version of the airfield won’t include the unique tower which is still present on the airfield site. I’d love to model it, but it’s a long way down the list at present.

Let me know via the comments box or contact page (or by e-mail if you have actually read one of my readme files!) if you have any suggestions. Ta!

Morris at the Gym?

Posted on 25th August 2018 by Ian P

It’s been a while since I posted anything again, so here’s a quick update; mainly about WW2 Halfpenny Green and trucks… Because I never mention them, right?

Halfpenny Green first. I’ve been working on the domestic side of the road again, this time adding the still-extant Gym/Church (Dwg 16428/40+15424/41) to the layout.

As you might expect from me, this led on to other things, including a Cinema 8891/42 and the whole set of a
16428/40+15434/41+8891/42. These are now in the IJP_WW2_RAF_Domestic library, in both brick and rendered versions, along with the also still extant Squash Court 16589/40.

I still need to do the WAAF Ablution block (16339/41?) and Standby Set House (unknown drawing number) which are on the farm site, plus the Petrol Pumphouse, Batmens Quarters and Officers’ Mess, all of which are also still extant on site but on local drawing numbers which no-one seems to have, unfortunately. At some point, I need to go and beg the campsite owner to let me hunt for traces of the timber construction Sick Quarters, but the rest of the extant buildings are on the farm site. I also need to approach airfield management for permission to get to the outside of the cinema (which is a VERY unstable ruin) to see what I can photograph and work out of that, as it bears no dimensional comparison to any of the cinema drawings I’m aware of. It’s too fat and too long!

The other thing I set out to do was that I found a nice photo of a USAAF runway control vehicle based on a Morris GS8 4×2 15cwt truck chassis, which I thought would make a nice change from the generic towed caravan that I put everywhere using SODE. I haven’t made the RWC vehicle yet, because I got a bit sidetracked… By General Service Open, Covered and cab roof versions, along with all three models including Explosive Ordnance Disposal red mud guards.

Excuse all the extra white space, please – the system currently has two screens attached and it seems to be confusing my graphics packages.

Anyway. These are currently only in “Mickey Mouse Ears” camo (c1 in my model nomenclature) apart from one test EOD vehicle in Royal Navy blue for HMS Tern/RNAS Voldemort (“The Airfield That Shall Not Be Named!”). These have their own “IJP_WW2_RAF_MorrisVehicles” library, as there are more Morris models to come and RAFVehicles is getting really rather overloaded! Should I break that up into smaller libraries, bundle them all together, or leave it as it is? You tell me! 🙂

Elvington version 2

Posted on 8th August 2018 by Ian P

I’ve finally got around to uploading RAF Elvington version 2.0 for FSX to the server. It’s been done for a couple of weeks, but I have a number of issues going on with my health at the moment, so it’s taken me way too long to get around to actually packaging and uploading it. It’s now available here, supported by a new release of my scenery objects, which can be found either via the link on the Elvington page, or the top menu bar. I’ll try and get the All in One files updated as soon as possible, to include the new files.

Just a little update today

Posted on 18th June 2018 by Ian P

Facebook (specifically) is a pain in the neck at present. Apart from constantly hounding me to pay to promote a post begging for money, which is kind of counter-productive, it’s also popping up six, seven, eight messages a day telling me that I haven’t posted anything “for a while”, whatever that means.

So here’s a quick update. I’m trying to convert all my models to P3Dv4 format and… Well, ModelConverterX said they were converted, but LibraryCreatorXML announced that they weren’t valid .MDL files, so apparently I have “an issue” to resolve there before I can get the objects into the Lockheed-Martin sim in a native format. Could be worse; they need almost entirely rebuilding for X-Plane 11.

I haven’t been idle on other things, either. Callendar-Hamilton and B.1 hangars have been modelled, plus I’ve done 20′ Temporary Brick Maintenance Office & Stores plus Crew Locker Rooms for Halfpenny Green. For anyone who knows the airfield, they’re the ones still in front of the hangars, being used by a couple of flying schools and the airfield operations team, in that order. Airside Halfpenny Green is getting pretty much done now. The domestic site across the road…? Best not mentioned right now, unless you know what any of the thirty or so completely undocumented buildings looked like!

Let me know if you’d rather I posted this sort of “dev blog” type of thing when there’s nothing else to talk about, or whether you only want me to post when there’s something actually been released, please?

WW2 Halfpenny Green as it stands, with lots of gaps to be filled. To get to the present day, just delete 90% of it!

B1 hangar. The “B” could easily stand for “Basic”.

Callendar-Hamilton hangar. At least this one has windows.

Crew Locker Rooms. These days, this is the airfield ops office and has been changed externally a bit.

A slight “spot the difference competition leads us to the Maintenance Office and Stores, also still extant and these days housing flying schools.

A Little Detour to Little Walden

Posted on 15th April 201815th April 2018 by Ian P

Not content with releasing one scenery today, I’ve also uploaded Little Walden in Essex, which was used by both the 8th and 9th Air Forces, both as a bomber and fighter station. This high usage was in spite of the fact that it was one of the last airfields constructed during the war. It can be found here.

Ian P's Dark Corner

Category: Historical Scenery