Well after some real life intrusions plus some hair pulling rendering issues I've put together a package of floatplanes for the community. Obviously they are meant for SPAW but they could be flown anywhere in the 1.6 world.

Let me tell you guys something. The 3dz wire graphics system has a hard time with putting 3dz models on top or underneath other 3dz models. That's why the bi-planes were such a PITA. The landing gear would show through the bottom wings and struts would show through the top wings.

Through sheer determination, trial and error I was able to get the bi-planes in pretty good shape with only a few R/S problems when viewing the plane from directly underneath.

So along came the floatplane project with the need to hang 30 foot long objects 6 feet under the fuselage as well as smaller floats under the wings. Plus, two of the models are bi-planes. The ultimate nightmare scenario I can tell you.

In the end I had about a 75% success rate with a few interesting aircraft left behind on the cutting room floor. Even some of these released models have a few R/S issues, again looking directly up from underneath the plane.

My advice?

Don't look.

Anyhow, here's the line up:

A6M2N Rufe -


F1M2 Pete -


E13A - Jake


E15K Norm -


E16A Paul -


N1K1 Rex


M6A Seiran


H6K Mavis -


H8K Emily -


Sunderland Mk II


Swordfish Mk II Floatplane -


Spitfire Mk V Floatplane -


Hurricane Mk I Floatplane -


SC-1 Skyhawk -


F4F-3a Wildcatfish -


Sb2c Floatplane -


PBY-5


So now the thing is, I have the flight models and loadouts done but I can't land or take off from water. So I'm missing something in the flight files that allows this. I do have the floatplane box checked off in the plane.dat file but there must be something else because they act just like land planes.

Hopefully Jel can set me straight on this.

Also, if I recall there are four seaplane bases in the original SPAW, two allied and two Japanese.

Too bad Glide did not win the tech war. When you switch material (Wire frame vs texture in this case) with DX6, everything stops and the video buffer is updated. The Z sorting takes place as the frame is updated and the polygon sort is dependant upon the view angle. What is new is then pasted over what is old (you can sort positive or negative).

Wire frame materials should be refrained from use, unless the polygon is 2D (GUI). Using an alpha channel, masked texture would make this much easier. I assume your empty F (forgive me I forget your naming) method would have allowed this.

EAW's 3dz material codes is based upon 2D rendering from that era.

Changing in and out of wire frame mode is a very bad thing to do for real time rendering in DX6..

Floatplanes are also set with a fixed undercarriage and can only land on or take off from water:


Amphibians do not have a fixed undercarriage, so they can use both land and water:


If you pack them for me please put them in a "NewSPAWPlanes" folder, with planesets that address it.

Well, I tried both "fixed U/C" on and off plus "floatplane" on without success.

Perhaps it is the exec I'm using which is 160NewMapV43.

Send them to me via the Gen server and I will try to check them while I am away in Lyon for a few days- heading there this afternoon

Ok, thanks.

Might be tomorrow as I have a couple of minor issues to finish up.

Edit -

BTW, If you figure out what I did wrong and it includes checking the "fixed U/C" box I'm going to have to go back and redo the flight models.

See, I increased the drag numbers in the plne.flt files to account for the floats but that was WITHOUT the "Fixed U/C" checked. The "fixed U/C" box adds a ton of drag to the flight model so the total drag will be too high. In some cases it might be too high for the plane to take off.

Nice job Ray!

Thanks, Moggy.

Might there be a couple that fit your China project? :-)

There probably will

Arrived safely in Lyon

Ok, the package is uploaded to the same folder where I put the new SPAW package.

Ok, so Jel sent me a few floatplane flight models. Not sure who made them but I was able to figure some things out.

FWIW, Jel, those FM's are shot full of serious errors so I suggest you mothball them. I can go into details in a PM if you choose so as not to bore the community.

That said, I did figure out what data needed editing to make the floatplanes work so now I can edit my more accurate FM's.

1- The plane.dat file has to have both "Floatplane" and "Fixed u/c" checked and all gear retraction boxes unchecked.
2 - In the plne.flt file the "mass fuel" number must be zero.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for amphibians. I tried a bunch of different combos for the PBY without success. As this is the only aircraft in the package that is an amphibian the easiest solution might be to make it a PBY-3 which wasn't amphibious.

It will take a couple of days to modify my flight files accordingly and then I'll upload a new set.

I was just about to get back but you had posted already. I found that the problem was in the "plne.flt" file, which I will now check and report further

To be clear, my plane.dat files are wrong too. I did not select "fixed u/c", just "Floatplane.

And take a look at the PBY-5 files. They don't work for land, nor sea, over here.

I have most of them working, but the Catalina is playing up. I will keep trying

I got the Catalina working better by using the "SPAW_PB4Y_FM" files.
It took off from both land and water. The only problem is that it takes off from water with the gear down.
There may need to be a fix in the exe to have the gear down on land but up on water.
I have not yet done any landing gear programming, so I do not know how much work there might be.

Jel, you have more important things to take care of, like file managing.

I'll just change the PBY to the -3 version and call it a day. I have all the other floatplanes working properly.

Here's a couple taking off

Yes, I can confirm now that the parameters I posted earlier are correct.

I'm now going back through the .FLTt files and resetting the drag to normal because the "fixed u/c" parameter in PLANE.DAT adds a lot of drag to the planes. In fact, it adds way too much drag but it doesn't matter as there are ways to counteract it.

I logged on to report and found your last post interesting. I just flew the Hurri and the Spit from groundstarts (on water LOL) and found it difficult to reach 1000 feet altitude without overheating.