Two Airplanes

[Chuck Bodeen]

Hi,
AC3D can be used to make animated "objects" that are used in conjunction with the X-Plane flight simulator. You create a model in X-Plane which is used for the aerodynamic calculations. Then you specify that it is rendered "invisible" - not drawn at all on your screen during flight. Instead, the AC3D object appears to be the plane.

One other project is a Quicksilver ultralite plane. It's all tubes and wires. The Quicksilver manual states that the real plane can be built in 40 t 60 hours. I think it took me almost that long to place each tube and wire along with the larger parts.

The other one is the Terrafugia "Transition" roadable airplane... a plane with folding wings that can also be driven like a car. Visit www.terrafugia.com for details. The company sent me a CAD model, but I had to rescale it and cut out the moving parts, then put it back together with animations controlled by the simulator. The wing folding was modeled just like the real thing! (Notice that the shadows of the wings are not animated. This is a failing of the simuator and will be corrected in the next version.)

[tbd]

Very nice