The Jaguar project for X-Plane has been a long time in the making. The overall aim is to realistically simulate the Sepecat Jaguar aircraft in many of its guises and to a high visual quality.

I began developing this model back in 2007, and since then I have spent many hours, and a fair amount of money researching and gathering data to ensure the flight model is accurate as possible within the limitations of X-Plane.

Assistance has been sought from ex Jaguar pilots, and from current Jaguar technicians and museum restoration teams. Some very kind and skilled people have provided me with dimensions, access to a real Jaguar, and documentation to aid systems and flight modelling.

The entire flight model has been rebuilt multiple times, and the 3D model had a few iterations before good progress was made.

This blog will document the build process, and updates will be posted when decent steps are made.

This is a long term project, and it will be available to buy upon its completion.

13/02/2014

Progress!

I know I said I'd be starting on the cockpit, but, I haven't! In an effort to prevent modelling burnout, I decided to have a little play with textures over the Christmas period. That led to me unwrapping and baking the afterburner section of the engine, which in turn led me to find better reference photos, which then led to me rebuilding the afterburner sections!

A lot of the 3D detail in the engine is hidden in the darkness, until the afterburner lights up. You'll have to bear with some what in this regard though, I'll come back to these and play with some nice afterburner flame effects at a later date. Images are from AC3D only at this stage.






Whilst there is a LOT of 3D detail in this afterburner section, I have also used a baking technique to add the perforations in each vapour gutter, which probably saved a few thousand vertices.

I might start on the cockpit next, but I might delay it a little further to sort out all of the external lighting. I need to experiment with translucent light lenses and also with placing and customising X-Plane lights. This will have to be done for both version 9 and 10 of course too, so a fair amount of time involved.

There is a method to my madness though, I'd like to have ALL of the exterior model finalised before doing the cockpit. Stay tuned to see which area I get to next!



4 comments:

  1. Fantastic model. Just like the real engine!

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  2. Looks great! Silly question but will this be payware or freeware? Either way I'm looking forward to it!

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