Messerschmitt Me-329 'Aerobatic Special'

Messerschmitt Me-329 'Aerobatic Special' Project

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Dan Daniel, LivewireExpress COO, approached me regarding painting a Messerschmitt Me-329 model designed for FS2002 by Steve Robinson. Dan wanted it to be painted in one my Birds of Paradise (BoP) liveries for the first official Livewire Airlines Air Show, but, being a stunt aircraft, he wanted it to be really wild! Unfortunately, after an initial look at the model, it seemed like it would not accept a BoP paint very well. While a nice model, it did not support reflectivity or night lighting, both of which have been put to use in all BoP designs. Furthermore, much of the texture mapping had problems which could not be solved even with compensating on the textures themselves.

Much to my surprise, however, the author of the model included the .gmax file for further editing. This is the aircraft modeling equivalent to open-source software in software development and is something with which I am always very impressed. Therefore, I decided to undertake a complete update of the model in gmax, something I had never tried before.

Over 60 hours of work later, I have a finished product of which I am very proud. Because of the unique opportunities involved in this project, being much more than one of my usual design and paint projects, I decided to write up a short pictorial documentary of the changes made to the aircraft. While this project kept me from my fleet work and my work on Livewire Assistant, I feel it was definately a worthwhile tangent.

First off, let me explain that I took Dan's comment to make it "wild" to heart. I stretched the boundaries of realism a bit in order to create something truly one-of-a-kind. For those of you who are traditionalists, you do not need to fear me incorporating some of the more exotic features of this project in my regular fleet design work. Also, you will notice some personalizations both on the body and in the cockpit of the aircraft. I created the ability to personalize the aircraft and created personalized textures for all LivewireExpress personnel. In the below examples, I used the version with my own name on it as it seemed to make the most sense.

And, while I feel this livery is great for our air show stunt team, the more traditional design (aside from the tail) of the original livery is still quite pleasing. For those interested in downloading the original unmodified aircraft, it is available in the package entitled me329.zip at http://library.avsim.net/. The original modeler, Steve Robinson, did a terrific job on this very challenging-to-model aircraft. For more information on this unusual aircraft, go to http://www.luft46.com/mess/me329.html.

External Model/Livery
Hover over images to see the original aircraft model/livery. Click on any image to see a high resolution version.

Virtual Cockpit
Hover over images to see the original aircraft VC. Click on any image to see a high resolution version.

By far, the most ambitious part of this project was the complete overhaul of the virtual cockpit (VC). This alone took over 20 hours. I wanted to make the VC one of the most pleasurable-to-use VCs available on a freeware aircraft. Besides the obvious aesthetic enhancements, I included custom instrument light-mapping which makes the instruments much easier to read and appear much more realistically than with using the traditional panel flood effect method.

Smoke Effects
Click on any image to see a high resolution version.

I felt it was necessary to spruce up the traditional smoke effects for this stunt show stunner. Therefore, I created new smoke effects specially tailored to this aircraft.

Notices

This section contains usage notes and known issues:

The instrument lights are toggled by the landing lights switch instead of the panel light switch. This was a conscious decision. The instrument lighting should always be on, however, due to MSFS limitations, it can only be controlled by either the landing lights or the panel lights. While it may seem more sensible to attach the instrument lights to the panel switch, this would force the user to have the panel flood light on during all low-light situations. However, due to the high quality and high practicality of the custom instrument light maps, the panel flood is unnecessary and actually causes a reduction in visibility outside the aircraft much like turning on the dome light in an automobile. Because the landing lights on this aircraft turn on all the external light maps, I felt that they can be considered "always on" and it would therefore be most sensible to attach the instrument lights to the landing lights switch. To put it simply, just leave your landing lights on during all low-light situations.
The cockpit canopy is closed when the landing gear are retracted.
Due to a very frustrating limitation in the MSFS engine, namely that specular and transparency maps cannot coexist with light maps when "the lights are on", several visual errors can be spotted under certain circumstances. Generally these are only obvious if you look for them and great care was taken to minimize their impact.

The partially transparent personalization planes lose their transparency when the external lights are on. If there is enough ambient light on these surfaces (during dusk/dawn) the usually transparent plane becomes opaque and can be seen as a slightly darker surface.
The fully transparent planes upon which the instrument dynamic textures and instrument light maps are attached become opaque when the instrument lighting is on.
All specular maps (dynamic shine) are disabled when external lighting is on.

Exact details on the proper flight dynamics of this aircraft are obviously hard to come by, since it was never mass-produced. It appears that some of the flight dynamics on this model are geared more towards entertainment value than realism. However, I opted to leave the FDE alone because (a) I don't have any accurate values upon which I can adjust the FDE, and (b) the stunt team was practicing on this model long before I took on this project.
The radio gauge is only present in the virtual cockpit. Only one gauge of this type can be present on an aircraft due to conflicts and having one on the standard cockpit and one on the virtual cockpit counts as two separate instances of the gauge. Because the focus on this project was to make the VC so usable that the standard cockpit is unnecessary, I opted to include the gauge on the VC only.

Changes

The conversion of this model from FS2002 to FS2004 did not go smoothly. After importing into gmax 1.2 w/ FS2004 gamepak I had to make the following changes:

Rescaled units from feet to meters as the FS2004 gamepak will only accept meter units.
Reoriented pivot points on all animations.
Re-texture-mapped 90% of all textures.
Re-animated the nose-gear turning axis.
Adjusted the landing lights positions.

Furthermore, the following elective changes were made to the model:

Changed the nose-gear steering animation to the more proper c_wheel from l_rudder. This makes the nose-gear steering only operate when the aircraft is moving on the ground and also allows configuration of the nose-wheel steering in the aircraft.cfg separate from the rudder.
Added specular maps (dynamic shine) to most major external surfaces of the aircraft.
Added light maps to most major external surfaces of the aircraft.
Changed fuselage texture mapping from planar along the X-Y plane to cylindrical.
Aligned the pivot points for the [internal] and [external] groups allowing the panel flood light to show in the virtual cockpit.
Complete remodeling and retexturing of the virtual cockpit for aesthetic and practical improvements.
Added light maps to all instruments panels in the virtual cockpit.
Created and attached fx_smoke_r_lit_blue_thin.fx, fx_smoke_r_lit_green_thin.fx, and fx_smoke_r_lit_r2y.fx effects based on the Microsoft fx_smoke_r.fx effect.
Addition of four external and one virtual cockpit textured planes for personalization/labeling.
Added classic Dymo labeler-style labels to several unlabeled controls in the virtual cockpit.
Added many minor tweaks.

Downloads
The full packages contain their own custom sounds.

The FS2004 versions contain the new 'Aerobatic Special' mode/livery. The 'Mini' FS2004 version maps to default MSFS DC-3 sounds.

Full Package for FS2004 v1.0 (4.4 MB)
Mini Package for FS2004 v1.0 (1.8 MB)

The FS2002 versions contain the original Danger Girl model/livery repackaged to work for the Air Show. The 'Mini' FS2002 version maps to default King Air 350 sounds.

Full Package for FS2002 v1.0 (3.8 MB)
Mini Package for FS2002 v1.0 (1.2 MB)

Credits

Steve 'Ratt' Robinson for providing the FS2002 model upon which all this work was based, and making it open for modification by releasing the .gmax file! This is a truly spectacular act, and a very rare occurrence in the flight-sim community.
Dan Daniel for approaching me with this project, helping me along the way with his sage advice, and weathering my endless grumbles about the project and babbling rants about MSFS limitations.
The LivewireExpress team for being such a nice group of people. They make it easy to want to give one's all.
The authors of innumerable gmax modeling tutorials. I had to read a whole bunch of them for this project and couldn't have done it without them.
The folks on the MSFS Aircraft and Panel Design Forum at avsim.com for solving the misaligned pivot point issue.

Final Notes

I just want to remind everyone that Steve Robinson was the modeler behind this excellent aircraft. I only updated and tweaked his model. Below are a few shots of the aircraft wire frame from gmax just because they look neat.