still persevering with QW146 but why 32 side tubes?

[britfrog 180]

hopefully we have a tame dev onboard  mutleys who can explain the intricacies of a/c design to a thicko like me.

 

the qw 757 was a well executed model with round engine nacelles like PMDG and aerosoft however the the 146 has 32 side engines and fuselage which look pretty happy shopper.

Now I understand that in the past all circles because of the antiquated software that had to be used (for fs9) had to be 32 sided, but in recent years (like about 5 or 6) this was no longer the case as someone had found a tweak to eliminate this awfullness. Consequently all new a/c except the 146 are all round.

Can someone explain why the 146 devs  have chosen to go back in time per se as it ruins a good a/c , is it the fact that the dev for the 146 lacked the experience of the 757 dev?

 

It would be rally interesting to know.

[ddavid 149]

I guess the 146 model was developed using either gmax or 3DS-Max, both of which use polygons to represent curves and arcs. Circles are made up of 16, 32, 64, etc sides and tubes use the same "approximation". Unfortunately, there's a strict limit to the number of "faces" used in an aircraft or VC model, and some developers have been "caught short" towards the end of model building as they run out of "faces". Two examples spring to mind: the FCS Lancaster, which had no bomb aimer station, and the JF Comet, where, I think, the starboard pax cabin internal detail was missing. To avoid this, I guess, the 146 team decided to go for lower definition on the engines, initially. Unfortunately, they possibly omitted to go back and increase the number of sides, from 32, when they had completed the model and had "faces" to play with?

Mind you, I could be barking...

Cheers - Dai.

[Quickmarch 488]

Interesting concept.

 

I worked with CAD systems most of my adult life. Polygons are used there as well to cut down on the redraw time for normal operations. However, when output to print, these polygons are revised and have many sides so that the resultant looks like a circle.

 

The "faces" concept was introduced with 3D and are drawn in minimum configuration for the same reason. I expect that the developers of FS software are doing exactly the same thing except that the model is always represented as "display output" because that's the way we want to see it.

[britfrog 180]

Thanks for your thoughts guys , like you Dai I get the impression gmax was used, in my naiivety I thought that sticking a digitized photo onto a wire frame was old hat

[Christopher Low 63]

Have you asked the QW guys, Brit?