P3D V4.5 Bell 412 Project

[Scorch00]

A ways back I undertook the complicated task of getting Jordan Moore's great Bell 412 into P3D v4.5. As many know. P3D as a whole lacks any kind of freeware Huey variant. Me, focusing mainly on military and firefighting operations took it upon myself to not only convert these birds to P3D native, but to also modify them into firefighting helitankers. No, not the bambi bucket versions. The actual tanked versions. I grew up in Southern California and saw the 412s from various city agencies work wildfires. This project started several months ago as more of a pet project. But after a lot of interest grew, the project attracted the eyes of much more experienced modelers than I. In particular, George Arana. Who provided me with numerous fixes and updates to the 412 to bring it up to date on top of my conversion and external modifications. Originally, I had posted this project here as being a joint FSX/P3D project. But as the project progressed it was clear FSX was too limiting to what I wanted to do with this helo. So it has become a P3D only project now. After several months it is near the end of re-development. As of this morning. I am planning on releasing the updated and modified Bell 412s by next weekend (May 22nd/23rd 2020) time frame. Baring any major issues that appear. These will cover not only US operators, but will also cover Canadian and Australian operators. These will come with 5 model variations of Helitankers, and 11 liveries. It's been a long time since I updated the old thread. But decided to make a new one devoted to the P3D only version. I am compiling these models for P3D v4.5. They will be untested in v5. But if someone does try them in v5 after I release them. I'd like someone to touch base with me so that I can update the compatibility to v5 as well. (Which I hope happens by default) The only limiting factor of these is that I do not have the ability to apply PBR to them. So the textures do suffer a bit from that.

11 liveries are from:
Alpine Helicopters
Carson Helicopters (Fictional)
Cal Fire (Fictional)
Kestrel Helicopters (2 liveries)
Wildcat Helicopters (2 liveries)
Los Angeles City Fire Dept.
Los Angeles County Fire Dept.
Orange County Fire Authority
San Diego Fire Dept.

Things I've added:

External water tank/snorkel
Working FLIR Camera
Working Rescue Hoist
and numerous other external modifications to represent the operators that operate them.



Late Development Video Update:
https://youtu.be/hTz0gLbfevY

[gray eagle]

A ways back I undertook the complicated task of getting Jordan Moore's great Bell 412 into P3D v4.5. As many know. P3D as a whole lacks any kind of freeware Huey variant. Me, focusing mainly on military and firefighting operations took it upon myself to not only convert these birds to P3D native, but to also modify them into firefighting helitankers. No, not the bambi bucket versions. The actual tanked versions. I grew up in Southern California and saw the 412s from various city agencies work wildfires. This project started several months ago as more of a pet project. But after a lot of interest grew, the project attracted the eyes of much more experienced modelers than I. In particular, George Arana. Who provided me with numerous fixes and updates to the 412 to bring it up to date on top of my conversion and external modifications. Originally, I had posted this project here as being a joint FSX/P3D project. But as the project progressed it was clear FSX was too limiting to what I wanted to do with this helo. So it has become a P3D only project now. After several months it is near the end of re-development. As of this morning. I am planning on releasing the updated and modified Bell 412s by next weekend (May 22nd/23rd 2020) time frame. Baring any major issues that appear. These will cover not only US operators, but will also cover Canadian and Australian operators. These will come with 5 model variations of Helitankers, and 11 liveries. It's been a long time since I updated the old thread. But decided to make a new one devoted to the P3D only version. I am compiling these models for P3D v4.5. They will be untested in v5. But if someone does try them in v5 after I release them. I'd like someone to touch base with me so that I can update the compatibility to v5 as well. (Which I hope happens by default) The only limiting factor of these is that I do not have the ability to apply PBR to them. So the textures do suffer a bit from that.

11 liveries are from:
Alpine Helicopters
Carson Helicopters (Fictional)
Cal Fire (Fictional)
Kestrel Helicopters (2 liveries)
Wildcat Helicopters (2 liveries)
Los Angeles City Fire Dept.
Los Angeles County Fire Dept.
Orange County Fire Authority
San Diego Fire Dept.

Things I've added:

External water tank/snorkel
Working FLIR Camera
Working Rescue Hoist
and numerous other external modifications to represent the operators that operate them.



Late Development Video Update:
https://youtu.be/hTz0gLbfevY

Looking forward to this

[Victory103]

Great to see the work on this as Jordan did an outstanding job on this freeware 412 from the start. It's so good I didn't purchase the payware Cerasim version as JM got it done on his.

[Joseph29]

Very nice. I like flying helos in P3D.

[Scorch00]

Thank you all for the support! The HC412 is a great helo. The fact P3D lacks freeware Hueys as I said, I thought this great bird deserved to live on. Especially after Hovercontrol's demise and the community was left with a void that is very hard to fill. CeraSim makes great helicopter models. I own their 212 and UH-60s. Luckily people here were able to mod the UH-60 into a Firehawk. Which I love, as I've uploaded a repaint pack for them here. But I wanted to do these birds justice after seeing them in operation for so many years in real life in the various city / county agencies. Soon they'll be in P3D v4.5 and v5 hopefully as well.

[Daube]

Very nice project !
I agree with you when you say P3D lacks some freeware Hueys. This was in fact also the case with FSX, since as far as I know, that 412 was more or less the only nice looking model with a virtual cockpit (from hovercontrol, right ?)
It will without doubt look fantastic in P3D.

One thing though: if I remember correctly, this copter had a little bit frustrating limitation: the virtual cockpit switches were not clickable, so the pilot was forced to use the 2D panels to perform a cold&dark startup. At least, that was the case back when I tried this beast in my FSX days. How about your model ? Any chance you make this bird fully controllable from the virtual cockpit ?