FS 2004
It's been 10 years, 4 computers, 2 moves, over a million kilometers, and my children becoming adults since I opened Gmax. I found it on a backup disc yesterday with some old sceneries I created with the FlightOntario group, and my first/last massive undertaking, the Fairey Firefly Mk V/VI. So, I loaded it up. And funny thing, in good ol' Gmax tradition, textures wouldn't appear, and I had errors! Ha! Gmax you wretched devil. Still as feisty as the day we parted. There's no room in my life for you now old nemesis, but I'm glad you can still cough up the goods in your little insignificant, 32 bit ways. Ha!
It is to bad I can't do anything with the Firefly anymore, I now see it would need a lot more work mostly correction, and it has a whopping 143,378 faces and 81,407 verticies. Back then, the only way I could get it to export was using the brilliantly devised, but in conclusion, 'not reliable' method called- the Unlimited Export. I really had a lot of great help and support along the way by a lot of fantastic people here, some still visiting this forum, and some who are sadly, no longer with us.
Here we are in the future now, and we've got the amazing technology of MSFS. It's so much more complicated than building .mdl and .bgl files isn't it? And it's the stuff we all imagined and strived for back then. Us always trying to get better textures, better models, and always walking that fine line of - trying not to impact frame rates. It's great we still have that spirit.
Back when I set out to figuring out modeling in Gmax, I had no idea I was to about to get royally schooled on aerodynamics, data/ code, engine performance, special effects, animation, hand (mouse) texturing, etc. etc. It was all consuming and I obsessed. But, now that's all behind, lessons learned. I will likely wait to see if MSFS evolves to become more developer friendly before I try to create again. I did something then I didn't know if I could. I would like to again. It was a journey I needed to take I guess.
So I'm looking back at my Firefly in Gmax tonight and I remember the struggles and the successes, and I'm still grateful for the help. It's like visiting an old friend it seems. Or it's that I've just become a sentimental old fart. Likely. Anyway, here's a few screenshots thought I'd share. I'd be curious to know if any of you can still get into Gmax to have a look at some of your earliest works, would you post a shot?
WB271 by Doug Smith, on Flickr
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