A Host of Furious Fancies
Posted By Randy on November 8, 2009
With an host of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear
And a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander;
By a knight of ghosts and shadows,
I summoned am to tourney.
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world’s end-
Methinks it is no journey.
~ Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song
The title and lead in to this post come from the well known poem Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song written by an anonymous 17th century author, and what I’ve quoted above are the last two verses. To my mind, a better description of the field of flight simulation has never been written.
As a real world pilot of some years gone, I still maintain my interest in aviation and my appreciation of the beauty of things that fly. These days, the cost of owning and operating an aircraft for purely personal use puts it into the realm of people with much bigger toy budgets than I have. That and the fact that I now have more important things to live for than in the days of my indestructible youth. It’s an interesting fact that there are a lot of people with real world aviation experience plying the virtual skies at the controls of flying machines that exist only in the CGI world of a flight simulator program running on their PC.
It’s hard to explain to the uninitiated what kind of attraction there can be for spending hours at a time engaged in what many regard as a computer gaming activity where no scores are kept and there is no factor of win or lose that can be held up to the world as a sign post of success. The fact is that, done right, flight simming is immersive to the point of bringing on all the sweat that comes with a tricky cross-wind approach to a mountain runway at night in near zero visibility, along with the deeply personal satisfaction that comes of pulling it off. For me at least, flight simming is very much a personal process and it needs to be as real as possible.
Early on, I embarked down the road to learning the arts of creating and applying my own paint schemes to the sim aircraft I chose to fly, all available for free on the host of dedicated websites that support and supplement the hobby. These days, it’s possible to download simulator aircraft that are crafted to a degree of realism where the acts of starting and shutting down engines, and everything that goes in between, require a degree of understanding and skill rivalled only by the real thing.
My painting efforts are always inspired by things that matter to me in the real world; sometimes historic events and sometimes more personal matters. This goes back to 2006 when, in the wake of the death of our dog Cinders, Diana and I used flight simulation as an outlet and a tool in working through the grief. With the kind assistance of Australians Garry Smith and Warwick Carter, and over the span of two months, I produced the paint schemes, mastered the skills of formation flying inside Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, and with Diana’s invaluable guidance and technical expertise, learned the black arts required to turn what was happening on my computer screen into a movie. The resulting commemorative film, A Tribute to Cinders, did everything we needed, and all with a “computer game”. I’ve posted it here before but just so you don’t need to go looking through the dusty archives I’ll throw it at you again. Make sure your sound is turned up.
Lately I’ve been assembling a small fleet of aircraft bearing the markings of the real world dog rescue organization Diana and I operate, Golden Mountain Dog Solutions, bearing its logo and colours. The project started simply like this: With a mission to rescue dogs in Canada, and a budget to die for, aircraft would be invaluable. What would the fleet look like?
I’ll be posting illustrated articles on all my choices, and making the paint schemes available on my downloads page in the near future, but I’ll begin the process here with the superb Bell-Textron 412 helicopter originally developed and made freely available to the flight sim community by Jordan Moore and his posse at Hovercontrol. This was an incredible effort combining top notch developers with real world Bell 412 pilots to produce what is arguably among the top five helicopter simulations ever produced. As if it needed to be made even better, the source codes for further development were made freely available resulting in enhancement to a mind boggling degree.
Into this phase with a model that fit my needs exactly stepped Nobu Aki of Japan with his “JCG412 Complete Pack 2008” based on aircraft serving with the Japan Coast Guard, available through Hovercontrol where he posts his ingenious creations under the nom de guerre of “nobuppoi“. When I noticed that the paint kit provided by Hovercontrol for the original 412 model didn’t exactly fit Nobu’s version, I e-mailed him in search of both his permission to repaint his helicopter and to find out if he was in possession of any model specific repainting templates. What I got in response to my query was all I could ever hope for and more. Nobu not only rooted out all of the files I needed but he consulted tirelessly with me in fine tuning everything from such subleties as antenna colour, to identifying what areas of his intricate texture files controlled the colour of what parts of the helicopter, to generously crafting and sending me the art work that adorns the 412’s nose! All of this, AND he’s a dog lover too!
I could go on but right now is as good a place as any to stop and post some eye candy. Without further delay, here’s the Golden Mountain Dog Solutions Bell 412 with more than a dash of Japanese flavour courtesy of Nobu Aki. Click here to go to my Downloads page and click on the thumbnail image of the black and gold helicopter you’ll find there to open a sequential gallery of screen shots.
I am presently awaiting Nobu’s review and final approval on the new textures, as well as his blessings on free distribution. In the mean time, while they can be downloaded they can’t be unzipped without a password, but if you’re a dog loving FS9 helicopter pilot and would like to have these textures for personal use, send me a request via this contact form and I’ll add you to the waiting list.
As of this morning, password protection has been lifted from the GMDS Bell 412 file. Refer to today’s blog post titled “Late Breaking News From Japan” for details.
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