OMG!! 😮 😮 Chris, your screenshots are getting better and better! They are truly stunning! 🙂

Coming together slowly: 😀

thanks!

just a little update on what i have done:

Hey

good shots guys!

I want to fly a POSKY Ryanair 737-800W in flight sim, but unfortunately i don’t think there are any high quality paints of it available, so in the age old fashion – D.I.Y!

I’ve never done this before so its all new to me but I have started work on creating a photo-real, partly hand painted aircraft. It was a sort of ‘on the spur of the moment’ thing; started last night, and this is what i have managed so far.

Ive trawled through a.net and jp.net for close up photos of the new livery aircraft – ive managed to get some, but was wondering if any of you photographers have any close up shots of the new livery that uve taken yourself and would be willing to pass to me so i can use them in the paint. Im especially looking for close ups of the large Ryanair titles down the left hand side of the aircraft.

If its ever completed and i decide to try and get it on avsim.net, perhaps you guys could volunteer to test it to check for errors etc. i’d also have to get permission from the photographers whose photos i have directly used to paint it.

What do you think so far? 🙂

the textures are most likely going to be in 32 bit format, which always take a couple of seconds to load. one way to reduce loading times is to reduce the file size, but this would mean sacraficing on texture quality.

this can be done yourself, by downloading a program called DXTbmp – http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/programs/dxtbmp.htm – widely used by texture painters in flight sim – i think it is the only program that is available that does what it does. its free, and under 1MB in size.

the program allows you to open the textures and export them into an image editing program like Paintshop or Photoshop, where you can then edit the textures. you then save your work, import the texture back into DXTbmp and save the file.

to do what you want to do, open the main fuselage textures in DXTbmp, and simply resave them in a different smaller-file format. be sure to back up the original textures so that you can go back to them if you dont like the changes. play around with the file formats to see which work and which don’t.

try converting the fuselage textures from 32-bit BMPs (or whatever they are in) to a ‘DXT1’ or ‘DXT3’ format, which is a more efficient format = smaller file sizes.

i think that should work.

I Hope that helps 🙂

I’m not perfectly sure, but the figure 900 flying hours per year seems to stick in my mind as the maximum legal number of hours that a pilot can fly commercial aircraft. i think i got the figure from the Dispatches programme about Ryanair, which said that Ryr tends to take all its pilots right to the maximum number of legal hours, occasionally overworking them too much.

As for scheduling, i believe that the big airlines work from bespoke, in-house computer packages that sort out schedules for pilots (and i’m assuming cabin crew as well). i believe that, for example, Emirates has a pool of flights that it offers to its crew members, and pilots choose the routes that they want to fly on a first come first served basis, and then the pilots are given their schedules.

someone with more knowledge will be able to give more info

hope that helps