topic: Aircraft Development

Creating Photo-Real Paint Textures

This tutorial will walk through overlaying a photo onto an aircraft fuselage in Plane Maker. It assumes familiarity with the basic aircraft texturing techniques discussed in the Creating Basic Paint Textures tutorial.

You can download the aircraft file and images used in this tutorial here: A36_photo.zip

Selecting a Photo

The ideal photo to use as a Plane Maker texture is one taken from a 90 degree side view with even lighting across the whole of the fuselage. Beyond these requirements, be sure sure your use of the photo complies with the terms of its copyright.

For our example Bonanza, we used the photo below, with many thanks to its copyright holder Terry Shepherd:

Getting Started

Create a starting point PNG image as in the Creating Basic Paint Textures tutorial. Then, using your image editor, cut away everything from your photo except the fuselage. In Photoshop, you can use the lasso tool to do this. You will inevitably get some of the wings in the photo, but don’t worry about these for now.

In our case, this fuselage-only image looked like this:

This image was stretched and warped (using the Transform options in Photoshop’s Edit menu) to sit over the starting-point image of the fuselage. Note that it is not uncommon to have a large area on the top and bottom of the fuselage side views that is not covered by your stretched image. This area, like the parts covered by the wings, can be cleaned up later.

Go through the same procedure to texture the wings, stabilizers, engine nacelles, and so on. For each piece that you have a photo, you’ll need to:

• crop a version of the original image to include nothing but that piece,
• paste the image of that piece over its placeholder in the starting-point image, and
• stretch and/or warp the piece to fit the area you defined in Plane Maker.

Do this for both the left and right sides of the aircraft, where necessary.

Using a layered image format like PSD will prove invaluable for making small changes during this process.

Because a top view of our example aircraft’s wings and horizontal stabilizers was not available, our example aircraft will only have it fuselage, vertical stabilizer, and engine housing textured with the photo. For the rest of the wings, we will simply use the same solid white that the body is painted with.

Touching Up the Photo

With a rudimentary version of each piece of the aircraft placed properly, it’s time to clean it up. Note that each time you save your Aircraft name_paint.png file, you can press the T key in Plane Maker to reload the texture.

Unless you have photos of the top and bottom of the aircraft, you will probably want to use Photoshop’s clone stamp tool (or an equivalent) to fill in the top and bottom of your fuselage. Because our example Bonanza has a flat underside, there was a great deal of area that needed this in our photo. Because the aircraft has a very plain, flat white texture for most of its body, this wasn’t a problem.

The clone stamp tool should also be used to get rid of the wings and any other bodies that are attached to the fuselage in the photo but are not actually part of the fuselage.

Finally, in addition to cloning for the top and bottom of the fuselage and removing the wings and other non-fuselage bodies, you’ll need to use your image editor to remove the shadows and other artifacts of uneven lighting across the body (because, of course, the X-Plane simulator will add its own shadows where it needs them.

We’ve highlighted the most prominent trouble areas in green in our photo here:

In the areas highlighted, our aircraft texture needed a lot of attention before it would look convincing in X-Plane.

A Note on Windows

If you are creating a 3-D cockpit object in a program like AC3D or Blender, you will want to completely fill in the windows in this overlay image, as the transparent windows in your cockpit object will replace this texture as needed. Since, for the purpose of this tutorial, we are not creating a 3-D cockpit object, we left the windows and made them semi-transparent.

Examining the Finished Product

Our finished images are seen below, and are also included in the completed aircraft ZIP. Our ACF file is A36_photo.acf, so our two image textures are A36_photo_paint.png and A36_photo_paint2.png, respectively.

A few things to notice about these images:

• The textures for some pieces overrun the area laid out for them by the Plane Maker-generated starting points, but for small areas, this isn’t a big deal.
• The white area in the middle of the first texture image is used for the gear doors and struts, which were too shadowed in our image to be usable. Instead, the white texture from the body was copied.
• The propeller texture (located in the far left center of the first image) is simply made of a darkened slice of the nacelle texture, which itself is in the second image.
• Since our original image was of the left side of the fuselage, the tail number on the right side had to be reversed.

Creating Basic Paint Textures

This tutorial will walk through the creation of a basic paint job for an aircraft file in Plane Maker. It require only Plane Maker (and the image editor of your choice) to do so–it doesn’t make use of any 3-D modelling programs.

This tutorial assumes familiarity with the Plane Maker interface, and it references the aircraft file created from scratch in the basic aircraft creation tutorial.

Introduction

Plane Maker can be used to overlay a 2-D image on a 3-D aircraft model. For this tutorial, we will apply a very simple (and ugly) paint scheme to our example aircraft.

In order to understand how the textures are applied, we will look at the example aircraft found here: Bonanza_A36_painted.zip

Creating a Starting Point

We will begin by setting up the approximate placement of our aircraft’s parts in the image which we will create. From that data, we will have Plane Maker create a PNG file that will serve as our starting point.

To begin, open the Expert menu in Plane Maker and click Visual Texture Regions. In the window that appears (shown in the image below), you can click and drag the flashing red boxes to change which area of the (currently non-existent) image will be used for each part. Move between each part of the aircraft using the tabs at the top of the window.

For now, don’t worry about modifying the positions of anything but the fuselage, wings, and engine nacelles–these are the parts of that plane that will be in the starting-point image that Plane Maker creates for us. For now, our biggest concern is making sure that none of these parts overlap one another accidentally. Note that you can (but do not have to) use the same area of the image for both the left and the right side of each part. Note also that you can check the use second texture box, which will force X-Plane to look for a second image for that part of the aircraft.

Once you get your aircraft’s parts arranged in roughly the positions you want them, close out of the Texture Region Selection window and click Output Texture Map Starting Points from Plane Maker’s Special menu.

Plane Maker will automatically create one or two image files (depending on whether you used the use second texture check box) in your aircraft’s folder. It will also automatically name them properly. The first image (or the only one, as the case may be) will be called ACF file name_paint.png. The second image, where applicable, will be called ACF file name_paint2.png. Note that in order for Plane Maker and X-Plane to find the image textures, they must keep this name.

Note: You will need to re-create these starting point images each time you change the aircraft’s geometry.

Here’s what our example plane’s starting-point image looks like:

Note that images used with an aircraft file should have dimensions (in pixels) that are a power of two. For instance, the image could have a resolution of 512 x 2048, 1024 x 1024, 2048 x 1024, and so on, with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 2048. The image should be saved as a PNG. The files that Plane Maker outputs will abide by these rules.

Creating the Image Textures

Now that the starting-point PNGs have been created, open them in your image editor of choice. While it is possible to use photos of a real aircraft to create these textures, doing so is beyond the scope of this tutorial (for information on this, see the Creating Photo-Real Paint Textures tutorial). Instead, we used our image editor to create simple textures based on solid colors.

You will probably have to go back and forth between modifying and saving your image in your graphics editor and viewing it in Plane Maker. Press the ‘t’ key in Plane Maker to quickly reload the textures displayed on the aircraft.

Here is our completed basic texture (which is also included in the aircraft package download in the introduction):

Adding a Livery

A livery is a second set of paint textures, which can be selected in X-Plane by opening the Open Aircraft dialog from under the Aircraft menu and choosing among the livery options in the bottom right box. To use an image as a livery, save it with the same name as the original paint texture (that is, as “ACF file name_paint.png”), but place it in a path that looks like this:

Aircraft folder\liveries\Name of livery\

Thus, the complete path for our example aircraft’s second livery was:

G:\X-Plane 9\Aircraft\Custom Built\Bonanza A36\livery\Labeled Parts\A36_paint.png

Compare this to the location of the default paint scheme, which was:

G:\X-Plane 9\Aircraft\Custom Built\Bonanza A36\A36_paint.png

Note that you must use the same placement of the aircraft parts in each of your liveries; that is, the fuselage, wings, wheels, etc. must all be in the same place, respectively, in each image. The livery’s name in X-Plane will be listed as the folder name, thus in our example above, the second livery will be called “Labeled Parts.”

Final Notes

Once again, you can download the completed example aircraft file here: Bonanza_A36_painted.zip

For further reading, see the Creating Photo-Real Paint Textures tutorial.

Creating a Panel in Plane Maker

For this tutorial, you will need a copy of the Beechcraft A36 Bonanza created in the tutorial “Creating a Basic Aircraft in Plane Maker” or you can download the files here.

Understanding the Panel Creation Workflow

To begin, get Plane Maker running (recall that the Plane Maker application is located in the X-Plane directory) and open the Bonanza. Open the Standard menu and click Panel: 2-D. You’ll be greeted by a very plain panel background with no objects on it.

Creation of the panel is pretty straightforward. First, make sure the Instrument List is visible by clicking its tab if needed (labeled 1 in Figure 1 above). Find the instrument you’re looking for in the instrument list and click on it. For instance, in the image above, the general aviation altimeter (labeled 2) is selected. With an instrument selected, you can see what it will look like in the Preview tab (labeled 3 in Figure 1 above). Beneath this is the Description tab (labeled 4 in Figure 1), which details what the instrument does.

Taking up the center of the screen is the layout pane (labeled 5 in Figure 1 above). To add an instrument to the panel layout, drag it from the instrument list into this pane. Once there, click the instrument once to select it. With it selected, you can drag the instrument around to reposition it, or use the arrow keys to move it by very small amounts. If there is more than one instrument in the panel, guide lines will appear to which the instrument will “snap”, allowing you to align instruments perfectly.

When an instrument has been added to the panel layout, it will appear in the Hierarchy list (labeled 6 in Figure 1 above). You can select an instrument from the layout pane by clicking its name here. Additionally, you can set its status to visible or invisible by clicking the eye next to it, and to locked or unlocked by clicking the padlock.

To select multiple instruments, hold down either the Control or Shift keys and click as desired. To group instruments, select them and press the G key. Double-click an instrument to change its name.

When an instrument is selected in the layout and hierarchy panes, the Properties tab (labeled 7 in Figure 1) will display its settings. This includes which electrical bus the instrument is on, what Tool Tip (if any) will be displayed when it is moused over in X-Plane, and what lighting is used on the instrument.

Finally, in the very bottom of the window is the status bar (labeled 8 in Figure 1 above). Here, you can see the level of zoom for the panel layout pane, the position of the currently selected object, and its size (as a ratio compared to its original size).

Tips for the Panel Layout Pane

Use the = and – keys or your mouse wheel to zoom in and out in the panel layout pane. Right click (or hold the Control key and left click) on the panel and drag it to pan the view left and right. Hold the Alt key to view which electrical bus each instrument is on. Click and drag to form a box that selects multiple instruments. To delete an instrument, select it and hit the Backspace key.

Creating the 2-D Panel

To create our example panel, we found an image on the Web of a real A36 Bonanza’s panel and (loosely) based our instrument selection and layout on that. Creating custom instruments is beyond the scope of this tutorial, so we used the closest approximations to the real instruments that we could find in the Plane Maker instrument list. If you’re interested in creating custom instruments, see the Generic Instruments page of the Plane Maker manual.

Creating the Background

Before beginning the layout, you will want to create a basic version of the background panel image you will use. Plane Maker will supply a default panel image based on your cockpit setting in the Viewpoint window, but you may want a different image for a number of reasons.

For our example aircraft, we modified the default general aviation panel to make it 1600 pixels wide, with both “ends” of the panel visible (instead of only having the left side in the image). A width of 1600 pixels was selected so that the panel will be usable, albeit a little shortened, in the smallest X-Plane window available (which is 1024 x 768 pixels), but it will also look great in a large, widescreen window of, say, 1920 x 1080 pixels.

If you want to customize the panel background, you’ll want to create at least a basic version of it before beginning the layout so that you don’t have to rearrange or resize your instruments later.

Our example cockpit image, before customizing it, is here:

Panels used in Plane Maker can follow one of two naming conventions. The old convention is simply to name the file “Panel.png” (without the quotes, of course). As of version 9, Plane Maker will still find a panel named this way. The new convention, and the one you should use when creating new aircraft, is to name the image to match the panel setting in Plane Maker’s Viewpoint window.

For instance, if the cockpit setting in the Viewpoint window is set to General Aviation (as in our example Bonanza), the cockpit image will be named Panel_General.png. If it were instead an airliner, the image would be named Panel_Airliner.png.

The official names for panels are the same as in Resources/bitmaps/cockpit/-PANELS-/ and are:

• Panel_General.png
• Panel_Airliner.png
• Panel_Fighter.png
• Panel_Glider.png
• Panel_Helo.png
• Panel_Autogyro.png
• Panel_General_IFR.png
• Panel_Autogyro_Twin.png
• Panel_Fighter_IFR.png

In order for Plane Maker to find your background, you must (re)name it using one of these conventions and save it in this folder:

[Your aircraft folder here]\cockpit\-PANELS-\

Thus, our example aircraft’s panel image had a full path of:

G:\X-Plane 10\Aircraft\Bonanza A36\cockpit\-PANELS-\Panel_General.png

After you get your layout complete, you’ll probably want to come back to this image and customize it further–for instance, to add a column of a different color. You can find the finished version of our example Bonanza panel below.

Adding the Instruments

Once your Panel.jpg image has been placed in the correct folder, it should appear the next time you open the Panel window in Plane Maker. Once it’s loaded, you can begin dragging and dropping instruments from the list into your panel.

For our example panel, we chose to use the S-Tec System Fifty-Five X autopilot. This is a complete autopilot system modeled as a single instrument in X-Plane. You can find it in the “autopilot” folder in the instrument list.

You can download the .acf file of our example A36 Bonanza with the completed 2-D panel here: Bonanza_A36_with_Panel.zip

Creating a 3-D panel

Creating a Basic Aircraft in Plane Maker

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the creation of an airplane–specifically, a Beechcraft A36 Bonanza–from start to finish using Plane Maker. No prior knowledge of the Plane Maker software is required, though familiarity with the X-Plane simulator itself is assumed.

You can download the example aircraft referenced throughout this tutorial here: A36.zip

Choosing an Aircraft, Researching the Design

Plane Maker can be used to model a tremendous variety of aircraft. For the purposes of this tutorial, though, we suggest choosing a straightforward design to model. Our example craft is a Beechcraft A36 Bonanza.

In the course of creating the aircraft file, you will need a good deal of information on the actual plane, including its physical dimensions, engine and propeller specifications, weight, fuel capacity, fuel tank locations, limiting and recommended airspeeds, and so on. A web search should turn up this data for most popular planes.

Beginning the Project

To begin creating the aircraft, open the Plane Maker application found in your X-Plane installation directory.

When the window appears, open the File menu by mousing over it and click New. This will create a new, very basic aircraft file. Then, open the File menu again and click Save As. We will save our example aircraft in the “BonanzaA36” folder which we created in our X-Plane installation directory, and we’ll name it “A36.”

We’ll begin by setting a few basic parameters for our aircraft in order to the avoid the warning that pops up every time you save.

Setting the Aircraft’s Details

Open the Standard menu and click Viewpoint. The most important settings here are for the aircraft’s limits (found on the left side of the window in the Default tab). With the exception of the G-limits, these will not be factored into the flight model; they may, however, be used in the airspeed indicator. These limiting velocities are not hard to find, either in the pilot’s operating handbook or on the Web.

If you can’t find official G-limit values, 4.0 is a good guess for most general aviation aircraft. At G-loads more than 50% above these values, if the appropriate settings are enabled in X-Plane, structural damage will occur–probably in the form of a wing being torn off!

Setting the Weight and Balance

Next, open the Standard menu and click Weight & Balance. In the Center of Gravity section of this window you can set three longitudinal positions for the center of gravity, along with one vertical position. The center of the longitudinal positions is the default, while the outer two are the forward and aft limits. The center of gravity can be modified within these limits in X-Plane.

Beneath the Center of Gravity box is the Weights box. The empty weight, fuel load, and maximum weight can all easily be found from the manufacturer. Set these parameters now.

Now move to the Tanks tab of this window. There are 9 different fuel tanks available, each one holding a ratio of the maximum fuel. Note that the ratios must add up to 1. For our example Bonanza, we have two fuel tanks, one in each wing, each holding 0.5 of the total fuel. Position each tank’s center of gravity using the standard longitudinal-lateral-vertical positioning relative to the reference point.

Making A Fuselage

Preparations

If you are not familiar with the basic views and controls in Plane Maker you can review them in the section “Working with the Views” found in the Plane Maker manual.

Unless you have physical access to the aircraft you’re designing, you’ll want to find scaled images of the craft to use in the design. We found front, top, and left views of our A36 Bonanza on the Beechcraft website. These will be used as background images with which to align our design.

For use with the fuselage creation, crop your top and left images down to just the fuselage, being sure that the images are the same size and are both centered on the fuselage center.

Setting the Basics

With the images ready to go, open the Standard menu and click Fuselage.

In the window that appears, we’ll set the Body Data section first.

The number of stations corresponds to the number of individual sections that Plane Maker will link together to form your aircraft body, with a maximum of 20. You’ll probably want to add 2 to the number of sections you had in mind to account for the two closed ends. In our case, we will use a total of 15 sections: 13 “real” divisions, which meet at a point at each end (adding 2 extra cross sections).

The number of radii per side is the number of points used on each side of the cross section. Unless your aircraft has a very simple shape to its body, you’ll probably want to use the maximum of 9.

The body radius setting controls the width of the cross-section views below. Keep this close to the actual max body radius for accuracy when placing your points, but err on the side of setting this too big so that all your points are visible.

Finally, the body coefficient of drag controls the amount of drag generated by the fuselage. An average fuselage will have a coefficient of drag of 0.1, while a very sleek one will have a coefficient of 0.05. We didn’t have any official data on this for our Bonanza, so we chose an approximate value of 0.075.

Setting the Length

While still in the Section tab of the Fuselage window, look directly above the cross section boxes. The parameters there set the distance of each cross section relative to the reference point. The reference point can be whatever you want. Many people use the aircraft’s nose. For our example, we’ll make it the aircraft’s center.

Note that negative numbers along the longitudinal line of the aircraft (like the parameters for the cross-section placement) indicate a position forward of the reference point; positive numbers indicate a position behind the reference point.

At this point, we will set the approximate distances from the reference point for each of our cross sections (as in the image below). The most important of these will be the first and last cross sections. Since our example aircraft’s reference point is its center, the forward-most point of our aircraft will be set at -13.50 feet, and the rear-most point will be at 13.50 feet. Taking these two together, we have a 27-foot fuselage. The aircraft’s official length is 27 feet 6 inches, but since we will build the housing of our propeller separately, this should be about perfect.

With the fuselage’s length properly set, move to the Top/Bottom tab. At the bottom of the window, click Load Top Background Bitmap and select the image of the top that you worked with in the Preparations section above. Then, click the Load Left Background Bitmap button and do the same for the side image.

At this point, since the fuselage has the correct length, we need to align its two ends with the ends of the fuselage in the background images. Use the – and = keys to zoom the 3-D models out and in, and use the arrow keys to move them around.

You will likely want to return now to the Section tab to fine-tune the distances set for your cross-sections.

Setting the Radius Points

With the distances properly set, move back to the Top/Bottom tab. There, drag the radius points evenly around the fuselage visible in each of the three sections. You will likely want to use the buttons in the top right of the window to occasionally reset the cross-sections to be vertical. Note: You will likely find the Ellipse buttons (found near the bottom of the screen) helpful. Clicking this for a given cross-section will shift its points to a best-fit ellipse. To lock a point from further automatic shifting, just double-click on it (it should turn a sold black color). This may be helpful once you have them correctly established, especially the center line of each frame in the Top/Bottom tab.

Move occasionally to the Section and Front/Back tabs to check how the cross sections look from other views. You will probably find the best workflow to be something like this:

1. In the Top/Bottom tab, match the outer points to the fuselage edges in each of the three views.
2. Distribute the middle points evenly between the outer ones in each of the three views.
3. Move to the Section tab and modify cross sections to conform to the shape you know they should have. For instance, with our A36 Bonanza, we knew its bottom was completely flat in the middle of the plane.
4. Move to the Front/Back tab to fine-tune the points that are very close together.
5. Repeat as needed.

Eventually, your points should look something like this:

When you’re finished, close out of the Fuselage window and load up your background bitmaps one at a time (using the button in the bottom left of the screen). Check your fuselage against each one. (Tip: use the Background menu to select whichever view you have loaded in the background.)

Designing the Wings

Now that our fuselage is finished, let’s move on to the wings. Open the Standard menu and click Wings.

In this window, you can specify four wings, a horizontal stabilizer, and two vertical stabilizers. The wings will be mirrored on each side, as will the horizontal stabilizer, whereas the horizontal stabilizer will of course only be created once. Other than this, each of the flight surfaces here behave identically.

Note that if you need more wing sections than what is available here, the Misc Wings window (which is also found in the Standard menu) allows you to specify up to 20 additional wing sections.

Creating the Main Wing

For our example Bonanza, we’ll use three wing sections, with each section meeting the one closer to the fuselage, in order to model the single wing of the actual aircraft. Each wing section can have two different airfoils set for it (one for the root and one for the tip, which are blended together in the center), as well as different control surfaces.

For the initial creation of each wing section, you can focus exclusively on the Foil Specs section of the window. You can enter these parameters visually if your top view scaled background image is loaded and your Plane Maker window is wide enough.

Let’s talk about these parameters a little.

The semi-length parameter sets the length of each side of the wing as measured through the center of the wing, from the root to the tip, 25% behind the leading edge.

The root and tip chord set the width of the wing at the root (closest to the fuselage) and tip (farthest from the fuselage), measured from the leading to the trailing edge of the wing.

The sweep parameter sets the angle (in degrees) that the wing is angled back.

The long, lat, and vert arm parameters set the wing’s position relative to the reference point. See the diagram to the right illustrating the longitudinal-lateral-vertical positioning system.

The dihedral parameter sets the angle (in degrees) that the wing is angled up. For instance, in the image below, each of the 3 wing sections used has a dihedral set between 5.5 and 6 degrees, causing the wings to angle slightly up.

Example Wings

The image below shows the foil specs used to create our innermost wing section in the G36 Bonanza. Note the 15.8 degree sweep, which creates a relatively sharp backward angle for the section.

This creates a wing section that looks like this:

The next image shows the foil specifications for our middle wing section, entered on the Wing 2 tab. This section is significantly longer than the base one–it has a semi-length of 12.5 feet, compared to 2.6 feet. Note also that, unlike the base wing, our mid-wing has a lateral arm specified. This moves the wing’s root out away from the body, so that it meets up with the base wing’s tip. You can have the section “snap to” the previous section by selecting Right Wing 1 from the drop down box in the top right corner of the dialog, instead of setting the wing section’s location manually using the long, lat, and vert arm boxes.

This creates a wing section that looks like this:

Click on the Wing 3 tab to finish the tip of the wing with the specs shown in the image below.

Creating the Horizontal and Vertical Stabilizers

The horizontal stabilizer is specified just like the previous wing sections; the only difference is that it will have a much higher value for its longitudinal arm than the previous wings.

The vertical stabilizer, unlike the other wing sections here, is not mirrored on each side of the aircraft. Other than this, and its default dihedral of 90 degrees (so that it sticks straight up), you can set it just like the previous wings.

Setting the Airfoils

With your wings created, close out of the Wings window. Open the Expert menu and click Airfoils. In the Airfoils window, go to the Wings tab. Here, you can set two versions of both the root and the tip airfoil for each wing section. The foils on the left are for the root side of the section, and the ones on the right are for the tip side, as seen below.

Plane Maker will interpolate between these two foils in the middle of the wing section. The top set of foils in each wing’s box specify the low Reynolds number version of the foil; the bottom set specify the high Reynolds number version.

The following two pages may be useful in determining what airfoils to use in your wing:

• The Incomplete Guide to Airfoil Usage
• StrategyWiki: Airfoils

To set an airfoil, click the gray box to the left of it to open your X-Plane Airfoils directory folder. Select an airfoil from among the list then click the Open Airfoil button.  Remember that our wing is made up of three separate sections, so you will want to choose the same “wing root airfoil” for all four boxes for Wing 1 and Wing 2.  Set the boxes of Wing 3 to the “wing tip airfoil” as it functions entirely as our wing’s tip.

Setting the Control Geometry

With the wings and their associated airfoils set, it’s time to set up the control surfaces. To do this, open the Standard menu and click Control Geometry. In the window that appears, a number of possible control surfaces can be specified, from ailerons to elevators to rudders to speedbrakes to flaps. Each of these work in a similar way.

In the image above, the parameter on the far left sets the control surface’s root-side width as a percentage of the root width of whatever wing section it is placed on. Thus, if this were set at 0.50 and it were used in a wing whose root was 5 feet wide, the control surface would have a root width of 2.5 feet. To the right of the root width is the tip width, also specified as a percentage of the tip width of whatever wing it is placed on. These two parameters are the same on each of the control surfaces available. Start with an amount close to the default recommended  by the mouse over text.

To the right of the size parameters are the parameters controlling how far the surface can move. This will be different for each aircraft, but again start with the defaults recommended.  You may need to return to this window after your first test flight to fine-tune it.

With this knowledge, specifications for ailerons, elevators, and rudders are all fairly straightforward. At the bottom of the Control Sizes box is the control surface type setting, which modifies how effective the surfaces are in X-Plane. Surfaces which are corrugated with gaps are least effective.

In the right half of this window are the flap settings, as seen in the image to the right.

Here, you can set the root and tip width ratios like the other control surfaces. You can also specify the flap type and the aerodynamic coefficients for each flap. Plane Maker will calculate the coefficients of lift (Cl), drag (Cd), and moment (Cm) based on the size of the flap, but these may be modified manually.

Beneath the coefficients, you can set the flap deflection time, the number of detents (or stop points), and the deflection at each detent. In our example, the maximum flap deflection is 30 degrees, so that is set in the last box. The first box is 0 for no deflection, and the remaining boxes in between are spaced evenly (in our case, 10 and 20 degrees).

For our example Bonanza, we specified one aileron type, one elevator, one rudder, and two flaps. We now need to add them to our wings.

Adding the Control Surfaces to the Wings

In order to see the control surfaces once we add them, open the Special menu and click Show with Still/Moving Controls. This will make the control surfaces move as we add them, so that we’ll better be able to judge where they are.

Now, open the Wings window from the Standard menu once again.

In the Element Specs box for each wing section, you can control:

• the number of pieces that this wing section will be divided into (using the parameter highlighted in red in the image above),
• the incidence, or upward angling, of each “piece” (using the parameter highlighted in blue), and
• the control surface (if any) present in each “piece” (using the parameter highlighted in orange).

For instance, in the image above, the middle section of our main wing is divided into 9 “pieces,” all with zero incidence. The first four pieces (the four closest to the fuselage) use the flap 1 control surface, and the last 5 pieces (the five farthest from the fuselage) use the aileron 1 control surface. Both of these control surfaces were specified in the Control Geometry window and were fine-tuned after seeing how they looked here.

Set your control surfaces as you need them for each wing section. Our Wing 1 had 8 sections with the flap 2 box checked for all but the first piece (where the wing would attach to the fuselage). Wing 3 does not move in our Bonanza so despite having multiple pieces, no control surface boxes are checked. The horizontal stabilizer is where the elevator boxes are checked and the vertical stabilizer has the rudder boxes checked.

Adding the Engine

With the wings and their associated control surfaces finished, it’s time to add an engine. To do this, open the Engine Specs window, found in the Standard menu.

When the window opens, it will be in the Description tab. Let’s talk about the Critical Altitude box first. If your aircraft has a turbocharged reciprocating engine or a “down-rated” jet or turboprop, use the critical altitude parameter to set the maximum altitude at which the engine can put out its maximum allowed thrust. If the engine has a Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) system, check the appropriate box. Our Bonanza has neither, however, so we will leave these alone.

In the Prop Engine Specs below, you can set the engine’s maximum allowable power. For our example A36 Bonanza, this is 300 horsepower. Beneath this control are the various engine RPM settings. Note that the top of green arc and redline parameters should probably be the same. If it is a fixed-RPM engine, these should be the RPM the engine runs at. Also, the bottom of green arc should be set to zero for fixed-RPM engines.

The rest of the prop engine settings are self-explanatory. Once these are set, move to the Location tab. Here, you can set the details of the engines and propellers, including how many there are, their type, location, RPM, etc. The parameters available here will vary depending on what type of engine you set. At the minimum, you will set the location in longitudinal-lateral-vertical arms for the center of thrust (which, for a propeller based craft, is just the center of the propeller).

Unless you have multiple transmissions or propellers, you can ignore the Transmission tab. Unless you have specific numbers on the engine’s specific fuel consumption or the propeller’s dimensions and angle of incidence, you can safely ignore the rest of the tabs here, too.

Creating an Engine Nacelle

If you created the aircraft fuselage like we did in the example Bonanza, you left off a few inches from the fuselage for the propeller and its housing. We’ll add this now around the propeller.

Open the Standard menu and click Engine Nacelles. In the window that appears, check the aircraft has a nacelle over this engine box, found near the top of the screen. From there, you can design the nacelle just like you did the fuselage. This time, though, the distances will be relative to the engine’s center of thrust, not the craft’s reference point. In our example Bonanza, we needed 6 station and 6 radii per side to model the propeller housing, with a body radius of 0.07 feet.

While designing the nacelle, you will likely find the Ellipse buttons (found near the bottom of the screen) helpful again. Clicking this for a given cross-section will shift its points to a best-fit ellipse. To lock a point from further automatic shifting, just double-click on it (it should turn a sold black color).

When you’re finished creating the nacelle, you should see the aircraft really beginning to take shape. All that’s left is to create the landing gear!

Creating a Landing Gear

Open the Standard menu and click Landing Gear. In this window, you can add up to ten different gears. For each gear, you must specify (listed in order from top to bottom in the window):

• its type (e.g., skids, single wheel, double wheel in a lateral line, etc.),
• its position (in longitudinal-lateral-vertical feet from the reference point),
• its latitudinal and longitudinal angles when extended and retracted (where applicable),
• its leg length,
• its tire radius and width,
• its steering ability,
• the degrees that the wheels spin when retracting,
• the distance that the strut compresses when retracting,
• the time it takes to retract or extend the gear,
• whether or not it brakes, castors or has fairing.

For our example Bonanza, we created 3 landing gears with the parameters shown below.

To finish the gear, you must go to the Gear Data tab and enter the specs for the wheels and tires, as shown below.

The Test Flight

At this point, you aircraft is ready to be flown in X-Plane. It won’t be pretty (we haven’t added any overlay graphics or objects), and it won’t have any instruments in its panel, but it should fly just fine. Load up X-Plane, fly the plane around a bit to see how it handles, then return to Plane Maker to tweak it as needed.

Good luck!

Further Reading

For information on creating a panel for this aircraft, see the panel creation tutorial. For information on adding a paint job to the aircraft, see the paint texturing tutorial.

The latest version of the Plane Maker manual is always available online.