Firefly Serenity - Now fully flyable in X-Plane!

POSTED BY: Mid7night
UPDATED: Friday, May 2, 2008 13:26
VIEWED: 10912
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MID7NIGHT

Wednesday, February 13, 2008 5:40 PM

Hey all,

I may be new here, but I'm a long-time Serenity fanatic. I also love taking my favorite sci-fi craft and making them flyable in my favorite flight sim: X-Plane.
So it was only natural that I want to fly Serenity! Finally, after a LONG time in development, our beloved Firefly is flyable in X-Plane. Now I know there's already one out there for "Orbiter", but that's just for space. With Serenity in X-Plane, you can take off from anywhere on Earth-that-was, go into orbit and return at your leisure!
Just to be clear up front, the exterior 3D-model was created (and used with permission) by Sean 'Treybor' Kennedy. I never could have created such a beautiful exterior, he's awesome. Rest assured though, the task of making Serenity fly is far from simply an aesthetic one. There's plenty of my own sweat in this project.
Anyway, please let me know what y'all think. I just wanted to share my (re)creation with some fellow Browncoats, so enjoy!

Here's the download link: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?autocom=downloads&showfile=4611
This is the forum thread I started: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=26743

~ Ben 'Mid7night' Harber

MID7NIGHT

Monday, February 25, 2008 4:40 PM

More Serenity goodness!

A friend of mine made a short video showing Serenity flying off into space. Check it out:

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=30314

~ Mid7night

OUT2THEBLACK

Sunday, March 2, 2008 6:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Mid7night:
More Serenity goodness!

A friend of mine made a short video showing Serenity flying off into space. Check it out:

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=30314

~ Mid7night

Awesome !

I just wish that you'd started this thread in 'General Discussions' , where it could get more of the notice that it deserves....

Shouldn't be so 'tidy' with your postings...Make a bigger splash !

I wish the Serenity gear-legs could be the movie version rather than the TV version...They never had good landing gear on the series due to CGI expense constraints...Too spindly...

Wonder if Treybor would create new gear legs for the exterior model...Then you could animate them , which I'm sure is harder than it sounds...

MID7NIGHT

Monday, March 3, 2008 3:51 PM

Thanks for your reply, glad you liked her!

There's actually more differences between the movie and TV Serenity, they're subtle, but there. The legs are definitely the most noticeable though. I know Treybor was working on modeling the movie version of Serenity completely separate, but I don't think he's released it (yet?).

Animating the moving parts is actually the easiest task. The hardest part is texturing it and carefully reducing the poly count so it doesn't overload the flight sim. Treybor makes the most beautifully detailed 3D models, which is great for rendering pictures - not so great for real time flying!

~ Mid7night

BRIGLAD

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 10:48 PM

I found a pretty decent Serenity model for Flight Sim 2002/2004 at Flightsim.Com. It doesn't fly real great at the moment since MSFS doesn't do VTOL well but there's hope.

Brian

KNIGHTREYEDER

Friday, May 2, 2008 1:26 PM

Very nice Briglad and Mid7night. Still waiting for my email response from Xplanes site to view that video.....

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Mal's expression in the scrapyard when he first see's Serenity says it all.