Nils's kind of ok repaints

[Nilsfr91]

Two Utopia Tails done today, "Animals and Trees" and "Colum-Dove". Next on the line is "Chelsea Rose" and "Wings".



The preview includes in chronological order:



G-VIIK "Animals and Trees" pre-Oneworld

G-VIIK "Animals and Trees" Oneworld stickers

G-VIIP "Colum-Dove" Oneworld stickers

[FSMuseum]

Great to see the world tails getting more attention, I am just sad that I couldn't finish my own world tails project sooner 😭

[Nilsfr91]

Mar 15, 2024 23:40:24 GMT -5 FSMuseum said:

Great to see the world tails getting more attention, I am just sad that I couldn't finish my own world tails project sooner 😭

Thanks! I meaaan I'm only doing the 777's and some Airbuses, the core of my project is going to be the BA Connect/Citiexpress birds, so your 747's will be a nice addition haha 😅

[Nilsfr91]

Third update (and preview) for the BAW 777's, and probably the last before the pack gets finished. The new additions are: G-VIIA "Waves of the City" pre-Oneworld and wit Oneworld stickers, G-VIIL "Wings-Vinger" pre-Oneworld and with Oneworld stickers and the pair of 777's that wore the "Chelsea Rose" tail G-VIIO and G-VIIS.

World tails-wise there's now "only" two different tail variants of the "Rendezvous" scheme, two different tails of the "Delftblue Daybreak" one, "Waves and Cranes" and "Whale Rider" to be done. Then there will be some Landor/Interim variants to add (probably only 3 or 4).

Here's the latest preview:

[darrenvox]

wow good job on taking this on...

[Nilsfr91]

Mar 19, 2024 18:00:34 GMT -5 darrenvox said:

wow good job on taking this on...

Thanks!

[Nilsfr91]

The 777's are nearly done, only the few Landor variants are left to be painted. It took a bit longer than expected, but as a reward a pair of those have the 'fictionnal' Caribbean tail that was conceptualized for the Utopia Tails "phase 2" but got shelved...thanks Margaret. Also because I found it fun, especially since we could have had one or 2 Seychelles tails, I painted a completely fictionnal and veryyyyy lazy Mauritius tail haha

[Nilsfr91]

And here they are, the British Airways 777-200/200ER's circa 1995 thru the late 2000's/early 2010's. It includes the Landor livery for both the early non-ER and the ER variants, pre-Oneworld and with Oneworld stickers, all of the World Tails including variations for those painted between 1997 and early 1999 before Oneworld's creation. Also included is the Interim scheme painted on G-VIIA when waiting to be painted in the Waves of the City tail art, and also the proposed Caribbean tail for the "phase 2" painted on a GE powered plane and a RR one as well (the tail didn't have a proper "name" so I searched a bit and decided to simply unofficially name it 'Darkwood Beach' after a beach in Antigua) and a lazy, not-really-good-looking custom tail representing Mauritius and named 'Le Morne Brabant'.
Counting all the Landor/Interim liveries and all the World Tails variants, pre-Oneworld and Oneworld the pack is 37 variations heavy.

Here's the thumbnail:

[Nilsfr91]

After weeks of meticulous BA work I'm a bit saturated and started to work on a "rework" alongside the rest of my BA project, this time it's with the AF 747's. At first it was only to add the 2009 livery to the pack, but when looking at pictures on airliners.net I couldn't stop noting a lot of "small" mistakes I did painting the 90's to 2009 barcode livery.

The rework is mostly directed on the base livery, the multiple test liveries will only get the added details and reworked tail logo. So to explain what the rework consists of:

- A more detailed pack: each era (pre-Skyteam, Skyteam and Skyteam+AF-KLM logos) will have a variation for the regular -400's, one for the -400M's but now also now F-GEXA and F-GEXB will have their own variations (they were ex-UTA planes with very different regs, a slightly different windows config and tail logos). There will also be variations added for the last 3 -400's delivered to AF between mid 2003 and early 2004 (different font for the regs, different antenna/dome config, etc).

- Reworked tail logos: there is slight differences with the logos applied on the regular AF -400's and -400M's delivered between 1991 and 1992, the pair of ex-UTA ones but mostly with the trio of regular -400's delivered between 2003 and 2004.

- More details and accuracy on the liveries: my AFR 747 run is not that old but from a time when I wasn't very very detailed oriented (it seems), the stencils I added under the doors were right but only for the very early 90's test liveries but for some reason I kept those for the whole pack, this is now getting corrected. I also added the emergency fuselage cutouts, and for the rest it's the basic "fleet rework" things aka making sure the different fuselage titles look exactly as the IRL plane, adding the underwing registration etc...

The same kind of rework is to be expected for the 90's barcode livery on the 747-300/200SUD, -200 and probably -100's. This rework might also push me into finally painting the A310's to complete the fleet lol.

Here's a visual representation of the changes, here on the regular -400 circa 1992 to 2000:

[chasensfo]

Amazing work! The FSPX 777s do work in MSFS if you use the FSX-native models and copy the aircraft.cfg text over properly to whatever AI 777 you use as your MSFS "base" converted 777 (TFS most likely). Hope to see these there when its all working again.

[Nilsfr91]

Apr 18, 2024 5:14:54 GMT -5 chasensfo said:

Amazing work! The FSPX 777s do work in MSFS if you use the FSX-native models and copy the aircraft.cfg text over properly to whatever AI 777 you use as your MSFS "base" converted 777 (TFS most likely). Hope to see these there when its all working again.

Thanks! Oh that's cool, I haven't touched MSFS for some time now, let's just say that Microsoft's approach to the sim (well-behaving, easy to tweak AI traffic, AI traffic friendly AFCADs + GOOD air traffic control being apparently not essential to a good sim experience to them), it's a gross generalization but they seem to treat MSFS 2020 only as a beautiful skybox to be filled with gorgeous scenery eye-candy. So for now I stil stick with P3Dv4/v5 as even if their AI traffic logic and atc are basically the same as FSX, so it's limited and a bit flawed but still (in my opinion) far better than MSFS2020's.

The guys at FSPX seemed to have been trying to convert/remake their models and make brand new ones for MSFS2020 for some time, it's at a point where I think that they made a Facebook post basically saying that they are now working on models for P3D lol, making AIG the sole developers for MSFS native ai models (I think?? Yikes). So I'll wait for MSFS2024 to see if they treat it as much as a flight simulator as most iterations were before 2020.


Alsoooo...I might have gone a bit off the rails with the AF 747's, let's just say that those who like having overly detailed fleets will be satisfied, for those who just want representative liveries seeing the thumbnail might get them thinking that I'm crazy lol.

I've got at least another 10 variations planned, I wont spoil the number of those that are already done, but here's 3 little previews:

[Nilsfr91]

Update for the AFR 744 fleet: most of the early 90's, late 90's up to the early/late 2000's variations are done.

I spent the evening finishing up the early 90's ones as well as one of the "test" liveries, aka grey-belly liveried F-GISB circa 1992-1997 (this time the alignment of the grey part is far better). The last one to be done is F-GITC's grey belly + silver cheatline test livery, last time I did it I just used F-GISB's grey belly as a base. But it turns out that for F-GITC it was painted far lower on the fuselage, so I'll have some fun re-aligning all this haha.

When that one will be done I'll turn to the "New" colors liveries which will include: a variation for the -400's originally delivered back in the 90's, one for the ones delivered in 2003/2004 and the 3 combis that got to be repainted in 2010/2011 before being retired from AF's fleet in 2012/2013.

[Nilsfr91]

[Nilsfr91]

Here's some madness:



All this made me fall in a pit of online content about AF and their 747's, for example the configuration of their cabins during the late 2000's were...questionnable. The whole fleet got the mods to bring the newer versions of the then renamed classes: l'Espace Affaires for Business class and Tempo for the economy class. The main changes were with the Business class seats, seen here:

Those seats were put in the nose section of the cabin and the one between doors 1 and 2. For the trio of newer -400's delivered in 2003 and 2004 it also meant that the seats of the "Tempo" class were all equipped with PTV's which was already becoming the standard for an economy class for airlines of 'that' calibur. HOWEVER, for some reason, all of the earlier -400's that got the mods finished by late 2004-early/mid 2005 got a little quirk: the Tempo class retained the older entertainment system, aka having a small TV hanging from the ceiling every 4/5 rows. But for some reason, the airline did equip the part of the Tempo class situated in the upper-deck with small PTV's and marketing those as a "enhanced" Tempo class named classe Alizé, some sort of precursor of the Premium Economy. Only issue I see: you had much more chances between 2005 and 2009/2010 to get on a AF 747 without PTV's in Economy, but if you paid a bit more for the few Alizé seats you got a PTV and a little more comfort and calm in the upper deck, but then you had also some chances to get on a 747 who got modern PTV's in basic economy making the Alizé class barely different...


Upper deck on one of the older -400's



Main deck of one of the youngest -400



Main deck of one of the older -400


But I digress...I only flew as a kid two trips on some AF 747's back in 2007/08 and the second in 2011/2012 (well the first one was only the CDG->MRU way, the return was a MRU->RUN->LYS->ORY with CRL) and only had l'Espace Affaires and Alizé (upper-deck) experiences, but I understand why AF wasn't considered much of as a good/premium airline in the late 2000's/early 2010's.

I also found a nice video on youtube, it actually is a part of the 70y anniversary dvd circa 2003 and showcases a number of AFR/ITF/UTA ads from the 80's, 90's and very early 2000's, it includes a beautiful ad inspired by Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) and it's author and famous french airman Antoine De Saint-Exupéry (unfortunately it's all in french): link HERE

[Nilsfr91]