Shadow, my first piece of advice would be this...

Patience

Learning how to do this well takes a lot of time & effort. Answers might not always appear as fast as you would like, and sometimes they might not appear at all... leaving you to answer the question for yourself. It's not as tough now as it was when I was getting started, as many questions I had a long time ago have been answered many times over.

I would suggest that you work through the included tutorials before starting a plane. I would also strongly advise getting a copy of the "Gmax Bible" which has been very useful to me. Then select a reasonable first project. I would suggest a single engine GA design that has a basic instrument panel. It would help you if you can find something you really like as that will make it easier to keep going.

I would also strongly suggest that you broaden your horizons. There are many good sites out there that are devoted to developing. Here are a couple of good ones...

http://www.aerodynamika.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/index.php

As to your questions about flaming engines...fire & smoke are accomplished by use of effects. You will not get to using those for awhile. The windows should be modeled  

Good Luck on your future modeling. I look forward to watching your journey  

Quote:


also, this depends on the kind of aircraft you're making... if it's a small GA plane like a cessna or piper, where the windows take up a big portion of the aircraft's surface area, it's probably best that they're modeled, even because if you paint them on, you won't be able to see through them, will you? it would be like a decal of a window on a toy airplane (although there are ways to make transparent holes on your textures, but let's not get ahead of ourselves)

now, if you're modeling a large commercial jet, that has lots of really small windows, painting them on is not such a bad idea, since if you were to model them, you'd have to go through a whole lot of work for a relatively small reward... the front windshields, however are a different story, they're a lot larger and probably worth modeling

Hope this helps

Cheers

ahh so it is a commercial jet!

then your best bet would be to paint the side windows on the fuselage texture, and only worry about modeling the windshields and the cockpit within

ah, and is your plane, per chance, a DC-10 or MD-11?

I may use some of the MD 11s technology though.

I also have plans for a bomber but that won't be for a while...

Shadow wrote on Jan 28^th, 2009 at 8:28pm:


theoretically, yes, it would require a good understanding of how .fx files work and how to add the appropriate entries to your aircraft config file.
but once again we're getting ahead of ourselves here... your aircraft doesn't even have it's own config file as of yet, so i'd worry about the essentials first... 

Cheers

Shadow wrote on Feb 5^th, 2009 at 9:10pm:


{blink}

What CD thing?  You mean an installation disk for the software?  If you go to the manufacturer's site, they should have a download for the software on there.  Most do.

Ok so I think I'm readty to get gmax and start my plane...

But before that, I would like to know what kind of features people are interested in... (that way I don't waste all my time...)