Updated: September 1, 2007; April 30, 2011
Here comes another aircraft, this one looking much more Russian than the first one. I believe it can be confused with a Su-35 on a cloudy day. I tried to be as accurate as possible, while not impeding my artistic freedom, but you be the judge of that. Let's go.
Gallery
The plane is a typical single-seat 4.5th generation multipurpose fighter with Su-27 genetics, a classic cropped delta wings with LERXes, canards, and twin tails with massive turbofans and a rearward-looking radar housed in between. Here's a sprinkling of images, from all kinds of angles.
I had the fighter armed with four R-77 (AA-12 Adder) and three R-73 (AA-11 Archer) air-to-air missiles, deliberately omitting one of the pylons to create a bit of asymmetry. This time, I felt I had to make sure the missiles were realistic. My previous aircraft design featured a mixed batch of Western and Eastern weapons, none too faithful in its looks.
The R-77s have the rear cruciform wings missing, which is understandable, considering they are dummy rounds, painted red in the best of Russian tradition. The Archers are training rounds, missing the warhead, but they are still live (indicated by the black stripes).
Notice the pale-gray radar proximity fuse windows on the forward missile body on R-77s.
Here's a closer look on a lonely wingtip Archer.
The plane is dead sexy from angles, even from below. Notice the massive engines and the wide separation between them, reducing the chance of a dual engine failure in case of a missile hit. Plus, lots of goodies can be carried on the centerline pylon.
Dead aggressive!
Here are a few chase plane camera views.
Notice the powerful engines and the rearward-looking radar, a novelty seen only on Russian fighters.
Finally, a couple of mid-distance shots.
Kerkythea images
Here's the same model, only re-created using Kerkythea, after exporting the model using SketchUp Importer for Google SketchUp and rendered with photons and ray tracing and magic and whatnot. You will like this. My dream of making near-realistic models is coming true, finally. Nirvana. Spledidski.
But then, I redid the plane with more realistic materials, including matte brown and ocher, sort of like desert camouflage colors, which could suit an Israeli F-15 or perhaps a Russian Su-27, although they normally go for blue-dominant tri-color schemes. A whole bunch of dazzling sky images:
I like these two best; surreal lighting in the thunderstorm:
This one is pretty neat, too:
Here's the fighter in takeoff ascent above Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar:
Here it is swooping above California coastline:
Another top shot, like with the first plane model:
Credits
Some third-party images were used for the model backgrounds. I would like to thank the creators for their beautiful and inspiring work, which made into my models.
Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar image taken from the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing site.
City from above and coastline images taken from Palos Verdes Peninsula & nasa.gov.
Have fun, people!