PBY Catalina Interior
In 2024 while still studying in Singapore Polytechnic, part of the final semester consisted of creating a PC-VR project. In part due to how graphically heavy VR tends to be on computers, in part to help simplify the process: I decided to attempt a VR recreation of the well liked “Black Cats” level from Call of Duty: World at War. The advantages was that I wouldn’t have to worry about environment design (the mission and overall game takes place over the ocean), and the gameplay was simple, thus allowing me to focus on the game’s visuals and VR’s other strengths. However, CoD: WaW still came out over 15 years ago, and despite how it still looks great on monitors, the lack of graphical fidelity was more obvious on a much higher resolution VR display. This was most obvious for the model of the Consolidated PBY Catalina aircraft the player is in, where the player would be spending most of their time.
Thus, I decided to try and adapt the original aircraft interior model for VR by modifying the model and creating new textures for it.
PBY flying boats of the "Black Cats" squadrons, nicknamed such for their black camouflage. Flying at night, they would conduct recon missions; and raid Japanese merchant shipping with guns, bombs and auto-cannons.
Cockpit and nose section of a PBY Catalina, visible is the curtain used as a draft barrier; as well as the bombardier's position and equipment further forwards.
Significant challenges quickly presented themselves, notably:
Period correct references were hard to find, and often poor quality.
Most post-war PBYs were converted into civilian service and subsequently upgraded, which means the equipment and interior of most surviving PBYs do not match their WW2 counterparts.
Most PBYs looked different on the inside, in fact just about every aircraft picture seemingly had inconsistencies with each other.
In the end most of the references came from 2 sources: a copy of one the plane’s operating manuals, which contained basic diagrams for some of the systems; and eBay listings for individual parts, which helped provide the textures for the aircraft’s dashboard (there were no high quality references I could find to Photoshop into a dashboard texture). To better help the model’s historical accuracy several parts were also remodeled, such as the radio equipment and the bombardier’s equipment.
Furthermore:
Due to the desired texel density, textures had to be very big. Thankfully due to the lack of environment assets the game did not hit a VRAM bottleneck on the test system, however in hindsight (and for future projects) a trimsheet-like system would be better; such as Half Life: Alyx’s Hotspot Texturing.
Despite best efforts, time constraints meant a lot of desired details could not be added.
In the end I learned various lessons from this project, and although it could be better it proved a major learning experience.
