"The finished 314 was a thing of beauty. Though it was remarked the she had the 'body of a whale', she nevertheless struck the eye pleasantly. "
From "Boeing", by Robert Redding and Bill Yenne, 1997
Scene rendered with stopover.pov
Some comments:
The Boeing B317 was operated by Pan American Airways System on long distance routes to Honolulu and New Zealand as well as on Transatlantic routes. None of these planes has survived. There is a picture in Boeing's historic gallery, and I had more pictures from the book quoted above. I shaped the plane with a text editor and CSG statements. The model has its weaknesses, but it is as good as I could do it. I calculated the height field for the water with a simple FORTRAN program.
The palm trees are very simple, the fronds are in principle just a stripe pattern on an ellipsoid. Because a palm consists of only few objects, one could build a large forest of trees easily. I should do something with the trunks, they are too similar. Here is a picture of just the palm trees:
Scene rendered with palms.pov
If you would like to compare with real palm trees, click here.( I don't play golf ). By the way, it was dangerous for me to do all this palm tree research.
Here is another scene that shows the plane from below.
Scene rendered with b317.pov
