GrinchWSLG

Thanks for the comments guys. I'm going to try to make it to Thunder Over Michigan in Willow Run too. Chances are I'll get nabbed for my government job before then, knowing my luck I'll get my letter to report to the FAA Academy and the report date will be the day of the airshow.

What's this? Booze and Chair Force in my thread? I don't think so. Of the many images I looked at while referencing the model the Yamato "toy" came up quite often. In fact, I'd even looked into buying it once. However, like you said, Yamato had to make some design sacrifices to maintain the ability to transform. The end result is something that looks like a version of the YF-19 that had a few too many twinkies. The shape is just all wrong IMO and its not graceful or sexy looking at all, which is what the original YF-19 design screams out to me. Also, Hasegawa were the only ones to produce a plan view of the aircraft, although it was only 2 view, it did offer both top and bottom along with the side view. This was essential in modelling the aircraft. I also beleive that Hasegawa's design is the most faithful to the YF-19 as it was shown in the movie, barring the transformation aspects. Also, it was noted earlier by someone else, this was never meant to be a transforming model. I didn't have the skill or patience for it, its pointless in this game engine, and I personally believe attempts at tranforming valkyries are the reason we don't have any released for SF yet. Thanks for your views though. I have to admit though, if I DID make a transforming YF-19, I'd still use the Hasegawa plans and work it out from there. Yukikaze was just like Pearl Harbor, just skip to the action scenes and its a great show, watch the whole thing and you'll want to rip your eyeballs out. ------------------------------------------------------ On a more serious note (as can be seen by the usage of a dashed line of seriousness seperation) I'm open to the idea of bringing someone in to develop the panel/avionics for this project. This may seem a bit unfair from someone who's a noob modder but I'm going to have to require that this person have some experience in cockpit/panel creation. Also, I'll forewarn that this cockpit pushes the bounds of what the game can really do in terms of HUDs, so I'm looking for someone interested in trying new things. PM me if your interested, be sure to include links to your previous work. Also an experienced FM...um...builder? creator? Arteest? would be helpful. These positions don't HAVE to be filled for me to complete the project, they'll just help me complete it in a faster time period. I consider the YF-19 my baby, but I really want to get this out for you guys, and I know I'm terrible at finishing these projects of mine. Also, my life isn't exactly uh, predictable at this point, so it'd be nice to have someone working on something while I'm running around with my hair on fire.

Its on hold, things are finally moving in real life for me. The FAA finally chose me for further consideration so I'll be going through the craziness of interviews, background checks, pysch evals, physicals, and so on.

I love the mercenary campaign. I get bored flying the same plane over and over in a campaign so I go mercenary to keep things different. Sad to see it go in Wings Over Israel.

The understaffed air traffic controllers and over burdened air traffic network thank you for your cooperation. I believe an incident like this happened at an uncontrolled airfield in Florida a few years back, another case of low wing on high wing due to the blindspots. Thankfully, the only time I was cleared to land on top of a guy during a busy day at KDAB, I was flying a high wing and made a go around. That was the other pilot's fault though, he took the runway after hearing hold short, must've heard position and hold.

Thats awesome, thanks!

Nice Gun Cam effect, how'd you do it?

Oh how I wish I could have at least target brackets appear over enemy aircraft but unfortunately I don't know how it could be possible. Thanks for the screens Talos. I was wondering what color schemes they uses for the displays. I went back and watched Zero too and took some screens. One thing I've noticed is that instead of stack buttons and switches in vertical rows like modern aircraft, the Valkyries tend to have them follow the border of the panel. I'll do the same here except they'll be touch screen instead of physical.

Hmm, I guess I wasn't far off on the pedals. I'll enlargen them a bit and drill the holes in them. Looks like in DYRL they just made stuff up too, although it looks like engine gauge stuff may be there on the left. That pic of the HUD is pretty neat though, gave me some ideas. I'm thinking of moving the RWR to where the left MFD is now, especially since Craig's is so impressive. I don't suppose you have a color shot of the DYRL panel? Thanks.

There are definitely pedals, you just never see them without Isamu's feet in them, so its hard to tell what they really look like. There are a few references in the source material I was sent for Basara's VF-19. I'm just more worried about getting the instrumentation figured out. Here is the roughest of rough ideas of what I'm thinking about doing for the panel (using hastily cut'n'pasted bits of the EF-2000 panel). Most of the stuff isn't there yet, there's just so much crap in modern jet cockpits. If I did use the EF-2000 avionics they would all be redesigned visually, but first I need to contact Craig.

There are pedals, I may remodel them as I don't like how they look. If we were going for realism then most of this aircraft wouldn't exist. I want to recreate the cockpit from the series, so I'll be experimenting and seeing what I can do.

Unfortunately I can't attest to much progress being made. The sheer amount of work that is required to develop and place everything, plus just trying to figure out what and where instruments are needed for a fictional aircraft is giving me headaches. I have started prototyping the 3D HUD. I don't have an up to date screenshot but here is one of the first test. Just the first test, I totally reworked it after I figured out how to do it. However, while testing the DirectX 9 bloom effects brought up in another thread here, I ran into a problem. It only affects the YF-19 as far as I can tell. I tested the F-15C and the CF-188 and they appeared fine. Removing the d3d9.dll fixed the problem, but removed the bloom effects as well. It may just be this particular version of the .dll, I'll try some other ones. For radar and MFDs I'll probably talk to Craig about modifying some of his great avionics from the EF-2000.

Wait, so if you have specific LOD models for distance, like aircraft that have 3 LOD's for different distances, does this mean you can make the further LOD's shine brighter then normal, making them easier to spot?

Sorry, I should have posted an example from the series for those who haven't seen the panel in action. As you can see, its all viewscreen. What I'm trying to figure out is how to arrange everything on there digitally. Or at least take suggestions. AFAIK the closest example we have to this in modern fighters is the F-35. The movie isn't much help since they pretty much make up random crap to put on there, I don't think there's two shots of it where it shows the same display. Thanks for the suggestions so far though.

Well, here's the cockpit at the moment. Other then moving it around a bit and adding the smoothing I think the panel is done. Theres other bits too, and I'll model the control stick and throttle too, but you have to look down to see those. There's also some bits on the trim to add. I've never built a pit before, so I have no idea if this is good enough, it seems a bit skimpy but then, the real thing is too. I also haven't given any thoughts to instrument placement, as you can see, the space is limited. Thoughts, suggestions, critiques?

I can't figure it out. If you've gotten it to work, send me the WEAPONDATA entry, I'd like to see it.

I set your AAM-1 up as a heat seeker (using AIM-9M data) and loaded them into a LAU-10 pod. I get the IR growl when I switch to the pod but I never get a lock tone. Also, it displays the air to ground pipper instead of the AA cage but I assume thats a limitation of loading these in the rocket pod.

Very nice job, I think that looks just like it did in the series. What I'll probably do is include 2 data files, one for people who want to use regular weapons, and then another for those who want to use more canon fictional weapons. This is assuming we get some of the missiles from Macross working of course.

Well, the problem with the panel is that its a single display screen. My guess is that to have individual instruments on it I'll have to create the display as a single plane and arrange the faces to the shape of the instruments, then group select the whole shape and detach it. I was wondering, should I start a whole new model or use the aircraft model as a base and get rid of it once I have a shell?

The base textures aren't even finished, but I couldn't resist. Aside from that foolishness, I'm thinking of getting started on the cockpit soon. What I'd like is some advice from those who have done this before, especially on getting the cockpit started. Thanks in advance.

Tried out your railgun, not bad, I'll play with it. As far as the ROF, going off whats shown in the movie, the internal guns have an incredibly slow ROF, probably because they're high output energy cannons that need charge time between shots (or something). Also, while certainly 1000+ rpm is necassary when you have only one gun, when you have two I don't think its as important. I think the 800-1000 range works well. Certainly the Israeli A-4 pilot who shot down 2 MiGs with his DEFA's can attest to that. I think having 2 gatling guns is a bit much, especially in terms of weight. And like I said, the ROF doesn't need to be incredibly high. Well, I was definitely thinking of doing an 80's US Navy scheme at some point with gull grey on top and white on the bottom.

Well, in Macross the internal guns are "energy cannons" so I can pretty much pick whatever I want to replace them. I'm thinking a chain gun with a rate of fire under 1000rpm.

Well, in Macross they seem to puke missiles out of every crack and seam, but this model is all external stores. There really isn't much room interior wise anyway. As far as mounting goes, the concept as it exists in my head is: 1 center hardpoint between the engines for gun pods 2 hardpoints on either side of the gun pod for heavy ground weapons 1 hardpoint under each wing root 1 hard point (at least) on each wing I'll start playing around with weapons once I get the cockpit done. The internal guns are set up, I just need to look through the gun editor for something more appropriate then the M61A1.

Thanks The unfortunate advantage of the FAA's snail pace hiring process is I have plenty of free time. Thanks. Ha, thank you. Well, first completed model, certainly the first time I ever UVW mapped and textured from scratch, can't believe how much work goes into this process. I'll do my best to make my template into something a sane person can use, I'd love to see what kind of schemes others can come up with. When this is released (which won't be for a while yet) I'll include both the Alpha One demonstrator scheme as pictured, and probably a generic USAF based grey military skin.

External Textures are done for the most part, I hope. Still need to do some insides and lots of detail work. Plus weathering. Tell me what you think. EDIT: Okay, new screens with better graphic settings. Didn't realize this install wasn't setup with my video card.