GrinchWSLG

Its a privately owned team known as the Starfighters.

Just to let you guys know, I did Thunder Over Michigan up at Willow Run this past weekend like I mentioned earlier. Airshow and weather were pretty disappointing. Shame to see such a great roster of performers get let down by such an awfully run airshow. I wasn't terribly happy with the photos that I came away with, but did manage some more high contrast grayscales that may have saved the day. The rest of the color shots can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepirateking...57606673569997/ Thanks

Reminds me that my best real life landings were always simulated dead stick. Shoulda been a glider pilot I guess.

So will you have underage girls in tight flight suits sitting prone in the cockpit with the camera pointed right at their butt just like in the show? For realism of course.

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.

A little background first. Our small local municipal airport which is primarily a corporate use and GA field used to have a little fly-in. Since there used to be few warbirds based at the airport they would fly some circles and call it good. I was just a young lad, probably 10 or 11, when I started volunteering. First it was plane washing, and, once it officially became an airshow, I helped park cars. My dad being the former air traffic controller that he is, eventually took over the parking lot position of the airshow committee. From then on I ended up working as an aircraft fueler and line safety volunteer. I watched as this little fly-in evolved into a real airshow. After September 11th the format of the airshow was changed into a one day long celebration of American independence. The date was changed to the first saturday after the 4th of July and the entire show culminated in a massive fireworks show. This year apparently they posted record attendence with over 25,000 attendees. Unfortunately, due to not being around because of college, I stopped volunteering a few years ago. This year I came as a spectator for what I assume will be my final Freedom Fest as I'll be moving eventually this year to Washington. This also being my first major event with the Sony Alpha DSLR, I was determined to get some good shots. Anyway, sorry for ranting. I'd like to share some of my favorite shots from the day. The entire set can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepirateking...57606017065669/ These are from the 4th, the day before the air show. I went over to shoot some of the early arrivals since I would be able to roam around the taxiways and ramp without crowd lines to impede me. These are the show itself. If you live near Northern Indiana and don't have plans next year, I really suggest this airshow, the staff really want everyone to have a great time and the performers really love to come here every year. Thanks guys.

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.