FastCargo

Yep, didn't even need a tailhook... FastCargo

It's tedious, but conceptually straightforward. I've already done it. GermanyCE terrain with: Hi Res airfield tiles Gepards airfields JSF_Aggies Road airbases Airfield light addons Brain32 and CA_Stary's tile and terrain object mod Yep, this is WOI.... FastCargo

If you are wondering where to look, go to the terrain and look for the "terrain name"_targets.ini. In that file you'll find various entries, for airfields you'll see something like this: [TargetArea275] Name=Hohenheide Highway Strip Position=367000.000000,711000.000000 Radius=8485.281250 ActiveYear=0 Location=1 AirfieldDataFile=ROAD_AIRFIELD1.ini NumSquadrons=1 Alignment=FRIENDLY Target[001].Type=Road_Runway Target[001].Offset=0.00,0.00 Target[001].Heading=0.0 etc, etc, etc.... Now, the bolded line references a ini that defines several things...but specifically the taxi and parking spots. Going into a representative file referenced above: [Runway001] Heading=0 Offset=0,0 Length=2500 Width=90 TouchDownHead=0,918.5 TouchDownTail=0,-918.5 TakeOffHead=0,1300 TakeOffTail=0,-1300 TaxiHead[01].Heading=270 TaxiHead[01].Offset=88,1325 TaxiHead[02].Heading=270 TaxiHead[02].Offset=138,132 etc, etc, etc... TaxiTail[01].Heading=270 TaxiTail[01].Offset=88,-1325 TaxiTail[02].Heading=270 TaxiTail[02].Offset=138,-1325 etc, etc, etc... ParkingChance=90 ParkingMaxSpan=18.0 Parking[01].Heading=180 Parking[01].Offset=333,-482 Parking[02].Heading=180 Parking[02].Offset=354,-482 Parking[03].Heading=180 etc, etc, etc... LargeParkingChance=70 LargeParkingMaxSpan=48.0 LargeParking[01].Heading=0 LargeParking[01].Offset=436,-125 LargeParking[02].Heading=0 LargeParking[02].Offset=384,-125 LargeParking[03].Heading=0 etc, etc, etc... As you can see, it's pretty simple. The hard part is just figuring out the coordinates to place your statics. Also, if aircraft are disappering in campaign, they might be getting attritted... BTW, the parking chance numbers are not stock...I bumped up mine significantly. FastCargo

"You - got - BONED!" FastCargo

A B-1B chaff dispenser blow a coffee can (size and weight) container full of chaff clear of the tail...at 540 knots. You do NOT want to mess with these things. FastCargo

Dude...awesome! FastCargo

I'll give it to you thumbnail: LOMAC 1. Detailed systems modeling 2. Great terrain 3. Awesome multiplayer 4. No dynamic campaign 5. Modding is relatively limited 6. Can choke even modern computers with all the bells and whistles on Wings Over Israel 1. Simplified systems modeling 2. Terrain is okay (some 3rd party addons can adjust this) 3. Very limited multiplayer 4. Dynamic campaign 5. Very moddable...if you can think it, it's probably being worked on or already exists 6. Easier to run well on modern systems They really are two very different simulators, and are hard to compare because each one provides such a different experience. I'd get both...they are not that expensive. FastCargo

Uh oh, you've gotten Wrench, The angry... You wouldn't like Wrench, The when he's angry... But on a more serious note folks, please, check the WIP threads first...trust me, if you can think it, someone is probably working on it. FastCargo

I don't know, I don't think you have to model wings at all in the LOD. The data.ini defines the flying characteristics of the aircraft. FastCargo

Nope, nobody wants these aircraft. FastCargo

But here's a fun fact...aircraft have been built to purposely kill other aircraft this way: Northrop XP-79B Flying Ram So hey, a kill is a kill... FastCargo

Definitely not! And for the same reasons Flanker562 alluded to. The playing field is already not level, and any leveling we attempt to do will be unfair to somebody. Think about it. What if Amokfloo (as an example) decides to take screenshots of his stuff he hasn't released yet in action. Or me? Or a hundred other modders? Is that a unfair advantage? Screenshots are not about the latest or prettiest toys. They are about creating a mood...turning binary into art. Notice the first screenshot of the month winner consisted entirely of freeware that everyone already had at the time. Anyone could have done that shot...but only one person did. We took absolutely nothing into account when we voted other than what we thought looked 'cool'. The only thing I MIGHT consider is unretouched screenies...and even that's a maybe... FastCargo

Welcome to a list of acronyms used by the ThirdWire series of sims. Some of these will have already been defined in the Basic Definition of Terms article (written by Caesar) here at CombatAce: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=25845 Note that most of these acronyms are for the ThirdWire sims in particular and do not cover the more generic aspects of air combat (terms such as HUD). It is assumed you already have a basic understanding of air combat and it's terms. If not, please start with research at these links: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=21944 http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_061a.html FE - First Eagles - 4th release of the TW series of sims. Set in central Europe, but back in World War I. SFP1 or SFG - Strike Fighters:Project 1 or Strike Fighters Gold - The first release by TK of the TW series of sims, set in a fictional country. Mostly contained aircraft from the late 1960s. FM – FM is an abbreviation for “Flight Model” which defines how an aircraft flies. Flight Models take a long time to complete and are modeled as accurately as possible. Keep in mind that the ThirdWire series of simulations are “light” sims, so accuracy is not always 100%, but it should be noted that in the latest iteration, Wings Over Israel, departures and spins have been modeled. Note, a Flight Modeler might decide to spend a lot of extra time to force an aircraft to depart under certain conditions in prior versions of the TW series, but this is not easy and it is time-consuming. .INI – .INI files are known as “Initialization” files and are the files that define just about every aspect of the game, aircraft, weapons, etc. Flight models, aircraft limitations, ordinance points, fuel capacities, dates of service, availability, who flew it…all of these are decided by the .INI files. Knowledge of the .INI files is necessary to modify any aspect of the ThirdWire series games, from adding skins to adding weapons to modifying aircraft. The more you work with them, the easier it becomes to mod. .LOD – “Homeworld Level Of Detail” files, abbreviated .LOD, are exported files from 3D Studio Max that cannot be reverse-engineered. They are the actual model files that are used in the ThirdWire series. Without a “skin” attached, they appear in the shape of the aircraft, but are flat white. In order to use some of the mods available, .LOD files are necessary from different games in the ThirdWire series, for example, to use the Tu-22 mods in Wings over Vietnam or Europe, one must first have the .LOD files found in Strike Fighters Project 1. .LOD files made by ThirdWire unique to individual games cannot be posted online, this would be illegal. TW – ThirdWire is the company that developed Strike Fighters Project 1, Wings over Vietnam, Wings over Europe, First Eagles, and Wings over Israel, usually called the ThirdWire series. TK – “TK” is Tsuyoshi Kawahito’s name abbreviated. TK is the designer and creator of the ThirdWire series. He previously worked on European Air War. WOE - Wings Over Europe - 3rd release of the TW series of sims. Set in central Europe and added late 1970s aircraft including the F-15, A-10, Hawker Hunter and Mig-23. WOI - Wings Over Israel - 5th release of the TW series of sims. Set in the Middle East, and adds new aircraft, including the Mirage III. WOV - Wings Over Vietnam - Second release of the TW series of sims. Focused on the Vietnam War and it's aircraft and added carrier operations.

Alrighty folks, you are working WAY too hard here. First, install the checksix megapack somewhere other than your WOE directory. Then go into where you installed it, find the following directory: F-18BA Put that aircraft in your Objects/Aircraft directory. Now, go into your old F-18 directory...you see the subdirectorys of skins? (most named for the squadrons they belong to). Copy those directories to your F-18 Blue Angel directory. Go into the F-18 Blue Angel directory (F-18BA)...you see the subdirectories with the Blue Angel skins (BA, B1, B2, B3, etc)? Delete them...all of them. Open up the F-18BA.ini file and first look for the entry that says this: [AircraftData] AircraftFullName=F-18 Blue Angel etc... Change it to: AircraftFullName=F/A-18A Hornet Then, find these entries: [TextureSet001] Directory=BA Name=BlueAngels N°1 Nation=USN Squadron=Blue Angels Specular=0.150000 Glossiness=0.500000 Reflection=0.100000 [TextureSet002] Directory=B2 Name=BlueAngels N°2 Nation=USN Squadron=Blue Angels Specular=0.150000 Glossiness=0.500000 Reflection=0.100000 [TextureSet003] Directory=B3 Name=BlueAngels N°3 Nation=USN Squadron=Blue Angels Specular=0.150000 Glossiness=0.500000 Reflection=0.100000 [TextureSet004] Directory=B4 Name=BlueAngels N°4 Nation=USN Squadron=Blue Angels Specular=0.150000 Glossiness=0.500000 Reflection=0.100000 [TextureSet005] Directory=B5 Name=BlueAngels N°5 Nation=USN Squadron=Blue Angels Specular=0.150000 Glossiness=0.500000 Reflection=0.100000 [TextureSet006] Directory=B6 Name=BlueAngels N°6 Nation=USN Squadron=Blue Angels Specular=0.150000 Glossiness=0.500000 Reflection=0.100000 Delete the entries...yep, go ahead and delete all of them. Save the file as FA-18A.ini. Delete the following files from the F-18BA directory: F18_fuse.bmp F18_leftwing.bmp F18_nose.bmp F18_rightwing.bmp F18_tails.bmp patch.bmp Rename the F-18BA directory as FA-18A. Done. It works...I just did every single step myself to verify it works. FastCargo

By Column 5, USAFMTL, jtin. Edited by FastCargo. The ThirdWire series of sims runs fine on Vista. However, there are a few things you may have to do first. 1. Make sure that you are running the latest Vista drivers for you video card, sound card and game controllers! 2. The version of DX9 that ships with Vista does not include the latest DX9 updates. You will need to go to Microsoft's DX site and download/install the latest DX9 update pacakage. The procedure is exactly the same as updating DX on XP. 3. There is an incomaptability with Vista's DX9 implementation and the new Pixel shaders TK recently introduced for land and water effects. Disabling these shaders in the terrain INI file fixes this problem. 4. You may have to change the 'rights' of the program and/or change it's location to get it to run fully. 5. A FLIGHTENGINE.INI tweak may be needed if you are getting CTDs. Lets examine each step in detail. All Vista users are highly recommended to get through at least Step 3. Steps 4 and 5 should only be done if you are still running into problems. Step 1: Pretty straight forward, go get the Vista drivers for things like your video card, sound card, etc. Step 2: Go to Microsoft.com to get the latest DirectX drivers (you will have to do a search on their website). Realize that sometimes they do very small updates that are not well advertised. Here is the link for the latest DirectX (as of March 7, 2008) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;DisplayLang=en Step 3: Stock terrains, Desert, VietnamSEA, GermanyCE and IsraelME have all their files 'packed' into the cat file, located IN each of the terrain folders. The file that needs to be edited, the XX_Data.ini is located inside. Using Skypat's Cat Extraction Tool, available here: -->Cat Extractor <--, extract the XX_Data ini (where XX is the terrain's name). As with other extractions, it will wind up inside the terrai folder in question. 3rd Party, or add-on Terrains will have this file already existant in their respective folders. Open the Terrain folder, and for each installed terrain do the following. (In this example, I'm using GermanyCE from WOE.) 1. Open the GermanyCE folder. 2. Find GermanyCE_DATA.INI 3. If the data INI is not present, extract it from GermanyCE.cat using the .CAT extractor. 4. Edit GermanyCE_DATA.INI and change any occurance of UseEffectShader=TRUE to UseEffectShader=FALSE. There should be two occurances, one for the NormalTextureMaterial and one for the WaterTextureMaterial, as shown below: [NormalTextureMaterial] UseEffectShader=FALSE //TRUE EffectShaderName=TerrainEffect.fx DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=TRUE RenderedInOrder=TRUE AlphaTestEnabled=FALSE CullMode=CLOCKWISE LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=FALSE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.0000000 ZBufferOffset=0.000000 BlendOp=ONE NumTextureStages=1 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=NO_OP [WaterTextureMaterial] UseEffectShader=FALSE //TRUE EffectShaderName=WaterEffect.fx DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=FALSE RenderedInOrder=TRUE AlphaTestEnabled=TRUE CullMode=CLOCKWISE LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=TRUE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 SpecularColor=0.500000,0.500000,0.500000,1.000000 SpecularPower=5.000000 Reflectivity=1.00000 ZBufferOffset=4.000000 BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA NumTextureStages=2 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE TextureStage[02].TextureName= TextureStage[02].MipMap=TRUE TextureStage[02].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[02].ReflectionMapping=TRUE TextureStage[02].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_BLEND_TEXTURE_ALPHA TextureStage[02].StageAlphaOp=DIFFUSE Basically what I found is that the game ran fine after I updated DirectX, but until I changed the above I would get a CTD every time I hit ESC to end a mission. Step 4: For those having problems with screenshots, adding 3rd party mods, or even running the program, read the following. In Vista (Vista Ultimate here, not sure about other versions) the computer bugs you about putting stuff in the program folder. If you are an administrator, it will ask you if you really want to do it (supposed to be good security or something) and if you are a normal user, you have to enter the admin password in order to do it. Also, screenshots and kmd saving will be disabled due to this. To get screenshots, just make the program (flightsim.exe) have administrative rights. If you want to get rid of the whole folder thing, just make the whole folder (in properties) make the normal user have admin rights for that folder (needs admin password). Don't know why it doesn't bug you about if you started the action after that, but it works. Do not unzip anything to your HD with Vista. Unzip files to a folder on your desktop. Vista does something to your main HD that protects it from accidental deleteing of files and adding of harmful ones. Vista also makes a file with whatever username you gave your computer on log in. IE I have a folder called "usafmtl" in comprises of my doc, pictures, videos etc. There is where you can add files etc and modify them without interference from Vista. You can even drag the whole directory to the desktop and run it from there. Step 5: Open FLIGHTENGINE.INI (It might have to be extracted from FlightData.CAT) Find the section in it called [GraphicsSettings] if it exists. If the section already exists, overwrite it with the entry below. If not, just cut and paste the entry below into the FLIGHTENGINE.INI file. [GraphicsSettings] ZBufferDepth=24 MaxVertexCount=16384 MaxIndexCount=32768 MaxTextureCount=16384 MaxModelType=2048 MaxMeshPerScene=2048 MaxModelPerScene=4096 MaxLightPerScene=1024 AspectRatio=1.333333 MinPixelSize=1.0 Save the new FLIGHTENGINE.INI file. If after all of these steps, you are still having problems, please post your problem with your computer specifications (including hardware, specific Vista version, and exact symptoms) in the 'WoI/WoE/WoV/Project-1 General Discussion' forum at CombatAce.

The technical rule from what I understand is that you cannot SELL Cuban cigars in the US. Cigars for your own personal use are just fine in small quantities. FastCargo

Heeeeyyyy....a Bomarc! One of my favorite SAMs... FastCargo

Okay, read this very carefully: There are two files that are critical to adding weapons to your install. Weapondata.ini and weapondata.dat. All the weapondata.ini file does is provide information to the Weapons Editor to BUILD the weapondata.dat file. THAT file is the file the sim uses to give you weapons in game. So, if you want to add weapons, follow the instructions laid out in the link in the post you put up. If you want a fast way, delete the weapondata.dat (AFTER BACKING IT UP), then open up the weapondata.ini file with the Weapon Editor and then hit the Save button. The only bad thing about that technique is that for some reason, Weapon Racks won't show up. So if you have the time, while in the Weapons Editor, double click on each weapon entry that is a Weapons Rack and just hit the OK button. After you have done that for ALL the Weapons Racks, then hit the Save button. Bingo, a new weapondata.dat ready for use. FastCargo

Fixed. Thanks! FastCargo

Please look at this thread if you're interested in my results with 'over the shoulder' and 'rear firing missile' testing. http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=25542 FastCargo

You need to start here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=21944 Then here: http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_061a.html And then here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showt...87&hl=simhq This will get you started to surviving. FastCargo

There have been a few folks who have asked about the idea of flexible wings...for instance the U-2 and B-52 both have long wings that look very different at speed vs on the ground. So donning my 'mad modder' hat, I decided to add a one piece wing to the T-38 model to test a possibility. Here's the model in game on takeoff: The wing is one piece and part of the model...currently only has a material applied, no texture. The following is a sequence of pictures I took in the middle of the process. So far, it looks totally possible. The trick I think would be to have it speed dependent, and to make sure anything 'attached' to it moves with the 'flexing'. FastCargo

Well, I'll let you guys know how I did it for any future modders to take advantage of the technique. The TW engine supports animation to move, rotate and scale whole mesh pieces. But it only supports scaling of vertices (not moving or rotating). And you cannot combine vertex scaling with any other animation for that piece within the 10 frame block. So how to create a 'bending' wing. One way is to physically break up the wing and animate the pieces using the conventional move/rotate/scale for each piece and minimize the seams (hopefully). My method is different. I use vertex scaling. In the example above, I created a cylinder in the general shape and size you see above, then flattened it to the shape of a wing airfoil, then converted it to a editable poly. Now, to make the wing bend up and down, i would normally have to move each 'cross section' of vertices and set them how you would think. But the TW engine will not support this. Instead, make a clone of the wing, and slide it vertically several thousand meters upward. Then, go to your clone part that you just moved, and delete everything except rows of vertices that lie (above) the verticies of the original wing. Then select all those 'ghost' verticies and your lower wing and combine them into one object. You now have a aircraft part that has a bunch of verticles that lie outside the mesh, and are completely invisible. Now, lets select our mesh, and select one 'cross section' of verticies, including the coorsponding 'invisible' ones WAY up high. Now, scale them...vertically only. Note what happens...that part of the wing appears to 'move' upward. Now it will get thinner...however, the farther up the 'invisible' verticies are, the less the the 'cross section' of vertices will thin...hopefully to the point that it's not noticed. Do this for the rest of the wing...adjusting the amount of 'scaling' appropriate to the distance from the 'anchor point' (usually where it attaches to the body). Save and export. Congrats, you now a wing that can bend. You may be able to assign this as speed dependent in the data.ini. The parts attached to the wing will have to be animated as well...probably using the 'move' function. It will be tedious, but it should work...that part I haven't tested. Hope this helps somebody... FastCargo