Centurion-1

The Whiskey model is really not a prio for me. Sorry. J and T model Sea Cobras first. and we'll see what comes after that.

Thanks DA will do! And I haven't forgotten about the A-37B either 

I am really sorry to hear of your problems Volker, I really hope you will get well. It always seems to be the best people that gets these things!

The wing template looks stunning though! Keep your spirits high!

Looks great!

Needed to get something new going to get the creative juices flowing, and this is one bird I've been wanting to do for the longest while. But I am really lacking good refs. So high res drawings from front/top are needed, and whatever else you can throw at me.

This will be primarily for Iran army aviation but of course USMC versions are easy to do from here.

Something like that Dave.. I could release it right now as a beta, only the 150gal tanks and hook are a bit low definition.. Been a bit out of creative steam lately.. What say you?

Hi Russ, yeah it is OK of course! Your burner looks nice!

Looks great!

Gonna have to see if I could add a simple tailhook on the model, but there arent any free animation slots i think. Love the overall blue camo tho!

Personally, I think it would be a bad idea to ban free downloads all together, it would really limit new people. But maybe there could be a download cap each month for freebies, after that only those with subs or other types of premium accounts get to download. Maybe a large, omnious bar type thing at the top to remind everybody that the free DLs are a finite resource. I bet more people would upgrade their membership if they wanted to get some mods only to realize they cant because the monthly free DLs have run out.

As for the large mods like Nato fighters, I think peer to peer sharing would be a very good compliment to the traditional DLs! Especially if you could get all parts as one torrent, I for sure would download that way and keep seeding it too. Just have a downloadable torrent file on the dowload page. Good idea?

Especially when the free dls run out the torrents could help a lot.

I also have a theory regarding why the bandwitdth is running out, probably because all mods are realy large in filesize these days. Large textures take a lot of space!

Also upgraded my sub, wish I could have went for platinum but choice had to be enough this month.

Perhaps we here at CombatAce should put our weight behind making a DCS F-4E? Even FC3 level or less to begin with would send a pretty big message to ED: THIS BIRD IS WANTED!

The people making the Gazelle and Boh 105 have gotten quite far, so maybe modding for DCS is not impossible. If not easy. But it would take a TEAM, I stress this, because the level of detail for every individual bit is 2-10 times more than what we are used to produce. And that is just the visual side. Tho if we had Volkers models as a starting point, that would be 90% of the work done right there  . And having the possiblity of using 60-70K tris for the external model would actually make many things easier.

Sorry for the thread hijack. But the thought also gets me salivating 

I still make 3d stuff. But time has been in limited supply lately. Got a bunch of project sitting on the HDD waiting  for some TLC. Plus, got to admit, the development time is starting to become very long if you want to get stuff right. I think the Thirdwire lack of support is starting to be felt too...

But looking at modding instructions for DCS and well just thinking about the level of detail "required" by DCS makes my head ache. It is really fast approaching a point that it won't be possibly for a single modder to develop such an aircraft.

Hell, I got banned today from the ED boards.  4 years as a tester, being a subject matter expect for the development for the A-10C, developing and sharing with the community countless documents, answering questions about the A-10C on their forums, and being the Commander of the 476th vFG and freely advertising DCS World for them and I get banned for asking why a post got deleted that did not break any forum rules.  I can completely understand why people aren't happy with ED or how they manage their forums.  

 

It isn't moaning over nothing, if you express any opinion on the ED boards other than "everything ED does is perfect" you get attacked, your post(s) deleted with no notice and then when you ask you get banned.  If people want to think I fall into the "Seems to be the same set of people tbh - moaning over nothing as usual" category so be it.

That sucks, a temporary suspension would have been a much more tactful approach if the really had to make a statement. I hate the heavy handed moderation used by some forums. I got banned from the Bohemia Interactive forums once for one "slightly less tactful" statment. But anyhoo, there was an amnesty at some point, so still got my original 2002 register date account :)

As for the overall level of drama over these things - maybe a tad over the top. But these things matter to those who care about this hobby, it's not like there is a lot of choice in this field.

I just checked out some documentation for making new planes for DCS. I mean we have a Mirage F.1, F-4E and F-5E over here at combat ace, a port to DCS would probably be possible but the learning curve does seem steep. Plus the cockpits need C++ programming to work, and the flight modelings really looks very difficult for me, I cant even figure out SF2 flight modeling... 

Regarding the Iranian Su-25Ks, some were recently supplied to the Iraqi govt to fight ISIS.

That's a fair point too. And regardless, we are getting there slowly and surely. DCS is set to be the "standard" air combat simulation platform for years to come. I just need to buy a 27" monitor now and those durned rudder pedals. And decide if I will wait for the Oculus Rift CV1 or just go with trackIR.

Wags said

 

 

As one of our first maps using the new map tools and DCS World 2, we are going to walk before we run. We also need to first get new maps into DCS World and get a good understanding of performance and file size issues that could arise. As such, future maps could certainly get much bigger if the development team has the time and resources to develop it (doing large urban areas, airbases, ports, etc. are a massive amount of work). We all realize that maps truly are “bigger is better”, but we also need to balance that with risk, resources, time, file size, etc.

Enough of the "map is too small" comments please.

So pretty much as I suspected. Great news anyhoo, and the developed middle eastern art assets can obviously be put to good use elsewhere in the region. Fingers crossed there will be at some point an Iran/Iraq border map, that would be dope. Already have some flyable assets from the late Iran/Iraq war, hopefully others like the F-4 and F-5 will come eventually (it would make so much sense!!!!).

I wonder how well the ED tools support importing already existing vector data from Open street maps or google maps or whatever, stuff like roads and such. Could cut down dev time a lot.

The graphical fidelity we all come to expect these days makes dev times insanely long, we all want a 2000X2000km accurate map with every single shrub modeled, yet complain when it takes too long for devs to place those 1 trillion bushes and houses at the right place. I have dabbled in the Arma series map editors, and created a test 40x40km Takistan type map for Arma2, the object count is simply flabbergasting for this type of map. And from the looks of it, EDGE maps will be almost Arma2 quality visually but 10+ times the size. You do the math.

I personally think that it might be a good move for ED to consider a fictional setting for the first larger map they intend to do (or some very sparse region like the sahara desert), to ease object placement requirements. A ficitonal setting might alleviate some of the problems the slightly "unfocused" plane set currently creates.

Sorry for the rant 

The screenshots look dope! I am a bit "bummed out" by the smallish size, but I hope this does not represent any upper limit for EDGE map size but rather is the ED's way of finally getting a new terrain out there. I hope they have a separate team that will work on map modules and keep churning them out. I am glad I upgraded recently so I now can enjoy DCS properly!

My god does this look pretty. I am going to make a Dhimar vs Paran campaign for DCS 

I think I will buy this at release, even though I probably won't have time at this point to really sit down and immerse myself in the probably very long training needed to fight effectively in this bird.

Thumbs up leatherneck anyways, can't wait to see what they do next!

Acesfakia,

 

From my quick research, the C-130H2 and C-130B models will suit for the Hellenic Air Force Hercs so you will be able to release the skins as a package after I've released the templates.

 

As for the cockpit...

 

Once the package for the aircraft is finally complete and released I will be going back to upgrade the C-130J cockpit. This will be released separately later.

Once that is done, depending on my workload at that time, I may consider building a 1960's era cockpit for use in the early C-130s. I don't make any promises as cockpits (especially ones with lots of instruments) are a PITA to build and I will need a lot of motivation to do it.

 

Dels

Amen to that. 

I think this was a great newsletter to be honest. a lot of good stuff in the pipeline! Especially the "new terrain for the Hornet" sounds like great news.. any speculations what that might be? Korea? Cuba? Libya? Iceland?

All the Korea and WW2 stuff is a bit "meh" for me... Cold War stuff is what really get's me going.

Hah, DCS:W is not a combat flight sim, it is a patience training app 

Seriously though, kidding aside, there is probably a buttload of content they need to tweak to make it look right in the new rendering enviroment. As the mig-21 decs said, updating the textures was surprisingly much work, and that is one product.

I just upgraded my main rig, now I got a nice i5 4670K, Z87 mobo and GTX760, finally can play DCS:W for the first time (even tho I have owned A-10C, Black Shark 2 and FC3 for a long time), and I am enjoying myself. But the real revolution will be when the new map tools will be released, hopefully to the general public. And from what I understand it, EDGE should alleviate FPS problems and allow for even nicer scenery. 

But like most people here, I hope for more cold war stuff. Still, it aint looking bad, I mean soon we have Su-25A, MiG-29A/S and MiG-21bis flyables so there is at least a good amount of Soviet VVS aviation of the 80s represented!

And yes, if there was a good, concerted effort by the modders here to have a go at creating a DCS module I would be game, but the dev time does seem to be unreal... And we would still need experienced LUA scripters and probably a C++ coder too.

If I was ED I would really look at releasing all the source files for some older aircraft like the MiG-29A so you could just fill in the blanks to create new flyables... I am not very familiar with what is out there though.

PS. While I understand it from a financial aspect, I hate that they had to start going down the WW2 route. Seriously, there are so many quality simulations done of that period, can we please stop already? Just my opinion, so agree to disagree...

Nothing could please me more than if Leatherneck would proceed with either the F-4 or more cold-war era soviet aircraft. If you look at Belsimtek they have really picked up the pace since getting their first product out the door. Once you know what to do and how -  the dev time will inevitably be shorter, and I really hope Leatherneck will keep the ball rolling and put their aquired know-how to good use. Maybe even recruiting some new talent would be an option if DCS Mig-21 works out well. 

-> That said, ED and whoever really need to pay attention to people who say they are content with FC3 level aircraft!

--------> Meaning, releasing aircraft modeled to a lower fidelity has huuuuge potential sales since the dev time is likely to be close to 50% shorter.

I don't think the modders are running out of steam at all, but summer is summer, many people do other stuff than games during summer. Myself for sure. But I still have a large list of stuff I wanna do in SF2 before I call it quits!

I really do wish TK would pick up the ball or some other sim would take up the slack, whether something new or something that is already out there. I am catiously optimistic about the future of DCS, and finally got my computer upgraded so I can run it properly. If Eagle Dynamics can start releasing some serious mod tools that might be the platform we all move to. But that is still some ways off...

On the official front SF does seem very quiet but I have not given up hope quite yet. Modding is the big thing here, and quality standards are really being pushed as far as the engine allows it!

Will some other sim take over SF2 in the future... probably, but that is still a long ways off. Everybody is waiting for more DCS stuff and EDGE and whatnot but, in the mean time one can have a lot of fun in SF2 

Yeah mate, get well soon! And don't be afraid to ask for help here, wheter modding or otherwise, I am sure a lot of people here myself included would be glad to help!!

Looks cool, gotta wonder what it would look like in a camo set-up like the MiG-21bis or Draken?

I love the Fulcrum, but in retrospect, I am glad the FAF got the F-18 instead. The only upside to a Fulcrum buy is that they probably could have gotten a lot more of them... but by now they would need costly upgrades to SMT or M2 standard to keep up!