Hawker

Well, got a lot done today. Lots of tweaking this and that. Got the NLG animated and it looks so cool (steerable as well). Canopies open. Got the transparency fixed. Going to add working slats. May animate the main gears tonight but more than likely tomorrow. One thing I can't understand is earlier today in the game the plane was a nice silver color (no mapping yet). But later on it started to be this dark color. Any ideas why? I didn't change anything (or so I think). I've got the Pilot and Navigator in place, but not sure how to go about adding the back seaters. Any help would be appreciated.

I got the speedbrake paddles working, and the left aileron works fine (speedbrakes will move as aileron does). But the right one for some reason needs more tweaking. The landing gear will get animated later today, and wheels adjusted so it will be able to land, taxi on ground. Does anyone know how to make the canopy transparent? I can do it in Max and it renders transparent, but in the game it's either NOT there at all, or it's solid. I have yet to T-Map it, so I suppose that could be it as well. More to come.

It's almost time! I start my vacation in a few more hours and I'll have lots of time to work on my EA-6B. Just looking at this A-7 is motivating me a lot to do a great job with mine so you can all paint it up as nice as this one. Great work all who made this A-7 so nice. :D

Air to Air refueling! With this beautiful sim engine it would be so kick butt to line up behind KC-135s (and KC-10s too?) and take on some gas. Have a manual and an automatic mode (for those who get too frustrated trying to get it right, as it is extremely tough). And of course, more diverse ground objects/buildings, etc. My .02 cents.

Here's what I can't wait to see on this plane... (skin) http://www.airliners.net/open.file/139387/L/

MrMudd, The default pilot's do the head turning automatically, just like they do with any plane in the game. It's a no brainer. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe those are default pilot models. :)

No problem, it's fun to work on. Navychief, I appreciate those top pics a lot. Have some tweaking to do on the canopy frames that I missed. It'll look sharp after I adjust them.

Yeah, I sure will need flight testing help when I'm to that point. Have you done some of this work already? If you have experience of course you'll have a crack at it. :)

Here's the latest on my Prowler project. Must sleep, work tomorrow!! Just got canopy frames cut out, pivots working, etc.

You got it Tiwaz. Thanks for offering to help. I will definitely need help in the painting dept. :) Have to go back to work for a few days, then I'll finish up the animating of parts and naming issues, and hopefully get it into the game within the next week sometime. Once that's done I'll texture map it, then send out a call for a few artists to come forth and paint it. Then during this time I'll be tweaking the FM, along with hopefully TK and company (if they choose to help when I ask for it).

Still needs several weeks of work, flight model testing, getting it into SF, and then texture mapping. In the end it's going to look pretty nice. Going to hopefully have animated folding wings among other animations.

EA-6B Prowler progress... General Characteristics Primary Function: Electronic countermeasures Contractor: Northrop Grumman Aerospace Corporation Propulsion: Two Pratt & Whitney J52-P408 engines (10,400 pounds thrust each) Length: 59 feet 10 inches (17.7 meters) Wingspan: 53 feet (15.9 meters) Height: 16 feet 8 inches (4.9 meters) Weight: Max gross take-off: 61,500 pounds (27,450 kg) Speed: Over 500 knots (575 mph, 920 kmh) Range: Over 1,000 nautical miles (1,150 miles, 1,840 km) Ceiling: 37,600 feet Crew: Four: pilot and three electronic countermeasures officers Armament: AGM-88B or C HARM missile Date Deployed: First flight, May 25, 1968; Operational, July 1971

For all the modelers out there, can we avoid re-inventing the wheel by creating a central location where we can share Max files such as instruments, joystick/throttle models, various cockpit shapes like ejection seats, panels, etc, to speed up the process of getting complete airplanes and cockpits released? Just an idea, I'm not sure if something like this exists already. But it sure would be nice to go to a site and download whatever instruments your cockpit needs, get them, and "plug them in" to your model. Because I'm enjoying SFP1 so much, I plan on making several planes in the coming weeks and would be happy to donate Max parts out of them that can easily be used in other aircraft, along the lines of instruments, etc. Thx

Sounds good for INI files. What about my idea though, do you guys like it? It would make things go so much smoother for new models.

DO, It wouldn't be a team at all and this post isn't about INI files. Just parts for building new planes. A parts store kinda thing. I think it could go over really well. No one is being asked to keep track of anything, just upload parts to a site. Upload to the instruments folder, misc cockpit folder, external parts (like wheels tires), etc. It would be fantastic to have. Max files ready to be imported into any new airplane project. Majorlee (who replied to this on SimHQ) already has come forward offering webspace.

Just tweaked the placement of the two outboard Aim-9Bs on this great F-86H model in the F-86H_data.ini file. Looks much better me thinks. Just point it to your C drive (assuming that's where it's installed) and unzip. It basically just goes into your main F-86H file (the airplane can be downloaded at Avsim.com in the Strike Fighters MODs section of the Files area). This plane gives you not only guns but up to 4 Aim-9Bs and is a lot of fun. I'm not taking any credit for anything but just adjusting the missle placement of the two outboard missles. Nice work to the creators! Hope you don't mind my posting this tweak. If you do just let me know. Hawker

I did a test last night and found out that the pivot is "off" for the NLG. I've written Zur about it and hopefully we'll get this fixed shortly.

IMHO, this sim has THE BEST dogfighting I've ever flown. Not only is it silky smooth fps wise, it is totally enjoyable, rewarding when you get a kill, etc. My #1 favorite thing is the lack of any stuttering whatsoever! The sim never "hiccups" like others tend to (like when loading a sound to play, ie guns). Yes there are many things that could be better, I agree, like a mission builder (full featured one), but in the meantime I am having loads of fun. Thanks to everyone who has done so much add-on wise, with skins, new airplanes, etc.

I did attempt to mod the NLG steering and it does work, however the wheel sits facing sideways! The actual model itself (the LOD) needs to be tweaked in order for me to fix it. It steers but looks pretty silling rolling left to right instead of front to back. Zurawski, it's Pete Hawk. Please fix this in the model when you have a chance and I'll get it working right for you. Great job on the plane! And nice MOD making it an H model to the people who did that. :D Some pics of the NLG in the neutral position. Note it should be rolling front to back, not like as shown. It does steer this way but obviously needs an adjustment in the base model. Upon retraction though the gear does center up! Kinda strange.

MOD Friendly is SO TRUE! With all the MODs I've done so far NOT ONCE has the game crashed on me! Either the MOD doesn't work or it does, but it's so nice not having CTDs when MODDing. :D Great game, I can't fly it enough! And it will only get better from here.

Here's how it looks now. Before the missles were sitting too low and too far forward.

I had the huge missle problem as well, but reinstalled, don't touch anything, just start a mission and it works! Nice job!

Still tweaking it, but it's more of a decent camera than what the game came with if you ask me. It's acting as if it's a camera fixed to the vertical stab. You can even pan and zoom in and out. I'll post it hopefully Sunday (today) later on. Just a bit more fine tuning to do. I also tweaked the soundlist.ini file and cranked up the distances you can hear several sounds, as well as added doppler to the guns / cannons / vulcan. IL-2 has it so I figured what the heck, make it work. It was very easy to do. Anyhow, here are some camera pics (again, this works on all planes. Some may look better than others).

Sure, no problem. Thx

Sony, My thoughts exactly! Great work column5!