Geezer

Also, the Aviatik Berg D1 gets some love.

More atmosphere shots from the old movie.

VonS and I recently had fun sharing a bunch of old pulp fiction covers - they were so horrible they were great! Also, I have been helping JacksonM as he experiments with hangar and loading screens. The two came together when he sent me a great shot of an "Evil Hun" with a Mauser broomhandle! VonS wondered if there was a way to code the observers to throw daggers at opponents!

Fooling around with some of Gambit's FE screens, adapted to the new concept.

VonS has gotten formations of mixed aircraft to work in single player mode, so we are going to experiment further. It was quite common for units to operate a mixture of equipment types - also, a variety of camo and markings was quite common. Test screens for the Pfalz D3a below. In the loading screen, imagine a line up of D3s with different markings and camo.

I'm also considering a hokey Dawn Patrol flavor to the screens.

Still toying with the possibility of a pulp flavor for the new screens. Some possibilities below. Good taste is timeless - but bad taste sells! How about "Wings Of The Death Modders" VonS would like to see a mod where early observers throw daggers at each other.

Absolutely! Another clever refinement - thanks you.

Also working on some future aircraft.

Spectacular!

Got a fair amount of work done on a Breguet 14 companion for the Caudron R11, but that has triggered a question. Because of its rhino horn exhaust, the Br14 had a gunsight offset from center line. Wondering if there was a difference between the settings for F2 and F3, I tried offsetting the pilot's vantage point in the data ini, but there was no result! Third shot shows F2 toggled and fourth shot shows F3 toggled.

I encountered some ini problems while developing Lewis gun-armed Nieuports, so I've temporarily set them aside until we get them working right. Meanwhile, I continue work on the Pfalz D8. Some interesting shots of a replica being built in Sweden. Note the complex engine mount sitting on the table shown in the first shot - second shot shows a 100-year-old original. Youtube link shows final assembly of the plywood fuselage.

Been working on variants - the Pfalz D3 (not D3a) and Lewis gun Nieuports.

I'm up to my eyeballs in WW1 stuff at the moment, but VonS and the other guys have expressed an interest in 1930s stuff. So, the answer is "eventually."

Also got some work done on the Pfalz D8 - a fast climbing little bumblebee of a fighter.

Having gotten assistance from baffmeister on some damage modeling issues, the stable of Nieuports is back in-work. Thanks, baff.

Continued testing of VonS's atmospherics reveal semi-transparent qualities that are usually seen in more advanced flight sims. Really outstanding work.

Also got the D3 - not D3a - working ingame for the first time.

Thought you guys might appreciate the kind of testing dialogue that we go through to develop new aircraft? VonS wrote: ...that the cockpit and engine section are transparent when viewed from about 400-500 m (LOD 2 level maybe?)... (see first shot below) My reply: RE: Pfalz - the "missing" stuff is deliberate. Ingame you are looking at LOD2 (see second shot below), which has only 7,610 polys (compared to 24,792 polys in LOD1). There is no "right" way to determine the distance at which LOD2 replaces LOD1 to maintain high frame rates. Currently, I have the transition distance in the PfalzDIIIa.ini set at: [LOD001] Filename=PfalzDIIIa_LOD1.LOD Distance=50 That's how I can run dogfights of >32 aircraft with no performance penalty (see third shot below). I have a fairly healthy rig - my frame rates are generally high - so it is difficult for me to guess when the change should occur. If you think your rig can handle the load, increase the distance to 100, or 200, or whatever. Perhaps this is an installation tweak we should include in our instructions?

Thanks. The Nieuport 28 will get lots of love.

Working on more paint jobs for the Nieuport 28.

The Pfalz D3a is nearing completion - I have shipped examples for what is hopefully final testing. In the course of testing dds artwork, I took some dramatic shots taking off from one of gterl's mountain airfields.

Battle in the clouds, with test versions of VonS' atmospheric files.

A few more shots of overcast/inclement weather: