Geezer

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:

Thanks. VonS tried your suggestion, but no joy: The environsys file should be installed into the Flight folder too by the way (tried placing it in the terrains folder and calling it up, also leaving a bunch of them in the flight folder and calling them up through the terrain.ini file, but was getting strange sky/cloud results and that ugly horizontal banding that's sometimes seen in WOFF....seems such install tricks, while working well in SF2, are not applicable to FE2...so best to put the environsys in the Flight folder and switch out for a new one when needed).

Just got VonS' first test version, and it looks great running in Win7 Pro with DX11.

Got some work done on the new Halberstadt CL4.

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!

Gorgeous!

VonS sent some outstanding experimental shots that I just had to share with you guys. He is systematically tweaking files to develop a much improved environment for the new aircraft we are developing. The last two shots would look great over a muddy France!

That is marketing art of the DIVAD self-propelled flak gun, painted when I was a concept artist at General Dynamics in 1979.

When I retired four years ago, I decided that making digital aircraft would be a good retirement hobby.

Long ago, I used to do that kind of stuff professionally. I was a concept artist/designer in LA before I went back into aircraft engineering, ultimately retiring as a field service engineer for the Global Hawk, and also training college interns to make computer game models. Below is a marketing painting from 1979, done the old fashioned way - geometry, pencil, and paint brush.

Detailing the forward deck of the N17/23 series. The Alkan-Hamy synchronizer gear was a developed copy of the Fokker gear. When combat was imminent, the pilot pulled on the ring-handle to engage the synchronizer, but in normal flight the gear was not engaged. This reduced mechanical failure due to excessive wear. The ammo belt was fed up to the gun on the right side, through a wooden chute with hinged sheet metal cover. The empty cloth ammo belt was fed out the gun's left side and then down inside the fuselage, where it was wound around a spring loaded drum. Because the cloth ammo belt (used by all versions of the Maxim gun) would often flex during high-G manuevers, the belts often jammed the guns during combat. The Germans developed the disintegrating metal link in 1916 to solve the problem, and the other major powers soon copied the German metal link concept. The later Nieuport installation for metal links extended the chute over the side of the fuselage so the expended links could fall clear.

The first value is right/left. The second value is forward/back. The third value - the one you want - is up/down.

VonS' new FM for Lewis gun-armed Nieuport 17s is very authentic. The extra drag of the guns slowed them down so they were slower than the Pfalz D3. Sure enough, ingame some Lewis-armed N17s could not catch D3s that did not want to play.

Superb detail! Even the trench rifles and mortars are accurate. I've always thought that FE/FE2 could use more strafing targets. Stuff like vehicles, guns, horses, grunts, etc marching through a sea of mud.

LOL, I turn 72 in March. Yes, these take a long time but there is method to the madness. First, it takes a lot of plain, old fashioned hard work to produce this stuff. Second, this forum is full of discussions about getting various bits and bobs to work because they were developed at different times to varying standards. VonS and I want to release a comprehensive package of stuff that is tweaked and adjusted to work in harmony as a system. That will take a while...

Progress shots of the Belgian N23 in development.