Gunrunner

Starfighter2> I know -_-' the answer was for Silverbolt... eraser_tr> Maybe it's time we drop the topic and paranoia around it, right. Knowing Blackbird, I guess he just added parts, canards are easily added parts, as is the nose cone, and as would be the air intake (except there would be visual overlap with the nose gear). Blackbird is after all one of the most enthusiastic user of this modding technique, have a look at his nice what-if L-29 project.

Ok, while continuing to get as much WoI features to WoE (using WoI engine) I was working with shadows, unfortunately, the new shadow system doesn't seem to solve what I call the Peter Pan shadow bug. It is a bug that affects some 3rd party planes, as well as a handful of TW models, aircrafts and ground objects, creating long shadows out of parts of the model incredibly long, linking to the ground shadow for plane models. Here are 3 exemples, ground object, 3rd party plane and stock plane : For ground objects affected it appears whatever the angle you see the object from. For some aircrafts they appear whatever the attitude and view angle are (ie. the F-105D), for others, only when the plane is in a given position and viewed from certain angles (ie. the F-15D, when in reverse), the shadow linking where the gound shadow would be appears, whatever altitude you're at. So far I didn't find a way to solve them and have no sure theory on what happens (probably some specifity of some parts of the LOD that the engine doesn't interpret properly when processing shadows). It seems to appear on every graphic settings as long as shadows are here, and was already there with the old engine (WoE). Am I the only one with this bug, if not, is it or is it nor GPU dependent (ie. happening on some video cards but not others), has anyone solved it ?

The air intake is below, F-16-style, a triangular shape...

Thanks for the technical explanation Russo. So we might "fix" some planes by building "patches" and positionning them inside the plane thus fixing the "leak"(or is that a dumb idea ?), but that wouldn't work for the ground objects, but since most of those afflicted are dead simple, I guess it's not completely out of my reach.

Baltika, you also could read Red Storm Rising from Tom Clancy, as a large part centers around Iceland, but I guess you'd need a larger map to permit some long range carrier operations (IIRC in the book Iceland was one of the first to fall to the Soviets as they used it to take control of the GIUK Gap and station bombers to interdict the zone to Allied convoys and carrier groups). Oh, BTW, during WW2 it was invaded by the Allies (can't remember if they were neutral at the time or not) in order, already at the time, to secure the Atlantic North for convoys; that would limit the potential for campaign, unless you decide that the Germans moved first, sub hunting from a plane in WW2 being far from fascinating with the SF series (or any other).

Nope, most if not all went to Israël, the Iranian Revolution was in 1979 and I think that at the time a lot of tooling and spare parts were either in Iran or underway and some planes were already in the region, Israël first F-16 were oficially delivered around 1980/81 IIRC and Venezuela only acquired theirs later in 1984/85, I think they were one of the target market for the F-20 or the re-engined F-16 which delayed things. We could simply go to F-16.net to have the definitive answer I guess.

Iceland has been independent since late in WW2, and even before it was mostly a symbolical part of the Danish crown I think, Commonwealth style... The move toward independance was gradual and started in late 19th, early 20th, WW2 only accelerated things as Iceland ended up isolated and then invaded. Baltika, as everyone I look forward to test your work...

The trouble is that some older drivers don't play nice with some other games and gaining shadows in SF but losing Trainz (well, using OpenGL might save the day though) is a trade-off I might not make, thanks for the tip anyway, I'll wait until I can get the new rig operationnal to try drivers.

Thanks for the quick answer guys. So far no luck with drivers change on a 7900GTX (using 169.21, 169.44 or 175.16) and I can't test on a 9800GTX yet, that was a good suggestion though, didn't think to check with different driver versions. Well, I've lived without shadows so far, I might go back to that if there's no other way.

Actually, it is not B.O. or S.O. but S.C. then, according to the link already provided by gwar...

Lexx, there is a difference between pushing the limits of the engine to reproduce something making sense (even in strange contexts, such as introducing planes and weapons from Macross/Ace Combat...) and another to just touch everything seamingly at random and with goals not making much sense to my eyes... I come from software, meaning I favor a methodic, controlled approach to tinkering, not just changing things at random and make conjectures at what happens even though you don't understand how it was working beforehand. My philosophy is to first understand the system, and then only push its limits, not do it "accidentally"; blind tinkering is for me a desperate action. And I'm very aware of your own experiments, some are very very interesting indeed, I like your cirrus particularly. I have nothing against tinkering, I just see Basher's experiments as anarchic, uncontrolled, with little understanding of both how the stock game works (knowledge he acquires with his experiments, that's one way of doing it, just not mine) and how things work in reality (adding smoke trails to smokeless missiles, removing contrails...), but that doesn't mean it's wrong, his ideas are stupid or that tinkering in general is a problem, just that, at the present moment, I can't understand what he is after and why. Basher, don't mind me, keep experimenting, we all have our own way to learn and work, that I, or anyone, disapprove of yours doesn't mean you should stop, on the contrary, we're all happy to benefit from what you may learn or discover we wouldn't have thought of with our own methods.

The words above Paragon are "trade mark"... nothing exciting alas... On the second picture it might be S.O. rather than B.O. but havin the real objects on hands I guess you are right on the B part. Nice find anyway, once restored it will look very nice...

Sexier is a question of taste, what you can't deny though is that she definitely is the one with the most grace, almost bird-like.

Spinners, I guess you are both right, the pun being to good for a pilot to pass up when it's justified... Now, let's concentrate on drooling, the bird craig's working on being one of the most elegant ever to fly.

No problem Jug, especially since I never said otherwise, my wording was just far too imprecise.

Damn, so many choices... Tristan, sorry to have forgotten you (especially since I still use your desert tiles for some installs), but I don't have it around and you apparently pulled it out of CA. Anyway, I'll have to find some infinite free time and some graphic talent now that I got into my small brain to introduce seasons into WoEinWoI -_- (the WoI engine inherited seasons from FE, and they work fine).

OT : Sparkomatic, actually, it wasn't the F-20 thread as the F-20 already HAD a name, Tigershark, you probably are thinking of the F-29 threads, of which there are two, one discussing the plane, the other discussing the name, no problem here... ;) Craig> She's absolutely gorgeous, I always had a soft spot for her and her tragic history, so symbolic of the organised destruction of the british aeronautic industry.

Basher> Oh, you changed the picture, too bad I didn't see it earlier... Wrench> He actually WANTS to get rid of contrails and smoke emission for whatever reason, probably "immersion", like having thousands of missiles launching at extreme range, with all seeing sensors... Or maybe just because in a sim he knows already, things aren't done that way; in which case I don't quite get the point of playing another sim if you are going to make it a replica of the game you left. I don't get what he wants or why he would break a game to the point of it being utter nonsense, but I just don't care anymore, it's easier to help him in his "experiments" than trying to talk some sense into him.

That's because you commented both the ExhaustEmitter and the ExhaustPosition, which is needed by the AB IIRC as there is no specific position for AfterburnerExhaust; Use : //ExhaustEmitterName=CleanExhaustEmitter ExhaustPosition=-0.70,-6.50,-0.00 and //ExhaustEmitterName=CleanExhaustEmitter ExhaustPosition=0.70,-6.50,-0.00 for the other engine and you should get the AB back. Also, it is strange that you would get smoke in static missions but not dynamic ones with the same plane, there's no way to tell that to the engine AFAIK, I'll test it. PS : Couldn't reproduce it with a stock, patched install; The F-15A uses the CleanEmitter in both cases. Are you sure you were not in afterburner when you didn't saw the exhaust trail, or that you were not shot by something, it may happen that a lucky shot kills your engines without setting you aflame, you then would effectively be flying without engines and thus you wouldn't have exhaust trails, which might be more logical if you didn't saw it in static missions, as the stock ones pit you against close bogeys on a frontal approach, giving them a chance to shoot you fast.

CleanExhaustEmitter still has smoke emission IIRC, the absence of emitter is actually the solution used by TW for the A-10A in WoE ^^

I suppose you could nicely ask Armourdave (or Sundowner, who seems more active around here) if he still has the 3ds files for his F.6 and if he would allow you to use it as a basis, provided he still has it. That way would be nice and friendly without raising any touchy subject.

Yes, if you wish to make clean engines you'll have to edit the /objects/aircraft/[aircraft]/[aircraft]_DATA.ini (or extract that file from /objects/objectdata.cat and place it there then edit it). The lines you want to edit are those starting with ExhaustEmitterName Then you have 2 options, the easy one and the hardest one. a) The easy is simply replacing the line by a void line : Change "ExhaustEmitterName=DirtyExhaustEmitter" with "ExhaustEmitterName=" (you should think of adding the void line and commenting the original one for easy reference, meaning the entry would look like : //ExhaustEmitterName=DirtyExhaustEmitter ExhaustEmitterName= b) The "harder" would consist of the same as above, but instead of removing the emitter name, you would change it to something like VeryCleanExhaustEmitter, and then create a INI file for this emitter in the /effects directory. That would also allow you to add emitters either dirtier or cleaner, per plane, instead of using the same for every (class of) plane, but that needs a little more work and is not necessary if your goal is to completely get rid of those trails. From a realism point of view, I advise not removing them, and making checking some replacement effects for "more beautiful" trails, I think Deuces and CA Stary made some. I never tried removing condensation trails so I can't give you pointers for these, I doubt they are plane dependent and are probably something you'd find in the FLIGHTENGINE.INI

A picture might be needed for a definitive answer, but the answer's probably yes. Jets from that era had smoky, or even very smoky engines, even today most engines aren't completely clean. At high altitude you also have white condensation trails.

OK, I'm curious, does Razbam tileset allow for highway strips ? Does it add anything in term of objectives, features, airbase design ?

I would suggest something, but since some people would deem it illegal, piracy, heresy and would launch a holy crusade to cleanse the surface of the earth of the very mention of a program able to open a WAV file (do you realise ? With that you could open a file created by someone else, modify it and release it, without crediting the original author if you are a complete jerk, this kind of thing should not be allowed), I'd rather not. Kidding and bitter sarcasm aside, have you tried Audacity (link), it's overkill but would allow nearly any manipulation you may wish, but most audio softwares should suffice to manipulate a WAV file.