Lexx_Luthor

Yes, that's the best way to do it. Almost ready, just thinking how to do it.

Tristan:: A bad Siberian Sun is on the rise. Give me "2 days" or so. Its better than the Old One.

**UPDATE 1.2 CONTENTS** Removed all files for my personal Enviro mods, as the New Sun effect did not seem to work properly when I recently patched up to the latest Patch (new sun caused black hole in the sky for example). Enviro mod and *new* new sun and star effects will have to be offered seperately for better download support. This has taught me a lesson to be fully Patched with everybody else before releacing any mods. I seemed to have found that the sim's custom Effects Details grafix option must be set to MEDIUM or HIGH. At the LOW setting, some important nucular effects will not show. Fixed a minor but potentially confusing Flight Engine file instruction regarding FarClip distances.

There may be a Problem. I finally Patched up to the vert latest SF version, and the New Sun would not work -- just a black hole in the sky. Something changed in the Patch. So, I had to radically re-do how I did the sun, and its even better, but I'll have to update the releace to note this. And, I found out, the nucular effects require the custom Effect Details graphix be set to Medium or High. Low setting causes some important effects not to show.

littlesmoke, you seem to be getting working contrails. I've never gotten them to work with the default grafix Blendop mode, and had to change it. My contrails always cut off when seen from most viewing angles. Your multiple contrails in your pic show many viewing angles to the contrails.

Mirage IVA would be something new for The Sims, never seen before. However, we really need TK to support some new features, for example, like placeble and functional ground radar stations that can make intruding aircraft more detectable to defending AI interceptors -- say -- if a plane is within ground radar coverage, its "visibility distance" is increased by a factor determined by the ground radar's in-game performance data. Something very simplified like that.

jtin:: I'll probably poast a thread at ThirdWire Modder's Corner about what to do to chop the cockpits. Your poast here did remind me to backup my new findings about this. That was the one thing I have not done yet, and a "USAFMTL-esque" style hard drive crash (a crash with no backup) would have set me back to having nothing. Thanks for making me think. It took quite a bit of work with a hex editor to get the results I desired, and I wouldn't want to do it again.

Alright, enough! Time to find out something. I had "read" that the B-70 cruised at its design speed without afterburner. The afterburners were otherwise used for two (2) reasons... (1) The extra thrust was needed to punch through the *higher* drag at the *lower* speeds below the wave-riding Mach 3 speed, as the aerodynamics were optimized for that Mach 3 low drag wave riding cruise speed. (2) In case one or two engines failed, afterburning could be used to maintain the top cruise speed. If the bomber somehow got below the wave-riding optimized top speed, and with loss of some engines, then it could not achieve that Mach 3 speed again as it did not have the power to satisfy reason (1) poasted above. What makes me think this could be true is that the B-70 was supposed to directly replace the B-52 for long range SAC operations. That to me says non-afterburning Mach 3 cruise. All this was possible only because of the wave rider concept optimized for Mach 3 at high altitude, thus true supercruise long before the F-22 superHudMFDjetfighter of Teh Combat Flight Sims. It still sounds crazy but just crazy enough to be possibly true. Am I making this up? Yes? No?

Just a PluGG for getting Wings Over Vietnam. Example -- chopped A-7 cockpit used inside Pasko's and Team's stunningly 3D B-58 external model crew compartment... GET TEH WOV -- The ThirdWire NAVY cockpits may never again become available.

Dante, I don't *see* clouds, I see generalized fog. Interesting texture. Can you collect them into well isolated large clumps, to represent large towering cumulus clouds that look hard edged from a long distance from the player's cockpit? I'm thinking that fewer larger clouds, with significant spacing between them would conserve performance as compared to the dense packed layers of industry standard "flight sim" white flak puff clouds. Can you do something new with these textures, never done before? I don't recall the season the Falklands war was fought, but it was winter down there I think, correct? Maybe you are modelling the drab wintery overcast kind of cloud cover we see in winter in the northern hemisphere. The mental Psycho image I have of the cold winter sea off Argentina is the same I have of the grey skies of the northern Atlantic. Your clouds, or fog, does match that image, if it is correct of course.

Basically, if YOU have the resources to endlessly add new flyable aircraft, like Maddox Games in Russia offering addons with dozens of flyable cockpits, then you don't need to open aircraft to modding. Otherwise, its not a bad idea. The rather limited planeset of the Falklands seems ideal for a good start with not too many flyable aircraft needed, but if the terrain/weapons are open to modding, other theaters present themselves, if not to you, then to the 3rd Party modders. Can you make almost any aircraft desired? If not, the 3rd Parties can. A4-AR Dante, please note that those opposed to open modding and accuse others of "arcade"are very hostile and bitter Old Timer computer gamers that do not represent a reliable customer base for any business, except *possibly* under an online Pay-To-Play business model. Its not "50/50" for/against open modding, as the majority of future potential customers, assuming market success, will not be hostile angry Old Timer computer gamers, but silent customers. Always ignore hostile computer gamers that insult the combat flight sim community and that insult your paying customers. Always. Many businesses have Bouncers that protect the majority of customers from the hostility and insults of an angry few. The StrikeFighters/Wings Over Vietnam series aircraft can stall, as well as fully model the entire flight envelope, but its up to the "hardcore" FM modder who has the time and skills. The developer decided not to include stalls, and I can agree, given the one-man team developing that sim series. Boopidoo's Su-15 with cockpit is perhaps the greatest 3rd Party aircraft modding advance in the SF/WoV series. Su-15 ~> http://www.aerospace.boopidoo.com/ Finally, a real Sukhoi in a combat flight sim. Would an established sim developer ever consider creating classic Soviet PVO interceptors or USAF Air Defence Command interceptors?

You can follow the discussion at the link below, where Dueces dragged me kicking and wailing through Terrain Editor when I was just starting out. It does work well once you get into it, and there's an updated version. There's alot of little bizzare tricks to get the TE to work, but works very well when you figure it out. If you pursue this, you can add to the TE Learning Thread if you wish, and bump it up a bit on the board. TE Learning Thread ~> http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=8781

A number of 3rd Party radars were porked in a recent patch early last year. What you do, is convert the radar tga file/files to bmp files. The Su-15 has only a blank tga file, so any black painted bmp file will do. Other aircraft radars have green grids and stuff on the tga files, so require conversion of tga to bmp. This was Tristan's idea, and it works. Other aircraft that I recall are F-111 series, some say MiG-21 series, etc... Page 3 of Boopidoo's Su-15 releace thread ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p...sc&start=16

Thanks csb. Get a limited "free" PhotoBucket account, I am amazed at how it Rules. They now auto generate the pic code for placing into forum poasts. If you must, start a thread here asking how to poast pics. The same way works for all webboards. ~> http://photobucket.com/

Try moving the default text file out of the folder. There's another default file, not a text file, and maybe the game reads that to generate another text file if the text file is not there. Dunno. Tip for the future -- make a New Folder in the Controls folder, re-name it Copy of Controls, and copy the default files into that extra folder. D:\SF\Controls\Copy of Controls ... that second folder will always have what you like backed up and the game won't touch it. That won't protect you from hard drive failure. To do that, you need all your SF stuff on another drive or CD/DVD....or floppies.

John:: Check for spelling errors in your weapondata file. That hits alot of folks, especially in computer programming, and Finance/Banking too. One spelling error or dropped zero and its blown. If that's not it, you mangled something else. What files? What changes? csb:: csb, just to make sure, you do not have to Delete any lensflares in your Enviro file, just convert the [027] "lensflare-which-is-not-a-lensflare" as you noted and follow the other Install file's New Sun instructions, provided I crafted those instructions correctly. Camera lensflares and the [027] "lensflare-which-is-not-a-lensflare" effect are independent -- Only the camera lensflares respond to the Lensflare ON/OFF option, [027] does not (the proof its not really a lensflare). I'd love to see others' screenshots of New Sun to make sure its working for others, or if I porked the instructions. Camera lensflares, and new SF sun, working together....I normally don't use lensflares either, but I turned them on for this display.

hehe thanks. Got screenshots? 30,000 feet? pffft 30Mt cloud tops out at maybe 150,000 feet, and lasts for a few hours game time. I'm slightly increasing the effects here, for an update. You can make the small yield effects far more detailed for tactical ops, but I assume dozens and dozens of these large cloud formations be visible across the map under a strategic warfare environment, so I try to economize on the number of "emitter particles" and stuff. Tip:: Something I naturally "forgot" to include in the install advice ... you can ramp up the game's external Free Camera altitude limit of 100,000 feet (if I recall that). Its in the FlightEngine.ini file. I set mine to... [WorldSettings] SectorWidth=20 SectorHeight=20 SectorMaxObject=256 Border=20100 MinHeight=0.5 MaxHeight=1E+6 Thats in meters, thus, for me, 1000km. And to make use of this extra distance, scale up the camera translation speed/acceleration. Advice for that are in the Add To FlightEngine install advice. At least I remembered to include that. I also "forgot" to put in the ThirdWire webboard link...had the "~>" dropped into the file, but I didn't include the link. I'll do it here... Linky ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3970 ... I could use some critiques and advice. More info I "forgot" to offer -- In all the nuke effects files, ALL lenght values (all distances, Emission Volume, etc...) are in meters, often with "calculator style" scientific notation of E+3 to readily allow mental conversion of the base to kilometers. Times are in seconds, Table-Time values are decimal fractions of particle lifetime. Emission Rates are not rates but their multiplicative inverses (time periods), in seconds, between particle emissions. I'm not sure what units the Emission Velocity uses, but I played with values until it seemed to work for me. For those thinking of using the nucks in WoE campaign, if it can handle them, think of adding MontyCZ's Yak-28 bomber. Its at colum5's pure Cold War downloads, on page 3 ~> http://www.column5.us/aircraft.shtml Somebody was working a TSR.3 (or was it .2?), you know the cancelled British supersonic bomber. F-111 may also be useful in WoE. F-111 series by the Vark Team is available at CombatAce. Amazing F-111 cockpit by Mike Werner here ~> http://www.schmidtwerner.de/products/f-111_pit.html I always thought F-5A and F-5E would be interesting additions to WoE, its also at C5's pure Cold War downloads, and with a very immersive pure daylight fighter F-5 cockpit.

Wow, I didn't know this thread was here. Must be auto generated. Hazen:: With my Enviro file, or your Enviro file? You may be missing a tga file, or a badly spelled file name in some ini file. Vikingo:: I don't have WoE, but bigal and Veltro have, and they got the nukes working in WoE. That was a big relief to me. Be sure to know how to work the Weapon Editor, and how to access the MissileObject.ini file hidden in the ObjectData cat file. Pay attention to the artificial fuzing distance instructions -- hopefully we can use a more natural method. Also, the nuke warhead types are not fully functional in the SF series weapons, so use High Explosive but with very large explosive mass, say 1E+10 or 1E+11 and work up or down from there as you desire, depending on weapon yield.

Tip...to see the neatest thing, let AI drop a bomb about 10km away from you -- depending on yield -- the larger the yield, the further away for best visual effect. And change mission time to night. The early fiery effects work best in darkness.

Hey Veltro, you got into the nucular club. Thanks for the screenshot --- I need more groundcloud puffs. I need to decrease the EmissionRate for the groundcloud. The variable is mis-named, as its not a rate which would be emissions per second, but time period between emissions. To increase the number of groundcloud puffs, you decrease the EmissionRate number.

Interesting stuff. Test ~~> look head on, with smoke trail, engage afterburners. The smoke turns off when afterburners are running. See if framerate goes up and down with the afterburner on and off. BE SURE to allow time for the smoke trail to dissipate and regenerate. It lasts some time. Particle density. Head on they all overlap, that is interesting. I *may* have noticed the same thing in making stem clouds. Looking from the side, okay. Taking external camera to the top and looking down the stem interior, lower framerate. I didn't conduct any experiments with this, just hazy kinda memory about this. What happens when you look tail on, from behind the smoke trail? One thing you might could do is reduce the EmissionRate of the particles.

Hi Veltro. Did you find MissileObject file? That's possibly what you are missing. You have to extract it from the ObjectData cat file found in Object folder. CombatAce has the extractor tool. If that's not the problem, we keep going until you are up and Nuking. Hang in there!

What changes?

mmm, if its there, check in the ObjectData cat file and extract it. You made some mistakes... (1) KT300Effects ... not KT300Effect (2) As far as we know, the Fission (or Fusion) warhead types don't entirely work. Use High Explosive, and use, say, 1E+11 explosive mass and work up or down from there to your desire. See the thread below, by Showtime. We finally traced a problem to the HE mass... Weapon Editor, by Showtime ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3961 Eventually I'll be doing some experiments and figure out what high explosive masses are needed for the various warhead yields. I suggest 200m fuzing distance. All the KT/MT grafix are designed for 200m.

Man that's cool. kout if possible make sure the model has a working interior canopy framework, as this would be excellent to slip a cockpit inside the 3D model. The Valiant/Victor series and MiG-25, for examples that I recall now, seem to have some kind of one-sided canopy framework that vanishes from the inside. Check out the inside of the stock An-12 crew compartment. That's the most interesting of all, along with the amazing 3D canopy framework on the B-58 model's crew compartment.