alexis99

A thousand thanks. I bit the bullet and downloaded the free Yankee Air Pirate mod. Such a plethora of really cool feature to play with. All the appropriate aircraft have animated brake chutes, canopies, and refuel probes. There is even one where the ammunition loading panel opens up to reveal the gun. Not important to flying a mission, but cool nonetheless. It has Vietcong troops ready to be cluster-bombed, and paratroopers and other friendly ground troops are available to go into transport aircraft. You can actually load soldiers onto underwing racks in bombers, which looks really stupid, but I had to try. It's what you call a cornucopia

Well, I have the visual models of brake chutes installed now. I realise this may be old news, but the Yankee Air Pirate Mod has brake chute animations which are triggered by the Bay-door command. Ctrl+O. They are installed on all the Vietnam aircraft that should have them. There's a lot of other cool stuff that the modders have come up with in that free-to-download package. This is why I've always whined about the general modder community not working together to share discoveries that every modder could use.

Since we were talking about drogue chutes, I did some research on War Thunder Wiki, and they claim that the following aircraft have drogue chutes: UK: HUNTER FGA.9, JAGUAR GR1, JAGUAR GR.1A, LIGHTNING F.6, LIGHTNING F.53, PHANTOM FG.1, PHANTOM FGR.2, EUROFIGHTER TYPHOON US: F-4C, F4E, F4J, F-5E, F-105D,F-104C, F-104A, F-100D, F-5A, F-5C, F-84F FRANCE: F-84F, F-84F IAF, S.O.4050 VAUTOUR, VAUTOUR IIA IDF/A, ETENDARD IVM, F-86K, F-100D, JAGUAR A, JAGUAR E, MILAN, SUPER MYSTERE B2, MIRAGE 5F, MIRAGE F1C, MIRAGE F1C-200,MIRAGE F1CT, MIRAGE IIIC, MIRAGE IIIE, MIRAGE 2000C-S5, MIRAGE 2000D-R1 There are lots of aircraft from other countries, if you are interested. You can fit a working drogue chute on any aircraft that should have one, even though it won't have a visual model. In the aircraft DATA file you add this notation to the fuselage: SystemName[NEXT NUMBER]=BrakeChute Further down, next to airbrakes for neatness, you add this: [BrakeChute] SystemType=AIRBRAKE DeployTime=3.0 RetractTime=1.5 AnimationID=10 DragArea=30.00 MaxDeploySpeed=87.45 BlowbackSpeed=89.45 FullyDeployOnGround=TRUE The above is what I borrowed from the F-117 and use on the F-4E. The F-117 has a beautiful visual model of a drogue parachute, but you can't have that. I adjusted the MaxDeploySpeed (given in metres per second) to170 kts, which is probably the highest speed you would land. I haven't a clue what blowback speed is. I just changed it to have a corresponding relationship with MaxDeploy. If the chute isn't slowing you down enough, you can change the Drag Area. You're welcome

That's interesting. Thank you Gepard and Wrench. So the follow up question is what effect does it have on airbrakes? Would it blow the airbrake back to its retracted position? And if the airbrake is a fake chute, then would it figuratively release the chute and return the aircraft to a no brake chute situation? I think I'll investigate this further.

Indeed. We might have what we have, but a few quick flicks of the pen and we can introduce a feature that he did not implement. Wonder what else is in there? We can also fix his failures, like badly calibrated AOA indexers. The information is in the Flight Manuals that are out there on websites, available to buy as CD downloads, or professionally published. When I come in to land in my A-6A, the indexers and gauge are on the money for speed and altitude. It is actually not rocket science.

Very old news Then why didn't you tell me about it?

I think the old Thrustmaster stuff is wearing out a bit. I am assuming you use Thrustmaster. If not, my apologies. I have the Warthog Throttle. I use the ECM switch for ECM and autopilot for Wing Leveller. Occasionally when I switch the ECM on, the Wing Leveller takes over, even though they are both completely different commands. So I had to remap the ECM to my Virpil panel. You may have something like that occurring. Jettison Weapons and Jettison Tanks are definitely two different commands. I have them mapped to my Virpil Panel, and those switches have not crosstalked so far.

What I miss most from the SF1 version of Vietnam is all those little bunches of troops and the Vietcong cyclists pedalling furiously through forest trails. And then you dive in with a bunch of cluster bombs and annihilate them. I loved that. Would you be kind enough to tell me if YAP RW has ground troops.

I forgot to add 9. Screen Wiper (Buccaneer). Or as it says in the Data file "Whyper". It's a beautifully clever animation.

Does anybody know what blowback speed is?

Fascinating. Thank you. I stand corrected. Actually, I now see where my mistake arose. On War Thunder Wiki, where I did my initial research, the article was entitled "Category:Aircraft with drogue parachute", and I just continued with their terminology. They don't have any articles about drag parachutes. Wikpedia says "A drogue parachute is a parachute designed for deployment from a rapidly-moving object. It can be used for various purposes, such as to decrease speed, to provide control and stability, or as a pilot parachute to deploy a larger parachute".

The thing that astonished me was that there are so many of these native aircraft that have the ability to display an opening/closing canopy, but are inactive. Why would they add that feature and then not use it? A bit like the fact that there is a drogue-chute key in SF1, but its use has never been implemented. Now if Wrench can't find the tutorial in the Knowledge base, then how am I supposed to? There is no Modder consensus. I complained (or whined if you prefer) about the fact that Modders used different Animation keys to activate the same features, and said it would be a good idea if everybody stuck to the same keys. Wrench replied that it was a good idea, but I might have trouble getting the modders to agree. Anyway, I convert everything to my own list 1. Canopy (including wing fold, if connected) 2.Trail Decoy (Super Hornet) 3. Air refuel probe 4. Extend antennae (F-117) 5. Slimers (Super Hornet) 6. Night Vision goggles (AV-8B plus) 7. Wing Fold (when not connected to canopy) 8. Back seat cockpit (Tornado - Tonka) All these keys are attached to switches on my Virpil panel That's the beauty of SF, you can tweak everything your own way.

Your Super Hornet is pretty Super

Incidentally, you have to remove the 10 here AnimationID=10 Otherwise, when you land in the F-105 and the chute kicks in, the cockpit flips open. That prompted me to investigate canopy animations as in the next thread

Then don't use it.

Oh gosh, Eurofighter Typhoon is in the list. It already exists, and it has an amazing cockpit.

Lockheed F-94 Starfire Grumman F9f Panther F-35 Lightning II A,B, AND C Mirage 2000D These aircraft already exist in SF2. I've been flying the Panther in Korea for ages. Razbam even made a cockpit for it. Starfire has a great cockpit. Is there something wrong with these aircraft as is, or are you just wanting to upgrade?

Well it is not stealthy for starters. But no aircraft in SF2 is stealthy when it is up against another aircraft. Air to air combat is down to who has the longest range missiles. The RCS entry in the aircraft DataFile just decides how likely SAMs and Triple-A are likely to shoot at you and hit you. That's why I keep returning to the A-6. Moving mud is more honest than loading up with the longest range AMRAAM you can lay your hands on. And that's why I really stopped being interested in the F-14. You plough grooves in the sky until the enemy aircraft show up on your radar. You shootlist them for four Phoenix at 100 miles, and you launch four missiles, one after the other. After a while the enemy aircraft blow up and you get to land on the carrier (The most exciting part)

I did rework it myself. But naturally I couldn't add things that belong in the real cockpit which SF2 does not support. Eventually I got so fed up with it that I decided I'd go for the Helmet HUD. I did the same for the EF2000. That cockpit is beautiful, but you have to zoom out too wide to see the MFDs, and much of the fine detail just jiggles when the cockpit moves. So Helmet HUD it is. I don't know about the flight model, because that's one of the few aircraft for which I don't have a pilot's manual.

This is my favourite cockpit It's an F-35A Helmet display. The design of the RWR is slightly modified from Eric J's Superhornet

How rude

Ully understood. And perhaps Ully can tell me what words I should have used, since he wrote: "He just didn't choose the right words to express himself". If you're looking for rudeness just read the comments made against me for suggesting we might make cockpits for existing aircraft that just have placeholders. Apparently, making suggestions is whining. I'll choose some different words myself: Good luck with the project. I believe the aircraft we already have are abundant and magnificent, and I personally do not need any more. I would rather effort was put into making cockpits for aircraft like the B-2 Spirit that only has a placeholder cockpit. But saying that is whining. And I was told that making cockpits is difficult and time consuming, which I already knew. Now if cockpits are difficult and time consuming to make, then whilst you may come up with working models of new aircraft fairly rapidly, you may have to wait some time for a cockpit to be available for each one. Unless you're going AI only. Or using placeholders. Just saying

Lot of ruffled feathers here. You gotta laugh

Actually, I don't care. We already have some of the greatest aircraft already available. But I don't blame any of you for dreaming....

Yes, that's how I do it. I go into the F-117 data file and steal the little section on drag chute, and put it into my chuteless aircraft. Then I take the name of the drag chute section, let's say [DragChute] and add it to the end of the system list in the tail section of the aircraft. You don't need a visible model. Most drag chute operations in SF2 are created as an extra airbrake with operation channelled by your normal airbrakes being out and your wheels on the ground. Back in SF1, I fitted one of these virtual airbrakes to an F-16, because that was what I was flying then. I tried removing the "wheels on ground" instruction to see what would happen. When I hit the airbrake the darn thing nearly fell out of the sky. That helped me adjust the efficiency of the drag chute.