Julhelm

Well the thing is experience from Iran vs Iraq doesn't really matter when that experience is against an opponent just as pathetic as yourself. The standards of the USAF are infinitely higher compared to those of Israel, who in turn has consistently spanked the various arab forces despite being outnumbered and the opponents having decent tech. So it probably doesn't matter what equipment you give arabs, because they'll be completely worthless when it comes to using it. You could have given the Iraqis F-22's and they'd still get the s**t kicked out of them 12-0.

Well I'm sure the pathetic training standards of the serbian and various arab airforces have something to do with the kill ration.

I know this guy. He's lead artist at Ubisoft Massive in Malmö.

Testing the cockpit lighting: Ford of VFN-90 prowling the desert skies:

File Name: F4D-1 Skyray File Submitter: Julhelm File Submitted: 16 Oct 2008 File Category: US Navy Aircraft F4D-1 Skyray V1.0 Credits: Model/Cockpit/Textures/Weapons: Julhelm Flight Model: Column5 Hangar Painting: Julhelm Many thanks to Kesselbrut for allowing me to use his excellent RA-5C gauge textures in my cockpit! --------------------------------------------- Features: * Virtual cockpit * Extensive exterior detail * Accurate markings for VF-102 and VF(AW)-3 * Pitch Trimmers that can be operated with the thrust vector keys * Fueltanks with unit-specific markings * Custom FFAR Rocketpods with radar targeting and which can be used by the AI when attacking aircraft! --------------------------------------------- Installation notes: Simply extract the F4D-1 folder into your Objects\Aircraft folder, the files in the F4D-1 Weapons folder into your weapons folder and then add the info contained in the two text files to their respective target files (gundata and weapondata) and run the editors to compile the files. --------------------------------------------- Legal s**t: This file cannot be used in any payware packages or such, it also cannot be changed or tampered with in any way, or uploaded in any shape or form by a third party without my consent or permission. Failure to adher to these rules will be punished by summary execution by firing squad - Your next of kin shall be billed for the expended cartridge. You have been warned. ------------------------------------------ Nils 'Julhelm' Dücker Click here to download this file

We used to get what was known as "gold cans" where they were just nondescript brass cans labeled "food" and could be either peasoup (which was awesome) or hotdog with beans and tomatosauce (known as "dead mans finger".

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the "new" engine ends up looking exactly like what we have now.

Well he'd only have to match what you've been doing for it to look considerably better. If you compare, say, stock Israel map with your modded one, it makes all the difference in the world. And he has the resources to actually make those kinds of visuals run optimized if he wanted to. But I guess it makes more business sense to spend the resources on modelling more planes and keep the same ugly environment and then complain about how noone buys the expansions.

I like those cirrus clouds a lot. The most annoying thing with TK is that he doesn't seem to understand that improving environment visuals goes a long way towards drawing in more customers compared to adding whatever new plane. I mean, if you look at a screenshot of SF2 with one of Stary's mods, it almost looks like jet-wings of prey. If you look at the stock game, it looks ugly and 10 years dated, no matter how nice the aircraft models are. It's like having a beatdown s**tbox and only ever putting new rims on it. And what really ticks me off is that I know from experience that a lot of these effects like SSAO and DoF that are industry standard today are not only well documented, but can be coded into a rendering engine with a few days of work. And it'd make things look a lot better.

You have a pretty nasty smoothing error on the intake, probably caused by the wing intersection. The rudder also seems to have some wierd shading, like both sides share the same smoothing group. I'd really like to see an AO bake on that thing, though. It'd really make it stand out even better than it does now.

Do an AO bake as well so it doesn't look so flat where pieces intersect. Otherwise it looks good.

Here's what I have so far in dx10. There's lower ambient lighting and more directional light from the sun so as to give it more contrast. No luck in getting the greenish tint, though. Also I've tweaked the postprocess shader to increase the bloom effect. This drowns out the horizon but can be counteracted somewhat I think by tweaking the horizoncolor values. At any rate it only becomes a problem during dawn/dusk when all of a sudden it looks as if a nuke went off. Play around with it and see where you end up. Juls_Envtweaks.rar

I honestly think his sales would improve if he tried more to improve the visuals. The stock lighting in these games is atrociously bad, and it's not all that difficult to fix, either. The main problem with SF2 is that while you can improve the contrast a bit by tweaking environmentsystem, there's no way at all to do any kind of color correction like in WoP. So no matter how you tweak the values you end up with the same bland all-white lightmodel. Maybe you should go post these before-after screenies at his forum. If we had this kind of vivid lighting + dx10 normalmapping and tweaked bloom it wouldn't look so dated anymore.

We should just petition TK to add the color correction palette to the SF2 titles. He could code that in a day if he wanted to.

Looking good! Too bad we can't do the same in SF2. I'd really like the ability to use a custom palette for each terrain to do color correction.

Dude, I'm talking about exporting it with normalmaps to bring some added surface detail, not remodelling anything.

Hey XRay, are you planning on doing any normalmaps for the Blackbird? The real thing has some interesting deformations on panels as well as the distinctive ribbing which would really stand out if you ramp up the specular a bit.

Hey Dave, try lowering the gloss value and ramping up reflection a bit on that cat and see how it looks.

Oh, it's BPAO's model? I thought it was Flying Toasters.

The Cat looks good but I think the metal parts like the nozzles and leading edges should have more specular and reflection on them. It's easy to do in max by assigning a new material to those parts.

Would this work? It's an F-22 derivative, after all.

As far as air combat movies go, the best ones are all from the 1950's. The Hunters, Flying Leathernecks, Bridges of Toko-Ri... Definitely prefer Flight of the Intruder to Top Gun. As far as Iron Eagle goes, I actually find the third movie to be the most watchable of the bunch. It's got both warbirds and the ARES in it, for crying out loud. If you want a really good action movie about flying, check out Deadly Encounter.

What's so good about Top Gun again other than it has tons of well-oiled men in towels? There's what, two fights in the entire movie - one of which is in the beginning and the other in the end. The rest of it consists of training. Sure the footage is cool but as an action film it's an absolute bore. It's like watching a Rambo movie where Rambo spends the entire movie at the range.

Iron Eagle > Top Gun

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