Dante-JT

It is with deep sadness that I inform that our beloved friend and lead developer, Steven Dobbs, passed away this last Saturday, victim of a terminal cancer. He was battling this illness for a long time, which caused the silence and distance to projects such as this one, since he had a much larger priority at hand. However, he instructed us to move forward regardless of his ultimate fate, and we will do so, to keep his memory and to fulfill his wish. Steven will be greatly missed.

jeanba, thanks for the words to him. gO_oSe, we still have a huge bottleneck regarding aircraft system simulations. We always had, stuff like HUDs with several modes (air-to-air, air-to-ground, CCIP, multi-mode fire control systems such as the Agave and the Blue Fox, even the Harrier GR3 laser) they seem quite simple in an aviation related stand point, but for software development in a small team (2 or 3 devs) they are a massive effort which always made JT almost an impossible dream. Everything else, like graphics, large terrain rendering, 3D cockpits, flight modeling, network/multiplayer, missions and campaigns, even VR Oculus Rift support from the ground up, which is cutting edge tech, are all well within our capabilities. But avionics again, they're always the barrier were we stuck. Much like the sound barrier before the Bell X-1. So, we're doing the MB-339 now, as it is one of the less "avionics intensive" *jets* of this conflict, at least it gets the ball rolling again. As a trainer it has a simple reflector gunsight, radio, basic IFR instruments, but was able to attack and damage the HMS Argonaut in one of the most daring attacks of the war. It's best than to have very (systems-wise) incomplete Harriers, A-4, Mirages or Etendards, which will not be a good first sight for a new sim platform. Thanks again for your words, guys.

Not really, this new engine/project has nothing to do with the original Jet Thunder of years ago, which is dead. The original developer of the Jet Thunder you know from years ago, is battling cancer, sadly. This one is a fresh start, even the art assets are being remade to up-to-date standards. But rest assured that now with a modern tool set and less ambitious goals it will not take much longer to enter in an early publicly playable state.

Aermacchi MB-339 and its 'nemesis', the HMS Argonaut Leander class frigate: https://www.facebook.com/JetThunder/videos/964788650222147

Video actually recorded by Steve this time. Anyway, I was pleased with the new cameras showed (like at 1:04 to 1:21), and you can see the first glimpse of the ground war, also naval fire support by the british frigate firing in the argentine troops in the hill in the very first moments of the video. Ground clutter is mostly made of placeholders, but even so it added a lot to the enviroment, specially the boulders in the hillsides. Also very noticeable is how WIP is the sound - it has been overlooked unfortunately as we focused in the visual department. And the Pucará cockpit is not displaying the cockpit glass for some reason (probably very simple to fix).

In the address below: http://www.cleared-to-engage.com/2010/08...on-jet-thunder/ I think it's a interesting read for anyone who has interest in realistic flight sims and the current challenges to develop them.

Here are some from the new Harrier Gr.3 cockpit which is much more detailed than anything we had before: And this from a day or so ago, whith less parts textured and less weathering in the canopy arc (maybe better):

Thanks. Latest images I've been posted are not rendered, are all in-game: The problem was that the game was getting obsolete, and what we're doing now is refactoring it completely, with the help of Aerosoft, to make it look up-to-date. The Pucará cockpit will look absolutely amazing, it's being done with every single detail taken into account, and with clickable buttons. -- Español: Gracias. Las últimas imágenes que han sido publicadas no son renders, son en el juego. El problema es que el juego ya era obsoleto, y lo que estamos haciendo ahora es la refactorización por completo, con la ayuda de Aerosoft, para que se vea como un juego actual. La cabina del Pucará esta quedando absolutamente increíble, se está haciendo con todos los detalles en cuenta, y con botones operados directamente con el ratón.

Hi all, some updates on my side - those are parallel tasks - all should be set and ready as fast as possible, but here we go: Sea King / Royal Navy colors, new Ambient Occlusion maps and integration to the JT sim engine: Westland Lynx half-way mesh, lots of adjusts, getting better drawings right now as I post this: L118mm Field Gun/Howitzer, in the process of getting decent drawings, the temporary ones are terrible as shown in the picture: And lastly, the bare bones start of the new high qualityt Gr.3 cockpit with an ortographic diagram out of Aero Technika Lotnicza drawings: As exemplified above, it's been hectic times, of 12-16 hours work per day, but it will be worth in the end! Stay tuned!

I'm re-creating the most important aircraft in Jet Thunder with more up-to-date quality standards. This will apply to cockpits too. The Gr.3 is armed and dangerous now - I've modeled the SNEB rocket pods which use 19x 68mm unguided rockets, and the 300lt fuel tanks. Also on centerline, there's a GP Bomb. Next task will be to do the uv-mapping and then add a paint job - the attractive RAF camo used in this campaign - notice that I didn't opened the landing gear doors yet - it's better to do uv-map and painting with them closed, specially a camouflaged aircraft like this, for practical reasons, and then cut them open and do their interior detailing. All this will follow in the coming days.

In the link below: http://www.forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?showtopic=39766

Thanks for your words. The game will be sold through the Aerosoft web shop towards the end of 2010.

Thanks for the fix Crusader! Not sure why the link became truncated when I've first posted it, though.

Hi, To sum up our current activities quickly in this post: - Ariel is doing Rio Gallegos city (tough task indeed - and it should look like it was in 1982) and then will proceed to do the extremely important airport/airbase located there. I'm doing the Learget 36 used by Escuadron Fenix as support aircraft in many A-4 Skyhawk attacks. Then I'll proceed to update A-4B cockpit to 2010 standards (I've done it in 2005/2006 if I remember well :)) Programming is optimizing terrain system for better loading times and then we'll start to see the whole campaign theather loading up (and finally with at least a very detailed and complete Rio Gallegos in the continent side). Hopefully in next post I can add some screenshots of improved terrain system! Cya! :)

Sorry, I have to politely deny this speculation. :)

Yes, you're about right about the dates. Thanks for your message. :) We're using proprietary 3D engine developed from scratch, because flight sims have specific demands that generic engines can't cope (it also is one of the reasons development is taking so long).

Hi Suicidal, No news yet in this topic, but I'm sure your photos and maps are very useful for Ariel's work in these parts of the content! Again, thank you very much for the support, and also thanks for the patience! Español: No hay nuevas noticias a respecto de este tema, pero estoy seguro que sus fotos y los mapas son muy útiles para el trabajo de Ariel en estas partes del contenido! De nuevo, muchas gracias por el apoyo, y también gracias por la paciencia!

Like I've said in January's update post, we were facing some issues regarding terrain size and loading time. After some re-engineering, the object format for the terrain mesh was changed to a more efficient one, and at the moment we're loading whole Falkland/Malvinas islands in a matter of 45 seconds, while in the older system it was taking several minutes to load just 1/10 of the islands territorial size. We still didn't loaded the continent (Argentina) yet but so far it's looking promising and hopefully the system will cope with this task. So, it's good news and I've also posted a quick update on our website. Cya! :)

Some neat campaign development news :) I'll write a update to our dev website as soon as we have something more substantial to show. A hint: it's going to use APP-6A for the symbol sets in the campaign map interface. ;) It's been written as an app that will communicate with the flight sim and it's planned to be fully modable from the ground up. Thanks to all for the patience, and stay tuned!

To CombatAce Moderators: I'm closing this topic, because it is misleading - it may led the reader to believe that Jet Thunder was released in Argentina only (specially due to some replies in Spanish asking about technical aspects and configs). Actually, the topic has to do with a Strike Fighters/Wings Over Europe mod, and not to do with Jet Thunder, which is still in development. Spanish: Voy a cerrar este topico, porque puede llevar al lector a creer que Jet Thunder fue lanzado en la Argentina sólo (especialmente debido a algunas respuestas en español sobre aspectos técnicos y configuraciones). En realidad, el tema tiene que ver con un Mod para Strike Fighters/Wings Over Europe, y no que ver con Jet Thunder, que aún está en desarrollo.

Probably. The lead programmer is using Windows 7 in his computer, if I remember well.

Jet Thunder itself - definitely not. Doing a CGI is one thing, doing a proper game is another completely different and way more complicated and full of 'surprises'... At the moment we're working in an intercept mission featuring the Sea Harrier - it should take off from HMS Hermes and provide CAP for a Type 42 destroyer. The AI Skyhawk is refusing to take off sometimes. And to fix this, takes a while. Plus, the thrust vectoring of the Sea Harrier is recently failing too, which requires a lot of code to fix. So, it's code, code code... infinitely. These little "surprises" don't exist when creating a CGI movie! You just model the planes, and set camera paths and add particles and effects later in the editing. It's very pleasant and flows very well compared to making the game.:)

Unfortunately not yet. :(

Hi all, Well I'm nearly one week late here, but anyway we hoped you all had enjoyed a great holidays season. Our project is under active development but we hit some technical barriers in the last months: 1st, the sheer territorial size needed for the Falklands/Malvinas campaign theater. We had a system in which the terrain was splitted in blocks of 10 x 10km and manually assembled using a script to position the blocks. This gaves us excellent terrain detail at all altitudes, but then it comes the technical barriers: with about a fraction of the whole territorial size needed, the loading times started to became so long that it was impractical. So, in the last few months another terrain solution was put together, with a new file format for the terrain geometry, and it's currently in tests. Reports are that it loads much faster in a ratio between terrain size X loading time. 2nd, we still may need programming help in the avionics department, as current solutions could maybe cover just A-4 Skyhawks and Pucaras, falling behind the complexities of aircraft like the Harrier/Sea Harrier and Super Etendard. 3rd, the same could be applied for Campaign code: it's still just a rough draft, and this draft is based on a heavy use of Artificial Inteligence, which demands extensive trial-and-error tests, so this 3rd technical barrier is something that jeopardizes the project as a whole. We're actively pursuing solutions for the above problems, and sorry for the long radio silence, we just endured a time period where we had not too much to show, but rest assured that progress was made and will continue to be made.