Dante-JT

Yes, the C-130 attacked a british supply ship named "British Wye", dropping 8 bombs in it, only one bomb has hit the target but failed to explode - no serious damage or casualities in the ship. In Ward's book he said that the C-130 rolled the bomb out of the cargobay door in the back, but in reality I think they really dive-bombed the ship dropping those underwing bombs you showed in the photo! That photos are on display in the Malvinas Museum walls.

It was odd, I will get some material on it soon, actually I wasted all the digicam's mem stick to cover the actual cockpits, the C130 bomber was in a series of photos in the wall so I didn't photographed it, it was odd because I saw underwing stores for at least 3 bombs in a MK82 style mounting. At the moment I'm busy with the Pucara's cockpit, need to adjust better the dashboard mesh according to the photos I've took: but it will be fine - I got all the photos I wanted to do this job. :) Btw, I think Steve is still working to get his AIs to follow orders like keep certain altitude, go to certain waypoint then keep circling, etc.

S! :) I've just returned from my expediction to Argentina, where I've succeed in getting all photos and material I need for the Pucara cockpit. I'd like to thank very much Gabriel, the museum's curator, who kindly opened the cockpits and we've seated and spent a lot of time getting many photos :) usually these cockpits are locked, because in the past some tourists had stolen parts of the cockpits as souveniers. The A-4C Skyhawk present in the museum shows this fact, although it was an incredible experience to seat down and lock myself with canopy closed in this historic aircraft (which performed an attack on HMS Avenger, it's feels like you're "wearing the plane", due to so tight and small is the cockpit space but it's actually confortable, that's why feels like 'wearing' ! I was also pleased with the hospitality and kindness of argentinean people, in special my hosts, Cancio's family. :) Also I've bought a lot of books (in Spanish) about the planes of the conflict, as well as a Malvinas t-shirt and other merchandisings - the museum's content is incredible, and heavily biased towards aviation - there are many ejection seats, pilot's uniforms, helmets, oxygen masks, debris and parts of shootdown planes, empty shell cases, empty/deactivated air-to-ground bombs, and a interesting wall poster showing many photos and description of the infamous "Hercules bomber", an adapted C-130 capable of carrying underwing stores and bombs (!), Sharkey Ward mentions this in his book, and I found it very odd, something hard to swallow, but in the museum I've saw strong evidence that this really was attempted! MBot: this "Warbird Tech Series" seems very impressive and detailed, is it still available to sell? Amazon.com ? Or is a rarity? Thank you very much for the scans!

scary_pigeon, it would be nice if you post the database tree you're setting so we can check if everything the game needs is inside and maybe forum readers could suggest some new entities to be added to the database. I'm at the moment working in the Sea Harrier FRS.1 weapons: did yesterday the Matra 155 rocket pod 50,5 mm RN rockets. Today I will do the Hunting BL755 cluster bomb and its bomblets. Also in the queue are the 454kg GP bomb, the Lepus incendiary bomb and a few other like drop tanks and so on. AIM-9L is ready and delivered to scary_pigeon. It's very important to have them all as these must go in the database definition for loadouts for each plane in the campaign system. It worries me a bit this part regarding warships weapons and sensors and also aircraft load in case of carriers or helicopter-carriers.

Working in Progress, just received this cockpit 3d mesh from Ariel Cancio, it's for our flyable Pucara: And these pics from Marcfighter, shows the status of the textures of the argentine carrier ARA 25 de Mayo: Still many details to add and correct, but I'm pleased with the deck painting and deck marks :)

Good thing Steve. In Falcon 4 dynamic campaign engine, this is called "the player's bubble" and is considered technically a primary requisite for a fully dynamic campaign like that in F4. The campaign just goes on as normal when the player was on briefing / debriefing menu screens or brosing the mission map in pre-flight, but as you said, in statistically calculated way. But, for example, that Su27 flight 50 miles Northwest will only be displayed as game 3d objects and using gameworld physics if the player is within radar range of them. In more recent F4 patches/updagrades, this player bubble was configurable by the player, enlarging or shrinking it according to your computer's processing power. You can read here a discussion about dynamic flightsims capaigns in Gamedev.net :) using google's cache if you have problems logging in that forum ;)

Don't forget to add compound object functionality for warships too! I'd hate to keep seeing Hermes still missing its elevators, rotating radar dishes and the ski-jump, and people will be baffled if they are able to sink Hermes by hitting the tip of a mast with a bomb...(need several hit-points and damage model like that of aircraft models).

Just a small update of ARA 25 de Mayo's status of our model, still some details to paint, but it's getting ready finally (notice that the deck elevators are missing, they're separated objects to be added in steve's compound object system so they will move and have a hitbox/be vulnerable to attack and all):

SFP1/WoV follow the same trend (SFP1 specially), but, why aren't they so successful online games? I like them. Maybe due to so many mods and variations between installs from different players? I would wish to add some climate factor, for example, in extreme freezing conditions, it is a fact that some instruments in argentine aircraft presented malfunction. There could be also the simple random factor: at every "x" hours of flight, there's "n" chances of a failure.

British ground forces also used their Blowpipe missiles successfully at the battle for Darwin and Goose Green, shooting down a MB-339: http://www.britains-smallwars.com/Falkland...raftlosses.html

thank you very much! excellent photos! Currently the ARA 25 de Mayo is still being textured by Marcfighters, as soon as it's done and ready, we'll start testing the A-4Q and surely will do a video of a carrier landing on it!

Reposting here (easier to spot) that we're working hard in the simulation of the features of the Blue Fox radar of the Sea Harrier FRS.1. Starting with a B Sweep air-to-air scan mode, It already feature a manually controlled cursor for target lock. Needs to lock a target and change its symbology; also will have horizon bank line and some flight info superimposed; probably the range vs bearing grid is refreshed by the sweep and parts under the sweep are brighter and away from it are faded, we will do all these details so it'll have authentic look and feel:

The real Sea Harrier FRS.1 has a small stick in the left hand console that controls the radar cursor in this AA scan mode, we're using numblock keypad keys for this functionality, as a hat 8-way button in a HOTAS setup will also be selectable for this use; "click-pit" ability is possible but we'll start thinking about its implementation when we're pretty sure of what all buttons will do and where in the FRS.1 cockpit, it's of course an enormous extra workload in developing the cockpits and add risks of unknown bugs so we can't promise it for sure now.

Yep I knew that :) Interesting to see how taxing would this be in the whole simulation, I think it reaches Fates' point, just look at the specs to run this radar simulation properly: The radar simulations can be run on single and multi-processor platforms. The standard configuration for an integrated simulator system is a 2 processor system with 256 Mbytes of RAM 2 cpus and 256 Mbytes of RAM for the radar...and the rest of the simulation runs on another rigs probably :) Anyway, would be great to license such radar simulation software...if people in forums is complaining that Blue Fox radar is performing too well against low flying contacts, or too bad, or whatever, all the hate mail will go to Camber company, not Thunder-works Getting back to reality, I this could be way too expensive... But, about jet sims' avionics being the cause of a heavy system's requirement specially for online play, well I'm not so sure of that - in Lomac, a game room with furballs of radarless A-10 vs. Su-25 doesn't play much different than a room full of F-15 vs. Su-27... but we have to look closer at this issue.

Good post, Fates. That screen above is our bare start of generic radar modelling, to start training Steve's WWII-oriented mind to the basics of air-to-air radar modes, search mode, track-while-scan, boresight etc. Its following a learning curve to not overwhelm poor Steve, so it may look shamefully simplified to seasoned jet sim veterans. Yesterday, our radar system display came alive for the first time showing a contact - plotting a blip - and also a manual cursor to lock a contact. It'll be a long way ahead, avionics and campaign are my biggest worries, and probably the worries of any other combat flight sim dev group. Steve and myself are JT's fathers. My view is slightly different than what Steve wants. We hope to find a good balance between our two visions. Steve sees JT more in the 'online fun' aspect, with multiple flyable planes, lots of scenarios, good and enjoyable gameplay, but enough realism to provide an enduring and tense experience. Much like what IL-2 series does today in the WWII arena. Very good and popular stuff indeed. Steve is right market-wise, he wishes that as many people play the game so it becomes a success and can at least pay the bills of a very small but efficient dev team (us). On the other hand, I am a old-school flight simmer, more single-player oriented, I wish to play campaigns from start to end, mission by mission, with all realism and options maxed out; I love a gigantic printed manual explaining step-by-step every avionic system of the simulated aircraft; I also would prefer a flight sim with just one but very well simulated aircraft (like Falcon 4) rather than a flight sim with many aircraft but rather generic/commonality between all them (like USAF for example... however, Lomac impressed me, half a dozen planes and seemed all well done). To sum up, in my vision I'd prefer a really 99% simulated and complex Jet Thunder with just the Sea Harrier flyable in a boxed old-style release with a huge printed manual telling the whole Harrier history and describing all its systems and an in-depth campaign with great historical accuracy. Probably JT will end as something between these two visions - also notice that IL-2's original Oleg's vision was to be an in-depth simulation of just the IL-2 Sturmovik aircraft - the other planes started being added later as the project grown. So, what you guys think ? Is the lack of popularity of jet sims in online multiplay is due to hard avionics and steeper learning curves, or other factors? What about SFP1/WoV ? In february (cross your fingers) we will got a SeaHarrier FRS.1 flight manual. Then we will dive in deep in it. We'll try to cover both equally. The word "sim-lite" or 'mid-core sim' scares simmers away, it's a well known fact that hardcore sims can have options to be accessible and playable by newbies, but softcore sims like Jet Fighter V or Ace Combat series doesn't have hardcore options for the seasoned flight simmer :) So we choose to be as realistic/harcore as we can reach but with options to cut down complexity to allow new people to get the grips with the flightsim. To end, I'd say that we choose the Falklands scenario and jets from 60's/70's/80's as a goal because how can a team like us, with just 2 fully active developers (Steve and myself) and a small group of people who contribute through the internet, face Oleg's sims experience and expertise in the WWII arena? No way, we prefered something really new. Falklands, V/STOL, carriers...;) Altough Steve would have loved to do a biplane game because he thinks it would be less work for him look the trouble that the Knights Over Europe team faced, in the end, any flight sim, be it about WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, modern, futuristic, is a very large and complex project - a WWI flight sim project would indeed have its own oddities and specific difficulties that will appear further down the road.

LoL shame on me! we're in zero G now due to a not very well calibrated G meter - I can calibrate it easily hopefully. We have a few other gauges giving slightly wrong readouts, which I have to 'calibrate' too, of course not as embarassing as this G-Meter.. I think it's the first flight sim with actual 'calibration' of the gauges... :) (actually adjusting the needles pivot triangles and texture position)

Also I think I managed to fix the problem of the horizon pitch ladder didn't matching the real horizon - now it is quite glued to it :)

Well done Steve, great looking video! :) Although I have to fix some aesthetic details such as the windshield glass not matching the cockpit frame and other things, I'm concentrating more in the instruments gfx one by one, to have a fully functional cockpit instead of having a good-looking but rather useless cockpit (like we had with the Skyhawk previously). Another task I'm focusing is to rescue our superb high-resolution accurate terrain meshes of the battlefield, I've converted these terrain meshes to a format that hopefully soon we will be able to have running in a sort of 'terrain shell' to be artistically and accurately populated according to historical info (placing farms, fences, houses, roads, harbours, rock formations etc) The mesh of the islands themselves is extremely dense and accurate: Another thing I realize is that eventually we should have a sort of 'wingman interaction shell' where we test commands to our AI wingmen.

It's quite nice, Steve, specially the ironwork around, looks more like old steel, but the panel itself is unrealistic 'yellow' while it should be light grey (don't be fooled by an aging photo, these tend to have yellowish shades :)) The 'skid ball' that you pointed to me in one of the photos, is missing too - fortunately, Steve's FM system already has a sliprate/skid variable, I don't know if it could cover the sideskid but I think it will not be hard to do such instrument.

Indeed, its how it is in the actual Sea Harrier FRS.1 plane, see reference photo: Thanks, and Merry Christmas to all! :) I hope we can finish all the basic head-down instruments as well as heads up display so we can upload a complete Sea Harrier carrier take-off and landing video to our website!

Thanks for the post and happy Christmas! :) If you wish, send me scans of these photos to dante@thunder-works.com - references never are too much! ;)

In Jet Thunder, you get argentine air force A-4B and A-4C Skyhawks, bought from the US then stripped of most american avionics, including the AN/APG-53A radar. These Skyhawks were called locally "A-4P". The argentinian navy "A-4Q" that were operated from 25 de Mayo carrier were essentially A-4B in white navy colors and with few local equipment added.

Steve, with the screenshot you've took of the HUD, I wonder why it is so blurred in your computer? When I arrive home, I'll send you a picture of the HUD in my setup, it's crystal clear as it should be. The thing of the upside down numbers in the horizon/pitch scale, no problem, this happens, you can see by my Harrier HUD photos I sent to you, the number stays level with the horizon scale and bank with it, the number '90' in the scale isn't usually represented, it ends on '85' as you can see if you play some jet flight sim there ;)

I spent the weekend thinking in how to do the HUD and I've ended doing the basic symbology of the SeaHarrier in NAV mode, I've packed all data and sent to Steve by email; heading scale and horizon scale will have to employ some clever programming tricks to scroll the strip, the rest I think is straightforward stuff. Now I'm polishing the rest of the SeaHarrier cockpit while I wait Steve's feedback on the HUD. Dagger: interactive 3D cockpit is technically possible, I think it would be really great to have at least the Blue Fox radar buttons interactive, and maybe the NAVHARS, but as we're actively a small 'team' of just 2 developers (me and Steve) full time in the project while the rest of the JT team have other business too and make sporadic (although important) contributions to the project, I won't be pursuing a fully interactive cockpit as priority at this stage, first it would be nice to have at least a full intercept mission to be flown from start to end in the SeaHarrier with V/STOL, radar and weapons working, with the means and resources we have in hand.

I'm progressing with the SeaHarrier FRS.1 cockpit, now Blue Fox radar CRT and the RWR are in their respective places, but there's still a lot to paint/adjust (picture attached in this post)