Dante-JT

AceMan, this is highly controversial, but Argentina claimed a Sea Harrier, downed by the Mirage 'Dagger' of Capt. Donadille (the Sea Harrier flew for more 30km, pouring smoke after a supposed 30mm DEFA hit), then the pilot ejected and was rescued in the sea by a Sea King chopper), if you can read spanish (which I'm sure you can, AceMan :D ) there are pages describing the combat here, here and here.

Well since today is Friday and we have something to show, I'll do a quick update on what we're working now: - Marcfighter is working in the Royal Marines skin for the AI Gazelle helicopter: - Myself, I'm modeling the FV101 Scorpion light tank used in the war, still incomplete as I'm still thinking in a better way to model the tracks without sacrifying too many polygons but with a level of detal compatible with the rest of the vehicle: Some data about the FV101 Scorpion armoured vehicle: And Steve (scary_pigeon) is implementing gunnery, while Romano is perfecting his ROAM terrain system with a variable view range and several, configurable texture layers. More news to come next week prolly. :)

heheh. That photo looks familiar. That's the Mirage's CSF97 gunsight

Ok this each Friday update could be done, but after we finish engine integration and the structural parts - like, when we finally have a fully developed flyable with a full cockpit and weapons/system, plus a simple way to generate missions for this flyable. Then we'd be entering alpha stage, and after this point, it'll be much more up to contend creation (adding new units, doing research, building the campaign) than the extremely sensitive "engine building" we're doing now - so, in this contend creation stage, we going to have weekly new contend to show each fridays :) But, daily?!?!?!? Then you gonna kill us

Hi guys! :) Thanks for all the positive feedback ! Sorry for the lousy flying I did in the video, I was not very sober - you know, Xmas and all that champagne B) :D The next video, hopefully by new year's eve, as scary_pigeon pointed, will feature some straffing of ground targets - we're working in the gunnery now - 2x Mk12 20mm guns, hopefully with some static land rover vehicles parked in the field below for target practice. P.S.: I received an email suggesting to link to an alternative codec's pack instead of that previous one, so I did. Thanks for the kind person who pointed out that one. ;)

The Alto-Cenepa War, 1995: http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_164.shtml Mirage F.1E vs. Su-22M Fitter B)

hmmm .. interesting B) So I'll be buying latest X-plane for 'research purposes' on this Harrier model with all four nozzles ;) The current Harrier FM 'mockups' we have in JT now are quite stable - there's side drag/rear drag, you know, the plane shape isn't meant for flying sideways or backwards, so, it can't develop speed in these directions while hovering - a real Harrier pilot advised that a speed faster than 30 knots in backward or sideways hover could be risky - specially sideways - as one intake on one side can have its airflux rather blocked.

Yep, IL-2 is a multiplayer success. It's the only flight sim I play online at the moment. But I just got Lomac, it's great, but I'm still in the basics - learning how to fly the A-10, use its weapons, offline - so I ask, how is Lomac going online? Is it as promising for a multiplayer flight sim as IL-2 ?

I've tried X-Plane once to check the Harrier that it features, it's pretty good compared to the other attempts at modelling the Harrier latelly, it has real thrust vectoring which can be assigned to an axis in the controller. But it's also too unstable in the hover, because it hangs over just one column of thrust placed below the aircraft's center of gravity, while the real Harrier has 4 columns of thrust (from each engine nozzle) - so, hovering the Harrier in X-Plane feels like riding in a monocycle. :)

Timeframe = as the historical period covered by the simulation: Well, 1982. :) But it features 70's and 80's air, sea and ground units so the simulation could be suitable for expansions with other similar scenarios in this timeframe(Bekaa Valley Air Battle, for example) If your question is related to when Jet Thunder will be out, well, at the moment the campaign (a huge part of the game) is in the early planning stages, we have only the A-4B Skyhawk properly flying (of 6 flyables), a separated Harrier executable with a placeholder cockpit made just for testing the V/STOL flight dynamics, and a new terrain system being completed and awaiting to be integrated in the rest of the simulator. This upcoming year we'll be integrating and joining these parts together, and making sure everything works, so with luck we could be entering Beta by Christmas 2004, for a 2005 release.

This website is very good (in Spanish language): http://old.p23.com.ar/ediciones/2002/mayo/01/01051982c.HTM http://old.p23.com.ar/ediciones/2002/mayo/01/21051982.HTM

I'm looking for flying Full Real - landing the Sea Harrier in the pitching HMS Invincible carrier deck, receiving campaign updates minute by minute as I plan my CAP mission in the map screen, and be scared as the warships below are reporting intruders too near the fleet, arriving fast and out of reach from our slower subsonic jets ;)

Replied your email :) At the moment we have two keys, one rotate nozzle gradually in one direction, the other key rotates in the other direction. But like we've done with rudder and throttle, there will be axis control of the nozzles as well or else VIFF'ing will not be that practical if you have to reach a keyboard shortcut everytime. ;)

Good point. As an example, many people will run Full Real Jet Thunder servers. In these servers, Port Stanley airfield (in the islands) has a runway with only about 1300 meters long. Only Pucaras and MB-339s operated from there. An armed Mirage III needs at least 2000 meters of runway space to operate, so in this scenario, we have Mirage players flying from the continent - a 45+ minutes flight - operating at the limit of their ranges - just like in real life. I don't mind this scenario, as I'm a Full Real guy and will enjoy to see the difficulties that these Mirage pilots suffered in the historical setting. But I was advised to create a 'what if' multiplayer map, optional, with an enlarged Port Stanley runway - it was on the plans of the argentinians to extend the runway but they didn't achieved, in time, the means to get the materials on the islands. Lets suppose they succeed in extending the runway to 3 kilometers, and Mirages are able to operate from there - an interesting situation, as players will be able to CAP over the islands and have fuel left for afterburner usage - enabling then to use the full potential of their supersonic fighters. Regarding aircraft mods, as I said, it'll probably have to be validated by the team for the model accuracy, and FM adjust, IL-2 style. Also the cockpits at the moment, are a bit tricky to do and program the instruments - another task better be made 'in house' by TW as well. But maps/scenarios for multiplayer, this could be freely made, as long as the server host describes if it's a historical or 'hypothetical' scenario, and what planeset is used (historical 1982 campaign, or not).

Good post, ChrisDNT! And thanks for the feedback! This way you describe, is Oleg's/IL-2 way. In my opinion, is what makes that sim so strong in the multiplayer feature. And also, all third-party models developed are great looking and have good, tested FMs. In the Thunderworks dev team, the balance now is clearly pending to the side of this kind of approach. But some in the team, who came from the modding communities, are interested in moddability in the SFP1-style. Personaly, I'd go for the IL-2 style, with third-party aircraft having to be validated by the dev team. My intention, as creator of the project's concept, was to have for the Falklands what IL-2 is for the WWII Eastern Front, so, the approach fits very well here. ;) But, lets see the result of some upcoming community polls about this subject and see democracy in action

Correct Nesher, this issue is getting very sensitive inside our development group - in our FAQ, I just said that moddability is expected, because the way the flight sim is now, it's just rather easy to change camos, plane models, even entire featured operations theater (by changing its heightmap for another). And at the moment, announcing a new flight sim about a certain theater and being 100% sure that it will be completely closed for mods from the start, is like shooting our own foot, IMO. Well, this is completely single player related, at this point. But then the Multiplayer issue was rised, and members of our staff strongly believe that the strenght of IL-2 in multiplayer is its closedness. I have to agree, because if there's a flight sim I play online the most, it's IL-2... It has very good online capabilities compared to other flight sims of the same class. So, we're still pondering the best way to procceed - at the moment, seems very hard to find a balance point between these two extremes. I'll be glad with community help and advice in this sensitive issue, too. After all, this is a flight sim being made by flightsimmers for flightsimmers. :) :) That's why we did it from scratch - because making it a Mod for SF:P1 or F4 for example, certain key features will be unavailable or will end as plain 'hacks'.

As it was a small-scale conflict, with very clear territory dispute and small number of units on the battlefield, the plan is to aim for ongoing war like F4. But as we're still in the planning phase of the campaign system, we'll ask for input from the community for the best direction to follow (inside the limits of our small resources, of course. :)

Troops will fire at the Pucaras doing CAS/antipersonal missions. They're a serious threat to low flying planes as most platoons carried shoulder-launched SAMs. HMS Sheffield will be there, and as the campaign is of dynamic nature, it will be placed there at the approx. position that it was on May, 1st 1982 (start of aerial raids against the isles), but after this point, anything can happen. Argie navy could decide to face the danger of the british subs and keep on sailing, instead of retiring to the ports and shallow waters as they did in the real events. As it's a small scale war, with fewer aerial units involved, the acts of you as a pilot and your squadron could be decisive to the outcome of events - like for example, intercepting a certain anti-shipping raid with your Sea Harrier CAP. Pitching deck carriers on rough seas are one of the goals of the project, as an improvement over previous sims featuring carrier ops. Resuppy will be limited, with the C-130s doing the supply route from continent to the islands for the argie troops entrenched in the islands. The converted countainer ships used as military transport by the british (Atlantic Conveyor, for example) will be there as well. As you may notice in our short video of the flightsim engine at work, the terrain has no trees at all. It was a fact, there aren't native trees in the islands, just small bushes. There are some trees but these are on gardens in Port Stanley residences, brought there from europe and planted there by the citizens... This makes a challenge for us to do a convincing terrain with enough eye-candy, because a thing you see in recent flightsims such as Lomac or IL-2, are the nice forests of trees. There is no forests in the Falklands. So, we have to resourt to extremely detailed textures for the (muddy) soil of the isles, and a good weather system, to make up for the lack of trees or other features covering the terrain. On the other hand, having very detailed ground textures is what gives a so good sense of speed in low flying. But don't worry, there'll be the Port Stanley trees, bushes everywhere, rocks, and in the continent, plenty of forests, as Argentina is not a treeless land. :)

Indeed, ground troops will be modelled as the ground war was mostly fought by groud troops, hill by hill. No armour fighting there, just man to man, old-fashioned fight. The ground war mostly based on infantry fight, makes this sim being very complex to do - yep, 2 Para, SAS, Royal Marines, Welsh Guards, argie conscripts - they will be modelled and it's their advance over the island's soil that will define the outcome of the war after the landings. And they're very important to the flyers. And dangerous for them. A friend of the family of Ariel Cancio (staff member of the project) is a vet on argentine side, he was in the air force and flew the Pucará in the war, he was the one shoot-down by a Blowpipe missile released by a Royal Marine. He ejected, and sure has a lot of history to tell. :)

Thank for the positive input, Vex! :) About that video, I was flying the Harrier Gr.3 at less than 50 feet of the deck at full throttle - the speedometer is in our metrical system here and reads approx. 1000 kilometers per hour sometimes, which gives about 550 knots or Mach 0.85 - with a dive like I did there, a clean RAF Harrier Gr.3 can reach Mach 0.97 easily, not bad for a so-called slow jet. :) The cockpit you see in the video is just a placeholder/generic virtual cockpit model to show the low altitude turbulence effect in the canopy struts at these speeds and heights, as soon as possible I'll record another video this time with a fully working cockpit (but probably of the A-4 Skyhawk, showing flight in this plane instead, because the Harrier cockpit is still 'on hold', waiting for a photo section to get details for the virtual cockpit modelling.) Harrier performance in there was based on estimatives, I have the performance specs of the Harrier and I gave to Steve parameters like thrust, mass, etc. With a bit of fine tuning Steve was able to make the Harrier perform like that - a high-subsonic jet optimized for low altitude flight. But don't worry, performance will be much more accurate once we get hold of any first generation Harrier flight manual (AV-8A or Gr.1 are valid there, we're having trouble in getting the Sea Harrier FRS.1 manual, Steve contacted the Fleet Air Arm museum and they weren't able to help, atm).

We're glad to hear feedback from you veterans! Indeed the Rapier will be modelled. I've read many things about this system, one is that it was not effective in hilly terrain, like in Bluff Cove. Also I have some documentary video footage of the system working flawlessly and hiting an argentine Mirage Dagger jet while it was turning real hard at very, very low altitude. But this link has an article where vet Tony McNally says a few negative things about the system: http://www.forgottensoldier.com/veterans_a...udpuncher1.html

The Pucará and Super Etendard you see in the screenshots in our site, are testing a 2048x2048 texture. Yes you will be able to edit the textures like in IL-2. ;)

:) testing another version of the ROAM terrain approach (by Romano) with a different number of texture tiling repeats per sector. Also was working in the portuguese language version of the site - it's the native language of the country where I live - brazil - people here asked for the portuguese version as well - not a thing to worry too much because I'm sure all hardcore flightsimmers here have some knowledge of english ;) but as they're asking, so let it be.

I work already in the game industry, in a local company here called Hoplon. They're developing a sci-fi game, I'm only there as employee and to do what they ask. :) But it's nice because this way you're able to see how things are organized in the game dev industry, from an insider's perspective. Then, they pay well, so I can have something left at the end of the month to invest on Thunderworks. I also own a small software company, we create local infochannels. Nothing to do with games, but software development, and games are software, so... ;)

Indeed. IL-2 is great and is the model to follow, IMHO. But Steve has his own, new approach for network code, which he can explain better in his own words, and he believes will give a nice performance boost for online play. The air war in the Falklands is very suitable for multiplayer online arenas of 16-32 players like we have now in Hyperlobby. Argentine flights of 3 to 4 planes, normally with 2 sections (8 attacking planes). The defending Sea Harriers, always organized in pairs (CAP of 2 planes, with strong guidance from the warships below).