Dante-JT

I agree completely. Carriers are busy and full of activity. We plan to have a couple of random deck officers going around and parked helos and stuff populating the deck. Although at the moment we're testing the carrier ops with a clean deck.

Hi, I've posted a couple of updates only in SimHQ forum recently, due to CombatAce's downtime; now I'm reposting that stuff here to keep this forum here "in sync". :) Hermes carrier model is back and now trailing a water wake: We got HMS Invincible and ARA 25 de Mayo ready too but it's wiser to work with just one carrier model at once as the program treats it as a 'mobile spawn point', and I don't know what the program will do with 2 different carriers(mobile spawn points) at the same time in the map right now - some tidying up of the campaign code regarding naval units must be done. Shorelines anim effect: And a video that I did of a slightly rough landing in an anchored Hermes few miles southeast of Stanley: http://rapidshare.de/files/22747671/carrier_landing.rar.html More to come soon - I didn't posted a video of our Pucara in the sim yet because I'm experimenting with the turboprop sound effects - the Puc should be 'showable' (and 'listenable') soon ;)

I've been working in the A-4B Skyhawk cockpit and getting it faithful to the instruments layout shown in the official Flight Manual; the argentineans got their used A-4D1 (A-4B) from "E" group surplus US Navy a/c (serials 142082 and upwards), there has been some extensive modification in the panel layouts of the Air Force A-4B (A-4P) with some local instruments added, but the CANA A-4Q didn't had too much modifications and the instruments layout was more close to standard A-4B group "E" planes, according to photos in the magazine "Aeroespacio" issue 567.

Yup this is an awesome effect in Lomac, was just amazed by it watching that virtualblueangels video the other day. It's a soft shadows shader as opposite to the stencil shadows (sharper) you see when plane is sitting on ground.

Carrier VTOL landing: I've did a short video showing a typical vertical landing in the carrier with a clean and light Sea Harrier FRS.1. The carrier is anchored 2 miles off the south of Stanley for landing trials. The deck's elevator was 'accidentally' left opened so I had to avoid landing exactly in that hole - done, but I ended sinking left wingtip gear leg 1 meter into the carrier's port lower platform deck - ouch, almost slipped of the deck into the sea. http://rapidshare.de/files/22747671/carrier_landing.rar.html To download the file follow these 5 easy steps: 1. Left click on the link above 2. Click "free" which is located in the bottom right hand corner of the page 3. Scroll down to the bottom of the short page, and wait at least 22 seconds 4. Enter the 3 digit prompted password 5. Download -------------------- ----- Jet Thunder Project http://www.thunder-works.com

Optimistically, I think a simple demo with at least one argentine mission and one british mission could be out around Q4 2006. The main problems we have now are the strange 'warps' of some enemy aircraft while in combat and a missile and loadout system too limited (only AIM9Ls) and too troubled to be of any use in a demo, this probably will be completely rewritten and therefore will take a while. Otherwise, the rest of the game (FM, graphics, sound, performance) is fine and we could even release soon a 'free flight demo' :) thus avoiding the most frustrating problems we have now (all combat-related).

Shipwrecks: I've been working in making the textures of the clipper Lady Elizabeth 2 shipwreck model that Ariel Cancio modeled. The Falkland/Malvinas Islands are the biggest cemitery of visible 19th century shipwrecks, and we'll have at least 3 of these in the sim for sightseeing purposes, in their correct locations. Good for buzzing and screaming past their masts at low altitude. This one in the pic below is the Lady Elizabeth 2, I've just dropped it in the game world at a few hundred meters from shoreline without caring about her exact location (which I know is Northeast of Stanley harbor, close enough so it can be seem in some war photos):

Muchas gracias! Lo estoy descargando ahora mismo :) (thanks, I'm downloading it now)

Yup. But we are not in beta yet, unfortunately. But, I liked your questions, so you may be in the Beta-test when we actually reach Beta. :) Not even half of what a Sea Harrier's FRS.1 displays in its HUD is being modelled yet. Lacks the VVI indeed, you're correct, but also lacks flight path marker, AOA, slip ball (very big and obvious in Sea Harrier's HUD just below heading scale). We did these symbols, they're not working yet for reasons beyond my comprehension. But rest assured we will not be entering Beta without these things working properly. hmmm...seems easy to fix since as you describe it's mainly an animation/graphics fix.

It's the same good old JT engine. :) TSE got a show-stopping problem: severe z-buffer flicker at shorelines and airbases runways, and we can't do anything about it at all, just wait for (if) garagegames to fix it. As mentioned before, JT engine will stay as it is as would be nonsense to dump 2 years of work that already resulted in an enjoyable flight sim engine, as show in the footage. What we're attempting is a seamless merging of both systems, or to transplant the shaders tech to JT. Yep, I've donated that airbase to Phil. :) I've did it for JT to represent Stanley airbase, but since then I've received more references on how Stanley airbase was in 1982, to sum up, that airbase is placeholder in both games, but very efficient now to test taxying, take-off and landings and it also (in JT) has all its buildings checking collision individually, so we can take them down one by one - the only problem remaining is that the server must know when a building has been taken down to pass this state to the other players connected in a multiplayer game, so everyone connected will see the building as destroyed.

To test this RapidShare thing and if it could help us with our bandwidth limits, I've uploaded a 40mb video demonstrating a complete flight from taxying, take-off, buzzing Stanley city and surroundings, a uneventful and smooth flight ending in a VTO landing back at Stanley airbase: http://rapidshare.de/files/20476485/takeof...anding.rar.html To download the file follow these 5 easy steps: 1. Left click on the link above 2. Click "free" which is located in the bottom right hand corner of the page 3. Scroll down to the bottom of the short page, and wait at least 22 seconds 4. Enter the 3 digit prompted password 5. Download The video is a bit low quality and the codec distorts the bottom area of the video, but it's watcheable and a good demonstration of our FM and sim engine, already enjoyable enough for leisure flights and sight-seeing.

Thanks for the comments! Our plans are to release still this year at least a concept demo of our flightsim technology, with at least a mission to take off in a SeaHarrier and buzz Stanley area hopefully having AAA to face and some mission target. Would be ideal if in the same demo we have an other side counterpart also flyable: a Skyhawk mission taking of from Argentinean continental base of Rio Gallegos, doing in-flight refuelling over the ocean and then proceed to face some RN vessel at low level with iron bombs. The sketchy release date is somewhere around 2007, because our campaign system in game is quite, well, sketchy at the moment, and this is very important to have done right as it will create the 'lastability' of our sim.

Very cool, thanks for these videos! Btw, I've heard somewhere that one of the RN retired SHARs has been bought by a warbirds operator in the US and will soon join the US airshow circuit. Cool isn't? :)

I'm doing some tests with shadows projected in the ground beneath the aircraft: http://www.thunder-works.com/shadowtest.rar Looking quite good as I can make soft boundaries in it (the shadow is just an alpha-channeled object going thru vertical axis of aircraft object, always being cast in ground). Although in the above video, the plane's standby parked position is slightly off (need fine tuning, it's noticeably too nose high). Also, we can also steer the planes on ground now, with good handling while taxying.

From british perspective too, although this time through the eyes of a pilot of the Sqdr 800: I've just preordered it at Amazon books. Release is in May, 11.

Probably yes, I've ordered from uk and at the checkout it calculated the shipping costs to brazil, so it seemed it'll ship it overseas.

It's a multiplatform 3D engine that we started to (carefully) consider for use in JT. It's in the testing bench now.

Indeed. A lot to do, some worrying things ahead are carriers waypoint and their decision making (huge weight in the campaign process). But, the good news is that this TSE we're starting to use, has a lot of features related to people walking in the ground :) We can't promise anything at this point, but we all know that pilots that ejected during the 1982 war (from both sides) have an interesting survival history to tell.

Still this year, although delayed due to our main coder departing to work in JuiceUK only.

Here is the real photo that Lionel has sent, of the Pucara gunsight reticle - not yet in game because I'm waiting next batch of fixes for TSE engine (they will fix alpha blend so these gunsight glasses will look better). In the meanwhile, between my campaign flights of F4:AF and WoV/VPAF campaign, I'm doing a re-evaluation of JT's campaign, now I'm sure it gonna work.

I disagree with this comment they made about Janes F/A-18: " There's not as much depth here as you'd expect from a game with Jane's on the cover " hey, in case they didn't know, Janes F/A18 is an in-depth study sim of the Hornet...

A kind person from Argentina, Lionel Bianchi, emailed me some very usefull photos taken through the Pucara's reflector gunsight, showing clearly the actual gun reticle - something we've been just guessing due to lack of references - but now I will be able to correct it and make it accurate and I will soon post a few screenshots here. :)

Indeed! Works, thanks Berkut! And I confirm, it's one of the flight scenes from Les Chevaliers Du Cieu ! Fantastic movie, finally (after so many years of CG plane movies) one with real planes in gorgeous locations!

Wasn't able to playback this video yet, downloaded 2 times and it gives 'codec downloading...error downloading codec' in Media Player, tried downloading the recomended latest DivX codecs, still no success...tried even VirtualDub with Klite codecs package, it says 'MPEG mal-formation' or something... :( But if it's awesome French footage, I could guess it's somehow related to the movie 'Les Chevaliers du ciel', a 2005 action movie with very well done flying scenes. Worth a look! :)

Exciting! :) First time I see 3d clouds in SFP1: This pic is particularly awesome, with the Luftwaffe Phantom. How is their WWI biplane's sim going? I've heard the clouds came from that development.