what am I doing now?

[Phlerp 0]

Just two suggestions.

First, and I guess you know this, the pitch ladder is suffering from the same thing as most HUDs I've seen in MSFS. The picture used for it is too small so the lines in the ladder in't really following their indicated angle. That is, thy indicate the right angle whn you are at that angle but then they don't move according to the world. You can see this best on th line indicating the horizon. It should be "glued" to the horizon, but it's not.

 

Second, it would be very nice if you could make the contrast of the HUD change with the background. I don't know if all fighters use this, but from reading the documentation for the SAAB JA-37, I found out that the HUD is ajusting the contrast according to how bright th background is. I gues it won't be possibl to meassure the brightnes of the background in the sim, but it could change according to angle to the ground and angl to the sun.

 

Other than that, you're doing a great job.

[scary_pigeon 0]

with regards to the horizon lines being glued to the real horizon.

 

If I understand your comment correctly - I think the problem is maybe the skydome.

 

in this test shell there is no terrain or real clouds and things like that, just a skydome, which might have the horison drawn too high up.

 

I know that when you point the thing up, on the hud it is straight up, and when mathametically level, the hud is level. I think the skydome might just be too high up in its suggestion on where horison is.

 

edit:

 

ahh, i see your point, cheers!

 

the benefit of showing early dev stuff to our followers! a larger hud object/ wider vertical texel difference should correct it.

Edited December 19, 2004 by scary_pigeon

[Phlerp 0]

ahh, i see your point, cheers!

 

the benefit of showing early dev stuff to our followers! a larger hud object/ wider vertical texel difference should correct it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Exactly. It's like comparing the cogwheels on a bike gearing. The angular velocity of them are the same, but the actual speed of the outer rim of each wheel is different

I'm happy to help in any way I can :)

 

How about the stuff about adjusting the contrast of the HUD? Is that something you might consider? Most sims has the option to chose the color of the HUD to solve the problem with bad contrast against the background. My idea would be more realistic if it works.

Edited December 19, 2004 by Phlerp

[scary_pigeon 0]

with regards to hud contrast.

 

I am aware that the aircraft have brightness settings, I dont think the sea harrier had a clever clogs system that you described where perhaps it brightens up above horizon and is less bright below..

 

..but the brightness settings are important for night time flying to avoid killing your night vision -which is kind of useful in game - after all in combat games like wwii online at nightime we switch our lights off to get a better picture of the screen -but if we had bright HUD features we'd be dazzled in that darkness. so I think this control is important to have and not hard to implement.

[Phlerp 0]

Great

Edited December 19, 2004 by Phlerp

[Nobby 0]

looking Good , just dropped by again to see how things are progressing, thought I'd post to offer a word of encouragement remember for everyone who posts there are a hundred viewers who don't post.

 

By the way just finished scanning in load of old negatives, among them many pictures of County class destroyer and Wessex helicopter (excellent quality), if you need reference pics for these sometime be happy to oblige.

 

:yes:

[+Dante-JT 6]

By the way just finished scanning in load of old negatives, among them many pictures of County class destroyer and Wessex helicopter (excellent quality), if you need reference pics for these sometime be happy to oblige.

 

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! ;)

[scary_pigeon 0]

 

stuff still to do.

 

most of the dials can now be programmed by lua script. For the first time (slow I know) we've got a artificial horizon dial.

 

It took so long because for some reason I'd never got round to the relatively simple maths of finding the a,b,c alignment of an object given its matrix.

 

this raises some interesting possibilities to my mind. a,b,c alignment seems to be a jolly reasonable way of tweening between alignments. Will be useful for when we have a track recording function and internet.

 

our previous internet code did have a tweened position but not a tweened alignment.

 

 

hmm on 2nd thoughts that might lead to some odd effects when the aircraft is pointing upwards very near the vertical axis

Edited December 24, 2004 by scary_pigeon

[Dagger 21]

you are rolling now...well done!I hope you and the entire JT team have a GREAT and wonderful Christmas.

[PG_Raptor 0]

Great job guys! Looks like you're doing just fine with your sim!

 

I just noticed something. I have no idea how that cockpit is built, but most planes that I've seen/flown have the degree of bank markers (the white lines around the edge of the artificial horizon) on the top, not the bottom. Now, like I said, it may be like that in the actual plane, but it just kinda looked weird to me.

[+Dante-JT 6]

but most planes that I've seen/flown have the degree of bank markers (the white lines around the edge of the artificial horizon) on the top, not the bottom. Now, like I said, it may be like that in the actual plane, but it just kinda looked weird to me.

 

 

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!

[Omega Oska 0]

 

stuff still to do.

 

most of the dials can now be programmed by lua script. For the first time (slow I know) we've got a artificial horizon dial.

 

It took so long because for some reason I'd never got round to the relatively simple maths of finding the a,b,c alignment of an object given its matrix.

 

this raises some interesting possibilities to my mind. a,b,c alignment seems to be a jolly reasonable way of tweening between alignments. Will be useful for when we have a track recording function and internet.

 

our previous internet code did have a tweened position but not a tweened alignment.

hmm on 2nd thoughts that might lead to some odd effects when the aircraft is pointing upwards very near the vertical axis

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Haven't checked the Jet Thunder site for quite a long time. Now that I come and see this very nice screenie. Great!!!

[scary_pigeon 0]

its getting exciting now. the way i see it all major things we now have a handle on. Previously, there was still epic mile stones to tackle - now its all coasting downhill now - mostly content creation, tweaking and completion.

 

what do you people think of this variation - i changed dantes textures slightly.

 

 

i was trying to match the colours of a real photo

 

 

anyway, this is not that important - what we've been doing recently is continueing to add function to the cockpit. more dials doing their thing, more hud details. It is going to be quite an undertaking all this. next we must model different hud modes, and the navigation and radar gadgetry.

Edited December 27, 2004 by scary_pigeon

[Ivankuturkokoff 0]

This is looking fantastic great work Scary and Dante. I cannot wait to fly this Sim.

 

Dante regarding the Artificial Horizon, it looks unusual only since the bank refrence pointer is missing.

[+Dante-JT 6]

its getting exciting now. the way i see it all major things we now have a handle on. Previously, there was still epic mile stones to tackle - now its all coasting downhill now - mostly content creation, tweaking and completion.

 

what do you people think of this variation - i changed dantes textures slightly.

 

i was trying to match the colours of a real photo

 

anyway, this is not that important - what we've been doing recently is continueing to add function to the cockpit. more dials doing their thing, more hud details. It is going to be quite an undertaking all this. next we must model different hud modes, and the navigation and radar gadgetry.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

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 :))

 

it looks unusual only since the bank refrence pointer is missing

 

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.

Edited December 27, 2004 by Dante-JT

[scary_pigeon 0]

just done a dev movie.

 

its not yet finished, so its not on our front page - but it is here for those that wonder.

 

clearly, there is some little glitches and incomplete behaviour - but the movie illustrates current stage.

 

we develop things separate. we have a fledgling mission system

 

an example of the engine in a game setting were you can take off and land from hermes, drop bombs and things like that.

 

and this is other segment is where we continue to focus hard on the cockpit.

 

It takes a while for files to load up so when tweaking things it good to separate things out a bit. Here in this movie we fly over a featureless flat grassland.

 

Within this simplified world the physics, and the avionics can be modelled quite well.

 

xvid codec required

http://www.thunder-works.com/media/seaharrierinprogress.avi

[+Dante-JT 6]

just done a dev movie.

 

Within this simplified world the physics, and the avionics can be modelled quite well.

 

xvid codec required

http://www.thunder-works.com/media/seaharrierinprogress.avi

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

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.

[SDirickson 0]

Kickass looking movie. When will we be able to see the headshake and eye behaviour that was talked about a while ago? Will the HUD move in relation to where the head is, disappearing off the side of the glass if you tilt too far from center? Is there going to be TrackIR 6DOF support? I know, those are pretty specific questions when you have a lot of other important stuff going on.

[scary_pigeon 0]

oh yeah head shake, that can be added in at any time really, not much to it.

 

pretty cool that head shake behaviour eh?

 

the shaking shows off the 3d nature of the cockpit.

Edited December 28, 2004 by scary_pigeon

[Ivankuturkokoff 0]

Gulp ... pretty impressive AVI.

[+Dante-JT 6]

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 :)

[Drakkhen 0]

Awesome... ...more vids p-p-p-p-please!

[scary_pigeon 0]

well happy new year people.

 

today I've been working on jet engine model.

 

quite simple at the moment but much better than our previous instant throttle linked thrust model.

 

now with lua scripted, the behaviour of the jet engine is modelled - albeit simply - and yet since it is script it is refinable.

 

perhaps I am doing this more or less right.

 

there is min and max fuelflow rates for engine RPM.

 

if the desired rpm is above or below current rpm, fuel flow rates are modified within the parameters allowed.

 

currently the model is quite simple and behaving linearly

 

the faster the turbine turns, the more drag there is on it - the more fuel flow, the more force accelerating it.

 

Had some fun things, can imagine it happening when people have been developing turbines in the past - were the fuel flow constraints are perhaps not too well set and the engine just keeps on getting more and more power and there is nothing you can do :-)

 

it is therefore more responsive at higher rpm - so its seems to work quite nicely.

 

this lets me set the gauges now.

[scary_pigeon 0]

http://www.thunder-works.com/movies/jumptest2.avi

 

a more recent more complete cockpit

Edited January 4, 2005 by scary_pigeon

[Ivankuturkokoff 0]

Great Video. A small point. i notice the G meter datum is zero... It should be 1 :)