aaronwhite

You might ping one of the Heatblur guys to see for sure, but as far as I know it's randomly chosen. I don't remember seeing anything in the description file, but I also wasn't looking, so it's possible I just didn't notice it.

I see it's written as Screenshot competition. Does that mean we're wanting one submission per poster?

I think that's a huge part. In real life you've got a much easier time judging distances and everything, between being able to better see the depth in the real world and using your peripheral vision, paired with being able to actually feel the little changes in motion. Not to mention the feel of the joystick and throttles moving, and the difference in having a real stick hooked up to real cables/pullies/computers compared to having your "one size fits all" joystick at home that's usually got a really short stick shaft and is the same between everything from an I-16 to an AH-64.

That's definitely interesting. I want to say the first time it happened to me, I was flying the Mavericks tutorial, the first missile came up fine, but no amount of squeezing the trigger got the next one to show up. I figured maybe I had done something wrong, so I exited the mission and restarted it, and I haven't had the issue since. It would be interesting to see if there's any common occurrence that causes it.

There's also a very high chance that I'm going to do an IRIAF RF-4E, even if it's not entirely accurate. This pattern just looks too good:

I'll definitely be down to give those Luftwaffe ones a shot. Those look awesome. Sadly, just waiting on the official paint kit for now. The F-4 is going to be a blast to throw some liveries on, and playing around with the base textures, it doesn't look too terrible to figure out what's where.

It takes time to get everything "public" ready. From what I've seen of various templates over the years, the one used by the teams are usually pretty messy in terms of organization and grouping. A lot of times you'll end up with stuff all over the place, multiple copies of layers so you can test things or try something new. It takes a while to go through the layers, organize things into logical groupings, get rid of extra stuff, label and rename things, and just make it generally friendly for the public. That said, if Heatblur wants to hand off the task, I'd be happy to sort through the templates and make heads or tails of everything if their graphics people are busy!

I had this happen to me the first time I tried out the Mavericks, but since then, I haven't had it pop up since. That was during the initial release, I believe before the first patch for anything on the F-4.

Pretty sure I just watched this one fly out at the RIAT airshow departures live stream!

I'm flying the same stick (it's "crotch" mounted with my desk mount I use) and what I've been doing, which likely isn't very real world, but whatever, is to pull full after on the stick at the start. Just hold back all the way as I'm letting off the brakes. Then as the airspeed builds and I get around the rotation speed, I'll wait until the nose starts to pitch up and just ever so gently move the stick forward a bit, while still mostly holding back, to pull a little back, until my rear wheels lift off, and then I'll slowly lower it until whatever point gets me level flight to bring up the gear and flaps, then I'll pull back the throttles a bit for the climb and trim it out to hold that and take some pressure off.

Yeah, I can see that being a pain to get programmed out. Because if the SAM is behind you, then yeah, it's possibly friendly. Unless you're turning away from an enemy SAM with the same type. I guess the only way would be to just have him ignore all same-side SAM units, maybe as a communications option you can set with the Jester menu. I guess then you get the option to have friendly SAM systems called out in case you're trying to drag enemies into their engagement zones for some cover, or just so you know where your friendlies are if you're lobbing Shrikes around. I've probably had a few SAM sites on my side that are lucky I'm still so terrible at getting those things to hit. They don't have that same luck with me flying the Hornet.

I like those colors! I know it's blasphemy, but the F-14 would look real good in a lot of the Russian/Soviet camo patterns they've used.

I'm glad to know someone's enjoying them! I mainly just made them as an excuse to mess around with the F-14 template, and to have my own version of the IRIAF skins. This one's waiting on the upload approval, and then it's good to download. I'll update this post with the link for anyone who's interested. Here's the link! Enjoy!

Oh, I'm all for any solution. I don't imagine any solution is what Heatblur wants to do, because they've already got enough on their plates with everything else, but if any Iranian voice actor wants to record all of the Jester lines, I'll happily contribute some money towards paying for that to get a custom voice option!

Still need to finish the helmets, and then touch up the left side non-slip paint on top of the inlet, but this one's almost done to complete the 4 IRIAF F-14 paint jobs. I've been working on editing the roughmet on this one, since the non-slip is different on the real one compared to the default Heatblur version. I tried making the black anti-glare look a little darker than the tan, and messed with a bit of other elements of the roughmet, but I don't know that they really show up well in the screenshots. I guess it'll hopefully just be a little bit of detail that people notice while flying around. It's too bad all camo paint isn't mirrored, because it certainly goes a bit quicker that way!

Yeah, the only other way I could see it working would be if there was some way to implement some AI voice changing technology that would allow them to just set a region and the AI would automatically change the voice samples to sound like someone from that region. But that's...probably quite a lot.

That's actually pretty cool. I didn't know about that. I wonder how possible it would be to have something like that done with AI to create an Iranian Jester voice for when you fly IRIAF missions. I know it's an impossibly massive task for Heatblur, but it would be kind of cool to have "regional" accents for the Jester voice. I would never expect them to do that, but it would be a real immersion boost. I need a stern German RIO when I'm flying the F-4 for Germany.

The one time, so far, I've heard anything positive about my landings... Thankfully, he just judges the touchdown and not the approach, because my smoothest landing was an absolutely garbage approach.

That's how I've got mine setup. The "Back" on my throttle for the speed brake (It's the Winwing Orion, mimicking the Hornet grips) is a momentary switch, where if you aren't holding it, it will pop back to the middle position, allowing you to just put it out as much as you want and then stop. Then to pull it back in, I've got to flip the switch to the forward position, which locks into place, so I don't have to worry about not holding it long enough and accidentally leaving speed brakes out.

Since I've fully hijacked this thread, figured I'd update that I was unable to keep myself from making the 4th variant of the IRIAF's F-14's, with the mirrored splinter camouflage variant that from my understanding only seemed to exist on one airframe and I believe has since been repainted into the standard IRIAF Blue camo. I was going to weather some of my other skins, but thought I may as well complete the F-14's.

It's ready for download to anyone who wants it!

I was thinking about tackling some of the HAF's filthy Phantoms after I finish up my current F-14 addiction!

Still need to do some final spot checks to make sure I didn't miss anything, and then try to finish up one of the cooler IRIAF helmet examples I've found in a way that doesn't look like total garbage, but this Asia Minor scheme should hopefully be out this weekend. And since I was bored for a little bit tonight, I tried out seeing how the weathering might look for a few minutes before bed. I might have to give this a shot on the full thing after I finish this Asia Minor skin up.