Ells228

Thanks again Sabre, I enjoy failing these missions. Makes me work at what I did wrong.

Top man, many thanks.

First off I'm not speaking on behalf of ED here, this is my thought as a modder and on behalf of discussions I've had with other modding teams. ED and TFC have been very helpful to the modding community I think. FC2 was very much hard coded and a lot of modders complained about this, so they release A10 which is very much more open to modding, as Trigen is proving. Also comments from other modding teams who have made contact with ED developers have always had nothing but good responses helping them out. There are a lot of talented people in this community that give up a lot of time to develop for this community leaving the ED team to work on the products themselves, VEAO, VNAO, ADA, and many others. Modding tools are almost products themselves. I am a software developer by trade and when I develop software, it takes almost the same amount of time to develop the tools to be able to mod that software. I have made the decision in the past to not release tools, but to open up the code more so others can mod it. This is what TFC/ED have done with DCS. So let's get this topic back on track please and if you're having problems getting things to work, post a specific request in the mods forums as I'm sure one of the modding teams has an answer and let's leave ED to work on their core products. Ells, on behalf of the VEAO modding team

Thanks bud, also just finished some other textures. I've left the MFD's in there at the moment as doing some weapon label testing as below.

Cheers PT, yeah I had a great weelend at Weston and made some good friends. For sure we will be there again next year bigger and better. The streams are still on our livestream channel at www.livestream.com/vralive Although it seems the Saturday stream didn't save correctly so we will re-stream that this week.

Sunday, second public day Up at 6.30am again to go get things warmed up, forgetting that the guys had a very late night and I ended up sitting in the car writing tweets and FB status updates until 9am when the gates opened. Sunday was a busier day and the only time I sat down all day was when we were flying. We had the charity auction at 12.00pm and Simon was hosting it. Great job mate and sorry for cutting you short so we could do the live show. Over £1100 pounds raised for charity with the HOTAS Warthog going for £280, nearly retail price. With all of the technical problems at the event sorted, we managed to get some tech problems on Ripper's PC with comms and music. I guess no show goes perfectly. Many thanks to Paul and Julia for sending the photos and video of me flying the Sunday show. It was a great pleasure talking to you both and enjoy your holiday. So, this is me flying our live show on Sunday, and no Ghost they are not gardening gloves lol Crowd videoing me flying Here is a video of me flying on the Sunday, in the zone with stern concentration: The day finished around 5pm, so time to pack everything up and I left Weston-Super-Mare around 6.30pm Many thanks to... Simon for inviting us to display at your event and we thoroughly enjoyed it. John for helping getting all of the technical problems sorted. Clive for providing the dome screen Warren for all of your help over the weekend helping out with the public Lee for letting us come into your museum Brandon from Sky High Radio for the live coverage about the team The catering guys for providing the much needed morning cups of tea The public for your gracious comments The LockOn and DCS community for your support and words of encouragement The Fighter Collection for your continued support and charity donations And mostly to our sponsor Thrustmaster for your support, for providing the HD LiveStream channel and for your charity donations. RED8 Ells

Saturday, first public day Up at 6.30am to get to the hanger for 7.30am start (thanks to Simon for wake up cup of tea), very bright sunny day and wondering how my TrackIR will perform with all the light in the hanger. To be honest Saturday morning went in a blur it was very busy with lots of people wanting to fly in the dome and on my pc. Some younger and older pilots. (Note, all images of children have had express permission from parents or guardians to be taken and shown) At 11am I decided to open the LiveStream studio and check in with the team on teamspeak. To say panic set in was an understatement. Teamspeak had massive lag and I couldn't hear the team, LiveStream studio just wouldn't open an I was getting pings of over 1000 to Crow's server. JOHN!!! I shouted as loud as I could. From 11.30am until show time at 1pm I was running around with John between my pc and the big screen trying to figure out how we can improve the Internet bandwidth so we can do the show. We had to take SkyHigh Radio off air and the VATSIM guys too in the end (thanks to both of them). I had no time to have a warm up flight, attend the pre-flight briefing and was a little stressed at this point. Not to mention there was a crowd of around 30 people looking over my shoulder and a few hundred at the big screen. Ok Ells, time to pull it together and show these people what you're made of!! Ready to start our second live public show (on big screen). Some of the crowd starting to gather for the show. Despite all of the technical problems and pressures of flying in front of a live audience watching over your shoulder, we did an amazing job and got a rapturous round of applause at the end of the show, and I was even asked to autograph our flyers. With no time to relax after the show, lots of people wanted to fly on our show phantom server and give it a go, so back to work for me. Duncan from VRAF flying on the phantom's wing The last member of public to fly was at 18:30 so a very long, exhausting, but very enjoyable day. We were due to have a Vietnam style disco, and I stopped off to get something to eat then go change at the hotel but made the mistake of laying down on the bed and woke up at 3am. I would have loved to have seen Simon dressed up as a purple pimp but alas was too tired. Sunset over Weston-Super-Mare on Saturday night

Friday, press day. Two boxes of TM brochures and 2 stands arrive so time to get those out. The VRAF guys turn up and set up. Very nice guys, good to meet you Duncan and Alec. With Ghost not coming to the event, I had a brainwave and try my spare XP box on the dome screen and viola, success!! Simon giving it a spin...shouting at the top of his voice (all weekend I might add lol) Smoke On...GO!! Now lets try the back seat ride view from our FLG show And see what it looks like from show centre, some work to do on the joining of the projected pictures. Now time to test the LiveStream HD feed onto the big screens around the hanger. Again thanks to John for help with this and soldering an audio cable to blare out Ripper's narration. A few of the other exhibitors and press came to fly (as I cranked up the volume of Crow's calls on the phantom server). Also got to meet Brandon and Ian from Sky High Radio (www.skyhighradio.co.uk), awesome guys, and an on-air interview with Brandon coming soon. I saw Sky TV walking around interviewing people and have been told they took some shots of our display and me flying, so will find out more on that.

Photos and videos have started to come in from some fans so I'll start this thread and post them up with a description of each. I have requested the photos and videos the organisers took and they should be with me soon. Thursday, arrival and set up day Must be getting close Found it Wow!! This is where we are gong to set up our area, couldn't have picked a better attack helicopter to be next to and man I never new it was so big in real life!! I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of these rocket pods I can tell ya!! Clive from Eventuality had already set his dome screen up for us to use and Simon (event organiser) had leant us his RED1 pit (thanks guys). After about 4 hours of unpacking the car and getting it all set up, we're good to start testing the kit. Many thanks to John for all of his technical help. The Thrustmaster T-shirts and donated Warthog have arrived, many thanks to Emma and Eric for these. We're having major problems getting the dome Sol7 software to work on Windows7 and Vista and await a reply from Australia. A very sunny day outside as the sun sets over Weston-Super-Mare

Replace existing ones for the overlay model you are using, I.e. A10, F15, SU27 etc. As you can see below, you need to align your cockpit model with the HUD / MFCD screens (if you want those) Excuse the textures, (this was just a HUD test)

Awesome Sawa

No worries Rattler, I have the Italian photoshop templates I think so they are better than the skin files. You're welcome Xanpitopato I am testing a new sound model for the Typhoon at the moment and will release soon. Thanks, Ells.

Apologies about my server (read pc hosting) not being open for last few days, I was training 3 of my team mates in basic weapons and formation flying and didn't want visitors taking out the targets I had designated. I was also testing 1.1.0.8 patch so it was up and down a lot. If it's not critical to be "closed", I'll keep it open in future.

Hi Matastor, I'm just unpacking all my pc bits form the VRA show at Weston. When I find my hard drive, I can send you the Italian skin template. Please PM me in a few days and I'll send you the link. Thanks, Ells.

Lovely model and cockpit. For the VEAO Typhoon, we basically used gauge arguments to make a workable HUD, but not a combat HUD. That is proving to be more tricky. There are also work arounds for the MFCD's but again tricky. If you need a hand with those, PM me. DCS is far more open to this if you know your way around coding and a hex editor. The VRA team are trying a few different things until such time as the tools are available. And as is our tradition, if we figure it out, we'll share it with you. Please note that this is my view as VEAO developer, not ED tester. Yes Moa, cockpit shadows are part of 1.1.0.8 as per Wags update post.

At the moment only small development has been made as we hit a few snags. And some of our team have been away for Easter and we are flying our live display in front of public crowd next weekend (Virtual Red Arrows), so most of our dev team have been flying for that. We have now created a basic HUD with flight symbology, however combat HUD is proving to be a poblem, and we haven't started to llok at functional MFCD's yet. This is a long haul project and limited to what we can interface with for FC2, but it is very much still on my mind to complete. Thanks for the interest, Chris.

I thought it was genius and a very good distraction, well done!! Yeah I just parked up behind it, in the bay and worked for me. To be honest most people won't know where the parking spots are unless they do a lot of mission building in the editor so I'd keep it, stop behind the follow me truck. Again great missions and I've started to make a PDF manual with your flight briefings that can dbe pdf'd when completed.

Haha someone was watching the choppers and not the follow me truck. I thought that bit in the mission was genius and a great distraction to see if you were paying attention.

Excellent read and advice buddy +1

LMAO

Awesome missions there Sabre

Excellent read Jim. I also have another recomendation for a book of a similar read: "Joint Force Harrier" The inside story of a Royal Navy fighter squadron at war By Commander Ade Orchard ISBN: 978-0-718-15399-1

haha made me laugh because if it was 2012 already then my work would be screwed as we're building the London 2012 Olympic Athletes Village and would be a "little late" lol

I'm looking forward to 2011 first ;) Best of luck with your team guys

The Virtual Red Arrows are pleased to announce that the team will be sponsored by Thrustmaster® for the FSC Weston event being hosted in Weston super Mare in the UK on the 13/14/15th May 2011. Two pilots, RED5 Melanie Warn and RED8 Chris Ellis, will be flying live at the event in front of expected public crowds of 1000+ per day on the Saturday and Sunday and the Press day on the Friday. Along with seven other pilots connected via the Internet they will be flying their exhilarating 2011 virtual aerobatic display routine replicating the Royal Air Force Red Arrows 2008 display routine using the LockOn Flaming Cliffs 2 flight simulator. The live display will start at 13:00 BST (British Summer Time), 14:00 CET (Central European Time) and can be seen on large screens displayed around the event location. The display will also be streamed live via a High Definition video streaming web page provided by Thrustmaster® at http://www.livestream.com/vralive The team will be flying at the event using the latest flight simulator technology from Thrustmaster®, the HOTAS WARTHOG TM a U.S. Air Force A-10C attack aircraft HOTAS™ (Hands On Throttle And Stick) replica joystick. Thanks, Ells.