LanceCriminal86

So you're the development lead now?

Yep, most of his photos were from Edwards, Nellis, and sometimes Miramar but he did have the airport code on there as I see it now. https://www.flickr.com/photos/147861202@N07/albums/72157666900357129/with/38691679272/

Coming, eventually. VX-4 F-14A+ 162911 from 1988. Same airframe would go to VF-24 as the 201 skin that currently is included (and is on the list for some fixes), then went to NFWS briefly and ended up over in VX-9 later on before ending up with VF-11 from '97-'04, and she's now on display as such: References, mainly thanks to the great Keith Svendsen's wonderful photos from Edwards and other bases/airshows from the 80s-90s, who caught her at the Edwards open house or airshow in 1988: But wait, helmets? Names? Well that took a good while, but I finally found a photo of some VX-4 crews walking to both Vandy1 black Phantoms, which dated to March of '89, and other photos from '87-'89 Point Mugu airshows showed these helmets but not clearly: Some more digging, and I found out "Edelen" was Marine Captain Russ Edelen, who worked on the F/A-18D stuff at Pax River in '86 and seems to have been around VX-4 at the right time as a back-seater, and the for the pilot, Tom Lindgren who was an F-14 project officer with VX-4 from '87-'89 and a Tomcat pilot. The pilot bodies are going to be changing at some point in the future, so I'll redo them at that time.

And some real world skins:

I can see a lot of unknown data points that would have to be known or somehow deduced to really figure out jamming and burn through and all that noise, no pun intended. Not just the actual transmission strengths of the radars and jammers but frequencies and all kinds of jazz, how the radar processes the results or discards erroneous returns, etc. I'm not sure how they'd even go about adding something like a Prowler to do protective jamming of a formation or flight, or area denial or any of that for the AI side. I understand there are some nice scripts that were done for the IADS framework/script to "disable" SAMs that were in a radius of a jet with that jammer script but trying to have more stuff like that to impact player aircraft is a huge challenge with lots of unknowns, all wrapped up in red tape.

Are there any decent A-3 models out there? The Skywarrior did a lot of spooky stuff back in the day and even up to the early 90s with VQ-2, and did a lot of testbed, training, and missile support/monitoring stuff too. If I had to think of another spooky AI jet it would be something A-3 based like the EA-3 or RA-3. MAM has a P-3, would be neat if they could add EP-3 bits to it as well. Even if EWAR isn't fully modeled in DCS they make great assets for missions for escort, intercept, etc. Thanks again to prccowboy for making and supporting your suite of helpful AI mods!

Barthek and Taz, making Caucuses great again:

Taz's trees + Barthek's Caucuses really make the map great with its age

Can we pay him in Trident Layers gum?

No, it just means that certain late upgrade versions may not be available to model, or that it just might take some more legwork to get the documents that are available released.

Somewhere along the line, the LANTIRN apparently isn't showing to the AI as a valid pod. It sounded like changes needed to be made on the ED end or that corrections to the LANTIRN code would need to be provided by them, as if you frankenstein a different pod on there suddenly the AI drop LGBs again.

People whose "feelings" matter: People with experience in the F-14, using the Phoenix, or who supported the systems. Aka, people who can say "something doesn't feel right" and provide feedback within the limitations of classifications, OPSEC, etc.

Do what "Hawk" Smith did while he was waiting for the results of his pilot transfer package while he was a Phantom RIO: Forget about it

If we had the early E, a B/C/D/J AND a Vietnam map? Maybe. As it stands our jet is post-war, we have no Vietnam to fly it in, and frankly most "Vietnam" songs have become pretty played out. Besides all that, it's more likely that the music wouldn't be some big, copyrighted song that would have extra $$$ involved for its usage.

Where'd you find that? I'm looking for any more stuff about him, I already went through "Roger Ball!" with Hawk Smith's accounts.

I mean we're really not getting a Vietnam jet for the most part...

No, probably not. Forge was about panels, seat pads, etc. in the cockpit.

The helmets were originally considered as possibly a livery switch but we'll have to see. It might be a special options item or doable in loadout, but it all depends on resources. As to desert flight suits, you'd have to do those as skins. More ideal is if ED has a framework where the pilot bodies aren't part of the aircraft EDM, and instead only the animation skeleton and positioning needs to be. Then pilot/crew models could be swapped in as long as they were rigged correctly with a common "skeleton".

They're on my list now, and will be perfect for the olderish Tomcat as they did used the TCS. I know they have been done but now I HAVE to make sure Capt Wilson's jet is in there, and of course everyone will want Hoser just because. And I did finally sort out that the mug was indeed from the "Boomer" who was CO at TOP GUN when the article Top Guns was written that triggered the screenplay, and then when the screenplay was written he heavily was interviewed. Boomer's callsign came from a very low/high speed pass over the Cubi Point O Club, and was the inspiration for Maverick's tower pass as well as his stories of flying F-8s and past cruises being the inspiration and basis of "Viper", as well as his mannerisms.

I think on the discord we found it was in the Roughmets/AO channel but I can take a look eventually when we are back in town.

Fly? Who said anything about flying modules? Maybe I've just spent too much time in the paint booth.

There's going to be a lot of hurdles for the Intruder, just like there are systems and docs on the Tomcat that just aren't available or had to be worked around due to ITAR and release issues. While NATOPS should be available, the concerns will always be around things like the TACMANs and additional system breakout manuals. A lot of that is going to decide what Heatblur is able to legally use, and how far around it they can work. There are different segments of the Navy that have different manuals, and apparently there's not 100% agreement on what can be released, downgraded, scanned, etc. between them. The Intruder Archive dudes are working pretty hard on as much docs as they can get but there still will be the issue of, what can be properly shared with Heatblur's devs as non-US Persons according to things like ITAR. The last thing anybody wants is devs in jail, or good meaning A-6 enthusiasts having a tangle with the State Department or Department of the Navy. Ultimately what is releasable not just to US Citizens but also what can be seen and used by Heatblur is what will decide if we get an E, E with TRAM, WCS, or SWIP, or whatever combinations can be documented between those upgrades and the NATOPS, TACMANS, and what pilots and BNs can comfortably share.

Having at least one of each major class or one-off boat would be great, as long at they can be painted up with the right deck numbers. Unfortunately some existing carriers are more difficult than others or plain impossible, plus there's the issue of the island's lights in the models now. Nevermind the deck crew textures in certain modules apparently being locked away/encrypted or unavailable for reskinning and being able to add squadron specific jerseys and helmet decorations for, as was common. I have no idea why they'd be locked away, but apparently that's a thing.

Pffff, getting carried away is buying piles of flight gear because you started looking close at the F-14 pilots while doing skins, and then deciding why not have a setup for each favorite module, because reasons. At this rate I'll be needing enough mannequins to crew a C-130 I was tempted to lay down the gauntlet on whether I was going to be able to piece together a set of F-4E pilot's gear from the 70s-80s before the Phantom drops, but at this point with the parachute harnesses being so hard to find it could end up being 2024 before I could get everything I'd need. So I think instead I'll just make sure my Christmas stocking has room for a Virpil WARBRD stick as it's the closest to the B-8 used in the Phantom, Intruder, and Corsair II. F-4E (Hellenic): A-6: A-7E: Apparently the B-8 family was also used in the F-5, 100, 104, 105, 15, A-10A, and a bunch of other older jets we are pretty unlikely to see in DCS. The Virpil has some differences but it's the same general body and layout, and should work great like my VFX grip and curved extension have. Here's to hoping I'll be able to use it by Christmas or New Years!

Warhammer 40K: "And I took that personally"