LanceCriminal86

The Iranian -95 will not be a full and "true" Iranian -95 in itself. Unless something massive changes it will still have the same externals as the -135 Early, maybe with the ALQ-100 only but maybe just with the TCS bullet housing. It will probably still have the late -115+ beaver tail with ECM. If the early external model gets the older vents it probably will have those. Probably will have the external tank pylons, unless that too changes across the board. It has been stated more than once that it will be the "Early" -135 with some features turned off and Iranian skins. Everything depends on what the art team decides to change for the earlier external model. If they add changeable TCS pods and removable ALQ-126, and removable tank pylons then sure, it will be pretty darn close to an Iranian jet. They added the option for an Iranian player jet further down the road in development as a bonus.

Hwat? No such thing occurred. The -95 wasn't originally promised, then or now, only an Iranian spinoff with some disabled systems was added further in development. There's TALK of setting up the "early" -135 so it can look like the older jets for the most part. Functionally the -135 "early" is going to fly the same as a US -95 would, just with a little extra jamming. All the early/late and -135 naming from HB were intended for was to separate the later 90s LANTIRN equipped jets that eventually got ALR-67 from the 80s-90s Tomcat with the old ALR-45 and still Air to Air focused. Giving us some visual or mounting options would let you maybe remove some stuff to pretend it's a -95 in 1981 off the Nimitz with no TCS or ALQ-126. Again, being considered but nothing concrete. And the early jet basically is waiting on art from what I understand in past updates. Once the model can have the features backdated/added for the different As and the B then it should just be testing of the ALR-45 and that's about it.

Oh? What other changes to the B preclude including the A+ back through '87-88 besides not mounting the LANTIRN and ignoring the GPS dome?

TL;DR Airquake servers have been spared one more month. Next month there will be rending of garments, wearing of sack-cloths, and the lamentations of their women will drown out all. Phoenix will blot out the sun, and there will be no fighting in the shade.

I think the problem we still face is needing the contemporary opponents and assets. As much as you want a B/C or D, we wouldn't really have a good environment for a more pure 60s/Vietnam Cold War. OTOH, the E and J/S covers the heavier parts of the Cold War from the late 60s through to even the early 90s. By the early 70s the Bs were being phased out for the Js, Ns, and mainly F-14s, while the C/Ds started going to rear line Reserve or Guard squadrons as the Es took over for the Tactical Fighter role. And even there they were overshadowed as the F-15A was coming in to dominate the air superiority role. I totally see the argument though for representing the B/C/D when they were the premier fighter for the AF and Navy, as well as the Marines. They deserve to get some representation for when they were the top of the food chain, I just think without the right "Red Air", either player or AI, it'd be an empty experience. Kind of the same with trying to represent late 70s-80s F-14A action without some older MiG-23s and Soviet bombers that better match the era. When the MiG-17 is completed that's going to really help, maybe even if an older MiG-21 could be done, or an earlier MiG-19. But we'd still need a decent 105 to escort and other VN era assets for the Air Force. Older KC-135s for example, earlier C-130s, C-123s or C-141s, B-47s, B-66/A-3, etc. I think the point is, many would rather fly in an era before the Hornets and Vipers, FBW, MFDs, and all that noise.

The Tomcat doesn't have dynamic MODEX, I think he's referring to other ED/party aircraft that do have them. In the existing ED system a material/face for each number array is cut into the model, and then assigned an arg. They then use TGA or PNG with alpha and coordinates within the image to display the number based on the assigned BORT/MODEX in the mission. To do the larger/heavily raked numbers Tomcats typically wore you're going to need a lot of real estate around each number to have the skewed MODEX display. And with the geometry of the Tomcat in that area it's a heavily complex set of curves. It sounds like something is coming down the pipe in the future but the assumptions that it's ezpz to just slap them on there seems flawed to me.

Here's a fun trick for taking pilot/RIO selfies: While you're in the cockpit, use the pause function, and then switch seats with 1/2. You can then move the camera position around to take photos because the other body has not disappeared yet. I've used it to take some RIO style selfies like those Bio and co took.

Same, I picked up mostly by time in grade but then 100 extra points because special duty or something, which blew me way over the cutting score. Always an LC at heart though. As to colors/resources I had some different shades I used, maybe your saturation or reshade is amped up but the intensity of the colors looked way more vibrant than what I used. The early war blue-gray is pretty tough to pin down as there's some resources making it more blue and others more gray. And there may have been different shades for Atlantic vs Pacific there in '42-'43. Then there were the Korea ones, still need to revise them and rework stencils, the base color, and roughmets all over again. The late WW2 and Korea blue is really hard to nail down as well because sometimes it looks almost black, but it also faded into a more blue-blue, and some shades also show it with a blue-green tint after they revised it following WW2 to reduce the color fading.

I did very similar ones that I've never released. Once some of these historic ones are done I want to resume working on my fictional CoNA skins for each squadron.

I know, and the problem is fixing it will break anything but blank tail skins. Even if graphics don't cross over from VSTAB to rudder panel the alignment of anything on the rudder panel would be thrown off. It looks like the VSTAB was accidentally rotated longitudinally at some point.

Heatblur's ACLS is not using ED's LINK stuff as it came before, you should just be using the existing ICLS channel and TACAN for the ship. The LINK system for the Tomcat is apparently different and separate from what the Hornet has, as apparently are the implementations themselves.

The hard part isn't just the positioning, but the raked numbers and kerning in trying to size/position that to match most squadrons. It was rare for the MODEX to just be straight vertical numbers like you see on the Hornet. The MODEX cutouts would have to be oversized to fit raked numbers, but then on the flaps and tails they may not be. And that's just trying to get the 98% solution if you average out where squadrons had their numbers and how they did them. VF-301 had super raked numbers for example, and I think another squadron had them almost vertical at one point. But for that 98% of scenarios the nose numbers were usually raked about 15 degrees or so, the wings were usually only two digits, and same with the tails with them either on the upper rudders or the fin caps. In whatever case we'll have to see what iteration is chosen and how it's going to work out. But in the meantime there are some more F-14B skins coming down the pipe while we wait for the earlier F-14A external model, the new helmets and pilot bodies, and the fixes/additions for the model in general like the ALQ-126 blisters. The challenge right now is finding good references for some of those late 90s cruises that align with not only the current F-14B's configuration, but the carriers they were operating on. I was researching VF-11 from 1998 but just haven't been able to nail down jets with names. Almost zero photos out there, and the cruise videos are just too grainy to make out some of the names. A lot of cruises were like that, while the more available photos are pre- or post-cruise with different names, paint, etc.

Because the solution to enable dynamic MODEX in the first place requires a model rework, not just flipping on an argument in LUA as had been stated many times before. It means pulling the model apart, cutting faces, potentially reworking UVW maps, and other time-intensive and destructive methods if the model wasn't built with them to begin with. And even the Hornet and Viper numbers have some oddities themselves viewing from certain angles. It's not off the table, it was mentioned in the interview video from the other week and it will probably be a generic position or two. That's also going to mean having to go back through each livery/squadron to create "blank" jets to please the online folks so effectively double the work creating blank and historic skins. I also would not expect that every single livery added to the F-14 is going to have both a dynamic and fixed/historic version. I'd anticipate a dynamic jet for the main fleet squadrons, and that would be that.

The current tails also have a D feature, an extra light on the right VSTAB cap below the mentioned anti-collision light. Not present on As or A+/B as far as I can see. Let's see if they can get some liquid nitrogen or dental floss out and chop it off like a skin tag.

..... Well, I've been staring at that area because the stab or rudder is slightly crooked and never noticed that. Guess I'll add that to the stack.

I was researching on that the other day, trying to get ideas for some VN era skins for the Es that we will have as far as slats but not TISEO jets. It had seemed that some of the Es rushed out to VN around that time supposedly had both slats and TISEO under RIVET HASTE in '72 or '73? or something like that, and then older jets had slats retrofitted from there through the end of the war. If you've got anything showing the slatted, non-TISEO Es in VN I'd really appreciate it.

I had to start finding former maintainers to finally get the radar stencils along the anti-glare that was added somewhere around the -75 or 80 jets. And finding some of the factory stencils that usually were obliterated over the years and rarely covered in books. There's still a whole ton not covered in the Detail and Scale books. There were also some stencils only done on certain squadrons in certain earlier years, like VF-124, VF-14, VF-2 to name a few. Up around the forward antenna on the spine some kind of stencil was added, I think we determined it basically said "do not paint" or something along those lines. Example here from an early VF-124 jet, one of the -65GR jets: Of course there were also the ones VF-2 had around their wing box area, with no explanation that I have ever been able to find as to why. And some of the stencils would just be too small to even be readable. The pitot/probe stencils are already barely legible, trying to do the other factory markings you'd be fine making squiggly lines.

Should be "Normal Canopy Control", give me a few and I can find some pics Basically a reminder not to use the f@*$)%& emergency canopy release, because that absolutely did happen. Wording may change the further you get in years past "factory fresh" but this at least is an example from VF-201's last CAG jet as it was being flown to AMARC:

Yeah, imagine volunteering your time to do something like reworking panels so the core HB art guy(s) don't have to. Or reworking the default skins so they don't have to. Painting up replacement helmets so they don't have to. That definitely sounds like nationalistic socialism to me.

Clearly the rational response is for you to go back to the first post, download the paint kit, and create the skins you desire. You can then submit them to UserFiles. You may then feel free to delete the packages for any other liveries that are released through the F-14 module, because they were made by a bunch of "rivet-nazis" which you clearly don't need or want.

Keep calling people rivet-nazis and don't get all shocked pikachu faced when they stop making liveries.

There are a lot of timeframes to fill in, with looming reworks of the base textures, panel lines, normals, etc. and earlier configurations coming it makes sense to hold up and do things once instead of having to completely rework skins later on. I get everyone wants every jet now, whether correct or not, but there's also a ton of work that goes into getting it *right*. For those that don't care about the differences between the B and A, might as well go right ahead and start working on them. If a better way to manage optional skin packs can be done then absolutely expect a lot more "official" skins coming down the pipe with as many jets as you can shake a stick at. But the challenge right now is guys are already complaining about drive space, and adding 4x detailed skins per squadron per year/cruise, with a couple eras represented is already hammering on drive space, imagine that spread out across 3x different iterations of the F-14.