LanceCriminal86

So, I know most things AI are tied to the ED side of the house, but some things I noticed taking screenshots today: - AI Tomcat flight launched off of Supercarrier, the flaps/slats were constantly "popping" between deployed and retracted, during climb out. - AI Tomcat flight in level flight, wings were "flapping" between the various flex animation positions. - AI Tomcat flight wingman in 2-ship formation was flying at a nose-down attitude, while still apparently flying level formation with flight lead. And something I'm not sure if I missed but I haven't been noticing wings sweeping at high speeds with AI Tomcat flights, as I thought I did before. Wingmen of player formation follow your configuration but some AI flights at 450-500 knots were still bumping along wings well forwards.

I recall an "orbit" option was planned for Iceman at some point. I personally wish Iceman would operate like a full AI pilot in the regard that he would follow waypoints and do whatever the mission editor has assigned for your flight.

In the back seat, the TF-30 intake whine produces a notable "looping" sound to my ear in the A model. It becomes very distracting very quickly as my brain latches onto it and can't stop hearing it.

One correction here: You need to go in to the roughmets, I believe in the Blue layer, and cut out the little door in the rear gas purge vent. The whole thing is painted to be metalic/chrome looking, but there is a door there in the gun port that should be TPS/painted, ie gull or ghost gray.

Were the issues with the dud Phoenixes in Gulf War and all the no-fly zone periods on the propellant, or were they from electronics?

Not sounding like it. I believe it's been said the Viggen right now is taking priority to finalize it to get it out of EA, and the Forrestal as well. There's a lot in the pipe but it sounds like we'll have to wait for the roadmap that was mentioned by Mike or Cobra elsewhere. I poked around asking a little while back and it didn't sound like the pilot body had changed at all since last time it was presented. Realistically, I'd expect 2.7 to cause all kinds of fun and upheaval, need for new patching, and fixes, and then a resumption of feature releases. Maybe by the time the new pilot hits I'll have my Virpil stick, base, and extension.

Super well executed, bravo!

As someone who is supposed to knockout Net+ and has about 30 days left, I feel that!

Nope, it's been asked to add the second helmet to the LOD as well as a few other items. That's tied into the model itself. We've also asked about separate pilot bodies, separate tanks, and a few other sundry bits to add to the jet and LOD to help reflect some of the designs and schemes we've seen.

I think head tracking and especially technologies like VR are a must for the carrier pattern. I won't say that's the only thing holding folks back, because there are a LOT of building blocks Naval Aviators have to have down near perfect to even get to "Das Boat". Things like being able to actually fly a precise, timed route, formation flying, being able to maintain the AOA and on-speed having been built off of formation flying because you have to constantly modulate throttles and stick to maintain that ideal speed and positioning in a formation. Without those skills and practicing them flying an actual bang on CASE I pattern by the books seems really tough. Each element of the pattern is in itself a movement combining a few different skills. Holding a particular speed, altitude, and bearing over the boat with your jet configured one way, then executing a particular radius turn and changing your configuration while you do it. That there screws me up every time, because I can't quickly look back and forth to see things like speed, altitude, AOA, and vertical velocity all while trying to watch the boat. And then after that, getting the jet set up to on speed and AOA while descending to the right altitude and again, watching the boat the whole time. And then AGAIN turning in at just the right time from the 180 onto your final while not stalling out and also again dropping altitude, not being too far out, too far in, left, right, low, or high. I'll be honest I think equipment makes for a big part of being able to do a lot of this right. Not having rudder pedals, head tracking and a big enough monitor, good frame rates, rudder pedals, some good buttons/levers for all the functions you need in the landing cycle, and a good stick that allows you to make smooth and fine inputs, all of that makes each part of it tougher. And it's unfortunate that the overhead to run all of those things in DCS is so high, apparently even a 3090, a mountain of RAM, and an overclocked i9 or highest end i7 still isn't enough to have DCS run completely smooth with a reliably high framerate over areas like Syria, or heavily populated missions (In VR that is). In whatever case I do look forwards to the T-45C mod, and it seems like a reason for folks to actually get online and do virtual squadron stuff like VNAO because to really get good at this, some of us probably need a whole virtual flight school running through the Navy's program as though we were fresh faced LTJGs at Pensacola, Kingsville, or wherever.

I noticed some similar problems with the Clemenceau or perhaps the CdG mods, perhaps you guys can put your heads together as whatever fixes one mod should help the other, and all who follow after you guys.

Yeah, Tomcat you paint down in the Livery folders. You can place a base color layer below those, but also note in the livery files there are TCS layers that apply the tactical scheme. Something else to look at, typically you need to drop the brightness of color samples by about 10% so they don't look washed out. Or, up in the topmost Components folder turn off the final adjustments group in each template file.

Question for the VSN folks like @cdpkobra, what is involved in having different pilot models for some of these mods? I've noticed most simply use a modern USAF pilot, and I assume for each you'd have to go back and either have someone model or buy/convert a pilot model and then animate it in the EDM. Is that correct? It'd be great to see more of the community mods have helmets and a base pilot that fits some of these "eras" better, but I fully expect it means time, effort, and money in a new pilot model for each one.

Yep, the A's warning stripe is behind the position slime lights, while on the B I think it runs roughly through the middle of them. An important detail to look out for when doing A/B liveries. My eyes usually go straight to 3 places when folks post liveries: Intake Stencils Turbine Warning Stripe Fire Punch-Ins It's pretty easy to pick those 3 up to see if any changes were made to correct those areas when doing an A model skin.

No, the pilot models are part of the aircraft model and are animated within it.

Not all 68s had the tracks, if you look at more Hornet helmet pics there's a bigger sample size. There was the "TACAIR" visor track like the pic I showed, there's also some newer ones that are on the sides like the older HGU visors. But most often I seem to see neither, just bungee visors and later on with the NVG clips. Another tell may be the location of the comms cord. I think 33s, 55s, and 68s have differences there as well. HGU-55s weren't coming quickly when the Navy adopted them and I guess the Air Force was getting the lion's share, so the Navy approved the conversion of HGU-33/34s to the 55 style. Hence where you see some of the funky elephant ear shapes, black ears, no ears and just bumpers, old style mask receivers, etc.

I was told explicitly that HGU-55s all have the gray edgeroll/elephant ears. If you see black edgeroll/ears it indicates an HGU-68 of some kind or a converted HGU-33. And as said above sometimes you see 68s with the fixed visor track but often you don't. To add another twist the HGU-55s from Gibson and Barnes and Flight Suits Ltd use an ear pattern that mimics the old HGU-48, from which the 55 was born. I'm not sure when those came about but they very well could be in the mix from the 90s. IMO for the Tomcats we have the HGU-68/SV-2B combo is probably the latest I'd want to see, considering our jets just don't accurately represent the ones used during the GWOT. While yes ours should have the PTID there are some additional features and upgrades on the Bs/B Upgrades that fought through 2005, which are the ones we're seeing here with the later CWU survival vests. The good news IMO is that with the HGU-55, despite having not actually seen any previews of it, I'm confident we can get awful close to the HGU-68s used through the late 90s. The visor track can be added in textures and a little fun with normal maps and roughmets ought to be more than enough. The existing faux 55/68 trick Isoko and others have used are pretty convincing from a distance. I've not yet been able to duplicate it on my own, I'm waiting for the 55 to come out so I can drop some proper helmets for VF-201's last Tomcat year. Some of the other squadron members had HGU-55s during that year, but I do also want to reflect the final flight jet eventually. I'd like to see more stuff from the late 80s through late 90s if you have em. Here's a video that has some good cockpit footage from VF-1, shows examples of the converted 33s or possibly even the above mentioned Gibson or Flight Suits versions. Skip to about 9 minutes to start the Navy fun, Tomcat crews around 12 minutes:

Last I saw the Bs didn't have OBOGS, per a 1999 or so dated training document. Only the D was listed with OBOGS, there's a VF-103 guy that was here through their last cruise who worked on B Upgrades and he recalled only the Ds having it. And those extra vents on the jet may be part of the OBOGS as it was further back in the jet and on one side. Like the MODEX I'm seeing a lot of variations over years and squadrons on flight gear. It'd be another really bad rabbit hole to go down for sure, but the SV-2B should still be the main survival harness until more recently, I think GWOT, when the CWU-33 style vests really started coming in. THIS IS NOW A TOMCAT FLIGHT GEAR THREAD UNTIL WE GET NEW BODIES Here's a VF-142 pic showing what we rougly have right now: Last F-14A flight for VF-201 in November 1998. I see MA-2 harness, SV-2B vests, HGU-68 helmets with the fixed visor track. Their patches are somewhat different than the base Tomcat pilots in game. Here's VF-31 in 2003, still looks to be an SV-2B. HGU-68 helmet as well. Maybe newer type flotation collar? Here's 31 again in 2006, Looks like the CWU-33 style survival harness here, but also looks like the guy climbing has a VF-32 helmet? I think this photo of Meagan from Speed and Angels with her RIO shows her with the later CWU-33? survival vest

Because those things are relevant. The existing Stennis model was hot garbage and everyone knew ED wasn't going to actually put effort into it, that's why nobody made a big deal out of it when both the Stennis and Vinson were early 2000s quality looking 3d models. You can't ask for and praise attention to detail about things like flight models and the 'feel' of a module but then laugh when attention to detail is pointed out, or the lack thereof. Some of the big things touted about the Tomcat was laser scanning and using photo scans for the base textures. And they indeed are very detailed. The problem is the scans got all merged together without another step of QC to make sure they were "right" for the jet being portrayed. That's being corrected, which is also the difference between certain developers. Funnily enough folks heap on praise about guys providing really detailed skins, yet we are the ones complaining to HB to do the things like fix the model or give us the right helmets to match the skins we spent months on researching and emailing/phone calling pilots to get photos or descriptions of who was on the canopy rails. Why? Because unlike the masses we've been face deep in Tomcat photos to try and get them looking just right. Looking at panel lines to help get the stencils lined up, that stuff. And that's where you start noticing things are 'off', and then you can't un-see them. I'm just glad that Heatblur has a great team who are willing to look at the various points and try to work them into their product improvement flow, rather than just saying: "Eh, it's good enough as is"

That's not the issue. We are talking about physical features and textures that are either present and shouldn't be, or missing and should be present. There are a number of mirrored vents and such that should only be on As or Ds that were rebuilt As, things that should only be on one side of the jet, the missing ALQ-126 antennas, etc. This is not something explained away by "well a few jets might have", this is well documented and acknowledged by HB. I've laid out these issues elsewhere on the forums under the Skinner's thread as well as when I asked what jets were scanned, which proved out that a D and 2 A models were scanned hence the presence of D only features. Like I said: Good enough vs "right", and attention to detail. For a time I could live with stand-ins as long as the right thing is eventually done, but usually sooner than later.

At the same time, good enough is the enemy of "do it right". Case in point, to many our existing Tomcat model is more than good enough, until you spend some time actually looking at it closely. Which is why there's now a pile of things that are in the pipe to get fixed because the jet is a mashup of 3 different models. Missing B and late A features, includes D features, and features that should only be on As or Ds but not on Bs are again everywhere. Doing it Right is important. Yes, mission builder flexibility is important and I think including one offs of ship classes sucks. I also prefer to have at least one thing done right so I'm not staring at something picking out every single problem because unlike the unwashed masses I actually picked up a book and learned about the subject. And considering how much work HB have yet to do on the Tomcat, the final fixes for the Viggen and the promised Drakken AI jet, the AI Intruder, etc. something is bound to get cut for now. Maybe down the road they make good and expand the ship list. Maybe in the meantime we get repainted Forrestalls to fill in. I don't know. HB may not have decided yet either. But I rather prefer it is done right, whatever it is.

Lol inevitable? How many years has DCS had both an F-86 and Mig-15 and yet Korea is still extremely absent from anyone's, particularly ED's, roadmap? What DCS needs is actual focus, structure around collective modules representing eras and conflicts.

Who made you the forum sheriff kiddo?

Having the decks and fleet filled out with the right ships, aircraft, and helos gives us the depth to have a wide range of missions. Thankfully some mods are filling those gaps in but the S-3, SH-60, and E-2 are still needing reworks or a more period option, plus the need for the SH-3 family. Heck EA-3 Skywarriors were still on the boat sometimes through part of the 80s. And RF-8s until TARPS totally took that role over. The MAM mod adding the P-3 and C-2 are super helpful too. Having the P-3 means perfect part to allow for escort or intercept of threats trying to ward off or attack a P-3. An EP-3 would be even better for that role with how often they get harassed. Perfect mission writer's basis to have something escalate into a hot conflict or incident.