LanceCriminal86

I completely understand. But my thought was that if your Tomcat is inverted or rolled 90 degrees, that TARPS pod isn't going to be able to *see* the target. Does the mission builder allow for any parameters like aircraft roll or pitch attitude for triggers?

Ah, but I take it no layered's PSDs or anything? Even something simple with the details and panel lines separated out would be a huge help. I ask because I've been having fun backdating various aircraft to the post-WW2 dark sea blue schemes used through Korea. I had the E-2 before my HDD crashed, A-4, F-18C, and Tomcat. I was thinking the Orion and C-2 would look great in those schemes!

I didn't see it previously, but do you guys have some basic templates for these aircraft by chance?

Perhaps in addition to actual photos/screenshots a "zone" can be painted around the aircraft representing the TARPS sensor and visibility, which can then trigger success flags in missions. Something a little more complicated than flying over a zone is making sure the cameras were able to "see" the target sufficiently.

@Lt.Seahawk Are those your own roughmets/template or did you borrow someone's? I'm looking for an improved roughmet to work from for a HAVE GLASS painted Tomcat.

At one point there was a P-51 weapon mod that allowed it to carry a loadout close to a Skyraider with lots of bombs and rockets, not sure it still works but until the Jug shows up that could fill a gap. There also was a Skyraider mod in progress but sadly it never even made it as an AI asset.

Could that be added? Allegedly the KC-10s with basket were preferred by Tomcat pilots for refueling during OEF/OIF, maybe due to the higher speed and less turbulence tanking from a basket off the boom instead of wingtips.

I was nearly done with a fictional F-14 Blue Angels pack, but I had an HDD crash and lost all of it. I may try it again if nobody still has done it, but the problem I ran into was matching the Blue's tail numbers. Have not been able to find a font that matches is, and am not so great at hand-making anything just yet.

@IronMike you forgot the ™ Soon™

Pay attention to what format you export in. I noticed that depending on what I selected in the Intel DDS export window in Photoshop the texture would come out super dark. It depends whether you select SRGB vs whatever the other option was. Also the tail texture does seem to apply differently, I had to do extra work on it to have it match the rest of the aircraft whenever I used non-standard colors like dark sea blue or ww2 Blue-Gray. You may need to add extra color layers or play with the brightness/darkness/contrast manually to have it match the body of the aircraft more closely.

I feel like a good number of the things folks are whining about not having been released yet, actually have had logical statements from HB on WHY, stuff like the Phoenix missile model as it was working fine offline, but wasn't working correctly in multiplayer. Seems to me being a 3rd Party developer is just as challenging as landing on a carrier in real life, you have a moving target, a small strip to land on, all while your fuel is burning away, and that's on a clear day when you get to do CASE I. ED has their own branches they are making changes in, and when it comes time to merge in, new problems arise that weren't there before because the target has moved. Perhaps whenever you guys get around to doing a dev rollup a line or two on the technical challenges for each major line item could be thrown in?

I was going to try and buy a busted X-55 throttle and slowly mod it into F-14 throttles, ended up with an X-56 instead. I'm still considering ways to one bit at a time upgrade the X-56 into a franken throttle, to include completely new replica F-14 grips, replace the buttons, and eventually new sensors and have the whole thing running on a whole new USB controller. I've wondered if Heatblur would be able to export some of the cockpit part meshes to commonly available 3d formats, that could be manipulated, split open, and 3d printed to allow for "drop-in" conversions of existing throttles like the Warthog or X-56.

Any chance to get some correctly scaled stuff like the landing gear and hook levers?

The challenge I've been running into is tracking BuNOs to which MODEX, and even tougher is pilot names. Generic MODEX skins aren't as tough to pull off but pilot names are proving very tough for me to find for more than a few birds.

I'm wondering if the issues with their new missile behavior not working in multiplayer slowed things up, with the expectation they could finish it and move on but then it just wasn't working, meaning time spent trying to get that to work instead of Forrestal coding.

I rewatched the 20% off vid, sadly not Forrestal that I could see. It sounds like they're winding down for the holiday already and they did push out some major content for the Viggen guys. I'm going to just figure we come back from the new year and Forrestal shows up somewhere in January.

I'd love to know what the process is like to bring models in as even just AI assets. I'd assume it's less intensive than say the A-4E-C or MB-335, but I'm also getting the feeling after watching Heclak's stream last night that there's a lot of work just in terms of rigging the model, assigning the right material names, animation bones, etc. With as many missing aircraft as there are, having more resources or walkthroughs on the process could help fill in some of the gaps where ED isn't immediately intent on filling in, like the F-4S and F-4N, the AD-3 Skywarrior, the RA-5 Vigilante, etc.

BuNO 162705 was photographed as late as 2003 Oceana airshow as 113, but it may be that she was reassigned to 101 for the final cruise. Guy swears there was a 113 as it was the hangar queen and nobody wanted to work on it. I'll see if she was a spare parts bird.

Perfect! My other thought was going to be creative usage of Alpha layers to make the visor assembly "invisible". When I did some modding work in Rome Total War years back, one way we got over the maximum model/unit limit was by adding extra parts to the same base unit, and then using alpha layers to only display the helmets, crests, weapons, or shield shapes we wanted for one unit. I was also thinking something like that may be needed to do the MODEX, since you guys mentioned there were a lot of different locations depending on squadron, year, etc. Maybe if you could somehow map all of them and get them to all display the MODEX, then you could use alpha channels or comment out the un-needed ones in the descr.lua. Then all the fancy fonts can just be handled using the numbers DDS files like other birds such as the F-18 do.

And here I was about to post "I really wish HB would reconsider offering the HGU-55 as well". Is there a way you guys can use "switches" or flags in either the description.lua or somewhere client side so we can swap the pilot/helmet models at will in skins? Being able to have both helmets as an option will really help with modeling both the older As and the As that still served into the GWOT with the Checkmates, Tophatters, Black Aces, etc.

Isoko, have you found any resources for other MODEX with VF-103 in terms of pilot assignments? I've been working with a guy on the Discord who serviced AA-113 a lot on the 2004 final Tomcat cruise and really wanted to be able to get that aircraft done for him. I am pretty sure I have the right BuNO for the bird I just don't have pilot/RIO info.

Yeah about that.... Good news is the Viggen guys got some of the long standing wants, the RAT, pilot model in cockpit, and a new campaign. Tomcat just got a few bug fixes and RWR additions.

I think realistically the weight would have been a bigger issue, both for landing and launch. But hey, these are pixel planes, so challenge accepted!

I can't see a specific post or reply in the thread, but does the A-4E-C model have or support Roughmets? I tried to create a roughmet just to test and see but it didn't seem to "take".

Can't wait to plop a Tomcat on it!