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Rick50

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Everything posted by Rick50

  1. This is NOT my project. I am not involved. Nor am I in contact with them. This video just poped into my feed, and I feel I need to share it with you all! Sorry, I litterally know nothing more than these vids exist! oh, also: And here's his channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc7FM-67rNFuXoCW7o85kKg/videos
  2. I don't believe that we re-designated those vehicles once they got the upgrade. And 99% of enemy soldiers would have assumed there was NO armor upgrade, because it just wasn't visible from further than 3 meters (10ft). To us users and the rest of the world, it's still a '113 aluminum box battle taxi. Look, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if 30mm will penetrate this or that armor. These days, aircraft cannons are NOT employed against even the lightest armor vehicles, unless they are DESPERATE. Desperate as in "it's gonna kill us now!", or "we're out of munitions but that thing just won't die, and the refugee encampment is just 5km away". Thin skin vehicles, dismounts, ok sure, but EVEN THEN they are taking a huge risk of a AAA or MANPADS ambush. Does it even make sense to risk your aircrews, and your very valuable (relative to your nations' tax base) and rather expensive, attack helicopter, say one of only 12 such units (small poor country), to plink away at armor that will likely just shrug at your efforts and then reward you with many holes in your airframe and rotors? Armor doesn't usually travel alone, so while you are linning up your BMP target, 6 more vehicles are lnning up on you with their HMG's, RPG's (remember Black Hawk Down were shot down using primarily VERY common unguided RPG-7 rockets) and maybe even GPMG's like the PKM on you. That vulnerable truck might have a ZU-23-2 and blast you hard. Sure, the armor in your HIND might save your life initially... but chances are high that you are going to have a hard landing.
  3. full fidelity Super Tucano, with electroptics ball turret, and full suite of ord. F-4J NAVY Phantom, carrier ops F-4E International Phantom (for IAF, USAF, and so many other users) Mirage III AH-6 Su-27 full fidelity C-130H, the older original sold all around the world for decades, the "Fat Albert" UH-60 Black Hawk CH-47D Chinook AH-1 Cobra Along with all the others actually in development or announced projects!
  4. Ok but please remember, just because it looks like a 113, doesn't mean it still has the listed protection you read in a Janes book. Way back in the mid-90's, I was in Yugoslavian civil war as a UN peacekeeping mission, while a member of the Canadian Army. Our M-113's had armor upgrades done while in the troubled lands. From even a tiny distance, they'd look EXACTLY the same as any '113. But up close, you could just make out that it had an inch of ceramic armor added to the outside. Look closer inside, and you'd see a kevlar spall liner. Such upgrades, uparmoring, have been going on now for 35 years, and as armies look to maximise value for dollars spent, are increasingly looking to keep the same vehicles, and upgrade them with better armor kits, better fire control, and now threat warning detectors, blue force tracking and so on. Not to mention MANPADS additions. They'll also upgrade fuel tanks to be more resistant to fire and explosions, relocate the tanks for the crew to be more survivable. Even in those days, the increase in armor given to British Warrior AFV's made them big and wide, and meant that you couldn't simply assume RPG's and older ATGM's would cripple one either. Similarly, 20 and 30mm cannon shells were not nearly as guaranteed to burn out the hull. Nowdays, just don't even engage EVEN the oldest APC's using heavy machineguns like 14.5mm, unless your intel is CERTAIN they never received any armor upgrades, and even then it's probably best to use your time doing something else, or you'll be laced with coax. Or have 30mm inbound. I wouldn't want to be such an uparmored APC when hit with a 30mm, but remember, if your whole crew is also wearing individual kevlar too, the 30mm may not do much to the M-113 with ceramics, spall liners, armor spacing, and so on. I'd rather be in an uparmored APC taking a couple 30mm hits, than be in a HIND taking a Stinger MANPADS hit.... when those lose control, it's often a crash into solid ground at 200mph.
  5. Thanks for sharing! It's not every day we get to see a good underside pic of the Hind
  6. Consider that the max altitude you can get to will have variables: - pressure density altitude: if it's colder weather, you can get higher performance from the engines, propeller and wings, than if it's hot and humid. So your flight might have been in warmer weather than acheived during the test referenced for the published celiing. - fuel loadout. The lighter your fuel load, the higher you can climb. Maybe you had more fuel than during the published test. - cargo/payload/ordnance loadout. The obvious part is the weight of your ammo belts, any rockets or bombs. Less obvious is if any special pylons are installed, even if not carrying ordnance, will slightly increase drag, which might cap the altitude you can get to. I'm guessing the published test probably was done without ammunition, pylons/mounts or ordnance. - sometimes in war, a unit's published capability might be "altered" to conceal a greater capability, or might be inflated to keep the enemy from exploiting a weakness. I doubt that's what's going on here, but anyway! - minor changes in settings can affect such performance. Maybe running too rich, maybe the prop pitch is off slightly (I'm speaking generally here, not Anton-specific), trim slightly off, weight and balance at the time of altitude.
  7. loving that crinkle paint! Is the top of the dash also painted like that too? Never got to see one of these helis up close. The closest was in 1990 during an exercise, one German anti-tank variant flew not too far away, but for some strange reason I couldn't see the top of the dash in detail !
  8. Well, I have been involved in a couple of projects that have some of the same characteristics, and the reality of actually doing those projects ended up VERY different than I thought they'd be! What I thought was going to be fun, easy, fast, and a slam dunk based on my subject knowledge... ended up taking about 20 times longer than I thought... because doing the last 10% took 95% of my time and effort... checking sources and facts, double checking what I might have missed. Re-checking. Getting someone else's fresh eyes to see mistakes that I could no longer pick up. I found that after a while of being on a project, it became MUCH harder to catch small mistakes, because... I dunno, some mental trick has your mind playing on you. What I mean by "the last 10%" taking "95%", is that I thought getting the bulk of the content was going to be the big effort... but nope, it was the last bit to polish the rough edges, ensuring the product was indeed precise. That it was truly worthwhile to the customer, not some vague throw-away full of inconsistencies. They say "perfection is the enemy of good-enough". That's true in so many ways. But when you DO need to aim for perfection, catching the minor mistakes and issues becomes increasingly difficult the more you stare at the same subject for days and weeks on end. It must be very difficult to do so for a truly complex product, that will be scrutinised so deeply by a few, even if most will enjoy it greatly!
  9. Wow... I just realised now how incredibly vague this post was... "so, way back before the invention of the wheel, something happened, not sure what, or when at all, but it definately happened, and is somehow relevant even though I barely remember hearing about it!" LOL!
  10. Agreed! I've never been involved in such a project. But I've been watching from a distance for 25 years, and the impression that I get, is that making complex accurate aircraft simulations, both civilian and military/combat, is that it's... a long grind. Make a model. Shape that model well. Compare it to real pics. Figure out how to make the shape more realistic. Thousands of hours to research the aircraft. How it flies, airspeed at different pressure density, and at each of those speeds/altitudes, does drag stop your velocity increase, or do you easily achieve max velocity never exceed? Do you get buffetting, vibrations and occilations at this speed/alt, but not at that one? How does high speed stall characteristics change with alt? Is the nose stable at 8 degrees AOA or does it hunt about, at that altitude and airspeed? Does this ordnance have a delay fuse option, airburst or point det? What's it's velocity rate of degredation, and thus trajectory? MAke sure all the model animations have the correct behaviors, and correct geometry (flaps that actually go to 39.5 degrees, not the listed 40 degrees in the POH, otherwise someone will complain it doesn't look right). Ensure the loadout combinations are realistic, that rockets' can't work on the centerline in this variant. Don't want to get nasty-grams from buyers. Checking facts, getting second and third sources to confirm data, configurations from actual SME's. Oh no, now the industry has gone to ZXY textures, we need to see if this is a quick fix update, or needing a whole new model built. Surely some of it's salvageable. Wait, the model converter to let the game engine is now not working properly? Do we need to get new 3d modeling software? Learn that new software and start from the halfway point? Ok, great, that hurdle's done. Geez, it's been a year since we thought we had an ETA. Oh, a major update for the game engine... it'll all be better for the gamers, will look nicer, better this better that... but we can't release this before the update, we need to play-test with the new update, make SURE there's no show-stopping bugs, major functions "broken". MAke sure our textures look nice, not a rendering mess. Test for the radars and fire controls to make sure they work like the real one. Wait, the Subject Matter Experts say that's not how it really works? What do they mean exactly? How do we program it to match what they are saying? I'm not trying to be pessimistic, at all. I'm just saying that it seems to me this is not a 9 to 5 job for everyone on such projects, not a career with giant expectations of showing up your criminal defense lawyer brother. It seems more like a commitment to a labor of love. The love of aviation, of that aircraft in particular, the very deep desire to fly/fight in that aircraft. And maybe even see some financial returns for all that effort. Maybe you break even on the costs: -hardware spent and upgraded, -software licenses, -personal time and effort put in, -costs of obtaining data/information about the aircraft -subcontrator payments. Maybe you hired someone to really specialize in very high quality textures. A sound recording expert who could be sent to record the real aircraft, and edit the recordings into a useable sound file. Maybe a specialist in 3d scanning, with tools costing $10,000 or more, to get a super-precise model. Maybe you will have a hit on your hands, maybe enough to buy a new car. Or an SUV for the wife and sportscar for yourself. Or maybe you end up just glad that some people bought it and appreciate the product, and now you can move on, while finally enjoying the product not as a beta tester, but as a virtual fighter pilot! Oh cr@p, another major update in 9 months, better book some time to play-test our product and then de-bug in time for the update launch. Guess the Ms. won't be happy having to shift our vacation travel time. Now... do we relax and shut down the company, or do we take on the Phantom? What variant? Is there enough documentation to do it justice? Do we have the money to put into this? Will it sell well enough to make the effort worthwhile? Is it going to be a can of worms? Who do we p!ss off with our variant choice, the Americans wanting a NAVY carrier jet, or the rest of the world who had a Vulcan up front? All of that said, the efforts are appreciated! Forget the hype train, forget marketing... when the product is fully finished testing, has approval from ED and whoever other stakeholders, when it's a week from showing up in the ED store and STEAM, that's when you can upload 100 screenshots, 2 promotional videos, start making tutorial videos, do the social media thing... and the virtual aviators will flock to it. Word of mouth in the community will spread, and when the product lives up to aviator expectations, word of mouth between customers will go MUCH further than screenshots 8 months before release.
  11. What? you never heard of the Pyramids of Damascus? This is something that's been seen many times in a civilian simulation. Basically, when using terrain data to make a 3d map, on rare occasions a measurement may have been not recorded, or the wrong number was recorded. The result is a datapoint in the 3d map that looks wildly out of place. Sometimes a pyramid. Sometimes a tower 15 miles tall. Other times a giant sinkhole where there isnt supposed to be one! This looks like one of these errors. On the other hand, it DOES look a bit like the pyramid at McMurdo Station, hidden in what is called "Mount Terror"... Edit: Specificially, this appears to be an elevation datapoint that is wildly wrong. Should be an easy fix for the dev team, it's probably more about someone seeing it and reporting it to them.
  12. Interesting... so then it would seem to be bug to be corrected?
  13. I should say though: the flying part should be fine with the Tflight. It's the hovering maneuvers that I think would be... uh, CHALLENGING! Because the deadzone may prevent a nice gentle transition of movement for a graceful approach. But even then, it might be ok. And you can use curves, that might help with hovering. jym's advice could prove a major benefit. Also, you could look into adding a second keyboard that can do macros, and program it for additional functions, and give custom labels. But not all keyboards can do this. I'd suggest getting an Elegato Streamdeck... but that's more money than a nicer stick, so I'm guessing that's not really an option. Not to mention an item with limited availability right now!
  14. I don't think it's always that difficult for even 1980's fighters to detect helos by radar, I seem to vaguely recall an F-15 engaged... not sure if it was a HIND or Black Hawk, or Hip, but I seem to recall they shot it down with either a Sparrow or AMRAAM. Now, maybe the helo was going full tilt, but even then, I would have thought that a helo going 80 knots would be considered a potential threat to intercept for VID....
  15. Soooo... someone walking by an aircraft boneyard saw parts from a HIND and a Cobra and thought "hmmm... what if we rivet together?" And a week later, a super-chopper was borne that made the Kamovs, Mils, Boeings and Euros all quake in their shoes! This... kinda reminds me a bit of the unwanted HIND-A, the greenhouse cockpit.
  16. Yea... I don't know enough about radar to figure this out deeper. But I do wonder if 80 knots is maybe too slow, or if such speeds ought to be very reasonable? I'm leaning away from this being a "bug", partly due to the fact the heater could still track it... but...
  17. Generally helos are nice radar reflectors, unless they are one of six with "Ghost Hawk" as a name. However, what speed were the helos flying, in your mission? If they were slow enough, your radar may have rejected those signals as "irrelevant". Dopler radars have a filter, to reject unwanted signal returns from cluttering the display. Generally, you don't want to see lorry trucks on the road if you are looking for enemy fast movers. Similarly if you hunting for enemy transport truck convoys, you may not want that friendly A-7 displayed on your radar display in MTI mode. So check the track file if you can, and look for the helos ground speed.
  18. I believe the model specified where the part of the image file goes for the wing, and where the image of the fuselage is taken from. Different model, the "skin" bitmap will have to put it's wing and fuselage artwork in a different location on the bitmap. So the short easy answer is "no". Now that said... if someone had all the time in he world, and didn't mind the extra work... "in theory" it might be possible for a skilled skin painter to take an existing "skin", and use that artwork, to then place into the repaint for a different "skin/model" combination, and that could work. But there's a few problems: actually doing this could be very frustrating and time consuming. It may not look very good due to issues with resolutions and copy/paste, and the surfaces being a different geometry definition due to different modeler having a new plan for laying out the bitmaps. And finally, because you are using someone else's artwork, the expectation is that you'd get permission to modify and share with the community, but you may be unable to contact the original author in some cases, a few may refuse, and if the skin was part of a paid module, you'd need to get permission from the original payware dev team. Honestly, at some point it probably becomes easier for a skilled artist to just make their own version that is "inspired" by the original skin.
  19. Possible? Yes. Effective? Pleasurable? Eh... maybe. The stick has a physical dead-zone built-in. That may make maneuvering in a hover... quite difficult. Jerky and borderline losing control. Only one hatswitch. That is a significant limitation IMO for a modern flying war computer like the Harrier, Viper and Hornet. HOTAS were built for a reason: to allow very fast functionality without hands leaving the controls... remove needed hatswitches from the HOTAS, and I no longer consider them true HOTAS, just a regular throttle and stick. So yes, it's possible. But it's likely to be awkward and clunky. With time and experience you may get so good that you can overcome these limitations! Or maybe not. Use the free mods to get used to your new Tflight. Then sign up for the free trial period with the Harrier and try it out with your combo. Then you'll know better than any of us could tell you!
  20. I do think there should be room for at least a couple more Eurocopters. Not sure which ones, but since the US Army now has the UH-74 Lakota, that one might benefit from increased sales! That said, I think one significant factor in DCS sales, is how many nations have used a particular airframe. If something was used by only one airforce, for just 5 years, with only 80 airframes, it will be outsold by the airframe that 27 airforces used, for 30+ years, with some historic actions. With that in mind, I'd suggest that the Chinook and Sikorsky H-60 "Hawk" variant would help meet this best. I mean, seriously, this list is way more impressive than I even thought when I typed the above paragraph! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_CH-47_Chinook_operators ...and unsurprisingly, the H-60 has a great number of operators too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_UH-60_Black_Hawk#Military_operators That said, I've always loved the Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma, and believe that this could also sell well in DCS too, and has been sold around the world for decades, license built, and have featured in many historical actions. One unique aspect in favor of the Puma is that it also has a fantastic level of use by civilian operators as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aérospatiale_SA_330_Puma Hmm... now I want a Puma more than the Lakota!
  21. In a much earlier Hind thread (long before release) I brought up the subject of rocket smoke color. Turns out.... it seems to change visual color depending on available lighting: in highly sunny times it will look like black smoke, normal lighting, looks kinda grey, and in thick overcast can look like white smoke.
  22. Sorry, I saw yer post and just HAD to! I actually rented a brand new Polo, in 1991, drove through France and Germany for two months with it! Was pretty good for a cheap rental when it was new... be awfully old nowdays though! We drove it to München, and also Paris. Good car... but no Porsche 911 Carerra!
  23. Ah well hang on a sec... Just because you have "partners", doesn't nessisarily mean there would be shared ownership, shared financing or shared profits. Remember, the Luftwaffe is govt, seen as taxpayer's money, I'm guessing the Luftwaffe has a directive from govt that does not include taking profits, So say the Luftwaffe heard about this project, and got excited to get a super cheap sim, for the low low cost of sharing unclassified data. That's a HUGE win. But that doesn't mean the Luftwaffe, or other companies, are going to give True Grit money to complete the project. I'm doubting they'd get money, but who knows. The Luftwaffe maybe gets to pay for the same retail product as the rest of us. Or maybe they get the "Special version", where they can put in real numbers themselves into classified data. Maybe they pay TG a significant bonus upon delivery and product assesment. Or maybe the partnership is simply: we give you access and info, you offer the final product to us for free, and make the profit off the civilian users, and the Luftwaffe signs up for a DCS account, and waits for the seasonal sales to save the German taxpayers money! Partnerships don't always mean money changes hands, usually yes, but not always. Ever heard of PPP projects? Public Private Partnerships. When a government, often regional or municipal, realises they don't have the resources to pay for a huge costly project that's desperately needed (say like a new very large bridge say 6 or 8 lanes), they will team up with a private financial company, say a bank or fund management, to get it done. So the bank gathers their money, hires a construction contracting company, and when the bridge is built, the govt and taxpayer haven't had to pay a thing! Beauty right? But since the bridge is owned by the bank... they monetize it by putting a toll price on using the bridge, and open an Onlyfanz account. Ok maybe not that last part. In the past, when a govt needed to use tolls to pay for a project, after say 20 or 30 years the toll would be eliminated. But since this is private for profit bank money, the toll likely won't go away ever, unless govt specifies this ahead of time. Also, the bank could adjust it's pricing as it sees fit unless specified by the govt whom it partnered with. The upside is the govt still keeps the taxes for other things, but also gets the new fancy needed bridge. The downside is, some taxpayers will still be paying for it, and because it's toll based, those who use the bridge regularly will pay WAY WAY more than some local rich dude who never uses the bridge and doesn't pay the toll. This ends up penalising trades workers and trades companies, like plumbers, roofers, renovation construction crews a great deal more. But bridge and no tax increase. This MIGHT be a little bit how such a partnership could have materialised: we give you data to help your quality and speedy completion, you give us cheap modules at $79usd, instead of buying from CAE for $5 million each.
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