Rick50

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.

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!

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.

1991 Polo ?

LOL!! Poor guy can't see forward anymore! It's... nice that it's got an aimable cannon... but isn't 20mm a bit of a downgrades for something like this? Is this model having a power upgrade, to go with the weight? Anyone know the missile brand/product name? I'm guessing a new-ish ATGM, maybe a licensed copy of the SPIKE ER or something?

Typhoon is simply NOT a "simple" machine. Complex is almost an understatement. It seems to take about a year, or more, to make a WW2 Warbird... for some reason I don't get, the Corsair is taking a long time to get to the runway! But there's loads more weapons systems in the EF, each of which is more complex than it's predecessors. Then there is the complex display pages. The aerodynamics and flight model/characteristics will be at least as much a challenge as the Viper or Hornet, but with the unique canard specific flight representation to create test and validate. It's gonna take some time, probably 2-4 years since starting, to get it to an Early Access state that's got truly minimal bugs/issues. The upside is, with their partnerships, accessing data in a friendly format, sorting through how to get around "secret" systems and still represent something plausibly realistic, would seem to make the job faster, maybe a little easier as there would be less guesswork involved. Hopefully their aerospace industry partners are actually serious about giving real help and access, and not simply lip-service "why do you keep bugging us? We gave you permission and a airshow brochure, what more do you want? Go away now." It would be nice of the partners to let TG make laser scans of the exterior and interiors, give them details about all the "unclassified" display pages and generally how they work, and maybe a real but partial (omitting the classified stuff) flight envelope diagram and engine thrust performance chart... Maybe eventually someone will make a map to go with this Eurobird, maybe looking something like this, so we can sneak through the valleys and fjords, surf the glaciers:

Ah yes, the Pucara! RAZBAM is working on it. Or was. I dunno, RAZ seems to have so so many different projects on the go, and I don't think this one has had news about it for some time. It was started for RAZ's Falklands project, which includes a new map, an older British Harrier (Sea Harrier? I can't remember), Mirage III, couple of ships. Very few Pucaras were involved in that war. Only 110 Pucaras ever got made or sold. No air to air missiles. It did seem like it would have been effective for very light COIN in the 70's and 80's, but of little use for anything else... sooo... might not be the best fit for Cold War CAS. But considering RAZ is currently working on the Mirage3, Mig-23, English Electric Lightning, F-15E Strike, Super Tucano, BO-105 HOT helo, Falklands map... and more.... who knows when the Pucara will be available from the store. Edit: FMA IA 58 Pucará https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FMA_IA_58_Pucará Only 110 made. One managed an A 2 A, using it's 7.62 FNH mg's to down a British helicopter. Biggest loss in combat was to SAS night raid ground commandos. Several surviving Pucaras have resided in England since the Falklands war. Again, this is not a tankbuster in any way, not at all meant for even 1960's Soviet formations.

https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack Head tracking software for MS Windows, Linux, and Apple OSX

hmm... I was just thinking, if you had external fuel tanks, still quite heavy with fuel, and suddenly had to eject/drop those tanks... would that potentially be destructive to the HIND ??? Or any helo for that matter? I mean, an instant drop of heavy weight, might do strange things to the rotor blades, the disc shape and dynamics, maybe damage the rotor hub... flap the blades as the fuselage unloads of significant weight... but I dunno, am neither a heli pilot nor an expert in rotorbirds!

CrazyGman uploaded this vid, and I had to post it here. This is a two person crew, no AI in the HIND, engaging a Western enemy column, on the Cold War server by By Alpenwolf

Wow, that's the first vid I've seen of two-human crew using the HIND, and it really looks fun!!

LOL! HAving fun are we?

Yea, something like that... might be too big for TODAY... but development isn't instantaneous anyway, so maybe 3 years from now when a map would be ready, maybe the average users' hardware could handle that size then. Personally I wish to see this map as a terrain module, eventually when hardware can handle it:

LOL!! It's nice to see people having fun joking and in good spirits about this! It's nice to "feature creep" an imagined module into the most amazing product ever in all history... but it's sometimes good also to manage your expectations. You and I may want every Phantom variant out there, but the EXTRA time and effort required for the devs to do that, would be monumental. At this point it's NOT certain that: Boeing would award licencing rights to depict the Phantom (since Boeing bought McDonald Douglas). It's NOT certain that there is enough legally ok documents, available for purchase, to cover the most popular Phantom variant that a dev might want to module. It's also not certain if any dev teams would actually decide to green-light it, even with the Phantom's history and significance. I'm not wanting to project doom, but if this doesn't happen, please see that life goes on! By then there will be other amazing modules to fly! That said, an E and a J would do very nicely on the Syria map, as USN and IDF, Turkish AF, USAF, and even pretend Iranians figured out air to air refueling to make a long distance visit! A Vietnam map would be amazing though IMO!

Hmm. So if someone's parent is dying, in pain, you don't care? "Get back in the cellar, get some work done"?? Or marriage falling appart? Or loss of career? stress at a tough university program? These things are HUGE in someone's life... just overpowers things like side projects, careers, and even one's health. Don't underestimate the power of "personal life", it can often claim another life through self-harm, self-deletion. But I'm sure community reluctance to support PC will inspire them to push through and finish the Kiowa. {/SARC} I'm sure that community toxic behavior towards dev teams couldn't possibly have unintended consequences!

the Petrovich AI might not be 100% finished yet. Or finished, tested extensively for quality, signed off and checked as "complete". If that's the case, Wags might not even have it to show it to us. Besides, these vids aren't for show, but for instruction, and many won't use the AI but choose to manipulate EVERY button. These vids are for all to learn. I wouldn't worry about the AI just yet, first they need to finish the aircraft, it's systems, do bug testing, then add the AI, bug test and so on.

pew pew PEW! Sweet!!!

Long time ago I had a conversation with a friend about simulation games vs actual results in afteraction reports. I think he was confused about how he had beaten every ace of WW2 in a single flight, in... uh, I think it was EAW or something. I pointed out a few differences just for starters. First, real bullets cause very REAL fear. Fear that just simply doesn't exist in any game or sim. It's just non-existant when "restart mission" is 30 seconds away. The one time I actually got shot at, the trace probably went 100ft (or more) over my head, no chance of hitting me, but even then I ducked down into the APC, just in case the next burst was bang-on. I know my pucker factor would have shot up to 23 had rounds bounced off our armor! The point being, when the bullets are real, and dying instantly is actually probable, you behave different than when it's "just a game". Maybe you keep pressing the target instead of diving and extending away, to fly another day. Maybe you keep a third of your belts in reserve, in case you get bounced on the way home... while in a game maybe you go for the glory of racking multiple wins. Movement and G's. It's easy lining up a shot when the reticle doesn't move on you. Just figure out what the enemy plane is doing, put the cross on the wings and pull. But in real life, the sudden G's will pull your head down a bit, and now the reticle seems to have moved a bit. Roll hard and you might need a moment before you can get that deflection shot. If you have played more than 100 hours of any flight sim, you are an expert compared to the very low hours of flight that most WW2 pilots got, before being thrown to the wolves of battle. They barely knew how to fly "ok" and were now fighting for their lives. 5000 hours of simulated combat? Unimaginable to the real aces. And all that is with truly simple warbirds, for the flying CRAY platforms carrying everything including a few kitchen sinks, there will be SOOO many more factors between what is real and what gets simulated, what gets played in a retail-home sim-game. No matter how "real it feels".

Any news of this proposed module?? I'ma leave this here:

That must have been it then! It had wing mounted external tanks (have no idea if they are "drop tanks" on a trainer!). I work near the north west corner of the CLAWR range at Cold Lake, and see jets training for this and that from time to time. Most often Hornets (most likely Canadian CF-18's), but other jets too, as Cold Lake is a popular training destination for many airforces! The range is larger than some nations...

Nah, he was an old man by Top Gun! Check "Risky Business" and "All the right moves" for young Cruise. Oddly enough he doesn't seem to have aged at all since the first Mission Impossible... in 1996... At some point I fully expect him to reverse, and get younger, like Benjamin Button.

Meaning... a sound pack for individual AI planes?? Interesting... I suppose one could theoretically maybe start with a freeware sound pack for old FS addons, some are quite small but sitll sound good.

Does there exist any Mirage F.1 operators out of CFB Cold Lake, Canada ? I ask because I swear I thought I saw one of these a few days ago, it was doing about 400 knots, 500 ft above treetops, doing a banking turn... It might have been an Alphajet, but didn't really get a good look. But it was high wing fighter jet for sure. Guaranteed not a Tornado either.

Yea, it's been so long since Afghanistan map module was discussed, that I don't think we can be certain its in development, or even got started. Last I heard of it, was when the Syria map was first announced... that's a long time ago now in "DCS years"!