Andrew_McP

That seems likely, unfortunately. Maybe if Intel or AMD squeeze 512Mb of fast cache onto their processors that would also help a lot. We might need a generation or two of wafer improvements first though :-) Andrew McP

Thanks for trying anyway. Now I know it's worth investigating multiplayer mission design in more detail. It's not something I've paid a lot of attention to before. Interesting. Wonder why the canopy was open? I think I have a lot to learn :-) Andrew McP

ED stuff rarely works without a *little* struggle... I mean, er, effort ;-) The biggest problem at the moment may well be my online server inexperience though. It's now, er... 13:41GMT (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ for local times relative to each other) and the server's back up on the same IP, not on Hyperlobby this time though. 81.86.109.249 I've left the mission running, with me in spectator mode. Yesterday someone from HL was able to connect and chat, but couldn't fly for some reason. Still, connecting is half the battle. The rest can be sorted out if I'm around. Anyway, the server will be up for the next 12 hours or so unattended if anyone fancies trying to connect to it. Later on (my night off work) I might hang around Hyperlobby as McP... Or I might just sleep a lot. The thing about working nights is your biological clock gets completely messed up. I've learned to catch up on sleep whenever I can! :-) Andrew McP

*20:54GMT, server now down* I've been trying to avoid online play for years... sucks up too much time if you're not careful :-) And with racing, lag is critical. You need very low latency to be able to get close to another aircraft. So international racing is a recipe for nightmares. Still, it's now 9:50am GMT (+0:00) Saturday and I'm testing my router/adsl connection to see if I can host. I've opened up port 10308 (I think!) and the machine's running the Su27 race mission tweaked for five clients starting in the air. If anyone watching in the next 12 hours or so could try to connect to it just to see if they actually connect, I'd appreciate it. If it works maybe we can try something more organised some time... or I could leave it running more regularly as a race practise server (can only race properly with whoever's driving the server there to hit "s" with everyone ready to race.) Anyway, unless it crashes while I'm asleep (which won't be for a few hours yet) it's the Andrew_McP server on hyperlobby, or try 81.86.109.249 directly from within 1.1. I'll edit this message when I take the server down. Chances are this won't work at all though, my router is probably forwarding incoming traffic to email or something ;-) Andrew McP

Sorry, it's on the web page. To save you scrolling up... http://www.andrew.mcp.dsl.pipex.com/race.htm Andrew McP

I looked at your course and thought maybe it was a little long for such a slow aircraft. Needed more excitement :-) But then I re-discovered that the most exciting thing about the 25 is trying to get it to stop! So I've created a small course aimed mainly at encouraging us to practise our landings and approaches in that demanding little aircraft. Maybe once I've got my time down from 2'10" on that I'll be ready to try a more demanding course. Judging the right time to deploy the parachute will probably help me most. You have a very narrow window of opportunity to open it in. Too soon and it blows off. Too late and you're ploughing fields. Hard work, but at least it's useful practise for when I need to land in a hurry on the battlefield... which seems to be every time I take the 25 out tank hunting :-) Andrew McP

How you dump speed in the air on that final turn to land is critical. Get it right and you can virtually stall onto the runway at minimum speed, giving you a shorter roll. In the AFM aircraft you seem to be able to pop the parachute at low speed before landing. That helps! But in the 27 you have to wait until touching down. We must find some stronger parachutes. Wonder if I can steal one out of a B-52? :-) Andrew McP

I always say there are two conversations. One is about relative capability as killing machines. I care little for that, even though you can argue that as these *are* killing machines it's the only thing that matters. But then if we're going to measure killing capability I'll choose an S-300 missile battery every time.... and they definitely can't do a backflip. The converstaion I prefer is about these aircraft as, essentially, aerial sports cars. Hanging the back end out as you round a bend doesn't mean you're the best or fastest driver, but you do get plenty of marks for style and excitement. There's also a school of design thought which says that things which *look* right, are right. And the Flanker line of aircraft look very right indeed. IMO anyway :-) Andrew McP PS Have fun at MAKS.... should make a great movie! I suspect by the time I can afford an Su-27 flight I'll be too old and the planes will be far too rusty :-)

No stopwatch required. I wanted something that was enjoyable, not a chore :-) Just switch to F2 and the time's at the bottom of the screen when flying or watching the replay. Andrew McP

Yes, but the Raptor looks as ugly as an ugly fruit on national ugly day. Only its mother could love it ;-) Andrew McP

> Watching another Flanker perform is still nothing short of amazing I've only seen an Su-27 display in real life (UK) four times, but it's almost impossible to overstate how beautiful this family of aircraft are in reality, especially when moving (obviously :-). They have a "presence" which other aircraft just cannot match*. It has nothing to do with their offensive capability (that's about electronics not aerodynamics) and everything to do with an amazing triumph of design... art and technology meet in this airframe to dance in the skies. Sorry, getting carried away <wipes techno-sentimental tear from eye ;-> Great footage by the way, thanks for the link. The crowd noise makes it better, making you feel as if you're actually there watching it in the crowd. I'd better go lie down in a darkened room for a while now until I've calmed down :-) Andrew McP *Ok, a Spitfire comes very close. Some shapes just look like they're moving even when they're not.

Just change it in the same place you (or whoever) set it in the first place when building the mission. The editor automagically sorts out all times relative to that new start time. Andrew McP

Gustav & FF... 1:37/6, great times! I doubt 1:30 is possible FF, but I've done enough sim racing (cars) to know that if I can do a 1:43, someone can do a 1:33. Only time will tell. And Greg & Quirk, keep going... you'll get there eventually :-) Perhaps I should have made the first course a little simpler. That final tower makes landing a little tricky. However anything that encourages people to practise difficult landings must be a good thing. I rarely get to land in combat missions. Usually the AI arranges for me to land in several fields ;-) Andrew McP PS Later: Ok, managed to get a 1:36 at last. I think the biggest contribution to saving time is how much speed you can bleed off in the air before landing. The better you are are bleeding off speed (without crashing!) the faster you can go right up to the final tower. So perhaps I created a braking competition, not a racing competition. Maybe we should try a few more laps before landing, then we'd see bigger variations in time... and more angry shouting as we crash after several laps instead of just the one :-) PPS FF That 25 track's hard work! It's like driving a Mini after driving a Ferrari for a while (not that I'd know :-). And getting that beast to slow down in a hurry without crashing is a pig, especially when you're used to having those massive 27 engines to power out of any slight problems you cause yourself. Interesting challenge though.

You don't need my permission for anything :-) I only locked the original file so nobody would be tempted to move the pilons around and end up with incompatible times. Hopefully I'll have some time to fly tomorrow, I need to work on my time as well! Then there's the downhill slalom course to design. Have you seen how steep some of those mountains are? :-D I'm still not sure I fancy 25T racing though. The 25 is a more agile, faster aircraft, and still has the AFM. The lack of HUD might make height monitoring more tricky, but as long as people stick roughly under pilon height that's good enough. Andrew McP PS Glad a few others are enjoying it too.

Nothing wrong with that sadly. The X800 buys you 1600x1200, x4fsaa, x8aniso, and a generally smoother ride (no doubt down to the 256Mb onboard buffering more textures). But frame rate over/near built up areas seems to be CPU-limited rather than vid card. 1600x1200 is very pretty indeed though; takes things one step closer to genuine virtual reality. Andrew McP

No idea :-) There's got to be a balance somewhere between speed and manoeuvrability. I guess finding it's the challenge! :-) Heh. It is fun isn't it. "I'll just try that *one* more time". I think the course would have to be smaller or we'd get bored between pilons ;-) But obviously, with the AFM racing with the 25T could be nice on the right course. Something with a little more horsepower seemed like a better place to start though :-) Andrew McP

Oh, I see. Only ten seconds faster than my 10th-ish attempt. I think I may have just gone off this idea in a big way! :-) Andrew McP PS Hang on... > 5) The clock stops when your aircraft comes to a halt undamaged! > This exercise is about skill as well as speed. You came to a stop at about 1:40. <phew!> Three seconds faster I can live with. That gives me something to aim for :-)

http://www.andrew.mcp.dsl.pipex.com/race.htm Just a quick time trial for now. I've always been far happier racing than killing stuff. Guess I'm just an old hippy at heart :-) Andrew McP

Thanks TT :-) Andrew McP

With the ACS enabled I wasn't too impressed by the tweaked modelling to be honest. But messing about now with ACS disabled I find that not only can you pull a partial kobra (ie start and then change your mind before the AOA gets too great) but you seem to retain much more control towards the end of what used to be the scripted experience. With ACS disabled you also seem to get fewer of those awful "oh look, the plane's dead in the water" stalls. That's a good sign. However it's not a good idea to be messing about with this stuff with realistic blackouts enabled. Otherwise you spend a lot of time staring at a black screen and wondering how high you were :-) Thanks for making me take a harder look at what's going on. Andrew McP PS And as MBT reminds us, congrats to Mizzy!

Agreed. Although I'm as big a fan of the 27 as anyone else, I think it'll be a while before we see the AFM for it.... and even then I'm not sure ED will ever be able to allow us to do unscripted kobras. That will always be the holy grail, but it will require very, very complex modelling of aerodynamic drag and weight distribution as the aircraft moves into high AOA situations. Of course it may be possible to cheat a little and still give us a wonderful experience :-) Andrew McP

I've certainly noticed quitting times seem to be quite long sometimes. Normally I don't spend that long in a LOMAC session (maybe an hour at most) and it's not that obvious. But when I was filming for my recent movie I spent hours in LOMAC and it certainly took a *long* time to quit afterwards. I thought the PC had crashed, but the HD light was flashing away as if a lot of data was being shuffled (rather than some sort of regular "please reboot, I currently have my head up my *rse" kind of way) so I left it for a while and eventually the desktop came back. I guess it's more of an inconvenience than a problem though. Andrew McP

I had seen that Mark, It just didn't look like you were quite as close as the VFTC planes... but then I guess if you'd taken pictures of those you might be out of a job. Always pays to be careful with stuff let loose on the net :-) > I really hope that VFTC makes the public aware... I had no idea > it was going on till well after the fact. I think their biggest problem was lack of 1.1 sales (for obvious reaosns), so many couldn't join anyway. But the only place I saw them post was the main Ubi forum. These days it can be confusing enough for native english speakers to work out which forums to visit regularly, so I guess the VFTC don't stand a chance of keeping up to date with where everyone is. Mind you, I think most of us are just about everywhere... in fact it gets hard to remember which post I made to which conf sometimes :-) Anyway, nice to see you're still enjoying your flying. But then I've always thought your job is a little more interesting than most commercial jobs. Ferrying commuters and holidaymakers seems like a mug's game to me. Your passengers don't complain :-) Shame it has to involve regular periods away from home though. Andrew

I guess they don't let you fly your planes that close together, eh? Not sure the passengers would appreciate it... though if they're ill already a little more sickness wouldn't hurt, surely? :-) The live display was a real experience. Like a real world display, knowing that someone could make a mistake creates tension that hightens the pleasure of seeing manoeuvres successfully accomplished. I'm sure they'll have a much bigger crowd next time... well, assuming anyone ever manages to buy a copy of 1.1 :-) Andrew McP

Sometimes the Gods of Creative Inspiration smile upon me. It started off solid, but it looked "wrong" that way. Glad you (and the others) enjoyed it anyway. Watching the trk still makes me smile, and I'm glad some of my pleasure shows in the movie. Andrew McP