Community A-4E

[AG-51_Razor]

Gospadin, I hope you had a very relaxing Christmas holiday, being with friends and family, whiling away the days eating, drinking and being merry.......and crashing your Harrier! :joystick:

 

Now it's time to get back to the grindstone because that Forrestal class CV that Heatblur is building will be here before you know it! I'm just telling you this for your own good because you know how pushy and self centered the folks in this DCS World can be. :music_whistling:

 

Have a happy New Year and a big THANK YOU for all you and your team are doing for this community! :thumbup:

[gospadin]

Now it's time to get back to the grindstone

 

I knew you'd be the first one to post here =P

 

Merry Christmas. Hopefully we'll have an update in the next few days.

 

--gos

[uscstaylor]

Nice looking forward to seeing it

[AesclepiusCrow]

I love how this forum dies out and then thaws in the last days before an update. Gospadin has us all well trained. Here's hoping there's some news we can add the A-4 to the list of this years toys.

 

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[javelina1]

I knew you'd be the first one to post here =P

 

Merry Christmas. Hopefully we'll have an update in the next few days.

 

--gos

 

Razor is on it like a tick! ;):thumbup: thanks Gos, appreciate all of yours and the teams efforts! Happy New Year M8!

[Robert31178]

Pavlovian dog theory lol......we're the dogs for sure!!! Ring the bell God, ring it!!

[LevelPulse]

I knew you'd be the first one to post here =P

 

Merry Christmas. Hopefully we'll have an update in the next few days.

 

--gos

 

We need our monthly update fix ;)

[gospadin]

Community A-4E: December 2017 Update

 

Community A-4E: December 2017 Update

 

Hi everyone!

 

This month we're sharing (1 day early!) a bit of in-progress work to create a set of sight tables for the A-4E.

 

As most of you know, Vietnam-era A-4s did not have "modern" ranging gunsights with computer calculated impact projections. Merely a collimated reflector site, that the pilot was responsible for manually setting to the proper amount of sight depression. Since that'll be about the only way to get accurate weapons-on-target, we realized that we needed to create a set of our own tables to match in-game armaments.

 

We do have a copy of the official pocket guide, and were able to test the published values for a variety of armaments. However, due to slight variations in the flight model, ejection force, or other details, we found the published values are off by 10-20% for slick munitions, and 5-7% for high drag munitions. Adding to that, it's very difficult to manually hold a perfect 10 degree dive to a target point with an exact release height of 3000' and a velocity of 450 knots true!

 

To first do the calibration to generate our own tables, we needed a way to exactly maintain radar altitude. To do this, we added a debug mode of the altitude hold AFCS that used the radar altimeter instead of the barometric altimeter. (I also cheated and added tuning functions to climb or descent to even multiples of 10').

 

From there, we set airspeed to published values (350, 400, 450, 500 KTAS) and dropped weapons manually based on targeting with the gunsight in level flight. (You will also see our debug console in use here, to confirm TAS, radar altitude and gunsight calibration while flying.)

 

This first video is of an early test I did with a full compliment (18) of Mk-81 iron bombs. Gunsight is set for 175 mils. In this run, the altitude gets away from me (the AFCS altitude hold disengages if the instantaneous pitch correction becomes too great). Additionally, I am low and a bit fast, but with a bit of climb present, so the bombs ultimately get lobbed and land a few hundred feet long. This is mostly an example of how not to test. =P

 

 

In this 2nd video, this time I have the radar altitude hold working at 1500'. Speed is almost exactly set properly at 450 KTAS, and there's an additional 2 mils to account for the increased AoA with this payload. I'm dropping a string of 5 Mk-82 bombs with quarter-second intervals, started a few hundred feet in front of the target trucks. As you can see, in this case the bombs land a tiny bit short of the intended target. (2nd bomb in the ripple was dropped "on target" but landed about 250' short.) The 4th bomb in the string was within 50' of the center of the target.

 

 

Ultimately, we'll try to build a set of useful tables for common configurations (Mk-81, Mk-82, Mk-81 Snakeye and Mk-82 Snakeye) plus a few others, so that folks will be able to have a shot at delivering weapons accurately in controlled conditions.

 

In other news, a number of other little changes ongoing...

 

• First, we're still in the midst of the conversion to the 2.2/2.5 engine and PBR, which has us altering almost all our existing textures from the ground up to use RoughMets instead of the old spec maps.
   
  
• More unwrap and texture work continues, and as we texture the new parts, it often exposes little errors that require correction. (Did anyone notice the gunsight knob textures being slightly mis-calibrated? These are the little things we need to nail down!)
   
  
• We still have some modeling changes in-flight, though I don't think any of them are obvious in the above videos.
   
  
• We've made some payload fixes, to work with ED's recently published high resolution LAU-10 rockets and BRU-42/43 weapon racks. We had originally created our own models, but there's little reason to ship our own versions anymore now that the ED models have been updated.
  

 

Thanks again for everyone's support, and hope everyone had a great 2017!

--gos

Edited December 30, 2017 by gospadin

[Tirak]

As always looking nice. I wish you'd guys would post more videos of just screwing around in the plane to help satiate our desire to see the Scooter in action.

[AG-51_Razor]

Thank you for the update Gospadin. I think I can make it another 30 days now. :pilotfly:

[LevelPulse]

Thanks for the update Gos!

[javelina1]

Thank you for the update Gospadin. I think I can make it another 30 days now. :pilotfly:

@Razor - Buddy, I'm not sure if so, but we're here for you... :thumbup:;)

 

@Gos - thanks! appreciate the update. Great job to you and the team! :thumbup:

[AG-51_Razor]

It's. Bros like you Javalina that keep me going! :thumbup:

[gyrovague]

> Community A-4E: December 2017 Update

 

Great work!

[Ciribob]

Thanks for the update! Amazing work as always :)

 

Have a good new year!

 

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[Merker]

Playing with the Boys

 

As a Holiday "bonus", check out these shots from my Aggressor Training against the vanilla F-14. I even had a former TOPGUN student instructing me throughout!

 

 

 

 

Looking forward to sharing more in the New Year!

[LevelPulse]

Awesome screenshots. Make me really happy to see how far the cockpit has come since the first announcement.

[AG-51_Razor]

C'mon funny feeling!!! :joystick:

[JazAero]

impressive amount of work.

[Andrew8604]

Yet one more fan of the A-4 checking in here. I've been wishing for a simulation of this aircraft since the 1980's. It's been a long wait. The videos I've seen on YouTube look impressive. This aircraft has not been released to the public yet, right? I can't find any place to download it. I'd love to test it and provide feedback. If it became a full licensed product in DCS, I'd buy it for sure. Even at $70. I'd buy a 1960's Southeast Asia Terrain, too (although that's quite a large area). And hopefully an Essex-class carrier with angled deck would go with it. :) Sumner, Gearing, Sherman and Farragut-class destroyers would be nice, too, as escorts.

[gospadin]

Yet one more fan of the A-4 checking in here. I've been wishing for a simulation of this aircraft since the 1980's. It's been a long wait. The videos I've seen on YouTube look impressive. This aircraft has not been released to the public yet, right? I can't find any place to download it. I'd love to test it and provide feedback.

 

We have not released anything yet, and when we do it'll be free. As to testing, we have enough folks on the team finding issues that at this time we don't need any more help.

 

Thank you for your interest though!

 

--gos

[AG-51_Razor]

I know it's free and yet, I find myself thinking for ways to steal my wife's jewelry without her finding out about it in order to pay for an update. I am SO BAD!! :megalol:

Edited January 30, 2018 by AG-51_Razor
added clearity

[Tread_Head57]

January 31st. :music_whistling:

[Tirak]

They have a few more hours...

[gospadin]

Community A-4E: January 2018 Update

 

Hi everyone!

 

Tiny update this month: Cockpit lighting.

 

Thanks to some tips from Cobra847 (thanks!) on the technique, we were finally able to sort out variable intensity cockpit lighting.

 

A bit of background, though. First, there's a set of white flood lights controlled by a rheostat on right side of the cockpit wall. These floods are quite bright, and there's one on each side, plus two white floods under the front glareshield pointing down over the front console.

 

Additionally, on the right rear console is a set of interior lighting controls for the instruments and consoles. One rheostat controls the intensity of the instrument backlighting, and a second one controls the intensity of the console lettering backlighting. And finally, there's a 3-position switch to control the intensity of a set of 8 red flood lamps that are enabled whenever the console lettering is being illuminated.

 

With the 2.5 drop, we still need a bunch of tuning and work, but we thought we could show some in-progress cockpit shots so you can get a feel for what the white and red floods will look like. This was just the floods, not the backlighting, so please excuse the incomplete nature of these systems.

 

First, the red floods:

 

 

...and an early shot of the white side floods. In this photo, the glareshield white floods had not yet been implemented:

 

 

A lot of last minute tweaks are being made, and hopefully we can make a small video in the next few days to show off where the lighting is at.

 

Thanks everyone for your support!

 

--gos

Edited February 1, 2018 by gospadin