The Crimean Tour: Taking in the Sights

[Ironhand]

Mark "Shepski" Shepheard created this tour several years ago. Steve "Brit Radar Dude" Tonkinson expanded it and republished it two years ago. And I finally flew it one month ago and was sorry I had waited so long. What a gem!

 

Join me in the cockpit as we fly a convoluted route from Saki to Kerch-Bagarovo taking in the historical, cultural, and entertaining sights we find along the way. These are definitely not the sort of details you expect to find in a military flight sim. We won't blow anything up but, hopefully, you'll be entertained just the same.

 

This download includes Brit Radar Dude's Crimea Tour package with its mission and associated Word document among other things. I have also included a transcription of my comments in both RTF and TXT format. This might be helpful for anyone having difficulty with my English language voiceover.

 

The current download is 355 MB with a runtime of 51:28. I also have a less compressed 800 MB version that I can make available, if folks would like to have access to that version as well. But the 355 MB download looks good to my eye, so I'm starting with that.

 

Enjoy.

 

Rich

[Glowing_Amraam]

Any chance you could post the download link? :P

*Edit* Ok found it:D

[Glowing_Amraam]

Ok just watched it!

Very nice movie, Rich! So much information! And lots of stuff there i never knew existed in the lock on world. :D

[Groove]

Thank you for all the work Rich !

[159th_Viper]

Getting Impatient - cannot seem to download fast enough :D

 

Thanx Rich for all the Effort - I'm sure it's gonna be a Good One :thumbup:

[zaelu]

A very fine work, I loved the comentary. You did some research back there. :thumbup:

 

I enjoyed the tour much more than I would if I was flying.

 

Any second part chances? :D

 

edit

 

Oh... and the 800MB version would be excelent so we could show to other non LockOn people that can't recreate in they minds what is missing from codec compression. A big screen also makes the image more fuzzy.

[monotwix]

Yep it's a good one, thanks Rich for presenting it.

I did see that coming he-he no I didn't...

It's the kind of quality that is easy to appreciate in a combat sim which has to do with enviroment appearance as well as the dog fight winning experience.

So it would be nice if a definition of a combat sim would change, may be to some thing like multy ''choice flight experience'' and may be loosing some concentration for killing some thing for the sake of joyride.

I think devs should consider it more as the civilian planes would only or normaly hurt passengers...!

[Aeroscout]

Amazing!

[Senti]

Nice tour Ironhand,

 

I noticed one thing. When I play the sim I get a lot of pop up buildings. In this video it seems like you can see the building from far away and it scales nicely as you get closer to it.

 

Can you tell me if there's a setting to get this effect?

 

The other question is about the terrain mod. Does it work for all seasons?

[colubridae]

outstanding work on an outstanding sim....

 

astounding...

 

col

[JimMack]

Rich, as always, this is outstanding. I have flown the original mission several times, but only spotted 50%. It makes me want to visit the Crimea. Seriously, have you sent this to the Crimean Tourist Board, if such a body exists? With the historical commentary it is a great advert.

Caucasus to come next?

 

Jim

[Poncho]

Very nice! Thx for your effort, always much appreciated :thumbup: I think that there is a lot of work to put together something like this.

And yes, maybe also Caucasus in the future?

Cheers

[Flier]

thank you so much for the brilliant work,Ironhand:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

[Ironhand]

Thanks folks. I'm glad you're enjoying it. And, thankfully, I thoroughly enjoyed the project. I lost track of how many manhours I put into it after passing 50. (After that, I really didn't want to know.) But it was fun to build upon what Mark and Steve had already done and make a flight sim video that, actually, had little to do with flying. I'm considering a video of Steve's Caucasus Tour but, if I do make it, it'll be after a break for other things.

 

...and the 800MB version would be excellent..

After I posted, I realized that I was being stupid and uploaded the larger file, too. You now have a choice of which version to download. Be warned, though, that even the larger file is compressed, just a bit less so. It'll look better on a large (32") screen but is still far from perfect. The 26GB version with Huffy compression looks awesome at that size but I'm not uploading that--even if I was willing, it'd take a week and a half to do so. :)

 

...I noticed one thing. When I play the sim I get a lot of pop up buildings. In this video it seems like you can see the building from far away and it scales nicely as you get closer to it.

 

Can you tell me if there's a setting to get this effect?

 

The other question is about the terrain mod. Does it work for all seasons?

For the purposes of the video, I cheated and set buildings to be visible at a much greater distance than I would if I were actually flying the sim. Tom Weiss's FPS mod has this statement in graphics.cfg under his "TOMMY" setting: structures = {30, 5000};. I altered that to read: structures = {1000, 10000};.

 

As far as the Groundpounder mod is concerned, my impression is that it's only the summer textures. I have it uninstalled at the moment, otherwise I'd take a quick peek and give you a definitive answer.

 

Rich

[Mizzy]

Very well done indeed, great piece of narration.

 

It is truly an wonderful sim and the best we have.

 

Mizzy

[G3]

found it eventually, thanks Rich, grabbing the big one and she's coming across at 330K, you beauty.:thumbup:

 

Rich, your site is absolutely packed with a wealth of info for the total novice to the veteran,

a most impressive collection of educational movies and tutorials, never knew what i was missing,

will be hammering your server for a while :)

[Shepski]

Great work as usual Rich!!! I loved the history lesson!

 

Thanks to Brit Radar Dude's great expansion of the original mission I made many, many years ago!

 

Here's a challenge for everyone... in the Su-27, fly through the rock sea arch from the opposite(shore) direction. I've made it through a few times but you have to approach parallel to the coastline and dive down and turn it hard right into the arch... barely any room for error and the timing must be perfect!

[EricJ]

Very nice Ironhand, though I've flown it a few times already (along with the Cacauscus tour) so it was good to get a little history on the area :thumbup:

[Nate--IRL--]

Excellent vid thanks! I have flown it myself many many moons ago, an didn't even see a quarter of what you managed to pick out. Well Done!

 

Just makes it even more of a pity that the Crimea is being dumped in Black shark.

 

Nate

[JaBoG32_Prinzartus]

I hae flown the tour myself, back then. Nevertheless I will download your flight and look at it again.

 

Very nice idea! Thank you for your video(s). *downloading*

[Ironhand]

...your site is absolutely packed with a wealth of info for the total novice to the veteran...will be hammering your server for a while

Glad you finally found me. :) And thanks. I sometimes forget how much info I actually have available there.

 

...in the Su-27, fly through the rock sea arch from the opposite(shore) direction...

I'll have to give that a try. Should be fun. BTW, when did you actually create that tour? I was thinking it was only a few years ago, then realized it had to be longer. Couldn't figure it out which is why, in the video, I say something witty like "(it was created) back in ...uhhh...quite a few years ago."

 

Rich

[51GRIZZLY]

Great work,:thumbup: I really enjoyed it and i think i will host it in my downloads section if thats ok with you :)

[Shepski]

BTW, when did you actually create that tour? I was thinking it was only a few years ago, then realized it had to be longer. Couldn't figure it out which is why, in the video, I say something witty like "(it was created) back in ...uhhh...quite a few years ago."

 

I made the tour during beta of Flanker 2.0 once I realized the amount of detail that Eagle had put into the terrain and released it once Flanker was in the stores. So... that makes it almost... 8 years ago!

[Ironhand]

...i think i will host it in my downloads section if thats ok with you :)

Not a problem. Please do.

 

 

...that makes it almost... 8 years ago!

Wow! Has it been that long? I knew it had to be sometime during the Flanker years. Didn't realize you had created the mission while it was still in Beta. The mission itself was a great idea. I'm certainly glad you did it.

 

Rich

[666th_birdy]

Thanks Rich, always enjoy your tuto. You realy got a skill for narrating vids.

 

Maybe nice to know, that my wife Monique actualy made the "female tower voice" (that you are using) possible.

 

PS: Thanks for credit but its 666th Birdy not 166th LOL (never mind)