F-14 Factory Clean Cockpit Mod

[DSplayer]

14 minutes ago, 7HUNDERH0R53 said:

I appreciate anyone that has the gumption to create custom cockpits. I'm a traditional artist by profession and also have spent a LOT of time in photoshop as well. I feel that Heatblur does a phenomenal job with every aspect of their modules and, to me, the Tomcat is stellar. I appreciate the fact that it shows the wear and tear of the Turkey's long history, complete with fading text, etc. I prefer the modules with a more lived in look anyway. Understandably, I can totally see why people want a a clean cockpit and I applaud DSPlayer for taking the initiative. That said, my only gripe about mods like this is when all the surface texture inherent in the panels is taken away and the result has a cartoonish look and all realism is lost.

For example, Here is a portion of the original cockpit...

Here is the same portion of modded clean cockpit. The text looks great, but the panels surfaces are flat and lose the tangibility of the original.

A good compromise would be cleaning up the panels and text without sacrificing some of the look and age of the panels like this...

Obviously, this is just my two cents and everyone can say I'm a jerk or whatever. Regardless, happy flying to everyone and and thanks to Heatblur and DSPlayer for their approaches to this fine bird!

 

Yeah one of my main gripes with my mod is the loss of any 3D detail outside of n-maps and uv maps. While I would've liked to have done option 3 (which I actually tried to do for some panels), it didn't look that good and I think someone already had created that. I'll look into the possibility of doing that in the future as a separate mod.

[7HUNDERH0R53]

44 minutes ago, DSplayer said:

Yeah one of my main gripes with my mod is the loss of any 3D detail outside of n-maps and uv maps. While I would've liked to have done option 3 (which I actually tried to do for some panels), it didn't look that good and I think someone already had created that. I'll look into the possibility of doing that in the future as a separate mod.

I hear you on that. Option 3 is a version of the clean cockpit I did for my own use, but I didn't go as far as the uv stuff. Ultimately, I have to remember that you even said that this mod was still in development and on early release so I shouldn't be too critical. You do good work and have a lot of great mods. Doing mods reminds me just how fantastic developers like Heatblur are. I'm in AZ where we have a lot of old planes and I've seen a number of worn cockpits so Heatblur's approach looked on par to me. Admittedly, I would love to see how they would approach a factory new look, but I'll always appreciate the look of a used and abused cockpit.

[LanceCriminal86]

It's one of those things best done in a tool that does it all at once, namely the whole Substance 3D suite, as you can "paint" with PBR materials and then layer in the weathering, scratches, scuffs, stains, etc. There's been some comments around that something like that *could* happen, but it will be time intensive and not a quickly delivered thing. As I understand the F-14's cockpit (or really its whole model/texturing) was done differently than the upcoming F-4, where the F-14 took the photo scans and then cleaned them up by hand, the F-4 was all done by hand. With Substance you can dynamically create various levels of wear and tear as desired, without losing that base "depth" and feel of the painted metal panels.

And yes, they had validated in the past that the existing cockpit was not just straight up scanned from a museum jet and dropped in, it was cleaned up significantly and adjusted to SME input of what a jet typically looked like on cruise.

[Raisuli]

<rant>

Yeah, so Heatblur loves their 'realism' to the exclusion of all else.  I have to wonder how many of those thousands of hours HB's SMEs fondled F-14s were in the late 70s and early 80s when the A was new, or even how many got to play with recently updated Bs.

The Tomcats I saw flying were on their first deployment and despite their thousands of SMEs with an hour of experience each I'll bet they didn't look like they'd fallen off the deck and been left in the ocean for a few months, then power washed.  Maybe they did in the 90s and 2Ks because they'd been handled by all those SMEs for decades.

Maybe Gumman sent sent them out of the factory looking like that, which explains why they went out of business.

Our engineering control rooms looked a little better than those cockpits HB loves.  The Vinson's control rooms looked...lightly used!  The difference between something over a decade old and something only a few years out of the shipyard.

Imagine that. 

Realistically I'm not allowed to fly the things anyway, so to be realistic I leave mine in the hanger or use them for AI.  I'm sure HB doesn't mind; they got their revenue.

This mod, of course, is TOO clean, and doesn't have HBs touch, but I'll call it an improvement anyway.  Now I'll need to get some bindings set and actually fly the thing, despite that not being very realistic...

</rant>

 

[draconus]

5 hours ago, Raisuli said:

I have to wonder how many of those thousands of hours HB's SMEs fondled F-14s were in the late 70s and early 80s when the A was new, or even how many got to play with recently updated Bs.

They say it didn't matter if the aircraft was from the same year or 15 years old. It took months and hundreds of flight hours before deployment and then it looked like what we see in the game. You think they lie to you?

You have the mod now and HB maybe even will provide one too, so what's the rant about?

[Raisuli]

5 hours ago, draconus said:

They say it didn't matter if the aircraft was from the same year or 15 years old. It took months and hundreds of flight hours before deployment and then it looked like what we see in the game. You think they lie to you?

You have the mod now and HB maybe even will provide one too, so what's the rant about?

Lie?  No.  I would never accuse anyone of intentionally lying without some pretty clear information to the contrary.  There are plenty of more reasonable explanations why something might be inaccurate, which is why I asked the question.  I had not seen the comment about being destroyed before deployment.

However, if they decay at that rate how long before everything needs to be replaced?  Mathematically that doesn't make sense to me; even if the decay rate is a logarithmic curve it's going to be unusable within the aircraft's lifetime and they're going to need a lot of Dyno tape.

The rant was meant to be more tongue in cheek because we've had this conversation before.  Me: Don't like the cockpit, rest of the model is awesome.  HB: Too bad, this is how we make models.  Fortunately HB seems to be the only developer in DCS with that philosophy.  The revenue I provide to any developer is a drop in a lake so I don't expect them to change anything for me. 

On the other hand there are two flight sim ecosystems in which I have an interest and up to now I've bought every release in DCS (other than a few campaigns) just to support the developers, so plenty of models to fly and places to go shopping when the time comes.

[draconus]

21 minutes ago, Raisuli said:

Fortunately HB seems to be the only developer in DCS with that philosophy. 

They've heard enough. Maybe the F-4 cockpit will please you.

[Raisuli]

25 minutes ago, draconus said:

They've heard enough. Maybe the F-4 cockpit will please you.

I sure hope so!  Looking forward to that one, and let's be honest; HB is the varsity when it comes to this stuff.

Those still flew when I was in the Navy as well.  I was there for three generations; -4, -14, and I was on the first deployment of the -18.  Besides, when I was growing up it was all about the Phantom! 

I'm actually holding off on rev 3 of the simpit for the F-4; not sure what it might need that's unique to that air frame.  HB has been stingy with cockpit pictures so I don't know what controls it uses.  I can worry about bindings later.

[Naquaii]

3 hours ago, Raisuli said:

The rant was meant to be more tongue in cheek because we've had this conversation before.  Me: Don't like the cockpit, rest of the model is awesome.  HB: Too bad, this is how we make models.  Fortunately HB seems to be the only developer in DCS with that philosophy.  The revenue I provide to any developer is a drop in a lake so I don't expect them to change anything for me.

Afaik we've never said anything along these lines, we certainly respect the people wishing for a cleaner cockpit. What we however don't agree with is the claim that the current cockpit as delivered with the module isn't realistic. We have multiple times verified that it is.

That said a less worn cockpit is being looked at and might still happen, just hard to promise anything.

But we've certainly not told anyone who want a cleaner cockpit to go pound sand or anything similar.

[Raisuli]

11 minutes ago, Naquaii said:

Afaik we've never said anything along these lines, we certainly respect the people wishing for a cleaner cockpit. What we however don't agree with is the claim that the current cockpit as delivered with the module isn't realistic. We have multiple times verified that it is.

That said a less worn cockpit is being looked at and might still happen, just hard to promise anything.

But we've certainly not told anyone who want a cleaner cockpit to go pound sand or anything similar.

No, of course you haven't.  That was me being tongue in cheek (and probably inappropriately direct), but the fact is you have defended the state of that cockpit from about the day of release and made no move to suggest an alternative is even possible until very recently.  At least not that I've heard, and I've had the model, and been a (probably too) vocal critic, since about then.

Is that 'pound sand'?  No, but a 'no' can be expressed any number of colorful ways, and it still means no.  At least I didn't go Monty Python on it!  In the end it was a business decision, and I don't have enough information to even have an opinion on those.  If I had to make a wild guess you're probably shaking your head wondering why this whole thing hasn't gone away after how many years?  Drawing a new cockpit at this point is probably stupidly time consuming, and expensive, which brings up all kinds of interesting questions.

But without impugning your SMEs I have to wonder how many hours of wear that is, and if an air frame with 200 hours looks like that what does one with 2,000 hours look like?   

Actually it makes me want to know what degree of wear is common on aircraft with n hours of flight, and work on the math to model aircraft wear based on panel location and use percentages and all that 'not quite on the bell curve' stuff because this thread kind of triggered my curiosity.

(Okay, Dymo tape.  That is epic!  I still have a Dymo gun if you need more of those made, but only black tape)

((Are we seriously on page three of a thread more or less about how much wear is appropriate for a computer generated graphical representation of an aircraft?  Damn our lives are good!))

[Naquaii]

12 minutes ago, Raisuli said:

No, of course you haven't.  That was me being tongue in cheek (and probably inappropriately direct), but the fact is you have defended the state of that cockpit from about the day of release and made no move to suggest an alternative is even possible until very recently.  At least not that I've heard, and I've had the model, and been a (probably too) vocal critic, since about then.

Is that 'pound sand'?  No, but a 'no' can be expressed any number of colorful ways, and it still means no.  At least I didn't go Monty Python on it!  In the end it was a business decision, and I don't have enough information to even have an opinion on those.  If I had to make a wild guess you're probably shaking your head wondering why this whole thing hasn't gone away after how many years?  Drawing a new cockpit at this point is probably stupidly time consuming, and expensive, which brings up all kinds of interesting questions.

But without impugning your SMEs I have to wonder how many hours of wear that is, and if an air frame with 200 hours looks like that what does one with 2,000 hours look like?   

Actually it makes me want to know what degree of wear is common on aircraft with n hours of flight, and work on the math to model aircraft wear based on panel location and use percentages and all that 'not quite on the bell curve' stuff because this thread kind of triggered my curiosity.

(Okay, Dymo tape.  That is epic!  I still have a Dymo gun if you need more of those made, but only black tape)

((Are we seriously on page three of a thread more or less about how much wear is appropriate for a computer generated graphical representation of an aircraft?  Damn our lives are good!))

We have defended the current cockpit against those who just blanket state it to be unrealistic, as that's not the case.

That said we've also said that we recognize that there are people out there who want a cleaner cockpit and while those decisions aren't up to me as the former researcher, afaik it's something that is being looked at. I'm not sure what else I can add to this discussion.

[Drofseh]

@DSplayer I'm really enjoying flying with these cockpit textures you've made. Makes it so much more understandable, especially when first learning to fly the F-14.

If you're willing to listen to feature requests, I'd love it if the up-front warning lights (caustion, fire, wing sweep, reduce spd, etc) could be make more readable as well.

[DSplayer]

6 hours ago, Drofseh said:

@DSplayer I'm really enjoying flying with these cockpit textures you've made. Makes it so much more understandable, especially when first learning to fly the F-14.

If you're willing to listen to feature requests, I'd love it if the up-front warning lights (caustion, fire, wing sweep, reduce spd, etc) could be make more readable as well.

Those are a soontm item!

[Drofseh]

18 hours ago, DSplayer said:

Those are a soontm item!

I'll be looking forward to it!

[freehand]

Interesting thread I would imagine it was rather frustrating for the instructors teaching new pilots as the students would be constantly asking what's that button do what's that one do as I cannot read it     

[draconus]

27 minutes ago, freehand said:

Interesting thread I would imagine it was rather frustrating for the instructors teaching new pilots as the students would be constantly asking what's that button do what's that one do as I cannot read it     

Navy wouldn't let them into a cockpit without thourough knowledge of the aircraft, avionics and sim hours. Not even mentioning they'd be already experienced after 1-2 props and a jet trainers.

[BubiHUN]

On 9/30/2023 at 3:47 PM, Naquaii said:

But we chose what we did because of realism

is this why the clean cockpit exists in Microsoft flight sim, but not here?  

[Hiob]

45 minutes ago, BubiHUN said:

is this why the clean cockpit exists in Microsoft flight sim, but not here?  

Better a little bit too worn out, than looking like a render scene in Cinebench if you ask me. If that is the Choice. One of the many reasons I prefer DCS (apart from the obvious "boom" related stuff...)

The Phantom II seems to look pretty spot on in that regard.

Edited November 9, 2023 by Hiob

[Naquaii]

2 hours ago, BubiHUN said:

is this why the clean cockpit exists in Microsoft flight sim, but not here?  

Seems like an interesting notion to not listen to our SMEs because of that...

[draconus]

2 hours ago, BubiHUN said:

is this why the clean cockpit exists in Microsoft flight sim, but not here?  

Different target, you know, families with kids...

[Rhrich]

15 hours ago, freehand said:

Interesting thread I would imagine it was rather frustrating for the instructors teaching new pilots as the students would be constantly asking what's that button do what's that one do as I cannot read it     

No fighter pilot worth his salt needs to read the labels on anything. Long before you’re ever let into a cockpit you should know your way around the it by heart. It’s decades since I’ve flown anything fun, but I can guarantee the muscle memory is still there. I could operate everything blindfolded. 

On 10/28/2023 at 9:04 PM, Naquaii said:

We have defended the current cockpit against those who just blanket state it to be unrealistic, as that's not the case.

 

Of course it’s realistic. Almost every squadron has a dog and has a star. That goes for both looks and performance. 
The problem I think some have with Heatblur is that they have chosen to portray the Tomcat as a museum relic. (With the exception of the TID screen). It even makes rattling noises like an old car. I’ve seen quite a few up close and sat in cockpits, but I’ve never been up in one, but I’ve never heard a pilot or Rio mention those noises. I think that’s weird. I don’t believe they ever sounded like that (but sure is handy considering you don’t get bum on seat feeling, so I’m not objecting). That said, it got older after I left, and since I wasn’t navy or us they might not have mentioned this to me. 
 

[freehand]

6 minutes ago, Rhrich said:

No fighter pilot worth his salt needs to read the labels on anything. Long before you’re ever let into a cockpit you should know your way around the it by heart. It’s decades since I’ve flown anything fun, but I can guarantee the muscle memory is still there. I could operate everything blindfolded. 

Of course it’s realistic. Almost every squadron has a dog and has a star. That goes for both looks and performance. 
The problem I think some have with Heatblur is that they have chosen to portray the Tomcat as a museum relic. (With the exception of the TID screen). It even makes rattling noises like an old car. I’ve seen quite a few up close and sat in cockpits, but I’ve never been up in one, but I’ve never heard a pilot or Rio mention those noises. I think that’s weird. I don’t believe they ever sounded like that (but sure is handy considering you don’t get bum on seat feeling, so I’m not objecting). That said, it got older after I left, and since I wasn’t navy or us they might not have mentioned this to me. 
 

Your so cool.

[Rhrich]

On 10/28/2023 at 10:11 AM, draconus said:

They say it didn't matter if the aircraft was from the same year or 15 years old. It took months and hundreds of flight hours before deployment and then it looked like what we see in the game. You think they lie to you?

You have the mod now and HB maybe even will provide one too, so what's the rant about?

There’s nothing magical about the Turkey that makes it looks more worn than others. In reality some planes looked better, other looked worse. I’ve said it before. I’ve seen a lot of cockpits, many of them on planes modelled in DCS. I’ve seen cockpits in all of them looking as muddy and worn as the HeatBlur tomcat, and I’ve seen them look pristine. Heatblur is right when they say it’s not unrealistic, but it’s not fully representative. And, more to the point, this is just a game. Others have made better choices than Heatblur when it comes to showing wear while still keeping it user and VR friendly. It seems Heatblur agree since the Phantom looks better than the cat. 
 

we all learn from our mistakes. in my view Heatblur haven’t made many when they made the cat. This one mistake I can forgive. 

[MAXsenna]

Different target, you know, families with kids...

Well, then the cockpits should definitely be messy. Have you sent the inside of a car after transporting a bunch of kids....

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Naquaii]

11 hours ago, Rhrich said:

Of course it’s realistic. Almost every squadron has a dog and has a star. That goes for both looks and performance. 
The problem I think some have with Heatblur is that they have chosen to portray the Tomcat as a museum relic. (With the exception of the TID screen). It even makes rattling noises like an old car. I’ve seen quite a few up close and sat in cockpits, but I’ve never been up in one, but I’ve never heard a pilot or Rio mention those noises. I think that’s weird. I don’t believe they ever sounded like that (but sure is handy considering you don’t get bum on seat feeling, so I’m not objecting). That said, it got older after I left, and since I wasn’t navy or us they might not have mentioned this to me. 
 

As far as we know that's not the case and as has been mentioned multiple times we've verified this. That's really the only point I've tried to make in this thread; the cockpit we have in game isn't unrealistic. That said the wish for a cleaner cockpit is ofc valid but calling the one we currently have unrealistic is not one we'll agree on.