Congratulations to all involved in VFTC airshow!

[Искатель, 128]

Su-27 weights 16 tons and full load is 9 tons of fuel that is more than a half of it's weight. If you load only 2 tons you'll make it 7 tons lighter that will react on the control. VFTC never uses unlimited fuel, but it never uses full load also.

By the way, here:

http://forum.virtualflight.ru/index.php?showtopic=1419

the discussion of the offline formation flying has also started, so you can join.

 

Andrew, thanks a lot for your video!

About ACS (Automatic control system), there is a button named "Execute Pugachev's Cobra" that turns it off while you hold it. This is the feachure of all super maneurable planes.

[Искатель, 128]

About the tracks.

BBQ, thanks, VFTC exists already 4 years, so the day came already long ago. Here are our US colleagues :) http://www.virtualthunderbirds.com

Modern avsims make it possible.

 

Sorry, no tracks of our virtual pilots will be ever published. We are preparing a good quality track of the spectator's view with my voice comments. It's going to take some time because everyone of us is too busy now. The Spring semester is finishing soon, we have our educational programme in VFTC, and also our ingeneer is a student, so he has exams there also.

We publish all our news in our Press-Centre.

[LawnDart]

Congrats to the VFTC for an outstanding job!!! We (the VTB) envy the display you guys put on, but also promise to bring everyone something similar in the future.

 

Skill wise we could give you a live show now, but connection wise as well as that being a territory we haven't explored yet it would be some time. We need a rock solid connection and good server before we'll be able to fly a tight show with everyone located all over the country (world). We will release our new video first, now that we have 1.1 and soon will be able to start recording it, but live airshows is somthing we're definitely looking into as the internet can only get better and faster...

 

Once again, awesome display and I really enjoyed it! Especially the burner-loop on takeoff... nicely done VFTC!

 

LawnDart

[LawnDart]

Well, this is registration:

http://forum.virtualflight.ru/index.php?act=Reg&CODE=00

The fields are:

Name (or nickname)

Password

Password again

E-mail

E-mail again

Real Name

And a small checkbox in the bottom with a button under it. Than you'll recive the activation letter on your e-mail and that's all.

This is the link to the language bar:

http://forum.virtualflight.ru/index.php?act=UserCP&CODE=06

I think I will also post it in our forum before our engineers will fix it.

 

I tried to sign up on your forum before, but gave up since I don't speak a word of Russian! I think that's why so many people haven't said much there. I'll give it another try now that I have an idea of what each field on the registration screen has, but for future (english) users, even if you can switch the board to english after registering, it would be much more user friendly if you could sign up in english as well...

 

LawnDart

[britgliderpilot]

<looks innocent> Video?

 

;-)

 

Actually I'm supposed to be working on it right now. Just popped back to the thread because I realised An.Petrovich must have flown the whole display with his ACS disabled (unless there's a toggle I've forgotten).

 

<pause... watching new Airbus A380 taxiing in background on TV>

 

Where was I? Yes, A.P. flies at the back of the diamond, and the track seems to show him doing a lot more "twitching" of control surfaces to hold position. Watching his solo display again at the end I realised that 's because he had the ACS off, which means staying with the diamond through that section of the display must have been *really* hard work. Amazing flying.

 

Anyway, back to trying to squeeze 12 mins of flight into about 6 mins of video.

 

Andrew McP

 

 

Mmmn.

 

 

I thought the twitching was due to the MP code lagging behind when showing control surface movement?

 

edit - and about the Pugachev's Cobra key . . . . is that a true ACS off function now, or still mostly scripted for the Cobra?

[Искатель, 128]

Yes, there were a lot of lagging in the track. Actually it looks MUCH smoother when the guys do it in local net. But this is inescapable evil, so let's try to live with it.

LawnDart, reserve several places for us when you'll do your Show! ;) It's great that you are preparing new video!

britgliderpilot, Su-27 still doesn't have AFM, but it's second condition of flight is modeled also. Not as good as it could be. May be one day......

[Andrew_McP]

I thought the twitching was due to the MP code lagging behind when showing control surface movement?

 

It's hard to be sure what you see is *exactly* what happened, because of packet loss etc and the way LOMAC re-creates replays. But it seems to me that the mp lag (between me and their server anyway) mostly shows up in obvious situations where you can see all 4 aircraft twitch slightly off-track together. Individual aircraft seem far more stable relative to each other, no obvious twitching in position, only in control surface movement.

 

A.P.'s aircraft *seems* to be the most twitchy in terms of its control surfaces, and while that might reflect a slightly poorer connection between him and the server compared to the rest, I'm sure it also reflects the fact that (a) it's no fun at the back of a diamond :-) and (b) the fact he needs his ACS disabled in order to perform his excellent single aircraft display towards the end.

 

Overall though I was very impressed by the stability of the connection and lack of MP problems. Before the start though (in another trk I cut short when I quit to change my MP name) when one of the aircraft landed & taxied to a stop I did get a phantom "whizz across the landscape and crash into a building". And in the display trk A.P.'s landing at the end was *impossibly* heavy, causing the plane to skate about a bit on the runway... which is why I cut away from that in the movie just at the moment of impact. Not very elegant :-)

 

But apart from that there wasn't a lot to show it was being beamed across the internet. Speaking of which, there are still moments in life when I'm totally amazed by what the internet allows us to do. This airshow was one of them... people from all over the planet able to connect and share an experience. If I wasn't such a pessimistic cynic I'd say there was hope for the future of humanity after all :-)

 

Andrew McP

[Shepski]

Hey Andrew,

 

Thanks for offering up the track!!!

 

What an incredible display of formation flying!!! I wish I could have made it to the live broadcast. What was really cool too was seeing all their pilots heads turning and looking in real time.

 

Cheers to Andrey, Daniel, Konstantin, and Alexander!!!

 

Have a :icon_jook on me!

[LawnDart]

Yes, there were a lot of lagging in the track. Actually it looks MUCH smoother when the guys do it in local net. But this is inescapable evil, so let's try to live with it.

LawnDart, reserve several places for us when you'll do your Show! ;) It's great that you are preparing new video!

britgliderpilot, Su-27 still doesn't have AFM, but it's second condition of flight is modeled also. Not as good as it could be. May be one day......

 

The track looked pretty good to me as far as lag goes! We (the VTB) are used to much more lag than that while we fly that even shows up on our hosts (server) tracks. This is what I'm affraid might be the downfall of us being able to do a live show?! Half our pilot group fly with ping over 100 while only feet apart and the occasional spiking or lagging doesn't help either. The internet isn't as stable as a local network unfortunately. It would be great to see a track directly from the VFTC just to see how smooth it really can be on their own computers! I only wish we had that... O'boy, do I ever wish we had that smoothness! We'll certainly reserve spots for you if we ever do a live show, but in the mean time look forward to our next video project! It will make the old video pale in comparison I'm sure! Our flying is on a different level now... :icon_wink and as long as SilentEagle gets the camera angles to showcase the skill it will rock! We should have it by summer sometime...

 

LawnDart

[Andrew_McP]

What an incredible display of formation flying!!!

 

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

[Shepski]

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

 

Hi Andrew,

 

I guess you missed this thread I posted... http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=8018

 

If the nurse, on an empty leg is ok with it, we like to have fun. :) I was flying the King Air the pics were taken from since the nurse on my plane was the only one of us that had a camera. We switched lead as you can see from the pics and we each did a figher pilot break turn... too much fun!

 

I really hope that VFTC makes the public aware... I had no idea it was going on till well after the fact.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

[Andrew_McP]

Hi Andrew,

 

I guess you missed this thread I posted

 

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

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It's hard to be sure what you see is *exactly* what happened

Sure, it is unexplored field. Several times we saw the airplanes digging ground, or flying to explore the Universe... Once we had a cool track recorded with too high requested connection speed, so package loss was extremelly high. The airplanes were making Cobra right in diamond formation, they teleported several kilometers away to return back like they were connected by springs... :D it looked very funny like 4 UFOs flying aerobatics. The whole sky was covered with smoke lines like abstractionist's painting. So, this is simulator's realism that makes it a little bit special. The result of the world 'virtual' in all that we do (except for the skill and friendship ;) ). It's not worth to shy of it or try to hide somehow in the videos.

The formation now looks much smoother than it was year ago. The guys have increased their skill, they are incredible.

[Искатель, 128]

LawnDart, I have an idea for you :) Why won't you record your track of the Airshow and just publish it? It could be very good step to the live show.

[LawnDart]

We might! But the same problems that prevent us from doing a live show still exist in the tracks (lag, warping, no dedicated server etc). I'm sure we can put together a track once everyone starts showing up again for practice, altough it may be a little laggy at times (like you described in your previous post). Everyone is kind of busy in real life now, but once we start recording our video we should be working on a complete show at the same time, so we'll keep it in mind. I still hope we'll be able to fly live at some point...