Monday, April 20, 2009

Tomcat update: carrier trials and cockpit progress












As today has been a rainy Sunday here in Genoa, I finally found the mood to make some significant progress with the Tomcat. "Significant progress" means that finally the left console is textured and most of the switches have been modelled. Main instuments are functional, and so are the MFDs and the HUD. Let's say the cockpit is 80-85% complete. I just need to make the rivets and bolts of the canopy, put some screws and switches here and there, make the advisory lights and assign the animations/mouse rectangles. Two/three hours and it will be done.

I've also tweaked the textures of the outer model - now they are more color-consistent and slighly more defined. The burner effect has been furtherly revised, too.

Bad news come from the extenisve carrier trials I did today... while the flight model is generally OK, the plane sinks too much below 150-160kts forcing the pilot to keep an attitude that makes almost impossible to see the deck though the HUD. It is possible to land, but it is extremely difficult (I mean I know it should be difficult but this is like "guess where the deck is").... I need to work on this.

As some of you are asking. the Tomcat Last Flight is currently the only paintscheme and it will be the default one. As all of the repainters seem to have "bailed out" of this project, I am not sure if I will have the time to make some other liveries myself. If I will, the ones I'd like to do are VF-213 , VF-31 and VF-101. Due the the way I places the textures "vintage" schemes (i.e. the ones with white moving surface and lower fuselage) cannot be done with this model.

...and I know that 4 JDAMs is not an allowed configuration for carrier ops!

4 comments:

SpazSinbad said...

Looking forward to your Tomcat work. It looks to be as good as the Goshawk. Hope you can solve the 'carrier landing view' issue OK. Your carrier capable aircraft are special for sure. One question: Does the Tomcat have a 'conventional AoA indexer as seen in the Goshawk? Looking for this info, could not find this detail (except line drawing references) at: http://www.anft.net/f-14/index.htm

SpazSinbad said...

DOh, I note in the last pic on the first post on this website, that there is an indexer on the left of the HUD: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BtrUCGKwx9k/SdFuiIVFtUI/AAAAAAAAAVg/XbHVf8X5Tuw/s1600-h/cokpit_update1.jpg

ScimmiaSpaziale said...

Yes - and it is already working. One thing I am not yet able to do is the AoA units indicator... It is likely that I will replace it with a VVI (in the Goshawk I have replaced it with a g-meter)...

Arkady said...

Complimenti Dino, il tuo lavoro รจ spettacolare come al solito.
Mille congratulazioni e un
Keep up the Good Work
da un affezionato cliente dei tuoi Tomcat, mi ricordo ancora le prime release per fs9, che meraviglia!
Grazie ancora, e e ti serve un tester contattami pinkspider86@hotmail.com
Buon lavoro!