Briefings

Eurofighter Typhoons by JYAI team

I have often thought of having a go at a new Typhoon, but the numbers and variations were off putting, particularly in the light of experience with the amount of work involved with previous of my packages, like the F-35 and Tornado. Nick Black’s Typhoons have served the FS community well for many years and are available for all 3 sim versions. All credit to Nick for his work, undertaken several years back, when polygons were more constrained by PC and GPU power. Time now, I thought, to use a few more.

Steve Holland suggested a new Typhoon some time ago and having finally succumbed, it was with pleasure that I could present him with something in return for all the support he gives to people here at MAIW.

By creating the opportunity for others to become involved with the project, in their own areas of interest and skills, the response has made it much easier. 15 people joined in to bring skills ranging from research, flight dynamics, painting, scenery design and flight planning. Individual contributions are acknowledged in the manual for each package, but this is a joint effort and my sincere thanks go to the team for all that they did.

The "Typhoon Team" (in no particular order):

Between us, we manged to produce 28 AI models and 465 paints, all x 2 for FS9 and FSX/P3D. In addition, 17 sceneries are either included or linked to, in order to provide homes for the aircraft and 27 flight plans bring them to life. There are 12 packages in total, 6 for FS9 and 6 for FSX/P3D:

Package 1 – Austria (15 aircraft)

Package 2 – Germany (120 aircraft)

Package 3 – Italy (92 aircraft)

Package 4 - Saudi Arabia (71 aircraft)

Package 5 – Spain (68 aircraft)

Package 6 - United Kingdom (100 aircraft)

The FS9 and FSX models all have an afterburner that is specified in the [Lights} section of the aircraft.cfg file. In the real world, the afterburner is generally only used for take-off on Quick Reaction Alert aircraft and aircraft that are heavily loaded. While it is possible to simulate that, it would mean doubling the number of aircraft folders across the Typhoon project because two versions of the aircraft.cfg file would be needed for each nation. Rather than do that, all FS9 and FSX Typhoons have been assigned afterburners.

In P3D the afterburners need to be embedded into the models, along with the navigation lights, to prevent the flaring into “fireballs” when viewed, especially at night. That has enabled the split of afterburner use as in the real world. QRA and loaded aircraft therefore have embedded afterburners.

All of the Typhoons have “slime” lights – the green formation strip lights on the fuselage, fin and wing tip pods:

Brake chutes are not frequently used in the real world, so they have only been assigned to a few aircraft, along with animated airbrakes behind the cockpit in a few other models:

It was a bit of a challenge to find scenery to accommodate the Typhoons across the 3 sim versions, but by and large, we managed it with thanks to designers and people with the skills to convert from one sim to another. Space here doesn’t permit illustration of them all, but here is a sample:

Zeltweg - Miljan

Mount Pleasant, Falkland Islands (Dale and Mark)

Grosseto (Giorgio and Tim)

Lossimouth (Tom and Tim)

Rostock-Laage – Gert and Pete

Neuburg – Menno and Pete

Taif – Dale

Coningsby - Ian

I must also give credit to John Tenn, who decided to have a go at a new custom scenery of Albacete (LEAB) Spain. It was always going to be difficult to do that in a couple of months, particularly while learning new Gmax techniques. Good progress has been made, but rather than rush it, we very much hope to see the finished product in the coming months.

Was the Typhoon project easy? – not always, but it was largely enjoyable. Problems we had to overcome ranged from the actual colour of grey paint, going around in circles (circuits), to get the high alpha landing in the FDE right, the canard animation, converting some sceneries and handling the number of elements for the 3 sim versions all at the same time. 

The real pleasures, among many: 

  • the quality of Geoff’s spreadsheet research that mapped the way for what needed to be done. 
  • watching the Typhoons finally performing properly thanks to Steve’s new FDE. 
  • the quality of the scenery, especially Ian’s new RAF Coningsby for P3D, Tom’s revamp of RAF Lossimouth and the starkness of Dale and Mark’s RAF Mt Pleasant. 
  • exploring the conversion of Gert and Menno’s German sceneries for FSX and P3D by Pete. 
  • watching the parallel scramble of the QRA Typhoons in Giorgio’s FS9 Grosseto. 
  • taking screen shots of Miljan’s painted Austrian Typhoons against the snow backdrops. 
  • the creation of the Spanish flight plans myself (something I never particularly like) and working with Dan on the UK ones. 
  • opening my mail each morning to see if Ray had delivered another of his wonderful special paints among the 259 Typhoons he painted for the German, Spanish and Saudi packages.
  • setting up the added bonus of the new RAF Posiedon’s at Lossimouth, thanks to Tim’s new hangar and Ray’s repaint of my model.

Above all, the greatest pleasure was undoubtedly the willingness of people to give their time and skills to the project, coupled with many helpful posts in the MAIW Forum. 

On behalf of the Typhoon team, we hope you like the packages. You will find them in the Download Hangar. Look in Newest Files, or search “JYAI Eurofighter Typhoon". 

John Young
September 2020