Mikey's BUFF

[mikeblaze]

A small note to all, these models are distinctly different from all of my release models, and probably won't work too well with previous textures. There is a bit of new ordnance which has replaced a couple of things on the texture bitmaps, and the fuselage has been modified for the eighth time in this series, with new antenna and such. These models will be compabile with the Barksdale and Minot paints.

[Makadocias]

You're the MAN!!!

[mikeblaze]

Another quick update, the contemporary Barksdale paints are done and off to the project manager, so my part of this biggie is done (one can only hope, lol). After next week, I will do the modern Minot paints and do the modeling for the various NB-52 lifting bodies.

[Makadocias]

Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed watching your B52's through the FS skies!!!

Thank you so much Mike!!!!

[JDT73]

Just wanted to say thank you Mike, as my kids would say, 'AWESOME!'. I would say similar, but with a few expletives before hand.

The mutt's nuts, as they say,
Jamie

[Stewart Pearson]

At loooooooooooooong last, as promised here are the callsigns for Mike's Buff.

There's a couple I haven't included as they didn't sound right (Bonzo & Turquoise) however there are (I thnk) 51 for you to make use of.

Hope you like.

[mikeblaze]

This has been the week of service packs. I did a little one for the Tu-95 series, and a huge one here. While doing my Bears, I discovered a phenomenon with my batch-conversion macro I use for mass-compressing my textures to DXT format; it discards an all-white alpha channel. I have never encountered this before, so I don't count it as an error, just one of those things I learn by having it happen to me. It affected the #1 texture of every B-52 I have painted to date (a lot of them, lol). The #2 texture, by a stroke of luck, had a glass part area on the alpha channel because my original intent was to do a full cockpit modeling, but I scrapped it because of a growing polygon count. At any rate, the #2 texture compiled just fine because of this (lucky me, only half the work, lol).

At any rate, Service Pack #3, in three parts (3a, 3b, 3c) represents 112MB of optimized #1 textures for every one of the 564 B-52s I did for the first twelve parts of this project. I didn't do the three NB-52s that I included with the first update, as I will cover these when I do loadout models with various experimental aircraft/mothership loads, in a planned part 13 of this oddesey. The 2nd BW Barksdale paints will be updated at a near-future time to-be-determined between Des an myself; and the impending 5th BW Minot release from MAIW will have corrected paints in it (that's where this nightmare started, lol). There's a lot more explanation in the documentation of the service pack.

The long and short of it is that you will see better framerates and better texture rendering of the fuselage/tail on these aircraft.

I traded brain cells for this one (654 new texture saves in one morning, ouch....).....

[petebramley]

I for one will admit that I did not notice anything wrong either on the Bear or the Buff. Thanks for the update and I will hopefully get them incorporated into my system over the weekend.

The best news is that the Experimental birds and the (hoped for) Minot package are still going to make an appearance.

Thanks Mate, You are doing an incredible job populating our virtual skies.

[mikeblaze]

This aircraft is going to appear on IVAO as well, in a simplified form, if anybody does that sort of thing.......

[SeanG]

Hey Mike, for those of us who do a bit of multiplayer, would you be willing to share your "multiplayer friendly" versions?


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[mikeblaze]

Hey Mike, for those of us who do a bit of multiplayer, would you be willing to share your "multiplayer friendly" versions?

I think I can make that happen......

[mikeblaze]

I've been giving this a think, about the payloads for the NB-52s. There are quite a few experimental craft, and each one is like modeling a whole new aircraft in some respects. I don't want to burn out making a whole bunch of individual air-droppable things (I think I have counted at least seven), so I am fixing my count on four experimental craft loads, but some were used by both the B model and the H model, so it will be a good representation overall.

Here is what I am planning

X-24A
X-24B
X-15
X-43 Hyper-X

I know that the X-15 and Hyper-X were carried by both variants, so that will increase the model variant count. Due to the nature of the modeling, I am going to throw in a third texture in each folder to cover the new stuff. Since there are only two of these aircraft around, I am not worried about call rates and rendering, and all necessary textures will be in each aircraft folder. I'll see how fast the modeling goes, and I may include a couple of the others (Stiletto and M2-F2); but don't hold me to that yet. Also, there will be clean variants with an empty pylon (I think everything uses a common pylon setup), so you can program one-way flightplans to a dummy waypoint with the loaded aircraft, and have the the empty aircraft return, if that's your thing. I always had this in mind with my SEA-era B-52s out of Andersen (or later conflicts), so I can certainly throw in some empty-rack variants for the D/F/G/H as well.

[SeanG]

Hey Mike, for those of us who do a bit of multiplayer, would you be willing to share your "multiplayer friendly" versions?

I think I can make that happen......

I know there would be an appreciative kiwi here if you can

Already had a cool bear hunt chasing the bear over the Sea of Japan, ignoring the boarding ladder which was always extended, looked great!

A B-52 "escort" mission would be awesome too

SeanG



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[petebramley]

Hi Mike

Is there any chance of releasing the 2 current Edwards Buffs ?
Believe they are 60-0036 and 60-0050

Regards

[Hippolyto]

This aircraft is going to appear on IVAO as well, in a simplified form, if anybody does that sort of thing.......

Sorry, I didn't understand.

Haven't IVAO asked permission to use your models?

[Woogey]

How do you get Ai in multi-player? Also, is there any plan for a retro Fairchild AFB in Spokane, WA?

[zsoltfireman]

There is a problem with the B-52G! Taxiing while shaking, bouncing on the concrete! Is there a solution?

[Firebird]

I found absolutely no problem at all. Maybe it was the base? What scenery were you using.

Just in case something got altered it might be worth downloading the B-52G pack again and re-installing the fde (aircraft.cfg and JMAI_B-52_Stratofortress_AI_ONLY.air).
Sometimes something accidentally updates a part of the cfg file and alters the aircraft balance.

[zsoltfireman]

I found absolutely no problem at all. Maybe it was the base? What scenery were you using.

Just in case something got altered it might be worth downloading the B-52G pack again and re-installing the fde (aircraft.cfg and JMAI_B-52_Stratofortress_AI_ONLY.air).
Sometimes something accidentally updates a part of the cfg file and alters the aircraft balance.

Hi Steve,

Which was the last package?

Thank you,
Zsolt

[flyerkg]

Hello and thanks for this discuss. I have noticed this issue with Buffs for Mather AFB. They bounce all over the place while parked. Perhaps 60-70 feet up in the air. I will try to swap out fde and maybe contact points in the aircraft.cfg.