Military AI Works

Having managed to get the F-111s out, the second part of the exercise is to do the same with my BAC Lightning packs. I built these in the same time frame as Mike P built his, with the intention of populating the upcoming RAF Binbrook scenery from ACG (FS9 and FSX). However that is progressing very slowly with Stevo at the moment due to other life pressures. Rather than have the aircraft sit unused on my hard drive, I want to clear the decks so that I can move on to something new without having to come back to them again.

There are 5 packs with a choice of FS9 or FSX native code:

Pack 1 contains F1s, F3s, T4s and T5s. Here's few of them:





Pack 2 contains F6s with and without overwing tanks:



Pack 3 contains F2As of 19 and 92 Sqns RAF Germany (the T4 is in Pack 1):





Pack 4 contains all 45 F53s and T55s of the Royal Saudi Air Force (Textures by Dale Ashcroft). Here's a few of them:



Pack 5 is a collection of F53s and T55s of the Kuwait Air Force (Textures by Dale Ashcroft)



I've spent hours refining the FDE and the performance I achieved was good, right down to 10 fps. However, Mike M kindly offered his existing set with a bit of adjustment and that works even better. He has also allowed me to use the exhaust efflux effects, touchdown smoke, contrails and smaller Nav lights that he supplied for F-111 too. I've used my own afterburners because they have a different shape to the F-111s. The file includes a "Blacklight" section following Steves's advice to prevent the afterburner effect causing a CTD.

Because these are comprehensive packages, I wanted to take the opportunity to invite anyone here to try them out before I upload to Flightsim.com and the wider community. I've therefore uploaded the files to my Rapidshare facility and I'll keep them there for a few days to enable a few interested users to get hold of them. These are the links in Pack number order:

LINKS REMOVED BY AUTHOR BECAUSE OF A BANDWIDTH LIMIT AT RAPIDSHARE. ALL 10 PACKS HAVE NOW BEEN UPLOADED TO FLIGHTSIM.COM (SEE POST BELOW).

I did most of my testing at Lakenheath and for users who have the MAIW scenery, I have included a test traffic file that has 13 aircraft representative of Packs 1 and 2 (please download and install both packs). The zip below has both FS9 and FSX versions of the traffic file, the latter assuming that FSX users have ported the scenery:

LINK REMOVED. FILE IS NOW AVAILABLE DIRECTLY IN THE POST BELOW.

Obviously, temporarily remove any existing LN traffic files.

I'm sure you will tell me how you get on.

John

Wow. What else can I say.

Many thanks as usual John.

Chris

They look great as always John

Having a bit of an issue downloading:

"Download not available
File owner's public traffic exhausted."

Rhino wrote:Having a bit of an issue downloading:

"Download not available
File owner's public traffic exhausted."

Rapidshare implement a daily traffic limit of 1GB, it may be that this has been used up today, so may be best to try again tomorrow.

I was afraid that might happen. I was surprised that it's only taken between 2 and 7 downloads for each package to exhaust the daily traffic limit. It's the paint kits that are really adding to the file sizes. I'll upload to flightsim.com early tomorrow morning when things are quieter. I'll confirm here when I have done that.

John

John
Ye've done a fine job !! They really look good . I've been waiting for this !!
Cheers
Brian

campbeme wrote:

Rhino wrote:Having a bit of an issue downloading:

"Download not available
File owner's public traffic exhausted."

Rapidshare implement a daily traffic limit of 1GB, it may be that this has been used up today, so may be best to try again tomorrow.

Hi Mark, you were (of course) right, after midnight they worked like a charme, thanks !!

Rhino wrote:

campbeme wrote:

Rhino wrote:Having a bit of an issue downloading:

"Download not available
File owner's public traffic exhausted."

Rapidshare implement a daily traffic limit of 1GB, it may be that this has been used up today, so may be best to try again tomorrow.

Hi Mark, you were (of course) right, after midnight they worked like a charme, thanks !!

Your welcome.

I uploaded all 10 packs to flightsim.com at 7am UK time today. They should be available later today. It's probably easier to do a search of "JY_AI_Lightning" and then you can pick what you want from the list. However, the individual pack file names are:

JY_AI_Lightning_Pack1_FS9.1.zip
JY_AI_Lightning_Pack2_FS9.1.zip
JY_AI_Lightning_Pack3_FS9.1.zip
JY_AI_Lightning_Pack4_FS9.1.zip
JY_AI_Lightning_Pack5_FS9.1.zip

JY_AI_Lightning_Pack1_FSX.1.zip
JY_AI_Lightning_Pack2_FSX.1.zip
JY_AI_Lightning_Pack3_FSX.1.zip
JY_AI_Lightning_Pack4_FSX.1.zip
JY_AI_Lightning_Pack5_FSX.1.zip

I think everything is there. It was a complicated set of zips to put together.

The Lakenheath traffic files test zip for FS9 and FSX is below:

John

Wonderful stuff. John, yourself and Mike P should be congratulated on both the subject matter and the standards that you have both reached.

Thank you Steve. It's good to be able to contribute something in this section and to be able to learn from it. Dale has just pointed out that the Pack 1 Lightnings (F1s, F3s, T4s and T5s) for FS9 have two fins on the fuel tanks where there should only be one. The equivalent FSX pack is fine. I'll just wait a day or two to see if anything else crops up and I'll fix that.

John

Great model again John !

Found two issues...

1. the canopies seem much darker on my system (FS9) then on your screenshots... With reflections turned off they become even darker... Not sure if anyone else is having this as well ?



2. the aircraft radius is set to 18 instead of something close to 10 which causes the aircraft to park at cargo spots on most AFCADs... This is easy to fix by users themselves with the aircraft editor included in Afcad2

Cheers,
Eric

Eric, my screen shots are from FSX. However, I had anticipated the dark canopies in FS9 when viewed with reflections turned off. That's why there is an alternative canopy texture in the zips to use with a non-reflective setting. The penultimate paragraph in the installation section of the manual explains this.

I'm not overly concerend with parking diameters. I needed to contend with the brake chute that is taken into account with the model size, particularly in FSX. Although the AFCAD editor works in FS9 it doesn't in FSX. I tend to use the parking code to control where aircraft park. As you say, it's easy for users to fix this as they wish.

John

Thanks for the explanation John ! However I was trying to say that even with reflections turned on it looks a bit to dark to me:



The JAI A-7 for instance has a reflective canopy as well, but is not as dark:



Cheers,
Eric

I had a look this morning, but I can't get the canopies to render anywhere near as dark as you Bora.

Here are the two textures in the packs (FS9 screen shots):

Reflective:



Non- reflective with reflections disabled:



I have though produced a new lighter version that might do the trick for you. This is what it looks like on my system:



The new texture is attached below. See how you get on.

John

Very strange, tried all kind of things but your original reflective canopy texture keeps showing up dark every time... Don't know if it's supposed to work like this, but when using the reflective canopy texture from the JAI A-7 (after renaming this texture file so it's matches yours) it shows up dark at the Lighting as well, and the other way arround, using your reflective canopy texture on the JAI A-7 (after renaming again) it shows up fine on the A-7...

Anyway thanks for looking into this and I would like to try your new texture, however the attachment in your post doesn't show up like a download link...

If no one else experiences the same, never mind, I can live with it !

Eric

Eric, I've just replaced the .bmp download in the post above with a zip file. If you still can't get the file, PM me your e-mail address and I'll e-mail it to you.

John

John, thank you very much, totally loving these Lightnings, with your recent Hunters, Victors and Canberras by retro FS9 install is beginning to look very nice. Speaking of Victors btw, I'm attempting to put together a (very basic) Radlett, but having pretty much zero skill it could take a while!

A question for you; are you considering adding the fighter canopy Canberras to your lineup?

Andy, thanks for your kind comments. If you are stuck on the know how when building scenery, I'll gladly point you in the right direction. Just drop me an e-mail. I think I'm all Canberra'd out at the moment and I have to stop somewhere so no more, at least for now. I am knee deep in the next project and really enjoying myself with something new.

John