Military AI Works

Wow. What a stunning shot. Firebird is right. FS has moved on to an extremely high level. Well done !!

The realism in the scenery is down to Manfred and Pete of course. Manfred has really grown in his scenery design abilities over the past few years while Pete is doing outstanding things with his ground polygons, not to mention blades of grass! The frame rate is very good too. I'm just glad to be able to contribute the Harriers for them.

John

Suffered a hard drive crash yesterday just as I was writing the last page of the manual for the Harriers. Fortunately my work is backed up on a portable drive (lost the manual though) but it's going to take me a few days to get the programs back on, including 2 years of Windows updates! A solid state Windows drive sounded like a nice idea at the time, but I wasn't expecting a failure after 2 years (one month outside the warrantly period).

John

Jeez what a mess, John.

For me that was the reason to stay away from SSD drives so far. While rebuilding your system have a look at Acronis TrueImage and ask me if any questions come out of that.

Sorry to hear of your HD crash John. Backups are so important to me now that I have a
reminder set up on my phone to do a full file copy backup to my NAS every month.

If I had to re-install my full FS system from scratch it would take me months to get it to a
bare minimum. Of course that would then mean going over just about every addon and
trying to work out just what changes I have made, if any.

Hope the crash does not delay your Harriers too much

Keep my fingers crossed for you, John! Hope you get back everything shortly....

My PC was supplied with a copy of Acronis True image plus an original image of the hard drives that I copied to a portable drive for safe keeping. I also had a much later image with all my programs on but I couldn't really use that because all the registry paths were wrong because of the crashed windows drive. I was able to recover though to the delivered state but with everything now on my 1 TB spin drive. 2 years of Windows updates only took 90 minutes to download and install and I have just finished reinstalling FS9, SDKs and Gmax. My FS9 designs are now back on, including the Harriers. Now for FSX and associated programs...........

John

Nice work, John. True Image has got me out of trouble quite a few times.

So you didn't go with replacing the SSD then?

Yes I agree Steve. You can't really have confidence in a program like Acronis True Image until you have actually used it for real. Now that I have done, I think it's great.

4 reasons for not replacing the SSD really:

1. Once bitten, twice shy.
2. It would delay me a few days getting everything re-instated.
3. The spin disc is working fine and there's not a lot of point spending £80 to £100 getting a new one. The only disadvantage is that Windows takes 3 minutes to load rather than 1 minute. I can live with that.
4. I believe SSDs are really difficult to overwrite securely when disposing of the PC and the more you write to them the more they slow down. That's what I read when I bought my PC, but that might have changed in the two years since. Mine certainly slowed down in time.

John

Fairly reasonable points there, John. The one thing I would say is that once 1TB SSDs become cheap enough will we ever have spinners again? The life of SSDs is getting better all the time, probably will never reach a spinners life time but it is improving.
The issue about overwriting SSDs isn't an issue in your case. If you can't read it, you can't read it. They are small enough and simple enough to smash to smithereens, probably quite therapeutic as well, a lot easier to make sure that nothing can be retrieved from it.

Glad that it hasn't derailed the Harrier production line.

All restored and working and I'm beavering away to finish the Harrier packages.

John

Well done John. Your releases will be most welcome and could not come at a better time.

Brian

Ooh Brian, you are such a tease . Do I smell Yankee?

but I wasn't expecting a failure after 2 years (one month outside the warrantly period).

In Oz, we now have what is called an expectation warrantly. This warranty makes the manufacturer responsible for the product repair or replacement for the average life span of a product. So for example, if a hard drive normally lasts 5 years on average, then that is the length of the expectation warranty, even though the manufacturer may only state that the product warranty period is two years.
This came into force in Australia because to many products, especially white goods were failing just as there warrantly period expired. I recently had my refrigerator replaced by this warranty nearly four years after its 2 year warranty runout. A frig has a general life span of about eight years.
It certainly makes manufactures think twice about importing rubbish products into Australia these days.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-07/b ... ts/2749924

That's a really useful consumer rights development fishlips and twice this year it would have come in handy. I wonder if it pushes up prices as manufacturer's/retailers need to take the associated costs into account? Be good to debate it further but not here obviously. Just to bring this thread back on track, here's a quick update on the Harrier packages.

The FSX packs are all done and zipped, including a fantastic sound package from Steve at Military Sound Studios. He is also working on an FS9 sound package that hopefully uses a .dll to circumvent the default AI sounds. I've sent the FSX packs to a couple of people here, but if two or 3 other people are eager for them, please drop me a PM. I should be able to offer the same for the FS9 packs next weekend. In the meantime here's a naval taster:





John

Looks stunning John, can't wait to get them

That looks stunning. Didn't know they could carry sparrows (or AMRAAM's ) on the fuselage!!

Yes, that is the fit for Carrier defence. They only carried AIM-120's. As far as I know they were never made compatible with Skyflash.

Just a quick update. I'm back from holiday, but trying to work at a PC in the current UK heat wave is really uncomfortable apart from a couple of hours early morning.

The good news is that thanks to some great help from Weescotty and Mike M, we have managed to get the FS9 VTOL and STOVL xml/animation/FDE options working in FSX. I'm just working through all the LODs in the FSX and FS9 GR9, FRS1 and FA2 optional models to apply the necessary linkages and xml. Then I need to set up the selected aircraft with those options.

John

This has been undoubtedly the most complicated project I've tackled so far, but equally one of the most rewarding in terms of outcome and learning, not just in design terms but in how to recover from a hard drive crash midway through it. To complete the project, I've spent a good part of my design time over the past month testing and adjusting numerous blocks of xml code that Guru Kevin has kindly been putting together to refine the VTOL lift and STOVL descent. That's coupled with separate flap and nozzle code for these aircraft and probably equally as dramatic as the lift, code that triggers gear up and down at any time I want it. In the case of the VTOL option, this occurs right at the top of the lift, as I recall display pilots used to do. For the STOVL models, gear retraction takes place just a few seconds after clearing the runway. That's going to be so useful too for future projects - VTOL or conventional. My thanks to Kevin for doing that and to Mike M for the tweaks to the conventional FDE that works in parallel. Thanks also to Steve at Military Sound Studios for the FSX sound package.

Here's a few screen shots of some of the finished aircraft I took yesterday to celebrate the end of the project:















The packages are all complete and zipped ready for upload to flightsim.com. However I am going to hold fire doing that so that I can do a concurrent release with Manfred's scenery of Gutersloh, the home of the RAF Harriers. He's not far to go. However, if anyone is really eager for a copy now of any of the packages, drop me a PM and I'll provide a temporary link. There are 4: RAF and Royal Navy for FS9 or FSX. Just let me know which one(s) are wanted.

Now to clear the decks and start researching a new project, although some work in the garden is going to compete.............

John