Military AI Works

Teaser time. This is currently what I'm working on:



Brent and Martin know quite a bit more, so if I could ask them not to spill the beans please.

John

John Young wrote: ↑12 Oct 2019, 15:20 Teaser time. This is currently what I'm working on:



Brent and Martin know quite a bit more, so if I could ask them not to spill the beans please.

John

Didn't expect that John, a good choice I think and opens so many doors outside of the military world too.

Looking forward to more details.

Nope, completely wrong interpretation Dale.

John

Like a Cessna, but also not. Part of a wider plan?

Absolutely a much wider plan.

Two clues that might help you get a little closer to what I'm doing. The title of the thread and the position of the datum lines in the Gmax shot, although you would need to understand modelling for the second one. It's also a response to a suggestion.

Obviously a model of the ill fated "Single Engine Hercules" a US Air Force plan to build a plane that could transport as much as a C-130 but would save them money by only having to buy 1 engine instead of 4. I believe the code name was XC-13

Gavin

Only things I can think of with that Cessna model is a T-41, the Cessnas for Civil Air Patrol or a piece of a bigger project.

Definitely a small piece of a bigger project. In fact, the Cessna is just a simple static object.

It's really a classic example of "mission creep" of my own making. I decided to make another variant of a previous AI aircraft of mine, but I wasn't happy with any of the available sceneries to put them in, so I decided to enhance the default versions. One thing led to another and with a lot of research, I have practically built the whole airfield with custom objects. I needed some help from Brent, who kindly diverted a river for me.

The airfield has a busy civil side with mainly GA aircraft. I thought about the best way of populating that side and soon rejected AI, principally because a lot of people here have GA traffic switched off. There are a lot of Cessna's based there, so a couple of days ago, I decided to make a static model with several different paints and put them in their own .bgl placement file. These are 4 of the models in place and awaiting painting:



I can also add in some statics derived from my AI aircraft like the King Air. I think it's the right solution. If GA enthusiasts want AI, they can remove the static file and set that up themselves - the AFCAD will have parking for them. Military enthusiasts will still get the "eye candy" with the static file in place.

It's what's on the other side of the airfield however, that should be of more interest here:





The screen shots are FS9, but my intention is to convert the scenery for FSX and P3Dv4 also.

So - where is this and what is the AI subject?

John

I would say : Stratton Air National Guard Base and the LC-130, another great aircraft from John

Yes indeed, it's Stratton ANG Base, which is part of Schenectady County Airport, New York State. I very much liked the suggestion from Jetrange to make the LC-130H, which is now all done for FS9 and FSX/P3Dv4. I just needed to solve the scenery problem:





The aircraft on the right is the LC-130D gate guard, complete with 3-bladed props:



The LC-130H involved quite a bit of work because the gear sponsons needed a complete rework to accommodate the retractable ski's. The aircraft also now have 8-bladed props:





As a bonus, I wanted to do something different and make some AI emergency service vehicles. These ones roam the airfield with an array of flashing lights at spaced intervals throughout the day and night:



They are quite easy to set up if people want to use them elsewhere and I'll include some simple AFCAD and flightpla instructions in the manual when I produce it.

Next task is to paint the Cessna's and decide whether to include the Air Museum on the NW side of the airfield and some buildings nearby. After that I need to do the scenery conversions and the flight plans because it's unlikely that 10 LC-130H's will ever be on the ramp together.

I'll talk about a "snow scenario" later, but that's probably doubtful for several reasons.

John

Very impressive John.

Damn. I was so close. I thought it was the Supermarine Scimitar.

Wow Joh,. Very impressive. what of energy you have. Thanks a lot for this coming project.

They look stunning, John! As do your emergency vehicles... [emoji5]

From mobile hence short

Hey John,
You surprise every time.

Concerning the AI vehicles i would love to see more of these.
For example also pushback tractors of TLD Douglas Goldhofer. And may be if you like some more vehicles.
With paintkits users could create different service armadas for different airports like dnata and others.
I think this was never done before to allow users create own liveries for AI vehicles.
Please more

Yes that's a possibility. I was in mind to make a fuel tanker too and might still do. I'll also paint the fire truck in Japanese colours for Brent (ambulances are completely different).

John

Hi John

It would be grear to see more AI vehicles and i think it would be a new chapter.
I mean how cool would it be to add AI vehicles for example in the flytampa Dubai Scenery in dnata livery.

I hope to see also fuel trucks catering trucks pushback trucks busses follow me ect in the future.

A paintkit would make sense as users could create tons of variations ect.

Thanks

Those LC's will be a lovely addition to NZCH for the Summer 'Deep Freeze' season!

SeanG

I've been giving that some thought too Sean. Do you know how many of the 109th AW Ski-birds actually deploy to Christchurch for the "Deep Freeze" season?

I'm not sure what to do for flight plans for such a deployment. It looks like a 4000 mile round trip to the Antarctic ice cap from Christchurch, so the aircraft will be in the air a lot of the time. Then there's daylight availability and probably most critical, how AI actually behaves so close to the Poles (not tested).

Is it reasonable to assume that only one aircraft at a time visits the Antarctic camps? If that's the case, wouldn't a user flyable aircraft be better than setting up AI?

As for Antarctic scenery, some will be needed or the AI will be operating in a featureless white void. There is some good pay-ware stuff available, but I'm not really eager to have a go myself.

It would be good though to have the Ski-birds operating in snow. Thoughts welcome on the best scenario.

John

The 109th often operates from Thule AFB, Greenland, operating to several ice/snow strips around Arctic Canada and within the Arctic icesheet. I don't have any up-to-date info, but it's a lot closer to most people's area of interest than McMurdo is!