JYAI FSX F-15s for FSX Lakenheath (ACG)

[John Young]

With RAF Wattisham now largely done, I thought I would have a go at the FSX F-15s that Ian McCartney (ACG) asked me for, for his super-detailed FSX Lakenheath that he is developing (see the posts in the scenery section at ACG). There are 6 base models - 3 x F-15Es, 2 x F-15Cs and 1x F-15D all in native FSX code with 7 LODs each:















Mike M has kindly allowed me to use his original FS9 F-15 FDE on the aircraft and it works extremely well in FSX. However, he is going one step further and doing a little more work on his more recent FDE with hopefully a more elevated nose on landing (AI engine permitting). Mark Inny at Sound Studios has also agreed to produce an FSX sound pack to bring the aircraft to life.

Don't expect a release any time soon though. Ian still has a lot of work to do on the scenery and we still need to build and test the complete AI package with a large number of aircraft.

John

[shaggy22]

Looking fantastic as usual John, keep up the good work

[Sonarboy]

Absolutely outstanding work John.

[paspou]

the color of PC ..............
In my mind , in 80's am see a demonstration of F-15 and the PC at take off was more

excuse me for my poor english

[Victory103]

Wow, great detail and I think I see the front seaters wearing the now standard JHMCS helmet.

[campbeme]

Pilot okay, but 182 was lost today.

[John Young]

My wife told me this evening that a military aircraft had crashed in Lincolnshire, but didn't know what. It was quite a shock to see here that it was one of the two F-15D's from Lakenheath - the one I had just modelled. So glad the pilot is OK.

John

[John Young]

Like the Pave Hawk models I’ve just finished, the F-15s in the above screen shots were built for Ian McCartney’s RAF Lakenheath scenery for FSX that, unfortunately, he had to abort recently. The models have been sitting on the shelf for the best part of a year. I was though able to turn the Pave Hawks into a much more comprehensive package embracing most of the Black Hawk family, as you have probably seen.

I wasn’t thinking of doing the same thing for the F-15s, at least not on the same scale, because unlike the Black Hawks, we already have very good FS9 F-15s in current packages. However, I don’t want to discard the models I've made and I was wondering how best to make them available.

Although Ian needed FSX native coded models, I built FS9 ones first because much of the modelling is common and the marginal cost in hours of work in doing both is quite small.

The current models (FS9 and FSX) are:

• F-15C x 2 – one with a standard (drill) load-out and one with AMRAAMs

• F-15D - drill load-out.

• F-15E x3 - one drill, one with Paveways and the other with JDAMs.

I’ve only produced specimen paints, not the whole Lakenheath fleet.

One prominent painter here approached me recently with a view to doing some F-15 painting and he has kindly run a sanity check on the texture mapping to ensure more than the current Lakeheath schemes can be painted. As a result of those tests, I’ve done some re-mapping on the FS9 models and I’m just about to do the same for the FSX ones.

These aircraft are quite detailed in the first two LODs but the performance is good. Mike Mac has done a brilliant job with the FDE and has managed to achieve the characteristic nose wheel high off the ground for the first part of the landing roll-out. I’ve also used various XML triggers from Kevin, particularly to deploy the air brake just before touchdown. I’m honoured also to be left a custom AI sound pack for the FSX F-15s that the late Steve Inny of Military Sound Studios produced for me. I really do want to put that to good use.

So the question is, how far should I go with these F-15s? I rather liked the way the Black Hawk project developed because it involved people here in producing other paint schemes, AFCADs, flight plans and call signs rather than presenting everything from a hat on a plate that users might or might not want.

Should I just release these aircraft as is (with the FSX mapping changes also carried through) and enable enthusiasts here add to them, or could I add more value in some way?

What to do?

John

[Bora]

Hi John,

These models look great again ! Too bad Ian had to abort doing the Lakenheath scenery, it looked very promising !

For the F-15C and D models it would be nice to have a few more load outs:

- clean
- centre line tank only + 1 sidewinder under the left wing for DACT (Dissimilar air combat traning), this was the most common load out back in the 90's for the Europe based F-15's, even the ones from US based units that came over for deployments...
- centre line tank + wing tanks (ferry flights)

Just a thought...
Eric

[Firebird]

My feeling here is that the loads you have done are probably the most common that they would carry. I would sacrifice other loads on these models to get mods of these 3 versions.

Don't get me wrong I would love to get more loads on all versions but I am realistic about the amount of time and effort that one person can spend on a project and so more versions carrying basically the same loads would be my preference.

[bismarck]

What about the Israeli F-15 I Ra'am?
Giorgio

[John Young]

I'm not averse to using my expertise and doing some more modelling, but I don't really want to get bogged down in lots of repaints, AFCADs or flight plans. Other people here could contribute those if they wanted to join in on a community basis.

I'm not sure about duplicating the F-15 variants we already have, although they will be FS9 models - they can still be ported over to FSX. That said, I don't really know what we have at the moment.

Keep the suggestions coming and we can take stock of what might be possible. I will almost certainly need some technical help to identify differences in the suggested models. That was so useful with the Black Hawks.

John

[Bora]

[quote="Firebird"]My feeling here is that the loads you have done are probably the most common that they would carry.[quote]


Seeing fully armed fighter planes operating from their home base is very uncommon... You will probaly see this in war zones only... A version without tanks or just a centreline tank would be much more common.

[Bora]

By the lack of suggestions it looks as if there is not so much interest in a new F-15 ? The model looks very detailed and I would be happy to use it knowing the high quality of John's AI models... But since most repaints for the F-15 are likely to be available for Nick Black's or Kevin Reed's models already maybe there is less interest ? It looks as if this happened to Phantom FRG2 as well, it's the best looking FGR2 AI model available but I have not seen any new repaints yet other then the ones included with the release of the model. Probably because of the FMAI and Michael Pearson/Nick Black models ?

I guess a brand new AI model like the A-6 Intruder / EA-6 Prowler would gather more interest... I am sure this would be a nice subject for the repainters as well.

Personally I would love to see a JYAI Nimrod... But hey, that's not what this thread is about so apologies for deviating from the subject...

Eric

[Firebird]

Only slightly off, Eric. It may be that JY has not been overloaded with responses purely down to it being part of the summer season and that a lot of people are away. Most people are not sad enough like me to take a laptop with them to keep up to date.

[clickclickdoh]

By the lack of suggestions it looks as if there is not so much interest in a new F-15 ?

Well, for one, I haven't weighed in because I'm in the middle of repainting 4 squadrons of MH-60s, a couple hundred US Army UH-60s, rebuilding Komatsu and Chitsoe, 4 squadrons of F-15Js halfway through paint(which John isn't modeling so no point dragging that into consideration) and... how many squadrons of T-4s?

Simply put, John has another amazing model coming, but I'm way to overloaded to give him insightful input into it, so I've decided to let the people who will have the time comment. I know many of the active developers/painters/modelers are in the same position, juggling way more projects than they have time for. I call it "Ooh Shiny" disease.

As it is, the F-15, even though being a very famous and influential aircraft in military aviation, really hasn't gone through a great many obvious external changes over it's service life that would call for a great many models, unlike the massive variations in John Uh-60 models. So, there will be some debate about specific weapons loads, Fast Packs and a few antennas, then everything else is in the hands of painters, who honestly could spend a lifetime recreating various F-15s schemes through the years.

And remember, some of us actually like to fly in the sim from time to time instead of endlessly turning out new projects.

I will however take this opportunity to ask John to model the F-15J Kai+



... in a sling load under a CH-47.

[John Young]

There is something in what you say Eric and it doesn't bode well. The Wattisham scenery and Phantom packages have produced 765 and 506 downloads respectively for FS9 and 1328 and 875 for FSX. That's very low compared to what was happening a few years back. That's partly down to duplication in this case I would think, but even in FSX, although I made unique native AI, 453 users of the FSX scenery didn't bother with the FSX AI at all. The packages were also retro of course, so that might well depress demand further.

The 4 packages probably took around 5000 man hours to produce. That's a hell of a lot of investment for not a great demand.

99.7% of users will never say a word after downloading, so the majority of the hours go into a black hole. That's always been the case of course and if it wasn't for the support here in the forums at MAIW, I would have given up a while ago. The amount of designers who are no longer active and those that are unable to complete large projects is understandable particularly when time in this modern age is under pressure, work and family-wise. If you add to that the further segmentation of the "market" into FS9, FSX, and P3D, the AI niche in the military niche, now has 3 further niches all of which now split the demand into smaller units, unless you design for all 3 sims. Not many people do that.

For me, I am no longer eager to invest a few thousand hours in detailed scenery projects, particularly retro ones. I'm more happy with AI when I can take a gamble on a project that might only require 200 hours or less. That said, I will want to avoid duplication to avoid another Phantom disappointment. I need to ask first what people want and perhaps concentrate on finding the gaps of missing aircraft that haven't been done before. It was only because Ian needed FSX F-15s that I was more than happy to produce them and since the FS9 versions were marginal, I did those too.

The C's D's and E's were virtually all done a year ago so there's little further investment of time needed to make them available. The Export models don't differ hugely from the USAF equivalents, except of course in the paint schemes and perhaps the F-15J that Click has just highlighted. I'm really trying to clear the decks so I can think about modelling something less risky. That's why I don't want to spend a huge amount of time on this one, but I'd like to add value if I can.

John

[reconmercs]

As far as I'm concerned, you can never have enough high quality models. I'd say upload them to Avsim and let users make packages when they can. I remember Henry Tomkiewicz doing that with the now ever popular F-16 models and look how much use those have gotten over the years

Your F-15s will get used, maybe not in a package right away but they will get used. Don't let your hard work go to waste. I personally would love to be able to replace the older NBAI F-15C/D's with your version, so maybe I'm a bit bias

[petebramley]

You can never have too many models.

If you are happy with the state of the A/C then put them out there for everyone to enjoy. It would
be a shame for your work to go to waste.

[Victory103]

As far as I'm concerned, you can never have enough high quality models. I'd say upload them to Avsim and let users make packages when they can. I remember Henry Tomkiewicz doing that with the now ever popular F-16 models and look how much use those have gotten over the years

Your F-15s will get used, maybe not in a package right away but they will get used. Don't let your hard work go to waste. I personally would love to be able to replace the older NBAI F-15C/D's with your version, so maybe I'm a bit bias

+1 from me and not to take anything away from the huge early efforts from both Henry and Nick.