HMS Ark Royal Task Force

[John Young]

Wow, very pleased to have got up this morning to see such interest in the Task Force package. Thanks everyone for the feedback. A few things to respond to:

Apologies for the manual in Word format. I did convert it to .pdf but stupidly added the Word version to the zip. The .pdf is too big to attach to this post unfortunately, but if anyone needs it, just PM me with your e-mail address and I'll send it to you.

The textures on the frigates are not ours. The main cause of stuttering might be the numbers of them, but could well be the lack of mips. I can't test that because I don't have the problem, but it might be worth trying saving them again with mips rather than re-sizing.

Yes we were aware of the green patch, but you have to look hard to find it. It is part of the AFCAD structure and is difficult to remove without affecting other things.

You could merge the Sea Harriers with my earlier files if you transfer over the new aircraft sections to the old aircraft.cfg file. Before doing that I would just ask Mike to confirm that he hasn't changed anything in the FDE for the carrier operations.

I'm still very intrigued about the ski jump properties. Like Mike, whenever I've tried a jump from another developer, I've just flown through it. It can't be done with an AFCAD file as John B has already said. The ramp is a scenery object. If it were flat I could add a hardening bounding box so that aircraft could sit on it and not fall through. Unfortunately, I know of no way to harden what is essentially a series of planes at variable angles. Just out of interest, for those ramps where users can run up them, can you taxi up them and stop half way and stay put?

John Y.

[VulcanDriver]

Brilliant, simply brilliant!! This package is another great example of how the MAIW community has pushed the boundaries of FS and accomplished much more than anyone thought possible. Thank you to the development team for all your efforts and congratulations on an amazing package!

Hi Pete

I'm working on different versions of the Merlin so it will be appearing in other packages in the future.

[campbeme]

John,

put the PDF in my folder and I can add it to the download for future users.

[John Young]

Thanks Mark, I've just put it in folder 415 Mark C. I assume that's yours.

John

[david.harwood]

John,

I've added a pdf of some screenshots of the HMS Illustrious downloaded from the RFN website detailed in an earlier post. As you can see the ski jump can be taxied up right to the edge. It seems to be made from three angled flat sections as there is a small jump as you progress up the ramp and the angle change can be seen in the side view of the ramp.
If the screenshot pdf has not loaded let me know as it might be me not quite getting how to add images to a post.
Anyway the Illustrious looks good next to your tack force even without the Harriers and Merlins buzzing around. Its a shame is just not as finished as your Ark Royal model.

[david.harwood]

PDFs added

[david.harwood]

PDFs added

[david.harwood]

PDFs added

[david.harwood]

PDFs added

[campbeme]

Thanks Mark, I've just put it in folder 415 Mark C. I assume that's yours.

John

Okay got it John will correct today.

[John Young]

Thanks for the screen shots Dave. I've been to the SOH website and found "HMS_Illustrious.zip". Unfortunately, although the site tells me I'm logged in with my credentials, that wasn't enough to remove the gold padlock by the download link, so I left empty handed. It's not at Avsim or Flightsim.com. Bit stuck really.

John

[david.harwood]

John,

For some reason I got the gold padlock also but then re-registered and followed the site through FSX addons/FSX ships and the Illustrious was on the second page and available to download this time so I grabbed it again. The readme file states that the author is Gary Payne at gary@gpayne9.orangehome.co.uk so might be worth a punt contacting directly as it looks like other data belongs to other individuals and permissions are needed.

Anyway its actually much better flying on and off the Illustrious next to Ark Royal as instead of missing the eye candy its all around you and having two carriers next to each other makes an impressive site. Must try it with the SDB Enterprise! now that will look nice!

[John Young]

It's OK, I had to wait for a confirmation e-mail apparently. Although the site said I was logged in, clearly I wasn't. Having authenticated my log-in, the padlocks were gone and I managed to download the ship.

You can indeed power yourself up the ski jump. I can't though determine how it works. I've opened the model up with MCX. It's made with Sketchup which I'm not familiar with. It's installed into FSX\simobjects\ships and uses a traffic file in scenery\world\scenery to display the ship, but it doesn't actually move. I'm not clear then whether it's a scenery model or an aircraft model. It has 106 platform attach points, but I don't really know what they do.

I could get very bogged down on this and I don't really want to do that, given that I'm not intending to make any more ski jumps.

I think I'll leave it unsolved if that's OK.

John Y.

[david.harwood]

John,

Its fine with me to leave well alone! Sounds far too complicated especially for my brain. I for one am more than happy with what you have generously supplied and having the ski jump only adds something but its only a little something!

Just on a side note, have you or anyone else ever thought of producing a 'Gate Guardian' scenery package? I'm always intrigued by gate guardian aircraft at operational and non-operational airfields and air bases. I note the GR-4 and Victor are at Marham and some of the other scenery produced by ACG but have never seen anything for Lakenheath for example. RAF Croughton has the F-100 and F-105 from RAF Upper Heyford and would be nice to see them in a sim. I have the Vulcan scenery placement package so I assume it can be done i'm just not sure how to place objects in FSX with my more than average laptop! having a single package for Uk, USA would be nice as some of the US airbases have quite a collection at the side of the road.

[mikewmac]

Wow, I can only repeat myself, what an awesome package.
Just took the time to install it and watch the morning flight operations.
The only thing missing is the appropriate ambient sound: sound of the sea and jet noise....

Here are a few of my observations / questions:

1. the manual is in Word-Format, since I only have an old version of Word on my flightsim PC I opened it on a different computer and saved it as PDF

John has already addressed this.

2. I experienced some severe stuttering when the textures of the frigates where loading.
The textures come in DXT1 format. I converted all the textures for the static and the AI frigates to DXT3 format.
For the AI frigates I also replaced the textures: ddg17_eot2.bmp, hcvc.bmp, hcvc_L.bmp, helm.bmp, pilotdeck.bmp, vc_panel1.bmp with a tiny 16x16 pixel texture that is only 1k byte to further reduce loading time.

I never saw any stuttering on the 3 different PC's including an older laptop that I installed and tested this package on so I saw no need to alter any of Earl Watkins textures with the exception of creating new hull numbers for all frigates included in the package.

From the file Earl Watkins' Installation.txt I assume that the AI frigates are a pilotable model and have a virtual cockpit that is not needed when used as AI model.

Yes, I converted Earl Watkins pilotable frigates to an AI frigates using a unique AI FDE, adding special AI ship effects and deleting all unnecessary folders and files.

3. When viewing the Ark Royal from bow, starboard side there is a green patch visible at deck height below the skijump ramp. I assume that is a part of the AFCAD file?

Yes, as John posted this is part of the HMS7 AFCAD that I thought that I had hidden from view.

4. Can the Merlin folder and/or the Sea Harrier folder be merged with the previously installed Merlin / Sea Harrier or do the have special flight dynamics for this package?

The JEAI Frigate Merlin has an improved AI FDE from that used for the JEAI Merlins in the RNAS Culdrose package, but it is compatible with and usable for all the JEAI Merlin models. However, the JEAI Frigate Merlin is a completely different model containing unique animations that allow it to takeoff and land on the frigates.

I also tweaked/improved the JYAI Sea Harrier FDE, but it is compatible with and can be used with all of John's JYAI Sea Harrier models.

[mikewmac]

I am delighted with all the interest in and feedback on the HMS Ark Royal Task Force package and want to thank you all for it. It is very gratifying to see the product of all our work so well received.

[hawk_sh]

Thanks for your answers.

Regarding the frigate textures:
converting the all the frigate textures from DXT1 to DXT3 (no mipmaps) completeley solved the stuttering issue on my system (which might be a little bit dated nowadays ).

Regarding the ski jump:
coming back to the UKMIL ski jump (UKMIL Harrier Ski-Jump for UK2000),
the readme says it was made by Stephen Legg (Stevo), who was part of the ACG team

you can taxi a user aircraft to the top the ramp, the curvature seems to be made of several flat sections

[John Young]

Thanks Hartwig. I'll ask Stevo, but since he made his ski jump 9 years ago and doesn't use FS9 anymore, he may not have the source file still or remember how he did it.

John Y.

[hawk_sh]

Maybe you can reverse engineer the this mdl file.
Since it is that old it is probably not made with Sketchup.

[John Young]

Yes indeed, I've just tried that. It's a Gmax source file which is ideal, but unfortunately reverse engineering means producing a 3dmax file for import into Gmax. When it's there I can see the ramp model but I can't determine how the hardening has been applied.

I've e-mailed Stevo, so we might get there yet.

John Y.