Service to my Country 9/61 - 2/03 US Navy - HS-3, VX-1, HS-7 (USS Intrepid, USS Wasp, USS Yorktown) Va National Guard - 229th Cbt Avn Co US Coast Guard - E City CGAS, CGC Morro Bay, RTC Yorktown NOAA - Co-op Observer 1983 - present
Its a shame that Fernando left the scene before releasing his F-4K, I did provide him with some info on it, as he actually had the extending noseleg built in to the model. I have pics of it.
It was awesome but Fernando was always improving his models, its almost like he never felt that they were good enough for release, which they most certainly were.
Steve _______________________________________________________ Quid Si Coelum Ruat _______________________________________________________
In respect of Steve's comment I'm probably not the only person who remembers seeing the screenshot on an Alphasim forum of a carrier deck on which Fernando had A7, A6 and maybe a Crusader if I remember right.
I wonder what happened to them..and him!
I have a feeling a feeling the Alphasim forums were revised long time back but not long after Alphasim released the Enterprise Fernando released a ile 'f4b_for_bige'. In it were F4Bs in old US Navy colours and one retro texture for Alphasim's A6.
forums Big E section, of the carrier with the aforementioned aircraft, and maybe a twin engined US Navy carrier borne aircraft, and as the thread grew it was soon worked out that it was his work in progress on those aircraft.
Then he went uncontactable.
I still have the file 'f4b_for_bige' unzipped, 2.16mb.
Incidentally I did some seven paints some time ago for f4nutter of the RN 892RNAS Phantoms using his FGR.2 in the '77' scheme if anyone wants them.
Being a total numpty at repainting and just cannot find a simple enough explanation of the alpha channel and how it works.
Could you explain how you edited the F4 to get rid of the nose sensor and stores.
I can not give you a technical description of what the alpha channel is and how it works. I am sure someone on this forum can.
I have attached some alpha channels for the F-4B model.
You will need DXTbmp.
Open the texture you want to modify.
On the top right corner of the window there is a small preview window of the alpha channel of the texture. (It will be plain white)
Then goto the menu bar: --> ALPHA --> IMPORT ALPHA CHANNEL.
Select one of the bmp files.
There will be black areas in the small preview window now.
Save the texture.
The areas with a black alpha channel will become invisible on the model thus removing the nose sensor or stores.
The alpha channel of an ARGB image defines its transparency when it is composited with a second image. If a pixel has an alpha channel of 0 it is considered completely transparent when composited onto another image. If a pixel's alpha channel is set to 255 it is considered completely opaque, and will show at full opacity when composited. Intermediate values will cause the pixel to fade smoothly between the first and second image. In 4-plane char Jitter matrices, data stored in plane 0 of the matrix is considered to be the alpha channel.
Iv'e seen some nice helo's where the authors put alpha channels on the windows to make them realistic. It's looks like the real thing when you look out but murders the frame rates. I't must take a ton of processing power to make that smooth average.