[wip] f-35b

[chortles 263]

Thanks to the recent Arma 2 content library public release, look who's baaaaaaaack:

Known issues or items where my design vision may differ from others:

• Currently using A3 weapons (hence "GAU-12 Cannon 25 mm" in the game's weapon HUD) for simplicity's sake.
  
• I do not have a cockpit HUD implemented yet... emphasis on yet! EDIT: Thanks to mankyle, this has been implemented... expect to see a Blackfoot-pilot style HMD!
  
• the ASRAAMs are currently appearing outside/underneath the weapon bays as if attached to invisible pylons; the proxies were already in the P3D and I liked the look.

Before anyone gets on me over this last item being unrealistic, I'll note that #1, vanilla Arma 2 had them materializing from the centerline and flying out the nose, and #2, my preferred two methods for working on this would be to either implement external underwing hardpoints, or to adapt the "weapon bays unfold to reveal the weapons when they're selected" that the AH-99 Blackfoot has; I have not started on either method yet.

I can safely say however that the animations are otherwise working (and the weapon bay animation does work in Buldozer), that it flies, it deploys weapons, it lands, the VTOL is indeed working... and that I look forward to hopefully releasing this soon!

Edited January 6, 2014 by Chortles

[oktyabr 12]

This is one aircraft I have been waiting for in ARMA 3! Looking great so far!

[Miroslaw Kowalski 54]

Nice work :) I started working on exactly the same thing two days ago and have reached the same state so far...i attached the missiles to the wingtips and was thinking of adding an useraction for opening the weaponbays and unlocking the ability of dropping bombs by doing so :) Keep up working on this!

[mankyle 410]

I have converted it to A3 too. Mine has HUD. I have tried to look in the blackfoot to see if there was a tip in the config about how to set the weapon bays but no luck.

pm me if you need help with anything.

PS I have converted the MV-22 too

[chortles 263]

BusterBlader, mankyle, expect PMs. :) Or can we chat on Skype or Steam by any chance?

[slatts 1978]

Man I had so much trouble with this...lucky :P Could you add weapon pylons to the wings? That was my main aim (like so http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm180/guitaro-man/arma2oa2013-12-0600-28-43-18_zpsd23303ea.png )

[Miroslaw Kowalski 54]

Send me a PM if you want and I'll give you my Steam or Skype username ;)

[chortles 263]

How did you achieve those in A2? Considering that I didn't see them in vanilla A2...

For what it's worth, here's a photo of the F-35B with pylons; I'm not sure if this image is representative of the spacing for that variant, but here's one for the F-35A.

[slatts 1978]

How did you achieve those in A2? Considering that I didn't see them in vanilla A2...

For what it's worth, here's a photo of the F-35B with pylons; I'm not sure if this image is representative of the spacing for that variant, but here's one for the F-35A.

Just used the pylons from the sample models of the A-10 and harriers and put them on the F-35 model :)

[Rages123 10]

Do you plan on getting in contact with John Spartan about his "Service Menu" for rearming? its such a great feature that all aircraft mods should have, or his ejection seat that is cool too.

[Ranwer135 308]

Do you plan on getting in contact with John Spartan about his "Service Menu" for rearming? its such a great feature that all aircraft mods should have, or his ejection seat that is cool too.

We could have 2 versions of the jet (one that is modified, and one that is not)

After all, I always like flying aircraft that are not modified.

[th3flyboy 0]

Looks awesome, any chance you'd be willing to work with the Community Upgrade Project in porting to A3?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?169933-Community-Upgrade-Project

[mankyle 410]

I have worked with Chortles and the HUD is working again and functional (except some small glitches).

I have also modified the way the engine hatches behind the cockpit open so the plane looks like the F-35B more than the X-35.

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/883003003897784448/03955B41C13BC7AFBDE8880C452E3D4353C60488/

That was a conversion for my own private use but I think it looks cooler this way. I don't know if Chortles will want add this modification to the plane

[eymerich 11]

Awesome...

Thanks to modder, Arma3 is getteing better...

[disco.modder 116]

Awesome...

Thanks to modder, Arma3 is getteing better...

No worries. :D

Look forward to this!

[CyclonicTuna 87]

Great work! Do you think you could give the F-35 a more realistic paintscheme? And I was hoping you might introduce weapon bays to the aircraft as the A2 one didn't have any and it has always bothered me a bit.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

I don't mean to barge in, but this is not an F-35B Model. This is an X-35 model.

As compared to the actual F-35B model.

Might want to check your data, this is the model form Arma 2, which BI named the F-35, to compensate for it being put into service in Armaverse. (X stands for Experimental, or undergoing testing)

[chortles 263]

Great work! Do you think you could give the F-35 a more realistic paintscheme? And I was hoping you might introduce weapon bays to the aircraft as the A2 one didn't have any and it has always bothered me a bit.

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4f64e5bbecad04fc66000059/f-35.jpg

Funny little story: the A2 one does actually have modeled weapon bays, and I've even gotten the doors opening and closing in Buldozer! It's just that BI didn't implement what the AH-99 Blackfoot has -- as previously described in this thread -- where the wings/launchers swing outward when selecting one of the weapons inside and closing when selecting one of the exterior weapons such as the gun, and unfortunately at this time I haven't gotten that working yet either.

I'm also not sure how to implement the behavior that I've seen in the first F-35A live first test, where an AMRAAM essentially "fell" out of the weapon bay before its rocket motor ignited, though as an interesting note it appeared that the AMRAAM(s) were/have been attached to the doors -- and thus in a way closer to what the Blackfoot has -- instead of the "weapon bay ceiling" as it were.

HEADS UP: At this time I'm intending to release the F-35B with a config there's separate "AA" and "CAS" versions in the same manner/style as the A 143 Buzzard; the gun aside, the CAS version has the Arma 2 F-35B's loadout while the AA version has the Buzzard's AA loadout. Would anyone object to this arrangement?

I must note that I have not yet set up proxies for the Zephyr missiles or GBU-12s (or Skalpel ATGMs if anyone wants me to just flat-out match the A 143 Buzzard's CAS loadout), so currently they would be doing the "materialize from the center and free-fall or shoot out of the nose" routine that the Arma 2 F-35B's weapons did. :(

EDIT: I've also been told that the Buzzard's "engine noise" is so much ("leagues") better than the A2 sound(s) I included that I was asked if I could change 'em to the Buzzard's; would anyone object to me going this route instead of using the A2 sounds, especially since I believe that this route would be as simple as making the necessary config changes?

Edited January 7, 2014 by Chortles

[mankyle 410]

for the missiles to fall and after a short time engage the engines...

that's very easy.

in the cfgammo of the missile

put this

initTime = 0.800000;

and in the CFGMagazines of the missile put this

initSpeed=0;

The missiles will fall a short distance and after 0.8 seconds the rockets will engage and the missile will accelerate. Fort that, unless you want to override BIS ASRAAMS missiles (overrinding BIS classes is usually a bad idea) you will have to create a new class ammo, class magazine and class weapon for this derivative ASRAAM, new classes that inherit from the ASRAAM ammo, magazine and weapon. I will have something today in the evening. Cheers mate

[chortles 263]

you will have to create a new class ammo, class magazine and class weapon for this derivative ASRAAM, new classes that inherit from the ASRAAM ammo, magazine and weapon.

I'm specifically using the vanilla A3 weapons to avoid having to create any new weapons/magazine/ammo, but thank you for explaining how this would be done. :) Admittedly I'd be more interested only after there's a Blackfoot-style "open/close doors depending on selected weapon".

I will have something today in the evening. Cheers mate

Excellent, look forward to hearing back from you... and check your PMs!

[CyclonicTuna 87]

Funny little story: the A2 one does actually have modeled weapon bays, and I've even gotten the doors opening and closing in Buldozer! It's just that BI didn't implement what the AH-99 Blackfoot has -- as previously described in this thread -- where the wings/launchers swing outward when selecting one of the weapons inside and closing when selecting one of the exterior weapons such as the gun, and unfortunately at this time I haven't gotten that working yet either.

[/i]

This is so weird because I recently heard someone say that they discovered that BI also had animated doors and get-in get-out animations for a lot of vehicles but they just aren't used. I don't understand it. It makes me wonder if they are actually hiding a lot of code that is used in VBS. BUt I couldn't think of a reason why. Perhaps it just caused too many crashes or was too demanding on an average PC.

[artisanal 22]

They weren't hiding it, in fact, some time during the alpha/beta (don't remember) there were functional opening/closing door animations for the AH for example. BI took this feature back by saying they weren't satisfied with the result, though visually it was quite nice. I heard that the real problem was the hitbox of the aircraft/car/etc... which didn't actually change when the door was open, so if you wanted to shoot or throw a grenade through an open AH, the grenade bumped against an invisible wall and came back to you *boom*

[CyclonicTuna 87]

They weren't hiding it, in fact, some time during the alpha/beta (don't remember) there were functional opening/closing door animations for the AH for example. BI took this feature back by saying they weren't satisfied with the result, though visually it was quite nice. I heard that the real problem was the hitbox of the aircraft/car/etc... which didn't actually change when the door was open, so if you wanted to shoot or throw a grenade through an open AH, the grenade bumped against an invisible wall and came back to you *boom*

Yeah but if it was almost finished couldn't they patch it up or something? Release it with a patch? Don't get me wrong, I don't know a whole lot about coding but it seems to me to be kind of a shame to just leave it there.

[Degman 73]

Good job, guys. Looking forward to this. :)

[chortles 263]

Yeah but if it was almost finished couldn't they patch it up or something? Release it with a patch? Don't get me wrong, I don't know a whole lot about coding but it seems to me to be kind of a shame to just leave it there.

Here's the SITREP with the official explanation:

There is one graphical enhancement we are going to have to take out for the initial release of Arma 3. You may have noticed more use of functioning doors on vehicles while getting in and out. Unfortunately there are issues with this approach we do not have time to address (without taking away resources from more critical areas). Examples relate to doors on large shared passenger compartments and grenades thrown into vehicles. Even if we were able to correct those, we would not have time to enable it for all vehicles (their meshes are not all prepared for it). This inconsistent state is not acceptable to us and therefore we will disable the doors for release. Since it does look very cool, we hope to re-visit this post-release and do it right.

To reiterate, the unbinarized F-35B P3D from BI has an Anim weaponbay with minValue=0 and maxValue=1, and the latter is the bay doors being opened (two doors per bay) to reveal what looks like a pair of faux launch rails per bay, it's just that you have to manually add type="rotation" to all relevant animations (since class Rotation; then <animation> : Rotation doesn't seem to work, plus for such a rotation it must have both angle0= and angle1=, many of the former which were not included by BI... and the model.cfg files from BI are utterly cluttered in these omissions)... and the F-35B, again by default as provided by BI, doesn't actually seem to use the weapon bay doors-opening/closing animation for anything.