F/a-18 c "fighting omars" public beta ready

[Hudson 0]

I have got the hornet ready for community beta testing. It is being released as version 0.9 beta. The final version will be completed after I get some feedback from the community and finish the Su-30/34 addon  (pic with temporary textures). If you would like to help out hosting the addon please do so and add any URLs to this thread, you guys are great about that

****Disclaimer so I dont get flamed like some other poor souls***

The model used is a downloaded .max model imported into O2, I did not make it and do NOT in anyway take credit for its creation. Please enjoy  

(grey textures shown are not actual textures on model....)

The addon can be obtained by sending an email to f18@radishville.com you will recieve an email back shortly with a download URL. Thanks and look forward to your feedback....

[Edit] Forgot to mention that because I animated the cockpit canopy, landing gear and gear bay doors, and AA missle warning with event handlers this addon only works with resistance versions 1.90 and above, sorry[/Edit]

[Tovarish 0]

Looks great, will try .

Just to nitpick:

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Su-30/34 addon<span id='postcolor'>

That's Su-32/34. The Su-30 is totally different.

[Harnu 0]

I just have to review this for my old buddy Hudson

-----

The model is great, even if it wasn't made by Hudson

Weapon systems are quite good.  The bomb's release fast, and don't blow you up with them after letting them go.  As some addon planes do sometimes.

Flying this is great.  Good turning, nice handling.  Very easy to controllably flip upside down, then pull up and you can go the oposite way.  Very nice!

Missiles are very accurate, and the bombs have guidance.  Just lock, line up and make sure the locked thingie appears, then fire.

Pros:

Nice model

Really nice, smooth textures

Great weapons

Excellent flight capabilities

High speed and thrust

Cons:

As with some other use made aircraft, there seems to be an invisible something beneath the plane.  If you fly too low, like at 1-2m you skid the ground and KABOOM!  But I think I'm the only one who tries to fly that low so it's really not a problem

If you hit the ground too hard with the landing gear, thhe "break" and fold up.  However, you can still land with them "broken"

Thrust is sometimes too great, going with nose totally up, and full acceleration, you barely lose speed.

Theres a problem with the muzzle flash of the gun. When firing, and the flash appears, it stays there, solid and thick till you stop firing. It's not a thin flash like normal.

Special Features:

When you slow down to stop, once you get a very low speed on the ground, the cockpit window goes up.  Was really nice

Suggestions:

Possibly not have sooo much thrust.

Fix that invisible "thing" below the plane.

In an earlier beta version, the AMRAMS flew at a speed of aprrox 1,200.  It was a nice slow speed.  It's fast in this version, and AA needs to be fast.  But I would like to see the ground rockets slow down a bit.  For effect, ya know  

GOOD JOB HUDSON!!!!!!!!  

[TaNK_Em 0]

Looks sweet going to test out later.

[Koolkid101 0]

It's probably the best air since the tornado! It'd be nice if someone finishs an aircraft carrier

[LandShark-AL 0]

WOW! Looks good flys even better.Good job I even like it better than the F15.Keep up good work.

[Chill 0]

Great work!!! This and the tornado are the best user made addons by far. Any chance a CCIP could be made for the bombs?

[crassus 0]

Okay, well, I tried searching for hard references, but that was a bust, so you'll have to take my word as a former U.S. Marine who's job was to load ordnance on the Hornet.

Great model! But I must correct your bomb load-out, esp. w/ regard to the Mk-82s. I believe you have the load-out at 4 pylons of 6 bombs each. That is incorrect. The only "bombs" the Hornet can carry in such quantities are practice bombs, about 20 to 30 lbs in weight. These are loaded on the Multiple Ejector Rack (MER).

~The correct load-out for the Mk82 would be:

  1) one Mk82 per each of the four underwing pylon

  2) one Mk82 the outside station of a "side-by-side" bomb

      rack/ Verticle Ejector Rack (VER)

 (The picture is of an F/A 18 E, which has three pylons underwing; earlier Hornets had only two per wing.)

  3) two Mk82s on the the VER.

You can probably find more info regarding load-outs for the Mk83 and 84, this last can only be loaded on per pylon; ya can't use the VER....

With all the work that went into getting the model in-game, I hope you find this bit of info useful in improving upon it.

[Hudson 0]

Good suggestions, I think what I will do in the final version is use a suggestion from Wonder and put static wingtip sidewinders, AMRAAMs, and some Mk82 on the model so it will look more multi-role. If I use static weapons then i can actually use more than one missle type per plane as they wont be seen, only 1 proxy type will display but thats ok because there is a static missle displayed allready. So in theory I could load up the plane to real worls specs. 2 sidewinders, 2 AMRAAMs and some static bombs. Only bad thing is it will still looked loaded even after you fire everything off.

As for the stacking of the bombs on the plane, I had problems with the extra bombs falling out of the middle of the plane. I used 12 proxies at first but used 24 bombs in the loadout. The first 12 bombs fell out of the middle of the plane right above the fuel tank causeing it to explode. So I stacked the bombs in my own little way. Why 24 bombs you might ask, its a game not real life. I kinda like dropping 12 bombs on a target and leveling it in 1 pass. Its if that big a deal it can allways be changed of course. The paveway version, Hmm Ewwww. I really need a seperate model on that one :-) didnt notice the way it looked till a couple hours ago. Hopefully Ill get some more great suggestions from you guys and we can make this one hell of a fun addon to play with. Thanks for the supportive feedback.

Forgot to mention, I am needing help with a few things on the plane. If you happen to open the pbo and look at the config you might have a heart attack, all that code makes my brain hurt and serioulsy needs some consolidating. I bet if you printed out that config.cpp file you would have a 23 chapter novel to read. Not my strong suit could use some help there. Also im not really understanding which command(s) in the animation scripts (gear.sqs and canopy.sqs) are not running local on client machines in MP games. During testing some noticed delayed canopy and gear animations this could be due to the fact that we were seriously maxing the upload speed of the server, could use some help with getting that straight. Also a biggy, we run a linux server and this addon just wont work on that machine. Put it on a win32 server and its ready to fight. If anyone knows whats the deal there I sure would like to know. Also I would really like to try to make a script to govern the top end speed of the plane, it would be nice if the cfgVehicles section had a thrust setting like the ammo instead of having to raise the top end speed. And last but not least my AA warning light dosent blink. I need some help with a script there as well. So long story short I cant script and my cpp skillz are non existant. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[sseagle 0]

Glad Im back, time to go play with it!

[~Too Tall~ 0]

well teh warning light and sound works. . but. . no flare?. . could use some ECMs on this puppy. . other then that its a great aircraft

[cam0flage 0]

I love the way the landing gear retracts! <3

[-A-V-Trekkie 0]

Mirror

[radt 0]

OWWW

excelent work!

[miles teg 1]

I had a go of these bad boys last night and here are my thoughts:

Overall incredible model.  Decent textures although a tiny bit blurry...could just be my graphics settings probably.

I love the animations.  Very nice.  I hope you get the MP problems worked out.

Problems:

1. The AI doesn't bomb very accurately even with the Paveway bombs.  I never once saw a direct hit.  

2.  The AI pilots tend to fly into the ground while attacking.  Perhaps the aiming point is set too high causing them to dive down too low?

3.  The AI pilots in the AMRAAM and Sidewinder equipped Hornets doesn't want to engage enemy aircraft.  Or if they do they're not firing their AA missiles...at least I didn't see any fire any missiles.  

Other then that so far it seems very nice.

I also think that ngine sound could be updated to something different then the stock engine sounds.  Also I would VERY VERY much like to see a version with rocket pods and if possible... cluster bombs!   For defense of coarse a flare system like the one on the G8 Tornado would be nice.  

But in general this addon is wonderful and handles very nicely! Very good work!!!

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[Wonder 0]

I did some test flying yesterday and here's what i've come up with:

aircraft model: Hornet's airbrake is an opening panel located right behind the canopy, not on the wings.

cockpit model: Lot of work to do! The instrument panel seems to be too far away in the front. Move it abt. 30-40cm:s backward, so it's just about next to the canopy frame. Also the instrument panel's glare cover seems to be blocking some of the HUD and i'm not even going to mention the stick

Weapons: reduce the vulcan ammo capacity to 578 rounds, also IMHO change the firing sound... I prefer this one

Also decrease the vulcan accuracy just a wee bit, as to make it more effective in air-to air. I like the HE rounds tho!

coding: RWR light doesn't seem to go off after the threat is gone although the beeping does.

things to add:

HUD, this has been introduced to the ofp community, yet i've seen it in only 2 aircraft addons! I'd like to see it used in this addon with at least pitch/roll and vertical speed, maybe even airspeed&alt. Nobody uses the backup instruments these days!  

Flares, make that RWR useful.

Bitchin' Betty to yell "Warning - Warning"    

[miles teg 1]

I think the vulcan cannon sound used in this addon sounds fine. I think they should leave it. The .wav file in the last post sounded much worse in my opinion. Again just my opinion.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[The Sharpshooter 0]

I don´t like the muzzle flash, no plane in Flashpoint has a Muzzle Flash AFAIK and this one is not textured.

Otherwise great work!

[Wonder 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I think the vulcan cannon sound used in this addon sounds fine.  I think they should leave it.  The .wav file in the last post sounded much worse in my opinion.  Again just my opinion.  <span id='postcolor'>

Now that i think of it, it is kinda poor quality, but it reminded me of the vulcan sound from Falcon 4.

I just think that the acceleration part should be left out, because it sounds terrible when looping. If there's no way to make the loop start from the middle of the file, then I'd prefer a constant buzzing sound (that's what vulcan sounds like, when fully accelerated).

Btw. M61A2 has lighter barrels than A1, which decreases the acceleration time. (I've served in the Finnish Air Force in the same unit with HN-mechanics)

About the muzzle flash... How about adding smoke istead of a muzzle flash, because from what i've seen in video clips of fighters on a strafing run, you don't see much flash. Just a lot of smoke coming out of the ventilation ports. The downside is that it might effect the frame rate

[sseagle 0]

Bug I found Hudson, put yourself on a runway, place a Fighting Omar on the runway also. Try to walk close to the nose, either across the plane or towards the wing spars and you will run into an invisible block.

[ShadowY 0]

Hi

Great beta\addon

I have only one funny bugreport and that`s that the planes wont collide   so they kinda merge into eachother.

If you want to test that give the order DISEMBARK to the ai

so it goes over to autoland pilot and fly next to it and slowy fly into it

I have shots of them but cant place them right now

In air its FUN to see and on the ground the ai plane stopped almost where i stopped

I had this also with the F14 beta a while back, I hope you look into it...

Overall a good plane\addon keep up the good work

[~Too Tall~ 0]

again i just want to state. . that considering the fact it is BETA its pretty damn good beta. .and reading over the posts. .al teh bugs have been covered. .the getting stupck int eh plane. .umm. .fix the canopy so it opens on command and not speed .its weird shootin down the runway with the damn canopy open. ..add the flare system. . .but i wont go over all of them. .as i said they are all mentind but it is a nice beta

[Harnu 0]

What the hell is the "Flare System" that everyone wants on aircraft now!? Do you just want to be able to drop flares or something?

[Wonder 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Harnu @ Jan. 09 2003,01:54)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">What the hell is the "Flare System" that everyone wants on aircraft now!?  Do you just want to be able to drop flares or something?<span id='postcolor'>

Wake up and smell the coffee!

G8 team has invented countermeasures. Basically they're just slow rockets which block all projectiles coming from behind.

[miles teg 1]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Harnu @ Jan. 09 2003,01:54)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">What the hell is the "Flare System" that everyone wants on aircraft now!?  Do you just want to be able to drop flares or something?<span id='postcolor'>

The flare system was created as far as I know, by ColorChanger of the G8 MOD team. His Tornado was the first aircraft to have this flare system. What it does is to simulate an IR decoy flare such as those used on modern combat aircraft to defeat IR missiles. In the game however, since the game engine does not allow that, basically what it does is create a big collision area (kinda like an invisibile wall) that the missile smacks into. Also the plane automatically launches the flares and a missile warning goes off every time the enemy launches a missile at the plane. However side shots or volley shots of missiles can still destroy the planes. AA gun fire also will still destroy them as long as the flares aren't blocking the bullets.

It's not a perfect system, but it's much better then nothing as was really a stroke of genius on the part of colorchanger.

The Mig29 and Mig25 addons use his system but unfortunately have failed to give him credit for it. Hopefully if it's added to the F18, proper credit will go to colorchanger.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>