USEC F117A Nighthawk

[rocket 9]

USEC F117A Nighthawk

Developed by: Dean "Rocket" Hall (previously icemotoboy)

Unit for: UX102 "Black Thunder", Unity Security Force

BETA Download is available at:

* http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=3179

* http://www.eprison.de/news/1329

(Mirrors are allowed and much appreciated, just let me know and I will add them to the page).

Known Issues

Please note the following issues:

* TODO: Only one LOD is included (~5000 tri's)

* TODO: Geometry LOD is very basic

* TODO: Geomtery LOD is used fo Fire Geometry

* BUG: Weapons Bay Door Indicators don't work

* TODO: Cockpit needs more texturing

* TODO: FLIR/Laser Designator needs enabling

* TODO: Further work on stealth scripting needs doing

* TODO: Warning sounds and indicator lights

* BUG: Canopy "rainbow" effect too pronounced

* TODO: Materials not loaded for all textures

* BUG: Dampening of wheels does not work correctly

* TODO: Individual hitpoint objects need to be created

I have been developing an F117A for use by my gaming group, Unity Security Force, and have decided that I will release it to the ArmA community. I'm keen for feedback and testing. Currently the model has successfully been released privately as an Alpha, and I am anticipating having it available as a public beta for this weekend.

As I have not flown the F117A, nor have I even seen it fly, I have struggled to try and recreate a realistic interpretation. Hopefully, thanks to alot of reading and studying alot of similar addons and CAD drawings, I have come up with something close.

Comments, requests, ideas - Please post them in an orderly fashion in this forum topic.

Public beta will be released on Armaholic this weekend.

Key Features:

- Framerate Friendly (highest lod less than 5000 tri's)

- Single body texture and another texture for glass

- Normal Mapped, Specular Mapped

- Deployable Weapons Bay (bay opens, weapons come down)

- Fully animated (including canopy, wheels, elevons, etc...)

- High quality LODing work

- "Stealth", unable to be IR targeted, difficult to spot at night

- BIS Quality Icon and Picture in-game

- Long engagement distances

- Operations Manual

Variants:

- USEC F117A (GBU12); contains 2 x GBU12 Laser Guided Bombs

- USEC F117A (AGM65); contains 2 x AGM65 Maverick Missiles

[Blue_Flight 0]

looks damn fine!!!

Will try this baby out, that´s for sure

[R0adki11 3949]

looks very impressive, i like the fact you have got the bomb bay animated

[rocket 9]

I'm currently trying to decide whether or not too include the 2048x2048 normal map, to be honest I don't believe its very noticeable as I have tweaked the RVMAT file to ensure that the effect is very sutble. I currently have a 2048 x 2048 specular map, but again - I'm not sure the benefit is worth it, being barely noticable. While they will mip map, I'm not sure of the performance hit. Anyone have any thoughts?

Also, I'm not sure whether I have made the "rainbow distortion" effect of the windows too pronounced. I have changed it a million times, but having not seen it in person, its hard to get a good feel for how to model the weird glass that the Nighthawk has. Any thoughts?

The animated bomb bay was fairly easy to do, once I finally figured out how to animate parts properlly. The work I'd done on my C130 (which is still deep in Alpha) helped me with that.

[max power 21]

This looks very good. You should be very proud of yourself!

I think that your rainbow distortion is too pronounced.. I think much too. I would tone it down to where it's barely noticeable. I have not seen a nighthawk IRL but I don't really see such a thing in many photos. The windscreen of the thing, I'm fairly sure, is coated in gold, which should make the reflections of the outside world appear slightly gold tinged (one of the things I studied was how to configure shaders to simulate different material types). I am not denying that there is some rainbow distortion, or that it looks nice, but I definitely think that you should tone it wwaaay down.

[NoRailgunner 0]

Quote[/b] ]- "Stealth", unable to be IR targeted, difficult to spot at night

Hope it's not invulnerable and invisible for AI and player eg. F117 is able to fly within 300m ASL over enemy units and won't get tracked and fired at.

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

That's one thing about the F117: it doesn't require so many polys. lol

[rocket 9]

It's invisible on radar, but its not invisible to the naked eye or ear. That means no AA missiles, but the Shilkas can sink some nice hits in if you're too close.

RE: Rainbow, yes, I think you're right plaintiff1. I'm going to play with putting some different shaders on the glass to try and get a gold effect similiar to what I have seen others do. I can also play with environment mapping, which I see BIS did with the A10 glass.

[einsena 0]

looks good, how's the flight model? also does it have a laser designator so it could drop its own LGBs accurately?

[rocket 9]

Haven't added its own Laser Designator, something I should be looking at doing?

The flight model is pretty easy to fly at present, on all counts except for the fact that it has a high landing speed due to its lack of flaps. I have used the flaps function to model the opening of engine intakes (animated doors just above the intakes) which get opened on takeoff and landing.

Depending on feedback I may make the flight model harder. I have a fraps video of flying it, and right now I'm trying to figure out how to get an edited version onto youtube :/

[BlackScorpion 0]

F-117 has it's own IR camera and LD (no radar though) for selecting targets, so I guess it would make sense?

Oh, and I'm not sure if any of you have noticed... the F-117 fleet was retired about two weeks ago.

[Commando84 0]

Nice stealth plane!

The windows looks crazy colors hope you can make it look a little less rainbowish.

keep up the nice work! I like it that you made it to be frame rate friendly too! Btw does it have any gun in the front or so?

I played ace combat 2 on playstation many years ago and there the stealth fighter had some gun and rockets, but i dunno its your choice

[rocket 9]

The F117A was a very specific aircraft, that (as noted by a previous post) has now been retired in favor of the B-2, F-22 etc... It was designed purely for stealth, at the expense of both aerodynamics (at the very least during the "Have Blue" research phase) and armament. Hence it carries only two weapons pods. I would like to model HARM missiles in future, along with other armaments associated with the F117A - but alas... there was never a cannon fitted too it. It would be drastically unsuited to combat like that. I did find evidence that Sidewinders were, or at the very least could, be fitted too the F117A so I may produce a variant with that also.

I will be toning down the rainbow cockpit shortly, and a youtube demonstration video is being uploaded at this very moment.

[einsena 0]

Nice stealth plane!

The windows looks crazy colors hope you can make it look a little less rainbowish.

keep up the nice work! I like it that you made it to be frame rate friendly too! Btw does it have any gun in the front or so?

I played ace combat 2 on playstation many years ago and there the stealth fighter had some gun and rockets, but i dunno its your choice

o i hope not! but it's up to him and the community i guess. i'd rather have its avionics improved(FLIR, Laser Designator) then a fictional gun and AA missiles.

[NoRailgunner 0]

Hmm would be good if AA missile can lock this aircraft - under certain conditions. The landing speed of the F-117A is high, at about 180mph to 190mph, and a drag parachute is used. After take-off, the pilot can hand over flight control to the mission program until within visual range of the mission's first target. The pilot then resumes control of the aircraft for weapon delivery.

F117A armament in internal weapon bays: LGB's, Mavericks and HARM missiles.

2 Commando84:

Keep in mind this is aircraft was developed to deliver bombs into enemies backyard not to fight in air combat.

[mattxr 9]

Wow it looks fantasic.

[Average Joe 0]

THATS what im talkin' bout!

[BlackScorpion 0]

Nice stealth plane!  

The windows looks crazy colors   hope you can make it look a little less rainbowish.

keep up the nice work! I like it that you made it to be frame rate friendly too! Btw does it have any gun in the front or so?

I played ace combat 2 on playstation many years ago and there the stealth fighter had some gun and rockets, but i dunno its your choice  

Keep in mind Ace Comabt also lets you equip an F-16 with 50+ missiles... the thing has hardpoints for 6. And no, the F-117 has very limited offensive capability - the usual - and maximum - load is two BLU-109 or Mk84 based GBUs. AFAIK the GBUs are the only weapons F-117 is wired for, saw the Sidewinders in 24 (...), but never read about HARMs and Mavericks. Besides, you need to fly fairly low for Mavericks (due to the seeker head's FOV).

[nephilim 0]

Nice.

altough it appears pretty small to me.

as far as i can remember that thing has similar dimensions of an F-15 or SU27.

as plaintiff pointed it out. the rainbow colors are way too evident and should only be on the 3 front screens.

Also im not too sure that the nighthawk was made to deliver mavericks...

i think the gbu-27 (if im not mistaken) was specially designed for this bird.

it also has few geometrical problems here and there.

but oh well, ive also tried making an f-117 as some might remember...

pure horror to get it right...

[BlackScorpion 0]

Yeah, GBU-27s are GBU-24s with slightly modified wings to fit into the bomb bay. Other weapons are the rest of the Paveway series and JDAMs.

This gives some scale I guess... also few other good images there. And lest we not forget the good old Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:F-117A_Ramp.jpg

[ArmaVidz 0]

That overall look is awesome. As noted...the rainbow colors...and it's definitely too small. From the links posted this one picture shows the height of the aircraft off the ground, comparing the screenshot with the ArmA soldier next to it...

Looking forward to nailing some targets with it

Vidz

[rocket 9]

Ah yes, not quite sure how I missed the scale issue! Will have that fixed for the beta I'll see what I can do on the weapons front regarding fitting a laser designator to her and getting it working as well. As well as making it a little less "rainbow" (particulary with the back two window panels.

The YouTube video is up at

[frederf 0]

This is absolutely brilliant. I'm really looking forward to this. My silly realism unit tries to field air support and this F-117A is perfect because:

1. It's a more realistic aircraft to fly support for our operations

2. Survivability is up so they can be used earlier in the missions

3. Weapon count is down so they are more like surgeons than steamrollers

I just love how properly scaled this aircraft is to ArmA-island-size conflicts. Granted it's weird for them not to travel 1000 mi to the AO, but it's good that you don't have to put a company of armor on a postage stamp island just so the A-10 isn't bored.

[rocket 9]

My research indicated that there have been, admitedly unconfirmed, reports (Flug Revue, Aeronautics.RU) of the F117A being successfully tested/fitted with missiles such as AGM-65 Maverick, AGM-114 Hellfire and AGM-88 HARM as well as nuclear munitions.

Frederf, my thoughts exactly. The main reason I chose this aircraft is because I wanted to model a stealth aircraft so as to increase the options of commanders to use Air support early but be caused to choose their targets wisely. The F117A was a natural choice for a first attempt, as there is fairly good information and technical drawing, game models, textures, and resources out there for the aircraft. The F-22 does not have this same exposure. If this is a success and once I've finished my C130, I might look at doing the F-22.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

Looks great, I look forward to it.

Will you include a version with USAF markings in the release, or only the USEC scheme shown in the screenshots?