posted 02-27- 12:47 AM               

OK, there is a beta of the Corsair, but I couldn't get it to upload to my site--kept stalling out, and it's about a 1-Meg file.

But I DID submit it over at Razer's FS Hangar--
www.fshangar.com

So hopefully it will be up there sometime Sunday. I'll try and upload to my site again Sunday, if the net godz permit...

There's a hangar test flight mission, a takeoff mission, and an air combat sortie (which you need to have the Zero to fly against), as well as plenty of unfinished business. But it flies OK--most of the time

Landing, tho, that's another story...

FM work is up next.

posted 02-27- 01:35 AM               

Enjoy!

posted 02-27- 04:12 AM               

But anyhow, Looks fantastic!

------------------
Zoycite {GS}
GUNSLINGERS

visit The War Paint Factory

posted 02-27- 07:49 AM               

K first of this is constructive feedback. Not a flame. I realize this is an alpha/beta.

First off. I had the CDT too. I had to make a mission and change to D3D. Which may have caused my next problem.

K either my system sucks at SDOE in D3D (which is a very real posiblity since i always run in glide) Or this plane is a FPS hog.

All alone on the runway. In cockpit I get under 20 FPS.

That means if i have to stay in D3D to play with this plane. that i won't be able to fly it online. Probly not even just by myself without droping all my graphic options to none.

Does anyone have an idea why it would only run in D3D?

I had a thought that maybe since the flaps are always visible. (i think most switch out when fully closed) that it could be sucking some FPS

Also should the tail hook turn with the tail gear? I wouldn't think so but i don't know so i'm asking. It looks wacky.

The spins on take off where unreal but i later turned my steering coupled with rudder and will try again.

I;m sure i had more but i can't think of them right now.

HEHE have to take another flight to refresh my memory.

some good things. LOOKS great. And once yoru in the air its pretty stable. So stable i felt no fear doing a roll just off the air feild at 300mph. It was really solid.

posted 02-27- 08:01 AM               

HEH another thing

posted 02-27- 08:19 AM               

Just a couple of points from my perspective:

1. Mission CDT. Hanger test flight ok. Training mission against Zero did CDT, so I checked out the mission in the editor and changed the Zero to another aircraft, closed properties then changed back to the Zero. I don't no why - but it fixed the problem for me (perhaps your/my Zero's are different ???)

2. Just something to watch out for. I went to close the canopy in fight and accidently hit the key next to it(w). Could be tricky at low altitudes !!!

can the w key be disabled once you are in flight ??

Anyway as I said well done. It is at a very good standard for a beta.

Cheers,

AGAS 5

posted 02-27- 08:54 AM               

Whats your thoughts on my test AGAS 5?

posted 02-27- 08:56 AM            

It works great without it. I had a great dogfight with the zekes.

posted 02-27- 09:04 AM               

i have only flown it for a short while, but it looks great so far, and it finally gives us a another pacific theatre plane for the Zero to go up against. Besides just the P38.

Great Job!!!!

posted 02-27- 10:29 AM               

Just thought I'd drop you some quick feedback notes. Only had limited time to play this morning before appointments.

Yup, you're right about the Glide/D3D thing. Also reminded me to copy the A65M from my "old" 5.2 aircraft files to the new 5.3 aircraft folder. Guys, if you're listening, the Zero and F4U folders aren't going to mess anything up with 5.3a flying online are they? I'm not too smart in this area.

Anyhoo, running in D3D I made a little 2 v 2 mission with the Corsair and 2 Zekes.

Also didn't see a gun sight on the Zekes. Is this just me?

The frame rates were down in the 20's. This was probably due to D3D vs. my normal Glide setting.

Computer specs: Celeron 500, 256mb ram, 2 12mb Voodoo 2's SLI.

Anyway, the F4U flew great. Didn't like the frame rates I was getting, but wow, what power. I also liked the sounds, and the cockpit looked real comfortable.

I wound up chasing a zero towards the earth, but I didn't watch my speed, and compressed. EEEeek! Didn't catch what speed it occured at, but when I did look at the speedo after getting over the initial shock, it was 425 and falling.

Beautiful plane. Really looking forward to the final-final version, and playing folks with it online. Your work is appreciated.

Q's:

1. Will the Corsair and the Zeke in the new 5.3a aircraft folder mess anything up?

2. Is the Zeke supposed to have a gunsight?

3. I wonder what the deal is with it not working in Glide.

4. Will I stay awake tonight to play online, or fall asleep again on the couch?

Thanks again Jedi. Nice lookin' plane.

posted 02-27- 12:01 PM               

Any ideas?

Still, it's a good start, I love the look and power of the plane.

posted 02-27- 12:44 PM               

I flew her once and now i cant fly her any more even in my own mission

------------------
Watch For Falling Focke-Wulf's

posted 02-27- 01:23 PM               

On my system (Celeron 300/450 w/Voodoo3 and 128 meg) it's pretty stable in D3D, and I've only tested it a little in Glide, since Glide doesn't seem to work all that well in SDOE for me. Gonna make it a bit hard to chase down.

I guess the first thing I'll do is make sure the key commands reflect 5.3 standard. I did get some CTDs once when I first started playing with the keyboard.inp file. If I'm using different commands for the hook and wings than 5.3, it may be a problem.

As for frame rate, well, I'm really a bit clueless there. I know the fuselage has a lot of polys, but the rest is basically just Mustang parts with vertexes moved. I will try and optimize the fuselage some, and maybe make the flaps disappear sooner.

Today I'll be aligning all the file names to eliminate references to the P51 (wish me luck) and I'll do another beta streamlined a bit.

One thing I did notice is that the game is somewhat sensitive to the loadouts on the planes, and I had a lot of CTDs during the switch from 6 rocket load on the Mustang to 8 rocks on the Hog. Until I had it completely converted, it would CTD a lot, making it difficult to get the rocket positions just right, and forcing me to build new missions a few times. I think there may be some info actually stored in the missions themselves about the planes and loadouts, and if you make the mission and then change the actual loadout possibilities for the plane later, that mission may no longer run.

However, the three missions I included were built after I got the plane "ready" for beta. Another wildcard is that I haven't actually installed the 5.3 stuff yet (was waiting for the patch) so who knows, maybe mine won't work anymore either... At any rate I'll install the 5.3 Zero and make up a new mission with that one to see what happens.

But the fact that SOME guys have it working is at least encouraging.

As for the wings folding in flight, hehe, if you can fly it that way, you should be able to do anything, so don't look a gift horse in the mouth! Once I adjust the wing areas, I suspect it won't fly very well with the wings folded, so don't get used to it. Can't think of a way to disable the wing folding in flight, although if we all agreed to make the wing-moving key a CTL or ALT or SHF key, that would at least stop it from happening accidentally. I made the tailhook a child of the tail wheel, so that it retracts partway as the gear retracts--but that means it also swivels when you steer. I'll think about moving it to the fuselage instead, but that's low priority at the moment.

Look for an updated version in the next week or so, and if you run across any obvious bugs or have any ideas how to fix something, let me know. Progress will be rather slow tho, since for some reason I can't get OPS to allow me to save a change which will be compatible with Extractor/Builder, and I'm not yet willing to go "final" with the shapes of all the parts, which means I have to keep it "extractor compatible," which means I'm stuck with MANUAL modification of a lot of the data, using OPS only to view changes

Well, back to work...

posted 02-27- 03:30 PM               

When the wings folded in mid air I went into an uncontrolled spin right and down ..... although, I didn't try to regain control .... I was too busy pissun meself laughing !

Spanky, good feedback. D3D - man I'm a real dunce at this stuff but I think I'm in 'software mode'. Is this the correct term ? Any way my normal frame rate on small to medium offline missions is 60-70 fps, with this baby I think it was 50-60 fps, but I'll have to check again. (IBM PIII 450/64ram/8meg vid generic)

Cheers,

AGAS 5

posted 02-27- 03:32 PM            

i get about 60 with our T-bolt and about 70 with the default fighters.

posted 02-27- 04:53 PM               

I'm getting sub 20s FPS

Jedi what kind of problems are you getting under glide?

I can't see why you would get any

posted 02-27- 05:05 PM               

1. Can I just delete the Corsair folder and the Zero folder from my aircraft folder if I want to?

2. Will leaving them in my aircraft folder effect online play?

It really does look bitchin' though Jedi, and I'm sure the final version will be one of my favorite planes.

posted 02-27- 06:06 PM               

Well- I couldn't get the plane to work in the FSC Beta version of the game (MH's patch)- but when I reverted to the regular version, I got the take off to work. Any mission with it starting in the air wouldn't work though. I even copied the training missions I did for the Dauntless, and subbed in the F4U. Still- only the Take Off worked. Looking forward to the final release- but hopefully it will be flyable in Glide? Some of us can't get the D3D to work

posted 02-27- 07:18 PM            

You have done well with the Force!!!! Man the Corsair is awesome!!! I have not had the same problem with it not loading after the first flight, but I do not have 5.3a either. Wonder if there is a problem there????

I know it is just a beta, but I did want to mention a few things I have noticed (I have been flying her for about three hours now!!!!).

1) The wing radiator intakes are green i.e. no intakes. I assume this is from the P-51 mod. No biggy.

2) On landing I keep getting the plane to rotate about the left gear. Any clue why?? Is there a brake problem??

Other than that - man she is awesome!!!! thanks so much for your work

posted 02-27- 07:20 PM               

Jedi, I don't expect a fix for this - just some advice. I thought I'd have a go at doing a kiwi skin for your F4u (nothing wrong with yours though !) but when I did the texturing on the body went to crap. It was all distorted ie stretched and shaded all over the place. I quickly restored the orig skin and everything was ok.

I'm certainly no expert on this, but is it not ready for custom texturing yet ? or am I just doing something wrong. I use Gimp and this is the first time I've come across this kind of distortion.

Cheers,

AGAS 5

posted 02-27- 08:34 PM               

Points:

Flew Great in Glide, with NO FPS reduction at all.

er... thats all I think.. lol But damn, that thing can turn on a sixpence! needs no room at all just to flip it round in a 360. Oh, and it seems to always pull to the left on the runway, even with very little throttle, but to be very very honest, unless you really want to, I can't find anything you need to do to this one, I took your extra keys from your keyboard.inp and added them to mine, and they work without any problem.

Love it Jedi.. ver very good lookin, and a great all round job )))

------------------
JV~44 "Naturlich"

If you can't beat em.... out run em!

posted 02-27- 08:44 PM               

I don't have a clue why it won't work in Glide. I can't get either software mode or Glide mode to work at all, in any resolution (although I can run missions in Glide with the Corsair as the enemy, if I try to take control of the Hog, it crashes--if I even just try to LOOK at the Hog up close in Glide, it crashes). Any of you computer gurus have an idea why it wouldn't work in Glide but does work in D3D? Too many textures? Too many polys? I went back in and optimized the fuselage a bit, but it only shrank the .sm file by about 20K or so. 700K for the .sm file is larger than most planes, but some of the bombers are that big.

Kinda stumped here As for texturing, I don't know why you couldn't make a custom texture if you just "paint over" the texture files. (You did notice there are TWO files, right?) The only trick is that the center wing section is common to BOTH wings, so it can be a little tricky to match up. My suggestion is to convert the .tif files to .bmp first, do your artwork on the .bmp, and then convert the .bmp back to .tif files. That was the technique I used, so you might need to follow a similar path to get it working right. If it comes out spread all over, that usually means you didn't remap the texture coordinates, or flipped the image somehow. As for the green leading edges and radiators, well, I'm at a loss. They're blue and black radiators on my plane. My only guess is that since I left the names of a lot of stuff as "P51xxx" it may be reading a P51 file somewhere (everything is NOW referenced to f4u1 instead of p51d, so the next version should at least be more compatible with the other files in the game).

So, anyway, sorry for the rather lame overall performance, but I'm not really well equipped to analyze the problems, since I can generally get it working on my machine, at least in D3D mode. Hopefully someone will think of whatever I'm missing.

I can go back and shave polygons off of all the parts, but it won't look the same as it looks now (of course, I guess for some guys it looks mostly like a black screen, so anything is an improvement)

Oh yeah. Something Condor mentioned. He couldn't get it to work initially, but when he added an entry in the startup.ppf file, he said it worked. Now, I've never added anything to the startup.ppf file, and mine has worked all along. I assumed that since I was using the P-51 airfoil model, I didn't need to have a separate line in the startup.ppf for the Corsair, since the f4u1.sm file references the P51 airfoil model. Is that correct? If not, maybe I need to add an airfoil model for the Corsair into the mix? (Don't get excited, if I do it, it will just be a copy of the P51 file for now...)

------------------
--jedi--

posted 02-27- 09:05 PM               

Mate, it's good to see you set yourself high standards, but I for one don't think it's a lame overall performance. It is a beta after all and you can only get things picture perfect after you get feedback from us. Has anyone released a near perfect aircraft first time around ? I doubt it. Not hav'n a go at you - Its just that I think youve done an excellent job.

Cheers,

AGAS 5

posted 02-27- 10:02 PM               

Smitty
I can hardly wait to fly this online...

posted 02-27- 10:03 PM               

I don't know why we are having problems either. Maybe MH can shed some light on monday.

posted 02-27- 10:04 PM               

Just for your info, I'm running...

PII400
256mg Ram
GeForce Vid Card
SB Live
Saitek Cyborg 3D
Green Shirt
Blue jeans

Well, you get it.

Good luck. It's going to be great!

posted 02-27- 11:05 PM               

You know.Michael has a program to debug SM files. He can run it through and tell you what is wrong. Might want to ask him if he'll run it through a couple of times.

wouldn't hirt.