David Hingtgen

1/100 is a common mecha scale though. But again--in fighter mode, it's not very mecha-ish shaped nor sized.

Because Bandai designed it, not Kawamori?

Like the scheme, hate the head.

Like guns?

Oh come on, don't tease me like that! Are they for gust-alleviation, asymmetric-drag-yaw-control, or what? Please don't tell me they're a fancy lap-counter...

Oh, Snarf is coming. But his design is supposed to be uber-ultra-secret. No one has even a hint AFAIK. But he's still the comic relief character. If he was totally gone, that'd have been great.

There's a difference between complex and finicky. There are many small TFs with few parts that are very finicky---often shell-formers. You have to line up everything at once just right or it doesn't lock together at all. And "that one section" can only spin around into place if part A is exactly 33 degrees out and part B is 78 degrees up and 14 degrees back. Finicky, but not very complex. There are also big TFs with many parts and steps that aren't very hard or finicky, because everything clicks into place nicely, and you can do it in pretty much any order you want. Complex, but not finicky.

Yes, but it's caused errors before when people improperly convert from lbs thrust to a metric equivalent. They often try to "do too much" or something. A common issue is the fact that 9.8 is close to 10, and people kind of cancel-out a decimal point or something.

It looked like a banana in the prototype pics. Anything changed? That's my main complaint with the mold----car mode isn't the "sloped wedge" G1 at all.

IIRC, yes. All jet engines are assumed to be at mean sea level, at mean barometric pressure, at 1.0G when calculating thrust ratings. "Pounds" already assume 1G, kilograms do not. (and though the effect is ever so slight, being at sea level does tie in to gravity----the top of Mt Everest is like .98G or something, and a deep deep deep cave could be like 1.01)

Nope, she flies the ACTIVE. Want me to alter the votes to correct it?

The problem stems from the fact that many jet engines are rated in "pounds thrust". But you can't simply divide by 2.2 and get "kilograms thrust". It's an incorrect term. But a lot of places do anyways and write it like that. Kilograms and kilograms-force are not the same. But lbs and lbs-force are. Weird, huh? Have fun: http://www.sengpielaudio.com/ConvForce.htm

Most pics you find of missiles are dummies etc. Pics of the back end of live missiles are fairly rare. As the RMS-1 is a big long-range missile, a Sidewinder's not a very good reference IMHO. Here's the back end of an AGM-65 Maverick. (which is also actually quite short range, but at least a lot bigger with a big warhead) Overall, ceramic white or terra-cotta seem to be popular colors on missiles for the actual rocket exhaust. Are the RMS-1's actually rocket-powered though? They're big enough that they could actually have a jet engine like a cruise missile. Here's a nice set of Harpoon pics, and it has basically a simple black cap at the end though: http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/bill_spidle2/agm-84h-1/index.php

Re: Thread consolidation. Or not. We're still working on the details. I'll ask here---do you guys want to consolidate the console threads? When multi-platform games come out, it's very hard to keep track across multiple threads. FF13 I think was the worst case, where long discussions popped up on like 4 threads simultaneously. But many threads (various portables etc) can go many months without posting, which IMHO means they don't really need/deserve their own thread. But mixing EVERYTHING together isn't good either of course. Perhaps a dedicated 360 thread, PS3 thread, and "everything else" thread? But again----the most likely multi-system games are going to be on the PS3 and 360, which brings us back to the original problem of no one knowing where the "main" discussion is.

Has anyone actually mentioned that the Sv-51 *looks* cooler? That's always worth big points, like YF-22 vs YF-23.

I think though we should re-instate Tron guy in honor of the new movie.

Announcement: We're consolidating all video game console discussion into the "All pupose" video game thread. This thread will likely be closed soon, so please "transfer" discussions when you can. http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=32887

It's sad how similar girly-Alto and off-model Grace can look... (hair color doesn't help either). Of course, in flightsuits, it's very obvious.

I figured the VF-9 Cutlass was named after the F7U Cutlass. Kawamori seemed to definitely be homaging fighters of that era then. VF-3000 Crusader after the F8U Crusader, etc.

Re: A.I.'s ending Why does everyone think they're aliens? They're the robots, just "evolved" over centuries of upgrading themselves etc. They're re-discovering their own past and history of their "race". Not random aliens finding a new planet.

Done. From now on most all VG discussion goes in the all-purpose thread, especially talk about the systems themselves. Very popular games that will be discussed ad-nauseum for weeks on end (mainly RPG and "game of the year FPS") will continue getting their own threads as needed.

I don't even own the original. I'm just bumping as mod because I don't want 2 threads about Sony portables. The video game threads are all fractured and overlapping as it is. ::edit:: Dang it, it actually showed up earlier in the all-purpose VG thread. Sigh. Maybe we should just close every other console-specific thread (including this one). Probably make things easier, and many go weeks without posts anyways due to the all-purpose thread. Popular games still get their own threads, but general console discussion and "game of the week" should all be lumped together I think.

Bumping for the PSP2 NGP.

Theory and application are quite different. If Russia could actually have used that theory and applied it, they should be a generation (or two) ahead of the US when it comes to stealth design. Not several generations back.

Just a little point I like to make: Anyone can draw a plane that "looks" stealthy. And then paint it flat black. It's been done in every artist concept and video game for the past 20 years. But being off by like 0.1 degrees screws up everything in the real world, assuming you actually calculated out all the angles relative to the scan patterns and lobe shapes of the radars you expect to encounter and at what bearings. Making 3D curved stealth is even harder. I wouldn't be that surprised if the B-1B or something actually has a smaller radar signature than the J-20. "Looking stealthy and high-tech" is quite different than actually being stealthy. IIRC, the F-22 had a hard time in the final shape tweaking to get it to supercruise without compromising stealth, and that was with a combined NASA-Lockheed effort, the two groups with more stealth knowledge and history than probably the entire rest of the world combined. I doubt China could come close to matching its basic aerodynamic qualities on their first try.