Chronocidal

What's really kind of depressing about all the CG is that nothing seems believable anymore.. I mean, I get sick of the overuse of CG, when a man-made prop would more than suffice, and actually probably be more effective than a CG one, even if it's less glamorous and fantastic. Granted the robots would be hard to do.. but then again... the walkers in ESB were stop motion, and that worked fine. Yes, it's tedious. But it looks REAL. Same for the space battles. Real models have something about them that CG can't duplicate no matter how hard it tries.... plus, there's the invevitable copy-paste errors that become obvious in CG, ie, you see half a dozen droids with EXACTLY the same pattern of wear on them. Or, in the case of ANH, suddenly, every X-wing pilot got a duplicate of R2-D2. I'd take the entirely man-made battle in the original ROTJ over anything in the prequels... it was more hectic, more detailed, and better looking than anything I've yet seen with CG. Same can be said for sets... I dunno, I just tend to think of CG as a cheap way out of doing work that could end up looking better if a real model was used. LOTR is a perfect example of this... Minas Tirith was a handcrafted model, pasted into the landscape. And it blew the crap out of anything CG'd for Coruscant. Granted, CG troops are handy when you need hundreds of troops marching without hiring hundreds of extras... but then again, hey... LOTR did it. After seeing all the work that was put into LOTR, anything CG'd for EpIII is gonna look like a lousy cop-out by comparison. Now, I don't really know to what extent CG was used in LOTR, I'm assuming a great deal. But I think Lucas needs to take a lesson from Peter Jackson. Whatever LOTR did right with CG, the SW prequels have so far gotten wrong. CG should be like whipped cream.. a good topping to enhance the appearance and flavor, not the first and most important ingredient in everything you make. Without CG, LOTR would've still been doable, just on a much smaller scale. The prequels, on the other hand, wouldn't have a leg to stand on. K, sorry, ranting over now. Sheesh, I start typing like I'm talking, and before you know it I've written an essay.

Heheh... those raptors looked good to me, my tv has brightess problems so they were clear as day. Couldn't really tell if if they were super hornets, but I think I saw the outline of the rear stabs, and it looked angled. Most of what I could see was outline, but it was pretty distinct. But what really impressed me was what they did before that.. that had to be the best pre-game show I've ever seen, as well as the best performance of the national anthem I can remember hearing at any sports event in my life... the salute to the veterans really got to my family in particular. One of my grandfathers was with the group on Iwo Jima that they mentioned, and according to my mom, he may have been there to see it when the flag was raised.

I've got a blank sideview as well, if you want it. I did it the hard way though, I retraced the Hasegawa directions line by line. Lots more work.

You're right... it's ridiculous... considering that it's likely that neither plane was ever manufactured under the Boeing name, and it's very likely that no one who worked on those planes ever worked for Boeing at all. They probably all retired (or passed away) before Boeing even came into the picture. Half of me really wants to think this is all exaggerated ridiculously. The other half thinks this is a ploy by Grumman to recoup their losses on the Tomcat... think about it.. they went nearly bankrupt on that plane, because the contract for it was a fixed price-per-unit deal.. inflation nearly ruined em. Now that it's going out of service, and Tomcat memorabilia is sure to abound, they've gotta be dying for a piece of that action.

I've been following this issue for a while, and while it is really disturbing, and a load of legal feces that needs to be dumped on the corporate heads, from what I've read, the grounds for this whole issue is thinner than tissue paper... basically, the legal foul they're crying is that the license-free production of models, video games, etc. confuses the consumer about who makes the products. Essentially, if I understand it correctly, and I'm not at all sure that I do, the corporate heads suddenly got this bright idea that they could charge royalties on designs, and are trying to say they are confusing the buyers about who actually made the planes... yeah, whatever. The first instance I heard of was the recent game Pacific Fighters by Ubisoft. They had a legal fit with Northrop Grumman over using a couple of WWII fighters in the game.. They've had topics on their forum for some time now about this issue, and they have a current one about this article here. There was one back a while ago that described the so-called legality of the issue, and linked to a couple of legal commentaries on the issue, and what could be done. Here's the main thread... Ubi went through hell with Grumman to put accurate planes in it's game. The whole forum thread about the license problem is here. Edit: There's a link in this thread to a discussion on this topic on the International Game Developers Association, I'll just post that here as well, so you don't have to skim through all the WWII game discussion. Trademarking History?

Hehe.. actually, considering the current space travel situation, it'll probably have the opposite effect... see, knowing how people in general act, there'll be someone out there who refuses to give up on space travel due to a dust storm.. so, probably, I'm guessing somewhere in the next 20 years or so, deflector shields will probably be invented that'll at least protect ships/satellites from the dust, if not more powerful stuff like reentry.. reentry is probably one of the biggest problems of space travel.. ie, having to calcuate all the necessary angles, etc for a safe reentry has got to be a pain. It'd be much simpler if you could just fly a ship from orbit directly to the surface a-la Star Wars, without having to worry about burning up. With commercial space travel on the horizon, you can bet that there'll be people working non-stop to make it safer and affordable. Heck, face it, we NEED shields before we do much else in space. If the big corporations want any piece of the commercial space race, someone's gonna have to come up with something to make it safer, and more reliable. That'll probably result in LOTS of funding to companies and research labs to make new technology for space travel, and suddenly, we'll be up to our armpits in high tech gadgets, like deflector shields, more efficient rocket engines, maneuvering systems, computers, etc.. sheesh, the space shuttle uses a computer that runs at something like 25 mhz.. imagine what could be built now.

Hehe.. it'll probably be a least a year. I think games are leaping ahead in terms of graphics enough that it's taking the average computer gamer a year to catch up. I bought MS Combat Sim 3 a while ago now, and I just recently got a computer that can run it at full speed. I think flight simulation is somehow kind of going through a retro stage... seems like we've been seeing a LOT of stuff from WWII, which isn't bad.. it's where the the largest dogfights in history took place. Once you get into the jet age, dogfighting kind of gets lost in the translation with the introduction of the missile... nothing is really close range combat anymore, and you have to shift the focus to ground attack to keep the sims interesting. So, for combat sims, at least in terms of dogfighting, WWII is the prime time period to do it for... you can extend it pretty well to Korea, but it seems there's no love for F-86 Sabres and Mig-15s anymore. Personally, to me, the period between the 50s and 80s is kind of the golden age of military jet aviation... I mean look at all that came out then.. the Century Series, the fighters used in Vietnam, all the way up to the F-14 to F-18. The planes that flew in that era were designed for specific roles, and they did them WELL. But... alas, the Cold War stayed cold, and they never saw serious action.... that's what we need. We need an alternate reality simulator, like C&C: Red Alert did for RTS ..where the Cold War warms up, and all those beautiful planes from that era actually see some action. I really want to see an extended Vietnam scenario where the Tomcat gets let loose on the Vietcong (F-14s actually WERE in Vietnam, they covered the evacuation proceedings when the US forces bailed out.. no one felt like fighting when they were there though. ) All those planes were designed to combat the Russian threat.. and the war never happened. What if someone designed a sim where Korea didn't end, branched into Vietnam, and shortly after became a full on US/Russian brawl? Now THERE'S a campaign I'd really like to see done.. throw in a dynamic storyline like the Wing Commander series had, where you determine the outcome (and whether the final battle takes place over Moscow or Washington D.C.) and you'd have possibly one of the greatest sims of all time. It wouldn't have to be horribly realistic, since you'd be flying a lot of planes, but say you break up the story into sections, maybe 1950-1970, and 1970-1990, each with about 10-15 reasonably accurate planes to fly, then re-write history so that the cold war still ends around '89, just your actions determine if the Berlin Wall falls again, or if Russia invades the US. That's really one thing I've never seen actually (well, never played anyway, closest thing was Strike Commander, and that's ancient now).. a detailed realistic flight sim with a really good storyline. Heck, sure flying missions is fun, but it can be a LOT of fun if you're given a good storyline to back up why you're flying them in the first place.

If you're really up for a detailed challenge, try and find a copy of Jane's F/A-18... most detailed stinking sim I ever saw... models aren't great, but the completely 3d cockpit is incredible.. right down to manually targeting things with the laser designator, and firing off a maverick to wipe em out. But it's VERY detailed, as in, you can program your own JDAM weapons programs, and dispersion patterns.. yeah, far beyond what I ever did. Shoot, never did figure out what half the buttons did. Right now the only real jet-capable sim out there seems to be LOMAC. FS2004 just isn't meant for military aircraft (some very essential things are missing... actual working afterburners for one ) although freeware and payware ones abound. The sim is just obviously made for commercial and private aviation. CFS3 is okay, but nothing compared to IL2 as far as I've heard.. but yeah, nothing has come out for modern (or even relatively modern in a long time. Closest thing you're likely to find to a semi-modern combat sim outside of LOMAC right now is probably Battlefield Vietnam. Mostly, as far as combat games go, I've been sticking to CFS3 for lack of anything better (can't afford LOMAC or IL2 at the moment) and playing the X-Wing series games when that gets old. I'm also heavily into modding planes for FS2004, so I spend a lot of time just flying around doing plain old flight testing in new planes. There just hasn't been anything new for a long time now.. I personally think it's high time for a detailed F-14 sim, since it's coming up on retirement. Never did see it represented decently in a sim (Janes Navy Fighters version was pretty hideous looking. )

Here ya go Also, I know someone here has a completed VF-4, just don't know for sure who at the moment... yf_19.zip

Actually... what kind of formats can TurboCad use? If the textures aren't really needed, I can send you a copy of the model to just transfer directly.

K, I've got full views, but they're of the Hasegawa model, or at least renders of a polygon copy of it. So the proportions are a little different than those pics, and I'll need to send you the whole set so they're consistent.. what size do you need? (got the model, can render it in any size ) just for a preview, here's a render....

Crap.. yeah, just doesn't look right. Now.. my main question.. how long before Iran dumps their F-14s, and one ends up on the airshow circuit in the original VF-84 scheme from the 70s?

You ever watch "Tales from the Crypt?" I think that was one of Cher's lesser known roles...

Holy cow.. I thought this was a joke, and the shirt was paintshopped.... schweet. Wonder if any of the shops around Sacremento have em... hmmm.. not likely... although, SanFran isn't far...

Hmm.. I think in this category, I lucked out majorly. I never did manage to see Robotech on tv, my first exposure to the VF-1 was one of those midget 1/200 scale models that Testors put out in the 80's. I thought it was a Tomcat. I left it at that (I was about 3 after all) and then bought a Millia JM at a toy store when I was about 6. Honestly, took me a few years before I realized they were the same plane. I saw the word Robotech on the package, but it didn't mean anything to me, since I had never seen the show. Now, years later, while browsing on ebay, while looking for models, I started coming across the old transforming 1/72 Bandai valk kits. They were purely Macross, so I started looking up the word Macross, and my head nearly exploded when I first found a few of the Taka 1/55ths up for around $1000. I gave up right then and there on ever getting a decent sized one...Then, a friend of mine bought me Mac+ for Christmas. Watched it, loved it, and fell in love with the YF-19. So, I started browsing for those on ebay and various search engines, looking for info on the plane. In the end, I found both Yamato and MW right as the 1/48th debuted. Best timing ever. Really though, the thing that drew me most to the Yamato valks was the emphasis on the aircraft design. I always thought the Chunky Monkey would be a cool toy, but didn't look at ALL like it would actually fly. The MPC is better, but not much.. I always hated the swing-bar design for the legs. I'm an aircraft nut first, Macross fan second, and I went for the one that looked like an actual plane, instead of a clunky collection of aircraft parts that transformed. That's partially why I got sick of the old aircraft transformers really fast... they always seemed to have some robot part sticking out that ruined the shape of the aircraft. The VF-1 was the first transformer I'd ever seen that managed to fit all the robot parts in a believable aircraft form, and still deliver a decent robot.

Heh. It's easy to see why, though.. some parts of the two planes look almost identical.. the wing shape, the upper intake design.. pretty similar.

Hehe.. well, I use max, but my animation skills are mostly limited to doing control surfaces and landing gear.. although, a transforming valk can't be that far off. But as for things like walking, I've got no clue where to begin. My few experiments with bone structures didn't work out at all like I'd hoped.. probably need to run through a few tutorials. I could probably make a Valk transform, but that's about it.

Hmm.. judging by those pictures, the plane looks like an overall light-ghost grey, probably lightened a bit... quite a bit actually.. maybe a 50-50 mix of l-g grey and white, with either white or a very light grey for the nose.. that pretty much goes with current camo colors though, so it may be what they used. It might be more blue than that though. Note though, that's just off the model pics.. the cg is MUCH lighter... I can't really tell, in some places it looks blue-ish, others it looks greenish.. I'm very tempted to suggest an overall coat of light gull grey, what has been used on naval aircraft since Vietnam.. this just looks a little more blue than that shade, and a bit lighter, light gull grey is almost a light tan. Your best bet may be to mix a little bit of blue with light gull grey, or maybe make a mixture of light ghost and light gull greys... I'd mix a little bit of those colors on paper and see if you can get a good mixture ratio, but those colors would probably be a good starting point, along with some white to brighten it up to the point of matching the animation.

Hmm.. if it's too much work, I guess you could just make sure all the materials used are double sided, but that does up the rendering time. I remember many a time making a polygon mesh for a game where I had to literally go through the entire mesh polygon by polygon and manually flip all the backwards faces.. took forever.. then I finally learned how to draw them the right way in the first place so that never became such a big issue again. Lol.. vectors.. normals.. sheesh, we're covering those in my calc class, and my hobbies finally helped me understand something in math class. Oy.. see, you can calculate face normals manually if you want to.. you basically need the three points of the polygon, and turn them into two 3d vectors in space.. then you can find the normal vector by taking the cross product of the two edge vectors... umm.. yeah... I'll shut up. But I was thrilled to find out something in calculus that's useful for modeling.

Lol.. the old Taka Valks are called Chunky Monkeys... maybe the Yamato YF-19 should just be called the pregnant goose? That actually is the phrase that one of my friends used the first time he saw it.

Sorry for the lack of news people, my computer's basically gone through hell in the past few months... Service pack 2 problems caused me to lose a LOT of stuff from a messed up system restore. It seemingly deleted a bunch of files from my hard drive, fortunately none of which were irreplaceable. But I've been working the past few weeks getting things back to normal, and I still don't have any programs to work on this with yet. I'll post updates as I can, but I've got to find a way to recover a lot of stuff before the final version of this plane can come out.

Hehe.. Just as long as the only exclamation used during the movie is not "UNTHINKABLE!!" I'll be happy.

That's the edge of the skull I think, but it doesn't become clear until a split second before the valk blows. The skull is illuminated by the explosion for a short time.

Actually, if you go a few more frames forward, you can just make out the skull markings. It's really dim though, and I don't think the stripes are green.

Technically I don't really collect die-cast anymore, I prefer the plastic variety. But go back about 15 years, and it's a different story... I collected all the little die-cast planes you could get for about $.85 back then.. the Dyna-flites, and Skybusters, etc.. loved those things. Actually, when I think back it's kinda freaky.. most kids sleep with a stuffed toy as a little kid.. I cuddled up with my favorite toy planes.... yeah.. I know. Is it any wonder I'm an aeronautics major?