Chronocidal

You know.. now that I think about it, genetic degradation might explain why the stormtroopers tended to be complete idiots, or at least horrible at killing anything. Heavily recycled genes....

Well, I honestly can't tell for sure, but I wouldn't give up entirely on the original versions of the films being released.. While watching Empire of Dreams tonight, I noticed a few things that gave me hope. Mainly, the fact that the original film from Episode IV HAS been restored.. and I don't mean the Special Edition stuff, I mean the old motion control battle scenes with models flying every which way. It's not for certain, and I guess it could have been from the THX release a while back, but it looked every bit as crisp and clean as any of the DVD shots I've seen. All, the old shots of the DS battle looked perfectly cleaned up, and the gunnery scene on the Falcon looked similarly clear. Also, when they showed shots of the original title scroll, it was clearly remastered for clarity, but lacked the separate EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE line. So that proves that they've restored at least a part of the original version. Whether that means they've done the same to the whole movie, and will release it later remains to be seen, but I did see one shot of the original Greedo scene in there. I'll probably buy the new DVD set even with the screwed up Anakin ghost, just so I can actually have a set of my own. It's actually not as bad as I imagined it would be... I had assumed they would replace the dying Vader footage as well, with Hayden in a bunch of age/scar makeup, so thank God they didn't go that far. I'm leaving home for college, and no one is gonna let me take the old videos with me when I go. Besides, I've been dying to rip some real sounds and screenshots from the movies for years (FINALLY, a good accurate reference for building my X-Wing models ). If they release the originals later, I'll probably get them too, since we've refrained from buying the prequels, but that's just me. Maybe if I download a rip of the laserdisc set, I'll splice in the original Anakin footage just for the heck of it, and make a new DVD (heck, if I go that far, I'll replace Anakin's face and voice in Episode II with a cut and paste of William Shatner- the acting might be better ). But it's not that big a deal for me. I can always just fast forward. As for the later episodes, how the heck are they gonna do that? I was under the impression that Timothy Zahn got specific permission from Lucasfilm to make those first novels, allowing him to write the story. I guess I was wrong... But either way, there's probably no way the sequels will have any success with fans. Writing new stories for after Endor would pretty much negate any of the already accepted storylines and character relationships in the EU, as well as tick off a lot of authors who went to a lot of work to continue the story, only to be completely ignored by the man whose story they were contributing to, and previously seemed to acknowledge their efforts. GL will probably cut off a lot of his fanbase by saying all those books don't count. If anything, they should be making movies OF those books. Both the Thrawn Trilogy and Jedi Academy Trilogy would make incredible movies.

WOW.. judging by the size of that helmet on the X-Wing's nose, it looks a little small, but very nice... maybe it's just the wings being open that's fooling me. should be about 42 feet long if it's full scale. Btw, if you've ever read the X-Wing series of novels (#5 Wraith Squadron and #6 Iron Fist to be specific), one of the pilots made some modifications to his personal R2 that follow right along with that lightsaber launcher, but is a much more useful feature in real life. He had it so that if he called his droid and gave him the command "Cold One" he'd launch a chilled drink out through that same port. Would be fun to rig something like that up with a voice command module, and try it out at parties.

You know, I might be insane, but did you first introduce this design in the X-Wing Alliance modding community? I remember seeing this at X-Wing Legacy a few years back, I think...

Well, I can't say there has been no progress, since I did get FS2004, and am working to adapt it for that, but there has been little else that I've done. As soon as I get the effects and flaps working in 2004, I'll release a verion with textures, but that will be a while.... right now I'm concentrating on getting ready to move my stuff to my apartment for the coming year. The virtual cockpit is pretty crummy so far, but it's textured and looks ok, but not great. The textures are really low-res in it, since right now the virtual cockpit is just a copy of the exterior cockpit, and has no moving parts or anything. But once I get the flaps working, and the engines lit right, I'll put up something for y'all to play with.

Actually, looks like he used the standard YF-21 tails, but glued them to the top of the fuseage, and the stabs look like clipped off F-14 stabs..

Heheh.. well, all dreams of a battroid mode aside, there really is no reason for one today. But gerwalk mode.. well, we're closer to that than some people may think, and frankly, gerwalk seems to me like a heck of a lot better solution to VTOL than what we've come up with so far. With two engines to control stability, it would probably be a lot more stable in hover than current planes. But things are advancing at a rapid pace, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a gerwalk type transformation in the coming years. If anyone's seen how the new F-35 JSF does a vertical takeoff, then you probably know what I mean. The first thing I thought of when I saw that engine bend 90 degrees downward was "GERWALK! GERWALK!!!" Granted, they're only bending the afterburner can down, not bending the engine in the middle like Valks do. But it's a start, and if they have the technology to bend the engine down like that, and swivel it all around electronically to stabilize the hover like I saw (think foot/ankle joint), gerwalk can't be that far away.

Hmm... well, although they don't say it, Gundam W is involved in there too.. that's Wing Gundam in the front. Considering that series only got really popular in the US (I heard it did poorly in Japan, correct me if I'm wrong) it might give them reason to release it in the US. I can't tell for sure though, what's the big black thing in the background? It looks kinda like one of the mechs from G-Gundam, although it's too covered up to tell.

Heheh... pretty nice I have an older version of X-Plane, But I just got utterly frustrated with the lack of visual detail in the program. I was okay with the older versions, but in the most bass-ackwards "improvement" I've ever seen, the newer versions compressed all the aircraft textures into a single 1024*1024 texture map, with pre-set areas for each aircraft part, where the old version had allowed a separate map of that size for each part alone. It's a disaster, resulting in really terrible resolution on parts that are given small areas on the texture. I tended to get creative with part usage to allow more variety in the visual model, such as using fuel tanks as parts of the fuselage, and using a big texture on them to get some nice detail.. but when the tanks got assigned a 64*128 area on the texture, it ruined the idea of using them for detail. I had a really nice VF-1 in there once, but it got ruined when the new version wrapped the textures around wrong, and shrank them to microscopic sizes. In the world of flight sims, you've got two major competitors in the "pure sim" arena: MS Flight Sim, and X-Plane. To put it bluntly, X-Plane is ugly, and the interface and graphics are way behind the times, while MS Flight Sim is incredibly beautiful at times, with high quality graphics abounding, and a very user friendly interface. But then again, MS Flight Sim's flight models are entirely separate from the graphics models, and they can be a pain to tweak correctly, while X-Plane is used professionally to design and test REAL aircraft, since the physical flight calculations it does are above and beyond anything MSFS ever does. It's mostly a decision between visual accuracy and physical accuracy. If you like watching sunsets from 20,000 feet, get MSFS2004. If you want to test out a new design for a private plane, get X-Plane.

LEGO. Nuff said.

Eh, as dorky and ridiculous as those are, they are cute.. besides, after the uber-goodness that is the new Non-FX X-Wing, I think they've earned a little break from reality. If LucasPhlegm wasn't so darn copyright happy, this thing would be a great recasting candidate.

Well, it is taking a hideous amount of time, but I don't think I blame them.. the YF-19's gotta be one of the most complex designs in Macross, of not THE most complex. The fuselage literally has to fold over on itself into a pretzel shape to transform, and it's gotta play havoc with the proportions. If they're making it based on that custom model, it'll probably take a while to get it up to playable standards.. that thing looked pretty fragile.

Sorry to take so long, took a while to get the wing structure looking good, but I think I've got it working now... This model doesn't have any of the actual mechanisms for moving the flaps, but from what I've seen, this is approximately how they mount.

Hmm.. is there a statistic somewhere that says how many Tomcats were lost to spins? I just finished reading something about one Tomcat NASA had some fun with.. they added canards to the nose, and changed the avionics somewhat.. somehow they linked the roll control with the rudder control in the flight computers, and it made the plane able to stay stable at about 70 degrees AOA. Don't know how that compares to the standard Tomcat though.

Hmm.. what kind of limits does the engine have? Polycount, and texture size especially.. because if this game could handle some of the fancy 3d models that've been made, you'd have one beautiful Macross game on your hands. Also, considering this program's set in modern day times, why not do a Macross Zero scenario? Maybe tell the story of the Unification War, and end with the beginning of SDF Macross? Should be easy to find a Tomcat for that game if it's easy to mod, so you've got a lot of the stuff done already that way.

Yeah, I've been having the same problem on my CG Tomcat model.. I just figured it out though.. if you look at the top of a Tomcat's wing, there are small breaks in the spoiler that are raised up slightly..two per section on the 3 sectioned flap. Those are the places where the flaps are mounted... they had to leave cutouts in the spoilers and upper eyebrow door to allow clearance around the wing sections. I don't know where those sections would be in the VF-1. You may need to just find a good place to do it, like between spoilers, or flap sections, something that looks like a likely place for there to be a wing structure support, and then add those supports to the back of the wing to glue the flaps to. When I get the model done, I'll post a picture of what I mean.

Hmmm.. looks good.. On the subject of a Tomcat's flaps, I found a pretty nice diagram of exactly what they do. I'm attempting to build a high-detail Flight Sim model of an F-14, cause I've never seen one that actually did these flaps right (understandable though.. OY! so many panels to animate...>_<) So far I have the cove door, and eyebrow door as one piece each, but I'll need to split them so I have a place for the actual sections that hold the flaps on.. sheesh. it's like the wing splits into two sections, then forms two separate airfoils. O_O Sorry if the image is too big, I can reduce it more, but the text becomes pretty hard to read at 800 pixels wide.

Whoops... k, thanks, I stand corrected.

Heh.. yeah, if you can afford it.. and, somehow I don't think they'd be able to make something THAT big... I didn't see a size reference, but those samples would have better detail if they were in a large scale.

Actually, that's pretty sweet. I was thinking of doing something like that, but don't know enough yet about making my own instruments.

Ooooooh... pretty... Nothing to be ashamed of there, those lights look great. So, those nacelles ARE big enough for a flourescent bulb. I'm gonna have to think about lighting that one.... You're right though, most lit toys never look decent, simply because the bulbs don't distribute light well. The early Ent-E toy was hideous for that, you could see the bulbs, and since they used white bulbs in a light red engine piece, they glowed almost yellow-orange. Same for the Bandai kits.. as good as that ridged clear stuff actually conducts light, it still doesn't give an even glow, and the deflector looked pretty bad.. I added some clear blue cellophane, and a few layers of wax paper to diffuse the light more, and it helped, but it's still far from perfect.

Actually, apparently there's now a much cheaper way to get a decent Ent-refit... Art Asylum, the people responsible for the Enterprise series toys, got a hold of the rights to release a toy of the Ent-A..It's almost as detailed as the Bandai kit, plus 2-3 inches longer, for about $50 less. I've seen a bunch on Ebay, but none in stores yet. Rumor has it they've also acquired the CGI model of the Enterprise-E used in Nemesis, and are using it directly through CAD programming to make the molds for a new toy of that ship that'll be much more accurate than the Ertl kit, and much more affordable than the Bandai one. The best news about these is that they'll be very sturdy, since they're made to be played with, and, from the pictures I've seen, the toy Ent-A actually has the panels printed on it just like the Bandai one. Here's an Ebay auction with a few pictures, but nothing really big...Art Asylum Enterprise As far as stencils go though, I once made a texture set for a computer model of the Enterprise-A, so I know a lot of the panel lines by heart.. It'd be pretty easy to make a simple stencil set you could print out on the computer... wouldn't be the highest quality of course, but it might suffice. EDIT: Correction, the toy doesn't have the panels painted on, I think they're molded in different textures. Still will probably give the same type of effect in the light though.

Hmm.... I'm thinking the ones near the feet are verniers. The ones on the gear doors are probably lights like on the VF-1 though.

Hmm.. one other purpose I've realized that the head serves in fighter mode...it may stick out a little, but it partially streamlines those big blocky shoulders. Those things would cause such turbulence, it'd be ridiculous without something to direct the airflow around them.

Well, personally I'm pretty skeptic of what they show.. it's plenty detailed, but they also don't show how big the stuff is, or how strong the material is.. it might not work well to make model kits out of.. besides that, apparently, they want proof that you own the copyrights to the stuff before they build it for you... so, that right there probably eliminates 90% of the stuff people here would want to make. In my case, there's only a few things I'd really want, and almost all of them are either Macross or Star Wars related, both of which they'd probably refuse to do. I've got a couple of original designs, but they don't interest me as much as the other stuff. One thing I think this would be great for is making replacement parts for model kits. Say you want to replace a small part of a kit, or add something, like custom missiles or whatnot.. you could make it, and have them send you the stuff, and you could add it to your model. But reproducing a whole kit this way would probably be incredibly expensive.