Chronocidal

Meh. I could care less how it transforms, I just want that fighter. Actually, that worries me a bit as well.. if Bandai gets the license, I'm guessing that would keep Hasegawa from making kits... which would probably mean that we'd get no dedicated aircraft models. I'd probably still buy a transforming kit, but I don't like the thought of not having a solid aircraft mode around for display purposes... instead it might wind up being one that could lose joint tension, and start falling out of shape like the gundam kits tend to after a long time. You could glue the thing together, sure.. but then you wasted half the cost of the kit in extra parts. I'll just have to hope they put a decent effort in.. and maybe hope that they can badger HG into letting it into the US. Edit: btw, just had another look at the first trailer. Assuming that they're color coordinating, and the blue-haired guy (very tempting to call him Blair btw) is flying the blue striped VF-25, I'm a little relieved that it appears he has no qualms about blowing stuff up.

Actually, the belly plates on the -22 are a little different as well, they hold the gunpods internally (you can see that a little on the model pics above). What I find a little odd is that even though Bandai has the M7 license, they never attempted a VF-22.. probably too complex compared with the others, but still a little surprising. For now, I'll just hope that the VF-22 appears in Macross Frontier somehow, and Yamato uses that to make a ton of em. Anyone for an Angel Birds scheme? Edit: Hmm.. never noticed it before, but looks like that Black Clouds Hasegawa mod has the sliding canopy area to shorten the nose like the Yamato one. Wonder if they based the transformation roughly on that one?

Hmm.. VF-25 I'm loving a lot, takes a lot of the best features from several Valks so far. Transformation really reminds me of the SV-51, with the multi-bend fuselage, and the way the wings stay on the shoulders. Wonder if the new license will let Yamato finally make a VF-17 (sort of)?

Definitely looks like the gear are in the wings, but I can't wait to see how that'll work. Hopefully there's enough room for a sturdy landing gear. The nose gear is animated in the commercial, and it's beautiful though. I'd guess the intake covers are separate, it looks like you can see little notches in the intake area where they'll snap in. I could care less about that personally though. I hope they make more than one version though.. I could probably stand not having the YF-21 if they put out M&M VF-22s.

I think I just wet myself. O_O That thing looks beautiful, the fighter mode is so close to the Hasegawa kit, I thought I was seeing things. Ooooh, I can't wait till I graduate and get a job...

While I am drooling over this thing massively, I do have one little nitpick... I think the curved cut out areas on the underside of the main guns (the part that sits next to the "head" once transformed) looks just a little too smooth/soft around the edges, compared with the rest of the ship. While it looks great in distance shots, up close that spot just looks a lot less sharply defined than most of the ship, which has very fine detail. Dunno if you intended it that way though, it's beautifully smooth. Oh, and your SDF-1 texture is backwards on the starboard side.

Like this one?

I don't have a DYRL version to compare with, but those lines are on the TV 1J, both front and back of the upper arm segments.

Actually, from a marketing standpoint, I think it makes sense. The Hikaru 1J was (I think) the first pure TV release they had, unless the Max/Miria ones were first. M&M used them in the series, so they work, but they had custom colors on their FPs. So, in order to get out a set of TV colored standard FPs, they tacked them on to the new Hikaru 1J and marketed it for the series, rather than DYRL (TV hands/pilot included). Sure, they could have made a new TV edition Skull 1, but it would've hardly been different from Roy's, and may not have sold as well as the new 1J, which is pretty much a series icon. Sales-wise, a new VF-1J with unique fast packs is better off than an older VF-1S with unique fast packs. It also set up the Hikaru 1J as the only way to get a set of plain TV fast packs, driving up value. Besides, a separate TV FP set would contain less stuff (unless they replaced the beam cannon with extra TV hands), and probably not sell as well as the DYRL FP set. So really, the Hikaru 1J FPs should go on a Skull 1S... it just made better business sense to include them with another Valk.

K, can anyone tell me the difference between the two VF-0D models there? I might be the angle of the photo, but the camo one looks stubby for some reason.. can't really tell though. The only change I can tell for certain is that the little spike things on top of the legs are much bigger on the camo one. Is that a different model than the Hasegawa kit?

Yep, the control surfaces are nearly identical.. flap system is a little different, and no stabilators, but the wings are very similar. I'd say for a rough estimate, the wings might sweep back between 0.5 and 1.2 mach (F-14 I think is between 0.5 and 0.85 or so, but the VF-1's wings go further back), and they shouldn't sweep ALL the way back... at full sweep, there's almost no wing surface. Maybe just stop them once the leading edge matches the angle of the wing glove area like the F-14. Any more would be like the oversweep storage setting on the F-14. Spoilers, maybe cut them out at half sweep (you don't use them with the wings swept since they cause too much yawing force at those angles). With the thrust vectoring, and power this thing has (dunno thrust ratings, but sheesh they're nuclear engines after all), it would probably maneuver like an F-16, with a top speed of maybe mach 3, more likely mach 2.5 or so. If you really want it to maneuver well, and possibly in space, you could also give it thrusters, or "puffers" in PlaneMaker, sort of a beefed up version of the hovering directional system in the Harrier. I worked with X-Plane for a while, and while interesting in the area of design flexibility, I really was never impressed by the graphics (texture mapping blows chunks), or the lousy interface. If they've gotten much better, I may have to rethink that, but I don't need another game to work on.

Well, I'll put it this way.. I haven't hit the polygon limit yet in FSX. Course, I haven't been experimenting much lately, but I did get a 90k poly model running beautifully (no textures though). I can't actually sell anything like this, due to copyright junk, but I'll gladly put it up for free download.. whenever it gets finished that is. :?

Hey, sorry it doesn't appear to be up yet, I don't quite know what happened. I mailed the file off to someone who offered to host it, then headed home for Christmas, and didn't get to check back till now. I would try sending it to someone now, but I'm on a 28k modem at the moment. It might be another week before I can do anything about it. But I can give you a preview of the new one I'm working on for FSX

Oy. Megabloks. >___< I've personally never been a fan of "specialized" pieces, ones made to fill a specific need... like the Star Wars laser gun pieces they introduced, or any number of other things (Most of the SW Legos I've bought were never assembled, and the parts went to building my own set of SW ships in Technic's scale ) But Megabloks is infinitely worse. They just model outright whole sections of vehicles, giving you a piece that'll be nigh unusable on anything else. But for that price, these things are pathetic. Normally, MB sets are huge bargains comparitively to Legos.. Legos seem to tend toward 10 cents per piece on average, while MB tend to offer a much lower price... but the quality shows the difference. Now, this is a lego mech. The design is a custom, but it's completely self supported, geared, balanced, etc. Not to mention it's ginormous. What it would cost to produce, I don't even want to know. The real challenge for Lego mechs is the support system they need to stand up (when you build them big anyway). Which is what makes a large scale Lego transformer incredibly hard...still got a transforming 1/18th VF-1S up in my closet with no legs.. been sitting there for 3 years now, while I try to find a joint system strong enough for the hips/knees, and find a way to reduce the weight of the main body while keeping it looking decent.

K, sending now, should be up soon. Lemme know if there's any problems.. hopefully there won't be, I just ran a test with each model, and they all looked ok, but there always seems to be something to fix.

K, I apologize it's taken me this long to get this out, I've just had to push everything aside lately for classwork. The plane isn't quite done in my opinion, there's still more I'd like to do, but I don't have the time to learn how to do it right. I've got the basic plane done, with an extremely basic 3d cockpit, a stock instrument panel for the 2d view, and seven paintschemes, with no fancy effects or anything. It might even run in FSX, but it's meant for FS2004. Hopefully people will add in what's missing, since I don't have time to. Of course, now that FSX is out, I'm already rebuilding it from the ground up with about 4x as many polygons, and tons more detail. Dunno when it'll be done, but the model exterior is just about done, and is extremely smooth. It's kind of a learning project to teach myself the details of FSX modeling. I'll see about compiling all the files for my CFS3 YF-19 as well later. Blatant overkill in a WWII environment, but it's amusing to blow away every enemy in Europe in one strike mission. Now, is there somewhere I can stick a 10 mb rar file so people here can download it?

Just a quick thought... We all know the VF-1 series didn't get to the US market due to the Robotech license issues... but.... The YF-19 isn't Robotech and I've seen some Mac+ stuff sold in the US, where I haven't seen SDF at all. Now, I'm not expecting the YF-19 to pop up in Wal-Mart next to the Transformers, but legally, would it be possible? Or am I asking a stupid question since the old YF-19 never got here either? I'm mainly just hoping there's been some progress on the licensing since the 1/72 was around, seeing as how HG put out some DYRL stuff.

Hmm... Good thing I have a bit saved, cause I can't stop drooling.. this'll be my "end of the term" present to myself for surviving through finals week. I would absolutely love to see the supernova schemes though... dunno if I could afford it, but who knows? Now, the big question.. think they'd consider doing a scheme like this?

Just been catching up on this, managed to find the Hyperdyne site through another site, and was blown clean away. Has anyone here bought one of those blades? I've wanted a fancy saber for a while, just haven't gotten one, and I figure when I do get one, it better be darn good. I keep thinking of how simple that bluetooth module might make fan videos.. the blade is bright enough to almost not need any editing, and if the sounds are auto-generated, you could just record them as an audio track, and put them right into a video. Now if they could just figure out how to make a retractable blade.... hmm....

Wow, wonder how I missed this... course, I've been away for a while doing flight sim work. As much as I'm happy to see they're finally going through with this, I have to admit.. I've got serious reservations. I don't deny it's an improvement over the 1/72, but I'm saddened to see they couldn't rid the plane of the "pregnant goose" look. I tried matching the lineart up with several sets of other drawings, and besides the wings being too small, the engines are just... huge. Ginormous. I realize that's probably due to the limitations of the size, and cramming all the hinges and stuff in there.. but I've been spoiled rotten with the Hasegawa fighter mode kit, and those engines look really oversized. The plane shouldn't be that deep, it just doesn't look like the plane in the movie, or the lineart. None of the lineart I've ever seen gives the fighter that big a belly, either. I get the feeling that was the only way they could cram in all the guts that the transformation sequence requires. The YF-19 probably used more anime magic than any of the other fighters for its transformation.. well, except maybe the YF-21. I don't know if I'll buy one or not.. depends on my budget. But I'm willing to bet the battroid will be better looking than the fighter, so I'd probably leave it in that mode. It just doesn't look like it would fly. Eh, I'm still hoping for a 1/48

Oy.. and another one bites the dust. You'd think they could figure out that these movies are lousy. But nooooo..... I think the only vg movies I've had the unfortune to see were Mario Bros and Wing Commander... I couldn't decide which was worse for adaptation... holy cow. I wanted to bash in Freddie Prince jr.'s head in with my old Wing Commander boxed set. Mario I don't really remember fortunately. But the crapfest of WC made me want to puke. Whatever schmuck wrote that script needs to be shot. In my opinion, they already wrote a WC Movie... it was called Wing Commander III, had Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies, Malcolm McDowell, Jason Bernard, Tom Wilson, and Tim Curry for cryin out loud. The hollywood version had.. oh wait, yah.. no one. I think FPJ hit his peak in Scooby Doo, personally. Plus, no Thrakhath. Blair went from being a badass fighter pilot veteran to some idiot "pilgrim," who had some special "gift" so he could navigate jump holes manually.. such bs. I really kind of miss the old filmed video games... they were expensive to make, but hell.. it was worth it. Closest I've seen since was Half Life 2 (if they ever make that a movie, people will die I think), and Freelancer (hmmm.. Chris Roberts again...), where they still got some big-name actors, but it was all in-game character animation, and the plot wasn't nearly as good as WC (or heart wrenching for that matter )

Love that video. Any of you seen or own any of the giant 1/18th scale aircraft they've got nowadays? The FW-190 at my local walmart was down to around $30 cause no one would buy it. But they are beginning to branch out and do jets... Bought myself this behemoth for Christmas this year... holy crap on a stick. It's about a meter long. They're starting the Vietnam era with this one, but if they make an F-4, I'm gonna be in trouble... the ceiling's already full with this thing. If they end up making an F-14, I'll have to just get my own apartment and fill it with em. They aren't bad quality at all, considering they're toys, and they're getting even better. If I could find 1/18th scale decals, I might seal all the joints, and detail it up even more. Not a bad buy for $65, plus I have something to hang on that hook in my ceiling left by the last tenants.

Wait.. you've gotta be kidding.. is that using the polycount function in the toolbar, or something else? Cause it looks far too smooth to be that low.

I can render some for you.

Yeah, sorry I've been so erratic with updates, it's just that classwork, and my other flight sim work usually push this aside. On the good side of things though, I was able to get a YF-21 flying as well.. it's just not textured, and has even less of a cockpit than the YF-19.