Zephyr Net

New Suspension Bridge support towers...




New P-3C Orion with no radar dome...





New IL-76 Candid / IL-78 Midas






New C-27 Spartan (originally as C-123 Provider, but they were retired long ago). Shape makes a better C-27 anyway, a mini 2 prop Hercules......





New C-2A Greyhound COD





New (partially complete) IL-28 Beagle (still much to do on editis)



New Towed Artillery gunmount with support legs




New MT-LB APC/ Armored Artillery Prime Mover...



New fully colored M-2 Bradley (Colorable cannon and antennas)



I hope you have enjoyed it!

CAG out...

_________________
"Great pilots are made not born... A man may possess good eyesight, sensitive hands, and perfect coordination, but the end product is only fashioned by steady coaching, much practice, and experience."
Air Vice-Marshall J.E. "Johnnie" Johnson, RAF

That Il-76 just makes me wet myself Cag you realize that!

_________________
Centurian

LOL!! And I was able to fully remove the dish in the 2nd and 3rd stages of the shape also now...

Also I have mode other improvements, such as, when you edit the Tall King and change the color of ths kin and the shape, the support wires are still that ugly tan color, not anymore! I recolored them to a darkish grey to better emulate cables and for radars that dont have guide cables (Like the Flat Face or Barlock radars) I removed them entirely...

And I am working on a shape specificially for you Cent... A F-104 with no wingtip tanks, using the improved FA F-104 shape... I remembered you wished there was a high quailty version of that shape with no wingtip tanks...

I should have it completed this weekend for you... BUt the tricky part isnt the actual shape... Its editing the shadpw shape to match the new no fuel tank look...

Same with the improved SU-27 shape... removing the canards from the shadow itself...

CAG out...

I am very close to altering (and increasing) the skin file use by the shape. This means I am close to altering the way the skin is applied, to fix skin mirroring on wings and tails and fuselage, so that lettering isnt mirrored and details can be applied on the lower surface of wings on all aircraft, instead of just a select few...


However I still have not (yet) figured out how to add skins where no skin previously existed... such as the B-52 or B-1... But I am still working on it and I hope to have a solution for that soon also... It all ties into the segment headers and the number of segment blocks the headers say exist and the shape actually uses...

CAG out...

Well oorah! I am touched! That'll also work for NATO for the F-104Gs correct? GOD I WANT TO SHOOT DOWN IL-76s!!!! Gimme gimme gimme!

_________________
Centurian

I second that!!!!!!!!!!!

_________________
"Great pilots are made not born... A man may possess good eyesight, sensitive hands, and perfect coordination, but the end product is only fashioned by steady coaching, much practice, and experience."
Air Vice-Marshall J.E. "Johnnie" Johnson, RAF

Once FAF Winter/Summer is released I will open all the new shapes to open source. I just have to concentrate on finishing FAF and all the shape work I have to do for it.

Still much to do... I am altering taxiway shape and length to make the airbases more realeastic, altering the control towers to also look more realeastic...

Plus I have new skins I am adding... one especially nice... a realeastic skin for the Taiwanese Indeginous Fighter...

Its a huge improvement over the current skin...

CAG out...

Any update?

_________________
"Great pilots are made not born... A man may possess good eyesight, sensitive hands, and perfect coordination, but the end product is only fashioned by steady coaching, much practice, and experience."
Air Vice-Marshall J.E. "Johnnie" Johnson, RAF

I believe that I will be able to release the final copies of FAF Korea Summer and the first release of FAF Korea Winter(which should be the final one, since the 'guts' of the libraries are the same as summer, just different skins and terrains, etc) should... (I repeat **SHOULD**) be 1 week from today, on April 5th...

ALso there is no longer seperate Windows 98 and XP versions, as I have identified the problem area between compatibility and overcome it and have successfully implemented a single combined version...

If any of you would like to see something in FAF Korea that is not there, and can also reccomend the removal of a current item to free up the space, I will take a hard look at your reccomendations and try to accomadate you...

CAG out...

GREAT!!!

_________________
"Great pilots are made not born... A man may possess good eyesight, sensitive hands, and perfect coordination, but the end product is only fashioned by steady coaching, much practice, and experience."
Air Vice-Marshall J.E. "Johnnie" Johnson, RAF

BTW, Seoul Airbase is again my favorite airbase on the Korean FAF map... With all the new shapes for the new taxiways and buildings, and the runway extenison, it more resemebles the real deal...

Its now my favorite again...

PLUS I have been successful at altering the way the shapes use the skin file and I have been successful at altering the skin file layout...

So I am one step closer to changing the way FA aircraft use their skin files inorder to change the skins to a much more detailed version...

Next will be adding additional polygons to shapes... to change such things as canopies, fuselage design and length... and landing gear detailing...

CAG out...

Jackpot! New runway texture locations and layouts!

With all the new shape editing I have been doing I have been successful at altering both Taxiways and Runways in the way they use their texture files...

I have been successful at editing all the runways in FAF so that they now have 'skid marks' on the landing areas, by altering the skin file so it does not repeat that segment of the runway and only displays it in the landing zone... This means all the runways now dont look 'pretty' and unused, but have more realeastic 'wear and tear' on the runway surfaces representing much use. I am hoping I will be able to further edit them to reflect proper runway numbers...

Also I was able to edit the hardstand layouts and alter the pattern there, so I can build accurate taxi lines and parking areas for the aircraft...


I have to say, that if you are reading this Hotfrog, you have done us all a great service with your initial shape editing experiments... It opened my mind to all these different and wonderful possibilities that we never had before. You did a great job!

I have one request though, could you look at the runway shapes and see if there are any flags there for aircraft taxi positioning? Or is that hard coded in the game code? I beleive it must be shape related, because when you use the same type of shape but renamed, the aircraft still taxi to teh same locations. It must be coded into the shape... If we can alter this, then perhaps we can have multiple aircraft taking off together and new parking areas and and entire flight together on the taxiway waiting its turn to take off instead of just sitting on the hardstand and taxing out one at time after the first pair has taken off...

CAG out...

Cag, excuse me if I sound rude, which I don't mean too in any way, but I was wondering if perhaps work should focus on writing either a gui for editing shape files or an exporter for a 3d modelling program. Anim8tor might interface nicely or perhaps 3dsmax. The reason I say this is that then more people could get involved in 3d modelling and possibly relieve some burden off you so you can focus on coding. Also, from personal experience it is much easier working in a 3d modelling program than hex editing. Tell me your take on how much effort and time would be needed to make an export program/plugin or a gui.

-Goodjob55
P.S. Whats up Cent?

_________________
I was going to make something creative but then I started playing FA.

You are not being rude at all (except, maybe, for repeating your message three times! lol!)... However I am not a full time coder. I do not write programs such as this for a living...

I understand hex editing, and assembly language, and to a certain degree C++, but I am not a high level C++ coder...

The work I am doing for FA-2 is much easier with the modern tools already in existence for developing new shapes and creating code blocks. However I am at the top end of my understanding with C++...

If you know of someone that may want to do this development and has more 'hands on' experience then I do, then more power to you to find him and more power to you to accomplish the interface. Until then we are limited to what I understand and what others like Hotfrog understand, about hex editing...

I am writing a detailed article for "CAG's Corner" at the http://VNFAWING.com website on hex editing shapes and what specific segmetns of the code means and how to alter it...

I hope to publsh it in April...

Understand the shape editing is mainly just through experimentation and a major segment of the shape itself still remains a mystery, but is slowly (soooo slowly) being decyphered...

CAG out...