Midway aircraft upgrade

Post by **Moggy** » Fri Apr 02, 2004 2:23 pm

Kurt has now sent me the final upgraded aircraft he has been working on, and when time allows I will be posting carrier specific upgrade packs, together with a general upgrade pack.

Many thanks to Kurt for the work on these aircraft.

Post by **Moggy** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 9:30 pm

I'm close to finishing the aircraft upgrade package for Midway. This uses Kurt's new aircraft and consolidates all other upgrades since April 2001 into a package of "Air Groups".

A couple of things I can't sort at the moment and may have to leave out:

(1) Recent research (or maybe I wasn't looking in the right place originally - though I did a heck of a lot of research!) suggests that the light carriers with the Japanese Occupation Fleet and Fleet main body were as follows:

Zuiho carried Claudes and Kates, but not Zeros

Hosho carried BY4 "Jean" antiquated biplane torpedo bombers somewhat akin to the Vickers Vincent, and not Zeros

I could accomadate both Claude and Jean since I have four spare slots on the axis side. However this would mean changing a few of the saved missions and possibly ome of the screens. So I'll leave Zuiho and Hosho out of this update until I'll done a bit more research and thinking.

Wehave a Claude model done by Col.G, and Jan Tuma's Vincent is very very close to the Jean, so models are not a problem.

Personally I'm a bit skeptical about the Jeans. This seems to be based a report that Hosho was still arrying Jeans at the time of Pearl Harbour. But they seem to be perfectly useless aircraft to take into battle as air cover for a fleet in June 1942. However, I am told that the Jeans did pick up some of the survivors from the Hiryu.

(2) B17E at Midway. It would be nice to get a hi-res upgrade for this, and incorporate all the bomb site and prop control stuff. However there is no updated B17E model, and the prop control won't work because the Midway B17 is in a single engine slot. The cockpit bomb siteshould work however. But I'll also leave this for another day.

Post by **Moggy** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 9:35 am

Things move on quickly - not only was there a hi-res B17E partly done by Chompy, but Kurt has finished the job ... and I have got the bombsight cockpit working, and got a work round for the wing view, so we're functional in that sp2a slot for the flyable B17E for the Midway raids on the Japanese invasion and occupation fleets.

The only aircraft now without any substantial upgrade to the models are the Vindicator (I did think of using the V156 from Dunkirk to which I made some improvements to wing shape etc, but reverting to three bladed prop and central bomb holder) and the B26 Marauder which used a skin by Serb to what was I think more or less the basic EAW model.

AS soon as Kurt is able to let me have the B17E I'm going to release a Midway 1.5 upgrade which will consolidate all the work done by Kurt on all the other aircraft, together with the few small fixes I did and Claudio's cockpits. This will take the form of "Air Groups" for all the major US and Japanese carriers.

Some way down the line I hope there will be another update for the carriers.

Post by **Moggy** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 2:55 pm

Kurt may be doing the Zeros, Vindicator and Marauder, so the the aircraft package will await developments. Many thanks to Kurt whose aircraft were and are at the heart of this addon.

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 9:05 am

Moggy,

Have you tried to "insert" Pobs' carriers yet?

Post by **Moggy** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 10:23 am

Hello Anthony,

I don't think there will be any problems in inserting Pobs' 3d carrier models into Midway, but:

(1) We have a 3d model for the US carriers, but also need others for the Japanese heavy and light carriers. I'm hoping these will come out of CAW, and that I can do a "carrier update" at that time

(2) We need to develop the "long leg" FM for all the relevant aircraft to enable them to "land" on the carriers and deal with a problem with AI behaviour.

Somewhere in the exe are numbers which control the behaviour of the AI after landing, and it would be nice to locate those and stop the AI planes wandering off into the sea after landing.

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 12:25 pm

Who is working on the flight models? Have they changed from the original Midway flight models?

Post by **Moggy** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 12:54 pm

No new work has been done on the Midway flight models. When the first version was released these were a collection of existing and new FMs some modified by Flyright, with the carrier aircraft modified by me to include the catapault effect to get them off the carrier flight decks in the space allowed.

I was waiting for the CAW flight models to be finished so that any necessary changes to allow for the carrier landings could be transfered across to the Midway aircraft. Pobs was working on the "long leg" FM for the carrier aircarft in CAW, but its one of many things he has on hand.

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 1:07 pm

Is Pobs in this workgroup then?

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 1:09 pm

Is there a way to view the group members like there is for the whole "gen" member list?

Sorry for bugging you with questions but I may work out what I can help with. Mainly the long leg flight models. I just don't want to duplicate work, which is why you set this up in the first place innit?? :wink:

Post by **Moggy** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 4:59 pm

Yes - that is why :wink:

Questions welcome!

To see the memberships of groups of which you are a member, click on the usergroups icon at the top of the forum page. This gives you a drop down list of groups of which you are a member. Just select the relevant one and click "view information". You should then see the member list and other information.

If you sign up for the CAW group you can review the postings there about the carriers and FMs