Hi all, I have seen that there are several new "Mods" in development (eg the simulator to 32bit color and the wonderful textures Double_Patch), but you have not been heard of them, like the Super Team Hornet, the truth, I would carry a great joy if it were possible to know how are all these promising projects because I think the Janes FA-18 will remain a great simulator for long. Thank you very much and sorry for my English. A greeting!!

+1
I also read something about the sourcecode being worked on...

The members are currently busy with real world life. Without the hard push and motivation to the members it gets set on the back-burner.

I will say this...

We are always looking for very good C++ and/or DirectX programmers for reasons I can't explicitly type out.

JF18 can be the next F4... we just need the man-power of programmers

It's a real pity there isn't the manpower to hand.

An F4 type update for this sim would be amazing.

I would pay for it, and I'm sure plenty of others would too.

Have you tried begging the BMS chaps to see if they would be interested to give some assistance?

Source code for JF18!? If this is true, perhaps for manpower it just needs to be better advertised?

Great, thanks for the reply, I look forward to any new development, and well, I'm not programmer (or know where to get it), but hey, if you need someone to help, here I am, if only to tell you how good you are, Thank you!!

It's not a bad idea actually, but Joe will have to ask. He's the 'hancho' of our group.

IAM put it best when he says a good source helped him along the way to modify the hex code. We just can't let the good source help out everyone as far as advertizing.

to me, while the TSH project alive, and geniuses making changes, and it bothers me not knowing programming issues, so all I can do is say thanks for this project that will not die. THANKS!!

We could not charge for it - certainly that has never been the plan. And so there is part of the problem - we don't see how we could really go commercial with this. The original IP rights will have to be protected, as it has been with all our mods.

Begging hasn't worked, and yes we have been in contact, discretely, with a number of other groups in recent years. All we can say.

Ripcord

I don't agree. If we came out and posted in huge block letters that we have the SC, so everybody come have at it, then I am sure we would get bombarded with more people like me that are simply not programmers, but still well-meaning supporters wanting to be involved. In the end the sim still goes nowhere. It's just a helluva lot of work for volunteer code guys to do without pay. Some think it would be simpler to just code the sim all over again from scratch. Even if we had/have the SC, not sure it would really help.

Ripcord

Jane's F18 recoded to newer machine specs???? Now that would be something to experience!!!

Is there any way to get the lighter water color for the Iraq theater?

Especially with DCS and VRS. Imagine if VRS took their work to DCS :\

If you modify the unipal files or sparkle.pcs

Yes I have imagined that already! Except the one thing where FSX/VRS will prevail is that they have the whole world to fly in, not just a little corner of it.

Right, and VRS is just 3 guys. :p

If you guys are in need of a programmer still, send me a PM.

Hmmm... so...
I won't ask if the sour***ode is available or not (*), since I guess I won't get a direct answer , but anyway, I'd be more than happy with 3-4 simple thingies...

1. Both digital and analog ADI balls showing actual pitch degrees.

2. A WORKING analog altimeter. Right now, it does not show tens of thousand feet, looking at it you can't tell if you're flying at 1000 or 10000 ft, 2340 or 23400 ft... So in case of HUD failure you need the digital ADI in a MFD... an ADI that does not show pitch degrees... :/

3. RUDDER!!! We need a working rudder! I don't remember where, but I did read that the Superbug has a "big rudder authority". In the sim we have...well, none. :/ It just works like a spring, you release it and the AC returns to its original actitude.

As they say here in my country "the more sugar, the sweeter", of course, but with those 3 "little?" changes (i don't know if they are possible, to begin with), I'd be more than happy.


Regards.






















(*) BTW, is it?

It seems like we are all probably just "Wating for Godot," but the wait has been mostly good, so far. Still, the patience has waned and the crowds have thinned, although I still wait.

I'm definitely not holding my breath for any updates like those. Perfectly happy to fly the sim as it is and wait hopefully for a DCS F-18 :p

That, or Seven G.

Kolmo,

Trust me, we are definitley looking into all those matters plus more.

Glad to read that, Rudel.

Weird how the human brain works. A bad day, bad week... bad year in short. And just reading something like that makes me a little happier.
Thx for all your work and effort put into polishing this little jewel.

Regards.

PM Sent.... I recognize your name from the F4AF forums.

I sent him one too, and posted on TSH private

Holy dog crap please tell me you have the source and the coders. All hail Janes FA-18.

Janes just brings back good memories all around.

While it's true TSH Mod is a marvel as it is, if I may, let me request these two fixes for the next release (if at all possible):
1.) HUD and subtitle fonts that is easily readable. Currently I still have trouble reading them even with bigger font option selected.
2.) Prevent radio calls from overlapping each other. Since I can't read the subtitle, I rely on listening to radio calls to know the instructions.
Oh, and I believe you will find a trick to fix slowdown when the radar A/A Mode is searching for target? Well, whatever you do, thanks for the great mod!

We know exactly why the AA slowdown occurs. We'll have things fixed in time

Cheers

Great to hear that. Btw, forget about HUD/Subtitle font issue. I reinstall the sim and TSH v4.02 on Win7, and now the damn thing is crystal clear. Even without big font option selected. Dunno why. So, this means that now there's only one thing to fix until I can call it perfect: overlapping radio calls. That one's getting on my nerve already, I wish I could turn the radio off..

You may already know about this but you can turn off some of the radio calls. Ignoring other issues if you don't have overlapping calls you could run into a situation, for example, where radio messages are getting queued up, you get hit by a missile and a few seconds later you hear the warning about the missile tracking towards you.

Elf

Thanks for the information Elf; it's always great knowing you're still lurking around

Is there a reason why this talent doesn't move to DCS?

I don't think any of our guys know the lau programming yet. The carrier ops s top notch still, compared to any simulation. With what we have now, and with time, we can make this sim much better graphically and more realistic.

Because they like having AG Radars????

There is so much in FA-18 that isn't in DCS, most importantly (for me) immersion.
The DCS sims (and I have them all, except CA) have excellent graphics, very good FM (but maybe not for the add-ons...) and excellent systems modelling.
But no immersion, and a very boring locale.
Just wish FA-18 worked for me still...
Cheers
Keith

And with some creativity, the immersion factor being all important, F18 now has NATO supporting Free Syrian Army forces from a carrier in the eastern med. It's just been very hard keeping up with the news!

goddamn it, I really really really wish TSH, Seven-G and VRS team joined up and create together the ultimate F/A-18E Simulator! and to lesser degree perhaps all version of F-18 family...

I mean, yes seriously ffs... there are many F-18 sim out there actually than any other modern military fighters/multirole jets, including the supposedly mother of all military flight sim Falcon series... think about it, we had F-18 from graphsim to F-18 Korea, Digital Integration's F-18, Jane's F-18 and now we have F-18 from VRS, upgrade for Jane's F-18, Seven-G's F-18 and upcoming DCS F-18 (whether or not it's going to be true is quite irrelevant for this discussion because after all ED registered the domain of F-18C so at some point they must really think about it seriously) and 3rd party DCS F-18E!!!

that's around 10 different products across different times, and still not counting other sim I don't know about (if there any other?!), F-18 is everyone favourite in PC simulator apparently...

so please is there any possibility of all you guys join together? lol...

oh btw lol, so what's new with this Jane's F-18? I mean yes what's new? is it actually possible to add any new content to it (after TSH 4.02)? what, when and how (if it already exist)?

some above spoke about programming, what does that mean, does that mean you guys have the source code and plan to do things with it or what?

Okay thanks for the reply.

yes

And now the code can compile in VS2010 with DirectX 8 library, thanks to Mgarnett. We're just another step closer to getting into the DirectX9 and hopefully 10 libraries.

As of now we're having a few possible DLL hiccups.

After all these years, this is the best thing to happen.Hopefully we can fly a better Jane's Fa-18,better than every way we have now.

omg omg omg? if you guys can do things like Free Falcon or even Falcon BMS with Jane's F/A-18 then it's going to be the best news in military jet sim genre at this decade! well at least until DCS F-18 came out lol...

a high fidelity fully clickable cockpit is IMO the first step though, after these falcons, dcs and vrs, the non clickable cockpit in jane's f/a-18 feel prehistoric

It will still miss a ground radar

Oh, and I bet DCS won't be able to re-create carrier ops just as good as the old Jane's team did back then...

Well actually the next DCS aircraft will be US multirole aircraft which will no doubt have A/G radar, the DCS F-15E will also have A/G radar and 2 seat MP. (DCS F-15E from Iris) ED is helping 3rd party devs make these addons. BTW DCS will have better carrierops with F-14D, F/A-18E and AV8B in development by 3rd party. So far FSX has the best carrierops for a sim, FC2 also has Carrierops for the Su33 but no doubt if a 3rd party dev wanted ground crew on the deck like in DIs Superhornet no doubt they could.

Congrats to TsH for getting the source code best of luck making Janes F/A-18E a beter sim now you finally have the source code. My advice go crazy with the source code and make a mean as version of it.

+1 Yeah,what he said...........

These are all very great news but stating that everything will be better at this point is pure speculation


Let's just wait and see - if all that happens and is better than the old dinosaur that Jane's is, we'll all benefit from it!

Cheers!

A new work on JFA-18 sounds AMAZING!

Is it already the time to ask for a changelog or screenies?

Best regards
blue_plasma

Way too early to be talking about change logs, and screenies are going to reveal little at this point. But hell, if we can a DX8 version of this up and running on win7 machines, especially 64 bit machines, then believe me we'll let you know.

Now the word is out, so it is perhaps not too early to spread the news. We need a few more C++ coders on the team to help us move this along, so it's just word of mouth recruitment.

it can already run at win 7 64 here...

Runs fine on my machine here. Win 7 64 bit. Using TSH 3.06.

just a thought, how about sharing any info or coding from this JF-18 source code to the DCS/3rd party DCS who build the F-18 series or even other groups like seven-g or vrs? will that be beneficial to the whole community? heck who knows maybe this can save coretex design many precious time on building the DCS F-18E? the VRS team for example, candidly admitted that they borrowed some weapons/avionics function they didn't know from JF-18.

speaking about F-18 sim, I stumbled upon combatsim old review/comparison between DISH & JF18 and saw this



curious, is that true? what kind of RWR info? is that the some kind of arrows pointing where the potential threats directions are? how come VRS team 'missed it'? I thought that was fiction?

Good luck JF-18 and TSH. I believe this is a long time wish of many. As fate have it this finally happened. 'nuff said CHEERS!

This would be a very bad idea and I'm pretty sure DCS, 7G, VRS and any other respectable business would say no anyways - imagine the wide opened door to serious lawsuits if EA code was found in other companies products - even "borrowing" some concepts would be highly illegal.

Each sim you reference has it's own specific limitations and challenges and there are surely some things would be useful from Janes FA-18, if we could somehow just cut and paste those features in -- but it's code and it's not that easy, even if it was legal. Probably not even possible, in fact. Would be easier to just code it in there from scratch.

All they need to do is play the thing and be inspired by it!
And Longbow too for that matter (and BoB).

As technically good as the ED sims are, they are still aimed at chess players ... I'm convinced that neither they (nor Oleg) ever played the older sims.

Cheers
Keith

Pretty sure Wags has played Janes F/A 18 a time or two.

Wags might be the only guy over there that for sure knows what 'damage-tracking' means -- that and many other key features that Janes FA-18 has that their sim does not. All sims have their limitatios. For them I think the key is to keep their eye on the ball and not get distracted with all the many possibilities. They have proven to be good at that so far IMHO.

For us we'll see. We are also keeping a narrow focus (despite all my attempts to day-dream and consider larger possibilities) and the first was getting this thing to work with a newer version of DX.

...getting it to work, period, would make me very happy for a start!


...then the doors are wide open for day-dreaming!!!

I completly agree! I also think ED trends to forget that sims are in the end PC games like any other kind of PC game. This means that 'gameplay' features (which I won't mention here since these were already debated to death here in SimHQ) are together with 'full realism' (whatever that might be in/for a PC game) vital for a comercial sucess and these 'gameplay features' are definitly missing in ED sims.

Right, for me it won't run at all since going to 64-bit win 7. I guess for some it does work, still.

That is weird Ripcord, I can run it fine (the real one and even a VS6 build) under W7 x64 Ultimate.... (no compatibility mode)...

+1

Ripcord, have you read this thread? I hope it works for you.
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3479493/Installing_JF_18_in_Windows_7.html#Post3479493

From what I gathered, there appears to be bugs in the 4.02 update, causing some users not being able to run it. 3.06 is the latest stable patch put out, as proved time and time again by the VFA-41

Do you have a link for 3.06?

http://www.vfa-41.net/FA-18_Utilities.php

Been playin' a bit since the news...

I think it's also quite likely Oleg did play the older sims. You only need to look at the number of things in the earlier IL-2 releases that were nicked straight out of the old European Air War.

IL-2's biggest innovations were graphical and proprietorial (ie the grim skill with which they impeded modding...)

Hey, my first post here in many, many years!

And the first since rediscovering my ancient SIM-HQ password.

UGH! Wanting to re configure key binding in game I ran into the JOYHAT1 bug tried to remove it from the keys.ini and...



I pressed Yes


Any guesses as to how to remove it?

Wow Ghost...lol. Is it read only?

DOH!

Flying over Afghanistan in Operation Anaconda.

Intel map below:



Whale's Back on western side of Shah-i-Kot Valley. Takur Ghar to south east.

Lots of XCAS coordinating with ground-based FACs. Flying from carrier in northern Arabian Sea, ingress over Pakistan, and hitting vul time over eastern Afghanistan.

Terrain is Iraq with winter landpal.

Still lots of action to wring out of this sim.

I was able to edit the keys.ini. BUT, still have the bug and can't map the rest of my buttons.

32bit color, AA, less stuttering, and some actual frigg'n rudder authority. Oh, and either a helmet mounted sight or let the uncaged 9X circle show up on the padlocked target off the HUD. I could live with that. And 7 joystick axis per stick to show up instead of 6. Yeah. That's the ticket. Dual throttle compatibility is probably asking too much, though.

Either turn off administrator settings in Windows completely or open Notepad as an admin first, then open the keys file within that.

Hi Reticuli, our plan is to successfuly import the code over to DirectX8, with a stable version. Then we will import to DirectX9 and soforth.

Once we have a stable platform, we're going to try and fix most of the bugs already present in v1.01.

Afterwards, we can concentrate on adding upgrades, and graphics.

We are now now testing a DirectX8 build. But we have so many CTD errors at the moment.

Its hard to be patient.

Yeah but unless you know a lot more than they do,there is not much else you can do

I would like to help since I am a programmer, but due to work and family, I do not have too much time on my hands.
Maybe after my retirement.

Hope we see something before then.....

Staniol, thank you

There's not much to update. Holiday season. I wish it was Dec 2001 again, when TSHv1 was released on X-mas

You need to open notepad as admin then open file you want to edit from menu.
Or drag and drop should work.

Cheers