We will have the update completed by June 4th but that is Saturday and nobody is online on Saturday. We think we will release it on Tuesday here at SimHQ. That give us time to put a great paint job on the Tone, perfect the missions in XP and W7, try to make a better installer and take a break. We have been beating ourselves and our friends and our vendors to death getting this out.

The Tone is a key element to the story telling since it is the origin of one of the searches. Hinch came through with an amazing model. He even does ships he dislikes better than anyone else. It deserves the 24 hours it takes to paint a great ship model more than we have to hit the deadline exactly.

Bert Ernest landing back at Eastern Island as the only survivor.



E14A1 on a catapult...not the Tone's. You will see that first in a video.



Hinch's incomparable Tone.



Dive bombers fighting float planes over Tulagi.



Sinking of the Sims and Neosho by aircraft from Zuikaku in the Coral Sea.




We will shoot some very good FRAPS videos, if possible, for teasers. This is going to be violent.

Here are a few shots I took while working through the missions one more time before handing them over to Mike and Edward to complain about.

More concise thoughts about what we are trying to accomplish with the release but we think for the first time, the words in books will be images you feel as well as fly when you are done with this set.

Banzai.

Cool Beans.

Outstanding! - looking forward to the next series.

NIELS

I don't actually dislike the Tone. She's quite handsome in a Japanese way. It's just trying to negotiate obscure plans with blurry b&w photos............. sure recipe for madness.

And to think that the French have put official ship plans on-line for hobbyists to enjoy. C'est la vie. (I wish the UK would take note.)

Paint Night...





The Tone is in Launch At Midway configuration (i.e. everyone gone but #4). Recovery at Sea configuration (above lower) where you land alongside. Normal configuration (above top).

That's pretty neat.


Wheels

Yesterday minus 69 years.


Akagi



Kaga



Soryu



Hiryu



Jimmy Thach and AAA shoot down Kobayashi Michio who holes the Yorktown anyway, dooming her.



Ships by Hinchinbrooke

Hinch,

Here's the Tone. Nice work.










Last minute changes

The "Tone" looks real nice in her paint.


Wheels

Well I'm looking forward to it. My gaming rig is Windows 7, so I completely understand the need to get that sorted out. I'm picking up Strike Fighters 2, just for this.

In the meantime, enjoy the big room with the blue ceiling and the bright light in it.

We have had to delay because the Win7 version is not up to quality yet. I think we will have the last of the tricks worked out tonight. The Win7 version is...prettier? I don't have a better word. It certain show up shortcuts I took in texturing.

I threw in the towel this morning when I could not get the LSO to appear. You need a skin folder in SF2 and it took hours to realize that. Also, the Y command (which finds the closest friendly airplane...and the things we stick on deck are "airplanes") doesn't seem to work. It's our favored way of letting you pick your carrier out of a fleet and also have a realistic pilot's view of the ship.







We would have liked to have had it out on the 4th but it has to be right. There are some issues with the clouds. They aren't as good as the ones in XP and they need to be.

We will have the decks and hangar bays populated, too.

Is this part of the Coral Sea missions?

That's just a test shot. Skins and ships are all mixed up.

Phase Two starts with Butch O'Hare, runs through Coral Sea then ends at Midway.

The finishing touches are a bear in SF2 but we should be through today, shoot some video, fix the website and release this thing.

SF2 IS a lot prettier even if it is not as refined as the XP versions. It shows up every place we took a shortcut in texturing. It also reveals what that over-doing it will be appreciated.

Here are some shots taken during testing in Windows 7:

Two from Doolittle if you choose to buzz the temple. This was originally done by Diego for YAP1. We made the roof Japanese:





The Tone sailing by the Akagi. Hinch will cringe at the water. I had not fixed the shader yet but it's still mediocre. Good smoke, though.



A very non-Japanese destroyer alongside the crushed Kaga (that needs to lower its lifeboats away, I think.)



Zero's Eye View of Torpedo 8. Instead of running the mission as a doomed TBF pilot, we ran it from the view of Japanese Ace, Shigeru Mori. When I get bored with testing, I fly this mission. It must have been something.



Lights on the lagoon beach on Midway at the start of the day for the search planes. I think IL-2/COD had a rooster that crows.



The sun comes up on June 4th. AND...the sun comes up in SF2! You take off in the gloom and the sky slowly lightens. The bright sunrise comes through the window and casts shadows in the cockpit (not trying to sound like Carl Sandberg). You land back at the lagoon in bright sunlight. (Actually, they recovered elsewhere because the bombs had started to fall. We don't have an "elsewhere".)



Bert Ernest lifting off from Midway (along with everyone else on Eastern Island) to attack the fleet discovered in the previous mission at the location you determine. You will get separated from the flight, as he did, and that is all that saves you...and him. Then you have to find a little island in the Pacific on dead reckoning...like he did. Piece of cake.






DeWitt Shumway leaving the Enterprise to go kill the last Japanese carrier, Hiryu, which is still fighting.

Our Yorktown lowered it's lifeboats but we just didn't want to put the men in them. Enough is enough.




We had to perform a little triage. Here are some things that did not make it in from our huge toy box full of new models:

We land on the beach next time so this didn't make it.



We skipped the first Darwin Raid after completing it because there is nothing for the RAAF to do.



Tex Hill and some P-40E's and terrific terrain...we couldn't squeeze it in and we didn't have time to make the cockpit.





This is our old C-47. We have a very refined new C-47 and, possibly, a C-46. We didn't have time and weren't sure if anyone would like Flying the Hump with the game engine's limitations.



A comparison between the two versions shows that SF2/Win7 is superior in many was as far as pure graphics. As far as being able to set a scene, Deuces weather is wildly superior to what we have to settle for in SF2. SF2 chokes on it while SF1 can make a real sky. Personally, I prefer SF2 because it loads faster but as a pilot I appreciate realistic clouds, not arcade clouds that people might imagine to be real. We are working on it.

The delay is the May 2011 patch. People will tend to want to "upgrade" even if it is not an upward movement.

First, the disclaimer. We are aware that Thirdwire is selling a "light sim" that does not require geographical realism or realistic objects. It does not rely upon realistic situations or accurate recreations. It is a first person shooter. They are not concerned with 3rd parties and, especially, us. We get it.

But in trying to incorporate the changes, we found we just cannot. "Why" reveals an interesting comparison.

Pearl Harbor is a mess. Possibly fixable but for what gain?

Here is one of the oldest standard items and the only ship with a hull. Oops! Now the keel is on top of the surface.


Which means that the sunken Arizona is now on top of the harbor again and the tie down pilings are floating in the air.


And the trees. All the work done to mask the lumpy shag carpet that is WOV terrain, is now reversed.


And the shadows. What is this, I wonder?


Still, we were thinking of remaking Oahu and putting another destroyer in place to see if that worked and would wait until the next patch ( or the next or the next ) addressed the tree and shadow issues...if they do. But our reason for wanting to "upgrade" was because the missing Y function had been restored. This allowed formation flight and watching the LSO more realistic from a player's point of view...or a pilot's.

But to get this:

(The LSO)


You have to accept this: (that is the carrier's shadow, not the Wildcat's)


Compared to this one from the pre-patched version. (actually in the much more refined XP version)


The game engine is capable of producing amazing images.








It is very adaptable and Thirdwire's open design allows us to build things with their tools. But this patch is a move backwards for us.

There is also the not-small quirk of removing from the game a characteristic that I thought was very bright. Any aircraft carrier that had aircraft on deck, would accelerate to flank speed and turn into the wind. Makes sense. Right? Even though Thirdwire's program runs counter to the aviation and meteorological convention that wind direction is always given FROM whence it blows and not TO where, the carriers added their speed to the aircraft (as in real life) and the planes launched. That's gone now. While we can go back and reprogram all our carrier launches to go faster during that leg, the increased speed does not now seem to enter the formula. Thus, aircraft with marginal capabilities (like the TBD) can launch (because they are on a catapult program) but cannot sustain flight because they cannot accelerate fast enough. To increase it's ability to accelerate toys with it's storied horrible performance. A Devastator that can outrun a Zero is okay for a fantasy but not acceptable for a historical reproduction, is it?

So we will quit screwing with it and get this Phase out unpatched. Without the patch, it has been done for some time. I will update the website and it will be released as soon as possible. We started this and we will finish it.

Hi Zero,

if you consider it better to drop the latest - or future - updates, do so. your product is worth the money and the wait. take your time.

cheers
Phamtuan

Knowing that the greatest thing about thirdwire sims is the mod available for them, I simply cannot understand why TK insists on releasing patches, or changes to the sims, that render mods unplayable.

I had this same thing happen with Falcon 4.0, where all of the work I had done was trashed when the sim "upgraded". It is enough to make you want to quit.

Very nice pics

Thanks.

To be fair, TK advised Mike to put our water settings in DATA.INI back to stock. The wierd shadow and visible hulls went away. Now we are trying to recall why we changed them in the beginning...or if we did at all. We will try that at sea to see what happens.