IRIS PRO Series F-14A & F-14B Tomcat

[IanP]

It's a nice one to trap, as well. I managed it twice having not practiced for a long time, with no bolters and no missed approaches. I'm impressed so far. Now just need to convert the Black Aces livery to work on it when I get around to doing so.

Ian P.

 

[Marwal]

Virtual Cockpit Fix

How can the virtual Cockpit be reactivated for FSX?

 

[modelr]

OOO, sounds like a dropped download. I've e-mailed you a direct download link just in case...

Thanks, David. Got it downloaded and flying. :ernae::ernae:

(That's why I'm late replying.) This bird is FUN! But you GOTTA read the manual! :isadizzy: Now if I could just get my TrackIR4 to work in FSX as well as it does in FS9.

 

[modelr]

I was flying the VX-4 Clean bird, and the eyepoint was outside and looking backwards in the VC!! :isadizzy:

I checked the cfg, and it had been changed! Luckily, the correct eyepoint had just been remarked out (//)
so I just put it back, and everything great.

After a couple tries, I found this bird is very responsive in the landing pattern, and can be greased in after just a few attempts. Glide path indications on the hud are great.

Gotta go fly some more. :ernae:

 

[Smudge]

OOoo,

Thanks Don, don't know how I missed that one. Will build a hotfix for it.

 

[piperarcherpilot]

Due to Holiday travel, I dont have my joystick or throttle quadrant, but I've been playing with my recent purchase anyway

One question; Why can I not reduce power once I'm in afterburner? For instance, if I push "F3," the throttles slowly increase power to just before afterburner, and they 'jump' into AB. Pushing "F2" has no effect. I have to bring the engines to idle "F1" and then increase power again...

Liking it so far...even though I cant 'feel' the plane with my flight stick until i get back home. Just confused about this throttle issue.

Ideas? I have the newest version of FSUIPC... 4.20 I think?

 

[Smudge]

SP2 standalone and SP2/Acceleration codes the afterburner differently, and as such we've completely removed the afterburner controller in V1.1 which is currently on our store and has been given to our vendors.

Long and the short of it is, we don't know why the afterburner effect being linked to the throttle causes problems, so we can't really address it. As it is, the afterburner has been removed from the systems file, and requires manual use of Shift+F4 to use the burner dynamic.

This will also eliminate the nasty thing of not being able to throttle back out of afterburner.

 

[piperarcherpilot]

Thanks for the reply, David. BTW, I have Acceleration/SP2. Thats sounds strange that it is coded differently...I wonder why other planes work okay like the default F18 and Aerosoft's F16. One of those things, I guess...

If I log in to the IRIS store and re-download the F14, will I get v1.1 or do I need a patch?

 

[Smudge]

I don't know about the Aerosoft F-18, however the Acceleration Hornet uses three new entries in the aircraft.cfg file to provide stepped afterburner thrust.

Those items are specific to Acceleration, and are NOT part of the SP2 standalone product. As such, we incorporated a gauge which would turn on the standard FS Afterburner if the throttle was greater than 90%.

Unfortunately due to the way the FS afterburner works, this caused more problems than solutions in SP1/SP2, so we decided to just remove it completely for the time being. At least as far as being controlled by the throttle is concerned.

Anyway, to get 1.1, it does require a full download of the original aircraft, so log back into the store and redownload the aircraft package. I'll gladly renew the download links if anyone has run out.

However, if you all find that you're happy with it as is (in acceleration) then don't worry about updating.

 

[modelr]

David

Don't know if my copy you provided the 27th is the updated model or not, but my download link on my account page is still no good. Tried it again, just now, (7:41 am Central mountain time, USA, 1:41pm GMT) and it took almost two minutes to get an exe download, which was empty, 0 bytes.

 

[modelr]

Question to the panel gurus. I was getting ready to install the A2A lites, using the full set cfg that I have for the FS9 version, and I noticed that the panel gauge is at position
" [Vcockpit01]
gauge56=shockwave_lights!SW Lights_gear, 1,1,1,1 //shockwave light "

which is also used by the
"gauge03=F-14_Systems!SYSTEM_Onboard, 1,1,1,1"
(renumbering the gauge properly NOT the question, I know that part.)

My question, should I move the shockwave gauge, or is it ok there, since this is an "invisible" location, I believe.

 

[Smudge]

Don,

Use the details I gave you the other day to redownload 1.1 from there.

Don't worry about the shockwave lights though, 1.1 contains the light entry for a landing light if your shockwave lights are installed..

 

[modelr]

:ernae:

Edit: Thanks David, downloading now. Luckily I haven't discarded that email link, yet.

BTW, the cfg I have covers ALL the lites on the FS-9 F-14. I don't know if it will work on the FSX bird yet. I thought since the paints do, the lights should be in the same locations. Am I wrong?? I can paste the cfg if someone wants it.

 

[piperarcherpilot]

David, strange thing...I downloaded and installed v1.1 and all seems to be fixed but in a different way than you described. I have CTRL + SHFT + F4 linked to the AB toggle, but after the update it does not work. The engine seems to go into AB automatically and it comes back out of AB with just throttle movements. I thought maybe it was just the visual effect, but Fuel Flow reflects that it is indeed going into Afterburner. Strange...all seems to be fixed and it works flawlessly without the need of a key command for afterburner. Dont know how it works or why, but it does. Thank you.

 

[Smudge]

I've got to reissue a small hotfix anyway, so I'll look into that and apply it if necesssary.

 

[piperarcherpilot]

Oh well, my point was that it works well how it is, it just works differently than it says it should. I would rather have the AB tied to throttle (like it works in v1.1 for me at least) than have it tied to a key command (like it says it should in v1.1 users guide). I guess my point is after 1.1, the afterburner seems to work as it should have in v1.0.

IF you're going to release a hotfix; Two other tiny things i've noticed 1) On the control stick at the top, there seems to be a double faint copy of the trigger text under the white letters, and 2) I was wondering why the area on the panel above the buttons above the turn slip indicator seems to be 'airbrushed out'. Anyway, these are little gripes. Great product, great price, lots of fun!

 

[tigisfat]

I'm highly interested in this product, but I don't know enough about it to make such an expensive leap. I don't want to sound rude, but here are my concerns put bluntly. If anyone from IRIS feels like responding to help me out, I'd be very grateful.

1. The flight model. I've never flown an IRIS product with a decent flight model. It says it's been reworked, but that doesn't mean anything to me because I've never flown the original. I can't invest in another product that flies like the texan II.

2. The VC. Like everyone else these days, I run hi-res. The advertisements are obviously not hi-res. I'm not impressed with those shots, and I'd like to think it would look a ton better on my monitor with FSX running. Can anyone tell me if it gets better?

3. Functionality. How does it compare to the aerosoft F-16 or the stock hornet? There isn't much in the advertising to reveal how in-depth it actually is. Can anyone spare some veyr specific details?

4. The afterburners. Do I actually have to engage them with a keypress or not?


As a side note, the external shots look awesome!!

 

[mjrhealth]

VC is fine and i have no issues with it, hud is good and really helps when landing. Flight model, easy to fly, auto wing sweep seems to behave as expected. Just a lovely model. Noew to get a hang of AOA and not side slipping on that last bit. Be nice to have pedals.

 

[GR27]

No worries.

I've set up a imagetool bat file to do the conversions.

You'll need imagetools.exe which came with the SDK or can be found online

( it's also in the
SimObjects\Airplanes\IRIS F-14A Tomcat Clean\texture.vc folder )


Copy the below into a txt file save and change the extention to .BAT
then
1) Download FS9 repaint and extract
2) Place the .bat and imagetool.exe in the extracted folder
3) double click the bat file and wait for it to finish.
All being well you will have a folder containing the required .dds files
Take the folder remove the bat file and imagetool.exe and install into FSX as usual.

imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r boattail_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r centergear_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r fuselage_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r leftengine_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r leftglove_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r lefttail_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r nose_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r pylons.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r rightengine_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r righttail_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r rightwing_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r maingear_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r missiles.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r seats_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r leftwing_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r rightglove_T.bmp
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r pilots_T.bmp
 
del *.bmp
 
copy maingear_T.dds maingear_left_T.dds
copy maingear_T.dds maingear_right_T.dds
copy pilots_T.dds a_pilot_T.dds
copy pilots_T.dds a_rio_T.dds
del pilots_T.dds
del maingear_T.dds

Thank you for this.
Where do i put the file after i change it to .dds, in what model, and what do i add to the aircraft.cfg because it is not the same as FS9 aircraft.cfg?
Thank you.

 

[pernik]

It's a little complicated, easier to do than describe.
Lets say we've found a nice VF-2 repaint, you've converted all the files and are left with a single folder called texture.vf-2. You want to apply this to the F-14A Air Interdiction model.

1) Place the new texture folder in the IRIS F-14A Tomcat Clean folder

(\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Airplanes\IRIS F-14A Tomcat Clean)

2) Open an existing clean texture folder,copy the texture.cfg file and paste into your new texture folder.

3) Navigate to the IRIS F14A Tomcat AInt folder

4) create a new empty folder called texture.vf-2

5) In the new folder create a new txt file and paste the below into it, save and rename as texture.cfg

[fltsim]
fallback.1=..\..\IRIS F-14A Tomcat Clean\texture.bump
fallback.2=..\..\IRIS F-14A Tomcat Clean\texture.spec
fallback.3=..\..\IRIS F-14A Tomcat Clean\texture.vc
fallback.4=..\..\IRIS F-14A Tomcat Clean\texture.parts
fallback.5=..\..\IRIS F-14A Tomcat Clean\texture.vf-2

The key line here is fallback.5 - this must point to the folder you set up previously in the Clean folder

6) Still in the AInt folder Open the Aircraft.cfg and create a new fltsim entry. I usually copy the previous one, increment the number and amend

[fltsim.xx] ------ increment this
title=IRIS F-14_V2 01 ------- make this unique
sim=F-14 FDE
model=3b
panel=
sound=
texture=vf-2 <---- new texture folder
checklists=
description=\n \n
ui_manufacturer="Grumman"
ui_type="F-14A Tomcat - "Vf-2" <---- Description
ui_variation="Air Interdiction"
ui_typerole="Single Engine Fighter"
ui_createdby="IRIS Simulations"
atc_airline=Navy
atc_flight_number=200

save and that's it.
The beauty of it is that once you have the texture installed in the Clean folder you can apply it to any model

If you wanted to apply it to the ASupp_2 model simply follow steps 3 onwards.

Hope this makes some sense, if not feel free to PM me.