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RAZBAM proudly presents: The AV-8B Harrier II Plus for FSX

Thank you to JIMJAM and the others that have answered, I think you're giving a more objective opinion of whats going on. I must say before I go further that I am a happy RAZBAM customer (I have the Prowler) and I really like the direction they take with their projects/products. VTOL is just very gimmacky every time it's used, and I don't blame them for trying. Hopefully they are able to sort it out because I hate that VTOL always ends up being "jerry-rigged" in every product it's ever used in (I have the Alphasim Osprey and it's the same there. Everytime you articulate the nacelles it drops out of the sky momentarily before it's able to "catch" itself).

And not to end it on a sour note against this product or RAZBAM I also must say that I'm still considering buying it just to have it. :) Because it is visually stunning and I really would like to have a nice looking Harrier with a top notch VC.
 
IanHenry- The airbrake automatically comes out and thats normal. Whats not normal is that you can extend it in fast ff and go from 300k to 200 in seconds. Thats easily adjusted in the cfg but how does it effect the Vtol? Man I can only imagine trying to code vtol in FSX. Gotta be a major pita. They got more patience than I do. The Dino F-35 is amazing but I imagine it gives the programmer alot more freedom and wiggle room when its a experimental,relatively unknown computer controlled aircraft.
I just made some more attempts at taming this beast and as confused as ever. Some take off vtol are smooth while others the nose bucks up. I made some attempts at 20-60 degree nozzle stol landings. Some approaches the plane locks into vtol even though the indicated speed is 60-90. You cannot pull back on the stick to bleed off speed since it just knocks it out of level,climbs and/or into another flight mode.:isadizzy: If you try to reduce throttle the plane will descend and often you cannot power your way out of it.
What I do now is just come in 300 ft agl slow it down to 130 or so, slam in 85 nozzle and ride it like a wild horse till I get stabilized. Then it a matter of getting it down. Either it really,really wants to come down or it doesnt. Gotta say this thought. After wrangling with the Harrier the last few hours, I jumped into the Flight Replicas BF-109 which is a handfull and it felt like flying the default 172 lol. The Harrier is frustrating,aggrevating,annoying but I have always been a glutton for punishment. I did get it down on the Enterprise. Most all the flight deck guys jumped over board and I was arrested by the Mps but I did not have to go swimming:icon_lol:
 
I think that the F35 is done by Rob Baerendregt,the guy who made most of the very interesting gauges that permits our add-on to hover... I think also he's involve in SimSkunkWorks Harrier, which I tested for the minutes free, and seems to be very convincing, on this aspect.

For the rest, the speedbrake is obviously a problem, if you try to dive on high speed, then deploy the speed brakes, the plane will go under 100 knts... and then have a very erratic behaviour. That's definitely a bug, in my opinion (and on my computer, for what I know).
 
It looks to me like the airbrake comes out when you lower the undercarriage. If that's the case, then taking off conventionally is going to be a real problem?

Ian.
 
wapanomi said:
I think that the F35 is done by Rob Baerendregt,the guy who made most of the very interesting gauges that permits our add-on to hover... I think also he's involve in SimSkunkWorks Harrier, which I tested for the minutes free, and seems to be very convincing, on this aspect.

For the rest, the speedbrake is obviously a problem, if you try to dive on high speed, then deploy the speed brakes, the plane will go under 100 knts... and then have a very erratic behaviour. That's definitely a bug, in my opinion (and on my computer, for what I know).
Click to expand...


I have a question. Wapanomi, I was wondering if you had any part in the SSW Manual? I have heard few conflicting reports by a few people you did their manual, and instead of me just speculating, I wanted to ask, in case I was wrong.
 
IanHenry said:
It looks to me like the airbrake comes out when you lower the undercarriage. If that's the case, then taking off conventionally is going to be a real problem?

Ian.
Click to expand...

The airbrake automatically comes out when the landing gear is deployed.

You can see it in this video:

Conventionally it does increase the length needed to take off, which is why they recommend to do so with Nozzles at 10°
 
@Timghetta :

Can you please explain what you mean by "few conflicting reports by a few people you did their manual" ? I'm far to have a good english, but if I understand well, that's very disappointing...

Just in case, I've nothing to do with SimSkunkWorks, I'm not even their customer. The first reason is that the modeling of their Harrier is really too bad, the second is that I was waiting for the Razbam Harrier, and the final was the way they act in the community. But for this last one, I'm beginning to wonder if they were alone...

So, I've answered your question, could you please answer mine ?

Regards,
 
wapanomi said:
@Timghetta :

Can you please explain what you mean by "few conflicting reports by a few people you did their manual" ? I'm far to have a good english, but if I understand well, that's very disappointing...

Just in case, I've nothing to do with SimSkunkWorks, I'm not even their customer. The first reason is that the modeling of their Harrier is really too bad, the second is that I was waiting for the Razbam Harrier.

So, I've answered your question, could you please answer mine ?

Regards,
Click to expand...


I have heard from some people saying you did their manual, I just wanted to ask. See I have also seen you posting about the Harrier in other forums sort of bashing the efforts of Razbam. Along with the efforts of SSW attacking Razbam's Harrier, I just was unsure. I do thank you for clearing it up for me, I didn't want to listen to the rumors and give you the respect of asking you personally.

My humble apologizes, I just don't understand why we have these competitions between 2 companies doing the same aircraft and meanwhile all of the mud slinging which is uncalled for.
 
I completely agree with you, and you don't have to apologize, you made anything wrong.

But I'm very surprised you talk about posts that I would have wrote that were "razbam bashing"... I've talk about this Harrier only on a few places : here, of course, and I've never be unfair, I think. I also speak about this on the Razbam facebook page, being the first to post a comment, and this was a very positive one.

I post on the Razbam forum on a place call "bug report", and there, that's true, I've reported bugs. None of them being false...

I've open a thread on the french forum "pilote virtuel" to announce to the community the Harrier was on sale, and you can read my posts there, they remains positive, even if I've talk about my difficulties to make a vertical landing. Those difficulties become the bug known as "brick wall", so I think it was not bashing anything. The same on another french forum, "Check six", a very nice community with very interesting simmers. If you can read french, you will see that I certainly am the most positive guy about this Harrier there, if you think that our forums are made to share, not to make publicity.

Final : I was the guy that announce the patch there, and you can see how confident this announcement was. You can read here this thread. Now, there are people that asks me if the patch solves the reported problems, and I've a real problem to answer, because I know that if they experiment the problems I (and JimJam) have, they will regret trusting me.

Sorry for this answer, but - and I don't speak of you - what you say is that there are people who are "bashing" me because I don't say everything is wonderful... That's not good for us if speaking freely and faitly lead to such comments. And this time, the guys at SSW have nothing to do with that.
 
Don't get pulled off topic. The only reason I have not posted at Raz is I am to lazy to jump through the hoops and register at yet another forum. I am 2 or so weeks into recovering from a total OS reinstall and STILL have not got back to where I was. Not being able to log in or forgetting another password and I am close to having a fit!

Now back to the Raz Harrier.

The VID..... I wanna do THAT. Or something thats close to it.....

If the plane cannot, then just like the real Harrier what the point? Makes good screenshots I guess.

Just like in FSX, there are jets that are faster,carry more, go further, better agility................

But this one Hovers.

I saw on the Raz forum where a guy basically says the Harrier's abilty to hover is overated and used seldomly in real life. Which ties into what I said above. Whats the point?

Cuz its loud,looks cool and hovers.

Otherwise IMO its like Playboy without the centerfold. A Ferrari with a electric motor. A..... ,Well you get it.

Wake me when there is progress.
 
This is a really good thread and should be used to discuss the Razbam AV-8B Harrier II. We don't need to discuss bashing or get into a complaining contest. Please confine your comments to the Harrier itself. The comments can be constructive critique but need to stay positive. Personal comments are not acceptable. This is not directed to anyone in particular. I just want to see this thread stay positive. Ron and staff do a great job and we are thankful for such a wonderful addition to our hobby.

JimJam: I had the same thing happen to my OS two weeks ago. I am just now getting things going again. Really fun when that happens. Even with backups you always lose something. I am just now finding out what was lost. Backups save the day.
 
Hi to all...
I did't want to answer on this thread because I found it unkind for Razbam but I want to explain only three things, and they are not about the Razbam model, but about the few things said about SimSkunkWorks. First of all the manual of our Harrier is selfmade, based on the original one.
It is always sure that each of us has different view about flight simulation, different interest and from these interests everyone makes his choice....as Wapanomi well said.
About the old disagreements on this forum with one...and I say one of the member of the SimSkunkWorks, I want to say that one member from the developing team of the SSW is not all the team....we are on this forum, we read and we answer I think always in a kind, and fair way.
The last thing is that as SSW, we have never attack Razbam. We saw some video showing the Razbam Harrier, and our Harrier, and many had thought that user was someone of us, making video to show strange behaviour or else. That user is NOT member of the developing team, for sure it is one our Beta tester, and also a friend, but what he makes do not come by a particular request from us.
Sorry for this post, and if it were unappropriate I understand...so if the moderator had to cancel it..no problem...
Best regards
Emanuele
 
Thanks Emanuele, let us move on and get back to comments about the the Razbam Harrier. Your point is made and thanks for your positive comments. Back to the Razbam Harrier as the focus of this thread.
 
I hope this is not too long for you.

I understand that your fascination with the Harrier mostly lies with the ability to do helicopter stuff like hover and vertical take-off and landings. We at RAZBAM strove to bring that aircraft to life in FSX, but unfortunately FSX is a simulation software and an old one at that. There are severe limitations and one of those is that it does not support vectorial thrust. We found a workaround, for us it is a radical way to achieve vectorial thrust. Is it perfect? No, but I believe that it delivers the feel within the limits of FSX.

There is no secret in vectorial thrust, if you google hard and long enough you will get all the equations that make it work in real world aircraft. Unfortunately FSX is not real world and those equations are not enough. Some of the problems you experience is the FSX ceiling hitting your head. FSX does not know what to do with the aircraft when it is on hover, it is not an helicopter and yet it is not moving. It gives stall warnings and yet it keeps in the air. So sometimes it just says WTF and do whatever it thinks works the best. If we tried to control every single aspect of the flight, you would have had to shut down almost everything in FSX to keep processor power. That is unrealistic and not fun, so we decided to sometimes let FSX do its stuff and try to keep them as low as possible. We are near the limit in FSX capacity, perhaps a couple of inches short of it. We got some really strange non documented errors during development.

The best solution would be to create my own physics engine and use it inside FSX, unfortunately that is not possible. To my knowledge only Prepar3D has that ability, but then LM knows the limits of FSX and decided to just bypass them.

Second, the Harrier is a military aircraft. For the military, the ability to hover is not as important as the ability to take-off from short runways with a usable payload, and everybody knows that bombs are heavy. So, no. Real World Harriers mostly do conventional take-offs and semi jet-borne landings (the actual technical term). The vertical stuff is left for shows and demonstrations. This means that if you follow the manual, then you will get the same limitations that the real aircraft has. Both in jet borne and aerodynamic flight.

Don't feel cheated because the aircraft does not do the things you though it should do. It is an amazing aircraft and a joy to fly it. Even its imperfect vectorial thrust gives you a modicum of the feeling a real world Harrier pilot experiences, without the complication that you don't put your well being in peril should something happen.

I hope you enjoy it. Ron, I and everybody who make the RAZBAM team put a lot of hard work and we left something of us in it.
 
Once again, thanks RAZBAM for this great aircraft and the quick update!!:salute:

The aircraft is now much more stable and though I agree that STOVL is tricky, everyone must remember it is very tricky in reality, too! It takes a lot of practice to fly this bird safely in all situations. I think this is very well reflected in the RAZBAM model. This is not a C172, that you take for a ride around the countryside!
Things get a bit easier when you landing spot is moving forward at 30 kts and you have a good 20 kts wind over the flight deck summing up to some 50 kts over the wings, but then of course that landing spot would be pitching and rolling (which we don't have in FSX). I think patience and a lot of practice is really the key to this aircraft.
Having said that, the weapons are great! Even the missiles and rockets do now hit and explode! Marvelous! Really looking forward for the avionics update - for HMS Ark Royal to land upon. Oh, once again, what's the status of the "Principe de Asturias"? can anybody comment on that?

Best regards,

Seawing
 
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