SWS F-4 B/N Phantom PBR released

[expat]

VF-154 was added in the PBR upgrade and doesn't exist for the original one. Matt made a couple more, I think VX-4 "Baby Blue" was one of them.

Alex - I recently bought the upgrade and there is no VF-154. Grateful if it could be posted here or somewhere to download. Shame the old repaints don't fit the new bird. Be great to replicate the extra repaint pack we had for the legacy aircraft.
Thanks!
expat

 

[JensOle]

I'm a bit late to the party regarding the Phantoms; I have given up on getting the Milviz F-4J/S to work so I have gone for the fantastic SWS B/N pack. First out from me are 2 N paints; VF-202 Superheats early 80s and VF-154 81-82-ish, both in early low vis schemes (prior to the TPS).

 

[JensOle]

I'm having a problem when attaching the SWS F-4N on the USS Coral Sea cat. The tires goes into the deck and no visible bridle. It is in 3.4. Any help is much appreciated!

 

[Randy92]

I'm having a problem when attaching the SWS F-4N on the USS Coral Sea cat. The tires goes into the deck and no visible bridle. It is in 3.4. Any help is much appreciated!

Hi Jens,

I am having the exact same problem. I submitted a support ticket on their website back in late februari. Current status is that they are still working on it.

 

[expat]

Same here - glad to see it's not just me! I press Shift +U and the nose gear extends but Shift + I fails every time to engage the bridle. Same issue with CV 43 and other aircraft. SWS say they are working on this.

 

[JensOle]

Setting up the cat and bridle for FSX/P3D carriers should be something the addon makers know how do do. Even freeware ships have that feature.

The Midway/Coral Sea pack is judging from the details a work of passion and I hope we can get a timeline from the SWS team about when it will be fixed. Not much point with a super detailed carrier battle group if you cannot even get launched from the ship.

I did 4 traps last evening on the Coral Sea with the VF-154 N paint I'm working on and I must say that the visual of both the carrier and group is stunning! Outstanding work! I just hope we can get the cat working properly.

It would have been something to get an early 80s Coral Sea as well with F-4s, E-2Bs, A-6s, A-7s and RF-8! I know the carrier itself got some rework at this time with the new CIWS and radar systems, but it should not be to much change from the 70s model.

Back to the Phantom, I have not found any information with how to get the "gunsight" working. Any advice?

 

[JensOle]

BTW, testing with linking screenshots from Dropbox for higher res. It seems to work with some editing of the link code. How is this working with download bandwith vs my storage limit on dropbox etc? Just trying to find an alternative to photobucket and since I already have dropbox I thought I might give it a try.​

​

 

[expat]

Any ideas why my PBR F-4 (with the most recent updates) look like this instead of how it look in others' screenies?

 

[delta_lima]

Jens, FWIW, I’ve had the same sunken wheel cat issues you have. For the longest time I had functionally given up on SWS products, but slowly the issues are getting sorted.

One of my pet peeves (as per my post about what I thought was a problem with AICarriers) is that launching Fleets and then going back to an AICarrier formation kills the cat function on all of the latter carriers until I exit the sim and come back.

The other, and more substantial-is that planes which come modelled with bridles and holdbacks lose these when attached to SWS cats. Makes no sense. Plus their position changes. The F-8 will sit “flat” - main gear 2’ off the deck instead of squatted properly on all three. At least I got it to trap and launch. So there’s that .

Jen, those low(er) vis schemes are a dream come true. I too have given up on the MV Phantom-a complete mess in P3D. So I’ve had to abandon all the great J/S later-period schemes I liked so much. The VF-154 is one I’ve longed to have back. Will this be for the regular model or the PBR model? And on the VF-202, is there a reason the IRST isn’t fully painted? By this period, I believe they usually were:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F-4N_Phantom_VF-21_in_flight_1983.jpeg

Anyway - I’m so thrilled for some later period paints. If you’re open doing to USMC J/S type schemes, that’d be a real treat!

Thanks for posting progress shots on these.

DL

 

[fsafranek]

Any ideas why my PBR F-4 (with the most recent updates) look like this instead of how it look in others' screenies?

Angle of the light source?

 

[expat]

Frank, it looks this way "at all angles" unfortunately. I am using Tomatoshade shaders. But that makes other PBR textures look even better if anything. I wonder if my install or settings aren't right some way. Did a straight forward install of the recent upgrade the other day over the original PBR install.

 

[JensOle]

Regarding the colour on the IRST on the VF-202 paint, the reason was that this paint was my first on the N and the paintkit does not really makes it possible to have it in any other colour than black. It has now been modified as you can see on the VF-154 paint (and of course "retro" painted to the 202 paint)

 

[JensOle]

BTW, does any of you have any info on the paint scheme the used by VF-154 on their helmets in the early 80s. It seems as they were black with some red details.

 

[Victory103]

Great looking paints and funny I was just searching an early VF-2 F-14 helmet paint. For early 80s, this would be pre 100% reflective white tape required by NAVAIR, so the black/red seems correct. I can't find any good color pics yet. Using the USN cruise book site.

 

[JensOle]

Expat,

Regarding paints in the 3 grey colours scheme called TPS, rather few N models got it. But there are pictures of a few Ns in the TPS scheme, including a VF-154 bird in the very last year they flew the N.

J and S models gets a rather different look with the larger nozzle, clean radome without the IRST and shorter ew blisters on the intakes, so I'll keep the paints to real Ns.

Have any of you got the "gunsight" (weapon sight) working?

 

[JensOle]

Hello,

Latest on the VF-154 low vis paint; After some research and help from Frank Safrenek I think I have something which is pretty close to the helmet art used by the squadron in the early 80s. “Knight” (“crusader”) helmet visor art and a red angled V overlapping at the back with the other side. All in red on a black background. It add some life to the grey scheme.

I got an answer back from SWS that we might get a paintkit for the static aircraft after they have finished the cat issue patch. It is one texture per aircraft with one decal texture (the aircraft have individual numbers from this decal texture). It will make I possible to make a larger selection of different cruises. It would be great with a E-2 Hawkeye on the Coral Sea though for some late Phantom cruises??

I have set up a 1982ish ship group around US Coral Sea with 2 Charles F. Adams-class destroyers (1 as plane guard), 1 Spruance class destroyer, 1 Oliver Hazard Perry frigate and the USS Mispillion tanker. So removed the Forrest Sherman class destroyer as most of them were taken out of service around this time. A question for you navy experts, is this ship group plausible or completely out of reality? The ships were at least in service in 1982, any more ships I should include?

DDG-19 USS Tattnall as plane guard. A jolly nice model included in the SWS Midway class pack

 

[delta_lima]

Jens - now that is absolutely gorgeous.

I'm equally stoked about the prospect of repainted AI statics to reflect an early 80s cruise. No such configuration with F-4s exists to my knowledge in any CV, and it would be a dream come true to fly both the SWS F-4, and one day (hopefully) RF-8G in 1979/80, 1981/82 cruises.



For that matter, a similarly repainted deck layout for early 80s CV-41 from which to fly the already available RF-4 in the correct period would be dream-come-true material.

 

[JensOle]

For the Coral Sea 73 model you will when removing the A-3 and E-1 and having the deck ready for both recovery and launches from the left and waist cats have A-7s, F-4s and Sea King in the statick parking. Repainting these to match the early 80s cruises are easy when/if the paintkit gets available (only issue is that you can only have one paint scheme for each sqn, either high vis or low vis scheme- not both). It would have been something to have the A-6, RF-8 and E-2 as well

 

[JensOle]

These 6 paints are packed up and more or ready for release. All for the pre PBR SWS Phantom. Screenshots from V3, but I hope it will pass

 

[stovall]

Great stuff Jens. Very much appreciated. Thanks