Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Fokker G1 "Reaper"

This is a plane I personally think is one of the most beautiful ever designed and flown: the Fokker G-1, nicknamed "Reaper".

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Watch the youtube movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlOICYLc4Hw

The Fokker G-1 is one of those planes that just didn't get what they deserved though.
It was designed in the mid 1930's, and caught lots of attention at the Paris airshow at Le Bourget 1936. It was consequently ordered by numerous airforces in Europe, but the German invasion of the continent interrupted manufacturing and delivery to most of them. Had the Germans waited another year, then perhaps the G-1 would have been more famous than it is now, and done more damage to the German onslaught.

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The G-1's of the Dutch airforce were pretty much all destroyed on the ground before they could scramble and counterattack. A few did manage to get up in the air, and down some enemy planes, among which Me-110's, which were comparable in class and performance. Most German casualties were Ju-52's though, which were also being battered by Dutch anti-aircraft artillery.

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The G-1 was heavily armed with 8 machineguns in the nose, a rotating turret facing backwards, and a bombbay holding 2 bombs. The frontal machineguns were so heavy though that the G-1 had trouble taking off and landing because of its weight, and was not loaded with very much ammunition. The G-1's bombing capabilities were also never used operationally, even though the bombracks were available at the time.

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After the Dutch government capitulated, the German invaders used the few remaining G-1's for training purposes, but there is very little information about this. I managed to find one picture online of a German G-1, and on this picture did I base my German paint.

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Building the model for the G-1 was difficult, because there is so little information about the plane. Fokker destroyed all its information on the plane during the war, and there is only 1 non-flying replica left in the world, on display at Soesterberg airforce museum (the Netherlands). A team of enthusiasts is currently building a flying replica of the G-1 and their 3d imagery helped me a great deal in my mesh. I took the Mercury engine from Masa-AT's Fokker DXXI, which had the same engine (some G-1's had less powerful Wasp engines, including the Spanish orders). Of course the G-1 here has the characteristic Dutch WW2 camo scheme, dark-brown, and with those ugly orange triangles on the side. Still, even those triangles can't hide the inherent beauty the G-1 displays, and I hope my model will make you a G-1 enthusiast too.

Happy flying,

Major major
DOWNLOAD LINK:
http://www.4shared.com/file/45992841/1ae6fc30/fokkerg1.html

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Fokker DXXI Royal Dutch Airforce

This is a repaint from Masa-AT's excellent Fokker DXXI Finnish Airforce (link to masa's site on the right).

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Watch the youtube movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKLKyVjqCP8

He made a very detailed and beautiful model, which I had always wanted to paint in Dutch colours. The D21 is relatively unknown, but if you about the German invasion in the early May day's of the 1940's you will find that a small number of them did quite a lot of damage.

This is remarkable because the German planes were very good. The D21, being outdated and more of an early 1930's model, still packed a punch in the hands of motivated airmen.

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It was armed with 4 machineguns, and the camo scheme is unique in the fact that it was mostly darkbrown, with green and sand colours on the top. The typical orange triangle featured prominently on the sides of the plane, and is definitely one of the uglier logo's an airforce could choose for.

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May 4th and May 5th are Holland's national day's of remembrance and celebration of the end of the Second World War, which lasted almost exactly 5 years for The Netherlands. It seems appropriate to release this re-paint for this occasion, and I hope you enjoy flying the Dutch Fokker DXXI as much as I do. Put her up against a few BF-109's and see how well you can do.

Happy flying,

Major Major

DOWNLOAD LINK:
http://www.4shared.com/file/45992862/b1d9cf08/fokkerd21.html

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Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Formula YS

Formula YS: Racing just got faster!

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A major part of why I like YS Flight modding lies in the fact that everytime you develop a bit more, and pick up a few more tricks to incorporate in your models.

This release is one of the more ambitious of my projects, and the result is definitely more than what I expected of it.

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Formula YS is basically a different game than YS-Flight the flight sim. This is a racing game, and a pretty fast one at that. The cars are unarmed, very powerful, highly maneuverable, and look awesome! They are born from regular contemporary Formula 1 cars, which I was suprised to see there are none of in the YS databases (that I could find at least). So I had to make the cars from scratch, and after getting the basic mesh right, rescaling up and down a few times, and numerous attempts at getting the normals right, I got what you see here in front of you.

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So yey, we finally haveF-1 cars in YS! But I have tried driving cars around in YS Flight, and it just doesn't really do it for me. The ground detail is too rough, the speeds too slow, and driving behaviour isn't realistic. But then again, it is a flight simulator, so the next step was to make my formula 1 cars fly.

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That was easier than expected really. Just put in some wings, and somehow retract the wheels, and go for it. But without wheels there's no propulsion, so i built in some engines. Make them transform and look cool and there you go: Formula YS. Of course the engine blades rotate, just like the wheels.

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I wanted the formula 1 car to drive unless you folded out the wings, so I had to program the DNM so that the extended flap (drag) meansa folded wing. Flaps in mean the wings fold out, and the car has lift (increases speed). Once airborne the gears will be retracted and the car transforms into an altogether more streamlined plane, and once that happened, it's time to throw in the after burner which will increase your speed from a good 200 knots to 620+ knots on ground level. That is bloody fast by the way, but the plane is suprisingly well to handle.

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Make your way through some cool racing tracks that I quicly put together and voila, a race league is born. By saving your (succesful) flights, you can open these and add an airplane and race yourself. Do this 4 or 5 times and you've got yourself some adrenaline pumping action on YS Flight when you are racing 4 or 5 different cars, all flown by yourself.

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Anyway, it's time for you to see what it's all about, and try to out race me in my yfs files (in the major folder in the release). In the readme file you will find more info on how to install everything, and what Formula YS is all about.

So have fun, and I'll see you on the race track!
Download link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/43514754/79c29f9f/formulays.html

Major Major

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PS, if you have some groovy repaints of the Formula YS cars please do post them on www.yspilots.com and I will link this weblog to them as well!
PS 2, I haven't got any experience with servers but if you can figure out a low lag map for some online racing, that would really be racing! So for any of you who see an opportunity here, go for it and host a server with Formula YS racing.

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Download link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/43514754/79c29f9f/formulays.html

Venezuelan Air Combat

These two repaints I still had lying around, and seeing I won't be about to change anything about them I'll just release them like they are now.

The original planes are from 2ch's GAC pack of course. Seriously, we owe this guy bigtime for making the original meshes of so many planes from so many places, it's awesome!

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But the reason why I made these paints though is because of another website: http://www.acig.org/.
Cuz everyone knows about the big conflicts and the big airbattles, but the smaller conflicts often just go by unnoticed. Not so if it's up to the people from ACIG.

There are some fascinating airial encounters that we don't know about, in almost every part of the world. These are well researched and described on ACIG.org, and they do credit to the people who fought and died in those battles just so that they are not forgotten.

Take this link to the Venezuelan Coup attempt in 1992.
It's a great article and it inspired me to paint the F-16 and Mirage 3 in Venezuelan colours.
http://s188567700.online.de/CMS/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=95&Itemid=47

I hope you enjoy recreating some of the dogfights described on ACIG, and that some of those other articles will inspire you to make some more repaints of lesser known airforces around the world.

Best regards,
Major Major

Download:
http://www.4shared.com/file/43484800/cec8592a/VenezuelanAF.html

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