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Status report

The first post of the year, and the first “real” report on the project since 2011. :)

The biggest change so far is that I have added 3 more LODs to the model, which makes for a far better experience in Multiplayer. Still too many polys in the lower LODs, though, but I am working on it… Right now there are 6 LOD levels: 400, 150, 75, 35, 20 and 5.

I spent most of last week rewriting the brake chute function from scratch. It is now working more or less as I intended originally, and is tied directly to the flaps position variable without local vars inbetween. Also, the chute can now only be fired once, the “flaps up” command will no longer reset the animation. If you deployed by mistake (it happens), you can still cheat and reset it by pressing the indicator in the cockpit view. The chute is now also fully animated in LOD 150, with visible cords etc. Looks a lot better in MP.

The drop tanks are another headache, they never worked very well and the fuel system as well as the animation need to be reworked completely. Definitely on the “to-do” list.

At the moment I am working on adding 3D landing/taxi lights (screenshot below). Looking good so far, better than the default lights at least. Thanks to Bill Leaming et al for this.

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So, what else? Well, I have finally started dabbling with SimConnect, which I somehow managed to avoid so far. The possibilites are supposedly endless with SimConnect, although I can see some limitations.

Oh, I also (finally) added a cannon effect which you can map to your controller of choice. You can actually pull the trigger and hear/see something happen. Missiles also coming up.

/Tom