Jason_Williams

Full Developer Diary is HERE! Jason

I posted those in our Discord late last night. Jason

DD 06 Dear Pilots, Welcome to our first Developer Diary of 2024! We’ve been busy working on all aspects of our prototype as you can imagine and we have recently expanded our team a little bit further with the addition of a new Senior Programmer named Fred. Wish him good luck!! He's a brave man. Our main areas of focus continue to be flight-modeling and systems for both the A6M2 and F4F-4, more instrumentation, and support for controllers. We are also now engaged in sound work for both planes. Our development goals remain modest and for the remainder of our first fiscal year, but we are making steady progress. We still plan to participate in FS Expo, assuming they can book a new venue now that the Tropicana Hotel is closing in April. We plan to show you what we have flying at that point and have attendees take the stick. Actually, we could show you some in-flight footage today, but it's quite ugly and raw, so we'll wait until things look a little bit more attractive. On a general note, we’ve received many, many requests for features and content since we went public and we love hearing what you’d like to see in Combat Pilot so please don’t stop. The enthusiasm for what we’re making is fantastic and we appreciate it. However, just keep in mind that making a combat flight-sim is tough, and there are strong headwinds we must fight to reach our destination. Nothing in this genre is ever easy and like most start-ups, our limiting factors are always going to be the budget and manpower, not our imagination, creativity or desire to please the community. So, we are trying to be smart and only bite off what we can chew, avoid mission creep and stay on target! So, if we can’t answer when a particular feature or plane is going to be available, please have patience as we work to reach our first technical milestone this summer. We’ll share more about that goal in the coming weeks. In the meantime, let’s have a look at some excellent work by our art team since our last update. You’ll see a much bigger splash of color as we start to texture more of our 3D assets You’ll also notice some amazing detail on our carriers that we hope to take advantage of. A6M2 Textures Our Zeke is looking nice is it’s early-war color scheme. The legendary look. John has really brought her to life. Also, before you comment about the color, all textures are considered WIP. The exact color of the early Zero, in particular, can be a controversial topic we know. This texture is just the start. F4F-4 Textures Chris is wrapping up all the panel lines and rivets on our stout hero as he begins to paint her. Same caveats from above apply to the Wildcat's color. Oerlikon 20mm and the 1.1 Inch 'Chicago Piano' Here we showcase more of Stefan’s handiwork that will be defending American carriers. Top notch! 5/51 Gun Ready! Our 5-inch shore battery is ready to protect Midway Atoll from invasion. It’s final details have been added by Tamas. Next up is the 7-inch gun! USS Enterprise Hangar Deck And our friends at DigitalForms continue to impress us with detail work on both ships, especially the Enterprise and Akagi’s hangar decks. To be honest, we don’t know exactly how much of this detail we will use yet or how we will integrate into the gameplay, but it’s nice to have it available. Of course, we have lots of ideas, but there is much more to do before we tackle this issue. It’s interesting to compare the hangar deck designs and available space between the Enterprise and Akagi below. IJN Akagi Hangar Deck The Akagi’s hangar deck looks quite a bit narrower than the Enterprise’s, but did you know it was two story? Such a magnificent and iconic ship. And before we end this DD we want to give a hearty THANK YOU to Maty12 (very recently) and Batmacumba (couple months ago) who have assisted us with taking pictures of some important AAA guns at a museum in Brazil that will aid us in our work. Very much appreciated! チーフスは延長戦で３点差で勝利した。 銀行に持って行きましょう。 The Combat Pilot Team You can Discuss this Developer Diary HERE.

Guys, I don’t know why there is such anxiety about VR. VR is planned, but without mastering the fundamentals there will be nothing. That is our current focus. We have recently hired a programmer who has much experience with VR. Jason

Hi guys, Sorry no DD this week. Some things got delayed slightly. I plan to do one next week. Hang in there! Have a great weekend! Jason

Im right here guys. I’m not MIA. We continue to work. I’ve had a lot going on both professionally and personally. We have several things in the works and continue to interview potential new team members, doing research and working on our build. Hope to have a new DD in the next couple weeks. If anything goes sideways you’ll be the first to know. Jason

I definitely remember that! Good stuff! Jason

Hey guys, Let's please keep our DD discussions here free of conjecture about what others are doing. There are other avenues for that. Glad you liked DD05. Lot's to do in 2024, but remember, we're the baby on the block. Going to be a while before we can truly compete with any other teams. Jason

Dear Pilots, Happy New Year! to everyone in our wonderful community! Thank you for a great 2023 and may your 2024 be happy, productive and safe! Whatever you are doing tonight please don't drink and drive. The Combat Pilot Team

Full Developer Diary is HERE! Jason

DD 05 Dear Pilots, Welcome to the last Developer Diary of our inaugural year. What a first year it has been! We’ve managed to form a team, set initial goals, build assets, establish a community, setup lines of communication, get a plane flying in the engine and lay the technical ground work for our playable prototype. We have a long road ahead, but we’re on the road or perhaps I should say that we’re taxing towards takeoff? That’s probably a better analogy. This developer diary highlights more progress with building important assets that we’ll need and it marks a turning point in our internal and external operations that we’ll speak more about after the turn of the new year. We’re planning some new initiatives that we think you’ll be interested in along with pursuing additional development partnerships that can aid us in our journey. So stay tuned. Now on to the fun stuff! Big ‘E’ Work on the Enterprise continues and our development partners DigitalForms is making rapid progress on her. We’re making sure to add sufficient detail so the ‘Big E’ will look as impressive as she was in real life. IJN Akagi The Akagi is also making strong progress and her island is now taking shape. A much smaller island than the Enterprise, but what an iconic and beautiful vessel she will be when completed. Midway Buildings Our work to make Midway as realistic as possible continues and more 3D work by Carl and research by Jason has uncovered more of the story. Understanding what buildings were there during the battle is quite the mystery. Just one example is the famous seaplane hangar. Much has been said about it being bombed during the battle, but very little has been said about what happened after. Turns our it was re-built, but only half of it was! The original hangar was twice as large as we thought it was initially. Further research indicates that it was a near twin to hangars found in Hawaii and at Pearl Harbor. The Midway hangar had a control tower affixed to the southeastern corner overlooking seaplane operations. There are no clear photos or drawings to work off so we’ve done our best to figure out what it looked like. We are also building various other buildings such as workshops and some rather unique military housing. If only we could go back in time and walk around this island during this important piece of history and properly document it. 5 in. / 38 Cal. Gun Our carrier hulls are being built by DF, but their guns are being built internally by Stefan. Here is his textured 5/38 gun ready to protect the Enterprise from attack. Notice the little R2D2-like unit to the side, or is it more like R5D4? 5 in. / 51 Cal. Gun To protect Midway, our Lead Modeler Tamas, is building the shore batteries and here is a textured 5/51 gun almost ready for action. These guns look rather simple at first glance, but they truly are complex pieces of machinery. Trying to dig up good info on these old guns is not easy. We located good drawings on this gun in a textbook from the US Naval academy from 1939. Any Midshipmen among the Combat Pilot community? F4F-4 Progress And here is our tubby hero in more detail. Chris has gone a bit bonkers with internal detail that you may not see that much of, but the F4F is looking sharp. Now time to work on her textures. A6M2 Progress The Zeke is also coming along nicely, and John has the wingtip fold ready. Not sure how helpful this small fold was on Japanese carriers when compared to more extreme American wing-folds. The landing gear is also taking shape with nice textures. Flight-Sim Expo 2024 Some of you noticed that we created a channel on our Discord and a thread in our forum about FSExpo 2024 which will be held in Las Vegas at the Tropicana Hotel. And yes, we will be attending and have a small booth at the show. We hope to have several team members in attendance. We don’t know exactly what we’ll show there yet, but if you do plan on going please stop by and say hi to the Combat Pilot team, we would love to meet you! https://flightsimexpo.com/ 2024 Wallpaper / Calendar With our first year together ending and a new one dawning, we thought it would be nice to give you some custom artwork as a late Christmas present. We hope this gives you a vision of what we are building.. Inside the archive you’ll find a Wallpaper / Calendar for both the USS Enterprise and the IJN Akagi steaming in the Pacific, each with some air cover passing overhead. Two iconic capital ships headed towards battle. We hope you like them. Use whichever image you like best. They're native 4K images (3840px x 2160px), but your computer should be able to scale them to your specific resolution. We've engineered them to work with up to 150% icon and taskbar size DOWNLOAD .ZIP *These images are copyrighted by Entropy.Aero and approved for your personal use only. Any commercial use without prior written approval from Entropy.Aero is prohibited. All of us here at Combat Pilot want to thank you for your enthusiasm and support in 2023! Have a happy and safe New Year's and we'll see you in 2024! Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead! The Combat Pilot Team You can Discuss this Developer Diary HERE.

Dear Pilots! Merry Christmas! to everyone in the Combat Pilot community around the world. May your Christmas be filled with love and happiness. We pray for peace and prosperity for all no matter what corner of the globe you call home. We hope Santa stuffs your stocking full of flight-simming and gaming goodness this year. Thank you for making our first Christmas with you very special. The Combat Pilot Team

Hey guys, Will be happy to meet everyone who can make it. We’ll be talking more about our attendance as we figure out what we’re going to do there. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up. Hope to see you there fellas. Jason

Jason

I did not pay Murf to say that, but I like it. LOL We’ll do our best to give you something cool. Lots of work ahead till we get there though. Jason

Oh it’s far, far too early for that. We’re still in prototype mode. Jason

Yes Jason

That’s utter crap. Stupid Irvine. We could have saved that bird. Jason

Thanks @Falcon41! Jason

Thank you @Chris455 let’s hope we don’t disappoint! Jason

Cool pic! Jason

Full Developer Diary is HERE! Jason

DD 04 Dear Pilots, The holiday season is now in full swing and we want to wish everyone in the Combat Pilot community a Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas! We hope that 2023 ends on a peaceful and prosperous note for everyone and 2024 brings great things to you and yours. Progress on our initial prototype inches forward week by week and as usual we’d like to share some more images and news with you. Since our last DD we’ve seen progress on buildings for Midway, our aircraft carriers, and our airplanes. Let’s see what this week has in store. Midway Atoll Infrastructure Midway is often referred to as an island, but it’s really an atoll, consisting of two main islands (Sand and Eastern) and a coral reef system with a lagoon in the center. Several Pacific battles took place on atolls during the war which makes for some unique and exotic scenery, but a horrendous amount of blood was shed for their control. Battles on atolls such as Wake, Makin, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, and Tarawa come to mind. Midway was spared an amphibious assault due to the US naval victory out at sea, but it was attacked by air and took some serious damage. One of our goals is to make a faithful recreation of the infrastructure and defenses found on Midway during the battle. In our opinion, other games and simulators haven’t portrayed Midway very accurately over the years so we hope to change that and set a new standard. Midway went through several stages of growth, abandonment, and decay before, during and after WWII, so depicting her as it looked in June 1942 is a challenge. Detailed maps and quality images are surprisingly rare. We’ve been able to dig up some good references though with help from the community. Which we greatly appreciate. Midway was not only a naval base and military airfield, but it was also a civilian seaplane base for Pan-Am’s clipper service to the Far East. Additionally, Midway was an outpost servicing underwater telegraph cables. Therefore, not all infrastructure on Midway was military in nature. Here are a few images of buildings that Carl has created for Midway so far. They will be textured soon and really come to life. 5 in. / 51 Cal. Gun Midway’s beaches were defended by a mix of 3-inch, 5-inch, and 7-inch guns. Below is a pic of our 5-inch gun made again by Tamas who also made the 3in gun from DD 03. Boom! A6M2 Landing Gear Work on our Zeke continues and more progress has been made. This time on the landing gear. John has brought the Zero’s exterior mesh close to completion and next up is the wingtip folding mechanism. Then it will be time to texture it. F4F-4 Engine and Landing Gear Our valiant, but stubby American fighter is also nearing completion of what we consider to be the external mesh even though it clearly includes some nice internal details. We’re even hanging some stores underneath her. Chris has the R-1830 Twin Wasp looking sharp and everything will look even better once we have textures on it. 5 in. / 38 Cal. Gun for USS Enterprise Our USS Enterprise is being built by a veteran team that Jason has worked with for a long time and the guns are being built by Stefan who really knows his way around WW2 era ships. Matter of fact, some of you may own books that feature Stefan’s previous work. Below are images of the high-poly model that will, of course, be further optimized for performance considerations, However, our goal is to have our ships be as detailed and as beautiful as possible, while maintaining good performance. This gun will also be textured soon. CV-6 USS Enterprise (Yorktown Class) And speaking of the Enterprise, here is a very early look at her big beautiful hull and superstructure under development. Trying to land on her pitching and rolling deck will be a blast! More on the ‘Big E’ as she takes shape. We hope to have images of the Akagi in our next DD. Work on her started a little bit after Enterprise. Early Flights of the Zeke! We know everyone is eager to see one of our warbirds flying in the engine itself and that is already happening. Our A6M can indeed take to the virtual sky in our internal testing, but we are still working out the kinks in its flight model and researching its performance envelop. Some in the community have helped us locate performance data for the Zeke which we greatly appreciate. The current A6M2 model imported into the engine is without textures and animations so it’s a little odd to watch fly. What we do have working is basic flight and systems like landing gear and wheel brakes. We already have support for phenomena like stalls and ground effect which will be refined more and more over time. We also have basic instrumentation working, but it’s currently just a digital display. We still need to build our proper instrumentation for actual cockpits with gauges etc. The last thing we want to do is show you something too raw, but we’ve included a pic of our early work below. It includes a basic shader for the water so the ocean already looks quite tropical. As you can see, there's not much to look at yet, but big kudos to our engineering team for getting the Zeke airborne so fast. Remember, when compared to other sims on the market, we are just a newborn so a long way to go still. However, we have made strong progress in 2023 and we hope to show you something a bit more impressive in Q1 of 2024. We have also begun work on our damage model design and researching basic multiplayer support as well as increased controller support. Again, long way to go, but we’re making progress on the flying front. Enjoy! AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL The Combat Pilot Team You can Discuss this Developer Diary HERE.

Attention Pilots and WW2 RTS Fans! Our partners at Barbedwire Studios have just released their greatest expansion yet to the awesome Call to Arms - Gates of Hell tactical RTS series - GATES OF HELL: LIBERATION! Take the American army from the invasion of Normandy all the way through the Battle of the Bulge and experience gritty, realistic battles as never before. Grab it TODAY! https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/400750/view/3863587484674946889 Congrats to the Barbedwire Team on the release! Jason

Without getting into the politics it’s a special American holiday. https://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/history-of-thanksgiving Jason