Jason_Williams

Dear Pilots, Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans here in the Combat Pilot community as well as everyone around the world. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, may your day be filled with lots of delicious turkey, side dishes, football and friends and family. Have a safe, fun and long holiday weekend. We are very thankful for all your support this year to help us get off the ground. Jason

Good stuff! Jason

So many crashes on landing. I cannot even fathom the stress of that in real life and the sheer amount of danger. Jason

Sorry guys, No DD this week, but another one will hopefully be released soon. We continue to work hard. Jason

Oh no... damn he was a good guy. Don if you're gone rest in peace my friend. Cancer sucks. Jason

Dear Pilots, Today is Veterans Day in America and Remembrance Day throughout the British Commonwealth and other Allied Nations. The Combat Pilot Team sends our best wishes to all who serve and have served in the name of freedom and liberty, especially those on our team and in this growing community. The Combat Pilot Team

Hello Pilots! I have a very cool VirPil Throttle for sale. It's solid and very well engineered. This thing rivals or possibly beats the Warthog throttle. Possibly used for 2 hours total so it's very much like new. It's the first generation I believe. https://virpil.com/en/blog/163-introducting-the-vpc-mongoost-50cm-throttle $100 + FedEx Shipping to US address. SOLD - SHIPPED PM me if interested. Serious inquiries only please. Jason

Yes we have all that. LOL def do not need to pay $350. Jason

Yes we have PBR textures. Jason

Hopefully animated to some degree. We have a Mocap system we would like to utilize. Jason

We already have folding wings animated. Jason

Full Developer Diary is HERE! Jason

DD 03 Dear Pilots, Our work on Combat Pilot continues and we have completed our first official 6 months as a team and results are positive. The hardest part of creating something out of nothing is creating a strong foundation for where we want go. You have to walk before you can fly, but when tangible progress is made it's very satisfying to see. Right now, that work is focused on physics, flight-modeling, research (technical and historical), and 3D assets. But even somewhat straightforward tasks like building models requires research and finding the right artist to make what you need. And until you establish some standards it’s a little bit like stumbling around in the dark. When it comes to art and 3D assets we are starting to find our groove and you can see that in the pics I’ve chosen below. We hope you like them and it’s an example of where we are headed stylistically. F4F-4 Work Continues Our F4F-4 built by Chris is coming along nicely. He’s working primarily on the landing gear now and you can see there is some good detail there just like the rest of the plane. Lots and lots of rivets hold this bird together. He also worked on the propeller hub recently. Our F4F is going to be very nice. Sakae 12 Engine Our A6M2 is also coming along and John has spent some time texturing the Zeke’s Sakae 12 14 cylinder engine. It doesn’t even have its special materials applied yet. She’ll look even better when that happens. US GP HE Bombs You can’t have a warbird sim without some wartime weapons. Carl has spent a great deal of time working on our standard American General Purpose High-Explosive bombs as a primer for his future contributions. Here are some shots of this explosive family. Can you tell they are all related? Mk. 13 Torpedo Carl has also built the troublesome early-war Mk. 13 torpedo. Imagine dropping this fish while lining up on a Japanese flat-top! The history of the Mark 13 is quite interesting and often misunderstood. This lame guppy turned into a ferocious shark by war’s end thanks to incremental improvements made throughout the war. Development of the Mk.13 torpedo started in 1925 and was the first US torpedo designed specifically to be dropped from aircraft, and as such had to meet the requirements of the Navy Aeronautical Bureau which was responsible for torpedo plane design and development. After being accepted into service in 1936, this was the model with which the US Navy went to war in late 1941. As the historical record shows, it performed very poorly in the early stages of WW2. Navy pilots risked their lives only to find their torpedo would not explode, run wildly off course, or sink to the bottom. Still, the Mark 13 remained in production until after the war; but why if it was so bad? After these early failures, the US Navy set up an improvement program to eliminate the problems with the Mk. 13. Investigators found that some of the problems were due to its design, construction, as well as poor aero and hydrodynamics. For instance, it was found that if it hit the water at too shallow of an angle it would often sustain critical internal damage and simply not explode when or if it reached its intended target Significant improvements to internal parts, as well as some external changes, allowed the Mk.13 to become more resistant to the violence of entering the water. The development of stabilizers, drag rings, and shroud rings improved its water entry survivability and raised the launching altitude from a mere 50 feet to a whopping 2,400 feet! This new durability also raised the maximum launch speed for the drop from 110 knots (126 mph / 203 kph) to 410 knots (471 mph / 759 kph) which greatly increased aircrew survivability. These improvements made a huge difference in its effectiveness, warranting continued mass production while newer torpedo designs were considered. One of the Mk.13’s biggest achievements was being credited (in part) for the sinking of the Japanese battleship Yamato in 1945. Even though other types of torpedoes had come to the forefront during the war, the Mark 13 was the most prolific of them all, with almost 17,000 (out of a total of 64,000 units over 8 types) being produced during the war. 3-Inch / 50 Caliber Dual Purpose Gun The quick firing 3-inch / 50 Caliber gun saw action throughout the Pacific Theater and was used primarily for air defense on a wide variety of smaller warships like destroyer escorts, frigates, and patrol boats, as well as auxiliary and cargo vessels. However, in the case of the Battle of Midway it was also deployed as a shore battery by the US Navy for island defense. Had the invasion of Midway happened it would have seen heavy action in that role. However, it did see action at Wake Island where it helped repel the initial invasion attempt. In the US there are several museum examples and outdoor exhibits of this gun that you can visit. Jason visited a couple in San Diego as part of our research. Our Lead Modeler Tom has gone to great pains to reproduce this amazingly versatile gun for Combat Pilot and it represents an important first step for our team. We’ve posted so many pics of it because it is our first mechanically complex object that has been successfully modeled and textured to give us the aesthetic for which we are aiming. It also allows us to test how larger objects will look in the engine. It was also a technically challenging design that required quite a lot of research to achieve this result. For a new team like ours, it’s important to be able to create complex assets successfully and get over that first hurdle. The 3/50 is a complex piece of machinery that required several men and a great deal of teamwork to operate effectively. It could be aimed with iron sights or telescopic sights and fired a 3-inch shell weighing 13 pounds out to a maximum range of 14,600 yards (8.2 mi / 13.3 km) at 45 degrees elevation and had a ceiling of 29,800 feet (9,100 m) at 85 degrees elevation. We have more interesting guns to make and we hope they will all look as good as this one. Beyond what we've shown you here today our engineers continue to work on our flight-modeling and physics in a big way. We hope to have significant progress in our flight-modeling by Christmas of this year. Early FM work has gone fairly well for the engineers so we are quite encouraged and we recently reached an internal milestone by finishing a tool requiring some custom programming that will help us make FMs easier. Also, the virtual keels of our first two aircraft carriers the USS Enterprise and the IJN Akagi have been laid by the talented team that is making them. More on these capital ships as work progresses. We have also begun work on the Cable Company buildings, Seaplane Hangar and Pan Am Hotel found on Midway Atoll during the battle. These will be featured in future DDs of course. We hope you enjoy these images. I shall return! The Combat Pilot Team You can Discuss this Developer Diary HERE.

Thanks Colin! Jason

Well, maybe if we have something to sell. You never know. Jason

Happy Halloween Pilots! Our first Halloween together! Oh how I used to love doing Halloween sales for you all. Hopefully next year maybe. Halloween kicks off the Holiday Season here in America which is my favorite time of year. Remember that time I made some actual flying witches? If you celebrate Halloween tonight enjoy your candy and trick-or-treating with the kids and be safe if you attend a party! Here is a little Halloween treat for you. DD later this week. P.S. this image is just a rendering and lighting experiment. Not in-game footage, but that is our new 3in. / 50 cal. gun model. Jason

If I see anyone else taking the survey more than once or egging people on to do it, I will ban you from all our properties. You’re all adults. Act like it. Just take it once and leave it at that. Very simple. As I’ve said previously, we’ve taken reasonable steps to prevent multiple entries, but we’re not devoting our limited resources to secure a simple survey and make it Fort Knox. Jason

Just stop encouraging people to submit more than once. Annoying. Jason

Guys, I had planned to have a DD ready for today, but some things were not quite there yet. So, I hope to have it by mid-week next week. Enjoy your weekend. Jason

I do like the Helldiver even if it had problems. Would be a blast! Jason

Hello Pilots! I have yet more Thrustmaster gear up for grabs! This time it's the FCS HOTAS bundle with T.16000 joystick, Throttle and Rudder Pedals. I bought this while on the road visiting some museums so I could fly while in my hotel room. Barely used. Like new. I no longer have the packaging though. Great deal and perfect for entry level simmer. $90 + FedEx Shipping to US address. SOLD - SHIPPED PM me if interested. Serious inquiries only please. Jason

Hello Pilots! I have another Thrustmaster T.16000m joystick, but this one has never ever been used. Still in the wrapping! It's ambidextrous and can be used with another for space sims. Perhaps with the free one above! I guess I had this one as a back up. I don't even remember where I got this one. It's the first gen of the T.16000 I believe. $15 + FedEx Shipping to US address. PM me if interested. Serious inquiries only please. Jason

Hello Pilots! I have a used Thrustmaster T.16000m joystick. It's ambidextrous and can be used with another for space sims. I used it for testing my VR rig back in the day. Works great, but it's the first generation of the T.16000 I believe so just looking for a good home. Free + FedEx Shipping to US address. SOLD - SHIPPED PM me if interested. Serious inquiries only please. Jason

Hello Pilots! I have a like new EVGA 1080Ti 11GB Founders Edition (11G-P4-6390-KR) video card for sale. Hardly used. Still plays many, many games at good framerate including sims. If you're still using super old gear, this is a solid upgrade. $125 $100 + FedEx Shipping to US address. PM me if interested. Serious inquiries only please. Jason

Hello Pilots! I have a like new Thrustmaster Warthog Joystick and Throttle for sale. I've got way too much gear lying around. Used only for occasional testing at my old job. Priced to move. $150 + FedEx Shipping to US address. SOLD - SHIPPED PM me if interested. Serious inquiries only please. Jason