Combat Pilot Developer Diaries

[CP_Admin]

Attention Pilots!

Developer Diaries about Combat Pilot will be posted in this thread.

The Combat Pilot Team

[Jason_Williams]

DD 01

Dear Pilots,

Welcome to our very first Developer Diary for Combat Pilot! We hope this will be the first of many to come as we continue to build our initial prototype and get ready to take flight.

Today we want to share some images of our early work which includes the legendary Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 Model 21 flown by the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Allies assigned it the code name Zeke, but most remember it as simply the Zero. To Japanese pilots it was known as the Rei-sen. The A6M was extremely successful in the early months of the Pacific War and was superior to its American and Allied opponents like the F4F Wildcat and F2A Buffalo. It was built in large numbers throughout the war and several different variants were produced. The A6M2 Model 21 saw action in all the important early Pacific battles such as Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea and Midway and the A6M in all it's various forms continued to see service throughout the war. The Zero has become possibly the most recognizable icon of the Pacific War.  

We are building a flyable A6M2 to be featured in Combat Pilot and as you can see work is progressing and its beginning to take its very famous shape. It’s a long way from completion still, but you can be assured we will keep you informed of its progress. We also plan to have a Japanese aircraft carrier ready for her to operate from when our prototype is ready.

 

   

   

   

What good is a warplane without some available ordnance to drop on the enemy? Well, we have constructed our first bomb for Combat Pilot and it’s an American 250lb General Purpose bomb. This little bundle of joy will be carried aloft and dropped by our F4F-4 we are building for Combat Pilot. Our art team has done a great job on it.

  

We hope you have enjoyed our first Developer Diary and gives you a glimpse into the work we are doing at this early stage of development. Building Combat Pilot will require a lot of hard work and commitment from our small team and patience from everyone in the community, but we think it will be worth it. At this early stage of the project, we are focused mainly on the fundamentals such as flight and systems modeling and some basic content like the Zeke and bomb above. We are also building the infrastructure and defenses of Midway Atoll. So, lots of work to do. We want to be careful not to make promises we can’t keep, but we do promise to keep you informed of our progress over the next year or so as we work to complete our initial development goals.

We know many of  you want to know as much as possible about our plans for Combat Pilot both short and long-term, but until we overcome some of these early technical hurdles we can’t say or promise too much. Our initial goals are modest, but we think achievable. We’ll share more about those goals a little later. And please remember that Developer Diaries may be quite infrequent as we continue to get our sea legs, but please keep an eye on our website, Discord, and socials as you never know when one may drop.  

We want to thank all of you who have expressed your excitement for Combat Pilot and for sending well wishes and encouragement to us since we went public with the project. We also want to thank everyone in the community who has sent us great references and helped us with research. It’s much appreciated!

Add power!

The Combat Pilot Team

You can Discuss this Developer Diary HERE.

[Jason_Williams]

DD 02

Dear Pilots,

Welcome to our second Developer Diary for Combat Pilot! Today we are showing off a very famous U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps fighter – the pugnacious F4F-4!

The Wildcat as it was called was the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ front-line fighter when war broke out. Like the Zero it fought in all the major early war battles and helped blunt the Japanese juggernaut during the first critical year of the war. The Wildcat was outclassed by the A6M in just about every way and losses were high. Several F4F pilots earned the Medal of Honor for their bravery while flying her and even though outperformed, many pilots became aces in the F4F series. American pilots had to invent new tactics to compete with the Zero including the famous “Thach Weave” that focused on teamwork to down A6Ms.

The Wildcat’s contribution to the Pacific War cannot be overlooked or understated. Like the Spitfire in Europe, the Wildcat became a symbol of the dark early days in the Pacific Theater when the Allies where on their back foot. The F4F would eventually be replaced by the F6F Hellcat in front-line squadrons.

The F4F came in several marks (-3 / -3a / -4 / FM-1 / FM-2) which were all very similar, but with some main differences. The -3  and -3a were fixed wing versions with four .50 cal. guns. The -4 came equipped with six guns, but with fewer rounds per gun and folding wings for saving space onboard aircraft carriers. The FM-1 and FM-2 were the ultimate variants of the Wildcat reverting back to four guns, sporting a more powerful engine, folding wings, and adding an increased bomb load and rocket carrying ability. The later FM-1/2 models were used extensively by escort carriers to hunt submarines and served throughout the war. The Wildcat also served with the Royal Navy where it was known as the Martlet I / II / III / IV / V / VI. There were also photo recon versions of the F4F called the F4F-3P and F4F-7.

All Wildcats had a version of the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 ‘Twin Wasp’ engine as it’s powerplant except for the FM-2 which was fitted with the R-1820-56 engine. We are focusing on the F4F-4 model with the R-1830-86 engine for our initial Combat Pilot prototype. It was a fierce combatant at the Battle of Midway and best able to represent carrier ops with its folding wings. We hope to make all the marks of the F4F in time.

   

   

The Mk. 13 aerial torpedo used by the U.S. early in the war was a very unsatisfactory weapon. It often ran off course, sank, ran at the wrong depth, or failed to detonate. During the Battle of Midway no American torpedoes found their target. Compared to the deadly Japanese Type 91 torpedoes, the Mk.13 was woefully inadequate. However, the U.S. Navy made improvements to the Mk.13 and by mid-war they were more reliable and new tactics were devised to take advantage of its improved reliability.

The Mk.13 was somewhat squat looking. It was 13ft. 5in. long and 22.5 inches around. The warhead weighed 600 lbs. and was filled with Torpex explosive. The Mk.13 had a maximum speed of 33.5 knots with an effective range of 6,300 yards.

The Mk.13 was also used by American PT boats when their usual Mk. 8 or Mk. 10 torpedoes were in short supply. In this case the Mk.13 was simply rolled off the side of the boat into the water during the attack run.

    

Climb Mount Niitaka!

The Combat Pilot Team

You can Discuss this Developer Diary HERE.

[Jason_Williams]

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.

[Jason_Williams]

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.

[Jason_Williams]

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.

[Jason_Williams]

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.

[Jason_Williams]

DD 07

Dear Pilots!

Welcome to DD 07 where we celebrate Combat Pilot’s First Anniversary! Our official start date as a team is April 1, 2023 where we adopted our first budget and began work in earnest. In those 12 months we have taken a rag-tag team of developers, some with great experience in this genre and some with little to no experience with this type of PC game and tried to turn ourselves into a professional enterprise. It’s been a fun adventure. Now one year in we can see some real progress in our work and our baby is starting to become something real.

As many of you know, we’ll be at the FS Expo in June showing what we’ve got going on. It won’t be all that much, but for a team of mostly part-time people it’s a great accomplishment. It will only get better from here. The team has done a great job getting us this far and the future is bright.

Combat Pilot: Experimental Prototype is a go!

We have now christened this early creation - Combat Pilot: Experimental Prototype. This special title helps describe the current state of our work and if we ever happen to sell access to a rough early version, we want it to be distinguished from more fully-functional and content-rich future iterations. When that should happen, we will have a new title and new box-art. We plan to make Combat Pilot a long series of titles, not just one. Remember, this is just the beginning of our journey and we won’t get there in one big jump. Nor will we tease you for years and years while we develop it, we will continue to be as upfront and transparent as we can without giving trade secrets away. 

We’ve updated the digital box art to match this small update. Feel free to use on the web and in social media. We’ve also recently updated our media kit with this updated image.

Our goal was to have a playable prototype by this summer, and by ‘playable’ we just mean the basics! We wanted to be able to fly around with a detailed flight-model and have a couple aircraft carriers floating or sailing nearby. We also wanted to have a period accurate Midway Atoll built with a realistic looking ocean, sky, and clouds. Oh, and have proper controller support and a very basic GUI. The overall goal for our prototype is looking very doable at 12 months in and we are excited.

Unreal Engine 5.3 and Beyond

One item we are ready to speak more about is that we are indeed using Unreal Engine 5+ as our core game engine. In the beginning we did not want to really talk about this because we had some initial concerns about using Unreal as the foundation, but we are now confident it can do the job, or be made to do the job. We think the advantages of using Unreal are obvious and Epic continues to pour money and resources into it making it better all the time.

A couple years ago, Epic Games advertised what could only be described as a flight-sim demonstration project using a special build of Unreal. Jason and Carlos investigated this and they were encouraged that this could be a positive development for the genre. They also learned that the available demo was not quite a perfect match for our needs, but the bones of what could make a valid warbird simulation was in there.

Turns out, Epic aimed this flight demo not at the PC gaming sector per se, but the commercial sector and was trying to recruit aerospace and defense companies to get on board with Unreal. We have friends who work in these industries and it turns out several of them are already using Unreal to power their in-house simulations, albeit not a warbird sim like ours. Seems easy right? Not exactly, we have different requirements for graphics, geospatial, damage, multiplayer and other gameplay features that can make it a challenge. However, by using UE5+ as our base we have saved loads of time by not having to build a completely custom engine from scratch. How else are we going to catch up to the competition in our remaining lifetimes? They have a 10, 15 or even 20 head start! Jason is already over the hill and don't ask how old Frits is. 🧓 Maybe we’re crazy to even try? And Unreal is great, but we still have a mountain of work ahead of us.

Crowdfunding?

We’ve been asked by many if we plan to do any crowdfunding for Combat Pilot. The answer is yes, we are planning an array of options such as Patreon and selling quality Merch like t-shirts, posters, and calendars through our planned storefront. The aim is to offset some of our non-salary expenses such as travel to museums, research materials, aircraft access, special tools, software licenses and updating hardware. We are under no illusion that our crowdfunding will pay for everything Star Citizen-style, we could only wish, but it will be a great way for those that want to support us early on to do so. Our investors come from the CFS community and are very generous, but their pockets are not bottomless. If these initiatives are successful, more can be done sooner and more of our budget can be used to attract the talent necessary to build your favorite plane or feature. Even one more experienced full-time programmer can make a world of difference! Of course, this would all be optional and you'll get no hard sell from us. More on these efforts soon...

YouTube Channel Activated!

In even cooler news, we have activated our YT channel and posted a couple fun videos featuring our IJN Akagi aircraft carrier! We realize it is strange that our first couple videos feature a ship and not airplanes, but we’re not quite ready to show flying scenes yet. So, for now, showing our flat-tops up close is what’s possible. Have a look! As the kids say like to say - make sure to SMASH THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON!

 

Akagi and Enterprise LOD 0 Mesh Complete

Both of our aircraft carriers are entering the texturing stage. We’ve finally dropped some guns onto Akagi and they look awesome!

   
   

Zeke Airframe

John continues to build the Zeke inside and out so our planes can compete with other sims out there on detail. Looks very nice!

  

F4F-4 Airframe

Chris continues to add more detail to our little pussycat and it looks great! We are building such detail to give us as many options as possible for both flying versions and static displays. You never know when such detail will come in handy. Better to have it now then need it later and not have it.

    

7 in. / 44 Cal. Artillery

Another Midway defender built by Tamas is almost complete! This time a real bruiser in the form of the 7-inch shore battery. This gun will ruin your invasion force in a hurry. Check out the size comparison chart below. These guns were used on American WWI-era battleships and then later used for island defense.

   

Japanese 25mm Type 96 AA Gun

Stefan continues to crank out gorgeous AA guns for our ships. This gun was Akagi’s main air defense weapon. She had 28 guns in 14x dual mounts.

   

Japanese 12cm Type 3 Gun

Akagi had 12 of these guns on 6x dual mounts.

   

Water-Cooled .50 Cal.

 USS Enterprise was also defended by several of these water-cooled .50 cal. heavy machine guns in case a Kate or Val got close in.

   

Midway Buildings

Carl continues to build and paint buildings found on Midway during the battle where a few still stand today. Researching these buildings is not an easy affair. Some had makeshift camouflage added before the battle which we still need to add. Midway had a weird mix of permanent military and civilian structures and temporary military encampments. Some facilities were also underground. Today, Midway is almost completely closed to American civilian access and is a small and very remote US Navy installation and wildlife preserve where thousands of Gooney birds and other species live. We hope to have some version of the Midway Atoll in our demo at FS Expo.

   
   

Talented Skin-Artist Wanted

As our first two external aircraft models come close to being finished, we are looking for a couple talented skin artists who would like to do some paint schemes that we can show at FS Expo. Our modelers are going to stay focused on their targets for the prototype and move to making the cockpits immediately, so we figured we’d ask the community for assistance. We think it might be a fun opportunity for a talented someone who really likes to paint planes.

This would be a volunteer assignment to start and you should have a professional mindset, experience making quality skins with and access to and knowledge of the latest version of Substance Painter and Photoshop. A portfolio or examples of your previous work painting aircraft for flight-sims is preferred. Also, an intense interest in the Pacific Theater will help. You’ll also need to sign a strict NDA. Our models will be using all the latest materials and PBR techniques etc. You can contact us through our forum, Discord or social media if you’re interested (look for Jason). Community created skins are a special part of this genre and it we will continue the tradition here.

Finally, for the next several weeks we are going to focus intently on our work and prepare for the FS Expo. We have a lot of work to do. We will likely not have any major Developer Diaries until closer to the show. Of course, we will keep you informed through our forum, Discord and social media properties about our progress. You never know when we may drop something interesting!  DDs will always be part of our marketing so please do not worry.

Thank you for reading our lengthy First Anniversary Developer Diary. We hope you found it interesting and please wish us luck in our second year!

“Neither side in this conflict can build warships as fast as aviation can destroy them from the skies.”

                    -  Major Alexander P. DeSeversky

 

The Combat Pilot Team

You can Discuss this Developer Diary HERE.

 

[Jason_Williams]

DD 08

Dear Pilots,

And we’re back after a short summer siesta! We are happy to report that our expedition to FS Expo 2024 was a success and we were able to meet our technical goals for the show. It’s been interesting to watch the comments and coverage of what we showed. The overall response at the show itself was very positive and the response in the larger community has also been largely positive which we loved to see and is encouraging. 

We appreciate everyone who stopped by the booth and gave it a go. Was a lot of fun for us to meet all of you and watch virtual pilots fly our planes for the very first time! We also got to catch up with several long-time friends who have been so generous to us with their help and time this past year.

To be honest, if FS Expo had not been in Las Vegas (where Jason lives) we would not have participated this year with so little to show. However, having it in Vegas greatly eased the logistics of attending so we went for it and worked hard to make a demo that we could be proud of. The whole experience was a good test of the Combat Pilot Team’s devotion and working under pressure with a hard deadline which was the real aim of our exhibiting.

We also want to thank all the flight-sim media that covered our booth and gave Combat Pilot a moment in the sun during and after the show. And Carlos and Jason want to thank Joe aka Props for including us in the CFS Discussion Panel at the expo. 

Not everything went perfect at the expo though as there were hiccups like our PowerPoint file getting corrupted during our presentation and having almost ZERO time to film a proper video showcasing our work in the best light. D’oh! Nevertheless, we got it done and did not fall flat on our face thank goodness. Thank you again to all who visited us at the show and followed us online during the show. We hope you liked what you saw. But now it’s time to turn the page and begin work on our second year of development.

  

  

We will continue to keep you abreast of our progress in the second year and we will continue to do regular Developer Diaries. We are still working on our budget for year two and must finalize our priorities for this next phase, but as you can imagine the to-do list is HUGE. We still have some fundamental features to complete and technical hurdles to overcome, but we are confident we can make significant progress on all fronts between this summer and next.

One thing we will launch soon is our long planned Patreon and Merch operations to give those that want to help us financially an opportunity to do so. Such support is always optional, but any support is greatly appreciated. The more revenue we can generate ourselves the more independent we can be as a studio. We will also make more videos and hold live stream events in the coming months so you have a better idea of what we have built and have more opportunities to interact with the team.

We have a long way to go in all departments, and we have no illusions that this will be easy, it will be a long hard slog over many years. And we’ll likely need to try some radical, or risky ways to sell and market Combat Pilot in the future. All we ask is that you give us a chance, stay engaged and help us spread the word to your fellow virtual pilots so we can continue to build a large, friendly community.

However, before we end this DD we want to show you something new which has the team very excited and we hope you as well. The cockpits for both the A6M and F4F-4 are officially underway!

  

 

Enjoy! 

“Sevilla you will go into the hotel room aka the dungeon and work on the build all night if needed until the bugs are fixed.”

                    -  Carlos Flors June 21st, 2024  Las Vegas, NV USA
 

The Combat Pilot Team

You can Discuss this Developer Diary HERE.