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Quick and easy Tomcat tweak (IRIS F-14A and B)


BobSeaman

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The other day I was goofing around with the (freeware) IRIS F-14A* and I finally noticed something.

The AOA indexer (the carrot meatball carrot indicator) didn't work in the 2D or virtual cockpit view. :confused:

 

I was planning to make some panel mods anyway for a dedicated TARPS Pod panel, so I jump into the panel folder and check out the panel.cfg.

 

What I see is this:

 

[Window00]

file=vfr_window.bmp

file_1024=vfr_window.bmp

size_mm=1024

window_size_ratio=1.000

position=7

visible=1

ident=0

window_size= 1.000, 1.000

window_pos= 0.000, 0.000

 

gauge00=F-14_Tomcat!HUD Night, 401,244,219,219

//gauge01=F-14_Tomcat!AOA, 298,438,17,43

gauge02=F-14_Tomcat!Nav1, 736,696,52,10

 

 

OK, so I found the indexer but its turned off using the "//" trick.

I remove the "//" and check out the plane in FS. Its the older (FS) style indexer that shows vert speed but not necessarily AOA, but its close enough. :pilot:

 

I go back to the .cfg file and check to see if they did the same thing for the virtual cockpit, this can get tricky due to how virtual cockpits get made. No luck, it was never included for the virtual cockpit. Adding the indexer at this point can get tricky. Unless you know the folks who put the cockpit together in the first place, you almost have to play Detective and figure out what they were trying to do. :confused:

 

But, you have to start somewhere so I look at the .cfg file and notice that the virtual cockpit is actually kinda simple in its layout. The virtual cockpit is mostly composed of gauges on one BMP with separate windows for the CRTs. Next, I load the BMP files in the panel folder into my graphics program to check them out. Sure enough, its tough to make out but I see the outlines of the indexer in the main BMP for the virtual cockpit. :cool: I note the X and Y co-ords plus the width and height and add a new line to the panel.cfg then fire up FS to see how "off" I was.

 

I love it when I hit something on the first try. :cool:

 

To add the indexer to the virtual cockpit, add the following line to your panel.cfg:

 

 

In [Vcockpit01] at the bottom add

 

 

gauge55=F-14_Tomcat!IRIS Clock US, 846,445,65,65

gauge56=F-14_Tomcat!IRIS Elevator Trim US, 404,728,81,81

gauge57=F-14_Tomcat!CRS Knob, 535,372,24,24

gauge58=F-14_Tomcat!HDG Knob, 455,371,24,24

gauge59=F-14_Tomcat!AOA, 32,718,22,47

 

and you're done. :cool:

 

I don't know why IRIS missed adding the indexer, this was a "legacy" download when they shifted to FSX and DCS. :confused:

I've been flying the plane for several hours and can't find any issues or gauge "ghosting". It just works.

 

 

*- The freeware IRIS F-14 for FS9 installer is still available from sites like Sim Out House.

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Awesome fix, Bob! ;)

 

Do I post any other kind? :cool:

 

This aircraft has a slew of great re-paints available for FS9 and FSX. Some of the later repaints feature fancy helmets and uni patches for the pilots.bmp file (Tomcat flight crews, it seems, were exempted from wearing the "tactical gray" helmets and visor shields). Just be careful with the FSX repaints in FS9. Check before you download, if the zip file contains DDS textures you really can't use them. Some of the early FSX repaints will contain BMP files however, FS will crash when you try to load the plane. To fix this, you'll need to load the textures in Martin Wright's DXT2BMP program and convert the DXT5 textures to DXT3 format.

 

To check out the repaints available for this plane, search here, Avsim, and SOH using "tomcat IRIS" or "f-14 IRIS", do NOT limit yourself to FS9 only- keep the "sim" part of the search empty and see what shows up. :pilot:

 

I found a whole squadron's worth of repaints for VF-154 (the Black Knights) and combined the helmets from that download with the "rising sun" visor shield from a VF-111 download to produce a cool custom helmet for my aircrew. :cool: I remember VF-154 from when I was homeported in Japan and they were based at Atsugi and the USS Kitty Hawk.

This wasn't that hard. While it can be tough to edit re-painted DXT textures without having them "blow up", I used another program called FS Repaint (from Abacus but also still available from the program's author) to cut and paste the helmet visor from the VF-111 texture to the VF-154 texture and it worked great.

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I downloaded a repaint of Prototype #3, which also happened to work with the -B model as well.

 

I wish IRIS had included a Model with two tanks, an AIM-9 and an ACMI pod for NFWS use!

 

Alan :pilot:

"I created the Little Black Book to keep myself from getting killed..." -- Captain Elrey Borge Jeppesen

AMD 1.9GB/8GB RAM/AMD VISION 1GB GPU/500 GB HDD/WIN 7 PRO 64/FS9 CFS CFS2

COSIM banner_AVSIM3.JPG

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I downloaded a repaint of Prototype #3, which also happened to work with the -B model as well.

 

I wish IRIS had included a Model with two tanks, an AIM-9 and an ACMI pod for NFWS use!

 

Alan :pilot:

 

I wish they had included some additional models for F-14B. :D

 

If you're talking about an NSAWC F-14 flying out of NAS Fallon, remember that the F-14 already had some long legs without the tanks and they would have to drop them (somewhere over central Nevada), anyway, before calling "Fight's On". ;)

 

Same deal for Topgun out of NAS Mirarmar and the Adversary squadrons out of Oceana, Texas, and Key West. If you already have the home-field advantage, you may as well keep the plane as slick as possible.

 

Which sounds confusing when you consider that the whole point of adversary/dis-similar combat tactics is to teach the folks on the Blue team how to win the fight. :confused: Just recall, those folks had a cool job but a tight budget. ;)

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