slide

Looks good. 

5 hours ago, sqidd said:

What do you think the chances of someone terrible in 2024?

Back on track though: do we expect the release to be at the end of the month? [barring any further delays?]

This is all disappointing to hear, since the first one was pretty damned good...

Sukhoi has a proclivity for that... this is the Su-25 Grach we all know and love:

THIS is the Su-25T:

And as a single-seater:

Su-27:

Su-30

Fugly-beautiful two-seaters... It's just how they do over at Sukhoi

Just now, Dobber said:

Is that even real? Gotta say that looks photoshopped to me.

Chris

It has exactly the same profile as a Su-30-series cockpit, so it's a 50/50 considering how good some photoshop users are.

11 hours ago, David Hingtgen said:

I guess this would be an Su-57UB?  

Sort of depends I guess...

Going by Sukhoi's previous naming conventions: if it's a 2-seat trainer/fighter variant of the 57 it'll be the 57UB, if it's a multirole/strike variant or major avionics upgrade it'll be the Su-60 

7 hours ago, Mommar said:

That would be true if they were piloting fighters exclusively.  But in this case they all have two other modes to make use of.  It was just lazy writing/easier to animate.

You're correct, but I was simply referring to the over-use of the scissors maneuver

2 hours ago, Bolt said:

DYRL/SDFM, M+, Zero, and some Frontier carried weight. 
Maybe some balance can still be achieved. It's been reported that Kawamori san has many concepts and ideas in the vault..

As long as we're being told a war-story, not an Idol-group commercial merely SET in a war-story there is potential.

I mean, break-dancing in a Battroid even had potential, and they just simply wasted it in Delta

2 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

True.  

But then I was thinking before I posted that video, since he's wearing a 'backpack', I should've posted this in the Ghostbuster thread. 

 

During the process of building it, he constantly referenced the "Proto-Sabers" that predated the Lightsaber we all know and love:

eventually we'll figure out a fusion-reactor that one can safely wear as a backpack, or on a belt... and then miniaturize that even further to something the size of a MagLite/Lightsaber hilt... but until then it's Hacksmith FTW!

oh, and DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS! 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

>SNIP< There was very little transforming done and the only maneuver used was "The Scissors", over and over again because it's easy to animate.>SNIP<

If you were feeling really charitable, you could maybe attribute the unimaginative combat choreography to the inexperience of Windermere's untested pilots and the poor quality of the very remote Brisingr Alliance NUNS and the private pilots drawn from it.

That bears-out, having played DCS, Warthunder, and IL-2's various offerings online against real humans: 

Dogfights seem to end up one of two ways if they go on long enough: Scissors of some description [usually on the deck] or Turn-rate fights [also usually on the deck]. 

Both these scenarios typically end with someone panicking and pulling into the vertical, in a desperate attempt to change the geometry of the fight, which just means they are setting themselves up in front of the other guy's gunsight...

Many Combat-sim pilots do [and more should] know better, but that's almost always how it goes if it devolves into "goin' in for guns" on the other guy because you're Winchester.

So yea, unfortunately the writers are well within reason to use that excuse, in my experience.

4 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

It's not a merchandise** and I don't want to create a new thread just to post it.

 

**It's not merchandise... YET!

28 minutes ago, Darth Mingus said:

That is Dark&Twisted AF and I love it!!

Truly, You're 1-in-a-million @Shizuka the Cat... good luck with all the "work"

5 hours ago, Shizuka the Cat said:

Though, I have not decided yet if I will have my kids inherit my Macross toys, or if I will have them buried with me.

Viking Funeral FTW, but if your kid(s) do end up loving Macross, maybe just take one or two Valks with you...

3 hours ago, derex3592 said:

@MechTech , Ok, soo...I have to admit, I've never built a Hasegawa kit. I have a Hase 1:48 F-22 in my to build pile, along with the 1:72 YF-19 and YF-21, what makes them so revered?  I've done my share of modern Bandai kits and I know they aren't on that level of epic engineering, but what is it about them that makes people like them so much, I've watched others builds around here over the years and they don't seem to have perfect fit and finish, so I ask those who have them, what's the draw? Is it just because they do the "best" Macross kits out there? 

Hasegawa makes their Macross kits just like their aircraft kits, where Bandai's are like their Gundam kits. This is not a knock against Bandai, it's just how the different Macross lines evolved considering each companies' bread-and-butter.

Hasegawa's plastic is less soft and finicky than Bandai's [certain products used for modelling will eat/degrade Bandai's plastic, and I've never run into such an issue with Hasegawa's plastic].

There's no added complication of inner frames/transformation-gimmicks involved, making them easier and cheaper to build, and no concerns about gaps/sagging related to said gimmicks.

They also tend to have better [finer, crisper] small details. The plastic used is probably a contributing factor. I say "tend to" because Bandai isn't bad, and they're getting better, but they're not on Hase's level.

And they don't cost as much as a Wave kit does... the Hasegawa Macross line is quite comparable $-wise to other Hasegawa kits in the same scale/size, and look not-one-bit out of place next to a real-world fighter.

The real draw is for anyone who is used to building "Regular aircraft kits" as there's no surprises.

Add to the consideration Hasegawa's usual Cartograph-quality waterslide decals [even when/if they're not actually printed by Cartograph] vs Bandai's maddening insistence on stickers/having a comic-book-esque dot-matrix printing effect to the waterslides they do make, and the Hasegawa kits are straight winners... except the 1/72 VF-1 series' leg-droop, which tbh, is rather easily compensated for.

and like @MechTech said: accessories!

50 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Look, open YOUR mouth for the first time after having it sealed shut for most of your life and tell me how YOUR teeth look, okay? Sheesh, judge much?

Maybe it's supposed to be from the time Unit 01 ate the Angel....

2 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

I don't know why, but this idea morphed into a very strange crossover with LOTR, picturing Luke and Wedge arguing over kill counts, and after the first Death Star blows, Wedge pipes over the comm: "That still only counts as one!"

Now I want that scene in Star Wars!

I would view them more as a Campaign-Badge or Mission-Badge than a Kill-Marking [though Wedge does get credit for a half-Deathstar]

I'll note all the RAF Bomber command Lancasters with a bomb-scoreboard... 

JB663's 100th mission was recorded as 4th November 1944, a raid on Ladbergen - Dormund-Ems Canal, with Flying Officer F E Day in command - his one and only sortie in JB663! The following morning a huge bomb was painted on the aircraft's nose, next to the 99 bombs already there, put there in five neat, slanting rows of 20 and one of 19. Above the impressive scoreboard with wings outstretchede was an eagle, looking much the same as the RAF eagle, above were the words, 'King of the Air'.
In all she flew 111 operational sorties, and statistics compiled on this particular aircraft note that it flew 985 hours, covered 150,000 miles and carried 600 ton of bombs and incendiaries to targets in Germany and France. Its final trip was a seven-hour sortie to a synthetic oil plant at Brux in Western Czechoslovakia.

... however given the accuracy statistics [see Summary of the Butt Report below], these are mission-badges, not actual "We hit something" confirmations:

Quote

 

The Butt Report, released on 18 August 1941, was a report prepared during World War II, revealing the widespread failure of RAF Bomber Command aircraft to hit their targets.

The report was initiated by Lord Cherwell, a friend of Churchill and chief scientific advisor to the Cabinet. David Bensusan-Butt, a civil servant in the War Cabinet Secretariat and an assistant of Cherwell, was given the task of assessing 633 target photos and comparing them with crews' claims. The results, first circulated on 18 August 1941, were a shock to many, though not necessarily to those within the RAF, who knew the difficulty of night navigation and target finding.

Any examination of night photographs taken during night bombing in June and July points to the following conclusions:

1. Of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within 5 mi (8.0 km).
2. Over the French ports, the proportion was two in three; over Germany as a whole, the proportion was one in four; over the Ruhr it was only one in ten.
3. In the full moon, the proportion was two in five; in the new moon it was only one in fifteen. ...
4. All these figures relate only to aircraft recorded as attacking the target; the proportion of the total sorties which reached within 5 miles is less than one-third. ...

The conclusion seems to follow that only about one-third of aircraft claiming to reach their target actually reached it.

Postwar studies confirmed Butt's assessment, showing that 49% of Bomber Command bombs dropped between May 1940 and May 1941 fell in open country. As Butt did not include those aircraft that did not bomb because of equipment failure, enemy action, weather or which failed to find the target, only about 5% of bombers setting out bombed within 5 mi (8.0 km) of the target.

 

TL;DR Wedge is completely within the bounds of reason to have 2 Deathstars painted on his bird.

17 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

Time for a spaceplane 2.0. 

Damned right!

The Virtual Festival of Aerobatic Teams is streaming this weekend.

Day1:

3 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They're on their knees, begging fans "Just tell us what you want!".  

Just now, Mog said:

Did they actually specify when this story will take place?

No Wedge, no dice.

THIS x1000

14 minutes ago, Mommar said:

Why would you be optimistic?  Have you forgotten about the other six POS'es they've already put out?

Even I can't be all Doom and Gloom about EVERYTHING... someone else is going to have to take up the curmudgeon's crown on this one...

until it's a POS too, then you'll get to meet the real me about it!

12 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

I'm hoping this one is going to be great. Would love to see a lot of space dog fights.

 

That's all I want, I'll fast-forward through the rest of it if I have to

1 hour ago, 505thAirborne said:

Hopefully the next SN8 Rocket they build will have some type of retractable landing gear like the Falcon 9 boosters have, that should make it easier/safer to land. 

They just need to figure out how to not let the fuel tanks lose pressure in the tanks to the point where it [apparently] didn't flow properly.

"engine rich exhaust"

Considering how far they've come in this short time that's a trivial hurdle.

2 hours ago, jvmacross said:

The good thing about the Indiana Jones logo is that it does not have "Young" in it...

Truth.

2 hours ago, jvmacross said:

Hoping at least half don't flop...

We'll be lucky if 1/3 are any good/decent... and I'm really hoping Rogue Squadron is one of them.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this... they better not F it up!

SpaceX Rocket: explodes

Elon Musk: