Chronocidal

Speaking of playtesting.. I'd say HAWX falls under the "Play-test? What is play-test?" category, especially the pc version. "Please press the ESC key to continue..."

I would say doubtful, since the wheels fold up similar to the VF-1, but since this one still seems to use the oversized main gear bays from the 1/72, it might be possible.. Even though they're inaccurate, with bays that deep the wheels don't need to pivot to fold up, and can just fold straight back. Personally, I think the gear were the weakest point on the 1/72 kit. The front gear already look a bit better from that pic, but the main gear needed a complete rebuild.

Nice, looks like they gave it a bit of a surface detail makeover. Lots more panel lines on this than the 1/72, and that cockpit looks awesome. Even got the internal sensors modeled into the nose lenses.

I know it's from a while ago.. but it just now hit me what this reminds me of. All we need is a wilted christmas tree, and a black and white beagle. On that note, I should have a fitting edit coming shortly along these lines.

I realize this may be a bit off topic (not pictures of finished cosplay anyway), but those of you looking for a good base for a TV style helmet you can actually use... you might want to check this out. Would take a bit of work, but it's an actual helmet, and even has the retractable visor built in.

Actually.. that pic is interesting. I could be wrong, but it looks like they beefed up the gullet a bit. Not to 1/60 levels, but the area ahead of the arms on the underside looks a bit beefier. As slick as it was, that actually was one of the most obvious variations on the Hasegawa 1/72 when compared with the lineart. You know that sharp edge along the side of the fuselage that blends between the nose and the hip area? The 1/72 kit has that area completely flat underneath, making it more wing-like on the edge. I don't have the pic available right now, but the lineart shows that area very clearly angled downwards, dropping the gear area down a bit. Also, from the looks of it, they're building in the internal details on the leg missile bays. Whether they'll be fully molded, or you'll have to option to fill them with missiles has yet to be seen though.

Big possible problem I see with a 1/18th transforming valk is weight. True with something that size, you gain a lot of interior space for joints/hinges etc, but all that mechanism will get heavy on some valks. If you could manage to make the structure light enough, give it massively strong and versatile joints, and still give it enough weight to be sturdy, you'd probably be past that problem. Then you're just left with where to put it. On the plus side though, Valks are very modular, due to their transformation. Make the major assemblies separate, and you're golden. You just assemble it when you want it out, then it collapses into a nice flat box under the bed. The Lego one I tried was about 1/18, and fighter mode was about 3 feet long. I dunno how tall it would've been, but if you just scale up a 1/48, battroid is a bit shorter than the fighter length, so it would probably only get to about 2 and 1/2 feet tall.

Anyone make out the price on that masterpiece Skywarp? I live in the middle of nowhere, but if one of those pops up at the local walmart, I won't be able to resist. I'm also curious to see what that Ramjet looks like in fighter mode... it looks like he stole Jetfire's colors!

Freelancer I actually understood the control scheme for, as awkward as it was. It's hard to come up with a good interface when you're working with a wacked out rpg/space combat/insterstellar trade/fps hybrid game. For what it was, if you ignored all notions of it being a space sim, and looked at it more as an fps/rpg where you just happened to be in a spaceship, it worked much better. Player mods fixed a lot of the main gripes about the way combat worked later on. Still in the Chris Roberts genre though, EA's (or was it still just Origin at the time?) handling of the Wing Commander franchise has been a crime against sanity. The marketing that buried the Kilrathi Saga under the glitz of WCIV, and relegated KS to uber-rare, crazy expensive game status just sucked. That was only the start though. Since then, EA has continued to sit on the license, and done nothing with it. Given the ease of making animated cutscenes nowadays, I'm still waiting for someone to realize what a gold mine they could have if they rebuilt the original WC I and II for current computers. I would say to rebuild all of them, but only if they agreed to keep the original live action cutscenes, and just rebuild the game engine around them. I've never been able to play Ace Combat 3 unfortunately, but from what I've read, I agree about that one. While removing the story may have actually improved some of the AC games (looking at you 6 ), that wasn't one of em.

You know what's funny about this (besides all the obvious reasons already mentioned elsewhere)... I wonder if it's a stalling tactic. Not just to stall for insanity's sake, but to accomplish something behind the scenes. Really, I wouldn't expect them to flesh out the entire timeline yet, so whether they're doing them chronologically or not, it doesn't mean we're absolutely going to get the filming story this season. They may pull the same stunt some time in the future, and insert even more new episodes. What struck me as a serious problem when this started was that when the theoretical episode lists started showing up, they would lead to an unfinishable show. Any way you slice the Disappearance story, once it starts, you're in for a ride to the end of the novels... or should I say, the lack of an end of the novels. While it may be filler, this marathon of monotony is doing something very obvious, and possibly very important: it's building up a huge mass of fanbase rage, from fans who're sick of KyoAni's tactics. For this story in particular, what does it do?? People get impatient waiting for the ending. So, they find other means of getting the rest of the story. Which is actually already easily available... in the novels. While I don't know if they'd be so incredibly devious, this stunt almost makes me think they're trying to convince the author to go back and write more novels. I'd like to see the sales figures for the book containing the original Endless Eight story for the past few weeks, and see if there's been any jump. It may be too complicated to be realistic, but this could all be a giant plot to reinvigorate the fanbase and get them to pursue the novels, and get the author to realize he has a potential legion of fans waiting for the end.

Unless they go back later, and make a big nonsensical movie to explain everything. So, I'm guessing for "End of Haruhi" we find out that Kyon really is the key to everything, and he has the power to reshape the world through his own desires. So, he has this crazy dream sequence full of classical music and crazy doodles, and voiced over by Morgan Freeman explaining how he had the power to change things all along. Then he wakes up on a beach next to Haruhi and the whole world has been swallowed by closed space and destroyed by Ang.. I mean those big glowy giant things, and now it's his job to reform the world from scratch with her... Why does this seem familiar? Btw, I decided to try one of the dubbed season 1 episodes the other day, just to see how it sounded.. I can't say it was all that terrible, but I hit upon the main reason I don't watch dubs very often.. every time I do, I wind up hearing the same voices, and it just drives me nuts. They're definitely good voices at times, but they're so recognizable it kinda ruins it. If I close my eyes, it sounds like Alucard arguing with Vash the Stampede about whether or not they should let Blackrose continue her harassment of Silmeria.

*dies*

Until they pay you to take it away, I'll pass. Everyone who buys it is essentially paying to beta test their game for them.

Seriously?

I'm surprised at you people.. no one's said anything yet. Don't you realize what today is??

Holy crap, how can so much awesome come from such a goofy cute theme song??

Actually, that's not ENTIRELY true. Even leaving out "Someday in the Rain," they added some extra/different material into a couple stories, especially Lone Island, and a bit in Live a Live. To be honest, I like the episode version of Lone Island a lot better, at least as far as the ending goes. The scenes of partying/drinking got cut, but the ending of the book was rather... lame. The mystery kinda just sputtered out, whimpered, and died. The ending in the show was much better, since they trapped them in their own game, and gave us a Phoenix Wright homage to boot. Certain bits of that ending were very visual, and wouldn't have worked in the book. The scene about the shadow person also got added in, and what I wonder is if that will be tied in later somehow. Live a Live was changed quite a bit too, mainly with regards to the concert scene. I dunno if you'd call it adding to the story, since they had to cut the concert short, but they added to what they pulled off. The band in the book had only 3 members, and Haruhi and Yuki split the job of the lead singer/guitarist, with Haruhi only singing. They also played a full band set, not just the two songs in the anime. Frankly, I don't think the novel holds a candle to this episode, since you just can't do a concert justice in a book. Even condensing it to two songs, I think the effect of the entire scene was much better, and dare I say a bit more believable with only two songs, while still making Haruhi look like she was doing the impossible (even more so, since now she was winging it with lyrics AND guitar). I've been holding off watching Endless Eight so far, and I might try to wait out the entire season, as long as it might be. I kind of want to just marathon the entire thing, rather than wait for the next episode.

OMG. That song just made my day in more ways than I can even list. A more purely epic win has rarely shown its face on the internet. Btw, this is one track of an entire album, all done with the Tokyo Philharmonic. *runs to find the entire album* Most are with vocals, unlike the Mikuru theme, and some of the orchestral versions don't mesh well with the vocal, but I think I like the Bouken Desho Desho arrangement even better than the original. Edit: Hare Hare Yukai appears to be instrumental too, and is incredibly awesome.

Lol.. sorry, probably didn't ever actually say that I was working on how you'd do it in real life, not how the anime shows it. I know what you mean btw, I do love to overcomplicate things. What I'm trying to figure out is more something you could make work with a computer sim, or if we ever built these things in real life, not so much how the anime shows it. I'm fairly certain that no multi-engined aircraft has a single lever for both throttles, so that's one complication right there, and there's a whole other list. What you've got listed sounds just about right for the anime. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of anime magic going on though, since there just aren't enough controls in the cockpit for everything you see the VF-1 do. The cockpit obviously doesn't show a sliding axis for the right stick, so that idea doesn't quite work, and the amount of arm control you see in various scenes wouldn't be possible to control directly, unless there are a LOT of controls for functions we're not even seeing. Now, they could rely heavily on preprogrammed motions, or they might have contextual controls that perform different functions in different situations. Only way to really know would be to ask Kawamori. Being an engineering type himself, I'd bet he probably has it all worked out.

Well, to be fair, Macross Plus was written before we really knew anything about the F-22, so they couldn't really copy it. Linking those vector controls to the feet does make sense in geralk and battroid, so maybe the pedals just function as a manual override in fighter mode, specifically to pull off maneuvers like that. But they have to be linked to the normal flight controls as well, since otherwise pulling back on the stick wouldn't do jack, because several of these planes have no traditional elevators. The YF-19, VF-11, and VF-4 are exceptions, since they have canards, and the YF-21 could probably do without since it's got the same control surface arrangement as the YF-23. And come to think of it, even the later VF-19 variants had more of a delta wing arrangement than anything else. But planes like the VF-1, VF-0, and VF-25 just don't have any control surface to function as an elevator, so they have to rely on vectored thrust.

The big issue I see with the arm scheme you have is that even with wrist control, a 2 axis stick is not nearly enough to control an entire arm. At the very minimum you need 3 axes, to control the hand's position in 3 dimensions. Up/down and left/right is fine, but what if you need to punch something? You need another axis to control how far out you extend the arm. You need one axis for every direction of motion you intend to be possible with the arm/hand. Assuming we go with the stick controlling the position of the hand in 3D space, that means 3 axes just for that. Now, maybe the hand itself could be controlled with a hat switch, since hand motions would be relatively precise, and not need to be too fast (unless you plan on communicating with sign language). It'd be simple enough to make a pressure sensitive thumbstick to control the hand and thumb, I think, since 2 axes would be plenty to control wrist rotation in two dimensions. So, for the complete axis count, you'd have for each arm.. 5 finger axes (limiting them to simple gripping), 2 wrist axes, and 3 hand position axes, so 10 for each arm, 20 total. Throw in throttle (two, actually), and things might get a bit messy. Course.. this is assuming this is all for real life. A game would be much simpler, I'm sure. And oooh.. on the real life side of things, just had an idea... all those finger buttons? Yep, they're axes, but are they spring loaded? That could make holding things (like the gunpod) get tiring. You'd need a finger version of cruise control. Or, another option.. I know we didn't see this in the anime, but what if each of the fingers had a ring on it, and were actually not spring loaded at all, but simply allowed the pilot's hand to push and pull the fingers open as if they were his own? *shrugs* Again, I need to get a life.

Interesting thought about the arm/hand operation... anyone ever see one of those incredibly fancy/expensive CAD controllers? Think like a trackball, except you can hold the ball, twist it, turn it, tilt it, push in 4 directions like a joystick, and even lift or press on it. It's basically... wow, yeah, I think it is a full 6 axis control. Now, imagine if the joysticks worked like that for arm control. Given the fingers are pressure sensitive buttons on the stick, the hand itself could be controlled by the traditional joystick motion (as far as orientation of the hand and wrist), while the 3 axes left could act as a simple directional control for the hand. Essentially, it'd be what computer animators call inverse kinematics. It's used in rigging computer animation models, and greatly simplifies motion animations. For things like walking, you would only keyframe animate the position of the foot. From that, the computer interpolates where the rest of the leg should be, given it's limits of motion. If you had 3 axes to control the spatial position of the hand, and 3 more to control how it behaves, that'd probably work nicely. Now the only problem with that is that you have lots of axes with very similar motions.. it would take a VERY careful design to make sure you could activate the axes you wanted to for the hand, without accidentally moving the entire arm.

I would love my X52 more if they hadn't ditched several of the better features of the X45 when making it.. the extra features of the new version just don't make up for the lack of engineering quality. It just feels flimsy, where the X45 felt extremely sturdy and beefy.. especially for the throttle knobs.. the ones on the X45 were nice, smooth, metal bearings.. by sticking the extra button in the middle of the ones on the X52, they killed the feel of those knobs entirely, and now they're plastic-on-plastic components that tend to fall off a lot. But anyway, enough about my control stick rants The problem with setting up a set of canon DYRL controls wouldn't be just the flip-up throttle.. what you'd really need would be two extremely fancy sticks, with interlocks that kept certain motions from working depending on the mode. The way I see it, each of those sticks needs to have 4-5 axes of control each, not the usual 2-3 (the third being a twist function). Five separate axes might be a bit much, but four would be doable. What you'd need is for each side stick to have the standard twist stick setup, and then put each stick on a sliding track that could move forward and back for the fourth axis. What you'd have then are automatic lockouts that would prevent the sticks from moving in certain ways during certain modes. In aircraft mode, the left stick would freeze all axes but the slide function for throttle, and the right stick would remain stationary, and probably lock the twist function. Moving into Gerwalk/Battroid would free up all those axes, and the throttle would flip up into a full function stick. That would all seem to work really great, except for one thing... you now have sticks that can move forward and back on two separate axes simultaneously. You can tilt each stick forward or back, and still slide them either forward or back. Managing that much freedom of motion could be very tricky indeed; probably not impossible though, depending on how the controls were weighted. But just imagine trying to slide your joystick across a desk without tilting the handle, and you'll see the problem. Granted, your joystick is designed to produce friction with the desk, and a control would be much easier to move.. but it's still an awkward combination of controls. Imagine throttle control was integrated into an aircraft's stick that way.. you could very easily cut your engine while trying to pull out of a dive, since the motions would be so similar. Now just to throw a King Kong sized monkey wrench in the works here... I dare anyone to explain how Basara controlled his Valk.

Officially, I dunno if the controls have ever been worked out. We see bits and pieces throughout the different series, such as the buttons that control hand motion, and how the foot pedals control thrust and leg movement.. but Gerwalk? If you delegate the hand controls entirely to arm motion (which you pretty much have to), you're left with the foot pedals to control ALL movement.. which could get messy. The foot pedals in Valks are nothing like regular rudder pedals, since they pivot, control yaw like traditional pedals, AND can be pushed at the same time. To be honest, that's one thing that has always seemed flat out wrong to me about Mac+. The shot they show of Isamu's aerobatics shows him using the foot pedals to control how the feet vector the thrust.. well, in Gerwalk or Battroid that's fine, but shouldn't that control be integrated into the stick for roll control in fighter mode? I seem to remember the foot pedals actually being used to walk in some scenes, which to me sounds overly complicated, but when you consider the sticks have to control the arms, that's all you're left with. The same is true for Gerwalk mode. Now, given enough control flexibility in the foot pedals (they seem to be attached to the pilot's feet, rather than just something he steps on), you can get a large range of motion control from them. In Gerwalk and Battroid, they'd need to control the engine thrust (seen in I think Mac0 to be controlled by pushing the pedals down, kind of like a jumping motion), walking motion (which, if the pedals are actually attached to the pilots feet in some way, could actually mimic real walking), as well as thrust vectoring with the feet while airborne. If we assume that the pedals in Valks have MUCH more motion in them than just a simple set of rudder pedals, it's likely they could act more like the leg controls seen in Noriko's Buster Machine in Gunbuster, where the pedals move in multiple directions, and the pilot can move them in any direction he can move his legs. This would be really imporant for thrust vector control, since you'd need to be able to tilt your feet side-to-side and front-to-back. Walking on the ground could be more automated, but if the pedals have a built in feedback system, they might actually exert a slight pressure upwards on the pilot's feet based on the current terrain. That way, the pilot would know when the Valk's feet were firmly on the ground, and he could actually get some sense of the motion of walking, rather than just automated motion controlled entirely by computer. Considering some of the fancy footwork some Valks have been seen to be capable of, either they have a tremendous system for executing pre-programmed close combat maneuvers, or the pilot really IS in full control of the motion (I'm thinking of the tuck and roll Hikaru's VF-1J performs in the opening credits of SDFM, but I'm sure there are other examples as well). And now that I think of it, yeah, the pilot DOES have to be in full control of the motions.. otherwise, how would Alto have pulled off his custom victory pose? In this case, the arm controls confuse me much more than the legs... I mean, they're control sticks.. granted I think they slide, but there has to be some tremendous precision freedom of movement to manage an over the shoulder pose for the rifle. Btw, yes, in case you're wondering, I've spent FAR too much time thinking about this. Figuring out control interfaces for fancy stuff like this is just fun for me.. I've flown so many flight sims, I've had a lot of experience with what types of control schemes work, and what types don't (I'm looking at you Hawx ). I just love figuring out ways to make supposedly impossible stuff work. It'd be even better if I got to apply this knowledge to an actual Macross game at some point (or better yet, given my career field with aeronautics, an ACTUAL Valk someday ).

Ok, just to clarify.. when I say control scheme, it's coming from a full-on flight-sim junkie, and if I were to ever work on a Valk sim, I would design in an option to fully control as much as you actually wanted. I figure, there's a reason Hikaru crashed on his first time out, so piloting the thing should not be that simple (if you actually want the hardcore sim experience anyway, there'd have to be simpler options of course ). Ok, so the controls.. From the start, I'm working on the assumption that this'll be controlled by a full blown HOTAS system with pedals. It's not what everyone has, but if you try and build a control scheme backwards (starting from basic to realistic) you're going to run into problems when you get to the realistic end of things, and have to redesign everything to make it possible. Also, just for the sake of absolute crazyness, let's throw in a head tracking system as well. You'll see why it's useful later on. So, how does a Valk fly? Aircraft mode is simple, you just use a stick, throttle and pedals as you would in any other sim. Given a head tracking system (or someone very good with a hat switch/target padlock view), you could even link the targeting and head turret to it, but most of the weapons would be forward firing. Gerwalk mode is essentially a cross between an AT-ST and a helicopter, and I can see a helicopter control scheme would have great merits here. In this case, the stick would act more like your classic WASD setup, and you'd need to control yaw with the rudder pedals (or you could always swap yaw and drift functions between the stick and pedals, since many people would probably like that option). That leaves the throttle for downward thrust, working like a helicopter collective control. Once you happen to actually touch down on the ground, you could still use the stick to walk, just at a reduced speed compared with hovering. Now the fun part.. you have arms now. This is where things could get tricky, but if enough functions are automated, it'll be simple enough to do. The right arm traditionally holds the gunpod, so it's functionality as an arm is actually very limited. I'd say for that, you could probably just use a selector to slave the arm to either boresight aiming (directly forward) or have it auto-aim toward your current target. Head-tracking would be IDEAL here, since you'd be essentially flying the Macross equivalent of an Apache attack chopper, complete with the head-tracking main gun. Slave the gun to your head-tracking cursor, and you can just place the aiming reticle where you want to. You could also try doing this with a hat switch (the round ones with ridges are generally called that actually, while the ones with tabs sticking up around the edges are called castle switches), but those rarely have the ability to track targets well. You'd probably have to almost entirely automate functions for the left arm, things such as "pick up," "grip," "punch," etc could be controlled by a combination of the aiming reticle, and action keys. Battroid, in most respects would work pretty much like Gerwalk mode, but you'd have more hand-to-hand combat options. Here's where the head-tracking almost becomes a must, because you're essentially playing a first-person shooter, but with a joystick and throttle. Joystick should still control forward/back and side-to-side motion, WASD style, and throttle could control thrust/jumping. What becomes an interesting option here is the possibility of using the rudder pedals, especially if they have integrated toe brakes. I don't quite know how you'd use them, but it would be interesting to be able to individually control each foot in space combat. Now, note, this is a setup that aims for realism (if that word can even be applied to transforming fighter planes). In actuality, it would be much easier to just go to a keyboard and mouse combo (or gamepad) when moving to Battroid or Gerwalk, but then you deal with the issue of thruster control. Granted you could hold the jump button down, but setting a level of thrust to keep you hovering could get complicated. You'd need individual functions that would increase, hold, and decrease altitude. Aside from that, fps controls would probably work fine. You're just going to probably have to deal with a lot of automated functions based around mouse inputs, but it wouldn't be all bad. You could hover over an item, press a button, and drag with the mouse to move it, or pick it up, etc. But then, you wouldn't have an excuse to get THIS: I do find it a bit ironic that with the flight sim market nearly dead, Logitech decides to release this beast now... but that won't stop me from buying it. It basically combines the best features from every HOTAS system that's ever been produced... dual throttle design like the Suncom F-15 one.. lots of extra trim knobs like the Saitek X45/X52.. military styled stick like the CH Products version.. they even added force feedback, which I've never seen in a serious sim setup before. It's gonna be a little pricey at $300, but most of the other comparable systems cost more, or roughly the same.. they just don't come in one box. Combine this sucker with head tracking, and I'll be dying for a serious Macross sim. Heck, I'd settle for a re-release of Tie Fighter.