Canterbury to Vietnam


by SeanG

After a successful mission in South Korea, HMNZS Canterbury has made the treacherous transit down the Chinese coast, dodging Typhoon’s and is now in Danang, Vietnam.

Sailing into the sunset as Canterbury enters the South China Sea

First stop on arriving in the South China Sea was a rendezvous with CVN70, USS Carl Vinson operating on Yankee Station, East of Danang.

Early morning Rendezvous with Carl Vinson

After visiting the Carl Vinson it was time to head into port and resupply.  From ‘Yankee Station’ to Danang is only a very short transit, so before nightfall Canterbury was safely docked in Danang Harbour, within sight of the busy Danang Air Base.

Safely alongside the quay in Danang Harbour

I have been sourcing and installing Vietnam scenery with the idea to do a little exploring, with a touch of Vietnam War history included.  To that end I have installed some interesting 60’s era sceneries and AI packages.  Next step is to get the Skyhawk, Arrow and 737 in-country and start exploring!

Muliplayer on my own?


by SeanG

Sounds like an oxymoron, but that’s exactly what I was experimenting with tonight!

Being a sim-nut means that basically every device I have that is capable of running some sort of sim (normally ‘flight’ sims) does…. so tonight I had a quick jaunt in the Skyhawk, flying formation with both of my tablet PC’s, which were running FS9 and connected to my ibnet server.

Joined with a 737-400 running on my 7″ Windows tablet!
After harassing both 737 for a bit, I headed West to buzz Canterbury. 
Then it was back to Osan to land.

All in all a pretty cool nights flying.  Having other aircraft flying around is a lot of fun in the sim.  My next step is to integrate the ‘Terrain Following Radar’ I experimented with previously, into the sim’s running on my ‘drone’ PC’s, add some more complex flight plans and then play around with some mission ideas!

RNZAF_AI – DCS:World Edition


by SeanG

After an excellent online session on Saturday night, I was thinking about the aircraft types modelled in DCS:World which are representative of RNZAF types.   I have been flying the Macchi MB-339 a bit, and there is a Skyhawk coming.  There is already an AI C-130 in the game, and Lewis found a ‘Civil Aviation Mod’ which includes both the Boeing 727-100, and 757-200.

So, after the flight on Saturday I quickly fitted my RNZAF_AI B727 paint over the DCS template and made something which looked really cool!  Tonight I’ve been working on the C-130, which is ok, though not perfect…

DCS world is fast becoming my go-to sim, which has completely flipped my “sticking with fs9” theory on it’s head.  The new plan is for the Skyhawk to be FS9/P3D but also DCS:World in VR.  Unfortunately there is no likelyhood of a Kahu Skyhawk being released for DCS, but there is a very good A-4e ‘Community Mod’ coming in October (fingers crossed!)

More VR Testing


by SeanG

Tonight I spent time on the VR PC.  Doing all those “housekeeping” chores that I’d avoided when I built the machine *in a rush*…..  So, new chipset, Ethernet and USB drivers installed and a wee bit of tuning and it is running really well!

Of course this meant I had to do a test flight, just to be sure 🙂

First up was a flight over the NTTR in the F-15, strafing the RED guys.  Unfortunately, they seemed to get a bit angry and shot back!  The stuff coming out the back of my jet would be fuel running out through all the bullet holes….
So next up I jumped in the Tomcat, to make amends for my efforts in the last mission
And then this happened…..  shades of Top Gun.   1st person view, in VR of a flat spin is not very pleasant!

Rendezvous in South Korea


by SeanG

Canterbury has continued her ‘Port Hopping’ adventure around the Eastern and Southern coast of South Korea, visiting ports in some truly spectacular scenery.

Tonight, after a day-long cruise through the myriad of small Islands around the South coast, Canterbury was coming in to Port in Mokpo, so I decided to fly the 737 down tomeet her.

Canterbury arriving in Mokpo in the late afternoon

Departing at dusk from Osan, then a quick flight down the West coast had us arriving overhead Canterbury just after dark.

A night flight across South Korea

Mokpo airport closed in 2006, due to a number of reasons, but in my world, it was still operational 😉    One of the reasons the airport closed was the “frequent misty weather”…. which is what I encountered tonight!

After the flight, with Canterbury and the 737 bedded down for the evening, I fired up DCS:World, and had a quick test flight in the Macchi around Nellis.   I now have 3 versions of DCS installed on the PC, each with their own benefits……   The primary benefit of the ‘Steam’ edition is that it is the only one compatible with the version of the Nellis ‘NTTR’ terrain package.

VR TA-4k Flight


by SeanG

Tonight I installed Nigel’s awesome TA-4k Skyhawk into FSX, strapped on the Oculus and went flying.

A little low level on the way to Hokitika

A ‘quick flight’ from Christchurch, over to Akaroa then back to the city, turned into an incredible trip over the alps, following the road over Arthurs Pass, and landing in Hokitika.  The immersion of VR, linked with *very* familiar environment meant an amazing experience.

Looking back over your shoulder is a great VR experience!

This ended up being more that the simple test flight it was supposed to be, it ended up being simply astonishing.  VR is good, I get that, but the fact that it keeps dishing up these incredible new experiences is truly amazing.

FSHost


by SeanG

   In my continuing quest for multiplayer/multi aircraft missions in my sims I have been experimenting with FSHost.

Using this freeware (well, “donationware” actually) server and client I am able to connect different FS versions to the same multiplayer server.  This means I can connect my FS9 based sims with my VR enabled FSX… Imagine a formation hop in VR flying wing with the Skyhawk sim…….

First test, FS9 in the 737 on the left, FSX on the VR ox on the right

One exciting discovery was that lights seem to appear correctly, meaning I should be able to assign “effects” to the light switches in each sim.  This gives the possibility of simulating guns, rockets and bombs across multiple platforms in the same multiplayer session.

TA4KSIM.COM is now hosting a 24/7 FSHost server.  For more info Click on the FSHost Server link under “Sim Projects” above.   To connect to the server, just point your FS, or FSHost Connect Client to ‘ta4ksim.com’ and you should be connected.