not planned USMC Version of Litening TGP

Sounds familiar. Considering Litening was only ever a stop-gap measure because ATFLIR was so far away, and a TGP was needed to make the Hornet useful, I wonder if ED now thinks the effort to get things right is beyond what they anticipated. It's clearly more difficult to implement than they bargained for.

so I dont see why all this hoohaa had to happen.

Two reasons... As I mentioned above.

They wanted to drive sales, and people bitched about not having any reasonable A2G capability.

Now... People are trying to force ED to go EVEN FURTHER down that rabbit hole while ALSO talking out the other side of their mouth about why they don't understand why this hoohaa had to happen.

Do you really not see that happening here?

Or... Is your goal public EGO stroking for the sake of it? Seriously. I'm not trying to be a jerk. That is ACTUALLY how it appears. The Litening pod aws never part of the package until the community asked for a solution, and ED provided (for our benefit as well as theirs I'm sure...). Now it's not perfectly perfect (I feel like it does the intended job both in game and out) so you dig up a few pics and say look... see... we want more and it's not right. Waaaah...

Like I said... when the stated goals are released (ATFLIR)... Feel free to make sure it's speaking the right language and there's a rotating arrow... Great... I'll even appreciate it... It's all good. But...

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. It looks entitled.

My vote...

Delete the Litening pod and go full bore on the atflir. See what the community says then. You can't have your cake and eat it too boys. And I mean boys in the strictest sense of the word.

Grow up please :).

The constant wordplay is draining.

You know... As I recall... on this particular subject... there was no word play until someone decided that the Litening pod they were given to tide them over until they got a proper atflir wasn't good enough for them and decided to take issue with what effing LANGUAGE it spoke...

The constant bull-shittery, whining and entitled outlook on life is what's draining my friend :). Do you folks REALLY think that giving ED employees hell about something that they chose to go above and beyond about is the best way to get them to keep listening to reasonable community feedback?

Apparently videos arent a good source unless ED provides them.

Let's take a step back and think critically about this for a minute.

The problem with using YouTube videos as evidence are that it is extremely difficult to conclusively prove when the video was shot and what sub-variant of aircraft, equipment, and software is being used. Without knowing all the details, you can easily fall into the hole of referencing a system that is of the wrong variant or from the wrong date without even knowing it. I totally understand ED's desire to work primarily with technical documents with a known provenance and explicit date and version info.

Let's examine the (I assume sarcastic) claim "It may be worth changing the description of the hornet from 'Mid-2000s USMC/USN Hornet' to 'Mid-2000s SAF Hornet' then." It has a lot of problems:

The video description references the Spanish Air Force, Mexican Air Force, and "F18 Carrier OpsCarrier Strike Group 8: F-18 E/F Super Hornet flight operations from USS Dwight D. Eisenhower." so, how do we know this is even Spanish? How do we know the date? The video was uploaded in 2013, the only year in the description is 2012, "mid-2000s" seems to be right out, but who knows? The video isn't from an official source, nor is it a "tour video" like we see from US pilots where we can reasonably assume that all footage is at least from one squadron. There's absolutely no expectation that all clips within the video come from the same source or represent the same aircraft sub-type, software version, or even nationality.

I would say the video is not conclusive proof that the Spanish Air Force used that FLIR symbology in the mid 2000s, or any other year. But, even if it did, that does not mean that such symbology was exclusive to the Spanish Air Force as it offers absolutely zero evidence that such symbology was not in use elsewhere. The only thing it does show is that the aircraft orientation symbology we have looks to have been implemented in an operational Hornet at some time, so the idea that ED just invented it is out.

I don’t understand why it is always so hard for ED to accept fault in something and say: “hey, thank you for providing new and more accurate info, we will get to work with this”. Like it doesn’t hurt ED/the Sim/anyone to admit a fault sometimes. The info Swift provided clearly proves more accurate to what ED has been using for the Litening.

This goes both ways. People need to realize that a single YouTube video may not be more accurate info than what ED is already working with, especially when the provenance of the video is unknown. Too many people act like a 2-second clip on a random YouTube channel is 100% reliable proof of something and should trump ED's documentation every time. That is, frankly, absurd.

The reference video claims to show a USMC F/A-18D flying over Iraq in 2004. The video was uploaded 2013 and is not from an official source, so we can't take the video description as absolute fact. Further, can we conclusively prove that all footage in the video is from the same deployment? The video does seem authentic, but is one video from a YouTube account with a only a single upload a 100% reliable source? Is it more reliable than the technical documentation that ED has? Further, it shows a different aircraft from a different service, and most of the footage showing the FLIR imagery looks to be from the backseat. Does the FLIR symbology from a USMC F/A-18D WSO look exactly the same as that for a USN F/A-18C pilot? Do we know that for sure? Hell, for that matter, do we even know that the aircraft featured in the video, or all aircraft flown by VMFA-242 in 2004, were representative of the entire USMC F/A-18D fleet?

I'm not saying ED is always 100% right here, but I am saying we should not always assume that they are wrong either. Videos are difficult things to use as proof for anything, and I generally agree with ED's policy of trusting the technical documentation first. Can we please stop vilifying them for being cautious about relying on community provided "proof" over their own documentation?

Two reasons... As I mentioned above.

 

They wanted to drive sales, and people bitched about not having any reasonable A2G capability.

 

Now... People are trying to force ED to go EVEN FURTHER down that rabbit hole while ALSO talking out the other side of their mouth about why they don't understand why this hoohaa had to happen.

 

Do you really not see that happening here?

 

Or... Is your goal public EGO stroking for the sake of it? Seriously. I'm not trying to be a jerk. That is ACTUALLY how it appears. The Litening pod aws never part of the package until the community asked for a solution, and ED provided (for our benefit as well as theirs I'm sure...). Now it's not perfectly perfect (I feel like it does the intended job both in game and out) so you dig up a few pics and say look... see... we want more and it's not right. Waaaah...

 

Like I said... when the stated goals are released (ATFLIR)... Feel free to make sure it's speaking the right language and there's a rotating arrow... Great... I'll even appreciate it... It's all good. But...

 

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. It looks entitled.

 

 

My vote...

 

Delete the Litening pod and go full bore on the atflir. See what the community says then. You can't have your cake and eat it too boys. And I mean boys in the strictest sense of the word.

 

Grow up please :).

 

 

 

You know... As I recall... on this particular subject... there was no word play until someone decided that the Litening pod they were given to tide them over until they got a proper atflir wasn't good enough for them and decided to take issue with what effing LANGUAGE it spoke...

 

The constant bull-shittery, whining and entitled outlook on life is what's draining my friend :). Do you folks REALLY think that giving ED employees hell about something that they chose to go above and beyond about is the best way to get them to keep listening to reasonable community feedback?

I don’t see it as whining, more like questioning. ED went out of their way numerous times to explain that they are making the US Navy (insert lot number) version of the hornet when the topic of omitting ils came up in the beginning. By using the Spanish version it contradicts statements that they made in the past and some people are asking why. I think it’s kind of cool looking personally and if they said this is the version that we decided to go with because it’s the best complete documentation even though we realize it’s a compromise on what we said earlier then I completely get it.

I don’t think someone is wrong just because they hold a different opinion than I do and I think that’s one of your main beefs here.

You people are ridiculous...

 

Do any of you remember back when we had no way of targeting aside from rader (that lost lock if you moved...) and ED was kind enough to do EXTRA work just so we could run the lightning until the atflir is done?

 

WTF is wrong with you effing dumasses? <-- Red Foreman voice

 

I mean seriously... I appreciate the research and all of that for a module where you're actually making it more realistic... That's fine... but our bird was NOT originally supposed to be a USMC bird. That was only added because WE wanted a targeting pod and THEY were nice enough to push one through for us...

 

Now you have the entitled audacity to sit here and bitch about the fact that the implementation of something they just did to be nice and, yeah... help sales... because it wasn't a good idea to release with no pod... is not perfectly accurate?

 

Holy cow.

 

Look... just put your research time into a subject that makes sense and doesn't ask for another inch when you've been given a mile ok?

LOL... People are perfectionists, some pay too much attention to detail. I wish I was like that:doh:

Anyways, I'd be happy with symbology we have + coordinates... As long as make this freaken thing work. Now, what's up with A/A FLIR'substitute for AZ/EL if not really functional?

Dear all a small update on this.

 

The Litening was added to get a pod on the Hornet sooner than later, it is based on available Spanish docs.

 

The ATFLIR is to come later, this will be based on US docs and will be the prime pod for this Hornet.

 

Remember that ED has to follow the rules, especially when we have professional contracts the hinge on us being above board. Again, thanks for the reports, but understand the path we are on.

Thank you for the response Nineline.

I'm happy to lay this to rest, safe in the knowledge that we will eventually get a US pod. I figured it would be something like that.

Dear all a small update on this.

 

The Litening was added to get a pod on the Hornet sooner than later, it is based on available Spanish docs.

 

The ATFLIR is to come later, this will be based on US docs and will be the prime pod for this Hornet.

 

Remember that ED has to follow the rules, especially when we have professional contracts the hinge on us being above board. Again, thanks for the reports, but understand the path we are on.

Thanks for the confirmation.

It’s a shame in a way ATFLIR wasn’t implemented as option 1 from the start. I think we’d all agree that Litening wasn’t the quick and easy stopgap we’d thought it’d be.

Anyone got any good Spanish themed missions?

Good to hear, but that is what you guys should have done before the update, communicate.

Ay caramba

So the team is supposed to be modeling a 2005 (or whatever year) USN/USMC Hornet but a TPOD using Spanish Hornet symbology is "correct per available docs"? I get that this was a stopgap, but claiming something is correct without clarifying that it's correct to something that isn't even supposed to be in the scope of the project is disingenuous.

I don’t see it as whining, more like questioning.

Well... OK. but...

It needs to be put in context IMO. It could be meant either way. It would be in the grey area for sure. Until you put it in context. that context being that ED was going to make a USN F18 for us. They did mostly and released it into early access (still there BTW :)). We got into it a littleways and people decided to ask for an A2G solution because they were getting bored of A2A. that's fine. People get restless. It's cool. Just be respectful.

So...

ED decided to feature creep the 18 and say OK... we'll call it a USN/USMC aircraft because we can kinda roll with that in an effort to get you guys a litelning pod that wasn't really used much aside from specific limited usage cases but yeah... it makes sense and hey... it'll maybe sell a few more 18's too and that's a bonus.

Now... people are like "but it's not perfectly real and perfect. ED should change it so it has the right letters on the screen and maybe arotatey arrow. Because PICTURES!!!!

Nah... I'm sticking with "whining" and "EGO stroking".

By all means though... If you find problems with the ATFLIR and can prove it's wonky in some way... Then I'd be 100% willing to bet that EDwill either listen... or they won't :). But at least you won't have to listen to ME tell you about the entitled undertones of the request :).

All USMC features of the jet are "extras" given to us just because they were trying to skirt the hardline approach to realism to get something done to make the Hornet a better airframe in EA. Let's not fault them for it eh?

Gift horse.. mouth... looking... <--- Look it up :).

In order to get a pod to you as soon as possible, this is the path we took. Originally I believe that ATFLIR was going to be the only pod. Thanks.

Hi Nine, you said on discord that you are legally allowed to use the Spanish docs. I take it as the team had no access to US docs or were not legally allowed to use those.

Are you legally allowed to use US docs for the ATFLIR / has access to those documents at this time, or is it still in the gathering phase?

So the team is supposed to be modeling a 2005 (or whatever year) USN/USMC

Lemme just stop you right there ;)...

The Hornet was never supposed to be a USMC bird.

It ONLY is a USMC bird because that was the only way ED could justify trying to get a USMC targeting pod to us to increase the capability of the airframe in game during EARLY ACCESS.

They did this because the community wanted it. Not because it was originally what the community bought or what they decided to model.

If you don't know what you're talking about... Don't.

the ONLY fruit of your labor will be that ED, in the future, will not feature creep their products to appease the community because YOU will train them that the effort is not worth the BS they take later.

Just stop.

So the team is supposed to be modeling a 2005 (or whatever year) USN/USMC Hornet but a TPOD using Spanish Hornet symbology is "correct per available docs"?

It makes perfect sense if Spanish docs are the only ones available to them.

That’s what I don’t understand, if it’s not correct as per the year/model/vintage of F18 the Hornet is going for, why even include it and spend the dev effort? And why stop there? Why not have 2/3 rack Mavs while we’re at it?

Also, the underhanded way it which it was announced that we’ve got Spanish functionality on what is supposed to be an American Hornet (ie until the community bug them enough about it) feels down right deceitful. If ED came out from the start/prior to the OB and just said ‘hey, we’re going to give you guys something that, whilst not period correct, we feel will serve it’s purpose until we release the ATFLIR’ I think I/the community could get onboard (well, a lot easier than this anyway)

Agreed, if at the start of the litening project, they had said 'We only have info for a spanish litening' then we would have had an idea of what to expect and could have put our support behind the dev process. As it stands we are left feeling disappointing that its not as we were expecting it to be based on various videos.

If ED came out from the start/prior to the OB and just said ‘hey, we’re going to give you guys something that, whilst not period correct, we feel will serve it’s purpose until we release the ATFLIR’ I think I/the community could get onboard (well, a lot easier than this anyway)

That's almost exactly what happened...

Aside from the fact that ED didn't plan to put the litening on the 18 prior to early access...

But then they added it when the community begged for it and SPECIFICALLY said that it was s a stop gap measure until the ATFLIR was done.

Maybe also just read this thread. this has been stated and is the truth a few times.

So...

If you don't know what you're talking about... Don't.

As an aside, if you look in the video falcon_br posted yesterday, there is a north arrow :) it is just the coordinates readout that is missing

Agreed, if at the start of the litening project, they had said 'We only have info for a spanish litening' then we would have had an idea of what to expect and could have put our support behind the dev process. As it stands we are left feeling disappointing that its not as we were expecting it to be based on various videos.

Nah...

I'm not buying it.

You're feeling ashamed of trying to push the devs into a corner based on your lack of understanding of why we have the litening pod in the first place... And you're STILL trying to blame them for not going far enough in some way.