Announcing Tu-22M3 Troika by Black Cat Simulations

Can I request to scan one of the late MiG-23? MLD will be great If one is available!

If anybody has a prospective project that I might scan at Monino or the Ukraine Museum, PM me.

While I am not a content creator I thought I'd share what aircraft the museums have.

UKRAINE

For prospective modules I personaly think it would be great if we could see some attention paid to the

• MiG-23 and MiG-27
  
• MiG-25
  
• Su-17
  
• Mi-24 ( any or all three variants they have) and Mi-35
  
• yak-28
  
• yak-38 (russian VTOL!)
  
• Possibly the Tu-95 (Tu-142 ASW variant at this museum)
  

For the museum in Monino this is the closest I got for actually finding all aircraft stationed there

Hey, they have a Su-15 and Su-24! Which versions? And what version of the Su-17 do they have?

Wow, I guess I could spend a month in this museum.

Update 21 June 2016

I should have Wag's tagline, 'EVERYTHING IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE'.

- I decided to delay the trip to Ukraine by one month. The trip to Ukraine is a hold up for the programming and modeling efforts, but the early July date was rushing a number of things, and it also gives me time to make some cost reductions that make the effort less stressful, at least for me. For one thing I'm delaying a scanner purchase, and it won't coincide with this trip; I've found someone who can rent us a scanner in Kiev for a reasonable price. I'm also cutting out the Russia portion of my trip. Part of the motivation was to try to scan some cockpits at the Central Air Force Museum at Monino, but they have actually made good progress with getting airframes preserved against the elements, and that involves sealing off the interior entirely. When a fellow DCS'er asked them about scanning opportunities, he says they said NO!!!, with the exclamation points. So I'd just be going as a tourist at this point. I'll get there some day. It also frees me up to take my time in Ukraine, if I feel I need to extend.

My programming goal before Ukraine is to complete a first pass at the EFM. I have an awesome performance and dynamics study on the Tu-22M3 from a Russian Military graduate course that is really good. See here. With that guidance, I'm using a combination of openVSP, Cart3D and hand calcs, and praying (really hard) that I don't have to go beyond that to get the fidelity I want. I'll try to do a post about that process sometime before Ukraine.

- AI/Multi-crew: separate post shortly.

Brian

Awesome, just awesome!

edit: I dont get why they wont let you scan the Cockpits... :/

How about just going the old fashion way and taking measurement of the cockpit ?

Taking decent pictures and pertinent measurement should help figuring this thing. That's how most cockpit builders are doing rare airframes.

Hi, Brian.

I found a few photos of the cockpit of the aircraft in the RU-Internet.

link for download

Also I have my personal photos of Tu-22M3 (external) that I can share. We need some specific photo (bomb doors, etc.)?

Apologies for the Google translator.

Great find, CiberAlex!

Thank you!

Hi, Brian.

 

I found a few photos of the cockpit of the aircraft in the RU-Internet.

link for download

 

Also I have my personal photos of Tu-22M3 (external) that I can share. We need some specific photo (bomb doors, etc.)?

 

Apologies for the Google translator.

Holy crap....that's a lot of switches lol

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Hey, they have a Su-15 and Su-24! Which versions? And what version of the Su-17 do they have?

Hi, i'm from Kiev and can answer on same questions.

Su-15TM

Su-24MR

Su-17UM

Update 21 June 2016

I'm using a combination of openVSP, Cart3D and hand calcs, and praying (really hard) that I don't have to go beyond that to get the fidelity I want.

I really, really hope you have additional material to calibrate CFD results, like a performance flight manual. My experience with CFD, especially when computing drag, is quite disappointing.

But I wish you the best luck. It's the first 3rd party project that really catches my attention.

Regards!

I really, really hope you have additional material to calibrate CFD results, like a performance flight manual. My experience with CFD, especially when computing drag, is quite disappointing.

 

But I wish you the best luck. It's the first 3rd party project that really catches my attention.

 

Regards!

Yea, I give CFD the evil eye without flight test results, or at least performance numbers. I should have a flight manual (Руководство по летной эксплуатации, РЛЭ) once I go to Ukraine. The Tu-22M3 Practical Aerodynamics document that I linked to also detailed some stability derivatives, so my plan is to use Cart3D to generate flight dynamics derivatives and induced drag across the envelope, and to have a look at how shocks develop vs mach number, alpha and beta. If the Cart3D derivatives match the document, I'm probably going to consider them good. Drag is probably going to be an ugly mix of hand calculations, Hoerner's Fluid Dynamic Drag, and a few (emphasis FEW) RANS runs, plus Cart3D. If Cart3D shows shocks developing unsatisfactorily, I'm going to have to re-evaluate everything, but the aerodynamics document says that they are relatively benign.

That was meant for engineers. When the process is done, I'll make a youtube video and walk the non-engineers though what I did.

Brian

A lot of people have asked about AI and multi-crewing. Here are my current thoughts.

The airplane is not a dogfighter. Limit G is +2.5/-0, and wing loading is very high. If a threat is close enough to see, there is nothing you can do about him, apart from the tail gun whose performance is unknown. The Tu-22M3 is meant to largely be flown by autopilot during the bulk of a mission. If the player selects an alternate position (bombardier/navigator, for instance), if the autopilot is already active, then nothing happens. If he was hand flying, he can preset the autopilot to hold pitch and roll attitude when he is away.

There is an independent RWR in the front cockpit, similar to SPO-15. The RWR in the rear is 'large airplane' style where you can plot power and frequency vs azimuth, evaluate pulse shape and repetition and decide for yourself if you might have been seen or not. It is much more informative than the receiver up front, plus you have a directional jammer, so you can jam a threat directly, play ground bounce games, etc. If you are in the front cockpit, manually flying at low altitude, a simplified display of the rear RWR might come up so you can make an initial evaluation of the threat, and reject it if you don't think you've been spotted. Otherwise, you need to move to the back and deal with the threat.

That's pretty much going to be it for AI. Can you come up with scenarios where a single player can't do everything? Yes. Do single player missions have to be that way? Certainly not. It's my firm belief that for this airplane, making the 'crew' AI any more complicated is going to cause trouble and drag out development for little gain. If you want to have a 'Flight of the Old Dog' experience Soviet/Russian style, then make friends. Not that it was a realistic mission anyway, but we all have our fantasies.

I expect there to be four hotkeys for the four crew positions. In a multi-crew environment, a player can control a crew position on a first come, first served bases. Others who select a given position are 'ghosts', who can observe but not control. Thus it's up to the players to coordinate positions via TeamSpeak or however.

I think others will figure out solutions to coordinating controls in multi-crew before I get to the issue, but if not, I don't expect it to be too big of a deal. My concern is throughput limitations across the internet, but if that is the case I would 'schedule' different cockpit arguments to update based on criticality, so important stuff updates often, relatively unimportant stuff less frequently. That is what is done with data buses in my previous experience.

I'm interested to hear if there is something I'm not considering, so please, debate is invited.

Brian

Hi, Brian.

 

I found a few photos of the cockpit of the aircraft in the RU-Internet.

link for download

 

Also I have my personal photos of Tu-22M3 (external) that I can share. We need some specific photo (bomb doors, etc.)?

 

Apologies for the Google translator.

CiberAlex,

That is an awesome haul, thank you many times over. I'll take whatever you have, by PM or post here. My main interest at the moment is having proper identification and functionality for every switch in the cockpit, for as many switches as I can prior to visiting Ukraine. This will help a long way towards that.

Darkwolf, we want to at least try the scanning to see if it speeds up the process. ExtremeArtist3D has high hopes.

Brian

This all sounds superb!

Su-15TM

Su-24MR

Su-17UM

Well, that Su-15TM is pretty cool, but I doubt we'll see a module for it seeing as it had a very limited role. Still, it's cool that there's the possibility of getting good technical info on that particular aircraft.

The other two are a shame. I was hoping for the Su-24M or Su-17M4, since those would be two really cool aircraft to get modules of.

A couple more things. My intent is that this be a heavily Russian thing, so even though I only speak English, the cockpit will be in Russian, documentation will be in Russian and English (uboat and others welcome to expand i18n and markings to other languages). For the bilingual Russian and English speakers, do you have any suggestions for keeping Russian-only types in the loop on this thread? I hate for them to be excluded.

Much of my familiarity with the Tu-22M is from flying the Project Tupolev Tu-154 extensively in FS9 and FSX. The Tu-22M and Tu-154 (along with the Tu-144) have roughly similar development dates, so they have many systems commonality. Perhaps this is true with most Soviet aircraft, but I don't know others as intimately. Anyway, the PT Tu-154 is insanely detailed, and the English documentation is very good. A thorough reading of the documentation, and a few (attempts at) flights would go a long way to making you familiar with many, many Tu-22M3 systems and switches.

Just a thought. Plus, the PT is freeware, probably the best there is.

Brian

I think you should aim for something like AI Control so the AI will be able to at least help you out if you are flying, do the striking etc and talk to you.

Like Leatherneck´s Jester AI.

if you bail on Multicrew or say that you can(and must) do everything alone since there is no AI, your project might will not be as successful as it could be.

Update:

- bought the 3D scanner.

- leaving for Ukraine on the 27th.

- decided I couldn't stand going so far without seeing Monino, so I'm going to Russia too.

- still alive

Backfires rock.

Brian

Good luck, I can't wait :)

Great news

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I am curious how the 3D scanning results will look, and whether they will really be as helpful as we all hope. Good luck!

Good luck. :)

I think the 3D scanner will be helpful, mostly with precision of location of things and secondly as a general guideline as to how they should look.

But there will be a big amount of work from there,actually making nice looking and accurate 3D devices (buttons, levers etc.).

I was in a job where we used 3D scanners.

Very fast to document even large areas, but a big amount of work after, to translate it into actual 3D drawings.

The major advantage is that you get pretty accurate measurements of everything on the spot, so you can document a lot in a short time.

I also worked with 3D scanners and their data once (a mobile unit on a tripod used for buildings, and an airborne laser scanner for mapping terrain), and I was kinda underwhelmed by it because you had to do SO much work manually after the scan because those point clouds had quite some holes in them, and in the case of the terrain mapping some terrain features caused spikes and holes.

That was nearly ten years ago though, so I guess results are a bit better now.