Ito-san's TA-4J

[Wings of Gold]

Hi Guys,

As many of may have read here, I have just had a rather unpleasant experience trying to get Razbams Fs9 TA-4J (Douglas two seat Skyhawk). One of the reasons I wanted to review it were the comments I saw regarding the poor fidelity of the models shape.

I have now switched to getting Ito-san's version of the TA-4J. The fidelity is excellent (I saw the actual aircraft frequently while in the USN - and have an extensive library on USN aircraft). The problem is, of course that there is no VC. Although I can live with that (it is the ONLY game in town), I keep thinking of how to get a VC anyhow.

I note that there is a upgrade for ITO's single seat Skyhawk (A-4C) that does include a VC! The upgrade, "fsx_douglas_Skyhawk_updated" is by Bruce Fitzgerald, and is available on Flightsim.com (in addition to many other sites).

Is there anyone of you really talented guys who would know how to take the front seat from Fitzgerald's single seat upgrade and put it into the 2 seat TA-4J? I have a full set of Virtavia Skyhawk gauges (as I suspect a great number of USN fans also have), so this would be the source for all of us to populate the new VC.

There are already two wonderful textures available; one for VF-126 (the NAS Miramar agressor squadron) and another for VT-21 at NAS Kingsville.

This IS the best hope there is for this truely classic USN aircraft. Any takers for improving it?

Best regards,

Bill

[Shessi]

Hi Bill,
Please read Ito-san's README that came with the T4, and you'll see he does not want people to back engineer or change the mdl.

When you have read it, you'll see that Mr Fitzgerald et al, are wrong, and should not be 'publicly' doing this, and we should not be seen to do this at the SOH, not good publicity, for us. It is also failing to honour Ito-san's wishes, someone who was so generous and tallented.

No one knows or can stop you, if you do it privately.........................?

Thanks

Cheers

Shessi

[Wings of Gold]

Hi Shessi,

I fully understand Ito-san restriction. If I get takers, I'll go off line with them to do what we think we can improve. Although Ito-san is no longer around, we'll honor his wishes.

Bill

[falcon409]

Hi Shessi,
I fully understand Ito-san restriction. If I get takers, I'll go off line with them to do what we think we can improve. Although Ito-san is no longer around, we'll honor his wishes.
Bill
I recently sent Kazunori Ito a rather extensive e-mail regarding another of his airplanes. In the past when we have had correspondence he has been pretty timely with his replies. It has been a week now since I sent the e-mail and while that's not a terribly long time to wait to get a reply, I have to think that I probably will not get one. This could be due to his health issues, it could be that he no longer wishes to have correspondence concerning his models. . .or it could be that Ito-San has passed away. . .although I feel like someone in this huge community of ours would be privy to that information.

At any rate, when you read every line of his readme's and what he will allow and won't allow, it becomes very evident that he doesn't allow any tampering beyond a very simple and antiquated style of painting liveries. It's basically, hands off, just enjoy the model as-is.

[N2056]

As a developer when I see this sort of thread I tend to get a bit unhappy..
It matters not the status of the model's author. If he stated you cannot screw around with his work then you are pretty much done. If you do alter it you do so for your personal use and you cannot upload it for others to use.
That said, anything you manage to do should be restricted to you, and as such becomes irrelevant to anyone else.

[DC1973]

I agree fully with Robert - if the developer said don't mess with the model, then that's it.

However, for your own use only - you could simply copy and paste the single-seat A4 virtual cockpit model into Ito's TA-4J "model" folder, and then edit the model .cfg file to point to the single-seat VC as below;

interior=single seat VC name

This means that you're not messing with the model, but merely giving the sim another cockpit to point to. It won't be perfect, but it will give you the VC you're hoping for. This will only work in FSX, not in FS9.

As an aside, I'm going nuts for doing carrier-based stuff at the moment. It won't happen for a fair while but I quite like the Skyhawk :adoration:

[falcon409]

. . . . . .This means that you're not messing with the model, but merely giving the sim another cockpit to point to. It won't be perfect, but it will give you the VC you're hoping for. This will only work in FSX, not in FS9. . . . .
Correct, and to my knowledge Kazunori Ito never built an FSX model. I believe all of his were FS9. So there's zero chance that substituting another VC will work.

[huub vink]

Correct, and to my knowledge Kazunori Ito never built an FSX model. I believe all of his were FS9. So there's zero chance that substituting another VC will work.

When my memory is correct, most of his models are actually designed for FS2002, so I share your doubts.

Cheers,
Huub

[Wings of Gold]

I agree that associating any Fs2002 or Fs9 aircraft to another VC will not work. Has anyone had any success in using MCX to remove a VC, and then adding it to a different model? Is this theoretically possible (or just too hard to consider)?

On a different vein, I find ITO-san's beautiful TA-4F very difficult to fly (poor FDE?), even after I have tried a different Air file. I do a lot of Beta testing, so I am not a novice. Has anyone else experienced this?

Bill

[DC1973]

I agree that associating any Fs2002 or Fs9 aircraft to another VC will not work. Has anyone had any success in using MCX to remove a VC, and then adding it to a different model? Is this theoretically possible (or just too hard to consider)?

On a different vein, I find ITO-san's beautiful TA-4F very difficult to fly (poor FDE?), even after I have tried a different Air file. I do a lot of Beta testing, so I am not a novice. Has anyone else experienced this?

Bill


With patience and care, using one of the other threads here at SoH, it is possible to use MCX to convert a FS9 model to FSX format, upon which one can use my method to apply the VC to the TA-4J. Again, it should only be for your use. There are several folks converting Ito's models to FSX format and giving them VCs, so I do actually wonder whether this process was something he'd agreed to. Tough to know unless said modellers come forward and say so.

I can't speak to the Air file but as I understand it Ito didn't do much on that side of things, picking from a limited number of files and applying them to each of his models.

[dhazelgrove]

Let's close this, eh?

See here (http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php/109867-Models-built-by-Kazunori-Ito-Final-Word!).

Dave

[stovall]

Seem the message is pretty clear here and in other threads, Ito san didn't want his model's changed. Trying to work around that wish seems to be counterproductive. Closing this thread.