Has anyone tried the Cloud 9 F4 Phantom

[Guest blaster331]

Greetings All,Just wondering if anybody has tried out this fighter jet. I am intrested in its quality and flight dynamics.Yes I know I can try it myself but I live in the NE Pa hills and only have dial up connection. Its a 98 mg package.Happy flying!Best RegardsAndrew

[Guest flynman3]

Its AWESOMRE....I tried the demo version and took her up to FL400 and alls I can say is WOW she handles like a glove on your hand...I have been looking for a Fighter Jet to Fly cross country and this is the one Im getting....

[WAD3 0]

It looks pretty sweet. I have great memories of the F4 as a kid and I am really looking forward to getting this. I have been following there forum and there are reports of CTD so I am worried about that.

[Guest JIMJAM]

Been waiting for a long time and it was worth the wait.Higher quality than their awesome f-104 yet tame to fly by comparison.Great fps,detailing,sounds and overall quality.Seeing what some others are selling for the same price, its a steal at $30.The only problem I am having is after a flight I get a CTD.This happened before with their f-104 but was resolved by making sure the addon manager version was the latest. I am going to try and figure it out now.

[ejoiner 21]

How substantially different is an F-4F than the F-4E used by the USAF in past years? Eric

[ORN 1]

It's the best military fighter I've tried so far in fs9! Poweful, speedy and manouverable

[Guest JIMJAM]

Just wished it were more of a challenge. The flight model while nothing wrong, feels to generic and has no personality.Guess after learning to fly the F-104 everything seems tame. Its just with the F-4 you really cannot do anything wrong and the stalls are no more difficult than with a default 172.

[Guest kappa]

The Phantom gathered a number of nicknames during its career.just one... "Big Iron Sled" :-)

[virtuali 4,421]

>I don't understand how a plane with such detailed vc work>(everything is texured really beautiful) can be so>fps-friendly. Good work again Cloud9!Thank you, there are very good reasons because the fps is so good.- The general optimization of the panel: starting with the MB339, we use a totally different approach to drawing gauges on screen, all written in C++ using the latest advanced techniques like templates, that move a lot of the code on the preprocessor, and some standard algorythms like sort, search in arrays, indexing, are way faster than the more traditional C approach. - We use performance analyzers extensively: I know exactly how many micro-seconds each line of code uses, and we profiled GDI+ calls as well, so we know what we can use without impacting on the frame rate (the general consensus it's GDI+ it's too slow, with this two airplanes we proved quite easily it's not, provided one really knows how to use it ). As usual, what seems slow because it's many line of code, is in fact fast at runtime, and what seems just a line, it's usually slow at runtime. When something doesn't perform to our expectations, we analyze, profile, and eventually rewrite. Right now, the impact of the gauge code it's almost nil.- I don't know how many users realized it, but we draw all the needles fully antialiased and with shadows, and we draw glass reflections on top of that, without impacting on the fps.- We optimize the code by not unecessarily draw instruments when they are not running on screen.- We don't use the standard gauge update functions to run our internal simulation cycle, instead, we use a separate process, so we can freely decide the update frequency to be as low as possibile without impacting on FS9 operations, and we'll get multi-core improvements as well, when users will gradually move towards this kind of machines in the future.- The VC only uses a single panel.cfg entry, all the rest of the VC instrumentation it's done using real 3D parts animated, including things like the 3D numbers for the radios, so we get a realistic look *and* we don't have to waste a VC section for that.- We don't use complex interpreted XML code, almost anything is calculated in C++, and passed to the outside only as a result. The radar, for example, is using very complex code, to handle a realistic simulation of the antenna cone coverage, that would have simply impossibile to do in XML.- We use a lot of smoothing functions, to calculate the different inertia of the needles, and since we draw directly on screen, we can update the needles at more that the usual FS limit of 18 fps. If you have 40 fps, your gauges will update at 40 fps.- We don't use the standard non-linearity SDK code, instead we wrote our own.- We don't pass through FSUIPC, we read/write everything we need directly from FS9 itself, eliminating a layer of calls.Individually, these reasons maybe do not account much, but if you sum all together, the benefits are quite appearent. Having a Trial helps a lot, in this case (If the product was a frame-rate killer, the Trial would have been couterproductive )Umberto Colapicchioni - VIRTUALI

[1mikel151 71]

>- We don't use the standard non-linearity SDK code, instead we>wrote our own.So will this be a problem for FSX?It looks great and I will try it out soon.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/ambanner.jpg

[Guest Mesa]

It hardly looks like a Big Iron Sled in the preview window. Why is it so small??

[virtuali 4,421]

>So will this be a problem for FSX?The opposite. It means we will not need to rewrite that part, even in the unlikely event MS will change the panel SDK in future versions.About forward compatibility, the usual it's "as long as you stick to the SDK, the product has better chances to work in future version". But it's not entirely accurate: it's referred only to the parts that interface with FS. In this case, we are not interfacing at all, we are replacing entirely part of calculation code with our own, this means it will work with any system, OS or other game, as long as there is a C++ compiler availableregards,Umberto Colapicchioni - VIRTUALI

[Guest Dominique]

Most interesting, thank you for this peek behind the stage. I was very disappointed by the VC texture loading time and not so good fluidity of the gauges in the Gina which spoils the fun IMO but your post arises my interest for the F4.

[Guest kappa]

The G91 is an old product... and i think don't use this advanced technology.

[virtuali 4,421]

>The G91 is an old product... and i think don't use this>advanced technology.Correct: the G91 was programmed in a traditional way, as was the F104. Starting with the MB339, and now with the Phantom, we have a very different way of doing everything, thanks to a couple of new C++ programmers that joined the team.Umberto Colapicchioni/VIRTUALI