> The struts do, indeed, appear to be deloaded. That said,>and in general, I see nothing exceptional about this external>model.Of course, the lossy, highly-compressed, 582pix wide screenshot does it justice... NOT!In sim at 1280x960x32 it is simply stunning. ;)

LOMAC F/A-18C for comparison.

Bill,I think you make a very good point. The comparison shot that I made was intended to, as closely as possible, match the angle and distance the airplane was sitting in, so that someone could make a comparision of the rear struts.I chose that particular paint because it most closely matched the real life paint in the shot I chose for the live comparison. There are 14 different paints included (counting the 6 variants of the Blue Angels paint.)I am not biased when it comes to the enjoyment I've gotten out of this aircraft, primarily because I had nothing whatsoever to do with its development (although I did participate in the development of FSX: Acceleration.) I'd be the first to be critical of something I perceived lacking (and you can search my posts for examples of cases in which I think improvements can be made.)The developers did an excellent job with this simulation. Having purchased some third-party aircraft over the years, I can definitely attest to the value proposition of $30 USD just for this single aircraft.When you toss in fully-realized Carrier Ops, a rescue-enabled EH-101 with functional lift capability, a turbo-charged Mustang with realistic engine performance requirements placed on the pilot ... then it seems very difficult to make a case that there isn't value here.Now toss in 38 new professionally designed missions and tutorials in 9 differnet languages.For $30 bucks??? How do these guys stay in business?

and some new highly detailed areas like Instanbul and Edwards Air force base.... :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpgForum Moderatorhttp://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

Interesting comparison shot. Far be it for me to belabor such a small point, but note the weapons infrastructure attached to the wings of this model, and the resultant added weight on the rear struts.Also, does this paint seem too shiny? All the photos I can find demonstrate that the F-18a, even in direct sunlight, doesn't seem to me to glint (maybe I just haven't run across the right shot at the right angle in the right sunlight.) It has a very matte-like finish.

Not very good quality but look at the back wheel in each of these cases and compare them with the simulator shot. These shots are from a video taken during an airshow so the drop tanks are very unlikely to be full. 1. F18 taxing the lower wheel strut is pretty well horizontal. 2 and 3 On take off the strut starts to gradually straighten out until 4. aircraft leaves the runway and the strut is pretty well near vertical but with a slight knick.If the sim shot is how the f18 is actually depicted then I'll leave it to you to decide.Cheers WOZhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/178663.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/178664.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/178665.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/178666.jpg

First let me say having been around F/A-18A's & C's in the US Navy for 4 yrs as a AMS3 at NAS Oceana & USS Coral Sea CV-43 AIMD I know excatly what F/A-18 struts look like all too well, loaded unloaded whatevever, the Lomac stuts are correct the FSX struts aren't, now having said that, its a very small detail, but noticeable nontheless, Now getting all this in one package for 30 bucks is a great deal and I'm not complaining it was just an observation, jeez whats happening to freedom of speech in this country ?, someone says something someone doesn't agree with and they flip out, although you do have the right to be offended, get over it, there are many men and women who have died for the right of freedom of speech, you don't like it, move to another country. Off the soap box, end of discussion.

Probably would have been best, to provide your F-18/Navy background in the first place, with the initial posting.And then something along the lines of an observation that might be needing changing.I once did this with a well known small aircraft model regarding the batt/alt switch operation, just because I'm familiar with the exact operation, as I've installed them. They fixed it...L.Adamson

Interesting thread an comparision shots.IMHO, the exterior model of the F/A-18 Hornet in Lock On - Modern Air Combat (LOMAC) is still the best virtual representation of the real thing seen to date in any simulation. The model of the upcoming FSX pack seems to have shape errors on the forward fuselage, the vertical stabs' root fairing to the fuselage look too rounded and the canopy's curves do not exactly look right (e.g. the sill of the main canopy frame is too low, making the canopy glass look too large in height).I've been hoping for a decent flyable Hornet for FS for quite some time as regrettably the Hornet has never been included as a fully flyable fighter in LOMAC.In respect to the original poster's criticism, I concur the oleo struts should be more compressed. It rarely happens that they remain uncompressed like shown in the screenshots. Another thing is the deflection of the flaps. Those screens over at the flightsimworld forum show the Hornet approaching the carrier or on the catapult show the flaps always in cruise speed condition. If T/O flap is selected, the leading edge slats droop down 25 degrees, the trailing edge flap to 30 degrees and both rudders move inward by 20 degrees to increase the "downforce" on the tail to enable rotation at lower speeds (which they do on landing as well). When LAND flap is selected, the leading edge droops to 30 degrees and the trailing edge flap to 47 degrees, the ailerons to 45. All of course slightly variable depending on the pilots roll control input and the aircraft's angle-of-attack. Wait... on the real Hornet a "weight-on-wheels" microswitch sends a signal to the FCC (Flight control computer) to switch from ground to flight mode as soon as the landing struts are fully compressed, perhaps this is modelled in the FSX pack Hornet - since the gear isn't fully compressed the flaps always show these cruise deflections? well...Nevertheless, the VC of the Hornet in the upcoming FSX acceleration pack, looks fan-double-tastic to say the least, a job very well done by "virtuali" (member of the cloud9 team, they know how to do great FS stuff!).In the end, it is true to keep in mind the prize of the upcoming pack, and that we cannot expect everything taken fully care of.

For what its worth it would take little more than a tweak to the contact points to fix . CJ

I noticed the right front rivet is off by an inch and....Just kidding of course. Great discussion, who would of thought we'd be discussing this level of detail on an MSFS "default" aircraft?I'm wondering if the F/A 18 modelled is the military version or do the Blue Angels have a modified version and would that explain any differences in the appearance of the aircraft?Also, while I'm at it, how complex is the VC?

There are certainly a lot of knowledgable folks on the forum regarding the F/A-18!We utilized a retired Marine F/A-18c pilot to do a review of the aircraft and he identitifed some issues we couldn't fix or features we didn't have time to implement, but overall he was pleased with the aircraft appearance, features, and flight model (although he used much more colorful language than me :)).The gear can be adjusted in the cfg pretty easily, and I'm sure a third party will do that. I don't see us releasing any change there. Just be careful that the gear doesn't compress too much or there might be some unintended consequences in a hard carrier landing...The beta testers were flying the Hornet approaches in auto-flap mode which controls the leading and trailing edge flaps automatically based on AOA and mach (including aileron droop). According to our Marine pilot the use of auto-flap on landing approach was an approved procedure. You can manually set the flaps to half or full modes as well. We didn't however code the features to allow automatic takeoff modes for flaps and trim (sorry).

This would of course only allow lowering the wheels into the runway if it works in the usual manner.WOZ

>This would of course only allow lowering the wheels into the>runway if it works in the usual manner.>>WOZYou can adjust multiple parameters in the CFG to change the compression, damping, and contact points.

>The beta testers were flying the Hornet approaches in>auto-flap mode which controls the leading and trailing edge>flaps automatically based on AOA and mach (including aileron>droop). According to our Marine pilot the use of auto-flap on>landing approach was an approved procedure. You can manually>set the flaps to half or full modes as well. We didn't however>code the features to allow automatic takeoff modes for flaps>and trim (sorry). Thanks for your input P-12C. Sorry for this, but I am not sure if I understand your last two sentences correctly. Do you refer to the real thing when writing "you can manually set the flaps to half or full modes as well" or the Acceleration pack Hornet? Thanks for your clarification.