Hello again! Thanks for downloading my plane. I must say right off that I have been quite shocked at the amount of positive feedback that I have recieved from the Flight Sim community upon releasing the Firefox to the general public. Not a week goes by without someone emailing me to say how much they love the bird. I can honestly say that I have been flabbergasted at the amount of attention she received, especially considering that she was my first attempt ever at building anything 3D on a computer with a CAD program. So thanks all for your kind words. Of course I cannot take all the credit in any way. I must again thank Mr. Kurt Beswick for the textures and now Mr. John Schumacher for the flight model. This airplane was definitely a team effort. I only made the model and rudimentary dynamics. Kurt made it beautiful. John made it fly. My sincerest thanks to them.
When I released the original version of the Firefox I did so with the mindset that she was 90% of how I wanted her to be. There were a few things (such as the flight model) that I just could not get to 100% satisfaction with and I had to make the choice to either sit on her until I was happy or just release her and follow up with an update. This I did...and now we find ourselves here. The suprise review on SurClaro by Martin LaGrange brought to my attention some glaring inconsistencies that I had not realized were there (such as the afterburners not working correctly and the flight model being way too powerful). So I set about trying to make some changes to the Firefox that I thought would more accurately reflect how she would fly IF she were a real airplane. This included a more realistic flight model than the previous version (one that cannot do Mach 5 @ sea level and pull 20+ G's) and the adding of some effects that I though would immerse the pilot more completely into the sim. Et voila. I can say without reservation that this bird is 99% of what I wanted her to be. The only reservation I still hold is the fact that I cannot completely understand nor manipulate the flight model to the point of perfection. Sad, but hey, what do you do? Without further ado then, I present to you all the MiG-31 Firefox v2.0. Enjoy!
Changes from previous version:
1) Completely re-worked flight model (most work done by J. Schumacher). Much more 'real-world' realistic. She'll now only do Mach 3 @ 60,000 ft...but she'll fly a REALLY long way +/- 3,000 miles. :-)
2) Fixed the afterburners so they light up with throttle position now.
3) Addition of dynamic smoke effects for the engines. Thanks to Nick Needham for custom creating them for the Firefox.
4) Addition of startup heat effect (made by JR for F-16 Falcon)
A brief history:
A few months ago I decided to take up aircraft design so I purchased FSDSv2 and began to learn. Being a major fan of the 1982 movie Firefox, starring Clint Eastwood, I decided that my first attempt at an aircraft for FS2002/2004 would be the MiG-31. I was given an older model of the Firefox from Richard Hulme, and my intention was to basically "touch it up" a bit, learn FSDS in the process, and possibly release a newer/better aircraft for the simulator. I wasn't too long into fiddling with his model when I decided to just scrap the idea and start building a new one from scratch. I found a website dedicated to the Firefox aircraft and its owner, Mr. Kurt Beswick, was nice enough to texture the plane for me from his own incredible illustration. This is the final result. I hope you enjoy flying it as much as I enjoyed making it!
Owen
Installation:
Simply put the 'Firefox' folder into your 'Aircraft' folder, the contents of the 'Gauges' and 'Effects' folders into their corresponding FS2002/2004 counterparts. You do NOT need to overwrite any gauges that are already in your 'gauges' folder.
Copyright:
Not a whole heck of a lot really. This is freeware. The plane and textures are original. A few things (such as gear and wheel textures, afterburner effects, flight model, sound effects, some cockpit .bmp's, and a few pieces like the intake fans) were borrowed from other aircraft. I really can't remember who's stuff I used so if you see your work being used and you want credit for it, please let us know and we'll properly credit you. We absolutely DO NOT or WILL NOT claim anybody's work other than our own. Please know we respect everybody's work and since we aren't making a dime off this we hope nobody will complain if you see your wheel texture or reheat effect being used. :-)
You are free to edit any of this in any way you wish as long as you let us know what you're doing and give us a copy of it when you're done. :-)
Model created by:
Owen Smoot - osmoot@aol.com
Textures created by:
Kurt Beswick - kbeswick@oculusdesign.com
Flight Model by:
John J. Schumacher
Firefox website:
www.thinkinrussian.org
Open Invitation:
PLEASE do not email either of us telling us that the flight model of this aircraft is wrong. WE KNOW THAT! THE PLANE IS NOT REAL! IT NEVER WAS! In fact, the flight model is completely fake! I spent many, many hours on this with AirED and tweaking the .cfg file putting in the 'accurate' data for the plane if it were to really exist. The sad truth is that if she was real she wouldn't be air worthy at all. So instead I just borrowed a military flight model and tweaked it up quite a bit. If anyone out there would like to fiddle with the .air and .cfg files to see if they can get a better result, please feel free. We only insist that you send us a copy when you're done. :-)
