by ShadowMystDK » Wed Oct 08, 2008 10:30 pm
Several months ago I downloaded Cyril P's Rafale model, as it was the best available for FS2004. There were however a number of things that I didn't like about it. First was the HUD - it was borrowed from Kirk Olsen's F-16, and didn't even remotely match what the released photos and videos of the Rafale's HUD showed, not to mention the resolution and focus were off as well as being too light colored to even see unless you had it against a dark background like water. My second peeve was that for the life of me, despite multiple tries to fix it, I have yet to get the afterburner effect to work. Mind you, this thing moves - move your throttle lever about halfway up and the this Rafale shoots off like a bullet, and when the throttle is firewalled, she goes from 450kts to over 700kts in just a few seconds. There are two amber lights on the EICAS panel in the lower right of the cockpit that are supposed to indicate when the afterburner is engaged - but judging by the aircrafts acceleration, these are for display only as "Shift-F4 has no noticeable effect on acceleration. Also, you can't adjust the loadout on it - so all you have are two Matra Magic AAM's on the wingtips. My last wish for the aircraft, and it's once again a panel issue - is that I wish the Multifunction displays were indeed multifunction.
I found a HUD update on www.mirage4fs.com that more closely matches the Rafale's HUD, but the display resolution for it was off in the 2D cockpit, being all but completely unreadable. The only way I could use the thing "as-was" was in the virtual cockpit mode, where it's display resolution was readable. After some tweeking in the panel.cfg of the HUD's positioning and resolution/aspect ratio, I have it just about perfect. Mind you, I didn't have the benefit of a graphical panel editor, instead adjusting it's coordinates and resolution via lots of trial and error editing the panel.cfg
Eventually there are two things I would like to do to this aircraft:
1. Redo the panel's MFD's to make them true MFD's - incorporating the radios, EICAS, GPS/navigation, and an updated radar in them, and having them switchable from one MFD to the other - kinda like Alphasim's Gripen or Eurofighter.
2. Add different models/loadouts (ie droptanks, missiles, bombs, ect)
For now, here are the pics of how the HUD modification turned out, as well as the aircraft itself. Hope you enjoy 
She looks much much meaner with weapons doesn't she? 
Last edited by
ShadowMystDK on Wed Oct 08, 2008 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
