Combat Pilot shows off latest work including Enterprise, Akagi, cockpits, more!

2–3 minutes

Always love a Combat Pilot update especially when its full of new screenshots from the in development WWII combat simulator. We’ve got great new images and a few new details surrounding the work being done on the sim right now so let’s dig right into it!

Development underway

The latest word from Jason Williams and the Combat Pilot team is that they are well underway working towards their goals for the sim. Progress is reportedly being made for features such as tailhook landings, moving ships, aircraft systems and engine start-up sequences, as well as camera systems and working on the sound environment.

Flight models for both the F4F and A6M are being worked on right now and both are being done using historical research, aerodynamic research and their own CFD (computational fluid dynamics) tools.

Jason also reports that they’ve identified long-term development goals and created a plan to reach them. They will be sharing more about that plan in September so that’ll be interesting to hear about.

We know from the team’s FSExpo 2024 presentation that they intend to follow-up their initial Midway offering with a Solomons and the battle of Guadalcanal themed update. That is, of course, further into the future but it’s also a predictable follow-up to Midway with many of the same assets being shared with the opportunity to add exciting new ones as well.

Ship and AA gun updates

A lot of 3D assets are in development right now for Combat Pilot including some key assets. The USS Enterprise is one of them with a half dozen images released (including the two above) of the carrier in its 1942 scheme. Nice to see that scheme presented as the Enterprise has often been shown in pre-war schemes. The IJN Akagi is the other ship shown off with plenty of intricate details and texturing now in place.

Also on display is the M3 3-Inch AA gun used primarily, in the current development context, to defend Midway from aerial attack.

Cockpit and in-flight shots

We also have some images of the F4F and A6M cockpits. The Zero cockpit is a little further ahead of the Wildcat cockpit but both are obviously highly detailed!

And of course we have some work in progress shots from in the game engine with both Zero and Wildcat flying around. Here are just some of the images that they released this week!

17 responses to “Combat Pilot shows off latest work including Enterprise, Akagi, cockpits, more!”

  1. Trooper117 Avatar
    Trooper117

    If you aren’t excited about Combat Pilot yet, you must be dead!… it just looks better and better with every update.

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. Unknown Avatar
      Unknown

      All depends for me on how this game handles VR. Reading all the complaints in the (much bigger) simrace world about VR in combination with this type of game engine, sounds not good for VR users. While if this game suffers as much, as BoX from shimmer and other graphically defects in VR mode I’m sure I will be not exiting.
      Samples are looking great and very promising, as also Korea does, but only the gameplay itself will tell me more.

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      1. Aapje Avatar
        Aapje

        The upside of them using Unreal Engine is that they can use the OpenXR plugin for it, so their VR should be as good as that plugin, and should improve as the plugin gets improved.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
        ShamrockOneFive

        Sounds encouraging! I hope the VR experience is good. Jason knows its important as he was a big proponent of it getting into IL-2 as well so fingers crossed.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. Urgent Siesta Avatar
    Urgent Siesta

    I like how they’re “just doing it” when all we’ve heard for years is that the Pacific TO didn’t have enough info available to support a game.

    I’m very excited for this game even tho it won’t likely have a fully fleshed out Order of Battle. Just the chance to fly legitimate simulations of Wildcat and Zero from their respective aircraft carriers is more than enough for me to plunk down the cash.

    And so far the modeling looks great!

    I just hope the flight modeling is up to par – it’s so critical with warbirds, and especially carrier-borne aviation.

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. oesau Avatar
      oesau

      You know its actually going to be refreshing not having a huge list of flyable aircraft to choose from!

      Yep the FM is what I am interested in seeing how well they develop it – as you say Urgent Siesta; carrier ops is a key item

      Liked by 2 people

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    2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      I like that they are just doing it too. The thing I did struggle with sometimes was things like not having a fully documented gunner seat for the Val or the Kate. There are photos, there is some documentation, fill in the gaps with something that makes sense. If there are no resources left to document it, nobody is going to know and authenticity of the sim is maintained by them making educated guesses with what they do have. I think Combat Pilot has embraced that to get us a good looking and still obviously very authentic Pacific sim.

      I feel pretty good about their flight modeling so far. Its early days but it showed me that they have a real desire to get that aspect right.

      Liked by 3 people

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      1. oesau Avatar
        oesau

        good point on the detail gaps – I feel at times we’ve gone so far to the most realistic simulation on every detail that its ended up hindering development. Just look at DCS, we’re talking about flying museums there but the development time is massive. Don’t get me wrong, I love DCS aircraft, but… what IL2 did and looks like CP will do too – is don’t go too crazy, find the balance that enables you to develop and iterate quickly.

        Liked by 3 people

      2. Sokol76 Avatar
        Sokol76

        and most players will just fly drop bombs or torpedos from cockpit view, not making airplane or even going to PTO for so long because not so important missing part wes hard to see, but atleast they are doing it now

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      3. Novice-Flyer Avatar
        Novice-Flyer

        Jason and the GBs devs were too pessimistic about how the community would respond with the FMs for the Val and Kate not being 99% accurate and educated guesses for the contents of the rear gunner position on the aforementioned planes. The community would be totally okay if those FMs aren’t entirely accurate to reality as they are not fighters, an educated guess of the Val and Kate’s gunner position contents, and 6 planes per installment (3v3). However, the actual obstacle for them was that a lot of work — capital ships such as carriers and battleships — have to be started well in advance.

        The Close Enough approach and a flyable Betty minus the Top and Waist gunners is fine for me as long as an educated guess is not made early on and much work is based on this, risk having to start over if they guessed wrong.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
        ShamrockOneFive

        I can’t speak for Jason but I think he came around and or his new team are more eager to tackle that particular challenge. Plus CFD analysis has apparently gotten cheaper so I’m guessing it’s getting easier to mix in real world recorded data and fill in the blanks with your own CFD data. I’m guessing. Something to ask sometime!

        Liked by 2 people

      5. Urgent Siesta Avatar
        Urgent Siesta

        And you had the chance to fly the Wildcat at FS Expo, right? Glad to hear you like it so far and that it’s a priority for the team 🙂

        I don’t envy them as coming up with an FM for a simulator is a daunting task. At least most of the WW2 birds were aerodynamically straightforward and had fairly consistent planforms.

        Gotta love that CFD stuff. It’d be wild if they had a commercial license of X-Plane to validate some of their work. Not sure Laminar Research would approve that, but what a use case it’d make (for both)!

        Liked by 2 people

      6. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
        ShamrockOneFive

        Both Zero and Wildcat! I expected them to be on rails and just flying around but there was already a good feeling to them both. It was still a technology demo and not obviously the finished thing but for me it was a statement of intention and I was impressed!

        Apparently they have some tools available. They have some talent already deep into the field so I’m hoping for great things.

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      7. Urgent Siesta Avatar
        Urgent Siesta

        ETA: Yes, SO MUCH better to give us educated guesses and give us the chance to experience a good approximation rather than to have nothing at all.

        After all, “Perfection is the mortal enemy of Good Enough.”

        No flight sim or addon even approaches perfection in simulation, so a missing doo-dad here or there, as long as what is known is well modeled, will suffice. Combat Pilot will likely be more than Good Enough.

        Even if CP was delivering an experience similar to Il2, I would still happily pay for the PTO operations 🙂

        Liked by 3 people

  3. Sokol76 Avatar
    Sokol76

    Hangar deck looks great, i can see my self already clicking start mission and open scene is me in that hangar move to lift

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    1. beggyg Avatar
      beggyg

      Yeah. not having a very advanced HOTAS setup, I’d be really happy to have an IL2 level FM etc (hopefully graphics a little closer to DCS) but having a clickable cockpit, at least for the main controls. Sure, in IL2 I basically use the same buttons for the same functions and even though I only use the clickable stuff for maybe 10-20% of the functions in DCS, having a clickable cockpit really helps me with learning a plane and gives an experience that feels like maybe it’s a little closer to reality. I noticed with some tutorials with IL2 – There will be a run around the cockpit, telling us what each button and lever is and this is really nice and interesting but it’s mostly academic as you can only look at them. Something like FC3/4, but with the important stuff clickable would be more than fine for me. There was a mod that gave the FC Mig-29 and Su-25T clickable controls but as they only have a limited number of controls it wasn’t for everything. But I felt it improved my FC experience exponentially.

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      1. Charles Avatar
        Charles

        The trouble with clickable cockpits in combat sims is that when someone is shooting at you, the extra time required to take your hand off the stick and put it on the mouse and move the mouse cursor to the click spot puts you at a real disadvantage.

        I used to get around it with a customizable tablet-based button box, but after going VR that doesn’t work either. Until hand tracking /finger clickers get a lot better, your best hope is a HOTAS with a forest of buttons on it.

        More modern fighters like the F18 are very hard to fight in VR without that because there are so many systems to manage during combat. Even older stuff can be challenging if you have to click. Too much time with your head in the cockpit trying to click a jiggling switch is a good way to lithobrake or get shot.

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