New Combat Pilot dev diary shows off lots of details for the D3A1 “Val”

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Jason Williams and the Combat Pilot team are back with a new developer diary. The latest update is focused on their efforts to bring forward a highly detailed rendition of the Aichi D3A1 “Val” carrier-based dive-bomber. Let’s have a look!

Work in progress images

If you like details, you’re going to love the renders above that have just been released by the Combat Pilot team. The imagery shows off the 3D model work that has been put into their D3A1 “Val.” We’ve got great views of the exterior as well as the cockpit, gunner position, and even the internal structure of the aircraft.

Most of the developer diary goes into the historical details of the aircraft including its rise and fall as a key type employed by the Imperial Japanese Navy during the war. That includes an accounting of the units that used the type showing some of the background research going into Combat Pilot.

Go and read the full report here.

18 responses to “New Combat Pilot dev diary shows off lots of details for the D3A1 “Val””

  1. Wildvalach Avatar
    Wildvalach

    As a former Pacific Fighters pilot, I enthusiastically welcome any new news about the progress of this video game. Unfortunately, I’m worried that I won’t live to see it released. 😦

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    1. Caldeira Avatar
      Caldeira

      Hello Wild, I apologize but I have to ask , how old are you sir and where did you see combat ? Thanks

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      1. Aapje Avatar
        Aapje

        Pacific Fighters is a 2004 game. Wildvalach is merely a gaming veteran.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Wildvalach Avatar
        Wildvalach

        Thank you for the clarification for Caldeira.

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      3. oesau Avatar
        oesau

        Wildvalach – does that now make you feel old 🙂

        it does feel so long ago doesn’t it but ever now and then I play it again to re-live old times

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    2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      They have a steep hill to climb building the first new generation of combat flight sim in 2 decades. But they also have a great amount of expertise in their team and some good backing. I remain optimistic.

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      1. thedesertfox44 Avatar
        thedesertfox44

        They can set a new genre standard which will last for decades. Looking brilliant but still a long way to go.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. Caldeira Avatar
    Caldeira

    Got it, thanks !

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. Blue 5 Avatar
    Blue 5

    I cannot escape the feeling that they need to lower their sights down to the possible and the achievable. If this thing is to IOC in 2027 at the absolutely earliest I do not understand how their business will survive and it will have been overtaken by IL-2 Korea, IL-2 Pacific, MSFS24 Pacific-ish stuff, DCS Pacific and so forth.

    As sad as it makes me to say, I really fail to see how this is going to work.

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    1. Dimitri Avatar
      Dimitri

      I totally agree. IL2 Korea is almost ready and was announced later than Pacific Fighters.

      They clearly identified their initial scope and said they will add more after (Carrier ops for example).

      These guys are still showing us Blender renders.

      dont get me wrong, I will likely support them if they deliver. But we are still so far, far away.

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      1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
        ShamrockOneFive

        You mean Combat Pilot and not Pacific Fighters? 🙂

        There’s a giant difference between building an entirely new combat flight sim from scratch and developing a next gen title based on the technology already implemented. IL-2 Korea is, as you probably know, based on Great Battles and Rise of Flight before it. That saves a lot of effort.

        Combat Pilot will take a while to do. The difference is that Jason is operating out in the open (largely) on this and has been sharing stuff from early implementation. We as a community have to have a little patience to see this built from the earliest of days.

        They are showing us Blender renders but so is IL-2 Korea. Combat Pilot already has a playable demo so its not just the renders. Give them a chance to do something that hasn’t been done in 20-30 years and build a new sim from scratch.

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      2. Jason Williams Avatar
        Jason Williams

        I hope you’ve watched our Special Announcement videos and our other videos that we posted?

        1C began work on Korea in summer 2022 as I was leaving. Work on Combat Pilot did not begin serious work beyond proof of concept, organizational efforts and fundraising until very late spring 2023. So, your comment is not accurate.   

        The IL-2 team has been updating an engine that had its genesis in 2007 and been updated umpteen times since. They have a 15+ year head start on us, so of course they are going to be ahead of us technologically and feature wise. They also have a much larger team. As I have said many times, if this is a straight race, we will lose. However, this genre is more than a race and virtual pilots deserve more choices. Speaking of renders, you realize that most of the sexy images the Russians have posted of their cockpits are renders from the 3D app and not from the engine right? They can do it, but we can’t because we are new? Moscow gets a pass?  

        I suggest you watch these Special Announcement videos and all the other videos on our YT to get a better sense of what we’ve been doing and planning. (I’m not sure what content I can post here in the Blog replies so I’ll try links)

        https://youtu.be/si04dF6Bvw8

        https://youtu.be/-NAp1l3M4Y8

        Here’s a better accounting of some of what we’ve done so far and our status.

        – Built a completely new physics engine (EntropyFM) for UE5 that makes it a true native hardcore flight-sim engine for public use, not a proprietary solution solely for the defense industry. No one has done this before, especially for vintage piston powered warbirds.  
        – Built a new piston powerplant model and thermal damage model for it.
        – Built a new fuel consumption and transfer model up to modern aerospace industry standards including drop tanks.
        – Built instrumentation.
        – Created and early AI that can fly our planes including an early autopilot.
        – Incorporated CFD into our FMs.
        – Built flight models for the F4F-4 and A6M2.
        – D3A1 FM in development.
        – Built two state-of-the-art aircraft carriers (Akagi and Enterprise) with detail that no other WWII sim has that you can already take off and trap on.
        – Built and continuing to build out the first truly historically correct Midway Atoll as it appeared in June 1942.
        – Built support for a detailed and unique seascape that includes atolls and changing sea conditions.
        – Built numerous detailed and beautiful AA guns and shore batteries.
        – Added a realistic and accurate sky dome and celestial model.
        – Implemented pilot physiology effects
        – Implemented TrackIR
        – Implemented basic VR support (not optimized in any way yet)
        – Implemented an early UI with theme functionality
        – Implemented support for modern HOTAS controllers with custom profiles, input curves and virtually unlimited amount of devices.
        – Implemented modern 3D spatial soundscape
        – Begun the testing of ballistics model and period correct weapons.
        – Early work on aircraft damage model has begun.
        – Human character models such as American and Japanese pilots about to begin now that research is done. Other skeletal models like deck crew and gunners to follow.
        – Raided national archives and liberated rare and hard to find manuals and invested into possibly the largest reference library on airplanes, ships and vehicles in the industry.
        – Flyable aircraft we already have or will have in the series once we adapt them include:
        A6M2 Model 21 (Finalizing textures)
        A6M2-N Model 11 (Texture stage)
        F4F-4 (finalizing textures)
        D3A1 (texture stage) (will be completed late Fall 2025)
        TBD-1 (will be completed in 2026)
        SBD-3 (work will commence within days)
        B5N2 (completion date TBD)
        B-25D
        B-17F (will also become an E)
        B-17G
        B-24J (will also become a D)
        P-38 (we plan various marks)
        … and a couple more in the long-term pipeline you are unaware of.

        Also, we attended two FS Expos to support the industry and hobby, unlike 1C or ED, and we brought playable builds both times.

        So, a bit more than just Blender pics, but still a long way to go all told. I hope everyone watches Special Announcement #1 and takes note of our long-term plans discussed at  the 6:20 mark. I’ve broken down our plans to be as bite sized as possible. Anything smaller will make us irrelevant in the market.

        We will be releasing an update to our Patreon subscribers this week and we continue to march towards the completion and launch of Carrier Qualification as soon as we can in 2026.

        As I’ve said repeatedly, this is not an easy project to complete, but everyone here is committed to getting the job done. All we ask is that you be encouraging and keep up the enthusiasm instead of wallowing in pessimism. For those that want to give us money, we’ve made that available which we appreciate to no end.

        It’s been a long time since anyone attempted what we are trying to do so you can be skeptical, but don’t zing us for being the new guys on the block. We must start somewhere. I’m old enough to remember the early days and difficulties of the other teams and when the genre was supposedly “dead”. Imagine where we can be in 5 or 10 years just like the other guys.

        I wrote this as Colin was making his comments so there may be some overlap.

        Have a great Labor Day weekend to everyone in America!

        Jason

        Liked by 1 person

  4. PaperPilot Avatar
    PaperPilot

    If Combat Pilot aircraft will have clickable cockpits, won’t each plane take as long as DCS World aircraft to make (5+ years)?

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    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      Not necessarily. The clickable cockpit part isn’t what takes all of the extra time in development – its the underlying systems that they are connected to. Doing those in a simpler way can speed development.

      Keep in mind that X-Plane and MSFS aircraft have had clickable cockpits for over a decade. Some of those aircraft are very complicated, some of them are very simple.

      To deepen the example just a bit. There’s a difference between “toggle landing light” switch turning on and off the light and “toggle landing light” being connected to a fully simulated electrical bus with cascading systems connected to it simulating load on the bus, battery and alternator voltages, failures, etc. I’m not sure how far down Combat Pilot will go but even the simplest of MSFS and X-Plane aircraft have clickable cockpits. Not all of them require decades of development. Some can be put together in months.

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  5. Blue 5 Avatar
    Blue 5

    Both good and sadly accurate points. I will buy this and I hope to hell it succeeds but….

    I also do not get the clickable cockpit obsession. Maybe, for a modern fighter, it is a necessary interface, but it is also a PITA actually to do for most players under current technical limits. Great, yeah, but there is a reason that I have a HOTAS and it is the same as why the F-16 etc. have a HOTAS: reduce pilot workload and optimise for the actual flying. The F-4 was a nightmare of getting stuff right and that was for a full-time professional. They would have killed for what we have.

    Developers in WW2 spent time reducing cockpit workload so that RPM was throttle linked, radiators automated, superchargers, fuel mixture, nav systems etc etc. Yes, it is fun to move the levers, but down to the smallest of buttons? I have loads of buttons free on my set-up, I do not need to be blundering around looking for a specific cockpit graphical area to enable a single element.

    The pilots that flew these spent hours in just one aircraft learning all of this, we do not. A gaming HOTAS is – in many senses – actually more realistic because it is instinctive in juts the way a Spitfire / 109 etc pilot with months on type and as his sole day job did not need to look around and click stuff with his mouse.

    Reminds me of he sequential shift levers on modern automatic cars. Seems like great fun, until you realise they are pointless as under 95% of circumstances the auto transmission does a far better job.

    So – rant over – Jason please ditch the unnecessary like a full-fidelity cockpit with clickable seat-adjuster and focus on a releasable product. Midway was always – IMHO – a questionable theatre as it is 4 days of action and while dramatic there is in reality not that much to do. Yes, I get the name draw but Solomons would logically have been a wider canvas. So, dude, to achieve momentum you need to get this out.

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    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      Concern about a lengthy development cycle is warranted and there is a possibility, in any software development project, that it won’t come to fruition. Nobody has a time machine to jump forward and check so we’ll just have to wait and see of course! 🙂

      I do want to adjust the thinking of the core thesis here. In combat flight sims we tend to think of IL-2: Great Battles with no clickable cockpits and DCS World with full fidelity systems simulations and clickable cockpits. But that’s a false dichotomy because we also have IL-2 Cliffs of Dover series with some clickable items in the cockpit and we have X-Plane and MSFS where you have the simplest and most complicated airplanes alike sharing clickable cockpit features.

      The complexity is not in the clickable nature but in the choice on how deeply to simulate what happens when a switch is flicked.

      Jason’s vision appears to be offering fidelity around what IL-2 Great Battles offers. I think they are working towards being able to put together a fair number of aircraft without each one taking several years to implement. Give them a chance to put that vision into production.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Blue 5 Avatar
        Blue 5

        I really hope your (as usual) optimistic and balanced view is correct. I will embrace this with both hand and a wallet. I just worry that Jason might have bitten off more than he can chew.

        I would love to be utterly proven wrong.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
        ShamrockOneFive

        It’s a fair worry and I hope in my arguments I don’t come off as dismissive because what you’re saying is not wrong either should they choose to do too much. Scope creep for projects can cause tremendous problems.

        We’ll, of course, have to see how it goes! My fingers are crossed.

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