Modding Tornado

[Frankie]

Here are the equivalent Winter and Desert FLIGHT.EXEs of the modifcations made to the August 13, 2023 FLIGHT.EXE.

[Frankie]

Breathing life to a 30-year old DOS flight sim - Digital Integration's Tornado. I've added a 200-degrees pannable pilot view (non-HUD) to simulate the player moving his head inside the cockpit. See video below:

Let's see if I can't add this feature to the sterile and limited existing "Glance Left View" (End key) and the "Glance Right View" (PgDn key).

Cheers!
Frankie Kam

[Frankie]

Mod 208. Remembrance Day Special Mod Combo

In most countries, Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November to recall the end of First World War hostilities. Hostilities ended "at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" of 1918, in accordance with the armistice signed by representatives of Germany and the Entente between 5:12 and 5:20 that morning.

I. Improved Flyby view
Description: I've improved the flyby view. This time, after hitting F3 to view your Tornado flyby, you can raise or lower the viewpoint. The adjusted viewpoint height is persistent. Meaning that the next time you hit F3, the view remembers the last perspective. So this leads to some nice cinematic views of your Tornado zooming by. There is also Ctrl+F3 which assumes you are on the ground, looking up towards the Tornado. Hope you enjoy these new features of the flyby view!

F3           = flyby with current viewpoint height retained
F3 | 7       = lower bystander viewpoint
F3 | Ctrl+7  = raise bystander viewpoint
Ctrl+F3      = Flyby from ground zero viewpoint
Shift+F3     = Flyby from plane's level viewpoint


II. Fullscreen panning 360 Pilot view
Description: I've created a full-screen PilotView minus the HUD. This view points in same direction as the full-screen Pilot HUD View, but the difference now is you can pan left, right, up and down. You can also reset the current view so that it points dead-centre, in sync with the Full-screen Pilot HUD View. Purpose? To simulate scanning of the pilots head when looking for ground or air objectives.

Press Shift+D once = Home PilotPanel view
Press Shift+D again = brings you to the 360 view
1 = Pan up
0 = Pan up
< = Pan left
> = Pan right
Ctrl+1 = Reset 360 view to looking forwards centralised
d = back to PilotPanel view
1 & 0 pressed together = vertical perspective does not change (both 1 and 0 keys cancel each other)
< & > pressed together = horizontal perspective does not change (both < and > keys cancel each other)


III. Dual Lookdown View

Description: I created a dual-kneepad view as a programming challenge. I wanted to see if I could create a second settings screen where the user can change the settings mid-mission. In this, I was successful. However some of the features were incomplete, as I shall explain below. With this dual-kneepad view, the Tornado gamer is able to do the following:

• Change the Night level of a mission. This creates more mission variety if you don't mind a departure from standard Tornado out of the box.
• Increase the level of difficulty by adding fog to the environment; or at least change the sky from clear to overcast - lending at interesting take and mission variety on what would otherwise be a standard mission.
• Simulate component failure. This could come in handy when training for real eventualities like trying to land the Tonka with one engine out and with the flaps shot off by AAA. Unfortunately, although I can toggle on a component failure (e.g., TV-TABs disabled), I am NOT able to restore such said component. So please choose your component failures carefully as you will need to restart the mission if you wish to experiment with a different parameter of failures. Overall, this feature lends a What-If aspect to the sim. Something which was never possible with the stock game.
• Toggle between unlimited and limited Chaff/Flares. It can be argued, and rightly so, that this 'cheat' feature dumbs down the hard-core difficulty aspect of Tornado. As a modder, I sometimes like to question things that are and ask, can Tornado not be like Falcon where you can have various levels of game difficulty? Perhaps the Tornado gamer has executed and failed Mission XYZ multiple times and is ready to throw in the towel at the PC. Is there room to sometimes cut the Tornadoholic some slack and bend some rules, once in a while?

Kneepad View1
Numlock = Kneepad View1
< or >  = Toggle bwteeen Kneepad1 or Kneepad2 view
4 = Change ambience from Day->Dusk->Night->Midnight (buggy/incomplete)
5 = Change horizon behaviour from level to tilted
6 = Change night panel lighting from red to green and vice-versa
7 = choose damage effects row1 (Engine1 out, Flaps, Pilot MFDs, TV-TABs)
8 = choose damage effects row2 (Engine2 out, Gear, Radar, HUD)
9 = choose damage effects row4 (Afterburner, Sweep wings, RWR, Electronics)
0 = unlimited chaff and flares; weapons not decremented when used

Screenshot 1 - first kneepad view

Kneepad View2
1 = Visibility (as per original 1993)
2 = Ground Textures (as per original 1993)
3 = Hill Textures (as per original 1993)
4 = Sky/Clouds (toggle on/off)
5 = Horizon Textures (as per original 1993)
6 = Fog/Overcast toggle
7 = Devices (as per original 1993)
8 = Sound effects (as per original 1993)
0 = Min/Max visuals (as per original 1993)

Screenshot 2 - second kneepad view

IV. SAM Active tri-view
Description:  I've created this view so that you can experience the view of a SAM being fired from its SAM mobile. There are 3 views. View of SAM being launched and as it travels in the air towards your plane; reverse view of the SAM - seen from the front of the missible, looking towards its rear, and SAM crosshairs - seen from the front perspective of the SAM. To activate any of the three part-views, hit the Function key F12 when engaging SAMs in a SAM-rich target environment. Then choose among the keys F1 (Missile view), F2 (reverse rear crosshairs missile POV) and F3 (front crosshairs missile POV). Hit F12 again to disable the tri-views. Enjoy.

F12 = activate Tri-missile view
F1   = Missile launch and flying view
F2   = Rear Missile POV
F3   = Front Missle POV
] and [ keys  = show Tracking View split level (TR01 to TR06)

Additional keys when engaging AAA (ZSU) and SAM mobile launchers (Zomb). Refer to the video below. And to this link.

F12 = activate Tri-missile view
F11 = Toggle between active AAA and SAM mobile unit
Ctrl+Alt   =  raise the perspective of the AAA or SAM mobile unit
Ctrl+Shift = lower the perspective of the AAA or SAM mobile unit

Note: when you see tracer from the AAA, try hitting F12, Ctrl+Alt, Ctrl+Shift and F11....eventually, a unit will appear on the screen.

Screenshot 3 - SAM view with F12 and F1

Screenshot 4 - SAM front-facing POV crosshairs bearing down on your Tornado. Punch flares!

A majority of my mods are focused on external views. It is of course possible to play the entire game relying 90% of the time on just the Pilot Panel, Navigator Panel and the famous multi-mode Autopilot of Tornado. With these external mods, I hope to provide a glimpse and angle of Tornado seldom or never seen before in the stock game. Hope you enjoy this Remembrance Day Combo Mod!

Enjoy this two (Sept-Oct 2023) months of accumulated mods!

Regards
Frankie Kam
Malaysia

P.S.
I have attached the FLIGHT.EXE executable with this post. Hope this helps.

NOTE:
If you are unable to view the FLIGHT.EXE attachment, it's probably because you don't have a forum account with the Dogs Of War Virtual Unit forum. Fear not. You can also join the Tornado2 Discord channel where you can download the latest FLIGHT.EXE (as of 12/11/2023). Just click on this Discord Invite link: https://discord.gg/7wecsHytAw

ENJOY!

[Frankie]

Hi Tornadoholics, Tornado Enthusiasts and the retro combat flight sim aficionados

This morning I fired up Tornado to remind myself of the graphics.

I can't believe that I spent so many years modding the heck out of this venerable flight sim.

A shout out to Kevin J. Bezant. He is a freaking Coding Legend and a Coding Beast!  In every header of source code file (*.ASM) of Tornado, you will see his initials KJB. After 30 years his memory of the technicalities of the Tornado code has faded mostly, but he still remembers a lot of high-level stuff/concepts/techniques used etc.

These days I'm more found playing chess on Twitch and Youtube under the nick "Durian Defense". Hope you enjoyed the thrills and spills that Tornado (both vanilla out of the box and my exploratory mods) has given you from 1993 until today 2024.

Regards
Frankie "Durian Defense" Kam

[Frankie]

Mod 209. Normal MDF (d+key) and Full-Screen MFDs (Shift+d key)

My first Tornado mod after almost a full year of silence! Apparently I can still scrape the bottom of the modded Tornado barrel for content. This morning I remembered how one Tornado gamer messaged me saying that my full-screen HUD (activated after a certain sequence of hitting the d key successfully) was messing up his game play. He preferred to remain in the PilotPanel view as he cycled through the Pilot cockpit's central MFDs as he hit the d key. So anyway, after more than a year, I remembered this complaint (request to not disrupt the status quo of cycling through the MFDs) and decided to see if I couldn't do anything about it. So I tinkered with the code. I managed to pull it off. So gentlemen, here is mod#209. My first for the year of 2024. Any I am pretty chuffed about it.

Pressing the d key in Tornado allows you to toggle among the various MFDs of the PilotPanel cockpit.

Before today, I had modded the d key so that it toggled among the MFDs and a included two full-screen FLIR views (i.e., one is a full-screen HUD and the other a full-screen-non-HUD-but-two-axis-pannable view).
Not everyone was happy that I had disrupted their normal sequence of hitting the d keys that kept them inside the Pilot Cockpit view. They didn't like being forced to see the full-screen HUD twice before having to hit the d key again to return to the normal PilotPanel view.

So what I did today was to solve this nagging 2-year old problem. I managed to implement this solution:
1. When in the PilotPanel view, hit the d key as normal. You will cycle through the normal MFDs and will remain in the PilotPanel view.
2. If you for whatever reason wish to activate the full-screen HUD views, just hit Shift+d key combination and vola! You are now in the full-screen HUD view, with a fully-functioning HUD for all your weapon targeting needs and avionics data needs.
3. Press Shift+d a second time, and vola! You are in the full-screen-non-HUD-but-two-axis-pannable view! Pan up and down and left to right with the 1, 0, right and left keys.
4. Press Shift+d a third time to return to the PilotPanel view.

So if you don't care for the fuil-screen HUD or the full-screen non-HUD but pannable view, don't hit Shift+d. It's as simple as that.

So that should please the Tornado purists and those happy to play with my Tornado mods. Even in 2024 which is 31 years after Digital Integration unleased this fine DOS combat flight simulator on the world.

If you wish to contact me on anything to do with Digital Integraton's Tornado combat flight simulator of 1993, you can contact me at:
Email: boonsengkam@gmail.com
WhatsApp: +6011-2001 1429
Cheers!
Frankie Kam
Malaysia

APPENDIX
To control the full-screen, non-HUD and two-axis pannable view, use these keys:

Press Shift+d to cycle between the full-screen HUD mode and the full-screen non-HUD but pannable view
Press d to return to the Pilot Panel

When in the full-screen non-HUD but pannable view,
Press 1 to pan upwards
Press 0 to pan downwards
Press Left Arrow to pan left
Press Right Arrow to pan right
Press Ctrl+1 to reset the nose centre (the recticle will centre back on the screen)


Attachements in this post (you can view them if you have dogsofwarvu.com user account):-
1. FLIGHT_Euro.EXE (European colors)
2. FLIGHT_Desert.EXE (Desert pink colors)
3. FLIGHT_Winter.EXE (Winter colors)
Just rename any of the EXE files to FLIGHT.EXE and you are good to go!

[Frankie]

Dear All Tornado Fans

FYI, I've relaunched my TWO old Tornado website at this new server:


WEBSITE #1
http://frankiekam.com

WEBSITE #2
http://frankiekam.com/tornado (99% working)

To go direct to the menu, go here https://frankiekam.com/tornado/home.html

GOOD TIMES! GOOD TIMES!

Synchronise your watches! We're flying LOW, we're flying FAST and hitting HARD!

[Frankie]

The Frankie Chronicles 2024

Captain's Log, Stardate 0510.24. On our 10th day of October star mapping, I removed the object that blocked my previous posts' uploaded images.

Meaning that I updated the links of almost all my posts' images to point to the new server which hosts my Tornado images. Hence, vola! 90% of the images I posted together with 31 pages worth of posts, are now back in this Dogs Of War VU Tornado Forum.

This helps me a lot as much of the Tornado mods documentation on this forum were screenshots of the features being modded.
So I am chuffed to resurrect almost all the uploaded images and screenshots of these 8 years worth of Tornado mods.

ENJOY!

Regards
Frankie Kam

[Frankie]

AAA unit after hitting F11

SAM unit - F11 toggles between the two units

Mod 210. F11 to easily show the AAA or SAM units

I don't know why I didn't come up with this earlier. Now when you are in the thick of action, just hit the F11 key to show up on screen either a AAA or a SAM unit. Tap/hit F11 to toggle between the active AAA and SAM unit. Note: you  won't see any show up upon hitting F11, until they're in range.

Additional keys:
Adjust camera upwards : press and hold Ctrl+Shift
Adjust camera downwards : press and hold F11
Pan camera sideways : use the z and x keys
Zoom in and out: use the < and > keys
Additional zoom plane angle: use the 2 and Shift+2 keys

Enjoy
Frankie Kam

APPENDIX

Attached Zip file contains these 3 executables:
FLIGHT_Euro.EXE = Default European green hues Tornado and terrain
FLIGHT_Desert.EXE = Desert pink Tornado and terrain
FLIGHT_Winter.EXE = Winter white Tornado and terrain
To use any of these 3 executables, rename to FLIGHT.EXE and copy overwriting the original FLIGHT.EXE (make sure you first backup the original FLIGHT.EXE)

If you don't have a user account in Dogsofwarvu.com forums, WhatsApp Frankie Kam (that's me!) at +6011-2001 1429.

[Frankie]

Mod 211. Cinematic view of Drones (allied/enemy planes) with F5 | Key i

Hit F5 and then press 'i' to see the allied and enemy planes rotate in view. Adjust with these keys:
z : pan left
x : pan right
1 : pan up
0 : pan down
2 : zoom in
Shift+2 : zoom out

Cheers
Frankie Kam

[Frankie]

YOUTUBE SHOWCASE OF MODS

Part 1


MODS COVERED:
Vertical/sideways yaw/Panning views
Cinematic rotating view (Key "i")
Full-screen FLIR HUD (Pilot Panel)
Modded Tracking View TR2 (Weapons release View)
Modded Tracking View TR3 (Target View)
Modded Tracking View TR4 (TIALD/Ground reconnaissance View)
Modded Tracking View TR5 (SAM Intercept/Impact point View)
Missile View (F12)
KneedPad Screen1 (NumLock)



Part 2


MODS COVERED:
Full-screen HUD with Shift+D
Full-screen FLIR and TIALD
Switching from normal MDF-sized TIALD view to full-screen TIALD  (key 3)
Matrix-freeze time (Bullet-time) with Shift+p
Modded Tracking View TR2  (Impact point & Ordnance focus split-screen)
Moded Tracking View TR3 (Target split-screen)
KneedPad View - simulating component failure
Green Night Vision mode with Ctrl+Tab

END

[Frankie]

Mod 180 Revisited.
http://dogsofwarvu.com/forum/index.php/topic,5046.msg46155.html#msg46155

For some reason, the on-demand E-Scope (Terrain-Following display) was not working when the 5 key was pressed.
I have solved this now.

I have attached the latest modded FLIGHT.EXE as of 22nd October 2024.

If you do not have a DOWVU Forum login account, please contact via my Gmail account of boonsengkam@gmail.com. Alternatively, you can join the Digital Integration Tornado Discord https://discord.gg/7wecsHytAw to touch base with me and with other DI / Interplay Tornado fans:

Press the 5 key to toggle the E-Scope on and off.

In 1993, this was how Tornado modelled the E-Scope in Tornado. Not a bad effort, eh?
Click here to experience more: https://frankiekam.com/tornado/seats/pilot.html

Tornado E-Scope Head-Down Display

The E-scope was fitted to the Interdictor Strike Version of the Tornado GR1. A key piece of equipment in this version is the Terrain Following Radar which feeds an automatic terrain following system. This system controls the flight path of the aircraft to a pre-set clearance height above the terrain. The computer generates a theoretical "ski-toe" shaped envelope in front of the aircraft and compares this to the actual radar terrain return. If at any point terrain is found to penetrate into the envelope an automatic pull-up command is given. The E-Scope displays the theoretical and actual envelopes so that the pilot can monitor the system at all times. While the radar information is in polar co-ordinate it is presented in a modified form on the display: the vertical axis represents antenna angle while the horizontal axis represents the logarithm of range. For the E-Scope, Marconi-Elliott Avionic Systems Limited adopted a novel technique of logarithmic processing of the range information to preserve a simpler linear X-deflection scan. The principal advantage of this approach is the efficiency resulting from the processing of low voltage signals instead of high current deflection waveforms.

The E-Scope uses a high brightness green monochrome Cathode Ray Tube with a contrast enhancement filter. This is a functional unit but currently lacks the top cover.

It would have been manufactured around 1979. An Enhanced EScope was under development around this time. (See Tornado Systems)

The E-Scope had system trials on Buccaneer XT272 in 1980 at Warton and was shoehorned into the front cockpit.

Tornado E-Scope HDD CRT Assembly

The new Terrain Following display for the GR4 was a colour E-Scope which was the world's first application of beam-index technology. This could provide a brightness level high enough to enable easy reading of the display in direct sunlight.

A trials version of this TF display was tested on a Tornado at RAE and a development contract for terrain-following display was awarded to Ferranti.
At this time it was felt that Liquid Crystal Displays were too immature and the commercial panels were not available in the E-Scope size (the small requirement meant that the cost of a custom design was prohibitive). GEC Avionics bid a limited colour display using LCD Shutters in front of a Broad Band Phosphor CRT. This combination was not as attractive as a full colour display offered by the Beam-Index solution and the Specification was adapted to allow a small increase in the E-Scope size to accommodate the technology.

By the mid 90?s a source of LCD panels was available and the MLU displays were all replaced with this technology. This CRT is non-functional but was made by Thomson Tubes Electroniques.

Source: https://rochesteravionicarchives.co.uk/items/tornado-e-scope-head-down-display

Regards
Frankie Kam

[Frankie]

Mod 212. Drone/Chase Action View (F1 key, followed by "i" and "o")

Here's my latest mod. I name it "Drone/Chase Action View". Basically, it's just a variation of the cinematic rotating view. This time instead of rotating around a centre Tornado or wingman, imagine that there's a drone (as in the flying robots that make that loud whirring noise) that videos your Tornado while buzzing around it. It's hard for me to describe it, best you view it in action here:



Something like a bee that making lazy eights (flying in a figure '8') which keeping in close proximity to your head.

To see the effect, hit F1 to go to the usual Tracking View. Then hit "i" for India, followed by "o" for orange. Observe effect for 10 to 20 seconds, then hit "o" for orange again, then hit "o" again. Try to get the Tornado to go auto-pilot by hitting F7 in between the "o"s and then .... ENJOY.

Cheers
Frankie "It's Christmas soon!".

P.S., Can't see or download the latest FLIGHT.EXE because you haven't got an account on dogsofwarvu.com? Join my Tornado Discord at https://discord.gg/7wecsHytAw