The hiatus from FS work is having its desired calming effect and the break over Xmas was pleasant, allowing time to be dedicated elsewhere within the family.

 

Sadly, as many will know by now, this has been tempered by the loss of the MS ACE's team and the closure of both future flight and train Sim's for the foreseeable future. Personally the loss of the flight Sim side isn't too bad, we do at least have a reasonably good current ( FSx ) platform to build upon and if the truth be known the break will allow developers to fully explore that Sim, with no new flight Sim on the horizon I feel that this will be a good thing, and in time some exciting things will be discovered by current and new developers. Certainly for the next two or three years little will change, other than things getting better, PCs will catch up and eventually FSx will replace FS9 as the defacto Sim.

 

The really sad loss is TSx, an almost ready Sim shelved, worst of all there isn't anything elsewhere that can readily accommodate those user's looking for that next generation train Sim. Having begun to cut back on the flight Sim side of things ready for train Sim, its a kind of a big blow really, now that I'm virtually weened off FS its going to be hard to get back, but then life has a habit of doing things like this :).

 

Still, in an attempt to remain positive I dug around my files and resurrected the heavy cruiser project, some may already have seen her lurking in older carrier renders here and there. One big advantage of US vessels is their commonality in weapons and parts, once the war engine geared up the US produced corpulent amounts of weapons to a standard design. For modellers that great, a 5" dual 38Cal mount fits Essex carriers and many other vessels too, you simply make one model and then clone across as many projects as you wish. Like the Essex class the Baltimore heavy cruisers had a long career, many served in WW, Korea and I believe some were upgraded to serve in Vietnam, though one has to look very hard to see the original cruiser in say the Albany class, with their massive tower superstructures and full missile fit ( one of those is planned later in the year ).

 

Current projects include CA-135 USS Los Angeles to support the Essex carrier CV-21 USS Boxer for the Korean era package and for WWII the exact vessel has yet to be determined, as has the carrier if the truth be told, but it will probably be one Ms 32 splinter camo to match one carrier package and one Ms 12 to match another carrier package.

 

A new folder has been added with a few initial renders so far, hopefully these, like the carriers will be updated through out the year and maybe a few other ship projects will surface too, some military and some commercial, aka Ro-Ro's ( a particular favourite class of vessel of mine ), container, bulk or tanker.

 

Finally, a word of thanks to all who post comments, it is much appreciated.

 

Kindest

 

Michael