New Fan Project: A Virtual Firefox for the Oculus Rift!

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a visual effects supervisor from California by the name of Derek Crosby, his awesome plan is to create an extremely accurate "virtual" Firefox for use with the Oculus Rift VR headset. Of course I was more than happy to help him out with some reference materials. I even utilized a good friend of mine -- a retired F-4 Phantom pilot who happens to speak some Russian -- to help us with translating the cockpit gauges.

Here's the first screenshot Derek has agreed to share with everyone, and it looks awesome...

Imagery © Derek Crosby | ThinkinRussian.com

This has been fun so far and there's a lot more still to come, so stay tuned...

Superfan Scratch-Builds Firefox Helmet & Flightsuit

I thought I was a Firefox fanatic until I met Frank! He's taken it to a whole new level with his custom built pilot's helmet, full pressure suit as well as a custom scale Mitchell Gant action figure.

Check out more photos and a description of how he constructed everything in the new Fan Submissions section!

RIP: Craig Thomas

A moment of silence for a fantastic author, you will be missed, Craig...

Craig Thomas: Author of Cold War spy stories and inventor of the techno-thriller (Obituary)

Firefox Boat Wrap

So I recently had a request from a huge Firefox fan to design a wrap for his boat!? Sounds crazy right? But it came out awesome!

Note: The above image is a photoshop mockup--not the real deal. I'm still awaiting photos of the actual wrap...

UPDATE: New Website!

Welcome friends, fans and supporters of the Thinkinrussian Fansite! You may notice that the website looks slightly different--that's because I migrated it over to the Google Blogger platform to make updating far simpler and for better SEO positioning. I tried to retain the same overall look & feel since I've had so much positive feedback from everyone over the years. Stay tuned, because there's lots of new Firefox-related information and content coming up...

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my website and online resource of information dedicated to the aircraft featured in the 1982 movie, "Firefox" The focus here is predominantly on the aircraft and it's associated special effects itself, not necessarily the film, director or plotline. For that, there are probably better resources on the net.

I'm more interested in what people didn't get to see enough of, a really well thought-out design of a fictional aircraft. The real credit goes to Greg Jein (master model maker & artist) who came up with the initial concepts, and Clint Eastwood and John Dykstra for making it all happen on screen. Craig Thomas authored the original novel which the film was based upon.

 

There are many different magazine articles and publications available where you can read about the making of the film. The first one that comes to mind is the October 1982 issue of CINEFEX (vol 10) which gives some insight on the design of the aircraft from the standpoint of pilots and aircraft engineers. But, for the most part it wasn't much mentioned. It was always that 'elusive black jet that you don't get to see enough of in the movie...'

This website is the product of a personal interest I have had in this enigma of a plane since I can remember. I realize this seems like a pretty elaborate and time consuming effort for a product of Hollywood special effects that technically never existed, but after doing extensive research into the subject, I found a plethora of people that were as obsessed with this plane as I was! Thus, the wheels were set in motion to meet the demand. The illustration became the catalyst for the website.