LATEST NEWS
- 0 replies
- 1,765 views
- Add Reply
- 53 replies
- 12,067 views
- Add Reply
- 0 replies
- 3,204 views
- Add Reply
- 29 replies
- 16,854 views
- Add Reply
- 21 replies
- 8,681 views
- Add Reply
August Calendars Available
By Fates,
I've uploaded two new Calendars to the Gallery.
Enjoy!
Fates
CombatAce Calendars Ready
10 Years with Combat Ace
By Dave,
It’s been an incredible 10 years with all our Flight Sim fans, and I would like to begin by thanking all of you that have made this website the great place it has been for the last 10 years.
Past
CombatAce began as a much different site known as BioHazcentral.com in 2002. The site was originally created by MadJeff as a flight sim enthusiast site centered on Lock On: Modern Air Combat (LOMAC). It quickly expanded to include other popular flight Sims of the times, including the Jane’s Combat Series, and the Falcon Series. I came to know MadJeff from the LOMAC forums and we spoke about his creation of Biohaz. Being that is was a new site, and I was a huge fan of the Sims, I became one of Madjeff’s first staffers to help him with its creation. I worked on site graphics and moderations, but I also introduced MadJeff to the Strike Fighters series.nThe Biohaz site lasted for several years, but the cost and time consumption on one person to run everything truly became a burden. The Site was soon sold to our current owner who is one of the world’s biggest flight sim supporters. We had an incredible staff, but have expanded it even more as the site has grown over the years.
Present
Biohaz became CombatAce in March of 2005. CombatAce was bought by Mk2 and Erik who are huge supporters of the flight simming community. At the time we only had a few hundred members. I was brought on board with Fates to help get the site up and running and to work day to day operations. The site now caters to everything from flight sims to first person shooters. The membership has grown from that few hundred to over 61,000 members from over 150 countries making this a truly international site.
Column5 ~ Participate in many Internet gaming forums and one thing becomes clear: communities founded with the intent to bring together like-minded people to enhance the enjoyment of a game are often overrun by those wanting to complain about the injuries--real or imagined, but mostly imagined--they have suffered at the hands of evil developers and blind fanboys. From its beginning as Biohaz Central and continuing into its 10-year run as CombatAce, this site has consistently avoided that trend and now stands out as the best example of what can happen when real fans of a game, simulator, or anything else come together simply to have fun and, indeed, make a good product better through the generous donation of that most valuable commodity: their own free time. I can't think of a better place to come to talk about aviation and flight simming and I have no doubt that the second decade will be as good as the first!
CombatAce's biggest draw is the Thirdwire series of flight sims. Most of the posters we have here migrated from SimHq when it was decided that we needed a place of our own that we could regulate ourselves. We opened the download section in 2005 and the first series of Strike Fighters sims alone has generated 5372 files with 3,366,601 downloads! In 2008 the second series of Strike Fighters went live in 2008 and has generated 1560 files with almost 500,000 downloads.
We have also hosted files from the LOMAC community, IL-2 community, Naval sim community, you name it, we host it. Bringing our totals to 9201 files in 387 Categories with 798 different authors! Totaling 4,639,475 downloads! That's an impressive number.
CombatAce has also over the years hosted orphan sites that were a big part of a flight sim community but for whatever reason or another were not able to continue to operate under their current agreements with the respective site owners. In 2009 we picked up the hugely successful Over Flanders Fields community that had falling out with their previous site owners. Since coming here that has almost doubled the traffic at CA and they are moving along nicely. We also added a few forums for the payware community to keep in touch with their latest mods and developments.
Jeff "ST0RM" Stoermer ~ Wow, 10 years? Well, I came over here when things turned south over at SimHQ. Dave and I became friends via the net while I was stationed over in Germany. He asked me to move over and add some additional military perspective. Since then, I've been mostly active in the Strike Fighters series forums and have added some minor mods and skins along the way. Occasionally, I contribute to the Photography/Military Aviation forums where I can. Although I've met only a few people on the boards in person, I consider several as good friends. They've always been very supportive of me during my many deployments. CA has evolved from a small group of gaming enthusiasts, to an all out game mod factory. The amount of high-quality freeware work coming out of here, rivals any purpose-made company. It's that good! I look forward to the next 10 years here and will welcome the 20th anniversary in 2022.
The Future
What does the future hold for CombatAce? That remains unknown, there are many ideas being tossed about but currently we are running at full steam and we aren't going anywhere anytime soon. The members make that all happen. The posters, the modders, the lurkers even the stalkers make this place truly unique. It's been a blast the last 10 years and it continues to be a blast. I can say this. the future looks bright for CombatAce.
Michael "Fates" ~ I would like to personally thank Erik and MK2 for everything they do in supporting this community. I would also like to thank every member for their support in keeping this site a lively and exciting slice of the Simulation world. Cheers~
New Over Flanders Fields 2 development screenshots
By Polovski,
OBD Software posted new development screenshots showing some of the new damage and other pics in the forthcoming new major release of Over Flanders Fields.
See http://combatace.com/topic/71986-off2-development-screenshots/
Strike Fighters 2 North Atlantic Is Released!
By Dave,
Thirdwire's much anticipated release of Strike Fighters 2 North Atlantic has finally come.
Strike Fighters 2 North Atlantic is a jet air-combat game set in hypothetical Cold War Soviet invasion of Iceland. The player flyable aircraft include F-14 Tomcat and A-7 Corsair II.
The campaign is set in 1979 hypothetical "Cold War gone Hot" scenario - what if the Soviet Union had decided to invade West Germany in 1979? The key to Soviet victory in Europe rests in the capture of Iceland and its vital strategic US base located there. With the Soviet in control of Iceland, the NATO forces would not be able to contain the Soviet Northern Fleet, and the American reinforcement fleets would not be able to reach Europe.
Join the US Navy and USS Nimitz Carrier Battle Group sent to reinforce the Iceland defense, protect the carrier from Soviet long-range bombers, and strike the Kiev battle group of the Soviet Northern Fleet!
The game is designed for Windows 7/Vista and DX10 capable video card. It can be merged with other games in the series (Strike Fighters 2, Strike Fighters 2 Vietnam, Strike Fighters 2 Europe, and Strike Fighters 2 Israel) for additional aircraft, maps, missions, and campaigns.
Player Flyable Aircraft
• F-14A Tomcat
• A-7E Corsair II
AI Aircraft
• A-6E Intruder
• EA-6B Prowler
• E-2C Hawkeye
• F-4E Phantom II
• MiG-21 "Fishbed"
• MiG-23/27 "Flogger"
• Yak-38 "Forger"
• Tu-16 "Badger"
• Tu-22 "Blinder"
• Tu-22M "Backfire"
• Tu-95 "Bear"
• An-12 "Cub"
Available by going to the Thirdwire online store by clicking the link below.
https://store.thirdwire.com/store.htm
US Navy Fires Off Its New Weaponized Railgun
By FastCargo,
The Navy has spent seven years testing out the components of a way-futuristic weapon: a shipboard cannon that blasts bullets over vast distances at hypersonic speeds using bursts of electricity. But so far, that weapon, known as the Electromagnetic Railgun, has been more of a lab experiment than an honest-to-God weapon. It didn’t even have basic gun-like features, like a barrel. Now, however, the Navy is unveiling the first actual railgun guns, which it’ll test for another five years, in the hope of winning over legislators who consider it a waste of time, money and electricity.
Previous versions of the railgun have been laboratory test models, stored in a hangar at Dahlgren Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia. They look like shipping containers or school buses put up on blocks, hooked up like Frankenstein’s monster to giant generators that pump dozens of megajoules of energy necessary to fire the bullet. All that has cost nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. And you couldn’t fit any of it onto a ship, and it wouldn’t actually be a real weapon if you did.
At least not until Jan. 30, when BAE Systems sent its first actual gun-shaped railgun to Dahlgren. Competitor General Atomics will send its own design there in April. Both designs have 12-meter barrels. “Now that looks like a real gun,” said Roger Ellis, the railgun chief for the Office of Naval Research, which has inaugurated the next phase of tests to determine the gun’s practicality — something many in Congress doubt.
The Navy released video of the first tests, viewable above, on Tuesday. The dramatic mini-inferno in the wake of the slug fired from the railgun is the result of “1 million amps flowing through” the gun, said test chief Tom Boucher, the hypersonic speed of the shot, and the actual aluminum of the bullet — “reactive in the atmosphere” — burning off.
It’s the next step in a process — an expensive one — the Navy hopes will lead to a whole new era of self defense for ships, and way, way long-range strikes from on deck by the early 2020s. The Navy’s current 5-inch deck guns top out at 13 kilometer ranges. By 2017, the Navy wants the railgun prototypes to fire several shots per minute without soaking up a ship’s juice.
The idea behind the Electromagnetic Railgun is to fire a bullet at hypersonic speeds using dozens of megajoules of electricity. The Navy wants it to guard the surface ships of the 2020s, unsubtly boasting to adversaries that messing with the ships will lead to bullets shooting across hundreds of miles of ocean in mere minutes. The Office of Naval Research says it will give sailors “a dramatically increased multimission capability,” like fire support for land strikes over long, long distances beyond the reach of enemy defenses, and defense against “cruise and ballistic missiles” that target ships. No wonder the railgun’s official motto is “Velocitas Eradico” — “Speed Kills.”
Lab tests have pleased the Navy, if not Congress. In December 2010, the Office of Naval Research fired a shot with 33 megajoules of energy, a world record, sending a 23-pound bullet 5500 feet in a single second. The Senate Armed Services Committee still found the science too impractical, and recommended killing the railgun, until a Navy congressional counterstrike revived the program.
Now that the Navy has an actual prototype railgun to shoot, the plan is to hook it up to sensors and cameras to test its performance at 20 and 33 megajoules’ worth of energy. Its goal is produce accurate shots from 50 to 100 nautical mile distances, which the Navy wants by 2017.
Even railgun advocates concede there are a host of other challenges the hypersonic weapon will have to overcome. Its barrel will have to withstand repeated fires without wearing out. (The Navy wants to up firing rates to 10 per minute.) It’s got to fire smart bullets without frying the guidance systems during a blast. (The Navy says both BAE and General Dynamics are starting to design “a next-generation thermally managed launcher.”) And it’s got to be affordable. (The Navy has spent $240 million on the railgun so far, and it expects to spend about as much through 2017 on tests — before buying a single one of the things.)
Another big problem: the current generation of Destroyers can’t produce the power to fire the railgun without diverting juice from the propulsion systems. One of the goals of the railguns over the next five years is to create workarounds, so the guns will be relevant to their intended ships. Those include “an intermediate energy store using energy-dense batteries, similar to [those on] hybrid cars,” Ellis told reporters on a Tuesday conference call. “That enables us to put the railgun on ships that don’t have larger power supplies.”
Which should underscore how the Navy really, really loves its railgun — enough to go to the mat with Congress about it and win. That’s not going to relent now that it actually has a real cannon to shoot.
by Spencer Ackerman
Wired Magazine Article
The Navy has spent seven years testing out the components of a way-futuristic weapon: a shipboard cannon that blasts bullets over vast distances at hypersonic speeds using bursts of electricity. But so far, that weapon, known as the Electromagnetic Railgun, has been more of a lab experiment than an honest-to-God weapon. It didn’t even have basic gun-like features, like a barrel. Now, however, the Navy is unveiling the first actual railgun guns, which it’ll test for another five years, in the hope of winning over legislators who consider it a waste of time, money and electricity.
Previous versions of the railgun have been laboratory test models, stored in a hangar at Dahlgren Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia. They look like shipping containers or school buses put up on blocks, hooked up like Frankenstein’s monster to giant generators that pump dozens of megajoules of energy necessary to fire the bullet. All that has cost nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. And you couldn’t fit any of it onto a ship, and it wouldn’t actually be a real weapon if you did.
At least not until Jan. 30, when BAE Systems sent its first actual gun-shaped railgun to Dahlgren. Competitor General Atomics will send its own design there in April. Both designs have 12-meter barrels. “Now that looks like a real gun,” said Roger Ellis, the railgun chief for the Office of Naval Research, which has inaugurated the next phase of tests to determine the gun’s practicality — something many in Congress doubt.
The Navy released video of the first tests, viewable above, on Tuesday. The dramatic mini-inferno in the wake of the slug fired from the railgun is the result of “1 million amps flowing through” the gun, said test chief Tom Boucher, the hypersonic speed of the shot, and the actual aluminum of the bullet — “reactive in the atmosphere” — burning off.
It’s the next step in a process — an expensive one — the Navy hopes will lead to a whole new era of self defense for ships, and way, way long-range strikes from on deck by the early 2020s. The Navy’s current 5-inch deck guns top out at 13 kilometer ranges. By 2017, the Navy wants the railgun prototypes to fire several shots per minute without soaking up a ship’s juice.
The idea behind the Electromagnetic Railgun is to fire a bullet at hypersonic speeds using dozens of megajoules of electricity. The Navy wants it to guard the surface ships of the 2020s, unsubtly boasting to adversaries that messing with the ships will lead to bullets shooting across hundreds of miles of ocean in mere minutes. The Office of Naval Research says it will give sailors “a dramatically increased multimission capability,” like fire support for land strikes over long, long distances beyond the reach of enemy defenses, and defense against “cruise and ballistic missiles” that target ships. No wonder the railgun’s official motto is “Velocitas Eradico” — “Speed Kills.”
Lab tests have pleased the Navy, if not Congress. In December 2010, the Office of Naval Research fired a shot with 33 megajoules of energy, a world record, sending a 23-pound bullet 5500 feet in a single second. The Senate Armed Services Committee still found the science too impractical, and recommended killing the railgun, until a Navy congressional counterstrike revived the program.
Now that the Navy has an actual prototype railgun to shoot, the plan is to hook it up to sensors and cameras to test its performance at 20 and 33 megajoules’ worth of energy. Its goal is produce accurate shots from 50 to 100 nautical mile distances, which the Navy wants by 2017.
Even railgun advocates concede there are a host of other challenges the hypersonic weapon will have to overcome. Its barrel will have to withstand repeated fires without wearing out. (The Navy wants to up firing rates to 10 per minute.) It’s got to fire smart bullets without frying the guidance systems during a blast. (The Navy says both BAE and General Dynamics are starting to design “a next-generation thermally managed launcher.”) And it’s got to be affordable. (The Navy has spent $240 million on the railgun so far, and it expects to spend about as much through 2017 on tests — before buying a single one of the things.)
Another big problem: the current generation of Destroyers can’t produce the power to fire the railgun without diverting juice from the propulsion systems. One of the goals of the railguns over the next five years is to create workarounds, so the guns will be relevant to their intended ships. Those include “an intermediate energy store using energy-dense batteries, similar to [those on] hybrid cars,” Ellis told reporters on a Tuesday conference call. “That enables us to put the railgun on ships that don’t have larger power supplies.”
Which should underscore how the Navy really, really loves its railgun — enough to go to the mat with Congress about it and win. That’s not going to relent now that it actually has a real cannon to shoot.
by Spencer Ackerman
Wired Magazine Article
-
NEW TOPICS
-
-
-
Gallery Highlights
