March 2013 patch issue - WW2 aircraft

[+ojcar 157]

And there are people asking for a FE2 patch........

[+streakeagle 871]

The current situation simply confirms my original fears: if TK went mobile, successful or not, SF2 PC development would get little or no time.

The latest patch and DLC are indicative that "little" time is the end result rather than "no" time.

While TK made plenty of statements to lower expectations for the future of SF2, I still hope that he is operating the way he has before: completely blind siding the community with the release of WoV and to a lesser extent SF2.

At a minimum I expect an expansion pack with the Mirage F1C somewhere along the line.

If you don't post your problems, he will not see them, which gives zero chance of problems being addressed with the next expansion pack/patch cycle.

Some chance is better than no chance.

 

If you genuinely believe TK has abandoned listening to his most loyal fans, then you should pick a patch revision level and stay with it from now until you ultimately abandon SF2.

 

The people asking for an FE2 patch clearly don't understand what will happen.

I think TK makes wishes on a monkey's paw when he is adding features/patching old problems.

[JediMaster 451]

I do get the feeling he's fed up with requests for this or that feature or plane or terrain or whatever. He does what he wants/thinks will sell best.

 

Now if the majority of issues with this latest patch are to mods, whether planes or terrains, I can easily see him saying "I don't really care" and ignoring people talking about it. He will care about the stock game and terrains above all.

 

While it's true the success (as it is) of SF1 and 2 so far were built on the backs of mods, honestly other than a still small selection of terrains overall I think it fair to say that the complete SF2 collection of titles, expansions, and DLCs would give users more than enough now. I do have a couple TC mods like OTC and NF5, and I have one modded install that has pretty much EVERY plane I've DL'd, but I find I spend plenty of time flying the stock installs as well now because he has filled out the world pretty well. These new AI packs fill out the early years when you fly the P-51 quite well (take a look DCS, we need more than a D-9 for a P-51 to fight!), and early jets are always welcome to me.

[+streakeagle 871]

Third Wire has (had?) a loyal following for many reasons. Among them:

1) Unique era/planeset compared to everyone else.

2) Fairly cheap.

3) Fairly diverse plane set as of SFP1/WoV/WoE/WoI.

4) Highly moddable.

5) Tremendous amount of fabulous mods provided for free by the community.

 

But none of that would have mattered if TK had not stuck with the game and continuously listened to and worked with the community to polish up the features and squash bugs.

 

TK's current approach surely will not win him too many more customers and a lot of the current customers are slowly going to dwindle as the game ages and stops growing.

Code stability could be a great thing (like FSX and SFP1/WoX patched to the 083006 level) as long as stability occurs after most of the bugs are fixed.

TK's constant undocumented tweaking between SF2 patches/releases brought some great surprises, but make it almost impossible to identify a revision level that is best for any one person.

Getting mods that comply with an end user's preferred revision level negate much of benefits 4/5, and may even retard purchases of DLC that are not compatible with earlier revisions.

 

At least the game still principally works well for my needs in stock condition: DACT between complex heavy US aircraft like F-4s and century series and MiGs.

I would still appreciate if SF2 had at least comparable multiplayer code to SFP1.

The SF2 AI can be fun to fight, but years of flying against it mean I am rarely surprised, and usually win in close knife fights despite any disadvantages in numbers and agility.

 

But whatever its flaws or its future, SF2 still remains the only decent sim/game for F-4 vs MiG era air combat.

So it will remain on my hard drive and get used periodically unless DCS or another competitor steps up to the plate.

The DCS : MiG-21bis gets me halfway there.

If the F-104 ever gets released and is well-modeled, the combination of F-104/MiG-21 dogfights offline or online may almost entirely eliminate my SF2 time (it's already pretty slime between the UH-1H and P-51D).

If a well done  DCS : F-4 module ever shows up, that would pretty much be the final nail in the coffin for my use of SF2.

Edited June 11, 2013 by streakeagle

[JediMaster 451]

Oh, I wish he'd just ported the SF1 MP code to SF2. It would've worked well enough for a good while. Not so sure with 64-bit Windows maybe, but until we switched we could've had a few more years with it.

[+ojcar 157]

Well, since nobody has done it yet, I just have posted a link to this thread in Thirdwire Forum. 

[+streakeagle 871]

I am guessing you can't mix DX10 graphics with DX9 DirectPlay code, so to use the code, you would have to give up graphics quality and performance.

Prior to the birth of my son, I played SFP1/WoX multiplayer as often as I could find others, which was quite a bit of the time with the small but dedicated hyperlobby/hamachi SFP1 group.

I played a bit of WoI and FE online from hotel rooms until my job situation changed and I was home every night with my family.

I had plenty of good times with dogfighting, co-op missions, and even some formation flying.

[JediMaster 451]

Only thing I didn't like about SF1's MP was the requirement that the only planes that could be seen in a mission had to be flyable. So unless you had lots of flyable plane mods shared by all, you couldn't do heavy bomber intercepts or escorts. It was always 8v8, a max of 4 types, 2 sides, and one group was pretty much A2A only while the other side could be A2A, A2G, or A2A escorting A2G. I would've liked a little more flexibility and more planes possible (basically made it more like the SP missions as far as what you could randomly see).

 

Still, even with those limitations, it was the only place to go to fly Korean, Vietanam, or late 70s/early 80s planes in coop or H2H.

[+streakeagle 871]

The limitations were tremendous.

But Co-op could still have been pretty good if all 16 slots could be filled by real people.

Despite my best attempts to gather a crowd, I don't think I ever saw more than 6 to 8 on a Co-op mission.

No one else could join after a mission was started and once you died you were out, combine that with the connectivity/stability issues and you were lucky to keep 4 people together for an entire co-op mission.

 

The dogfight mode was far better due to its flexibility.

If someone had a problem, they could disconnnect, fix the problem, and rejoin the same session.

If you died, you respawned.

I think the record number of people online at one time on a single dogfight server was 12 as far as I know.

I took a screenshot showing all the names in the briefing chat room and posted it back then.

 

If you could get 16 people to show up for a dogfight server, but have them split into teams and form up before a dogfight, that would have been the way to play co-op.

Of course, that wouldn't allow for any air-to-ground, but it would be the best way to have great fights with no AI.

Unlike co-op, you could do something like pit 4xF-4Bs or F8Es vs 12 x MiG-17s or other odd ratios of interest.

 

Oh well, it was not meant to be. 

Maybe DCS will eventually fill that niche of an any era online co-op or team air combat simulator.

[JediMaster 451]

Yes, DCS allows spawning at any time once the mission starts, which is a big help.

[+Menrva 4,200]

I created an account years ago just to download mods from CombatAce, so i feel a bit guilty to post something so late now. I've just found what may be causing the issue: I played my heavily modded SF2 and noticed that the F-14 had the same issue on both the stock and my modded Desert terrain. Then I played the same mission of the Desert Fury campaign on a completely stock SF2 and it didn't have the issue. After checking all .ini files in my modded SF2 I tried to remove the FlightEngine.ini and all aircraft soon worked correctly as usual. I hope it helps.

 

P.S. Still I have no idea which parameter in the FlightEngine causes this.

[bubu 38]

HOLY SH%$ BLAZE YOU SOLVED IT! 

 

In each terrain that I had "problems" with (exploding planes), there was a flightengine.ini present in the flight folder of the overall mod folder. I simply removed it forcing the game to default to TK's new flightengine. Hats off to you! I was having horrible visions of going in and adjusting the "spring" and "damping" on 300+ aircraft in 20 mods folders. THANK YOU!!! 

[+SupGen 79]

  DOH! Oh no! Oh well, fresh perspective and all that...

[Wrench 9,848]

sorry, the FlightEengine.ini ain't the problem ... I've got several WW2 install that DON"T have one in the /Flight folder, and the issue is still present (planes tipping forward, blowing up, etc)

 

E for effort though!! At least somebody is thinking outside the box!!

[+russouk2004 6,958]

kev i think if you havent got it in the flight folder game reverts to one in the cats...

[+russouk2004 6,958]

I tried my su-9 which works perfect pre may patch...it bounces like a bronco....added the new flightengine.ini and its less but still there...so its deffo not just that...tho the ini has changed slightly.

new  top old one bottom.

some entries I changed...but only the meshdetails..

 

 

[Debug]
SkipFlight=FALSE

[FlightEngine]
HUDDLL=HUD.dll
HUDDataFilename=HUDData.ini
CommDLL=Comm.dll
CommDataFilename=CommData.ini
ObjectList=ObjectList.ini
SoundList=SoundList.ini
ViewList=ViewList.ini
ParticleSystem=ParticleSystem.ini
EnvironmentSystem=EnvironmentSystem.ini
MessageSystem=MessageSystem.ini
SpeechSystem=SpeechSystem.ini
DeltaT=0.016667
MaxDeltaT=0.100
RefreshTime=0.016667
ChangeTimeAmount=15
MaxTimeCompression=8.0
StartTimeCompression=1
StartPaused=FALSE
ShowCockpit=TRUE
TextFilename=FlightText.str
EjectView=EjectView

[ForceFeedback]
ForceFeedback=FlightFFBEffect.ini
ForceFeedbackControl=PITCH_CONTROL
FadeStartTime=0.2
FadeTime=1.0

[LoadingScreen]
BackgroundImage=LoadingScreen1.JPG
BackgroundImageSize=1024,768
TextFontName=Arial
TextSize=20
TextFontColor=250,250,250
TextFile=LoadingText.str
LoadingTextStringID=TXT_FLT_LOADING
PercentTextStringID=TXT_FLT_LOADING_PERCENT
ProgressBarRange=100
ProgressBarRect=204,733,820,753
StreamAudio=loading.wav
FadeTime=0.2

[GraphicsSettings]
ZBufferDepth=24
MaxVertexCount=16384
MaxIndexCount=98303
MaxTextureCount=4096
MaxModelType=2024
MaxMeshPerScene=4096
MaxModelPerScene=2024
MaxLightPerScene=256
AspectRatio=1.333333
MinPixelSize=1.0

[backgroundSceneClip]
FarClipDistance=80000.0
NearClipDistance=3000.0 NEW ?

[ForegroundSceneClip]
FarClipDistance=14000.0
NearClipDistance=0.45 NEW ?

[insideSceneClip]
FarClipDistance=250.0
NearClipDistance=0.01  NEW ?

[LowDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=30000.0
DetailMeshSize=4
DetailLevel=0
WaterEffect=0
NoiseTexture=0
MaxTextureRes=128

[MedDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=42000.0
DetailMeshSize=5
DetailLevel=1
WaterEffect=1
NoiseTexture=0
MaxTextureRes=256

[HighDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=50000.0
DetailMeshSize=7
DetailLevel=2
WaterEffect=2
NoiseTexture=1
MaxTextureRes=512

[unlimitedDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=62000.0
DetailMeshSize=8
DetailLevel=2
WaterEffect=2
NoiseTexture=1
MaxTextureRes=-1

[soundSettings]
SampleFrequency=44100
BitsPerSample=16
DopplerFactor=1.0

[WorldSettings]
SectorWidth=20
SectorHeight=20
SectorMaxObject=256
Border=80000.0
MinHeight=1.0
MaxHeight=35000.0

[MapSettings]
MapMaxSize=200000
MapMinSize=20000
MapInitSize=100000
MapScaleRate=5.0
ZoomControl=CAMERA_ZOOM_CONTROL

[screenShot]
FilenameFormat=img%05d.JPG
MaxScreenShot=99999
SoundEffect=shutter.wav

[TextStrings]
GamePaused=TXT_FLT_GAME_PAUSED
GameUnpaused=TXT_FLT_GAME_UNPAUSED
TimeCompress=TXT_FLT_TIME_COMPRESS
NormalTime=TXT_FLT_NORMAL_TIME
TimeSet=TXT_FLT_TIME_SET
StartFlight=TXT_FLT_START_FLIGHT
WaitJoin=TXT_FLT_WAIT_JOIN

[skipToNext]
Timer=3.0
FadeTimer=1.0
SkipToNextView=FlybyView
AutoPilotCommand=AUTO_PILOT

[startView]
StartView000=ShoulderView
StartView001=CockpitFront

[EndGame]
EndGameTimer=5.0
EndGameView=DeathView
AutoEndGame=FALSE

[inFlightChat]
TargetText=ChatTarget.str
RepeatDelay=0.5
RepeatRate=0.1
CursorFlashTime=0.4
CursorString=|

 

 

 

OLD

[Debug]
SkipFlight=FALSE

[FlightEngine]
HUDDLL=HUD.dll
HUDDataFilename=HUDData.ini
CommDLL=Comm.dll
CommDataFilename=CommData.ini
ObjectList=ObjectList.ini
SoundList=SoundList.ini
ViewList=ViewList.ini
ParticleSystem=ParticleSystem.ini
EnvironmentSystem=EnvironmentSystem.ini
MessageSystem=MessageSystem.ini
SpeechSystem=SpeechSystem.ini
DeltaT=0.016667
MaxDeltaT=0.100
RefreshTime=0.016667
ChangeTimeAmount=15
MaxTimeCompression=8.0
StartTimeCompression=1
StartPaused=FALSE
ShowCockpit=TRUE
TextFilename=FlightText.str
EjectView=EjectView

[ForceFeedback]
ForceFeedback=FlightFFBEffect.ini
ForceFeedbackControl=PITCH_CONTROL
FadeStartTime=0.2
FadeTime=1.0

[LoadingScreen]
BackgroundImage=LoadingScreen1.JPG
BackgroundImageSize=1024,768
TextFontName=Arial
TextSize=20
TextFontColor=250,250,250
TextFile=LoadingText.str
LoadingTextStringID=TXT_FLT_LOADING
PercentTextStringID=TXT_FLT_LOADING_PERCENT
ProgressBarRange=100
ProgressBarRect=204,733,820,753
StreamAudio=loading.wav
FadeTime=0.2

[GraphicsSettings]
ZBufferDepth=24
MaxVertexCount=16384
MaxIndexCount=32768
MaxTextureCount=4096
MaxModelType=2024
MaxMeshPerScene=4096
MaxModelPerScene=2024
MaxLightPerScene=256
AspectRatio=1.333333
MinPixelSize=1.0

[FarSceneClip]
FarClipDistance=80000.0
NearClipDistance=3000.0

[NormalSceneClip]
FarClipDistance=14000.0
NearClipDistance=249.9

[NearSceneClip]
FarClipDistance=250.0
NearClipDistance=0.45

[LowDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=30000.0
DetailMeshSize=4
DetailLevel=0
WaterEffect=0
NoiseTexture=0
MaxTextureRes=128

[MedDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=42000.0
DetailMeshSize=5
DetailLevel=1
WaterEffect=1
NoiseTexture=0
MaxTextureRes=256

[HighDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=50000.0
DetailMeshSize=9
DetailLevel=2
WaterEffect=2
NoiseTexture=1
MaxTextureRes=512

[unlimitedDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=62000.0
DetailMeshSize=10
DetailLevel=2
WaterEffect=2
NoiseTexture=1
MaxTextureRes=-1

[soundSettings]
SampleFrequency=44100
BitsPerSample=16
DopplerFactor=1.0

[WorldSettings]
SectorWidth=20
SectorHeight=20
SectorMaxObject=256
Border=35000.0
MinHeight=1.0
MaxHeight=35000.0

[MapSettings]
MapMaxSize=200000
MapMinSize=20000
MapInitSize=100000
MapScaleRate=5.0
ZoomControl=CAMERA_ZOOM_CONTROL

[screenShot]
FilenameFormat=img%05d.JPG
MaxScreenShot=99999
SoundEffect=shutter.wav

[TextStrings]
GamePaused=TXT_FLT_GAME_PAUSED
GameUnpaused=TXT_FLT_GAME_UNPAUSED
TimeCompress=TXT_FLT_TIME_COMPRESS
NormalTime=TXT_FLT_NORMAL_TIME
TimeSet=TXT_FLT_TIME_SET
StartFlight=TXT_FLT_START_FLIGHT
WaitJoin=TXT_FLT_WAIT_JOIN

[skipToNext]
Timer=3.0
FadeTimer=1.0
SkipToNextView=FlybyView
AutoPilotCommand=AUTO_PILOT

[startView]
StartView000=ShoulderView
StartView001=CockpitFront

[inFlightChat]
TargetText=ChatTarget.str
RepeatDelay=0.5
RepeatRate=0.1
CursorFlashTime=0.4
CursorString=|

Edited June 15, 2013 by russouk2004

[Wrench 9,848]

kev i think if you havent got it in the flight folder game reverts to one in the cats...

exactly! back to an unmodified stock one, in the /FlightData.cat.

the only thing I'd changed on mine, was the (no longer working) "expanding the world border trick", moving The Wall back 45km

 

still has the problem, but ODDLY, only on SOME aircraft -- Ravens P40 does it, while the ancient F4F Wildcat doesn't seem to (or as noticeably)

[+Menrva 4,200]

I'm back. Damn, Wrench is right: the removal of the flightengine.ini does work for me, but only to an extent. In my mod even stock aircraft bounce a lot, especially the Harriers, even though before the removal of that file they crashed as soon as I started the mission on the runway. After hours of research, trial and error, I came to the conclusion that neither the data.ini of the aircraft nor the .inis of the terrains are involved directly: I've tried to remove the modified .inis of both modded stock aircraft and terrains, forcing the game to use the original ones, but nothing has improved. One thing is sure: the patch TK released ruins most mods, but the stock game works as intended.

 

I apologize if my English isn't all that clear. After all, here in Italy nobody speaks English, apart from teachers, who sometimes don't even know what they're actually trying to say!

[slick cowboy 142]

i still haven't updated to the latest patch

should i do it? or does it cause a lot of probs?

[+RAVEN 414]

Anyone try changing a 3rd party aircraft data.ini to Unicode??

[+baffmeister 1,205]

Anyone try changing a 3rd party aircraft data.ini to Unicode??

Gave it a shot on my worst problem child, the Ju-87B/R, but no improvement.

[+russouk2004 6,958]

I might replace may patch germany terrain cat with old one and see if it is any better

[+russouk2004 6,958]

notice3d the bounce still there but considerably less with july2012 level of game germany terrain instead of the may2013 one...odd