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By Menrva
View File Operation Desert Storm: 30th Anniversary Edition
Welcome To Duty
Built with the extraordinary expertise and dedication of modders from CombatACE.com, Operation Desert Storm – 30th Anniversary Edition promises to be the most complete total conversion ever made for Strike Fighters 2 by ThirdWire.
Fly with more than 50 aircraft ranging from Cold War relics to the most advanced platforms. Gain air superiority in the mighty F-15C Eagle or challenge the Coalition with the agile Fulcrum. Support troops with the A-10A Thunderbolt II, bomb strategic targets with the stealthy F-117A Nighthawk, lead airfield denial operations in the iconic Tornado.
Enjoy a beautifully rendered scenario on a scaled and accurate terrain. Fly over the lakes and rivers of Mesopotamia, the oil-rich fields of Kuwait, the mountains of Iran and Turkey. Take-off from aircraft carriers stationed in the Persian Gulf to watch over Kuwaiti oil rigs. Perform landings and patrols in more than 90 airports and air bases in the Middle East.
Take part in different campaigns including the Iraqi blitzkrieg on Kuwait and the US-led liberation of the Kuwaiti Emirate. Discover how the Iraqi Army was one of the biggest in the world, through the eyes of American, British, Canadian, French, Italian and Arab pilots. Test your skills and abilities flying for the Iraqi Air Force during all stages of the conflict.
Thirty years after, Operation Desert Storm still remains the largest air operation of modern warfare to date. Modders and flight sim enthusiasts at CombatACE teamed up to bring you a unique product in the lite flight sim world. Exquisitely detailed aircraft and paint schemes are delivered in a well-researched and thorough order of battle.
The ODS 30th AE Development team would like to thank CombatACE.com, its admins, moderators and contributors.
We are sure you will enjoy and appreciate this high-quality freeware product. From the aviation enthusiasts, to the aviation enthusiasts... and for the pilots of tomorrow.
Minimum Requirements
Required products from ThirdWire:
Strike Fighters 2, July 2013 patch Strike Fighters 2: Israel, July 2013 patch Strike Fighters 2: North Atlantic, July 2013 patch Full support for:
Mission Editor DLC Campaign Customizer DLC System specs:
OS: Windows 7 x86 Processor: Dual Core 2.7 GHz Memory: 4.0 GB RAM Hard Drive: 17.0 GB Free Space Video Card: 1024 MB DirectX 10
Sneak Peek
Disclaimer
CombatACE.com shall at all times retain ownership of the Software as originally downloaded by you and all subsequent downloads of the Software by you. The Software (and the copyright, and other intellectual property rights of whatever nature in the Software, including any modifications made thereto) are and shall remain the property of CombatACE.com and of the respective developers/modders.
In no event, unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, shall CombatACE.com, or any person be liable for any loss, expense or damage, of any type or nature arising out of the use of, or inability to use this installer or program, including, but not limited to, claims, suits or causes of action involving alleged infringement of copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, or unfair competition.
The Operation Desert Storm: 30th Anniversary Edition modification does NOT comply with CombatACE's Freeware Licensing. Various contents of this modification are exclusive, as such you are NOT allowed to share, redistribute and/or make use of the mod and/or its contents for other purposes, without the consent of the mod's developers. Contents of the modification are the copyright of their respective authors.
Notes about the installer
Beware, the mod is available only in the ISO format. You can either mount it on a virtual drive, burn it on a DVD like in the good old days, or unzip it with 7-Zip or equivalent software.
The installer will automatically detect your installation of the required Strike Fighters 2 games by reading through the registry keys. Game folders that are copied from or manually moved from where they were originally installed are not supported. You need all three aforementioned Strike Fighters 2 games and they must be installed with ThirdWire's original installers, not manually copied from other sources nor moved elsewhere after installation to other folders or drives. If you do not meet any of these requirements, installation cannot proceed and you are on your own. If you install all required games properly, the installation of the mod will proceed correctly as intended. The installer then lets you choose where to install the mod folder; you can even install the mod on a different drive or partition than the one where Strike Fighters 2 is installed. No further user input nor manual edits after installation are ever required; the installer takes care of creating all proper links to your desired path for the mod folder. After installation is over, simply run the mod by using the created Desktop and/or Start Menu links.
If you have a previous version of the mod installed, please use the uninstaller to remove it completely. Clean installation is mandatory. You might want to make a backup of the Controls folder, so that you can easily restore your controller settings afterwards.
Suggestions on common issues
Make sure that you are using your dedicated GPU. By default, Strike Fighters 2 usually selects the integrated GPU you may have on your CPU, which is much weaker in terms of VRAM. In case you have frequent crashes or black/missing textures, I highly suggest you download and install the DXVK graphics wrapper (x86 DLLs) into your Strike Fighters 2 game folder: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk. You need a Vulkan-compatible GPU. The wrapper can greatly improve the experience with the mod. With DXVK I can play the mod on a mere Intel UHD 710, whereas without it the mod would always crash to desktop. Go to Sound and set Sound Channels to 32. We got reports that 16 is not enough and will cause crashes on some systems, due to the higher quality sounds included within the mod. The mod is pretty heavy for the game engine despite huge optimizations. Strike Fighters 2's engine is 32bit only and apparently does not manage VRAM properly; consecutive campaign missions might show black/missing textures on objects or cause crashes to desktop because the game does not release the occupied VRAM from the previous mission you played, thus the more missions are loaded consecutively, the more easily you may run out of memory. Set Ground Objects to Medium or Low, Horizon Distance to Near, and Shadows to Medium or Low. These are the most troubling settings. Avoid Unlimited settings as much as possible. If the mod used to work and suddenly crashes to desktop, updating or reinstalling video drivers should help. Make sure that DirectX June 2010 Redistributables are also installed, they are included inside the ISO disk image of the mod. Inside the mod folder, you'll find some extra text files. "(Coalition Order of Battle)" should be of your interest; the mod's terrain covers the entirety of Iraq, at the cost of not having all of Saudi Arabia; this means that a number of important units are based on airbases that are beyond the in-game playable area. With those units you always spawn near the target area, you'll never get to start from a runway nor to land on the assigned runway beyond the invisible wall. You have an entire list of the affected units in the aforementioned text file. By pressing ALT+N, the plane returns to base automatically. The mod is fully compatible with the Campaign Customizer and Mission Editor DLCs by ThirdWire. The Campaign Customizer might be an alternative way to experience those off map units I mentioned previously, since it assigns you to a random airbase of the in-game flyable area. Escort missions are often broken, this is not an issue of the mod, but a bug of the stock game; sometimes the AI flight you escort does not engage its target and keeps flying in a straight line instead of following waypoints, thus the trigger for mission success will never happen. Abandon the mission or retry it if the issue happens, sometimes it works. Pray for ThirdWire AKA Tsuyoshi Kawahito to work on a 64bit version of Strike Fighters 2, maybe even with support for DirectX 12. With that done, any out of memory issues should become an old memory. Submitter Menrva Submitted 01/16/2021 Category User Made Campaigns
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By Spinners
View File [Fictional] McDonnell Douglas Phantom F-4L (USMC)
McDonnell Douglas F-4L (USMC/USN) Phantom for STRIKE FIGHTERS 2
This is a simple mod of the stock Third Wire F-4M_75 to give a fictional USMC Phantom F-4L with markings for VMFA-333 'Shamrocks'. Also included is a USN VF-111 scheme that generally uses stock decals but is included here to give a blank F-4L tail for you to do other squadrons by using stock decals. It goes without saying that you will need to have the F-4M_75 from SF2:Europe.
BACKSTORY
With all the considerable design effort being put into the marriage of the Phantom airframe and the Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engine McDonnell Douglas thought it might be a good idea to propose a version to the US Navy to allow the Phantom to operate from the smaller carriers that were limited to F-8E Crusaders. In June 1966 the designation F-4L was given to the proposed Spey-powered Phantom and in October 1966 an initial order for 130 F-4L's (USN/USMC) was made, followed by an unexpected export order of 30 F-4L's for the Royal Australian Navy.
Deliveries to the US Navy commenced in February 1969 with VF-24 becoming the first operational squadron followed by VMFA-333. By this time the wisdom of operating such a relatively large aircraft on the older, smaller carriers was being questioned and most F-4L's served aboard the larger carriers or with land-based units.
When the decision was made not to re-equip the USMC 'fighter-attack' Phantom squadrons with the hugely expensive Grumman F-14A Tomcat, McDonnell Douglas pushed hard for low-rate production of the F-4L to continue specifically for USMC use and they were eventually successful meaning that production continued until 1976 with an eventual total of 306 F-4L's being built. Apart from Australia, F-4L's also served with the Royal Air Force where 15 ex-USN F-4L's were sold to the UK Government to allow the formation of an additional home-based Phantom squadron to release a squadron for the defence of the Falkand Isles.
INSTRUCTIONS
1. From the AIRCRAFT folder drag and drop the F-4L_75 folder into your Aircraft folder.
2. From the DECALS folder drag and drop the F-4L_75 folder into your Decals folder.
That's it!
CREDITS
As always, thanks to Third Wire for a great little game/sim.
And, finally, thanks to everyone in the wider Third Wire community.
Regards
Spinners
Version 2 - February 17th, 2024.
Submitter Spinners Submitted 01/24/2010 Category What If Hangar
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By Spinners
McDonnell Douglas F-4L (USMC/USN) Phantom for STRIKE FIGHTERS 2
This is a simple mod of the stock Third Wire F-4M_75 to give a fictional USMC Phantom F-4L with markings for VMFA-333 'Shamrocks'. Also included is a USN VF-111 scheme that generally uses stock decals but is included here to give a blank F-4L tail for you to do other squadrons by using stock decals. It goes without saying that you will need to have the F-4M_75 from SF2:Europe.
BACKSTORY
With all the considerable design effort being put into the marriage of the Phantom airframe and the Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engine McDonnell Douglas thought it might be a good idea to propose a version to the US Navy to allow the Phantom to operate from the smaller carriers that were limited to F-8E Crusaders. In June 1966 the designation F-4L was given to the proposed Spey-powered Phantom and in October 1966 an initial order for 130 F-4L's (USN/USMC) was made, followed by an unexpected export order of 30 F-4L's for the Royal Australian Navy.
Deliveries to the US Navy commenced in February 1969 with VF-24 becoming the first operational squadron followed by VMFA-333. By this time the wisdom of operating such a relatively large aircraft on the older, smaller carriers was being questioned and most F-4L's served aboard the larger carriers or with land-based units.
When the decision was made not to re-equip the USMC 'fighter-attack' Phantom squadrons with the hugely expensive Grumman F-14A Tomcat, McDonnell Douglas pushed hard for low-rate production of the F-4L to continue specifically for USMC use and they were eventually successful meaning that production continued until 1976 with an eventual total of 306 F-4L's being built. Apart from Australia, F-4L's also served with the Royal Air Force where 15 ex-USN F-4L's were sold to the UK Government to allow the formation of an additional home-based Phantom squadron to release a squadron for the defence of the Falkand Isles.
INSTRUCTIONS
1. From the AIRCRAFT folder drag and drop the F-4L_75 folder into your Aircraft folder.
2. From the DECALS folder drag and drop the F-4L_75 folder into your Decals folder.
That's it!
CREDITS
As always, thanks to Third Wire for a great little game/sim.
And, finally, thanks to everyone in the wider Third Wire community.
Regards
Spinners
Version 2 - February 17th, 2024.
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By Menrva
Welcome To Duty
Built with the extraordinary expertise and dedication of modders from CombatACE.com, Operation Desert Storm – 30th Anniversary Edition promises to be the most complete total conversion ever made for Strike Fighters 2 by ThirdWire.
Fly with more than 50 aircraft ranging from Cold War relics to the most advanced platforms. Gain air superiority in the mighty F-15C Eagle or challenge the Coalition with the agile Fulcrum. Support troops with the A-10A Thunderbolt II, bomb strategic targets with the stealthy F-117A Nighthawk, lead airfield denial operations in the iconic Tornado.
Enjoy a beautifully rendered scenario on a scaled and accurate terrain. Fly over the lakes and rivers of Mesopotamia, the oil-rich fields of Kuwait, the mountains of Iran and Turkey. Take-off from aircraft carriers stationed in the Persian Gulf to watch over Kuwaiti oil rigs. Perform landings and patrols in more than 90 airports and air bases in the Middle East.
Take part in different campaigns including the Iraqi blitzkrieg on Kuwait and the US-led liberation of the Kuwaiti Emirate. Discover how the Iraqi Army was one of the biggest in the world, through the eyes of American, British, Canadian, French, Italian and Arab pilots. Test your skills and abilities flying for the Iraqi Air Force during all stages of the conflict.
Thirty years after, Operation Desert Storm still remains the largest air operation of modern warfare to date. Modders and flight sim enthusiasts at CombatACE teamed up to bring you a unique product in the lite flight sim world. Exquisitely detailed aircraft and paint schemes are delivered in a well-researched and thorough order of battle.
The ODS 30th AE Development team would like to thank CombatACE.com, its admins, moderators and contributors.
We are sure you will enjoy and appreciate this high-quality freeware product. From the aviation enthusiasts, to the aviation enthusiasts... and for the pilots of tomorrow.
Minimum Requirements
Required products from ThirdWire:
Strike Fighters 2, July 2013 patch Strike Fighters 2: Israel, July 2013 patch Strike Fighters 2: North Atlantic, July 2013 patch Full support for:
Mission Editor DLC Campaign Customizer DLC System specs:
OS: Windows 7 x86 Processor: Dual Core 2.7 GHz Memory: 4.0 GB RAM Hard Drive: 17.0 GB Free Space Video Card: 1024 MB DirectX 10
Sneak Peek
Disclaimer
CombatACE.com shall at all times retain ownership of the Software as originally downloaded by you and all subsequent downloads of the Software by you. The Software (and the copyright, and other intellectual property rights of whatever nature in the Software, including any modifications made thereto) are and shall remain the property of CombatACE.com and of the respective developers/modders.
In no event, unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, shall CombatACE.com, or any person be liable for any loss, expense or damage, of any type or nature arising out of the use of, or inability to use this installer or program, including, but not limited to, claims, suits or causes of action involving alleged infringement of copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, or unfair competition.
The Operation Desert Storm: 30th Anniversary Edition modification does NOT comply with CombatACE's Freeware Licensing. Various contents of this modification are exclusive, as such you are NOT allowed to share, redistribute and/or make use of the mod and/or its contents for other purposes, without the consent of the mod's developers. Contents of the modification are the copyright of their respective authors.
Notes about the installer
Beware, the mod is available only in the ISO format. You can either mount it on a virtual drive, burn it on a DVD like in the good old days, or unzip it with 7-Zip or equivalent software.
The installer will automatically detect your installation of the required Strike Fighters 2 games by reading through the registry keys. Game folders that are copied from or manually moved from where they were originally installed are not supported. You need all three aforementioned Strike Fighters 2 games and they must be installed with ThirdWire's original installers, not manually copied from other sources nor moved elsewhere after installation to other folders or drives. If you do not meet any of these requirements, installation cannot proceed and you are on your own. If you install all required games properly, the installation of the mod will proceed correctly as intended. The installer then lets you choose where to install the mod folder; you can even install the mod on a different drive or partition than the one where Strike Fighters 2 is installed. No further user input nor manual edits after installation are ever required; the installer takes care of creating all proper links to your desired path for the mod folder. After installation is over, simply run the mod by using the created Desktop and/or Start Menu links.
If you have a previous version of the mod installed, please use the uninstaller to remove it completely. Clean installation is mandatory. You might want to make a backup of the Controls folder, so that you can easily restore your controller settings afterwards.
Suggestions on common issues
Make sure that you are using your dedicated GPU. By default, Strike Fighters 2 usually selects the integrated GPU you may have on your CPU, which is much weaker in terms of VRAM. In case you have frequent crashes or black/missing textures, I highly suggest you download and install the DXVK graphics wrapper (x86 DLLs) into your Strike Fighters 2 game folder: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk. You need a Vulkan-compatible GPU. The wrapper can greatly improve the experience with the mod. With DXVK I can play the mod on a mere Intel UHD 710, whereas without it the mod would always crash to desktop. Go to Sound and set Sound Channels to 32. We got reports that 16 is not enough and will cause crashes on some systems, due to the higher quality sounds included within the mod. The mod is pretty heavy for the game engine despite huge optimizations. Strike Fighters 2's engine is 32bit only and apparently does not manage VRAM properly; consecutive campaign missions might show black/missing textures on objects or cause crashes to desktop because the game does not release the occupied VRAM from the previous mission you played, thus the more missions are loaded consecutively, the more easily you may run out of memory. Set Ground Objects to Medium or Low, Horizon Distance to Near, and Shadows to Medium or Low. These are the most troubling settings. Avoid Unlimited settings as much as possible. If the mod used to work and suddenly crashes to desktop, updating or reinstalling video drivers should help. Make sure that DirectX June 2010 Redistributables are also installed, they are included inside the ISO disk image of the mod. Inside the mod folder, you'll find some extra text files. "(Coalition Order of Battle)" should be of your interest; the mod's terrain covers the entirety of Iraq, at the cost of not having all of Saudi Arabia; this means that a number of important units are based on airbases that are beyond the in-game playable area. With those units you always spawn near the target area, you'll never get to start from a runway nor to land on the assigned runway beyond the invisible wall. You have an entire list of the affected units in the aforementioned text file. By pressing ALT+N, the plane returns to base automatically. The mod is fully compatible with the Campaign Customizer and Mission Editor DLCs by ThirdWire. The Campaign Customizer might be an alternative way to experience those off map units I mentioned previously, since it assigns you to a random airbase of the in-game flyable area. Escort missions are often broken, this is not an issue of the mod, but a bug of the stock game; sometimes the AI flight you escort does not engage its target and keeps flying in a straight line instead of following waypoints, thus the trigger for mission success will never happen. Abandon the mission or retry it if the issue happens, sometimes it works. Pray for ThirdWire AKA Tsuyoshi Kawahito to work on a 64bit version of Strike Fighters 2, maybe even with support for DirectX 12. With that done, any out of memory issues should become an old memory. -
By DinoGarner
Hello, Folks!
My upcoming coffee-table book is TOPGUN: The Otherworldly Dreams of a Lifelong Ten Year Old. It features breathtaking images from my flights at TOPGUN, plus units of the Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard. Our colleague, Navy Captain “Heater” Heatley, said, “Pretty cool graphics and layout. Nice pics!” I’d like you and your colleagues and beyond to review an unfinished, first-draft copy my book, fall in love with it, and write testimonials/blurbs, please. The book will be published in early 2023, so you have some time to say yes. I’m also offering all the beautiful aviation images that appear in the book free of charge to air and space museums worldwide in perpetuity. My small way of giving back for inspiration over my lifetime. First, I’m Dino Garner, former scientist, Army Ranger, corporate merc, military aviation photographer, NY Times bestselling ghostwriter and editor of many cool books. Back in the day, I was the only independent civilian photographer to fly in all frontline fighters and attack aircraft of the US Air Force, Navy and Marines, plus helos of the Coast Guard. Had to quit that fun to report for duty as a US Army Airborne Ranger. Modesty aside, I took some stunning images that were on the covers and interiors of Smithsonian Air&Space, Newsweek, Time, US News and World Report, and in dozens of books, newspapers, articles, etc. The final book will be a 550-page coffee-table book that features my military aviation images, plus chapters by prominent people: Foreword by aviation neuropsychologist Dr. David Prewett, “Zatar” by Lt Gen Dave Deptula, Boyword by a 10-year-old boy/student pilot, and Afterword by Dave Senior’s son, Lt Col “Ghost” Deptula. There will also be a special dedication to "Heater" Heatley. This is also unique: I added dozens of candid pix of my fighter pilots and support personnel in scrapbook fashion and added some cool graphics that look like advertisements for the US military fighter aviation. I have spared no expense in the production of this book: it will be printed by the best offset-printing company of high-end books, in South Korea. Heavy, matte art paper interior; cloth hardcover with an added French-fold cover. A draft of the full cover is below. Dimensions: 8.5”H x 11”W x 2.5”D. If you’d like to see the entire book, I can email you a Dropbox link to download the full-color pdf file to view on your computer. It’s too large to view directly on Dropbox. Many thanks for listening. I hope you’ll consider my proposal. Cheers, Dino “Wang” Garner dino@topgun.photography
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