Older mods from "column5" website
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MiG85, in Thirdwire: Strike Fighters 1 Series - Mods/Skinning Discussion
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By Anshuman
Can Anyone help me..?After installing Su-35 mod in WOE,i cant get the Russian Weapons like R-77,R-73 even if i v already installed latest weapon pack,this case only happens with su-35,but in Mig-35 or Mig-29 mod i can get Those Russian Weapons like R-27,R-77 ETC..
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By MigBuster
Today we are taking a trip back to 2004, a time when as you can see from the photo above featured PC CDROMs!
Before Internet speeds for most were high enough to consider sending entire game files they had to distribute games to people using good old fashioned Compact Disks. The shiny CD came complete with its own (Jewel) case with cover and even a printed manual. As you can see a time when even Thirdwire had to distribute games and make them look like games used to - the manual even tells me to go to http://www.softwarehelpdesk.co.uk/ for technical support…………..ha looks like that domain is up for sale!
Looking at the back we can see it even ran on Windows ME with 256MB of RAM! - Yes, I had to look back to remember what Win ME was – the very last of the Win 9x line before Microsoft thankfully ditched that and we got Win 2000 then Win XP. Of course, in 2004 or nearly all of that decade Win XP was the only game in town for home users and it was great for its time.
For anybody who had bought Strike Fighters: Project 1, a Vietnam game was a logical and most welcome step forward….a game that recreates the intense air combat experience in the skies of North Vietnam at the height of the air campaign……………..what could be better!
The manual lists the Player and AI aircraft, and although the VPAF selection looks fairly complete, the US selection was very limited compared to the later Strike Fighters 2: Vietnam.
This was a time when there was hope for the future and many opportunities to modify the hell out of the game and start getting into place the absolute ton of things not included in the box.
Terrain & Environment
As you might see (from the case) the Terrain that came with WOV wasn’t much better than what comes with one of Thirdwires Phone & Tablet PC games – a pretty poor and unrealistic looking barren wasteland. Unsurprisingly it was not long before modders produced somewhat better tilesets - one of the first I remember and although free was used by Yankee Air Pirate later:
The RA-5 Vigilante - does not come with WOV
There was a payware tileset for sale at Razbams store at some point – but suffered from having obvious borders and tile edges – also 512 x 512 bitmap files were pretty big at the time but very low res by today’s standards.
This later effort includes a version of Starys Green Hell which included a lot more trees for the first time:
Vietnam was hell - Green hell!
When released WOV also had no clouds either but they were added in a later patch:
Low level clouds, gone but not forgotten
Game play
The North Vietnam Air Force (VPAF) and air defences were quite well set up as part of the terrain, with relevant SAM and AAA models for the era along with relevant AI. The MiGs varied in effectiveness from patch to patch whereas some of the SA-2s had a Kill probability of about 99% - this was rightly toned down somewhat in Strike Fighters 2 (SF2).
WOV included an airbourne FAC (Forward Air Controller) role and this was usually represented by an 0-1E Birddog flying over the battlefield (Callsign Snoopy) – this was removed from SF2.
The game added Carrier operations for the first time although the carrier was pretty lonely by itself most of the time, and players could only fly off it in campaigns and scripted single missions!
The B-52s thought they were safe from Thirdwires lesser spotted MiG-17F
Payware
There were some options for payware – mostly from Razbam and Yankee Air Pirate – both had air of controversy that I won’t go into here.
One of the very few payware aircraft was the A-1 skyraider pack
Before the Mission Editor arrived in SF2 you had to create single missions using Notepad basically, quite a time consuming and difficult process. Yankee Air Pirate basically created single missions based on real missions from Vietnam and was quite an important addition for anyone with an interest in that subject.
Populated carrier deck
Landing and taking off in Hueys from smaller boats like this
Shooting down Colts in Hueys
Shooting the side gun in Hueys - Get some!.
Of course, with scripted missions you can do quite a few things you cannot in auto generated single missions and campaigns!
Advance clone army!
The VPAF, masters of camouflage
Looking back
Wings Over Vietnam certainly started out as a fairly serious attempt to put together a decent standalone Vietnam war Air Combat simulator and in that respects, did a pretty decent job, but only if you took time to add a lot of the mods available and change the game yourself. Graphically it was using DX9.0c so was up to date in that regards although again you had to add mods to get it looking to what it should have perhaps been out of the box.
F-111A - not included with WOV
EB-66 - not included with WOV
…………and Here we are at the tail end of 2017 and still no real alternative to WOV and SF2V on the Vietnam War flight sim front.
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