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After a long hiatus, going back to the Range to get back into the flow of things.

Ok mate! I want more of this! Mandatory pic, intruders over mainland China.

Old SFP1 good guy... flying interception mission from SF2 game !

As the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia worsens, Djibouti becomes one of the main gateway hubs for international aid into the region. Transport aircraft of all shapes and sizes enter the pattern to bring in much needed supplies..... It's exhausting work for the flight crews, but even the tragic crash of an Italian G-222 who's pilot reacted just a little too slow to a vicious downdraft doesn't stop the activity at the airport for long... Local airline services continue too.. Aid is transferred to a variety of tactical transports for the onward journey into Ethiopia A virtually unmarked Boeing 707 cargo bird is next in on finals It's paperwork says it's a charity charter flight bringing in medical aid from Bahrain, but if so why does it taxi over to an isolated area of the military part of the airport on landing before proceeding to the civilian area to offload it's cargo? And who were the guys hurrying from the briefly halted 707 to a waiting USMC CH-53E that received immediate permission to take off and set course for the Ethiopian border? To be continued....

The addition of the F-14A to SF2 was the biggest draw this sim ever had... and it fell flat. The mission editor had consumed tons of money and time, but didn't draw the money the forum posts promised and the F-14 that "everyone" wanted didn't draw the money either. TK is not without blame. Many of his decisions/code changes were questionable among the die hard fans over the last few releases/patches, but no matter what TK did, the market simply did not want what he was selling. This fund raiser proved that this fact remains true to this day. A few die hard fans does not make a sim profitable. For SF2 to advance, a whole lot of people have to want that to happen and put their money where their mouth is. This fund raiser shows that the fans willing to fund future development just aren't numerous enough. This is the final nail in the coffin of SF series PC development beyond PC ports of Android free-to-play games.

17 September 1944, Operation Market Garden gets underway...

...you are watching an animal rescue video on YouTube and perk up at what the camera caught in the opening seconds of the video.

Intruders.

Tell me about it

Skinning this is hardcore ;-)

I think the crowdfunding route should have gone on longer, to accommodate the players that want to pay but can't at the moment. Star Citizen is a good example of crowdfunding, where they play the long game as far as funding goes (and those who have kept up with it, know it's working out pretty good) and through concept sales they get the money through its member base (which off the top of my head was around two million players). But the point is that there isn't enough hype to attract the crowd that TK is looking for. It's just marketing the game through the mobile games and then returning back to the PC platform to find out that there are players willing to pay for a new patch so it will be free, but it's going to take some time to get the hype back after he chose to go mobile, which turned me off quite a bit. Nice idea having different planes (though of course some were done by the mod community) but no cockpit, no interest. Just my .02

WIP, new HUD for GR.4 ....

Clearly, Strike Fighters 2 has not performed according to TK's expectations - by his own admission, SF2 North Atlantic still hasn't made back the money it cost to develop. There are a number of reasons why this could be so: 1. The game and its expansions are of poor quality. I would dispute this, as I'm sure most people on this forum would. 2. Flight sims are an increasingly niche market, and there simply isn't enough interest in them to support decent sales. I would dispute this as well. According to SteamSpy, the Il-2 games have hundreds of thousands of owners. The main DCS module has several millions. That module in itself is free, but it is at least useful as a tool to gauge the general interest in jet combat. If only a fraction of those people bought SF2, TK would be set for life. Obviously, those games were made by larger teams and their production values are well above what SF2 could aim for (although with the help of mods, it could certainly come close), but SF2 has other qualities that I am certain would appeal to a large portion of the owners of the games mentioned above. 3. Strike Fighters 2 is available for sale only to an extremely limited market, through an obscure website. This, I believe, is why the game has failed to meet with financial success. It can only be purchased on the ThirdWire website, only a small portion of the gaming community even knows of its existence, and to make matters worse the game and its expansions are severely overpriced. Il-2: 1946, the complete original Il-2 package, can be bought for $10 on Steam, or even less during sales. SF2 Complete is sold for $100 and can only be found on the ThirdWire website. It is all very frustrating, because I want SF2 to do well.

yes, as has been said thousands of times before, SF1 is deader than the dinosaurs. move on

(It would be helpfull if you quoted what you refer to here, but I suppose you are replying to me) It would make no sense because many of the changes from SF1 to SF2 are in the area of updates for newer Windows OS. Like the mod and settings folder location, unicode strings and much more. These changes are based on Microsoft recommendations for Windows Vista and 7 software. Third Wire is not going to apply these changes to SF1 again, since they have already done that and it is called SF2.

A trap ;-) But I can forgive .. helping homeless dogs or cats is worth of it ;-)

Every one of us here has a mod manager already: a brain and the read me!

back to Battle Creek after a visit amongst the Vaarks..

Most likely, though at this stage in the game what good is control when his market base is too small to drum up more than a few thousand $. He's actively limited his market... the player base could have been much larger and much more lucrative if he'd just accepted cold hard financial reality... he needed something like Steam if he wanted to make the series a success.

Heading out to the range getting some practice in.

This is an opinion I share also. I'd be willing to pay $50 for SF2, especially if it was made clear purchase of SF2 on GOG or Steam helped pay for SF3 development costs, full Flanker series inclusion, a good F-35 series, and more dogfights.

If TK put out the Strike Fighters 2 Complete package, with Windows 10 support, on Steam and GOG for $15 or $20, I would be very, very surprised if sales and the revenue they brought in didn't exceed the game's lifetime numbers up until now in fairly short order. Personally I'd be willing to pay as much as $40, but I don't think that's a realistic price for a ten year old game, regardless of how many expansions it has - sales would plummet and it would make far less money than if it was sold for less. $100 is right out. Money would continue to trickle in for years, during Steam sales there would be a sharp increase in sales, and TK would find it much easier to fund his future projects. Hell, he might even get those $2 million he needs for SF3 - especially if some of the mainstream PC games media gave his $15 SF2 Complete Steam release the attention it would deserve. Rock, Paper, Shotgun most certainly would. But that's just my opinion. I will never understand why the game isn't already out on Steam. Wings over Europe is already there, and maybe TK found its sales on the platform disappointing. But I have to believe that SF2 Complete would do much, much better. I just don't see what he would have to lose, and there would be so much to gain.

I think Steam is the only way forward to reach a wider audience and achieve the £££$$$$$ required to upgrade this series, a few people have mentioned in this post that there are a lot of people out there that don't even know SF2 exists. In my opinion SF2 is the perfect air combat platform for those of us that don't have the time to take up the more complicated challenges that DCS offers.

Gear Up

It's wild how many people play DCS just for the challenge, and if they had a game at the midpoint between say, Ace Combat and DCS (seems like there's a very popular sim around this place that would fit just great hmmmmmm) lot's of people would buy that game

I personally think SF2 belongs on Steam or GOG. Word of mouth is so key to games and unlike DCS, there isn't a steep learning curve to fly the planes. Nor a relatively few planes and especially maps.

I guess one does wonder why he han't gone down that route.. anyone care to speculate as to why not?

If TK put SF2 on GOG and Steam he would make an assload of money and the traffic to CA would be gigantic as well once word got out this is where all the mods are. Like, no-one but us is buying SF2 from ThirdWire.com, and there is currently a large amount of people getting back into flight sims because of Steam distribution.

I just found out that there is something going on here! So I did my donation of a Blue € Bill The time frame is ridiculously short... and I even haven't fired up the game for weeks. But I'm sure I wasted my money in the past in many worse ways

If I were TK, I'd open-source the engine under a strict-ish licence, keeping myself as the manager/maintainer and concentrate on selling games based upon it, content for them and let the community do the heavy lifting that I no longer have the financial means to do. Anyway... I did my part not by contributing to what I consider a ill-managed fundraising campaign, but by buying one more SF2 complete package.

The end of the Soviet Air Force base at Finsterwalde, GDR.

Yes, those guys have both versions of the Pfalz D.3, but Geezer’s work is many, many times better!

Come on guuruu, it's both! Aren't you tired of the old dx7shaders, and working on Max9.. (I know I am LOL!) Have faith, one update will eventually lead to others!

FFFFF........ hot

Up, up... and awayyyyy!!!

Sept. 1994. Last take off. The last russian occupation troops left Germany. (BTW the Americans are stll here.)

sometimes its easy, and sometimes i want to complain about age test: who likes Styx songs? ok, its Renegade, realized the word is abit small ok gotta stop being silly and let this guy take it over for the evening

Sinking a Krivark Frigate :

Tornado Outbreak........ Alert Pad Residents Wingman Follows... THIS is how you kill a runway And since I hate to bring high explosives home, let's create a serious FOD Hazard