NH2112

She's definitely hot....love the rack!

I guess my question is can these be used with TM gear? I recently bought a Cougar and unless the need for mods comes around I'm not planning on spending any more money on controls.

An old song but still one of the best Maiden tunes ever. Great footage that was beautifully arranged.

Good parent grasping at straws? It was a pretty good parody of how far some people go in the name of protecting "the children." Maybe he's right, though, and the reason I haven't been able to get better at hacking is because I have an American-made Intel CPU, with its integrated anti-hacking properties. I'm definitely buying the inferior foreign Intel-knockoff known as AMD next time!

The thing that amazed me about the M1 in the Gulf was the mobility kills on it (OK they were probably recovered & put back into action later) with rpgs etc..

It seems to have been quite vulnerable through the sideskirts.

They do have a relatively lightweight track compared to previous tanks, and road wheels aren't too hard to blow off. Tanks are all about trade-offs - an Abrams could be made invulnerable to everything but direct hits from a 16" shell from a battleship or Mk84, but then it'd have the mobility of a WW1 tank. In most cases they were also operating without dismounted infantry support, which in a traditional battle is tantamount to suicide for tankers.

WTF?

i NEVER Saw a russian who did admit that american Tanks are better than theirs (which i dont believe on)

If I'm reading you correctly you're saying you don't believe American/NATO tanks are better than Soviet/Warsaw Pact ones? I could probably point you towards some 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) tankers whose M1A1s took multiple hits from T72s back in '91 without being critically damaged, and find plenty of pics of T72s with their turrets upside down about 15m away after being hit by 120mm APFSDS, TOW, or Hellfire. The M1 is so good, even another M1 can't destroy one.

I don't know if I'd consider Jane's F15 to be a middle-of-the-road sim, it seemed to have a learning curve, flight model, etc, as complex as F4's. It fell short in not having a dynamic campaign, and definitely should have had a co-op play provision.

Aces of the Pacific used to be my favorite "fun" flight sim. Nothing was better than climbing in my P38 and mixing it up - get some altitude, dive into the Jap formation, pick out a target, a little bit of .50 chatter and a "thump thump thump" from the 20mm and he's done. Climb using the airspeed you gained in yout dive and do the whole thing over again :-)

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Falcon 3.0 or Tornado, which are my favorites.

I wish there would be a game where you put the enemy inventory and you put your inventory and money and make the two teams fight. If something it's destroy, it will be remembered in the next mission. I think that it is the only thing that today's sim are missing.

Falcon 3.0 had a dynamic campaign like this (way back in 1992!), and I'm pretty sure Falcon 4.0 and Falcon 4:Allied Force do as well.

Now that is something I'd really like to see. IMHO no sim before or after Tornado has been able to get this one right (perhaps with the exception of Falcon 4 that gets close to Tornado but doesn't really get there). Not even DIs later sims that had the same interface for planning missions managed to get close to Tornado.

 

I probably spent more time planning my missions in that sim than actually flying. It's hard to say what really made it so good, but what I think I liked most was that you didn't just plan for your own flight but for the whole package and timing was one of the most important elements.

 

Getting a bit nostalgic whaen thinkning about it *sigh*

Maybe I need to look for an old 486 with DOS 6.x that I can run Tornado and Falcon 3.0 on! X-Wing & TIE Fighter, too :)

WRT graphics vs realism, I got into flight sims back in the early (pre-HOTAS days, if you can believe there ever was such a time!) and one thing I've noticed is that some old sims with very dated graphics (Falcon 3.0, Tornado, Su27) are much more fun to play than some of the more recent sims with great graphics. I think this was because the developers knew there was only so much they could do graphics-wise so they concentrated on trying to put as much depth as possible into the sim instead. Kinda like a guy who wants to build a "sleeper" car on a budget, he's better off putting his money into the engine and suspension than doing bodywork and paint.

If photorealistic graphics AND absolute realism are possible in the same sim at the same time, then I'm all in favor of both. But graphics should never be given priority over realism, IMO.

I haven't flew in a month or so but what I was doing was flying the landing training mission over and over, usually with nothing but AA instead of the default loadout. The last time I "landed" an F15 was back in the F15 SEIII days, but I think there just might be a bit of difference in the FMs. SEIII seemed pretty realistic for the day, though. What I've flown more than anything else was F16s (Falcon 3.0, some B2B) and once I got the relationship between throttle, stick, AOA, and flight path marker landing them became pretty routine. I'm in the process of moving now, but not sure whether I'm going to stay at the job I currently have (a new one that doesn't seem as promising after 6 weeks) so until I have a permanent residence to fly out of I'm staying off the sims LOL

1) Both sides' troops were honorable men doing the job they chose and fighting for their countries, and neither deserve disrespectful comments made about them or their losses. You can try to kill each other, just don't talk smack about each other!

2) re Belgrano being outside the war zone. Call me old-fashioned, but there are no safe areas during a war. I couldn't care if the Belgrano was in the Persian Gulf at the time, she'd be fair game to any Brit ships or aircraft who happened to find her.

They're not "war movies" in the traditional sense, but "The Wind And The Lion" and "Farewell To The King" are 2 great "movies with conflicts." Also, "The Lighthorsemen."

It's the latest sim I have that'll work on my other PC - my Cougar's not up & running so I'm stuck with FLCS/TQS/RCS on a 400MHz PII. Are there any good flight training tutorials for it? Compared to sims like Falcon 3.0 and 4.0 the training portion of F15's manual really sucks and if I can ever manage to get this wallowing cow on the ground in 1 piece every time I'd like to have something a little more detailed and structured than the manual to go by.

Well I finally got my "retro" system up and running. It's a Gateway G6-400mhz, 128MB, 8MB 3D card, and (most importantly) an ISA slot for my TM ACM card so I can run the FLCS/TQS/RCS. I'm running Win98SE and I guess my next step is to hook up the controls and calibrate them. It's been a long time but I remember having a real bastard of a time getting anything done in Win98SE because it seemed everybody had a different idea of what to use for the settings - how many axes, how many buttons, digital or analog throttle, etc. I had a much easier time of it with Win95 but I didn't want to have to go through the hassle of partitioning my 10GB HD into 5 logical drives. Using DOS 6.2 was totally out of the question :P

So is anyone still running an FLCS/TQS/RCS combo on Win98SE and using it to fly Janes F15? What settings do you use? Got any good links for Janes F15 - flight training, missions, etc?

Well I've been doing some research and asking questions over the past few days, and the consensus is that the TM Cougar HOTAS system still has the same problems it did almost 2 years ago when I was considering buying one, so for right now that isn't an option. I may be able to run my FLCS/TQS/RCS through a sound card gameport, and sound cards aren't that expensive (I need one, too, my onboard sound sucks.) So I guess once Xmas is over with and I have a bit of extra cash I'll get a sound card and give it a try that way. If it works, fine, if not it looks like I'll be building a system using a mobo that has an ISA slot for my ACM card. If it's fast enough for F4:AF, fine, if not, it looks like I'll be flying F4 and F15!

Mig Alley is a great older title..and of course Fighter Squadron:Screaming Demons over Europe,Janes WW2 fighters...European Airwar..Flanker 2.0,so many titles of older sims..If you can handle Falcon 4.0 you can handle these..and might even look at Janes F/A-18.Good luck.( I know you said Jet sims..but look at these WW2 titles..great FMs and graphics..also if you're just going ot play SP..look at B-17 II the mighty eighth,F/A-18 is VERY realistic)

Are you referring to Janes F/A-18? Or one of the multitude of other F/A-18 sims out there? I was also looking to find Flanker 2.0 (I have the original Flanker, didn't play it much because of Tornado) and was also thinking of trying to find the latest EF2000 sim. MiG Alley isn't really my speed, I love fiddling with a dozen or so radar modes, designating targets, etc...straight gunfights don't do much for me. I'm not sure when I'll get around to building this system, but just to get ready for it I spent all day yesterday reviewing my Janes F15 manual LOL

One of the best older flight sims I played was the helicopter sim "Hind". I had to run it in software mode as it requires a 3DFX card. There is a terrain upgrade available as well for 3DFX. The game was very immersive with lots of ground and air action, airport activity etc. Lots of fun!

I was thinking of looking for Longbow 2, but would like to keep my number of sims down so I can enjoy all of them. I've never been very good at remembering 3 or 4 complete sets of Thrustmaster button configurations at the same time LOL. Right now I think I'll just stick with Janes F15 and Falcon 4.0, with maybe X-Wing or TIE Fighter for light entertainment :)

I'm going to be getting back into flight sims after quite a long break, and was wondering what you guys recommend. Due to cost and issues with Thrustmaster Cougar sticks and the fact that my FLCS/TQS/RCS won't work with my P4 3.0GHz I've decided I'm going to build a PC in the 500-600MHz range and just fly sims that it will handle. What I'm looking for are recommendations for good jet combat sims - I want realism in flight model, avionics, and weapons more than ultra-realistic graphics. I already have Falcon 4.0, Janes F15, and a bunch of older 486 sims I liked (Su27, Tornado, Longbow, even Falcon 3.0 Gold LOL) but I was wondering what the hardcore simmers here were flying 5 or 6 years ago? How about recommended 3D cards? (I was using a 16MB Voodoo3 2000 on my old P133.) Recommended RAM? AMD or Intel? Why? Inquiring minds want to know!

About 2 months ago I finally got a new PC built, w/3.0GHz P4, ASUS P4P800, 512MB, & GeForce 5200 128MB. I overclocked it 20% in BIOS the other day, ran it at 3.6GHz and 100% CPU usage with Folding@Home for almost a full day and the highest temp showing in my log file was 57C. Average for the 8-hour monitoring period was 53C. To really give it a workout I had F@H running 100%, plus was doing a drive-to-drive burn and playing mah-jongg at the same time. There was a slight stutter with the mah-jongg cursor, but other than that there are absolutely no problems at all. I had a friend with a cable modem DL 3DMark for me but the CD she put it on was bad so I'll have to get another one. and give it a shot. Sure beats the hell out of the 7+ year old P133 I was using up till then! (And still have as my Falcon 3.0, Tornado, Su27, Longbow, and X-Wing machine LOL)

I already have an FLCS/TQS/RCS from my old PC, but am not sure about using them on my new one. the PCI slots are set back a little farther on the mobo so my ACM card won't fit, and I have an ASUS mobo with onboard sound so there's no sound card gameport to use, either. I suppose I could see if a spare SB AWE I have laying around will fit and disable everything but the gameport, and there is a MIDI/joystick connector on the mobo itself that I figure I could get/make a cable for and use for my sticks if the SB won't work.

I was all set to save up for the Cougar but have been hearing a lot of mixed opinions on it. CH was recommended to me on this site, and it's definitely an option. I just don't want to buy one or the other and end up disappointed and out $200-$300!

Does anyone know if Suncom is still in business? I remember way back when, they had a realy good F15 stick and split throtle, and I was figuring well, now that I have a PC that I can fly Janes F15 on with a great frame rate, why not go all out and get an F15-specific controller (if they make a USB model.)

Well that's a very interesting thread. I don't have any friends who are into sims enough for them to justify buying a HOTAS setup, so all I ever had to go by were magazine & web articles, and the general "feel" of CH sticks in the store next to the Thrustmaster models. When I bought my FCS Pro and WCS the CH sticks didn't seem as good, and the same went for when I purchased the FLCS, TQS, and RCS (never had any problems whatsoever with either set, despite several years of hard simming in Falcon 3.0, Tornado, X-Wing, and B2B.) But from that thread it would seem that TM has gone downhill, and their website kinda reflects that. I wish I could find a "flight sim cafe" where I could try out a CH setup in hard use.

How about some good hardcore sims besides LOMAC, from the past 3 or 4 years?

Well, I've decided that I am going to pick up LOMAC sometime real soon, and a Cougar HOTAS setup ASAP. I've been hearing some pretty bad things about Cougar, though, but also quite a few outstanding reviews. Does anyone here use it? What are your thoughts? Are the pots really that bad? Does the center really get very sloppy with time? I've tried CH Products and just didn't like them nearly as much as my FLCS/TQS/RCS, so I'm not really thinking of their new stuff but if Cougar isn't all it's cracked up to be...

Also, I'd appreciate if I could get some recommendations as far as other true sims to look for (modern combat only, please.) I've heard great things about Eurofighter Typhoon, and supposedly there was a "Falcon 5.0" released but not under that name if my searches on Amazon & ebay were anything to go by. How about Strike Fighters? I'd LOVE to fly an F4, F105, or F111, but not if it's a game instead of a sim. I definitely want to get Falcon 4.0, and as I said in a previous post I have Janes F15...perhaps some of the sims of that era would work well with a gameport to USB adapter since they won't be taxing my PC?

Well seeing the price of a new Radeon 9800 puts that out of the question for the near future. Plus, I still need to scare up a Thrustmaster Cougar and maybe another 1/2 gig of RAM. Until that happens what I suppose I'll do is hook up the old PC and get my stupid hand (I'm a lefty) used to flying again by hooking up the FLCS/TQS/RCS and flying F3 Gold, Tornado, B2B, etc. It'll probably help quite a bit with my BFM, too (even though I'd never leave the A10/Su25 cockpit in LOMAC.)

Maybe I'll give the shop that built my PC a call and see if we can work a deal trading my 5200 for a Radeon 9800. Even $100-$150 off would be great.