streakeagle

The F-100 isn't the only thing that is better! Many people that had SFP1 failed to see the value in buying SF2, because in theory SFP1 with mods was almost equal to SF2... so why buy the same game twice? Wings Over Israel was a glimpse of what was coming in SF2. It foreshadowed some of the graphics, AI dogfighting behavior, and electronics improvements. Ultimately, SF2 was a step up in almost every area except one: the loss of any multiplayer capability. But only a handful of people ever played SFP1/WoX online, I know because I hosted for years. SF2 had improvements to the available variants: look at how many different F-4s, A-4, F-100s, etc. you can fly. Most of the have realistically unique external 3d models and cockpits, adding things like RWRs, jammers, etc. that early versions didn't have. The electronic systems were made more realistic, most notably the RWRs. The flight model aerodynamic co-efficient tables were re-done at a higher resolution, which makes the flight models much more accurate, especially as you approach the sound barrier. And it kept on evolving with the addition of the mission editor and ultimately the North Atlantic brought the F-14 and much improved support for naval assets, including the functionality of aircraft carriers, which now had parked aircraft. But most people didn't see it that way and wouldn't pay for it. They either stuck with SFP1, pirated SF2, or moved on to other flight sims like LOMAC/Flaming Cliffs. Between the mission editor and North Atlantic, SF2 development costs made Third Wire go into the red and forced TK to switch to free-to-play android games. They are great for what they are supposed to be, but they don't interest me at all. I would have rather seen SF2 keep expanding/improving. It is great that TK is trying to get the ball rolling again, but the failure of the crowdfunding effort for the Windows 10 patch to even come close to the goal tells me how this ends: we only get this patch, which only has one purpose, not to add anything new or patch any long existing bugs, but simply to maximize Windows 10 compatibility because a good number of people have had problems with running SF2 on Win10. After the patch, I expect TK to go back to the apparently much more stable/profitable android apps. If only everyone who ever bought an SFP1/WoX game or pirated SF2 would come back and buy an SF2 game, or better yet this complete collection. That just might generate enough demand/profitability to get TK to spend some more time patching/improving SF2, maybe adding proper VR support.

I am guessing that the radar is not being used correctly. Use search mode to find contacts at long range. Use the appropriate key shortcut or mapped button to move the radar cursor to a detected contact. Use the appropriate key shortcut or mapped button to lock on, which can generally be done at ranges greater than 10 nm for most US/NATO aircraft and later USSR/Warsaw Pact aircraft. The auto search/combat and/or boresight modes are all limited to about 5 or 10 nm depending on the aircraft. But even the long range manual lock has range limits that are usually less than the max search range possible. For instance, a radar with a max search range of 30 or 40 nm might only be able to track/illuminate targets at 20 or 30 nm. Whereas monster like the F-15 can detect contacts at 80 nm or greater, but can't track them at those ranges... which is ok since the AIM-7F/M used by the F-15A isn't going to fly that far anyway. Most SARH missiles are only effective at ranges less than 10 nm anyway, unless you are at high altitudes and/or high Mach numbers when you launch. I prefer to use AIM-7 missiles at ranges where they have been historically effective, which also seems to work fairly well within the game: 8 nm or less, preferably a head-on shot with high closure rate or less than 5 nm for a stern shot. Later Desert Storm AIM-7M BVR shots were about 35 to 45 % successful, but those were generally fired at ranges of 8 to 12 nm. Vietnam had more successful BVR shots than originally claimed because the "Combat Tree" system that allowed F-4s to use enemy IFF to confirm targets was classified, but even the declassified shots weren't that many and were all taken at ranges less than 10 nm, generally 7-8 nm with the AIM-7E2. In the game, the AIM-7E2 is horrible for head on BVR shots, it works much better as a stern chase dogfight missile, whereas the slightly earlier AIM-7E is great for head on shots and horrible for stern chase shots.

McDonnell painted their F-15B test/demo plane in colors patterned after the Thunderbirds' T-38s. I would have loved to have seen the big F-14s and F-15s doing airshows. But it was political death to spend that kind of money. They were lucky to be able to go back to first line fighters instead of cheap, fuel efficient trainers/light attack aircraft like the T-38 and A-4 brought on by the energy crisis.

After searching, I was surprised to find only two A-4 Skyhawk Blue Angels skins available and they are both for SFP1. The original MarcFighters skin was made to match the original resolution of SFP1 skins. It looks good otherwise, but is clearly far from a Sundowner's F-4 skin level of detail and quality. The other skin is for the A-4F and is of a much lower quality. My interest was piqued after trying out the free DCS World A-4E Community mod, which includes a beautiful Blue Angels skin, but it has the hump. So, that made me wonder if I could find an equally good looking Blue Angels skin for an SF2 A-4 without the hump. The answer is that there is no SF2 skin with or without the hump. TK did great skin DLCs for the F-4s that added respectable Blue Angels and Thunderbirds skins. But he never did the same for the A-4s.

The skin should be made for the A-4G... that would provide a 3d model reasonably close to the A-4F used by the Blue Angels and its flight model should be close, too since it was up-engined.

So here is what it looks like with SFP1 vs DCS:

I stumbled on to an F-101 Voodoo throttle quadrant on eBay. It looked suspiciously like an F-4 throttle quadrant, so I bought it to see if I could use it with my F-4 throttle levers. They swapped in perfectly for the F-101 levers. The mechanics for engine off and afterburner engagement are a little different, but this will do fine if I can't ever fine an actual F-4 throttle.

I have replaced my Warthog stick with a VKB MCG Pro, which has been great. But I have been getting the itch to make progress on making a more complete F-4 cockpit experience in anticipation of the future DCS World F-4E that may be only a year or two or three away. I have throttle handles, the panel with the slots and brushes where the throttle protrude, and the panels to either side on the way. I have a Warthog throttle that "bricked", so I am finally going to order a board and try to fix it, then hopefully use it as the base for making an F-4 throttle. I have two Warthog sticks as a result of buying a replacement for the broken throttle, so I am thinking about adapting it to my real F-4 stick so I don't have to clean pots like a did the last time I used the real F-4 stick. Alternatively, I may buy another VKB grip and gut it to adapt an extra B-8 grip I have to fit on the VKB stick. I may end up with two sim pits, one dedicated F-4 pit and one designed to be reconfigured to support several DCS aircraft. The F-4 pit would be in front of my PC and the generic/adaptable pit would be in front of my son's PC. I just need to upgrade his gpu or better yet build a new PC for me and give him my current PC. Just a matter of time and money along with some creative engineering.

DCS World has come a long way from Flanker / LOMAC. I thoroughly enjoy it. I have finally started to get into multiplayer using the awesome combination of VAICOM Pro for interacting with AI and SRS for interacting with real people using the proper radio controls and procedures. The F-14B and F/A-18C are great aircraft to fly. With Supercarrier, these two Naval fighters shine as the most fun and immersive to fly in DCS World. The Tomcat is a little harder to employ in combat because of the combination of older, complex systems and having to deal with the AI RIO, who can't figure out that if I tell him to track a target and the radar loses track while an AIM-7 or AIM-54 is in the air, that he needs to regain the lock as quickly as possible on the same contact. But the Tomcat is more fun to fly because it isn't fly-by-wire. The Tomcat is my go-to plane to fly until an F-4 Phantom is available. It is actually a half-decent F-4 simulator thanks to the RIO, steam gauge cockpit, and AIM-7/AIM-9 armament. If the F-14A ever becomes available as originally promised, it has very similar power-to-weight with resulting similar climb and sustained turn performance. If you don't use AIM-54s, it will only have the range and TWS benefits of the radar over the F-4 in weapons systems. Whereas the F-14B's big engines make it competitive if not superior to anything else flying if you can handle the lack of fly-by-wire with good pitch and yaw control. The Hornet is only crippled by two things: underpowered and low max g limit. But it is by far the easiest aircraft to use for air combat and one of the most fun to fly because of its high AoA performance. The Hornet really handles well if you can keep the speed low enough to not be limited by max G and fast enough to not be limited by drag and stall speed.

A taste of the OFP version, complete with passenger pickup and fighting a MiG-29:

That looks nice, but FSX is a waste for a combat helo with those capabilities. A long time ago, there was a pretty complete Airwolf mod for Operation Flashpoint. The models and textures look very dated at this point, but Operation Flashpoint was the perfect game engine for recreating Airwolf episodes as you could get in and out of the helo, drive vehicles, and fight bad guys in the air or on the ground. The only real drawback to helo operations in Operation Flashpoint was the flight model. But the FM was good enough to enjoy the variety of missions possible with scripting and open sandbox world.

My son loves this game. We used to play it at Disney Quest (Disney's version of a giant arcade/VR experience). So, I keep it installed and working with an emulator on our PCs. The emulation mostly works correctly... pretty much perfectly in the parts I like: X-Wing vs TIE fighters and snowspeeder vs AT-ATs.

I continue to experiment with SF2 VR and with the framerate locked at 80 fps, it is an amazing experience. SF2 is still the only semi-modern sim (as opposed to Jane's Fighters Anthology and Jane's USAF, which are much older and inferior to SF2 in most respects) where I can fly the F-4 in combat against excellent AI MiG opponents in historical environments like Vietnam and Israel. The FSX/P3d F-4s available from Milviz (F-4E/J/S) and Simworks Studios (F-4B/N) are a joy to fly, but VR runs like crap in P3d and the environment doesn't have AI opponents that you can dogfight. If you like clubbing baby seals, shooting down Cessnas and airliners works great in FSX/P3d with TacPack, but it isn't a true combat flight sim experience. SF2's terrains are obsolete compared to DCS World, even with the texture upgrades, but they are still the only way to fly decent combat missions over Vietnam and Israel in a historical context. The mix of SF2 and VR is a very good experience. I recommend it to anyone who owns both the SF2 series and has VR.

I tried doing some flying with TrackIR, but the zoom level kept shifting back to default whenever I looked down, whereas I manually back it out to maximum to match the wide FOV of my 4k TV monitor. I switched back to VR and the zoom stayed where I put it, and it was a blast. I pretty much can't stand to fly SF2 without VR at this point, despite some very painful limitations of the VorpX means of implementing a basic VR capability. I was beta testing an F-4G and then flew some stock missions: Operation Bolo and F-4J vs MiG-21MF. It is like I am playing a completely new game. Also, after years of focusing on VR, it is nice to experience SF2 dogfighting AI, which has a lot more skill than DCS World AI. In DCS World, if you max out AI skill level, they don't fly smarter, they just abuse their basic flight models and fly more like UFOs. In SF2, the "top-gun" maneuver of chopping your throttle and hitting your brakes will get you killed. The MiG-21 pops his breaks and chops his throttles, too. If you have lost all of your energy, he won't overshoot you, but will shoot as if you are a fish in a barrel. Whereas even the best DCS AI tends to fall easy prey to basic horizontal rolling scissors and will pop helplessly out in front of you even when the AI is in a much superior aircraft.

Congrats to the few, the proud, the suckers for Third Wire products! It has been a long time since I regularly played and/or modded the SF series. But I still have plenty of love for this sim and have even recently been doing some beta testing of an upcoming F-4G overhaul. Nothing but respect for anyone who is still pouring their heart and soul into making this sim better and sharing their work with other for free.

The missiles were not always hyper effective. In fact, they were originally only a little better or in some cases worse than historical effectiveness. I don't know when you started playing SF, but the original SFP1 early AIM-9s and AIM-7s were very likely to be duds or miss. The AIM-7C and AIM-7D were at best 25% effective against easy targets and couldn't hit anything else. I could get the AIM-7E to work fairly well head on, but it otherwise didn't track/hit that often. The AIM-7E2 was good from a stern dogfight position, but didn't do so well with the head on shots. The AIM-9B needed a solid stern position on a non-maneuvering target. The AIM-9E wasn't much different. But if you flew Navy jets, you got the half-decent AIM-9D and once you graduated to the AIM-9G/H, you had an excellent weapon, just short of AIM-9L performance, i.e. lacking the head-on capability. So what changed? TK was desperate to make the game more appealing to casual gamers and they would be complaining about not being able to hit anything. So, TK made some changes that led to the missiles being a lot easier to employ, at least for the player.

Aces High has an exceptionally good VR implementation, but most of its cockpits are somewhat old models/textures. But it maintains fps in dogfights. Aerofly FS 2 is by far the best looking implementation. Their best aircraft models mixed with their best terrains look awesome and maintain high, smooth fps, but at the cost of a static world devoid any traffic on air, land, or sea other than what is pasted on in photo real textures that have zero animation. DCS World suffers performance issues and ghosting, but is otherwise my favorite VR experience because of the amazing cockpits and the updated terrains. If DCS ever gets its graphics engine updated in a way that boosts performance, it will be the king. But for now IL-2 is probably the best balance between performance and looks if you want to fly air combat in VR. Prepar3d and X-Plane aren't my favorite sims to begin with. P3d performance in VR is horrible. I haven't tried X-Plane in VR since they released graphic engine support for Vulkan. But I dislike X-Plane so many aspects of X-Plane that I will never fly it regularly no matter how well it looks and performs in VR.

Great job. SF modding can be a thankless job. But those loyal to this sim series greatly appreciate the efforts of the few and the proud :)

The MB 5 is one cool looking airplane with somewhat exceptional performance to match its looks. But the RAF was right to shift their focus to developing fighter jets.

I love the results, but without proper support for the HUD functionality being built into the game, the cockpit can never be correct. Because of this, I prefer using the MiG-21 cockpit that is close to correct for the export version with the radar display down in the cockpit.

I just played the default F-4J Carrier Takeoff mission. I took off, circled back, and landed. The inability to move my head up to see over the nose is a problem, but the workaround is to recenter your view looking a little low, then look up a few degrees. The more you look up, the more your view is move up, so I was able to see over the nose well enough to have almost a perfect landing. It was almost as easy as landing in DCS World. Next, I played the default F-4E vs MiG-21MF mission over the desert. The real advantage of VR over TrackIR is the 1:1 head tracking which allows you to maintain a sense of where your nose is while you visually follow the target through your rear quarter with a smooth motion that is damn near identical to using padlock. I thoroughly enjoyed this fight as much as a DCS World VR fight. This makes SF2 feel like a new game. If only the terrain and cockpits were up to DCS World standards, I wouldn't know the difference from the experience in VR.

My review is up at amazon and there are two other reviews plus one rating with no visible review. Out of four ratings, this book has scored five stars every single time. So, I am not alone in thinking this is a really good book. While four reviews isn't many, having all four be five stars is a pretty nice start.

I got it much faster, and in fact it beat the other book here. I haven't had much time to read it, but I have already read several pages, enough to know what I have on my hands. First, let me say the English translation's publisher did an outstanding job. This book has the quality of a really good school textbook. It has a hard cover with high quality color printing with an unusual combination of a matte finish for the photographic elements and a gloss finish for the title block and author block. The pages are heavy weight and somewhere between a matte/gloss finish with excellent color photos and clear text that isn't too small, but small enough to cram a useful amount of information in between the countless gorgeous photos. Without even finishing the text, this is one of my best books. So, far I haven't seen any of the editing errors I have come to expect from translations, which makes it much easier to read. What it provides: 1. A comprehensive history of both development and operation of the Hind and its systems, including weapons employment and formation tactics. 2. Basic specifications of major variants. 3. A brief history of the opposition's attack helicopters. 4. Extensive number of high quality photos and some diagrams supporting the text. What is doesn't provide: 1. Blueprints, schematics, profiles, 3-view drawings. 2. Detailed flight performance. 3. Pilot manual. So, you won't be able to build a precise 3d model or learn how to fly the Hind from this book. But the photos are great for both traditional and 3d modelers to verify details, color schemes, etc. This is a great book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone that is a fan of Hinds, attack helicopters, or military aviation history.

One that I am beta testing. The entire F-4G series with refined 3d models inside and out is being finished as we speak. But I have no idea when it will be polished enough for release.