streakeagle

I bought my last Warthog from Germany not too long ago for $375 when my throttle died and the PCB to fix it was out of stock. Deals can be found but they constantly come and go.

There is nothing better than meeting and conversing with people that lived through major historical events. We are losing so many so fast from WW2 to through Vietnam. The saddest part of watching the WW2 generation fade away is knowing that their history is slowly but surely being forgotten by the majority of people who simply don't care about history.

I bet you can find a complete Warthog HOTAS for the price of the base + Hornet grip. The HOTAS can periodically be found at $350 to $400 and has been sold for as low as $300. Of course, even as I post this I find prices are way up for the holiday season.

Relatively recent thread on this topic: https://combatace.com/forums/topic/91885-an-important-question/?tab=comments#comment-742990

If you delve back into the depths of SFP1, this capability has existed since the very first Walmart release. Kreelin's mission editor provided the option to enable this. But it was an unfinished, unsupported option that caused lots of problems, so at some point TK had patched it out of existence. I didn't realize it had been re-enabled. I don't think TK meant to make this option available again, but sometime he accidently re-introduced old code/bugs in later patches, so maybe that is why this is available again? I can't recall ever trying a ramp start since SF2 was introduced, so maybe it has been there all along?

I never cared for the MiG-23 very much. The MiG-21 was generally better for WVR fighting and the MiG-23's BVR capability was limited to two missiles that were roughly AIM-7F equivalent (for reference, Israel was very disappointed with the AIM-7F). However, the radar was pretty cool, and if you are a Phantom Phanatic like myself, this is the Soviet equivalent to the F-4E, minus one engine, 2 SARH missiles, and one crew member. If a MiG-21 and an F-4 had a baby, this plane would be it. After flying the SF series for so many years and having extensively researched and flown all of the Soviet aircraft available for it, the MiG-21 remains my favorite, but the MiG-23 is a close 2nd place. I love flying the MLD, which strongly resembles a MiG-21bis with decent radar and even more power. I can't wait for RAZBAM's MiG-23 for DCS World. It won't be an MLD, but it is being modeled after a Cuban MLA. It should be the best the MiG-23 has ever been modeled in a combat flight sim. I can't wait!

AI flight models weren't always tweaked as well as they could have been, but a MiG-23 should more or less turn like an F-4, particularly at typical Mach 0.5 to Mach 0.9 dogfight speeds with the wings in the middle position. The final MLD variant was improved much like the slatted F-4E. The MLD was modestly superior to the slatted F-4E in maneuverability and way ahead in specific excess power (i.e. climb/acceleration). In that form, it wouldn't be too bad. Good enough to fight F-15s WVR.

If I had spent a lot of time developing a flight model for payware, I might be upset if someone else took that flight model and used it in other payware without my permission. But if I am experienced as creating/selling products for the SF series, I already know how open the game is and can expect the text based ini files to be borrowed/copied/edited at will by the modding community, as TK expects. What you are really selling are the 3d models, as everything else is readily copied/edited/redistributed. TK came to the same conclusion and started locking up the lods while leaving most of the game wide open to copying/editing/sharing.

I love FE, but have never modded it. I have been perfectly happy flying Camels, Dr.Is, D.VIIs, Spads, etc. But this post made me take a closer look at what is available. I remember a lot of the aircraft, but not the Gladiator. Well done!

The SF2 Korea produced by the modders combined with the Skyraiders and F2H-2 from Razbam makes for an awesome ride. I wouldn't hesitate to say that it came out better than what TK could have produced, which would have had a very small flyable plane set and still not as many aircraft and objects as modders have produced. But the problem of the FMs is always there. Ignore the FMs discrepancies and the quality of some of the older models and Korea looks great and plays great... Not available in any sim since MiG Alley and a marked improvement over MiG Alley. What other sim has a proper Korean War environment where you can fly missions with almost any aircraft historically available on either side? The F7F Tigercat and F3D Skyknight are rarely if ever in combat flight sim. Some of the Russian prop planes would have been late war monsters if WW2 had not ended, but in Korea they still faced P-51Ds but got a good taste of jets, too.

The prop engine flight model didn't exist in SFP1. First Eagles provided the WWI engines, but TK only made that sim because a certain person bankrolled it. Wings Over Israel was released with the first true support for WW2 aircraft flight models. I never delved into the WW2 aspect of the SF flight model, so I have no clue about what bugs were in it that might hinder attempts to develop decent flight models, but since they were rare birds in a sim focused on jets, I am sure TK didn't spend a lot of time on it, so it might not have everything you might want in terms of engine modeling and it might have bugs in the things it does provide. Having actually written an application to analyze and help edit SFP1/WoX flight models, I can say it takes a tremendous amount of research, time, and effort to get even one flight model as correct as the game engine permits. In many ways, the jets are much easier to model since more modern flight manuals contain countless tables of performance data that help figure out the actual lift, drag, and thrust curves. But even then, much of the information needed for stability and inertia parameters has to be done by trial and error and calibrated to personal preference. So, why would anyone try to develop the countless flight models needed for so many different aircraft to a decent level of detail when WW2 air combat sims are a dime a dozen and several already existed with diverse plane sets and/or great flight modeling? I only managed to create one decent flight model, the F-4B for SFP1 SP2a. As soon as TK release the next patch level, Wings Over Vietnam, my F-4B flight model was broken. While later patches allowed it to work ok again, it never was quite the same, especially because TK changed how the flight model engine handled stalling/departure, a critical aspect of hard winged Phantoms. I also developed a major bug in my flight model editor after adding new features to accommodate TK's patches. I didn't have the old source files nor the time/energy to track down what got broken, so I gave up developing flight models all together. There were/are several SFP1/SF2 veterans that produce new flight models and/or tweak old ones. But they mostly have moved on from this game or only pursue their own pet projects. It is possible to create a sort of template for a particular aircraft configuration and then massage it to fit particular aircraft. If you can find an existing aircraft in the stock game or available for download with a decent FM and similar to the aircraft you want to model, it is the best, least time consuming way to go. But you still have to perform flight test after flight test to tune the FM to any decent level of precision compared to published data for the real aircraft. To do a good job, you have to understand what the FM tables actually are and the consequences of tampering with them. Fixing one issue almost always causes another, unless you fully understand the interaction of all the aerodynamic coefficients, and even then it is still a lot of trial and error.

Thanks for the news. I now have BOK. I bought BOS and BOM a few years ago when there was a Christmas sale, but have been waiting for BOK to come down in price for a while. I don't play these sims enough to justify full price, but I still like to have them and try out new aircraft and features. These games work fairly well in VR. If I wasn't so focused on flying DCS World, I would probably spend a lot more time on this series. Now I am waiting for Bodenplatte to get finished and go through the sale cycle and hopefully the Pacific War isn't too far away.

I could see this being useful in VR. My preference would be for the version with the mousepad squeezed in between the keypad and keyboard where the cursor keys would normally be. But years of using laptops with mousepads has taught me that I would much rather have a real mouse than a mousepad unless the environment can't support a mouse.

Play the stock game for a bit. Find out what you don't like about the stock game and then try to find mods that fix those problems. The stock game is pretty impressive though, despite its bugs and limitations. The main complaint are the dated terrain graphics. You can find mods that provide major texture upgrades and mods that defeat the "newer" drawing distance limitations introduced in later patches. The best/most famous mods are complete additions, with some delivered as a "package" while others have to be searched for and downloaded as many, many individual components: NATO Fighters 5: Adds countless aircraft mods, some that you may not find available individually/only in this mod. I think the five (V) version was the last official release for SF2E, but there are probably some newer updates for it. Vietnam / Green Hell: I can't remember the name, but there is a comprehensive Vietnam upgrade that is comparable to the NATO addon, plus there are various terrain texture updates, most being a variation of the "Green Hell" addon. Operation Desert Storm: like NATO, this is a fairly comprehensive addon with some unique additions. For me, the one that is an absolute necessity is Korea for SF2. It isn't a single addon but an endless list of components that you must hunt down and download separately: terrain, aircraft, etc. All of these addons are getting very old and some modders have updated some of the components in them such as specific aircraft. I can't even give you the correct names of the above mods to aid your search for the best content, much less list all the updates that have occurred in recent years. Besides Korea, my favorite thing is the get the best looking, best-modeled variants of every single aircraft available for the game. For example, there are packages for the F-101 Voodoo. Some are newer, but aren't necessarily better. Sometimes you have to mix mods to get the best result: i.e. the newer mod has better textures, but the older mod has historically correct weapons, engines, etc. It is absolutely overwhelming how much content is available at CombatAce. If that wasn't enough, there is a private rogue site that splintered away from the main community, The A-Team Skunkworks. You have to request to join to access their content and they won't let you download too much at any one time or they will ban you, but they have content you can't get anywhere else: http://cplengineeringllc.com/SFP1/ But go back to my first statement: play the game stock for a while. There is already more to do there than you can possibly comprehend if you are a first time SF2 player. Then start out by downloading an airplane or two you really like, but isn't in the game. Then try adding skins or maybe a terrain or upgrading terrain textures. There is no shortage of things to learn/experiment with. The flight sim community at large wrongly bypassed this game. It is still one of the best available as long as you don't need multiplayer or advanced terrain modeling.

As cool as jester is, it is an immersion breaker for me. The graphical interface is quick and easy so you don't have to memorize all the commands, but what is the point of VR or 4K graphics if you have to break the immersion with a pop-up menu filling the screen? If I would take the time to use the vaicom voice module, I would probably like it, but voice recognition is still a pain in the butt to deal with... too many bugs/misinterpreted phrases, etc. It is like talking to someone who is partially deaf and doesn't know English as a first language. So far, I prefer having all controls from the backseat being available to me while I sit in the front seat: modes, range scales, cursor, etc. Modern HOTAS like the VKB MCG Pro have enough controls on the stick grip that I can operate the radar and fly/fight from the front seat. It may not be realistic, but it is better than dealing with AI or switching seats. The experience is similar to playing the SF series, where two-seaters were as implemented in a way that was easily as manageable as single seaters.

If nothing else, DCS World can be used to make some awesome videos. Who could have imagined how far PC graphics would come so quickly and how much time, effort, and money people would put into the models and textures to achieve such realistic and beautiful results? I prefer flight modeling and systems modeling detail/accuracy over graphics, but if I can have everything, I will take it all! As Queen once sang, I want it all and I want it now! I can't wait to get the F-4E. But one hole in the US lineup is the F-15. DCS now has very detailed modules for the rest of the "teen" series. The current F-15C is extremely fun to fly because the flight model is comparable to the other modules, but the Flaming Cliffs simple avionics can't compare to using fully modeled clickable cockpits in VR. I know most people want the latest best aircraft and would rather have an F-22 or F-35. But I would rather have the early IOC versions of the F-14A, F-15A, F-16A, and F/A-18A as these were the state of the art aircraft I grew up with that replaced my beloved F-4 and they had quite a few ugly warts that make them more interesting to fly and fight: engine problems, radar and ECM issues, etc. Not to mention missiles that were at best marginally better than what we finished Vietnam with. Fortunately, Heatblur plans to provide the F-14A. But I doubt we will ever see any other early variants of the "teen" series.

Advertising isn't all it is cracked up to be either. HiTech Creations bought some expensive ads for Aces High on the history channel, which should have been the perfect audience at the time. No real impact with lots of money wasted. HiTech Creations also went the Steam route, no useful impact other than slightly splintering the community between those on the original company forums and those at Steam. I wouldn't dare rename SF2 to lose the "stigma" of the "Strike Fighters" name unless some major content was added or radically improved. To be competitive with the arcade air combat games, civil flight sims, and DCS World, the terrain engine and graphics engine would need expensive and time consuming work. The crowdfunding wasn't an effort to improve the game nor to attract new players, it was a response to numerous requests from long time customers. It very effectively measure how many people care enough to follow Third Wire and seek a path forward for SF2 PC games. What I don't know is what TK actually expected the results to be as opposed to what he asked people to contribute.

Major programs are written using text based files, which are then compiled into compact efficient binary code files that are very efficient in size and speed. It can be painful and extremely time consuming extrapolating those exe's and dll's back into useful, comprehensible source code that will successfully re-compile back into a files that are nearly identical to the original files. There are people that can do that, but why? It is easier to start over with your own new source code if you understand programming and flight simulation enough to reverse engineer the compiled files.

Flight Gear is open source. What it doesn't have, can be added. If more people worked on flight gear voluntarily, it could have already passed up the payware sims. I periodically download and try it ever couple of years, especially after major releases. But the available library is a motley crew. Some aircraft are up-to-date examples of what can be done with the current release, most are old with poor visual quality and/or poor systems/flight modeling. Flight Gear is proof of what can be accomplished with open source and all-volunteer labor... a solid sim with tons of potential. But it is also proof of what cannot be done: its present form is far behind in visual quality to its payware competitors like FSX, P3d, and X-Plane. But with some real support from combat flight sim fans, it could quickly evolve to be better than SF2 in terms of the aircraft and systems modeling. But like FSX/P3d with TacPack, it is a long road to becoming a decent combat flight sim with lots of AI controlled objects that interact and fight with realistic sensors, weapons, etc. Since it is free, everyone who likes flight sims should try Flight Gear. It can be a paradise for modders.

Try making meaningful mods to the game without the source code. Again, Falcon 4's complete source was leaked. Rowan gave out the source code for Battle of Britain and MiG Alley for free. A2A Simulations released the much improved Battle of Britain 2 developed from and continuously improved by community efforts. But MiG Alley never got the same treatment, just a few minor bug fixes and the very useful support for TrackIR. So, if you want to make a patch that edits the source binaries to include new features, knock yourself out. But this sim has been out for quite some time and I haven't seen a single public release make even the smallest change. I qualify that with "public" because I vaguely remember this strange guy that would post videos and screenshots purporting to show actual game engine changes/improvements. But I have no idea what happened to him or whether his achievements were real or faked.

Falcon 4 was a special case: the source code was leaked and those using it to produce new releases were not legally prosecuted. The new owners of the Falcon 4 license are permitting BMS to continue developing and distributing new code, but with a new condition: the BMS release must detect a stock Falcon 4 install on the host PC in order to run. TK has not released the source code for any SF series game and has exercised his intellectual property rights establishing that no one is legally authorized to reverse engineer or alter the original code. Without TK's permission and technical support, the SF series cannot be significantly improved.

I am a huge fan of multiplayer for SF2, but it was barely useable and unpopular as implemented in SFP1/WoX. TK has made it clear that only a very small minority actually use multiplayer, so it is far more cost effective for him to stick to focus on single player development. I have and love VR, but that is also a small minority of players. Other than a few bug fixes, I don't know what else TK could do to improve the sim with minimal time and money. All it really needs to compete with DCS World and IL-2 are: well-implemented multiplayer, VR, and a new terrain/graphics engine. But that is way out of TK's budget range in terms of money, time, and manpower. So, beyond this minor Win 10 compatibility fix, I don't see SF2 evolving any further than modders can take it.

SF2 failed because the market didn't want it. The market that bought SFP1 knew where to go to get it and outright refused to buy it. SFP1 got a bad reputation from the start. Most people believed a "lite" sim meant low fidelity arcade. Many people who tried SFP1 simply didn't like it with too many complaints for me to list here. SF2 needed to offer something radically newer/better to get a large number paying SFP1 customers to buy it again and to attract people who had already dismissed SFP1/WoX. There wasn't much competition at the time, as the combat flight simulator market pretty much collapsed around that time. But the competition that was there, IL-2:Sturmovik and LOMAC/Flaming Cliffs, was making more people happy with their features/graphics/gameplay, so they were selling much better and are still putting out new versions to this very day. Ironically, I think the most successful of the air combat sims from that time frame and maybe even to this day were all the free mods/upgrades to Falcon 4.0, but only after Microprose went broke producing such a complex expensive game for what had become a very small niche.

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.

WTF? Why does a video for a dog being rescued open up with a Spitfire fuselage on a trailer?