streakeagle

Inspired by the off-topic derailment of the thread on flying the Arrow in SF2, I briefly clicked through the Third Wire online store for the PC SFP1/WoX/SF2 series. Something I noticed is that the prices have inflated. The games used to be $29.99 each and I think the original SF2 and/or SFP1 was only $19.99. Now they are all $39.99 and the SF2 expansion packs are $29.99. To own all the games and expansion packs would be 6 x $40 + 2 x $30 = $300, plus all the DLC (27 x $6 = $162 for just the aircraft variants/skin packs) for a grand total of $462! If you buy DCS World products when their prices are lowest (somewhere between 50-75% off over the years), you could pretty much own the entire DCS library for the same or less. I wasn't a beta tester for SFP1, but got invited in time for WoV. From that point on, I had always gotten a free copy of the game. But I always made the point of buying at least one store copy or later web store copy to pull my fair share of the weight of development for a game I spent most of my time playing for so many years. For me it was worth every penny. I am not so sure for people just getting into PC combat flight sims. They need and/or deserve a game that runs on modern hardware without having to tweek anything. But to date, there is no other combat flight sim that covers every thing from WW1 to the 1980s so well despite its dated terrain engine. Complexity aside, DCS doesn't have the maps or even the plane set to compete. FSX/P3D with TacPack is pretty cool for a civil air sim and realistic systems operation, but is but a shadow of what you can do in terms of missions and combat in dedicated combat flight sims. But SF2 is static. Whatever bugs remain won't ever be fixed. While a few modders are still at it and the Yankee Air Pirate Team is still scheming to make a few bucks off of modding for this sim, new mods are down to a crawl compared to its heyday. If I were 20 something and didn't have a lot of cash to burn, I don't know that I would buy even one SF2 title at $40, much less the entire collection... but my obsession with F-4s and nearly equal love for the century series and the MiGs they flew against would still probably push me to try at least one title... most likely SF2V so I could fly all the USAF and USN F-4 variants at their best and worst over the skies of North Vietnam. As for the topic of the best game cover, the original Wings Over Vietnam cover wins hands down for me as it reminded me of the cover for Avalon Hill's air combat board game Flight Leader.

While I had absolutely no need for this aircraft in DCS World, I bought it anyway. Like the P-51D before it, this aircraft is being used to develop new tech for DCS World. It was laser focused on producing the best possible flight model for a PC. One thing you can't say about DCS World is that the aircraft are even close to "feeling" the same. Even without force feedback, the response of each aircraft to control inputs with a "professional" or "external" flight model is unique. The F-86 and MiG-15 are very similar on paper, but they provide very different flying experiences in DCS World. This Yak-52 takes it to the next level. I only wish I had very realistic force feedback to fully enjoy all the work that went into this flight model. It may not be a fighter or even armed, but it is a joy to fly.

His only recent post on Third Wire FB was "Happy 4th of July" before that his last post was in Feb. Perhaps he is deep into coding a new project?

Like the other links, the Third Wire forums are accessible again, but the link from the Community page is still removed.

If you are a long time SFP1/WoX/SF2 fan, then you know there is a lot of useful knowledge stored on the official Third Wire forums. At one point, they completely disappeared, but TK brought them back. They have been largely inactive and TK almost never responds to any questions posted there, but they have been a link on the Third Wire community page for a long time now. The link on the official web page has disappeared. The forums are still up at http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/ But the question is how long are they going to remain? If there is any info you want to save when they are ultimately shut down, I advise you go copy the posts and paste them here.

He may be abandoning sales/support of the old PC games, which makes sense given that the SF2 games were designed for Vista and Windows 10 just keeps moving further away from compatibility.

Click on the "Download Center" link on the downloads page. It is a no go, too.

It would seem Third Wire is in the process of trimming its web presence down. Others have reported the loss of the store and other links. The forum link I posted above is now dead.

It is absolutely smart to provide the most played aircraft. But multiplayer only works if the sides are somehow balanced to allow pilot skill to be the dominant factor in victories rather than aircraft performance. Even the best flown Sopwiths and Dr.Is were dead meat against well flown Spads and D.VIIs. Specific excess power allowing altitude, acceleration, and speed advantages guaranteed the later Spads and D.VIIs could dictate the fight to either win or disengage at will. Personally, I would still rather fly the Sopwith Camel or Dr.I despite any disadvantages just for the fun and challenge. But unlike most people, I am willing to fly a P-40C on a server full of Spitfire Mk.IXs, La-7s, and Bf109K-4s. I will accept being shot down a lot if I can manage a few good dogfights where I can take down a superior aircraft with my preferred ride.

Releasing the Spad and Dr.I first is a mismatch. Should have been Spad and D.VII or Camel and Dr.I. First Eagles had a great beta/initial release by having the Spad, Camel, Dr.I and D.VII... the four aircraft I would want more than any other. But I have a soft spot for the Nieuport 17, Sopwith Pup, Sopwith Triplane, and couldn't imagine a sim without various Albatros variants.

I would hope that what is happening at Third Wire is that TK has done so well on advertising income with his android games that he can afford to take a few years off if not retire completely. He appeared to have invested everything into SFP1/SF2 and was going broke aside from any money he put towards a retirement. So maybe android games have treated him so well he can go have some fun instead of just eating Ramen noodles and coding every day.

It is just the current full DCS fighter set stripped down to Flaming Cliffs control model. Strike Fighters used to be superior to LOMAC/FC because of the simple flight models used by LOMAC. They have really fixed that problem. But SF still has a huge advantage in maps/objects for popular/major historical conflicts. The free Korean Air War addon for SF2 is much better than anything you can buy for DCS World. But the F-86F, MiG-15bis, and P-51D in DCS World are modeled better than any sim I have ever played. So if you want to enjoy historical missions over somewhat accurate historical terrain and ground objects, SF2 is still the only real choice for Korea, Vietnam, Israel, and hypothetical NATO vs Warsaw Pact in Germany. SF2 also lets you dabble in African, Indo-Pakistan, and countless other less popular theaters. But if you don't care what the terrain looks like beneath you or want more up to date terrain modeling even if it is the wrong historical map, DCS World is hard to beat. The main thing the Flaming Cliffs level offers isn't standardization of controls as that can be largely achieved by careful mapping of the real-world controls to your HOTAS setup. It is the price. If you are starting out and have little or no use for clickable cockpits, it is hard to beat the Flaming Cliffs 3 package. The new MAC package is an even better value with the included maps. You get the full blown professional flight models and generations of great fighters for one low price. Aside from the lack of historical maps/missions/campaigns, it is comparable if not superior to any of the SF2 games. Then, if you really like one of the planes, you can catch it on sale and get the fully detailed module. Not particularly useful to someone like me that already has everything available, but fantastic for people who have a basic joystick and would like to get into PC jet air combat with an up-to-date game engine in terms of graphics and hardware support.

If I wasn't so absorbed with DCS World, this series might have been my primary sim. But alas, despite enjoying what little time I have spent flying a P-40E vs a Bf109E in VR, I simply don't have enough time to fly every sim I have and DCS continues by far to be the most rewarding. WW1 flying will be great in VR, which DCS presently doesn't cover at all.

I wonder what the outcome would be like in real life. The missiles would be seeing a sky full of countermeasures as well as tons of alternate targets. The confusion and target management would be nearly impossible to overcome until the numbers thinned out. Only World War 2 saw air battles of this magnitude. A strength of the Battle of Britain sim is the ability to get a taste of flying towards a sky blackened by bomber formations and escorting fighters at great playable frame rates.

The F-100 was intended to be the supersonic successor to the F-86, and it was, just as the MiG-17 was to the MiG-15. That the F-100 wasn't powerful/agile enough to fight something like a MiG-17 doesn't change the fact that it was designed/purchased to be an air superiority fighter when speed was considered king. The F-104 was Lockheed's answer to the complaints of pilots fighting the MiG-15 in Korea: speed, acceleration, climb, altitude to control engagement/disengagement. Its sole purpose was air superiority when originally designed and flown. While the USAF eagerly accepted the F-4 after evaluating it, they did not ask for it. The F-104 was going to be the contemporary air superiority fighter. But the F-4 was generally as good or better than each of the different USAF aircraft it would ultimately replace. How could they not accept it? But it was really an interim air superiority fighter until the FX project could enter service. The FX started out being a large Mach 3 aircraft, possibly with a swing wing looking a lot like an F-14 Tomcat with similar weight. The Fighter Mafia was able to show that power to weight and wing loading were critical parameters for a successful fighter as well as a bubble canopy, so instead of building a Mach 3+ MiG-25 killer with limited maneuverability like the F-111, we got the Mach 2+ F-15 Eagle. Summarizing the above and ignoring production numbers and service dates, the air superiority role was fulfilled in the USAF as follows: F-51D->F-80->F-86->F-100->F-104->F-4->F-15->F-22. There are some big gaps in the F series numbers due to the numerous interceptors and strike fighters built in the early years and the crossover with the Navy numbering system in the 1960s. In many ways, the F-16 is better than the F-15 for air superiority other than a smaller/weaker radar. But it is employed as a strike fighter with a secondary air superiority role. Whereas F-15C pilots are almost exclusively trained for the air superiority role. If you study the service dates, only the F-4 and F-15 are significant. The technology changes so fast that the F-100 had barely entered service before the F-104, MiG-21, and F-4 were starting to fly. But exponential cost increases trapped almost everyone at the F-4/F-15 tech level all the way to the present with F-4s and F-15s still serving in significant numbers and F-22 production cancelled at about 200. If you go by service dates, the F-4 is king. But the F-15 has been flying since the mid 70s and claims to have a perfect record as well as remaining a front line air superiority aircraft of the USAF due to the low numbers of F-22s. Unless Korea or the Middle East goes really hot, the F-22 will never have the combat record of the F-4 and F-15. Due to their cost, the F-22 will probably never serve as long either like the F-117 that is already long gone.

Epic! But he didn't say who won or by what score.

You could fly an F-15 this way. While there was some very basic file checking for the old SFP1/WoX multiplayer, there were still a lot of files you could change that it wouldn't catch. Match the names/paths the campaign/game engine expect and just about everything else can be whatever you want it to be.

Razbam intends to do a Mirage III. With their experience with the AV-8B and Mirage 2000, coming up with a decent Sea Harrier should be much easier. It will be interesting to see how fast this develops and if they are able to provide assets similar to the WW2 assets for Normandy. I would love to see the A-4s, Super Etendards, and Pucaras, too. But with DCS level modeling, 5 to 10 years to reach anything resembling a playable theater? All I can do is wait and see what happens. Can't go any worse than the last Falklands sim that was in development forever, Jet Thunder. But based on the way Razbam has been working, parallel development may give up something useful in less than 5 years.

Forget differences in ECM capabilities, what you really lose by not getting the MLD is the improved maneuverability. MLA vs MLD is sort of like the difference between a hard wing F-4E and a slatted F-4E. I read on the forum that the MLA was selected because that is the version which they can access, so you can't argue with that. An MLD is pretty much equal or better than the slatted F-4E across the board, and makes it a little more competitive against US "teen" fighters. The MLA will be an energy fighter vs the slatted F-4E as a turn fighter, a fairly close match similar to the MiG-21bis (energy) vs the F-5E (turn). At least the MLA has the better radar/gunsight improvements.

I would have preferred either the latest/best MLD following the tendency of most other modules, or the original mainstream MF that was in widespread use during the heyday of the F-4E and F-15A. But the MLA is almost as good as the MLD and will make a fine addition to my DCS collection.

You can't really evaluate TrackIR very well from a single test. It takes most people at least a few days to get used to how it works and much longer to tune the profiles to suit your taste. The basic problem Is that it has to amplify your head movement to allow you to look 180 degrees behind you while turning your head no farther than you can comfortably see the whole screen. So, a head movement of about 20-35 degrees has to be scaled to 180 degrees in the game. The same problem occurs with the vertical axis, too. It is like tuning a joystick response curve for a fighter with a sensitive control stick. You may or may not want a deadband around the pitch and yaw centers. You may want a flat response or one that is soft around the center but really aggressive at the endpoints. You can have the software smooth out your head movement by slowing down the response or have aggressive immediate response to even the smallest movement of your head. A well tuned profile makes using the TrackIR a lot easier. While you can download other people's profiles for any given game, I think it is better to understand what can be tuned and end up getting exactly what you want/like. Different games may require different profiles. So if you get a TrackIR, be prepared to spend a little time getting used to how it works and learning what you want out of a profile.

I have flown TrackIR for many years, starting with a TrackIR 3, then adding "vector", then TrackIR 4 Pro, and finally TrackIR 5 Pro. Since I already had committed to a 1080 GTX when I saw it at Newegg for $470, I jumped on the Oculus Rift when it dropped to $400. My PC display is an old 46-inch 1080p LCD TV from 2006. I tend to pick one of the two ways I can play (VR or conventional display/TrackIR) and stay that way for a few days or even a week or two and then alternate. The VR experience is unbelievable, but I absolutely can't stand the low resolution not to mention some fatigue from having the head mounted display pressing on my face for hours (which is made even more uncomfortable because I wear glasses, which get pushed pretty hard into the bridge of my nose). When I switch back to TrackIR and the 1080p TV, the graphics of modern sims like P3d V4 and DCS World 2.5 are unbelievable, but I can't stand the limitations of TrackIR and the field of view of even a large TV after experiencing VR. As a general rule, I use VR primarily for "fun" flights where I am looking to feel like I am inside the cockpit and have time to look around and be immersed by the view and smooth, precise 1:1 head tracking. But with rare exception, I tend to use the display/TrackIR for any situations where I need to be able to read the cockpit instruments and spot/identify targets. If I had to choose only one, it would have to be TrackIR since the only real loss is a feeling of immersion. So, if the low resolution is bothering you in VR and you have the money to waste on TrackIR, I highly recommend it. I love the option of being able to switch between the two as I see fit rather than being stuck in one setup or the other.

But if you like online game play, try Aces High 3. If you can catch a good time when lots of people are online, it is a lot of fun.

The IL-2:Battle Over X series is very good. I don't play it much because I spend most of my time on DCS World. But I like the P-40 in AVG colors and it plays very well in VR on the Oculus Rift. It is slowly becoming a complete replacement for IL-2:1946. I was never a big fan of the original IL-2 for a variety of reasons, but I used to enjoy flying the F4U Corsair from/to carriers from the time Pacific Fighters was released. I am hoping this much better sim continues to expand to reach and even surpass the variety provided by IL-2:1946.

Some sims are starting to need more than 8GB of RAM with higher quality settings (here's looking at you DCS World), but you should be able to run most sims available perhaps with the quality levels turned down a notch or two. Steam shouldn't affect the speed of the game application, but it gets updates of one sort or another very frequently. I like some aspects of steam such as the portability of most games across multiple PCs and some awesome sale prices, but it is better for the game developers if you buy directly from them. So, if you like the devs and want your money to go to them rather than steam, buy direct. I am split about 50/50 between steam and non-steam games. In some cases, steam was the only choice. In other cases, the economics made steam the way to go. But whenever practical, I buy direct.