streakeagle

I would always compare LOMAC/Flaming Cliffs/Flaming Cliffs 2 to SFP1/WoX/SF2. To compare apples to apples, fly the WoE/SF2E F-15A and A-10A on missions over Europe than fly the LOMAC/FC F-15C and A-10A on similar missions. Aside from obvious differences in the graphics, the main differences were in the AI behavior, flight modeling, and systems modeling. SF2 had somewhat better AI for air-to-air situations. SF2 had far superior flight modeling. The systems modeling was a toss-up. LOMAC/FC went into more detail on radar modes and allows you to move the cursor with a joystick, but SF2 modeled missiles much more accurately until their reliability/accuracy was nerfed in the last few updates to SF2NA. LOMAC/FC did have the advantage of truly functional multiplayer. FC3 changes the comparison in several areas: the flight models for the flyable aircraft are now "professional grade" comparable to any other DCS aircraft. This makes flying the F-15 and A-10 superior to SF2. The missiles have been steadily upgraded to have more realistic flight and sensor performance at least as detailed and realistic as SF2. The AI has been somewhat improved as well. When you factor in the graphics improvements over the years, FC3 is pretty much superior to SF2 in every way but one: historical environments. SF2 covers every major map with period correct ground objects. FC3 can have Black Sea, Normandy 1944, Nevada, and very soon will have Straits of Hormuz. Of course all but the Black Sea are in an alpha/beta release state or unreleased, and Black Sea is in the middle of an upgrade to the future DCS World 2.5. So, if you want to enjoy the F-15C, A-10A, Su-25, MiG-29, Su-27, and Su-33 over the Black Sea, Flaming Cliffs 3 is by far the way to go if you have hardware that can run it at a decent FPS. But the SF2 F-15A and A-10A as well as free user mods for so many other aircraft is a much more viable game for flexibility and variety. But if you can live with the terrain/environment limitations of DCS World, the complete plane set spans quite a wide time period and has something SF2 never delivered out of the box: matched opponents, perfect for multiplayer dogfights. P-51/Spitfire/Fw190/Bf109 for WW2, P-51/F-86/MiG-15 for Korea, MiG-21bis/F-5E/Viggen for 1970s, Mirage 2000/F-15C/MiG-29/Su-27 for 1980s/1990s.

While I mostly fly DCS World and thanks to SimWorks Studios' F-4B I also fly a little FSX:SE with TacPack, I have come to realize I never finished populating my SF2:NA install with all the aircraft if should have, especially considering some recent updates to make some older releases more compatible with SF2. So, I have looked at my aircraft folder and started plugging holes I didn't realize I had never filled. Primarily talking about MiG and Su aircraft, trying to fill in the entire number sequence, but also including some American/NATO aircraft such as the F-5E. SF2 in its latest releases has some changes/bugs that I don't like, but in spite of them, I still enjoy flying basic intercept, CAP, and sweep missions in various fighters ranging from the 1950s to the present. SF2 Korea is still hard to beat for its plane set and map. I would kill for a DCS F2H-2 Banshee, but to this very day, SF2 Korea is the place to fly this fantastic aircraft. Of course, my principal reason to fly SF2 at all is that it remains the premier sim platform for flying the F-4 Phantom family in historical combat roles. Vietnam and Israeli air wars have not been modeled better in any sim to date. As much as I love DCS World aircraft for their detail and realism, the work it takes to release a particular aircraft and the limitations of sales potential for minor variants almost guarantees you will get only one variant of any one major aircraft type. For example, the F-5E and MiG-21bis are available in DCS World, but you will probably never see an F-5A, F-5F, MiG-21PF, or MiG-21MF. Whereas SF2 provides all the minor variants with reasonably modeled differences both graphically and functionally. I would love it if DCS World could provide a plane set comparable to SF2, but at the present rate it will never happen in my lifetime. This leaves me no choice but to continue flying SF2 every now and then for both the variety and the focus on the F-4 Phantom II.

Flying Mirage IIIs, Kfirs, and F-4Es over Israel is a great experience. The Lightning was the closest TK ever came to providing the most realistic flight model possible with the SF2 game engine, making it both fun and challenging to fly. While the later F-4M with Skyflash was a great aircraft, I prefer to fly early F-4Ks from carriers. I love the paint schemes and enjoy carrier operations. But my favorite missions in SF2 are historically themed F-105s vs MiG-17s, F-4Cs vs MiG-21Fs, and F-4Ds vs MiG-21MFs/MiG-19s. Operation Bolo with Col Robin Olds and 10 May 1972 with Major Lodge/Steve Ritchie are absolute obsessions even though I never followed through with making complete, accurate missions for those two events. Flying an F-105D loaded for mud moving while being bounced and outnumbered by MiG-17s is always a fun hop. I have been playing this sim so long that countless memories pop up from the first time I installed and played the original Walmart pre-release version to the present. I can't imagine what the number of total hours I have put into this game counting playing, modding, discussing on forums, etc.

The P-40B/C is one of my all-time favorite airplanes thanks to the AVG. I know the British were the first to put the shark mouth on the P-40 and apparently they were inspired by NAZI schemes, but I grew up with P-40 toys in AVG paint schemes on the shelves of every store. The P-40E seems to be the more common model/toy, but I like the sleeker look of the P-40B/C. The prototype XP/YP-37 was even seen in Bugs Bunny cartoons. It is rare for the AVG variant to be modeled in games. The AVG P-40s were pieced together from leftovers from other British and USAAF contracts. They were closer to a P-40B, but were a Frankenstein mix of British, P-40B, and P-40C parts with lighter air frames (lacking some later armor) and uprated blue-printed engines. Of course, the key to the success of the AVG was more from their tactics and pilot experience/skills than the otherwise mediocre if not outright inferior performance of the P-40. But my love for the P-40B/C isn't based on aircraft specs but their looks in AVG colors and their legendary performance against the otherwise unbeatable Japanese of that time frame.

I have touched the one in Dayton. When I left the Navy in 1997, I drove from San Diego to Tampa on a 10,000 mile road trip. I stopped at Dayton to see the museum. I was in a hurry to get up to Boston, so I limited myself to about three hours. I climbed up on one of the front wheels so that I could touch the skin of the airframe. Even among so many other great aircraft, the XB-70 was so impressive to finally see in person. I can't wait to go back and see it again now that the new hangar is open.

Unfortunately, this date also marks the anniversary of the death of Major Lodge in one of the air battles from that day.

One of my all-time favorites. I learned about it in the 3rd grade (1976-77) from the school library's Colby airplane books and was disappointed to find that it never went into service. I did find and build a model of it back then. Now I have a much bigger and better model of it hanging from my ceiling with the wingtips down and the nose raised up for Mach 3 flight :)

It flies like Airwolf :)

The advantage of purchasing on Steam is that the license will work either way. But I prefer getting stuff sooner rather than later and never imported my ED keys into Steam when that was still permitted. So I don't use Steam for DCS World at all. For many games, the advantage of Steam is the portability of licenses: i.e. install a game as many times as you want on as many PCs as you want, but you can only play on one PC at a time. DCS World does not get that advantage. The Steam version has Steam licensing AND ED licensing which means suffering the worst of both worlds. That is why I never imported my ED keys into Steam -- a total waste of time for me.

The reason I know her name is from Pink Floyd, The Wall: https://youtu.be/MummZBgO3Ek

One way to help create missions is to play a campaign and save missions that are similar to what you want in mission and scope... then merely adjust the aircraft, etc. to make it more like what you want. I just tested it. While I could not save random single missions, I was able to save a campaign mission (at least the option was highlighted and appeared functional). I used to use this technique in SF2 to see how carrier missions were set up prior to the official mission editor being released.

Something that might work is importing the FE2 assets into SF2 and using SF2 to make missions. I am not sure how well Kreelin's mission editor could be adapted to FE2. While I am (or more correctly "was") somewhat of an expert on mission editing in SFP1/WoX and SF2, I never really messed with FE2 missions. I was always happy with randomly generated dogfights. Good luck!

I don't have a Win 10 PC to experiment on, but there has to be a way to get it working. Win 8/10 isn't that much different from Win Vista/7. So what changed from 8 to 10 to break the old games? I would love to figure out the cause of the problem which might make for an easy fix/work around. Since all of my games still run well on Win 7 and none of them require Win 10, I refused the free "upgrade" to Win 10. Of course my next PC will have to be Win 10. But I can keep this Win 7 PC as a legacy machine because it runs every game I own and I started buying games with Jane's Fighters Anthology.

The look of painted on markings depends on the resolution of skin and how the mesh has been "unwrapped" into a bit map. They can look absolutely horrible being pixelated and/or stretched/distorted. One of the most common/annoying results is the US insignia looking like an egg-shape instead of a perfect circle around the star. While actually playing the game, it is rare to really notice any such markings... decal or painted on. More of an issue with taking screenshots. I like screenshots where there are no aliasing issues as well as no blurs or distortion caused by anti-aliasing graphic options. In any screenshot where you can see the wing tip insignia of a US aircraft, you can quickly see the kind of issues that annoy me. Because the insignia has rectangular, straight-line stripes/border, it can look very jaggy from the wrong distance/angle. These days, the graphics options that minimize this problem don't really drop any fps. Back in the day, it was a critical decision. Multi-sampling anti-aliasing suffered from this problem. Adaptive AA would anti-alias tga's, i.e. decals and help quite a bit but cost a few fps. the best quality comes from supersampling, but that really lowered frame rates. To this day, I cannot use supersampling with DCS World... too big an fps hit. But in SF2, it doesn't seem to drop my frame rates much if at all and looks great.

I generally prefer decals because they can be high resolution and placed precisely with little or no distortion. But, they don't look right compared to the results you can get with painting. The decals tend to look cartoony and like they really are pasted on decals. Adding a little transparency helps show panel lines or other details, but ruins the colors. Painted on insignia can show all the details and responds better to lighting an shadows. Painted on insignias also don't run into the mesh limits or cause weird graphic anomalies. The best solution is to have both. It is great to have dedicated painted skins for flying your very favorite aircraft while retaining generic skins with decals for the majority of AI aircraft to allow proper and unique markings right down to the serial/BuAer number. The fact is, I am so darn picky about everything (call me a rivet counter if you must, because I am), that no one is ever going to meet my standard: reality. But I am horrible at skinning, so I always have to settle for whatever the community provides. Fortunately, "settling" for many of the free community skins is frequently equal or better to anything available commercially. Here's looking at you Sundowner!

It looks great.

Welcome back. There are many still flying SF2 as well as some still flying SFP1/WoX. I recently tried to get anyone I could to play SFP1/WoX online via Hyperlobby and/or Evolve, the current equivalent to the now defunct Hamachi virtual network. The problem I ran into is that most people have moved on to Windows 10, which apparently doesn't work well with SFP1/WoX. So I only got three other people to play and one of those was in Europe on a very different work/sleep schedule. I have had FSX/Acceleration for a long time and had bought the Steam version when it came out for $5, but it took Simworks Studios F-4B Phantom to get me to fly it for any length of time. I also bought VRS TacPack and Super Hornet to enjoy the full combat capability possible with FSX and the new (technically still beta) F-4B. I looked at the Milviz F-4E and F-4S, but based on my experience with the F-4B and Super Hornet, I still don't have much use for FSX. If nothing better were available, I could live with this, but SF2 Vietnam is a far better combat experience even with the much less accurate/lower resolution terrain elevations. DCS World is where I have been since the announcement of the original MiG-21bis fund raiser. With a few careful button mapping options, DCS doesn't have to be much harder than SFP1/SF2: flaps, air brakes, landing gear and maybe some weapons/gunsight options. The F-86 and F-5E are absolutely as easy to fly in DCS World as they are in SF2. The MiG-21bis represents the other end of the spectrum. The technology of the time makes for substantial complexity... multiple switches and buttons just to get the radar, gunsight, and guns lined up for dogfighting. But I absolutely love it. I just have to review my control mappings if I haven't flown it in a while. I would like to fly multiplayer, but I haven't found a server that I like and haven't bothered to create a multiplayer mission that would be fun to host. As for configuring DCS controls, that has to be done for each aircraft type. The main thing is to get the analog axis controls where you want them and then map buttons as you need them (which can be done while flying).

I see a few editing errors, but the writing is great at creating visual images without being repetitive... very hard to do. Being a very short story helped me a lot. I don't spend a lot of time reading fiction as I much prefer studying history and technology with my limited free time. But this was a fun read and felt faithful to the traditional movie genre.

The link you posted leads me to "Gfantis vs Guest Monster Book 1". The price is right: free! The extended introduction explaining the history of such legendary monsters starts long before Godzilla movies is great stuff. I don't see a story titled "The Visitor", but I do see a story called "The Intruder", which has your name :)

The bug fix was needed because there were some bugs :) I got the bug fix version to work by first installing the bug fix version into an empty folder, then copying/pasting the files from the bug fix into the tv22 install.

http://janesscsfleetcommand.freeforums.org/nwp-download-archives-t180.html The version that worked for me appears to be posted there as well as several other older versions. NWP 19.2 Release TV22 is the one that worked. Others also had problems with the later, but here is the final release version, NWP 19.2 Bug Fix release: http://janesscsfleetcommand.freeforums.org/nwp-v19-2-bug-fix-release-download-t183.html

I know you are primarily interested in the SH-2, but the SH-60 simulation in Dangerous Waters lets you fly the same missions in very realistic detail, albeit with more modern hardware. Skip through parts in this video introduction to glimpse everything the Dangerous Waters SH-60 has to offer, no other sim even comes close for an ASW helo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNCp7Jdv-zE

You have keep in mind that Fleet Command is very old. This means the graphics are pretty ugly, even with the mods (the SH-2 has a mirror texture between left and right halves, so "NAVY" looks wrong on the other side). It takes some magic to get it running well on Windows 7, and is even harder still to get going on Win 8 and Win 10. The graphics are pretty ugly with only the following resolutions available: 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. On a typical 1920x1080 monitor, you have to choose between 1024x768 and 1280x1024 and whether or not to stretch them to fit the screen. The old NWP mod series provides an awesome array of old ships and planes, but is no longer being developed. The current release version, NWP 19.2 bug fix, has problems... it didn't work at all for me. Fortunately I had downloaded the previous NWP 19.2 without the bug fix some time ago, and that worked great. The game is still very entertaining and challenging if you like Cold War naval combat, but it is still unstable and can crash... especially on bigger missions.