streakeagle

It is a great idea to create your own monster and write your own stories. In fact, if your Godzilla story is sizable and doesn't expressly depend on the Godzilla background history, you might consider adapting it to your own monster rather than giving it away as fan fiction.

Love all the Godzilla pics. Great to see you having some fun, too.

With AFM and 3d cockpit, the only thing I don't like about the A-10A is that the wheel brakes only have the simple button press for max braking power rather than toe pedal axis controls. With the AFM for the Su-27 and F-15C, FC3 becomes a really great bargain: 4 flyables at near DCS quality balanced with one attack and one fighter for opposing sides. If it just had a map location similar to WOE/SF2E (i.e. Germany!), it would almost be perfect. I hope all of the FC3 aircraft eventually become fully modeled DCS level aircraft, but for the time being this will do nicely.

Flaming Cliffs 3 is an extension of LOMAC and requires the purchaser to have a valid LOMAC install. These separate aircraft modules are at the Flaming Cliffs level of systems fidelity, but do not require the purchaser to have LOMAC. So, if you are a long time LOMAC fan, you win by getting Flaming Cliffs 3. If on the other hand, you are a DCS World newbie, you can forget about buying LOMAC then FC3 and only buy the particular aircraft you want to fly. As I already have FC3, I gain the cockpits and flight models of the new modules for no additional cost which is a great reward for having bought LOMAC/FC/FC2 over the years. I can see the benefits to ED with this two-tier aircraft complexity model: 1) get an aircraft in the player's hands as fast as possible with Flaming Cliffs simplified systems modeling. 2) eventually provide full blown DCS level systems modeling as time/money permits. As long as I don't get knifed for buying the FC level module first, I am more than ok with this strategy since it means more flyables faster without giving up the DCS level systems simulation. With this approach, the F/A-18C could have already been available at the FC level.

I have all the RAZBAM SF planes and would really appreciate updated LODs without shadow problems. I was always sad that RAZBAM got out of the SF market, but happy to see them in the DCS market.

The USAF Museum displays Robin Olds' SCAT XXVII with AIM-9s and bombs. This isn't a mistake despite the lack of photos of USAF F-4s carrying both at the same time. When Olds requested to have the F-4Ds retrofitted with AIM-9s after he confirmed the dismal performance of the AIM-4s, he also asked for some sort of spacers to be shoehorned in to allow simultaneous carriage. I don't know if he was aware of the Navy's use of this configuration (were they even doing that in this time frame? don't recall). But it made sense to him and he personally tested firing the AIM-9s with bombs still attached before allowing the configuration to be used in combat. Olds also turned off his RWR gear. He felt all the beeps and flashing lights were just a distraction given the false alarm rate and the fact that they were almost continuously painted with radars the whole time they were in the combat/target area. Even after F-4Ds showed up with much better RWR equipment, he still left it turned off. He preferred visually searching/tracking/evading SAMs.

I love all of the human powered flying machines and adding a helicopter to the list of successes is fantastic! Thanks for the link! Leonardo Da Vinci is smiling. I wonder what he would have accomplished if he had access to our materials and CAD software. The closest modern equivalent in US aviation is Burt Rutan, but aerospace was just one facet of Da Vinci whereas that is all Burt Rutan ever focused on.

Finally made some progress. I have tried to get the upper ejection handles on ebay twice and failed to win the auction. I could spend a lot of money ordering from the same site that had the survival kit, parachute pack, and cushion. Or I could fabricate an imitation.

Found some more info on USAF F-4s and wing mounted AIM-7s at an old website I used to frequent: http://www.webring.org/l/rd?ring=vv;id=87;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebspace%2Ewebring%2Ecom%2Fpeople%2Fhu%2Fum_688%2F It is a site created by an F-4 tech that maintained the WCS and here is his FAQ that provides some additional insight: Eight: Four AIM-7E/F and four AIM-9M. Early F-4Cs could carry two additional AIM-7Ds, one on each outboard station, in place of wing tanks. ( They had a TG-76 single-station tuning drive inside the special pylon. All series had a small RF window about half-way out on the leading edge of the wing to support outboard AIM-7s, even though the capability had been removed.) Prior to 1974 or so, the larger AIM-4D Falcon missiles were used in place of AIM-9s, ( except for PACAF aircraft ). So, it is originally all about the pylon. Can't use the AIM-7 without a TG-76 regardless of control panel switches. But note that he is talking about carrying 2 x AIM-7 on the outer pylons instead of fuel tanks.

I doubt a plane with more elegant lines will ever be designed. Looks great in that paint scheme, too.

Sorry... didn't notice it was in the "What If" section... picked it up from the front page.

Source?

Read that a long time ago. This book was in the library in the aviation section at USF. I would skip boring lectures and study aerodynamics, radar, and jet propulsion theory in the library. "The Man Who Rode Thunder" caught my eye. What an amazing story.

Cuts can be made more carefully and efficiently. But certain leaders are intentionally choosing to make the cuts as painful as possible.

I just installed the latest available SF2 Flagon TM today and was reminded that it has a few bugs to fix. My download is old, but I think I downloaded it 2 months after the date on the version posted here in the new and improved SF2 Downloads section. So, I think it needs to be updated. Missile texture files for AA-3's do not match the lod. Afterburner emitter doesn't work because it is missing one line. The cockpit is nowhere near the correct position relative to the external 3d model. I easily fixed all of those problems. The flight model could use some work, but I have neither the time nor the data to fix that.

The limitations were tremendous. But Co-op could still have been pretty good if all 16 slots could be filled by real people. Despite my best attempts to gather a crowd, I don't think I ever saw more than 6 to 8 on a Co-op mission. No one else could join after a mission was started and once you died you were out, combine that with the connectivity/stability issues and you were lucky to keep 4 people together for an entire co-op mission. The dogfight mode was far better due to its flexibility. If someone had a problem, they could disconnnect, fix the problem, and rejoin the same session. If you died, you respawned. I think the record number of people online at one time on a single dogfight server was 12 as far as I know. I took a screenshot showing all the names in the briefing chat room and posted it back then. If you could get 16 people to show up for a dogfight server, but have them split into teams and form up before a dogfight, that would have been the way to play co-op. Of course, that wouldn't allow for any air-to-ground, but it would be the best way to have great fights with no AI. Unlike co-op, you could do something like pit 4xF-4Bs or F8Es vs 12 x MiG-17s or other odd ratios of interest. Oh well, it was not meant to be. Maybe DCS will eventually fill that niche of an any era online co-op or team air combat simulator.

Whenever there is a topic about which sims are the best, the IL-2 series always gets touted as the best WW2 combat flight sim. For multiplayer, I personally much prefer Aces High, though you have to pay a monthly fee and either play in a wild-n-crazy arena or have to wait for special historical scenarios. For offline play, I think Battle of Britain 2 is the best. Aside from not having multiplayer, it has great graphics, is very detailed/realistic, and is amazingly immersive. The AI is among the best I have ever played against and there is everything from single missions to full-blown strategic campaigns. Unlike IL-2, I feel like I am in the middle of WW2: there are planes everywhere, the tracers don't look like cartoons or lasers, the radio chatter sounds fairly good, and the carnage resulting from a massive, escorted German bomber raid mixing it up with British interceptors is impressive. When I take hits, I feel them. There is smoke and fire everywhere on the ground from bomb attacks and downed aircraft. Only one other game has given me the awesome sight of a sky full of hundreds of planes (Aces High 2). It is practically a study sim complete with clickable 3d cockpits and engine management, but is at its best in simulating the complete Battle of Britain. Originally, to play a campaign, you had to act as the overall strategic commander as well as fly any missions that interested you. The latest patch gives you the ability to simply fly the missions assigned to you. Of course, the results of your missions still impact the overall campaign dynamics. Despite awesome graphics, the IL-2 series has never really caught my interest. I every game in the series except the latest 1946, but I hesitate to buy that since I have never spent more than a few hours playing the other versions. Whatever it is that seems to be missing from IL-2 appears to have been captured by BoB2. My one hope is that some day they finally get around to giving MiG Alley the same treatment. I love MiG Alley even more than the original BoB, so naturally I expect that I would enjoy MiG Alley 2 more than BoB2. That's saying alot given that after years of playing combat flight sims, playing BoB2 leaves me feeling shock and awe with every massive air battle. Perhaps some day the Flying Tigers sim based on this engine will be released. If that day every comes, they have my money. I don't know if anyone could pry my fingers from my joystick if I could fly P-40Bs over Burma with the same level of detail/immersion/realism as BoB2. If multiplayer support is ever added and well implemented, this could end up being one of the greatest flight sims of all time.

I was flying BoB2 every night for a while, alternating between Spitfire and Bf109. The 109 is challenging to get started and off the ground quickly with a good verbal rating from the instructor. The 109 is hard pressed to beat the Spitfire in this sim, it takes a lot more patience and skill against a max Ace/Hero AI Spit. Whereas, I can beat an Ace/Hero 109 consistently even if I fly a little sloppy or make a mistake. Developments in DCS : World redirected my focus, but find the AI in BoB2 much more challenging and interesting than DCS : World. If I loved flying Spitfires and/or 109s as much as I love F-4s/MiG-21s, I would probably spend all my time flying BoB2. For me, the age of the game is a non-issue. The graphics are adequate and the flight model and AI are top notch. The clickable cockpits are icing on the cake, and I love having icing on my cake!

I am guessing you can't mix DX10 graphics with DX9 DirectPlay code, so to use the code, you would have to give up graphics quality and performance. Prior to the birth of my son, I played SFP1/WoX multiplayer as often as I could find others, which was quite a bit of the time with the small but dedicated hyperlobby/hamachi SFP1 group. I played a bit of WoI and FE online from hotel rooms until my job situation changed and I was home every night with my family. I had plenty of good times with dogfighting, co-op missions, and even some formation flying.

I don't own or play OFF, but I am a fan of its community and what they have to say. I do frequent SimHq just to make sure I don't miss any pertinent SF2/DCS topics, as there is a decent crowd over there that rarely or never migrated over here. But I have no interest in what the OFF devs have to say. So all of my OFF community knowledge comes from reading all the great posts by the guys that have stayed here. I would hate to see the OFF community slighted by CombatAce to punish OFF devs/SimHQ for the previous events, but I agree with Erik: They chose to migrate in a bad, very unfriendly way to SimHq, so SimHq should bear the burden of hosting all of the downloads. Otherwise, they are getting free support after making it clear that they are all about revenues. Maybe a bit idiotic, but I prefer to do unto others as they have done unto me rather than turning my cheek and setting a good example ;)

Third Wire has (had?) a loyal following for many reasons. Among them: 1) Unique era/planeset compared to everyone else. 2) Fairly cheap. 3) Fairly diverse plane set as of SFP1/WoV/WoE/WoI. 4) Highly moddable. 5) Tremendous amount of fabulous mods provided for free by the community. But none of that would have mattered if TK had not stuck with the game and continuously listened to and worked with the community to polish up the features and squash bugs. TK's current approach surely will not win him too many more customers and a lot of the current customers are slowly going to dwindle as the game ages and stops growing. Code stability could be a great thing (like FSX and SFP1/WoX patched to the 083006 level) as long as stability occurs after most of the bugs are fixed. TK's constant undocumented tweaking between SF2 patches/releases brought some great surprises, but make it almost impossible to identify a revision level that is best for any one person. Getting mods that comply with an end user's preferred revision level negate much of benefits 4/5, and may even retard purchases of DLC that are not compatible with earlier revisions. At least the game still principally works well for my needs in stock condition: DACT between complex heavy US aircraft like F-4s and century series and MiGs. I would still appreciate if SF2 had at least comparable multiplayer code to SFP1. The SF2 AI can be fun to fight, but years of flying against it mean I am rarely surprised, and usually win in close knife fights despite any disadvantages in numbers and agility. But whatever its flaws or its future, SF2 still remains the only decent sim/game for F-4 vs MiG era air combat. So it will remain on my hard drive and get used periodically unless DCS or another competitor steps up to the plate. The DCS : MiG-21bis gets me halfway there. If the F-104 ever gets released and is well-modeled, the combination of F-104/MiG-21 dogfights offline or online may almost entirely eliminate my SF2 time (it's already pretty slime between the UH-1H and P-51D). If a well done DCS : F-4 module ever shows up, that would pretty much be the final nail in the coffin for my use of SF2.

The current situation simply confirms my original fears: if TK went mobile, successful or not, SF2 PC development would get little or no time. The latest patch and DLC are indicative that "little" time is the end result rather than "no" time. While TK made plenty of statements to lower expectations for the future of SF2, I still hope that he is operating the way he has before: completely blind siding the community with the release of WoV and to a lesser extent SF2. At a minimum I expect an expansion pack with the Mirage F1C somewhere along the line. If you don't post your problems, he will not see them, which gives zero chance of problems being addressed with the next expansion pack/patch cycle. Some chance is better than no chance. If you genuinely believe TK has abandoned listening to his most loyal fans, then you should pick a patch revision level and stay with it from now until you ultimately abandon SF2. The people asking for an FE2 patch clearly don't understand what will happen. I think TK makes wishes on a monkey's paw when he is adding features/patching old problems.

Why not both a traitor and a defender of civil liberties? Clearly, the organization he worked for (US government) sees him as a traitor for revealing its secrets. However, what is legal and what is right can be two very different things. Additionally, if I swear to uphold the Constitution and the the government agency I am working for is contradicting the Constitution, then he really isn't a traitor. The dilemma he faced is similar to an enlisted soldier who is pretty sure he has been given an illegal order. If you follow the order, you will be as guilty as the person giving the order and potentially prosecuted as such. If you don't follow the order, you will be treated as having disobeyed a superior and punished accordingly. He chose to take the punishment believing he was right. If that is what really happened and he is right, I respect him for what he did.