streakeagle

No reply doesn't mean he didn't see it. While the odds of getting an effective patch or even an answer appear to be low, he surely doesn't not spend time browsing here. Low odds are better than no chance.

I am flying almost pure stock, and don't even fly that much SF2 these days other than some quick hops in F-4s, so I haven't seen or looked for problems. But if this patch is causing so many problems, how come I don't see much if any reports/questions about the problems on Third Wire forums? TK can't fix or at least explain what changed for problems he doesn't know about. Carry on! <Shuffles back to DCS World to practice landing UH-1s on oil rigs and smoking Fw190Ds with P-51Ds...>

Test satisfactory.

Can't post with Chrome (my normal browser). Trying IE. Works. So what do I need to flush from Chrome to restore functionality without dumping my cookies/etc. for all of my other sites?

Creating, owning, and running a business has nothing to do with being a drone. You have an idea. If it makes enough money, you can afford to keep doing it. If it doesn't, you have to choose to do something else. You can't always survive doing something you like or something you are good at. Regardless of what you or I think, TK has made his Third Wire problems and intentions in a very clear manner: 1) Third Wire lost too much time and money developing the mission editor and SF2NA. 2) Mobile games is where the market is going, so that is where he is going. 3) He will still do what he can to keep SF2 going forward at a greatly reduced pace with much less content per release. 4) There will be no SF3. The AI plane pack fits well with his current business model, which could be called being a drone since trying to make quick cash with many cheap DLC releases is the trend of many other games. Whereas in the past, these AI aircraft would have been freebies in a standard release with 4 or more new flyables, a new terrain, and one or more new campaigns. Basing your business model on economic reality is not being a drone, it is surviving in the real world. If "not being a drone" by knowingly sticking with a bad business model destroys your business and possibly your financial future, one should very much regret "not being a drone".

But businesses don't succeed based on what you like or want as owner/manager. They succeed based on profits versus costs. Obviously, as stated upfront by TK, the costs of PC development have far exceeded his profits as of SF2NA, hence the migration to mobile games. No matter how much TK loves F-4 Phantoms or flight sims in general, he has to put food on his table/pay the bills. I don't blame him for switching to mobile games. I just hate the fact that my preferences are always the unprofitable minority. I have watched countless hobby shops close, seen the end of many flight sim companies, etc. Why couldn't I just be like everyone else instead of loving hobbies that are such small niche markets.

Great pics! Thanks for sharing. No one lives forever. At least he had a great life while he was here. Pass on the love and memories to future generations.

I think it is more a case of parallel development: the mobile games added a lot of aircraft that were not in the PC series. Based on game play, I would say there is a lot in common between the mobile and PC games, so TK may have smartly developed all the new planes to the PC level before sticking them in the mobile games. As both would need flight models and the mobile game doesn't need cockpits... this leads to AI only planes for the PC version. Ultimately, assuming the mobile games keep TW in business, PC games may get DLC or expansion packs with cockpits for some of these aircraft. This is not too different from ED using FC level sales to help fund DCS development. But basic economic theory makes me wonder: if you are in business to make a profit, why would you use profitable products/services to support unprofitable products/services? Why not just focus on the profitable ones and make more profits and/or stay in business with lower risks of failure?

Good catch :)

I installed both games on my wife's old iPhone 3GS, which is now a portable iTouch game system for my 6-year-old son. I can do well, but gun combat is extremely difficult. I tried it on my mom's iPad, and I was an ace with the F-100D consistently getting 5-6 gun kills per mission. So, the cpu/gpu effects on smoothness/frame rates can make a big difference. If I am bored and the iPhone is available (i.e. car passenger on long trip and my son is asleep), SF mobile is good for a little diversion, but quite a bit repetitive once you get to the final year and just need to grind out kills to make level. It is so close to SF2 in so many ways... but the lack of a stick/throttle/rudder pedals and the gamey waves of enemies from random directions keep me from playing too often or too long. With a gaming PC available, or even decent internet browsing, I am not spending any time on mobile gaming at all. Having grown up with Atari Combat Jet and Biplane games as my principal air combat flight simulators, I could not imagine playing a game as realistic as SF mobile. So, I am amazed by it even if I have no use for it.

The F-15E is exactly the replacement for the F-4E: 2-seat, hi-tech multirole.

Patiently awaiting the AFMs. The F/A-18C will be a great ride: multirole, carrier-based, and a tad old-school. Would be nicer for me to have the F/A-18A, but they are so similar I don't really mind. Much more excited about having this version than the E/F Super Hornet. There is one skin I prefer on Hornets above all others: After that, I like the Blue Angels. Blue and gold are my favorite colors.

Loving the updated UH-1H FM. The original was fun and challenging, but unrealistically unstable. Now, the FM is nearly as hard as it was, but a soft touch on the cyclic avoids the wobbly goblin effect. I can land on the oil rig. I still can't beat the hard instant action ground attack since I am not accurate enough with the rockets at long range to kill both the ZSU-23-2 and the BMP before overflying the convoy and getting trashed by the BMP. I did destroy the entire convoy once, but was out of rockets and so damaged that I could not even begin to approach the static targets without getting shot down. On the other hand, I have the easy instant action ground attack down pat. If I practice on static targets with no return fire, maybe I can get my rocket pod skills up to a point where I can trash the convoy AAA escorts in the first pass and use miniguns to finish the soft targets, leaving me with a relatively undamaged helo and some rockets to do the same to the static targets. My standard night is: try UH-1H oil rig landing a few times to get warmed up. Fly UH-1H hard instant action ground attack until tired of dying. Finally, Enjoy chomping on a pair of Fw 190D-9s with the P-51D. Sometimes, I throw in some F-15C DACT guns only vs 2 x Su-27 just to enjoy the vulcan and the F-15's power/agility. I still haven't mapped Su-27 controls to my stick yet, so I haven't spent more than a few seconds trying out the new Flanker 3d pit.

But I don't want to see the lineage... I want the end result. Unfortunately, DCS is far from complete and it will be quite some time before I really see the end results I really want. But the UH-1H, P-51D, and MiG-21bis are a great start. Mi-8, Fw 190D-9, and F-4 are good compliments for those three. Having several major DCS level variants of the F-4 and MiG-21 and the historically correct environments would be perfect.

Flanker has come a long way. I never had Flanker, but I have LOMAC/FC/FC2/FC3. Love the direction the game is going and pretty darn happy with where it is now, especially since my hardware can run it pretty well. Bring on the AFMs for the F-15C and Su-27! Provide AFM upgrades for all the FC3 aircraft and continue to refine/improve the missile AFMs, and FC3 will be near perfect for my purposes. Of course, I will be happier with DCS:F-15C and DCS:Su-27. My flying rotation is pretty steady between UH-1H, P-51D, and the FC3 F-15C. SF2 is getting almost no time right now. I need to take the time to map the Su-27 controls to my stick/throttle, then I will put it into the rotation. The upcoming AFM upgrade will probably motivate me to get it working sooner rather than later. Can't wait to try the F-15C and Su-27 at the edges of the envelope: high AoA at subsonic speeds. I would also like decently modeled taxi/takeoffs/landings.

I have come a long way since I first sought to buy a B-8 grip to splice onto a USB stick... but I still have a long way to go. My son is going to visit family over the summer (about 6 weeks) and I will only join him for the last week, so I anticipate a tremendous amount of progress before the end of the summer. But I have not made any particular plans about exactly what I want to accomplish, so I might not get as far as I hope. I have been spending all my free time enjoying the current setup with DCS and SF2... with the release of the UH-1H and AI Fw190D9 focusing nearly every last minute on DCS UH-1H and P-51D missions. I love that the UH-1H used the B-8... I like it when the stick on the screen matches the one in my hand... right down to the button/switch functions. I may focus on eliminating the Warthog throttle by making an F-4 throttle, but I would like to get more time in a real F-4 cockpit before committing to that. So I may just sand/fill/paint what I already have and try to fabricate some ejection pull handles for the top of the seat and wire them to a switch on the BU0836X so I can map them to in-game eject functions. So many things to do, so little time and money to do them!

Sometimes, I can damp the initial oscillations and get into a great hover and stay in it with very subtle movements of the cyclic... but my lifesize real F-4 stick shaft length gives me a huge edge in precision/sensitivity. I have no friction or detents, and my centering springs have almost no pull at center. However, one wrong move and it takes me a while to damp down the oscillations. I can generally stay in an area the diameter of the runway width, sometimes almost perfectly still. But my ability to transition from forward flight to a safe steady hover and land on the oil rig is an explosive work in progress. I can land on the oil rig, but not very often. I am more likely to transition into a high, non-recoverable sink rate or snap my tail off on the tower or break a skid, or drift off the landing pad and settle down/explode on the larger platform. I have improved greatly with practice, but it seems to be a steep learning curve... which I love

If FC level aircraft can be created relatively quickly and then almost as quickly offered with AFM, that is a great strategy to expand the plane set and customer base while continuing to work on full DCS modules for the hard core crowd. While I love the full-blown DCS modules I don't really like the idea that it will take years before the flyable plane set expands to a useful level. But I can't stand the LOMAC/FC flight modeling inherited by FC3. An FC3 level aircraft with an AFM has most of what I want and potentially superior across the board to anything the SF series has if done right. So let's see how this plays out in terms of how realistic/fun/immersive the AFM is and how it is marketed. If a full blown DCS aircraft is $40 to $60 per module, how much is an FC3 aircraft and how much is an AFM upgrade? Of course there may only be two options: FC3 w/AFM or full DCS. This could be like Accusim, where there is a base aircraft and an Accusim upgrade. As long as ED stays in business long enough to crank out full DCS versions of significant aircraft from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts (i.e. F-86, MiG-15, F-4, MiG-17, F-8, MiG-21, etc.), I will ultimately be happy. Hopefully, this new approach will help make that possible by meeting the needs of a lot of people and thereby bringing in more money for development.

What he said! Hoping for at least Exp 3 before TK gives up the SF series completely. There are still so many planes he never added that deserved so much to be a part of the stock SF world. I had always hoped that nearly all AI aircraft would end up being stock flyables.

I don't know if Nevada will ever be released. Maybe DCS is gone by next year? Just don't know in the flight sim market. If it ground to a halt right now, I would be OK. The UH-1H is awesome. I already liked flying the P-51D, having an AI Fw 190 D9 to shoot down is just icing on the cake. The FC3 cockpits are way nice. Of course, I would prefer the DCS level F-15C and Su-27. As far as I can tell, ED and DCS are doing fine and it is just a matter of how many 3rd parties can adapt and succeed. Hopefully, the MiG-21bis delays are a thing of the past and it gets released before the summer is over. I am not only eager to fly the MiG-21bis, but to see if the MiG-23 is next.

Paypal had the problem fixed by the time I purchased it a little while ago.

You can make a nearly perfect by-the-book trap with an F-4B on a carrier with little to no recent practice. Knowing the limitations of SF2 (inability to see the carrier and too little drag and/or too much power in a landing configuration): Applied airbrakes. Lowered my nose just enough to see the deck. Used my throttle to control rate of decent. Observed glideslope right on target without any corrections. Nosed up to correct AoA just before touchdown. Touched down and hooked a wire about center of wires. Rectracted hook and moved out of the way for wingman to avoid collision. I can't say those are always the results I get with so little practice, but it was a smooth landing on CV-41 tonight... Time for another beer, maybe the first one helped out and another will make me even better! I not only landed, but killed all four MiG-17s (more or less simulating the 2 x VF-21 F-4B vs 4 x MiG-17F of 17 June 1965). MiG-17s are miraculously observing and dodging 3 out of 4 AIM-9s, but not doing as well against the AIM-7s

Love it. So far, everything I hoped it would be, and as it is only a "beta", I would dare hope that it is only going to get better.

While I expect DCS to proceed... it is really such a niche that the whole idea could go bust before it gets very far. But due to the lack of competition and the current evidence of steady progress, all my eggs are in this one basket. Against my better judgement, I prepaid for the MiG-21bis, and more than the bare minimum to help improve the odds of it getting done. But paying for a product that isn't available yet is generally a bad idea... paying for a Fighter Ops forum subscription even a worse idea ;) But I wouldn't have bet on the MiG if I didn't have 99.9% certainty that it would get done in a reasonable amount of time. Those that prepaid for DCS:A-10C looking for DCS:Nevada are still hanging out to dry. Hopefully, edge is compeleted AND turns out to be great, followed by an upsurge in third party participation and productivity. Would be nice if DCS creates a market similar in scale to FSX with lots of choices across the range in quality and cost for all types of addons to create whatever world you want to fly/fight in. It would be nice if sea combat makes it into the spread and all aspects of the game have the option to have addons at the A-10C level of quality and realism as well as the FC level to suit everyone's preferences.

Any mod of ArmA is nowhere near the quality of Jet Thunder or even the "lite" SF2 when it comes to flight/air combat simulation. If ArmA was any good in this role, DCS and SF2 wouldn't exist.