streakeagle

Hope everyone likes Strike Fighters Mobile Edition, because the programmers have to follow the money. On the other hand, if you take the kind of people modding for games like DCS and Strike Fighters and unleash them on an open source platform, there is nothing that can't be done over time. But it takes commitment for no pay. FlightGear can be made into anything anyone wants if they are willing to code it. MS FSX even has great potential because it was designed from the start to support external code and the codebase has become very stable. VRS has demonstrated that it is possible to make major additions/changes necessary to support a combat flight sim. Over time, their solution could improve to a level that surpasses SF2 and challenges DCS functionality. But no one is going to invest so much time if there is no profit for doing so. All I know is that I am not going to be the one to make any breakthroughs and I am left with SF2 and DCS as my only acceptable options for jet sims. Since SF2 development has come to a halt (or even started going backwards), I can only hope DCS will reach their stated goals.

The truth is, the product had changed a bit over the years... wasn't quite the Twinkie I grew up with. Cheaper ingredients? Getting rid of trans fats? I don't know, but it wasn't quite the same. Nonetheless, I have tried to raise (pollute?) my son with Twinkies. But the Publix across the street from my house didn't carry them very often. Most Publix grocery stores had a huge Hostess products section, but apparently Latin customers that predominate the area I currently live in prefer "Bimbo" products. So, my son has been calling the Little Debbie Cloud Cakes I have been feeding him "Twinkies". Close enough.

There are only so many ways to relieve stress and/or be "macho"... humor happens to be one of the best :)

I have had mine for years... it has been through hell. One of the pivot joints got broken, but I glued it in place (the remaining movable one gets the job done). I have had to tape on the external shell together in several places (two halves no longer stay snap-tight). But it still works exactly as intended. I find the vertical response of the LEDs superior to the reflectors, so I usually put up with the discomfort of wearing a headset to get better tracking over wider look angles even if my sound is coming from speakers. But other times, I just don't want to wear a headset and will sacrifice a little track quality for comfort. When I first broke my Clip, it stayed that way for months before I decided to fix it. Having both options can be nice at times.

In my experience with the TIR 4 (which is still working so well that I never upgraded to a TIR 5), the active LED lights clipped on a headset generally work a little better than the relfectors clipped on a ball cap. But both work well. So, if you are going to wear a headset while using TIR, I suggest the clip-on LED thingy, but be careful with it since it has wires and is made of light somewhat brittle plastic. If you don't normally wear a headset, you are better off with the reflectors (a ball cap is way more comfortable than a headset). The reflector clip is also spring steel or something like that... very tough to break. The best option is to get both so you can use them as needed/required/preferred.

I would assume CombatAce IS something you want, or you wouldn't have supported it It is a question of opportunity cost... instead of thinking in $, try something else you like as much as CombatAce. For instance, maybe you had to give up "x" cases of beer, cartons of cigarettes, or boxes of condoms to support CombatAce.

I have my game modded to play some Top Gun tunes on some of the screens, and Iron Eagle on one of the screens before/after flying a mission. But verbal responses were conditioned out of me when my son was born and both my wife and son needed absolute quiet to sleep through the night. That was the end of using a mic with Teamspeak chat or Shoot voice command.

Absolutely put your family first! But if any combat flight sim is compatible with little to no free time, it is the SF series. Choose a single mission or fly one campaign mission, start near target, fight for a few minutes, hit "ESC" when you are done. It would be real easy to squeeze in at least one flight a week, maybe one nightly if all your game hardware is already connected/ready for game play. Of course, if you quit cold turkey for a while, you may find that if and when you do come back to the SF series, you will enjoy its strengths more and hardly notice its flaws... at first.

Very useful progress:

There is always an opportunity cost. If you don't build strong enough defenses, you may tempt an enemy into a war he thinks he can win. If you build your defenses too strong, you may bankrupt your country. Clearly, the US realized the situation resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nearly every major program was cancelled. Sea Wolf subs: only 3 built. Commanche LHX: never went into production. The F-22 had already reached prototype in the early 90s, so it was "finished", but with a production of only 200 compared to the original intentions of 800 then 400. The F-15 and F-16 were needed not just to overcome design limitations, but because the F-4 fleet burned up their flight hours in Vietnam. While the F-22 might be "overkill" in terms of its price/effectiveness compared to the enemy, the F-15 and F-16 fleet at best is close in performance to the Su-27/MiG-29 fleet AND over thirty years old! The Navy was far more practical in replacing aging aircraft with an evolved, cheaper F/A-18E/F Hornet, but the Su-27 can literally fly rings around an F/A-18E based on power/weight and wing loading. The only way to know for sure which path was the correct one in major national decisions would be to have alternate time lines to see the consequences. Anything else, even "20/20 hindsight", is nothing more than pure speculation. Has the United States wasted a lot of money topping off the treasure chests of defense contractors since the end of WW2? Most certainly. But somewhere along the way, a NATO/Warsaw Pact World War 3 was avoided and the enemy completely collapsed economically.

I wish the B-70 and F-108 had been produced as well.

While the AIM-54 clearly shares the aerodynamic shape/layout of the Falcon family, it is in an entirely different size/weight class. No aircraft that was designed to carry Falcons could squeeze an AIM-54 in its place. But the F/A-18E/F is still considered a "Hornet" despite being almost an entirely new aircraft that retained the shape of a Hornet to bypass some budgetary red tape/development costs. So it is a personal opinion kind of thing. Certainly, any history of the Phoenix could/would/should mention the Falcon family it came from. Likewise, any history of the Falcon would be incomplete without mentioning its ultimate evolution into the Phoenix.

Forums were down as well, everything is back up now.

Would I have ever bought SF2 if the core aircraft were the F-22 and F-35? The only flight sim I have ever owned that came with the F-22 was Jane's USAF. What aircraft did I fly almost exclusively in Jane's USAF despite a rather nice selection of modern US aircraft? The F-4 and F-105. You may not care what 3d model is involved in your shooter game as long as it is fun, has good graphics, and decent AI... But the only shooter I have ever bought is OFP/ArmA series since it was the only one that provided a game engine that supported the only hardware/setting I liked for shooting: M-16s and AK-47s. The M60A3 and AH-1 Cobras were icing on the cake :) I have very specific interests. I never tried Bioshock (or any of the other blockbuster FPS games) because it wasn't in a Cold War setting with M-16s and AK-47s. All I have ever wanted PC sims to do is replace my old Cold War/Third World War board games that were set in the 1950s-1980s. My interest in flight extends to all aircraft, but with a focus on combat aircraft, and preferably the Cold War era aircraft. So, I am a lot more flexible on which flight sims I buy. DCS barely fell into my area of interest and only the imminent release of the MiG-21 pulled me into to buying it. I was very disappointed when OFP2/ArmA abandoned the announced Vietnam setting. The future setting of ArmA 3 is a total turn off to me. Even if I eventually buy it, I will never play any of the stock missions, much less the campaign. My sole interest would be to mod it back to the era of M-16s and AK-47s. If I had any interest at all in the "futuristic" settings, I would have bought any and all other games supporting them. I don't own any revision of Ghost Recon, Call of Duty, Battlefield series, Call of Duty, or Medal of Honor series. OFP/ArmA/ArmA2 is unique--the only shooter game to capture my otherwise aviation focused interest. I love 1980 Corvettes. Modern Corvettes are better in every possible way. But I still prefer 1980 Corvettes. Does it make sense for me to buy a modern Corvette, strip it down to a frame, and mod it to look and drive like a 1980 Corvette when I already have a 1980 Corvette? Is my view "narrow" because what I am looking for in a shooter game is different than you? Or the masses that think Arma2 is just the name of the game engine you need to play DayZ? I have never installed DayZ and never will. I simply have no interest in playing a zombie sim no matter how "realistic" or "fun" it is. Shooting sci-fi zombies isn't how I want to spend my time. Nor is fighting a war in 2030 with ultramodern hardware. What I would really like is the original OFP game with the content updated to match the ArmA 3 engine... I already have the mod to do so with ArmA 2. But the mods are done by volunteers for free and never quite match the stock Bohemia quality. I would like to see Bohemia direct the modders to meet their standards or even provide such an addon themselves... that would get me to buy 8 copies of ArmA 3 to replace my 8 copies of OFP/Resistance. and my 3 copies of ArmA 2. But developers looking for profits aren't looking to make me happy. I am too small a niche customer. It is almost a miracle that the SFP1 series and OFP series showed up to exactly match my hardware/setting preferences. The miracle is over. Third Wire has gone mobile and Bohemia has gone "Modern Warfare".

Out of the box, ArmA 3 doesn't have anything I want aside from game engine improvements. Unless some massive amounts of really well done retro content are released, I won't be getting this game.

Some pics of the new stick configuration: BU0836X and linear pot for roll axis: New centering springs and linear pot for pitch axis: Overall: The beginnings of a wooden semi-replica Martin-Baker Mk H7 ejection seat with real components:

As long as the Satellite is geostationary or moved slowly enough not to hit the map limits over the duration of the mission, there would be no problem at all. There is not altitude limit and IIRC, SF sims models the horzion at high altitude fairly well. But the space shuttle is very fast and very early in the launch profile leans over to accelerate into orbit. Other than making nice screenshots of lift-off and initial ascent, I don't see what you could do with a shuttle in the SF series. Whereas sims which model the Earth more correctly as a globe are much more suited to shuttle operations. I know x-plane permits landings, not sure about orbits. But between the payware Space Shuttle Mission Simulator and free Orbiter, I see very few reasons to add the shuttle to other sims.

The shuttle is more correctly called an "orbiter" because it goes into orbit. SF series games have small square maps with magic barrier walls. There are better sims for conducting shuttle missions. One of them is open/moddable and free. Can you guess the name of this program? ...wait for it... Orbiter I highly recommend Orbiter. With mods, you can recreate Mercury, Gemini, and the stuff available for Apollo makes DCS look like a sim lite!

Title says it all. I can take an FC3 F-15C down to ground level at 250-350 knots and feel like I am going fast without zooming out. I am going to venture that this has to do with the level of detail for the terrain. Who knows? Games sometimes mess with the 3d graphics and/or time scaling. Regardless of how they do it, it looks and feels good.

The truth is always better than any fiction. I just wonder how many stories as great as his were lost over the centuries. Some of the best stories become myths and legends, but I can only imagine how many died with the people that lived them. In this case, he lived a long life, 93 years! <S> to him and the unsung heroes like him.

I will post pics of the seat parts once I get a semi-scale seat bucket built to use them, but here are the AMARC tags identifying the parts and what aircraft they came from: Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I am exclusively speaking of SF2. The only time I touch WoX is WoI with expansion pack 1 for multiplayer with SF2-like AI and graphics features.

Bingo! Assigned the Spitfires to be "FIGHTER" rather than "ATTACK" and changed its primary/secondary roles to be like the F-4 except deleting the anti-ship. The Spitfires immediately turned to engage the Mustang as it crossed visibility range. While I haven't done any other tests, I can only speculate that there might be different rules depending on the actual mission assigned and current waypoint type (IP, OBJECTIVE, etc). No telling without extensive testing. When they were ATTACK, they immediately made a shallow check turn (10 or 20 degrees?) when I first got within visual range, then returned to waypoint path (perhaps not spotting me because the turn wasn't wide enough?). As "FIGHTER"s, they broke hard to the left as soon as I entered maxVisibleDistance, clearly spotted me, and engaged. I stand by original assessment: the AI does have 360 degree vision, if they don't automatically engage you, it is because some other constraint is forcing them to remain on course, whether it is their assigned role, fuel/ammo status, or whatever. In my particular case, where I was trying to recreate historical Vietnam missions, the criteria I was using ensured that I never once saw the "steady state" flight pattern permitting a bounce. In one example, I struggled to get the AI to replicate the response of the real pilots per fluid four training and the documented actual response of the pilots. I achieved the best results by assigning a flight of 1xF-105D on a strike (or maybe SEAD) mission, made the player F-105D with wingman with an escort mission, and created a 2xF-105D flight assigned to escort the lead strike F-105D. Per reality, all planes dropped their ordnance with the lead F-105D going pure defensive, his wingman trying to clear his tail, and the remaining pair trying to support/clear the tails of the lead pair. This was optimum for the scoring of the player since his real life counterpart would shoot down a MiG while trying to cover the lead, the goal not being to get a kill but to make sure his lead survived. To keep the player from being able to kill all four MiGs and give the MiGs a historically good chance of hitting the lead on the first pass, I had to give the MiGs the best possible pilot skill. To keep the F-105s from getting unrealistically slaughtered, I had to give them the best possible pilot skill as well. If I tried to start the MiGs at a longer range, the F-105s would magically engage the MiGs despite the fact that the MiGs were in a blind spot. So I had to start the MiGs at firing range to even have a chance of duplicating historical results.

Well, it might be fair to say that after the introduction of jets, props were mainly used for attack, as the P-51 and F4U in Korea. Of course, in their SF2I Expansion Pack role, they might still be regarded primarily as fighters? But I think all aircraft were used as multi-role (at least recon and strafing if not outright bombing?).