streakeagle

Yes, native hardware beats Matrox addon any day! My 7870 has enough outputs to do the 3-panel wide view and have a 4th for the instrument panel, but I don't like the FPS hit. My card just isn't strong enough to drive that much video at the resolution and quality I prefer. Those Thrustmaster MFD frames provide a very cost effective way of having a functional and realistic front panel without using a touch display. I will probably end up getting those. Right now, I am finalizing my plans for a full scale wooden mockup of an F-4 ejection seat. It won't have much in the way of details (no mock rivets, frames, mechanisms, etc.), but the overall shape/dimensions will be as good as I can get with the info I have. If the seat goes well, a mockup of an F-4 side console with the Thrustmaster throttle embedded is next. At the same time, I am cleaning up my F-4 stick. I got some industrial linear potentiometers and a BU0836X to give me a clean, reliable USB interface. I should be able to hide everything by building a mockup of the housing that goes around the base of the stick. When I finish all of that, I am going to build a faux F-4 main panel/computer desk that integrates with the stick/seat/side console. I think I am going to upgrade the family room TV to a modern 46-60" LED LCD TV and hijack the old Mitsubishi 46" LCD to become my dedicated PC monitor.

I can not ever see these photos enough. Proof once again that the reality is more impressive than anything Hollywood can dream up. The skill, determination, and luck it took to complete this mission is amazing. Of course, if they had been truly lucky, they never would have been rammed in the first place ;)

My son has loved playing the old Sega Star Wars Trilogy arcade game at Chuck E. Cheese and Disney Quest since he was about 2 1/2 years old (he just turned 6 in November). So, after discovering the joystick wasn't working do well at Disney Quest, I thought to myself, I bet I can find a PC emulator on the internet. Long story short, aside from a few minor graphical glitches, I got the original ROM running great on a PC emulator with my Warthog stick as the controller. However, the heavy axis springs require me to use two hands to be both fast and precise. Using the trigger button is slow. To fire fast, I have to use a keyboard key to fire while using the stick single-handed, which cuts down my speed an precision. After playing only a few minutes, my wrist hurts. In short, the Warthog sucks for arcade flying/FPS games (though it is extremely smooth and precise two-handed). I think the insanely lighter axis springs and trigger in the X-52 Pro will be much better when I get around to trying it (though I may lose some of the precision and smoothness). That is all!

I have a Saitek gamepad with rumble, but the real arcade game was designed to work well with a full size analog stick, not the crappy, sensitive sticks on gamepads. I tried using the Saitek X-52 Pro, and while it was much lighter and easier to move, it was also much sloppier than the Warthog. When using two hands to make up for the "stiction" of small movements and the spring force changes over large movements, the Warthog is an exceptionally fast/precise device, as it should be for its price.

It was originally known as the Su-19 Fencer in the West. There was some confusion in the 1960's/early '70s between the MiG-23 and MiG-25. Some publications used the name MiG-23 Foxbat. The old board game, Foxbat and Phantom, used the MiG-23 designation for the Foxbat. It was 1983 when I found the first books at Walden Books and B. Dalton that described the RAM-L and RAM-K MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters in some detail using DoD artist concepts and/or early prototype satellite photos and TV footage. I still have those books. It was feared that the US teen series fighters had been completely outclassed in dogfighting ability. Bill Gunston was a contributor/author in a lot of those books, and he felt the Harrier made all of the other planes obsolete. Mike Spick was the other common contributor/author, and he seemed to be more of an F-4/F-15/ATF kind of guy. I still have and love all of those old books even if some of the information is not as accurate as modern publications. Public info on MiGs (MiG-17/19/21/23) was surprisingly accurate prior to Glastnost. Some details were wrong, especially the actual Soviet designation for variants, but big picture details engine and armament were usually pretty close. A minor fallacy was the belief that Soviets always carried missiles in matched IRM and RHM pairs to be fired together at the same target for increased kill probability. Until very recently, every source I have says that is the way AA-7s were carried and used on MiG-23s when in reality they usually carried two SARH variants and were not really set up to carry or fire a mixed pair of AA-7s.

To justify the huge defense budget, Reagan had a propaganda report published and periodically updated: Soviet Military Power It was a lot of wild intelligence guesses packed with slick graphics. The version I own was the 1985 edition that was published by an anti-Reagan author, Tom Gervasi, The Pentagon's Document Annotated and Corrected The beauty of having that is you get to see two extremes at the same time: inflated US intelligence estimates used to justify horrendous defense spending and wishful thinking believing that the Soviets were incapable of challenging US military technology. Decades later, one can see that many of the estimates were not so wild. In particular, Tom Gervasi would have us believe that the Soviets only had 30 operational MiG-29s rather than the 300 estimated by the DoD. In retrospect, the in-service numbers were much closer to if not higher than 300 by 1985.

Since I didn't read the manual and just started playing by experience with similar games, I missed a little detail: I was given points I could spend on additional units. I thought the beginner mission was a little hard for beginners, but after many tries, I nearly got a perfect score. It was when I tried the 2nd mission unlocked by winning the 1st mission that I realized I was doing something wrong. I was outnumbered even worse than before and couldn't even begin to meet the victory conditions. But now that I know how to spend points, I am overwhelmed by the volume of information. Too many units to control and attacks coming from too many directions at the same time. Having played all the games of the Sudden Strike series and Company of Heroes, I actually prefer playing Steel Beasts Pro PE. In SB, you design your battle plan on the map prior to combat. It is tedious and time consuming, but if you do it right, the AI moves and fights like a well oiled machine... Or at least well enough that I can focus on one important area and know that the AI will do their best to hold their ground until I can assess their situation and revise their plan. But this "Wargame" looks great, has a really clean interface, and plays fast and fun as opposed to SB which I hardly play due to time constraints.

It is very fun. Reminds me of Sudden Strike, except NATO/Warsaw Pact instead of Allies vs Axis.

I looked at this before and should have bought it back then. Additional motivation of the sale price tips the scale. Love the time frame.

Which is exactly the direction I want DCS to go: give me all the realism/detail/combat capability of DCS:A-10C and a plane set from the Wright brothers to the present. The only problem is the time it takes to do one aircraft correctly versus the number of years I have left to live. So, if my favorites are filled in first: Sopwith Camel, Fokker Dr.I, P-51, Bf109, F4U, A6M, F-86, MiG-15, F-4, MiG-17, MiG-21, MiG-23, and F-15, then I will be good to go :) The UH-1 is a great bonus, which would be great if followed by an AH-1 and an Mi-24.

The commentator said "satin's angels" instead of "satan's angels" :)

LCdr. Johnny Magda, then Blue Angel leader and Commanding Officer of the squadron, was the only active Blue Angel to lose his life in combat when he was shot down off the north coast of Korea in March 1951.

I have seen plenty of modern shows that were just as or even more cheesy than this one. I actually liked this episode more than most "reality" shows I have ever seen.

In my never-ending quest to find the perfect combat flight sim (or at least the one that best suits my needs), I have had little choice but to put all my eggs in the DCS basket. But with the release of the FC3 beta, I see a pretty big hole in DCS. The air-to-air combat AI in DCS World is inferior to FC2 to a degree that it is very difficult for me to lose even when outnumbered 2 to 1 by superior aircraft. This obviously isn't a problem in online multiplayer if all the aircraft are flown by players, but makes both the single player and co-op games far less interesting/challenging. Even if the AI flew like an ace, I would still be unhappy since it also appears that the AI is not scalable. For the most part, no matter what skill level is specified in a mission, the AI still uses the same tactics and flies with the same skill. Apparently, skill level only affects the AI's awareness of the enemy. An important part of creating a historically accurate mission is being able to give all the AI pilots the appropriate skill level and tactics. i.e. novice pilots should mostly stay well within performance limits and/or be more likely to depart controlled flight when pushing the limits and fly simple horizontal turns. SF2 appears to have much better AI for the purposes of dogfighting and skill levels. It will be interesting to if DCS AI improves by the time FC3 comes out of beta status.

2 separate P-51Ds starting in a "formation" (spaced 600 feet apart) does the trick. I get two aggressive opponents. But, they don't fight as a coordinated pair. They don't do tactical splits. Initially, they follow parallel attack approaches, but over time, their slight offset leads to different responses to my actions. So they inadvertently split up over time. I end up getting shot down if I try to focus on shooting either one of them... as it should be.

That is a very nice solution. Almost perfect for SF other than not blacking out the area outside of the reticle. How accurate is it from 6-8 km of altitude?

The FC2 AI has been adequate for my casual dogfighting. If it gets too easy... just add another aircraft. From what I can see, FC3 is mostly a direct port of FC2's AI, but it somehow developed a bug in the wingman logic. It is the 2nd aircraft in the same flight that behaves erratically. I changed the stock P-51D dogfight mission to have a flight of 2 and saw exactly the same type of behavior. Another test would be to provide two separate flights of 1 and see how they behave. In the SF series, I modeled Fluid 4 tactics by creating a lead flight of 1 with the mission of CAP, SWEEP, or INTERCEPT, then creating second and third flights of 1 to ESCORT the lead, and finally a fourth flight of 1 to ESCORT the third flight. This was my way of getting around some of the limitations caused by creating a single flight of 4, particularly for historical missions where the player might not be the flight leader. So breaking up a single flight into singles might provide a useful workaround.

She wakes up if I even move around in my chair too much and she goes to bed early, circa 9 PM. If she doesn't get 9+ hours sleep, I pay for it. The last time I played multiplayer with any regularity was when I was still in my last job and traveling. She didn't wake up when I was playing in a hotel in Atlanta or Miami. On weekends, she gets up even earlier to train for running marathons, so I don't normally have an option to play then. I played Aces High for a bit without using a mic... no fun for me or my team, cancelled my account. So, for the foreseeable future, I "quietly" play games uninterrupted from about 9:30 PM to about 11:30 PM depending on how much time I waste doing bills, checking email, and browsing. When I feel well rested or am having a really good time, I stay up as late as 3 AM, then pay for it in the morning when I go to work (where I troubleshoot and program water and waste water plant control systems). Back to the topic: I have concurrence from others on the ED forums that they see the air-to-air AI having gone dumb with the FC3 beta. It would be nice to have scalable AI, as this "dumb" AI is good for learning how to use weapons, sensors, and maneuvering. The FC2 AI is fairly challenging, especially when armed with missiles, which doesn't give you much time to learn the ropes if you don't already know exactly what buttons you need to push and when to push them. On a tangent: My solution to the button complexity is to try as much as possible to make the same buttons do more or less the same function no matter what aircraft I am flying, using the A-10C as the base template since my stick is a Warthog. I had an existing FC2 F-15 profile that I abandoned in favor of not using target at all since DCS:World inherently supports different profiles for different aircraft. All of the modern aircraft fit the A-10C template fairly well. The P-51D is in class by itself not really needing a whole lot of stick buttons. I wonder if the dogfight AI problems are unique to the FC3 fast jets? I need to set up a 1 vs. 2 fight with the P-51D vs P-51D dogfight and maybe the same with the Su-25T vs A-10A dogfight.

As the ED tester requested tracks, I have provided them. I provided an FC2 track showing how the two Flankers split and one aggressively engages me while I pursue the other. I provided an FC3 track showing how one wanders off aimlessly while i kill the aggressive one. I get results very similar to these every time I play this mission. Give the FC3 Flankers the FC2 aggressiveness while keeping the FC3 gunnery skill, and this could be a much more difficult fight. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=1620681#post1620681

I was pretty happy with SF2 up until the visual spotting range got chopped when TK started messing with terrain/ground object rendering distances. That pretty clearly marks the version I would need to be with air-to-air, but at the loss of everything added since. I didn't buy EXP2, SF2NA, and a bunch of DLC to shelf them, but nor did I buy them just for nice screenshots. SF2 has already changed to the point that I get frustrated after only one or two fights. Consistently getting 75%-100% missile PK in the Vietnam era isn't fun/immersive for me at all, even real life test range shots didn't score better than 50%. DCS isn't quite where I want it yet, but is very promising. The flight modeling of the A-10C, Ka-50, and P-51D is exceptional if not perfect. I expected FC3 to be the same as FC2 with better graphics and better missile FM. I didn't expect the AI to lose any effectiveness. The tester's response on their forums indicate that ED is aware, just a matter of when and what they will do about it.

It was either 1989 or 1990 when I went to my first Miramar airshow and saw an F-14 with both the TCS and IRST under the chin. The aircraft was parked as a static display for the duration of the airshow and you could walk up and touch anything you wanted. It wasn't the first time I had seen and touched an F-14, but it was most certainly the first time I had seen an F-14D.

Now forget the guns-only DACT. When I play FC2 F-15 DACT with IRMs vs 2 MiG-23/29/Su-27, I have to evade and flare to survive the merge, then struggle to kill one without letting the other get within missile parameters and/or throttle back/flare. When I play the FC3 F-15 Intercept quick mission, the Su-27s are slow to engage me and rarely fire even with a full loadout of SARH and IRH missiles. In the less maneuverable F-15, I can at my leisure convert to a stern chase or use AIM-120/AIM-9s as necessary from frontal arcs. It is like playing two completely different games. The differences are on the order of SFP1 Sp2a vs WoV/WoE when the AI lost the ability to dogfight, which was recovered with WoI and SF2. I could produce tracks showing specific behavior differences, but why waste the time? It is boring to win every time with little effort. If the DCS AI fails to improve, I will have to return to the online only gameplay that I practiced for WoV/WoE back in the day. As the only time I can play multiplayer is after my wife and kid go to bed AND my wife stopped my multiplayer activity ages ago because I wake her up when I voice programs, that isn't a good option for me right now either. I find SF2NA air combat too easy as well with the stock missile set up... so it seems if I want decent single player dogfighting, I will be forced to mod the current revision of SF2 or revert to whatever pre SF2NA version gives me the results I prefer. Hopefully, DCS improves so I can have the best of both single player and multiplayer worlds in one sim without using any mods. I have long been at the point where I only want games that work they way I like out of the box, I want to spend my time flying, not tweaking/testing/downloading. I have zero use for sims downgraded to Free2Play mobile apps.

I have been flying FC2 F-15 DACT missions against MiG-23, MiG-29, and Su-27 for months now. I copied those same missions over to FC3 Beta. When I fly against 2 Su-27s with guns only, one Su-27 leaves the fight while the other falls prey to my guns. Only if I chase the fleeing Su-27 do I get attacked by the other Su-27. In FC2, I had to learn to beat the AI (since I don't use labels and have to try to find them using TrackIR after the merge). In FC3, I can smoke them almost effortlessly... though if you give them a shot, they have laser accurate aim, so all I have to do to beat them is get past the merge then reverse and kill the nearest Flanker, then use radar to find the other one, then close him. When I kill the aggressive one first, it reminds me of SF once a bandit goes home and flies ignorant of what you are doing. I still have FC2 installed and can blatantly see the difference. It looks like maybe they are reacting to me as if we both had missiles... one trying to push me around while the other one opens the range for a missile shot? They certainly are popping flares the whole time when I am chasing them.

That Saturn V model was awesome. I can't imagine where you would build it, how you would transport it, or how to safely make and store its engines (which I presume were still the typical solid propellant type used in hobby rockets, just on a much larger scale). I would like to know more about this model! The steam engines are nice, too. Just not quite as impressive.

External 3d model doesn't make me want to fly anything. Give me a decent flight model and a proper 6dof cockpit!