streakeagle

Thanks for the history lesson. I love B-26s but never knew about this mission.

I looked at cost versus performance and considered long term viability as well given my tendency to keep a PC platform for 5 or more years. This is what I came up with: AMD's best processor is cheap,and there is a reason for that. After researching Sandy vs Sandy-E vs Ivy, I decided on Ivy. The i7 3770 series cost about 50% more (over $100) and did not significantly improve game performance, so I went with: Intel Core i5 3570K Processor 3.4 GHz 4 Core LGA 1155 - BX80637I53570K Choosing a motherboard was difficult for me. I didn't want to go cheap and even wanted to allow for the possibility of Crossfire/SLI in the future, but I didn't want to spend $300+ on features I will never use. I am used to spending about $100 on the motherboard, but ended up spending about $200 (eating up the $100 savings on the processor): ASUS Intel Z77 ATX DDR3 2400 LGA 1155 Motherboard P8Z77-V PRO Best balance of speed, stability, price, and availability I could find. Had I bought everything from NewEgg, I would have gone with G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series. But I ended up ordering everything from Amazon and went with what had the best price and Prime free 2-day shipping. Corsair Vengeance 16 GB (2x8 GB) 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Memory Kit (CMZ16GX3M2A1600C9) My research told me that the way to go right now is the GTX670, but I really wanted to keep the GPU in the $300 or less ball park. I have studied the kinds of driver issues nVidia has been having in general and in particular to this card (especially with older games). While I always see plenty of posts about nVidia not having any problems, there have been several driver problems over the past couple of years. Some of those problems impact me as they usually involve issues with older games and figuring out which driver release to use depending on what games you play. I also studied the latest AMD driver issues and lumped that in with over a decade of Radeon driver experience. In the end, my success with using Win7 64-bit with a 6870 for excellent compatibility with old games and the lower price convinced me to stay with AMD. I could have saved another $100 by going with the 7850, but the 7870 is real close in performance to the 7950 yet great on power. Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHZ OC 2 GB DDR5 HDMI/DVI-I/Dual Mini DP PCI-Express Graphics Card 11199-03-20G I have had some bad experience with both Seagate and WD, but generally favor WD products. However, the price versus capacity forced the issue: Slightly lower price, twice the capacity, and within my target budget of <= $100. Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200RPM 2 TB SATA 6 GB/s NCQ 64 MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive I have learned the hard way how not to pick a power supply, still trying to find the right way. Studied a lot of reviews and settled on this one. Corsair HX Professional Series 750-Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply - CMPSU-750HX Don't know anything about Blu-ray burners. Glanced at the options and settled for this one. ASUS BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS 12X Blu-ray Internal Burner with Disc Encryption, Black I bought some good mid-range Antec aluminum cases last time around in 2005. To tell you the truth, I loved my old generic brand Pentium 3 cases more in almost every way except weight. Struggled studying various brands and price ranges, this seemed to be the best balance of budget/features. Corsair Carbide Series 500R White Mid Tower Gaming Case CC-9011013-WW I know Windows 8 is just around the corner, but this OS has served me well. I had Vista at work and hated it, so I had stuck with XP for a very long time. But I upgraded to Windows 7 somewhat quickly upon its release. It still has some annoying vestiges of Vista, but has been even better than XP. If I get this PC up and running well, I may wait awhile before upgrading to Win 8. Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit (Full) System Builder DVD 1 Pack The final total is $1,415 from Amazon with "free" Prime 2-day shipping versus the $1,500 price of my 2005 AMD Athlon 64 system currently still in use. NewEgg had the same build for about $1,455 and after various mail-in rebates, the price would have been very close if not a tiny bit cheaper. But shipping was not free on all items and rush processing with 2-day delivery cost even more. With Amazon: no mail-in rebates, no additional shipping charges, and everything should be here by Saturday. But I have never used Amazon for PC parts and NewEgg was a known good quantity. I may come to regret the $50 to $100 I saved by choosing Amazon over NewEgg. With this system, I should finally have the option to play all the latest sims I have been avoiding due to CPU limitations: DCS series Take On Helicopters I also can't wait to see how much better my existing games play: SF2 series Arma2 series I was looking forward to playing Rise of Flight, but their false accusation of image file theft against the Over Flanders Field developers irritated me enough that I don't think they will ever get a $1 from me. I don't spend that much time flying WWI anyway, so FE2 will have to do.

I have really enjoyed the abilities of the new system to run older games well such as ArmA 2, FC2, and SF2. I can see that I may need the 7970, multi-gpus, or better if I am going to go "Ultra HD" (the new 2160p TV resolution) or use multi-monitors with DCS.

The slider that kills my DCS performance is the Anit-Aliasing Mode in the max quality "Super sample AA" position. Super sampling greatly increases the image quality, especially when looking at gauges from longer distances or looking at terrain into the distance from a low altitude, but the FPS cost in DCS is just too high. So, I knock it back one notch to Adaptive Multi-sample AA, which still looks almost as good, but gets much higher FPS. In other games such as SF2, I can use Super sample AA and maintain Vsync 60 fps, unless I am over Iceland, then its more like 30 fps.

There is a CF-104 "walkaround" website that shows a cockpit without the RWR, but otherwise looks very similar: http://www.arcair.com/awa01/101-200/awa101-CF104/00.shtm

The original free MiG-21 cockpits created head bobbing effects. Use those as a reference. Essentially, you are creating a g-meter, but instead of connecting it to a needle on a gauge in the cockpit model, you are connecting the animation effect to the entire cockpit model. So, select the correct instrument parameter, connect it to the right node of the cockpit lod, and choose the correct type of movement (roll, translation, etc.) around the correct axis and you can get any kind movement you want.

Focusing on the F-15C means focusing on the US market, which makes sense for a lot of reasons. I am the US customer they are aiming at and I prefered flying the F-15C in LOMAC/FC/FC2 primarily out of familiarity with the systems combined with the fact that it was one of my all-time favorite aircraft long before there were flight sims or even MiG-29s/Su-27s. While I would prefer an F-4 to the F-15, I prefer the F-15 to the MiG-29 or Su-27. The DCS:MiG-21bis, if done well and I am able to employ it as successfully as I can in the SF series may end up outranking the F-15C. Of course, as an air-to-air fanatic, I prefer all of them to the A-10, Su-25, and Ka-50. FC3 will hold me until the MiG-21bis, and the MiG-21bis may be my favorite for a long time until F-104/F-4 aircraft and others of similar capabilities from that era become available.

I saw this on SimQH and wanted to make sure it got echoed here: http://forums.vrsimulations.com/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9059&start=0&sid=e6bcc07dc7df8535afc45cab7ef27466 I hope this does well, as competition is good for us simmers :)

Just caught up with this. Much better, but there is still an extra large blurry flight path marker wandering around on the HUD when tracking a target for a Sparrow shot.

For the dev forums to only have traffic directly related to them and the community chit chat to be somewhere else is actually a good thing. And the developers are perfectly welcome to continue using this site as well if they happen to have time and are interested in the daily chit chat stuff. The only complication I have seen in the Third Wire/CombatAce setup is people going to Third Wire for tech support on mods and people coming to CombatAce to report bugs with the game engine, which is quickly resolved by someone suggesting that the poster seek help on the other site. Most of what happens on other sim sites gets mentioned here sooner or later anyway, so it is not a bad thing to focus your time here.

Nothing stopping you from moving back here. Go to SimQH briefly once a day to look for dev news (or wait for it to leak here), then spend the rest of your time here. Problem solved. As time progresses, more will do the same and the SimQH forum will be solely used by the devs and those needing to communicate with them. Such a system is actually preferable and is the way it has been with the SF series where most of the community hangs out here and then pops in to the official Third Wire forums when seeking tech support or other questions for the developer.

Far too easy. I don't even have to look that one up.

Off topic: Currently, my job title is "SCADA technician" for the Toho Water Authority in Kissimmee, FL. I am principally paid to solve industrial control problems, but this is not the place to go into details about what that means, what I actually do, or how to get into this field. On topic: Now I am heading off to buy the Mirage IIIEL to complete my collection of SF products (much as I have a collection of 1/48 scale model airplanes).

I can't say I fly 100% stock: from the moment I complete a new install, I have to edit the ini to turn off sun flare and set antialiasing. Out of the box, I can fly F-4s/F-8s/F-105s/F-100s/Mirages vs MiGs... so what exactly do I need mods for? I tend to substitute 600 gal drop tanks for guns pods on F-4 loadout files when I get tired of manually doing so through the in-game loadout screen. I also tend to make MiG-21s/MiG-23s flyable as time and interest permit. Sooner or later, I throw a few addon aircraft like Julhelm's Convair, the F-101 Voodoo, and/or some of the Razbam stuff like the F2H-2. It takes me months to accumulate all of the above minor changes after a new patch/install. As I don't care too much for modern or hypothetical fights and the crappy stock terrain doesn't affect air combat, I rarely bother to install any other mods. While I have bought all of the DLC except for the latest Mirage IIIEL, I hardly ever fly any of those. I like having the option to fly whatever I want whenever I feel like it, but I am not compelled to periodically fly every stock aircraft. I do enjoy collecting them, and unlike user mods, they stay current with every patch/new release. My pay is on the order of $35/hour, and I get time-and-a-half for overtime, so if I inadvertently clock out late like I did today and get 1/4 hour of OT, I have $13 of play money I can blow on DLC. Which means, whether I need it or not, whether I will fly it or not, I will buy the Mirage IIIEL tonight and have lost nothing for doing so while expanding my stock flyable plane set by 1. As long as a significant number of other Third Wire customers do the same, what does TK have to lose by making every minor variant of every stock model into DLC? If the changes required to create finished DLC variants truly took only 30 minutes, TK would be cranking these out even faster than he has. I suspect he budgets a certain amount of time to research the variant as well as time spent creating textures/decals, making minor mods to 3d models, and editing ini files. I have been pleasantly surprised by some of the releases. I look forward to seeing what else he digs up and the history behind the real aircraft.

As much as TK focuses on budget/profit issues, he is still an avid fan of aviation. TK has specifically mentioned that he prefers to release aircraft in groups so that rare or interesting types that only a minority would like have their cost covered by popular types that most people want. His theory is that If he produced addon aircraft, only the most popular would make back the time/money invested in them, which means only the popular ones could be produced. Of course, he totally defeated that objective with SF2NA as it released only one new flyable and perhaps the most popular flyable ever included in a TW release. The days of four or more new flyables per release are gone unless there is a massive change in the economics involved.

In case you haven't noticed, the days where TK gives away the F-4J and A-4F for free are gone. The bills went up and the market value for '60s era "sim lite" air combat games remained the same. TK made it clear from the start what DLC would be: skins and minor variants of existing aircraft. So, what is wrong with TK trying to maximize customer choice and income by releasing these minimum change DLCs? If you don't like a particular product, vote with your wallet. My only problem is that I have to keep applying the latest patch revisions to use the latest DLCs whether I like the changes in the patch or not. The game is becoming more "nerfed" for "casual" players who expect hard settings to allow their missiles to work every time and enemy missiles to miss or do at most minor damage, and can't be bothered to lower and raise landing gear/flaps/tailhooks (TK actually expressed that he is considering eliminating gear/flaps/hook controls in favor of automation to reduce button complexity), Charging $3 for minor aircraft variants that nobody is forced to buy is simply a non-issue for me, especially when contrasted with the future of the core detail/gameplay. For the record, the A-4L is just as unique as the Japanese F-4. It retains many physical features of the A-4C, especially the length. But besides the obvious hump, it has updated "separate" intakes and adds the spoilers prevalent on later Skyhawks. You can't make a 100% physically correct A-4L from either an A-4C, A-4E, or A-4F. It requires a dedicated model to get all the details correct. As a fan of the F-4, I appreciate every minor detail that distinguishes every variant of F-4 TK has released. It is therefore equally easy for me to appreciate the many Skyhawk, Hunter, Mirage, and other variants of stock aircraft TK has decided to cover. While I happen to like Skyhawks and Mirages, I have never cared much about Hunters -- yet I own all the variants released by TK. Call me stupid, but I actually enjoy having the largest possible library -- and in a way that doesn't get broken every time a major game engine update is released. If you can live without an A-4L (and I am sure everyone can short of true Skyhawk fanatics), don't buy it. But when you consider the price, it is more than fair for a unique new model with a customized ini. I have paid far more for the same or less between Razbam and YAP.

There is a reason to use third wire refueling probe: textures. Cockpit's texture won't change with external textures, external probe will.

Original F-15As (not sure when this stopped) were delivered without ALQ-135 system... development issues. I have the books that would document what systems were added when... just have to dig up the facts.

Actually, they made it clear that you already had to have FSX Gold or FSX + Addon installed in addition to the $50.

First month is $50... probably competitive rate after that. Looks like it will fulfill the intent of Fighter Ops. Some sort of role playing at being a real pilot starting with the training. Looks like it will favor modern aircraft... which isn't very compelling for me.

You need to try the free 2 weeks with Aces High and find a P-47 squad. They have plenty of P-47 variants to choose from and some really good guys. With built in voice coms that have multiple "radio" channels, you can have a lot of fun. The flight models are detailed enough that it takes a while to learn how to push a particular aircraft to its limits and the weaknesses of the other aircraft you are flying against. It you have the time to commit to flying regularly with a squad, Aces High can be one of the most rewarding sims you can fly.

Sorry for the misinformation. I had wrongly assumed that DLC skins locked the textures. I am sure TK would be bothered if somebody "modded" these new skins and distributed them. So, if terrain files that very few would ever steal or benefit from are locked down, why are skins that he is trying to sell be open to extraction/modding/redistribution? I don't get TK's logic on which files to lock down or no lock down? Leave them all open or protect your property as best you can, but sitting in the middle where honest modders are impeded but dishonest pirates are not does not make any sense to me.

$600/year? Not so sure I will even consider trying it. I don't believe they are going to deliver a flight/combat experience even as good as FC2 much less DCS. Of course if they get a sizable user base, they will have the kind of income it takes to make it as good or better than DCS. But they better do some market research. Aces High was $30/month and eventually trimmed its price down to $15/month which remains the going rate for a decent online game. $600 will take me a lot further in DCS... and still be mine to fly every year after tha. But, if it was everything I ever wanted in a combat sim... I still might try it for a month or two.

In the beginning (well not the beginning, but not too far from the beginning), TK would provide templates that would make it easy for anyone to make half-decent skins. Since SF2, no more templates. Make your own, or hope someone like Sundowner is kind enough to make and release them. Personally, I do not have the time or talent to make the skins I want, and others have not done them either. So, TK's DLC strategy appeals to someone like me. Added benefit is TK should keep them up to date if he makes 3d model fixes, which doesn't always happen with user made skins. I am interested in the Blue Angels and would equally appreciate the Thunderbirds. The problem I see is that I would like to use them as starting points for even better skins... an I don't see that happening without a way to extract dlc cat files. So the DLC are cheap and cool... but kind of empty compared to the community library of skins that are completely free and moddable!

By the way, TotalSims = iEN, who lifted the rights to Warbirds from Hitech and friends. Forum sig of the man that makes it all happen: WildBill Stealey CEO IENT Lt. Colonel, USAF Retired