streakeagle

According to their road map, there are going to be two aircraft: 1) the previously planned DCS jet, which the current best guess is an F-18 Hornet of some form 2) a "flying legend" Given that DCS is a modern jet sim, I would have expected the "legend" to be one of the aircraft already in the LOMAC/FC/DCS universe like a MiG or Phantom. What would you do with a P-51 in the DCS map?

Precursor to the Thunderchief :)

:) First Mytai... now you. Its raining original SFP1 modders at combatace.com!

Welcome back!

Poland... suppose in the early 80's, the Soviets decide to suppress Poland with tanks and planes, but the Polish people revolt anyway and NATO decides to risk WW3 to provide interdiction missions to protect the unarmed masses from being crushed by tanks and planes. Very similar to the recent NATO campaign in Libya. This almost happened, so it is a very realistic scenario. Of course, at the time, I thought it was going to start WW3, but having watched the Iron Curtain and Soviet Union collapse with hardly a shot fired, maybe it could have followed a Korean War model fought to a draw or a Vietnam model where one side is forced to retreat for political reasons. This scenario permits an all-out conventional war in Europe with every type of mission being needed for a successful campaign. Maybe a modern Berlin Airlift that goes hot. Depending on time frame, F-4s and/or F-15s have to escort supplies into Berlin and end up performing intercepts/sweeps/airfield strikes. Could lead to some ground action and even threaten WW3, or could back down after a few air-to-air incidents.

And while the USN clearly preferred the centerline tank, I have plenty of photos that show the USN did use the wing tanks.

SF1 multiplayer connectivity is based on DirectPlay from the Microsoft DirectX library. DirectPlay is unsupported in DirectX 10 and later, so the multiplayer support in SF1 had to deleted in SF2 which supports DirectX 10. TK cannot develop the network code for any reasonable amount of time and money. Any code he would be able to develop would be even less capable than the already limited SF1 support. So, TK has stipulated that if and when he tries to bring back multiplayer, it will have to be based on a monthly subscription fee to subsidize the cost of creating and expanding the code base. As the audience for the SF1 support was extremely small, I don't think it will pay for itself even with a monthly subscription model. Who is going to pay for something that is less capable than the SF1 version of multiplayer that almost no one would play when it was free? I am a huge fan of SF multiplayer and would like to see TK bring it back in any form possible, but I don't see it happening since TK is already having trouble keeping the game profitable in the current format. If only Microsoft could put a new but backwards compatible DirectX 10/11 DirectPlay module, TK could at least bring back the original multiplayer code.

One year is simply not enough. I normally alternate between 2 years in Vietnam: 1965 and 1972. When I do Israel: 1973 and 1982. If I absolutely had to do only one year, probably 1972 where I can have historical combat between F-4Es and MiG-21MFs.

Old TV commercial with Russian fashion show... "Day Wear"... "Evening Wear"... "Swim Wear"... With all of the fashions looking identical and being little better than potato sacks and the model looking much like the lady carrying the log. Found a link: Didn't even remember it was a Wendy's commercial... which is an epic fail for the advertising agency because as intended I never forgot the commercial, but had no clue what they were advertising :)

Each skin folder needs to have its own hangar.jpg file. The absence of a correctly named hangar file results in the blank default hangar jpg. I already did a quick test and relocated my existing hangar.jpg down to a skin folder, which resulted in the hangar screen working correctly.

The real A-10A, as originally released, had a minimum of electronics. The GAU-8 30mm rounds have such velocity that its trajectory is almost flat. The gunsight was a simple fixed reticle. I have documentation that explains the whole procedure used by A-10A pilots. Range was estimated by how much of the target was covered by the pip at the center of the reticle, then the That-Looks-About-Right (TLAR) method was used to place the pipper per training/experience based on the estimated range. The actual gun camera film reels I have show how quickly the A-10 pilots can acquire, fire, and disengage against little black dots that I can't even see without reviewing the footage several times. So, the game uses a fixed reticle just like the real A-10 had. I don't know if the A-10 had a gunsight depression adjustment knob, but I would guess that it did. This is not possible in the game, but it can be adjusted manually in the ini files.

Finally got to try this out. Looks great!

Very well done...kind of like the movie "Heavy Metal" with a bit of "Matrix" style combat thrown in. Thanks for the link. It was well worth my time.

No recent Korean War flight sims. Last one was "MiG Alley". If you don't mind older graphics and a few bugs, this sim was updated by a third party to support TrackIR. It runs on my Win7 64-bit machine just fine. Flyables include F-80, F-84, F-51, F-86, and MiG-15... can't remember if any others are flyable. Very detailed sim. If the graphics were updated and the bugs fixed, it would be a top-notch sim.

It is only obvious because the photographer's on my submarine used the same trick. The filters make cool looking photos... but having seen the trick, I now look for it :P Much like movies/tv shows where they put a blue filter to make it look like night time while still filming everything under hot, bright lights.

In SF2, I can beat F-15s flying MiG-23s... if I successfully survive the merge. I stay low and close as fast as possible, but go perpindicular to break locks. If I don't make any mistakes, I can get into a close-in turn fight. From that position, I have at least a 50% chance of getting into firing position before running out of fuel. AA-8s can get the job done or at least slow down the F-15 enough for a gun kill. Sometimes, I even manage an AA-7 RH kill. But it takes precise flying. If I keep my view inside the cockpit, I can't see/judge the angles well enough to win consistently, but I can still win more than 25% of the time. It really depends on how the F-15 AI flies. If it flies perfectly, it is a draw or I lose.

Thank you, I needed that... just in time :)

What patch level? At one point, chaff/flares/ecm were too effective, working almost 100% of the time.

Must be firing the phasers near a black hole to have light bend like that ;) Guess the Enterprise needs a good LCOS to use phasers in the SF series.

I would rather an unmanned drone suffer the consequences of a virus than a manned F-35. Modern planes are highly computerized and it would be very painful to lose pilots to virus attacks. Think the recent Battlestar Galactica on Sci-fi where the pilots flying newer Vipers were immobilized and killed by viruses. The real solution is not to avoid computerized systems, but to handled them in a secure fashion. There is no reason a virus should ever come into contact with a military system. Military networks should be using secure VPNs and no one should be moving files by USB between non-military networks and military networks. How much you want to bet that the virus that got the Iranian centrifuges got transmitted by a USB key. Back to the drone issue... the current drones are unmanned, but no autonomous. That means that the difference between a drone and a manned fighter is the radio link between the pilot and the control system. I just don't see where manned/unmanned makes a difference in this case, other than a man would be at risk if it was a manned aircraft.

I would say neither... just an orange filter on normal daylight photos :P

I-75 is not heavily patrolled along certain long stretches. Lots of Florida is swampland anyway. Back in 2004-2008, I was driving back and forth between Atlanta and Tampa. Posted legal limits were in the 65-70 mph range, but I could do 80 mph in parts of Georgia and 90+ across quite a bit of Florida. Georgia had a substantial highway patrol presence between Atlanta and the Florida state line. They pulled people over in massive numbers... but never messed with me. I simply did the pace of the fastest group of traffic I could find and never hit any kind of speed traps. Before I joined the Navy in 1989, I-75 was hardly used at all from midnight to 4am. There were highway patrol / speed traps right as I got back to I-4/I-75 interchange, but no real threats outside of Tampa, especially going south. I would clear the known threat areas and then cruise between 100-130 mph for 2 hours out and back depending on weather conditions. The Firebird would start lifting at 130, so I had to back off on the speed if there was wind. Back then, the speed limit was still 55 mph, too. At the time, a lot of traffic did 75 mph. I was doing 80 and was passed by two Sheriffs who had to be doing 90+. I assumed they were heading for a call, but soon found them when I got off at my exit... they were at a donut shop! While I never got pulled over for doing the 100mph+ speeds, I did get pulled over for doing 90 in a 55 while coming home from USF. For some reason the officer guessed that I was an electrical engineering student and was sympathetic. He just gave me a verbal warning. Looking back, I can't believe my luck: no accidents, no tickets, no arrests, etc. Now, I feel uncomfortable doing more than 10 mph over the limit unless everyone else is going faster (like my return trips from Georgia). If only I had then what I have now: an mp3 player with a virtually unlimited number of great songs instead of a few 90 minute tape cassettes. But I still enjoy hearing all of my old cruising music when I am driving between Orlando and Tampa at 70-80 mph... in an Altima. My current 1981 Corvette has power steering and A/C issues that have kept it in the garage for most of the summer. The stock engine in my 1981 also gets horrible fuel economy and has much inferior performance to my 1980 L-82. Someday, I'll fix that and be cruising again with windows down, t-tops off... and my entire 6-700 CD collection in the form of a 64GB USB key :)

The $80 million luxury sub is absolutely amazing. USS Dolphin was only 165 feet long and nowhere near as comfortable. The fact that it is rated for 1,000 feet is impressive. However, no matter what the writeup says, there is nothing routine or safe about submarine operations. I can't imagine operating a sub purely for fun. The operating/maintenance costs would be staggering. But I guess if you have $80 million to blow on a sub, what's another $5-20 million per year to keep it operational?

One song I used to love cruising to late at night at insanely high speeds on the interstate was Bob Seger's "Turn the Page" (1986-1989 time frame in a 1974 Firebird Formula 350). Whenever I here this song, it takes me back to hours and hours of 100-130 mph cruising. Just plain lucky I never got caught? http://youtu.be/FaxjUUdGdH8 In the Navy around 1995-96, I found another song that I could here over the wind noise at high speeds with the t-tops removed: Stan Ridgway's take on "Ring of Fire". The pulsing deep base beat sounded great with my 1980 L-82 Corvette. My son loves Johnny Cash, but he loves this version of "Ring of Fire" even more: