streakeagle

The USAF "rewards" great combat units by assigning them training jobs. When F-15s were replacing F-4s, what famous unit from Vietnam became a training unit? Triple Nickel It even kind of makes sense that your combat proven best be the heralds of the next generation of fighter planes and fighter pilots. Unfortunately, the F-35 is kind of a step down from F-15s. The F-22 would be a higher honor: smaller more elite group that took the place of the F-15 as opposed to being the F-16's low budget replacement.

Be careful adding gpus to store bought PCs with integrated video chipsets. A lot of PCs are sold with the smallest, cheapest power supply that will get the job done with the hardware originally installed in it. Any decent gaming gpu may eventually kill the power supply. You also have to look at cooling issues. Cheaper PCs usually have smaller cases with less ventilation. If you are lucky, the case will be plenty big enough to fit a decent modern card and will have places to add more fans. <rant> I have a desktop PC my wife's employer gave to her. It is much newer and faster than my aging Athlon 64 3800 gaming PC. But it is in a smaller case, has room for only a single slot gpu, and only a 300 Watt power supply. If I put $100 into a new power supply, use an old case I have laying around, put $230 into an odd 6850 single slot gpu, and buy a Win 7 64 Home license for $120, I would have a decent PC compared to what I am using... but is at 3 years behind the times and at $450, I could buy a much newer better bare bones combo and end up with a far superior PC. Some day I will get an up to date rig so I can fully enjoy my existing sims and be able to fly the latest ones like Rise Of Flight and DCS:A-10 as well. </rant>

When the Luftwaffe, then flying F-4F Phantom IIs, absorbed MiG-29s and their pilots, the first thing they did was ground the MiG pilots so that they could learn to fly ACM the western way. The MiG-29 pilots could not understand why they were grounded, so a mock fight was conducted between an F-4F and a MiG-29, both being flown by the best of each sides pilots. The F-4F smoked the MiG-29. Even with the 20+ year difference between the service entry dates for the two aircraft and the resulting technology and performance advantages, pilot quality, training, and experience are still more important than the plane. I read the article describing this event in a Smithstonian Aviation magazine in a Navy Exchange magazine rack.

I have seen an entire TV special about that. Fortunately, satellites provided a far more practical and effective solution aside from the humongous cost of lobbing even the smallest payloads into a decent orbit.

nVidia has had their fair share of driver issues including driver changes that resulted in brand new cards burning up. So, I wouldn't restrict the advice to ATi products. Unless you are suffering catastrophic problems that a new driver specificially fixes, I wouldn't update drivers for the sake of updating UNTIL there is some history of what has happened to those who have done the same. I have been using ATi for a very long time: Radeon 8500/9100 128MB Radeon 9000 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB Radeon x800XL 256MB Radeon x1800 512MB Radeon HD4890 1GB None of those cards ever failed and I have had only a few annoying driver issues. The main problem I have experienced is that much later drivers add some new feature or bug fix that I want, but break some critical backwards compatibility with older games I still play. I know for a fact, nVidia drivers have done the same, so don't give me some fanboi story about ATi drivers being crap compared to nVidia. It is useful for both ATi and nVidia to remain competitive. It ensures consumers continue to get better products for competitive prices.

I remember my reaction to seeing Star Wars when it first came out. I was in the 4th grade. 1. Darth Vader and Storm Trooper in opening scenes. 2. R2D2 and C3PO. 3. X-wing fighters. I learned to draw all of the above and made my own paper models of R2D2, C3PO, and X-wings. I love being Storm Troopers and X-Wing pilots in Star Wars Battlefront 2, almost enjoy that as much as combat flight sims and OFP/AmrA2.

My son fell in love with Star Wars at about 2-1/2. I also taught him to play Star Wars Battlefront 2. But he has always loved clone troopers and battle droids more than anything else. So he prefers Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. He also fell in love with Hoth thanks to Battlefront 2: Snow Troopers, AT-ATs, and AT-STs. But the most memorable scene to him was Jango Fett getting his head lopped off by Mace Windu's light saber. This had a direct effect on his play time with the figures: someone isn't truly dead until you pop their head off. It has taken a lot of work for me to keep up with all of the heads, arms, and legs he likes to pop off of his clones and droids.

The Mirage looks all too well in USAF colors. It could easily have served with Air Defense Command. In those colors, it kind of looks like a delta-winged F-104... Which leads to the inverse: what if France had flown F-102s, F-104s or F-106s instead of Mirage IIICs? With similar intakes, the F-104 would look good in the Mirage paint scheme with "Starfighter" across the nose :)

It should be very clear why most true all-weather interceptors had a crew of two until digital technology automated most of the RIO/WSO workload. Even with night vision, thermal imaging, and hi-res terrain-following radar, dedciated night/adverse weather aircraft still get a crew of two :) The alternative solution employed by both sides in the Cold War was to uses a single seat, but bypass the pilot completely with automated ground-control intercepts. The pilot could operate the radar and get a fire control solution while ground control steered his aircraft based on their radar tracks of the target and the interceptor. It is a great solution with decent sensors and weapons as long as you can avoid a furball.

Excellent. Make the most of it before you go out and start your own company :)

Cold War Rearmed 2 Demo is a blast. This is a project to import everything from OFP/Resistance into ArmA 2. The demo has my all-time favorite warm up mission: Steal the Car as well as several other long time favorites from the original OFP. The rebuilt islands are great! In OFP, I usually beat Steal the Car very quickly using the "Han Solo" approach, i.e. run-n-gun relying on my reflexes and familiarity with the mission to pick them apart before they even get a shot off. Not so in Arma 2 Combined Operations. I don't know the patrol patterns and my pc runs a little slow for quick reaction times, so I finally beat it using the low-n-slow approach. I lay prone on a slope, watched a few patrols go by. Picked off the ones I had identified, then moved in sprinting from cover to cover. Luckily, I spotted the remaining personnel before they spotted me and hastily killed them. Took down 8 guys. In OFP, I would have scored 1 kill for every 1-2 shots fired. In ArmA 2 Combined Arms, I am spending 3 to 5 rounds to drop these guys. In OFP, I played on max difficulty with Super AI, whereas I get my butt kicked by AI in ArmA 2 with just the default Regular difficulty. Pure joy to play this. Project 85 was pretty good, but I didn't feel like scripting missions and didn't see any laying around. Likewise for Vietnam The Experience, which is the original OFP Vietnam mod with quite a few tweaks to take advantage of the latest ArmA 2 platform. The UH-1 and AH-1 are much better than OFP, but not fully up to Arma 2 standards.

Windows would have to be setup to see keyboards as separate controllers the way it does joysticks. By default, it unifies all keyboards. Not sure if it has any kind of option to see it any other way. If there is some way to choose the keyboard as a DirectX controller and all of the keys mapped as DirectX buttons... that would be the path Windows might be able to handle. What is the limit to the number of DirectX buttons per controlller?

I don't know much about Peter Falk as a real person, but I can say I thoroughly enjoyed him in every part I ever saw him acting. RIP, Peter!

If they sounded like they were lying, they wouldn't be very good recruiters ;) My Navy recruiter was very honest about almost everything, but he did distort his answers on my questions about the typical daily work schedule on a submarine. He gave the ideal, best case answers that made it sound like you could relax and enjoy the ride after putting in your 6 hours. He left out the drills, clean ups, training, qualifications, etc. that made it difficult to get the rest needed to stand a good sonar watch. Of course, as you get more senior, there were times when I was 6 hours on, 18 hours off, bored silly, and unable to sleep. Whereas, the days I went 9 hours on and 9 hours off made sure the time went by faster. But of course, a lot of the USAF types are 9-to-5-ers with a nice base to live and work on

I prefer dealing directly with the software writer. Plenty of distributors/major software companies have had problematic DRMs. My favorite one-man opearation, Third Wire, has had no DRM of any kind and you can re download the software at any time. If you lose your link, you can email him to get a reply with the same link. Now do I need to list all of the big names that charge you double what Third Wire does for a game and require you to have online access to not only activate but in some cases simply play the game? Aces High is a very small company and is extremely reliable with no DRM. The disaster known as StarForce was used in many major releases, never an independent developer. So, I would never claim adding middlemen is a benefit. Each company needs to be assessed individually regardless of size or reputation for EACH individual piece of software they release. I prefer no DRM at all, but as long as Steam doesn't go out of business over the next 10 years, I don't mind their system either. If I actually believed that Steam would be available the way it is now for the rest of my life, I would even say it is the best way to go. Otherwise, any software that requires me to communicate with a server to activate an install will eventually be worthless when that server is no longer available.

On the one hand, it is really a very minor change. On the other hand it is revisionist history, i.e. altering historical facts. Where does it stop? To meet German laws, photos with Swastikas have to be retouched, model airplanes have to leave those decals out, even games have to delete them entirely or make them an optional download. For me, the ultimate is in the country that made freedom of speech one of its founding principles, I can burn the national flag, an effigy of the President, or even make crude cartoons about God/Jesus of the dominant religion, but the moment you talk about burning the Quran or having Mohammed appear on South Park, it is the end of the world. So, people within the USA can do things that are utterly offensive to the majority of our own population, but they are severely discouraged from doing the same types of things if outsiders threaten to react violently? The system has been utterly broken since the emergence of the term "politically correct" -- which is quite the oxymoron as most politicians say and do things that are anything but "politically correct". The editing was far superior on the Dambusters video... so, I liked that one much better even if I am more of a Mosquito/633 Squadron fan. There was a movie made in the early 80's that had clips from the Dambusters, one of my all-time favorites: Pink Floyd the Wall, and they didn't dub out the name of the dog either!

The lines of a Spitfire are timeless. Just looking at them from various angles is so pleasing to the eye :)

It is a known bug recently reported at the Third Wire forums to TK. USAAF is there to support the P-51 Mustang which can be flown before 1947 when the USAF came into existence. However, the game engine seems to randomly toggle between the two names independent of the date you are flying. TK is looking into it. There are a number of glitches in the latest patch release, so I expect a minor bug fix patch as fast as TK can investigate and correct the bugs in this newest release set.

What about "department stores" ?

The F-14 sim will be the first to drop support for DX9.

There was a proposal (late 70s?) to try to make special refueling trucks that could go fast enough to refuel an aircraft from the ground while the aircraft flew inverted. The artist concept I saw showed an F-15 upside down over a tanker truck with a refueling boom between them. Obviously, it didn't go past the discussion stage as it was obvious that the truck would have to be very fast and have a very long level run to be able to keep up with a jet fighter. Meanwhile, the fighter would have to be at the edge of a stall while trying to maneuver for the boom while inverted! I don't know who proposed it, but it never should have even reached the artist concept phase!

Well, with high-end HOTAS, you pretty much get what you pay for (notwithstanding the Thrustmaster Cougar that orignally cost quite a bit AND needed aftermarket mods to fix its shortcomings raising the cost to the $800-$1000 level). I have had Saitek X-36 USB, X-45, and X-52 Pro. All of them are still operational, but the X-36 is not officially supported in Win 7. The insides of the X-52 Pro in terms of X and Y axis are much better than most until you get to the Warthog and Logitech G940. The G940 has far more problems than any Saitek stick I have had and costs a lot more, so I would not even consider that an option unless Force Feedback is really important. Given that I can't afford a Warthog right now, there are only two useful choices for a HOTAS: Saitek or CH Products. I don't like the F-16 style stick of the new Saitek. Doesn't interest me at all. So I have din't have a stick right now, the only two I would even consider are the X-52 Pro and the CH Products Fighter Stick. I could afford a CH Pro, but I much prefer the ergonomics of the Saitek sticks over the CH Pro, especially the throttles. So, from my perspective, there is only one stick I would buy: the X-52 Pro. There is a Thrustmaster that has advanced internal components, but I don't want a stick that isn't optimized for flight sims both in terms of appearance and functionality. Aside from the Cougar and the Warthog, Thrustmaster products seem to be about as good as common Logitech sticks. The Saitek products were progressively becoming worse as the X-45 and X-52 looked more and more like some kind of kid's space toy and used cheaper and cheaper components compared to the X-36 USB. If the X-52 Pro had not provided a "black" stick with high-end analog axis components, I would be flying with a Figther Stick right now.

I got my X-52 Pro for $100 (special sale at GoGamer when X-52 Pros were just hitting the shelves). It is far superior to the X-45. Haven't really had any problems with it, but the centering spring design makes small movements a little sloppy when the stick is close to center. But compared to the X-45, it is way smoother. Saitek progamming software has always been a little buggy (been using it since 2000 with an X-36 USB on Win98SE), but the current release is fairly stable and gets the job done. If you can get one for $150 or less, the price/performance ratio is pretty good. Mine works as well as it did the day I got it and I have used it quite a bit over the years. For $200, CH Products becomes a better option and for another $100 more you could gamble on a Logitech with force feedback. If I had money to blow, I would get a Thrustmaster Warthog :)

There is a really old (likely incompatible as it was released in 2003) Red Flag campaign at avsim.com, it is a mod of Dave's original Top Gun campaign to use F-4Es vs F-5s. http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=sfmup&DLID=41515

Graphics look good. Not my style of gameplay. The mouse and keyboard is used to direct the spaceships rather than "fly" them. Kind of similar to Knights of the Old Republic. Instead of needing first person shooter/flight sim skills, you need World of Warcraft button pushing menu selection skills. For instance, in SF series, you fly the target into your sights, then squeeze the trigger. In BSG Online, you select the target then use the mouse to point in the general direction of the target and it automatically fires. On the bright side, the spaceships look pretty good and you can dress in new or old style Colonial uniforms.