streakeagle

The Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS looks impressive, but so did the Cougar. I hope it is as good as it looks, especially after a few years of use. Now, how will the CH Products HOTAS compare? As much as I would like to have force feedback, the G940 has a really bad reputation between hardware, firmware, and software issues. My Saitek X-52 Pro is working fine, but I really like the A-10 replica throttle. If only they had modeled the A-10A or F-15A with my beloved B-8 stick grip. But for the throttle alone I could live with an F-16 style grip. Right now, my F-4 Phantom stick uses MS Sidewider Pro USB guts. It works, but I think I would like to use something with more resolution and stability (i.e. ditch the pots, higher resolution A-to-D converters, and USB 2.0 interface). Maybe I should forget about configuration software and use the generic USB card chosen by the independent stick design? As long as I am using the MS Sidewinder guts, I have two unused pots (throttle and rudder) that could become dual throttle axis and a few unused buttons that could become speed brake, chaff, flares, etc. But I would really like to mix my F-4 stick with a throttle comparable to the A-10 throttle since I can't find and/or afford to get real F-4 throttle handles right now.

Copied from SimHQ: http://www.splash-one-bandit.com/ Could never come to anything, or might be the next big thing. Only time will tell.

The real point of eliminating control surfaces is stealth. No hinged joints with gaps, hinges, etc. While losing the engine would obviously be a major problem with complete loss of control, it presents no more risk than unstable aircraft losing computers or tailless aircraft using vectored thrust (think X-31). It seems like this project is principally for stealth drones as the practical application to commercial aircraft appears to have little value.

I very much like certain tracks from Bjork and Sinead from the late 80's to mid 90's. A couple of them are on the mp3 player I listen to in my car. I haven't heard later music from either of them, so I don't know if the songs I like were flukes. I was introduced to Bjork by a friend in the Navy who loved the Sugar Cubes. A Navy friend also introduced me to the Red Hot Chili Peppers before they became an MTV hit. Most of the music I listen to not only sounds good to me, but takes me back to specific places and times. Sometimes I forget where I am at while driving as memories are rushing by. If I ignored any of my music because of the personal beliefs, actions, sexual orientation, etc. of the artists that wrote/recorded it, my collection would be much smaller, possibly even non-existant. I could care less whether Sinead tore a photo of the Pope or shaved her head. For me SF is both a game and a chance to relive history. I can't see myself using it as a therapy to attack those who truly irritate me. If I were to ever add a famous person and/or their home as a target, it would be one historically related to the game. Jane Fonda in Hanoi comes to mind. I could see myself in an F-105G suppressing anti-aircraft guns only to discover using a view key that the one I am hitting is crewed by Hanoi Jane :)

My solution is to own them all and play as I see fit. You will be hard pressed to find multiplayer opponents for the SF1 series, and aside from multiplayer, the SF2 series is so much better. If you can only afford one, I would go for SF2. But SF1 games are pretty cheap, so why not buy one game from each series and figure out which one you like best.

The state of Georgia has always had a special realtionship with arms deals via its leadership of the Senate Arms Committee. Lockheed Georgia won many contracts whether or not they were the best option thanks to their connections. My submarine was named after Georgia Senator Richard B. Russell thanks to his "kindness" to the Navy and the military in general. It is funny when they single out someone like Duke Cunningham and put him in jail when almost the entire system is corrupt. Of course, Duke isn't laughing about it. Duke must have crossed someone higher up to end up being investigated and prosecuted. From what I understand, the Boeing design was superior in many ways, but Lockheed made a much lower bid and then needed bailout money from the federal government to survive cost overruns caused by design problems and delays. Boeing took the lessons learned from the design competition and turned it into the 747. While the C-5A's wings were cracking, the 747 became a huge commercial success. I love the C-5A, but it is a terrible design compared to the 747.

I grew up with C-5A's flying overhead in MAC colors: white over gray with a blue stripe and silver wings. I still prefer to see them painted that way. The gray scheme shown above looks much better than Euro One though. It is amazing to see one coming in for a landing. The combination of large size and low speed makes it look like they are just hanging in the air. While roughly the same size as a 747, its rarity and military purpose has always made the C-5 special to me.

They were a great source for OFPGOTY as they rolled everything into one install.exe giving you OFP 1.46 and Resistance 1.96 without the multi-CD / license typing fest of the original packages. I would hate to see them go. The DRM free model was very appealing as well... burn it to CD, no problems ever even if the company shuts down. I can imagine a day when Steam ceases to be and all of the games purchased via steam become useless. The trick is, do I still have a PC that can run the games if Steam disappears (assuming it will be 5 years or more before it could cease to be)?

Have you patched it up to the latest revision? As released, it did not support force feedback, but in recent patches it was added back.

TK explained a long time ago why replay wasn't practical with his game engine. It involves deterministic versus non-deterministic programming. In a conventional deterministic program, if you start in the exact same point and feed exactly the same inputs to the program, you get exactly the same results. TK's engine is non-deterministic, every time you play you get different results even if you give it the same exact control inputs. So, for a replay program to work, it would have to record everything that is happening in the game down to the individual bullets being fired by M61 gatling guns at a very fast time interval. Now, I know it can be done because Aces High 2 appears to track everything even when you are flying in an arena with 400 other people plus AI flak and ships, but TK has stated he cannot do it. So, I don't think it is even on his list at all. The closest you can come to replay is to run fraps to record the video you are seeing. Obviously, this doesn't allow you to jump around and analyze what happened, but it is all you have.

I applaud his effort, and maybe it will have some impact. But if you are Bin Laden and hate the West, why are you going to care about what anyone thinks when you are certain that you are fighting Satan for Allah. It is refreshing to see someone with his background express such a level-headed point of view. Though, like Anwar El Sadat, it seems he arrived at this viewpoint through military defeat. There have been plenty of Muslim moderates transformed into terrorist extremists, but this is the only time I have seen one of the extremists transition to being a peace-seeking moderate. Even if his letter has little impact, his own transition gives me hope that this doesn't have to be an endless war the way Israel and the Arabs have been fighting for centuries. Maybe one day in the not so distant future, the extremists will become like Nazis: small fringe groups that don't have the money or power to do much more than fight amongst themselves and seen as unacceptable embarrassments by everyone else in the world.

I am a long time veteran of the series. I have owned every version of this game since the original Walmart Strategy First release of SFP1. Up to the 083006 patch level, the best AI dogfighters were in SP2a. They could actually aim and hit with short bursts of their guns. WoV introduced carriers, but killed AI effectiveness and broke many flight models. Enemy AI could barely hit anything and friendly AI was pretty much defenseless. By 083006, the AI was still short of the effectiveness seen in SP2a. WoI reintroduced AI that was aggressive and accurate. Friendly AI is still somewhat ineffective if you use HARD settings which bumps up enemy AI's likelyhood of having proficient pilots and gives friendly AI a higher probability of novices. Now for the direct answer to your question: SF2 AI out of the box is capable of shooting me down. Most of the time, they don't come close to flying like aces, but they can and do get behind me and shoot me down. AI is currently on par or better than SFP1 SP2a in air-to-air dogfighting. I have had MiG-21s using early AA-2 Atolls hit me. This almost never happened in SP2a and absolutley never happened to me in WoV or WoE at the 083006 patch level. However, I can still engage and beat MiG-17s while flying F-100s, F-105s, and F-4s with relative "ease" if I am free to use external views (like player to target) to maintain perfect situational awareness. Part of that is my level of experience. Part of that is that the AI still plays a mostly 2d turn-n-burn game that is predictable and therefore defeatable even in lead sleds like the F-105. I use the word "ease" in quotes because I have seen posts from plenty of people that have great trouble turn fighting MiGs in heavy US fighters. Even if you restrict me to 2d turn fighting, the MiG-17 can be beaten using aggressive scissors. Whereas, when a human pilot in multiplayer flies a MiG-17 against another human player, the only chance the heavy fighter has is if it has superior acceleration and climb to control the engagement, otherwise, the MiG-17 will eat you alive. So, even at its best, the AI doesn't come close to a skilled human player like doghouse, but the AI in SF2 is better than a lot of the people I met when I hosted SFP1/Wov/WoE/WoI online. One more reference: I posted and SF2V mission at Third Wire with four loaded F-105s getting jumped from behind by four MiG-17s. I had to set both the enemy and friendly AI to max skill to even get close to historical results, otherwise, I could clear the skies of MiG-17s and take no losses every single time. With the mission as released, if I stick to using the in-cockpit view with TrackIR (no padlocks or <T> key, etc.), the results vary each time I play, but come pretty close to reality. Now, jump into SF2I with the expansion pack and fly P-51Ds versus Spitfires. Neither side has the vertical performance of an F-104, F-4, or F-15. This is perfect for the AI's turn fighting skills. If you do not personally cut down the number of Spitfires quickly, they will eat the P-51Ds alive. But, as in F-4 vs MiG-17 fights, with a lot of practice, you can get to where the Spitfires are killable. I much prefer multiplayer, but this sim never supported multiplayer that well and the community was always pretty small. Now SF2 doesn't even have multiplayer and I am not really interested in giving up any of the refinements in SF2 to play multiplayer in SF1.

I had returned from naval service in 1997 and went back to the University of South Florida in January of 2000 to finish the degreed I had started in 1987. So there I was in the "fishbowl" where all the engineering students hung out and studied between classes. People in the nearby computer lab could no longer get through on the internet, as it was choked with traffic. So I mostly got 2nd hand verbal information. I was in a state of disbelief and didn't really come to grips with what had happened until I got home and saw everything on TV. While the President's initial response upon being informed wasn't the one I would want from the man leading this country, I fully understand it: utter shock and disbelief. He was literally stunned. <S> to Flight 93! In a no-win situation on the worst day in recent US history, they managed a victory. That one aircraft could have made an already bad day quite a bit worse.

I am not aware of an electronic copy. Mine is worn out and yellowing from all the years of reading it, tracing diagrams, and traveling in the Navy. It is probably the oldest aviation document I have in my collection as I received it as a gift from a Tampa Police Department radio dispatcher. In return, I gave her a posterboard T-38 replica about 2 1/2 feet long that I made using the profiles in this magazine. A few years ago, I got a Thunderbird book that has a lot more history and color photos, but none of the aircraft profiles. I lack similar documentation on the Blue Angels.

For me, the Korean War mod for SFP1 SP2a was always my favorite. This SF2 version is absolutely stunning. If it works as well as it looks, this team should seriously consider going "payware". Maybe the business model could be $1 per mission in 10 mission packs that come with all mods required to run the 10 missions? Wait, someone else is already abusing that model :P At a minimum, a small token $10 or $20 fee could be charged and used to pay for the CombatAce bandwidth to distribute it. Or maybe combined with a renewal of a full CombatAce subsription? This kind of work deserves monetary compensation of some sort (as does many of the best modders here - think Mirage Factory).

Whatever path TK takes, I am sure I will get more planes I want. I just hope TK finds a path that keeps him in business so that we keep getting more from him.

Games permitting players to be NAZIs are prolific. But no one has a problem with that. What about games where VC are user playable, i.e. Battlefield Vietnam? Obviously, the difference is time. As long as you wait 20 years or more after hostilities have ceased, it is no longer offensive to release a game where players can pretend to be US enemies and kill US troops per historical reality. The kind of logic that requires removing that game from store shelves is the kind of logic that requires censoring tv, movies, and books. I have no interest in playing games like Grand Theft Auto series, so I simply choose not to buy it. Do bases permit selling GTA? I personally find that more offensive than any tactical first person shooter. I wouldn't ban any games. Is a game any different than a book? I see it as a free speech issue.

I am looking at the possibility of making some "training missions" for the SF2 series and was using an old board game scenario book for ideas. One of the missions was to simply shoot at a gunnery banner as well as possible without shooting or colliding with the towing aircraft. It would be difficult to model a banner being flexible (i.e. bends when turning), but I would think a banner could be part of an aircraft's 3d model. Would I be wrong to think that it could consist of multiple meshes such that there would be separate damage textures for each section allowing review of where it had been hit? If it could be modeled as a pod that could be attached to any aircraft and still keep the multiple meshes for registering damage, that would be even better. Just a little something to think about. Ground targets in the form of gunnery bullseyes with multiple damage textures would be cool too.

Just finished several of the stock single player missions in Operation Arrowhead. They completely capture the best aspects of the original OFP and then add a whole bunch more: Screaming women and other innocent people that should not be shot. Classic shoot/don't shoot style gameplay. Goats. Sniper rifle with thermal imaging scope and selectable zoom. Almost cinematic quality graphics. I still have some issues due to my weak single core processor, but the ArmA2 series is simply amazing after so many years of playing OFP/Resistance.

The "little bird" with rockets and miniguns is a blast, too. Functionally, it is identical to my favorite UH-1 gunship configuration except that it is more agile. I know the helicopter flight models are as bad as any of the other vehicles in the game, but not having any other combat flight simulator that allows me to fly AH-1s, UH-1s, AH-64s, etc. has forced me to adapt to this implementation. In all other aspects it is immersive enough to make me forget about the flight models. Whereas as with aircraft, there are so many other sims available that do it much better that I can't force myself to become proficient with ArmA 2's flight models. If the DCS series ever decides to model a UH-1 or AH-1, I might finally get a decent alternative, but in the mean time, OFP/ArmA 2 remains my favorite for flying combat helo missions.

I found that there is a semi-finished "Project '85" mod that has unit and vehicle packs covering a lot of what I want. However, they were started in 2007 and have not been fully brought up to ArmA2 standards. The modder has moved on, so it is all "as is". Not sure if I am going to mess with mods at all. I haven't even begun to finish all of the stock missions.

I just got British Armed Forces. Steam has everything all patched up to current revision, so I used the optional "Combined Operations" startup to have everything available in one installation: ArmA2, Operation Arrowhead, and British Armed Forces. The only reason I would want mods is for older time frames. I really like the original game's 1985 time frame and the other mods I focused on were the Vietnam era mods, which were assembled into one awesome package. But out of the box, I get an old UH-1 with a single engine and door guns, which is pretty cool. I can't stand flying the jets. Horrible flight modeling/playability. However, I still thoroughly enjoy all of the helos and the various types of missions that can be flown with them. The ability to have more than one weapon manned per vehicle has been a great thing. That was one of the more annoying parts of OFP. Now, when can we start clubbing people with rifles? Fix bayonets? Or simply come up from behind and slit a throat? I am not talking about custom user scripts, I want out of the box functionality. First aid and dragging troops is pretty cool at this point. Much better than the OFP implementations.

While the mission editor is a very big deal to me, there have been "major tangible game changes" with almost every release. WoI had some major changes that impacted gameplay greatly - AI fixes and addition of terrain effects on radar and missiles. The SF2 series took the ball from WoI and added accurate variants of major flyable aircraft covering equipment carried, exterior 3d models, and best of all, accurate unique 3d cockpits reflecting all of these variants. I won't necessarily be using a mission editor every time I play, but I see the cockpit interior almost 100% of the time I am playing. If I had to pick between the two, I would have chosen the cockpits given that mission files are only text files and two user made editors already exist. Again, I am very excited about the idea of the stock game having a built in editor, but my perspective on where it ranks versus other "major tangible game changes" is just a bit different than yours. Once the mission editor is debugged and working well, the game will be missing only one major component compared to Jane's Fighters Anthology: multiplayer. Unfortunately, TK has made it all too clear that his current business model will never be able to afford it, and as long as he is doing well, why should he take the risk of changing his business model to support a very small niche market. The closing of Fighter Ace leaves only Warbirds and Aces High 2 as the only MMOG which are dedicated flight sims. Aces High still has a very strong user base that just grew a bit with the addition of some Fighter Ace veterans, but Warbirds has a dwindling community. It wouldn't surprise me if Warbirds shut down completely any given month. As the flight sims shut down, World of Warcraft continues to rake in money at an amazing rate. I wish the flight sim community could attract that kind of user base. Then, the games would be doing much better. However, ArmA 2, Steel Beasts Pro PE, and the Black Shark DCS series have given me hope that the type of games I want will continue to exist via funding for real military simulators.

I am pretty sure a towed target can be done in some fashion, just a matter of the best way to do it. I am well aware of the range, but I haven't ever seen a target that looks like a sheet with bullet holes ripped through it. I have seen footage of both types of engagements and think it would be cool if the same visuals were present in the game.