streakeagle

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.

Congratulations! ...and welcome to the club. I have had a hard enough time with one son. I can't imagine dealing with double trouble :) It won't be long before they understand what daddy is doing on the computer and want to find a way to participate to spend more time with you. But protect your power and reset buttons :) That is the first things they will find to get your attention.

Most people can't see a difference between a 720p and a 1080p tv either. Most gamers don't know what FSAA or AF is either. Find a game where you can very the frame rates from 30 to 60 to 90. Do a barrell roll in a high roll rate aircraft with the horizon rotating at the center of the view. If you can't tell the difference and like the 30 or 60 better than the 90, you can donate the hardware that does 90 fps to me :) My acquisition of an LCD monitor a few years back capped me to 60 fps, but my hardware usually limits me to 45 to 50 fps (cpu bound). In SF2, I can easily tell when the frame rate changes by 10 fps and can tell you the fps +/- 5 by how the aircraft handles in rolls and air-to-air gunnery. At 60+ fps, my gunnery is a lot better than when it is 20-30 fps: smooth tracking of LCOS gunsight = very high accuracy. If my fps are falling to 30 or lower, not only is the screen/motion a lot more jerky, but it means TrackIR and joystick inputs aren't being handled as well either. Another game where the difference directly affects my performance is Operation Flashpoint/ArmA2 (also Star Wars Battlefront). Not even using TrackIR or a joystick, the smoothness of movement and aiming with the mouse are critical. In OFP, I can easily achieve the FPS I want most of the time (locked at 60) and can handle an M-16A2 like it is a sniper rifle using just the iron sights. I had a friend visit and play Arma2 with me. The laptop is Core I7 with 6GB of RAM, but has a relatively low end ATi laptop graphics chipset, which I run at 1080p despite its limited processing power. My Athlon 64 3800+ has only 2GB of much older PC3200 RAM, but has an ATi HD4890 1GB graphics card. My kill ratio dropped by 10% when I switched to the visually slower laptop (20 to 35 fps). My friends kill rate more than tripled when he switched to my desktop. He now understands all to clearly how much the frame rate matters and how much the graphics card affects frame rate and quality. My desktop's CPU is 2.4GHz single core against the much faster core I7 laptop, yet my desktop plays with 40 to 50 fps at much higher image quality settings (higher FSAA, better shadows, etc). Just because the majority can't tell the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps doesn't mean there aren't people who can't, and it can affect gameplay dramatically. If I had the money, I would try to make all my games play at the highest possible resolution at the highest practical frame rate (2500 x 1600 and 60 or 120 Hz). Instead, I have to live with what I have and play older games or have crappy image quality if I want that kind of frame rates.

It is simply amazing how far PC flight sim graphics have come since Jane's Fighters Anthology and even Falcon 4.0. Today's untouched screenshots look better than yesterday's retouched box art. If it wasn't for the little puff of clouds and the repetitive pattern in the water, I could scarcely tell that the pair of A-4s above aren't real... And this thread is full of untouched pics of that same quality (and in some cases even better).

SP3 was the last patch that used this terminology, which was the patch series that matched WoV. The patches that brought SFP1 up to WoE standards were noted by their date. The first series that did so was May or 05 series. I say "series" because first there was a full-blown "service pack" which didn't require any previous upgrades and it was followed by a hotfix. Ultimately, the pre-WoI (Oct/Nov 2008 series patches) standard was 083006 (August 30 2006) was the long time standard that is compatible with almost every single release. I made a post detailing SFP1 patch history at Third Wire forums: http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5949 the answers to any questions about SFP1 patch history should be there. I even included extended posts of each "readme" from each patch / hotfix.

I haven't had any issues with steam lately. They are providing the latest patches as they are supposed to. Whereas not so long ago I had to disble their automatic updates and manually patch to the latest revision. There is a really good M60A3 for ArmA, but wouldn't know the first thing about whether it could be ported to ArmA2. As of August 21st, Steel Beasts Pro PE should be satisfying my desire for Cold War era matchups.

I think some of the missions are very fun, especially the helicopter ones, but overall it is boring compared to combat flight sims. If you want to practice button pushing/flight procedures or take some pretty screenshots, FSX is hard to beat. X-Plane is fast catching up, but FSX is still better overall out of the box and/or with addons.

Red Hammer was an addon for red campaign that came out prior to Resistance. I bought OFP x 3, Red Hammer x 3, and Resistance x 3 off the retail shelf as they were released so that I could have friends come over to play. Then I bought OFP GOTY x 5 at retail for $15 each - a great deal since it contained everything from the previous three releases that were about $30 each. Then I got a couple more of GOTY from GoG.com for $10 each. This was by far the best package since it consists of a single setup exe that installs everything in the right order including all the patches to have OFP 1.46 / Restistance 1.96. I learned I could save my registry keys from the other installs so that I can quickly install GOTY seven times using the single setup exe. This has been convenient because every now and then I still have all my friends over for an OFP LAN party. Any license conflicts are quickly resolved by reissuing the reg files so that no two PCs have the same license instead of having to track what PCs have which licenses and resinstalling to eliminate accidental duplicates. OFP is by far my favorite non-flight sim game of all-time. I consider ArmA and ArmA 2 to simply be expansions/patches of OFP. I just haven't played them as much since the hardware requirements greatly limit which PCs I can play them on.

Ground threats are identified by a solid line. Air threates are identified by a dashed line. Radar mode is indicated by the length of the line. Search mode is indicated by a steady short line (1st ring) with no audio. Aquisition mode is indciated by a flashing medium line (3rd ring) with slow beeping audio. Tracking/Lock-on mode is indicated by a flashing long line (to outer edge of display) with fast beeping audio. Ground Search / Aquistion / Tracking Air Search / Aquisition / Tracking

Actually, twins have been around almost as long as the single engines by the same users of the current twins: USMC AH-1J Sea Cobras. But the AH-1T+ -> AH-1W -> AH-1Z is an entirely different beast in terms of engines, rotors, dimensions, armor, weapons systems. Besides performance/load, I love the twins because they retained the original round canopy glass, which looks much better to me than the US Army's flat plate glass. But to get back on topic, it is very hard for me to narrow my list of favorite airplanes to just one. The first airplane model I ever built is certainly in my top 5 and maybe number one: the B-17G. The next major model airplane I wanted and got was an F-4E because that is what the Thunderbirds were flying at the time. With the appearance of Baa Baa Black Sheep, the F4U Corsair became one of my favorites. Along the way, the P-51D, XB-70, F-15A, F-105D, C-5A, and UH-1D joined my group of favorites... but still, my most memorable models were my Monogram 1/48 B-17G and my Revell 1/32 F-4E. They were big and beautiful. Based on the fact that I fly F-4s a lot more than B-17s in PC flight sims, I would have to go with the F-4E as my all time favoirte.

What AI difficulty setting are you guys using? If you set it to hard, AI enemies are more likely to be smarter, while AI friendlies are more likely to be dumber. Use Normal to get the correct experience/skill per nationality settings. I guess it would be nice if TK had separate setttings for both enemy and friendly AI so that you could make both sides as smart or dumb as you like.

A lot of great planes on the list, but there are some sleek, graceful, "sexy" planes missing. The most obvious would be the Spitfire. If you are going to include bombers on the list, how could the B-17 "Queen of the Skies" not be listed? Of those listed, many are "brutes" rather than "sexy". I might choose either the Spitfire or F-86 Sabre, but since neither of those are listed, I am left with the P-51 Mustang, especially a highly polished P-51D which really has nice curves aside from having squared off wings and tail. While I love the looks of F-4, F-105, F-14, and F-15, big boxy intakes don't follow the form of a woman in any way shape or form. As I type, I think the one aircraft that I would call "sexiest" of all time is the T-38A. Small rounded intakes, pinched waste, clean lines, and bubble canopy. The F-5 is a little bit boxier and has a flush canopy. T-38A in Thunderbirds colors is even better. So there you have it, my vote is for the T-38A in Thunderbirds colors.

While I have played many of the other sims listed, Jane's Fighters Anthology is the only one I spent years playing and I even have it installed and running correctly in Win 7 64-bit. In many ways, the Strike Fighters series has striven to be an updated Fighters Anthology. But it lacks the mission editor, multiplayer support, and little details like being able to eject and parachute.

The combo package last Christmas was the ultimate deal. I had already purchased all of them, so it didn't help me out, but for those who didn't have any SF2 sims yet, it was great. Hopefully, TK offers something similar to it again this Christmas to draw in more newcomers and old SF2 holdouts.

It looks impressive, but so did the Cougar. Maybe this stick will put Thrustmaster back on top for quality and replica HOTAS markets. Maybe this stick will have as many problems as other Thrustmaster joystick products of recent years. I will wait and see. The new Logitech and Saitek sticks have already disappointed me. So I am not getting my hopes up at all. And how will it compare to CH Products new A-10 HOTAS?

I don't actually expect any flight model enhancements to support V-G. Probably an animation link based on Mach for the visual position, while any aerodynamic effects will probably be hard-coded into the standard tables. But, I am still curious to see what he decides to do. My statement took into account the new TMF F-14. Surely TK will includde some feature to reward those who choose to get the new Tomcat sim despite the TMF release. Perhaps the new terrain will be the reason the buy this sim for those that are happy with the free mod F-14s? Only 6 months to go. Given the F-4E was produced with its trademark shark mouth, will the F-14A get a proper VF-84 Jolly Rogers skin rather than some generic decals? Maybe a shiny new Nimitz class to land on?

There were other features lost in translation. Lexx is big into environmental mods and can no longer get the realistic results he wants in the SF2 implementation. TK changed the game in a way that cannot be fixed by modding. I also have several issues with broken features in player-designed single missions. There are things I can do in the old series to model historical situations properly that I cannot do in SF2. Those still using WinXP and/or DX9 may benefit by staying with the old series as well. Those blessed with the latest hardware/Windows and happy with random single missions will be the happiest with SF2. Those with older hardware/Windows or multiplayer or mission editing types may find SFP1/WoX series more rewarding. There is also the issue of payware. If you have Razbam's stuff, it can be made to work in SF2, but will have a few issues (primarily shadows). YAP1/2, being built on custom missions and having helicopters definitely has problems working in SF2. For the most part, any SFP1/WoX era installs on my hard drive are there so I can extract files that are needed to support stuff I want in SF2. I recently re-installed SF2 without any mods, so the only first gen install I have right now is YAP2, which I never play. I can't wait to see what the F-14 sim brings to the SF2 series. How will TK implement aerodynamics of the VG wing in the data.ini file? Will multitarget tracking be added? What is the new terrain going to be like? What other flyables/non-flyables will be added? Will any aircraft carriers and warships will be added? Will there be any surprise revisions to the game engine? What is going to be in the other expansion packs? This is going to be an interesting year for Third Wire sims. I hope the Tomcat sim makes a Xmas release (or earlier).

If you have a sense of humor and are not French, then: Go to http://www.google.com Type in the search window: French Victories Click on the "I'm feeling lucky" button. Follow the suggested "did you mean" link on the resulting page.

TK can't make everyone happy. He counts on moddability to get people to buy at least one of the games, since you can taylor any one of the sims to suit your needs. Of course, ever since the original release each patch has fixed some things and broken others. I have many fond memories of SFP1 SP2a. It had few bugs, AI was good in a dogfight (think Korea mod), multiplayer mostly worked, and my F-4B flight model departed almost exactly as it should. But WoV brought carriers and naval aircraft, WoE brought clouds and advanced avionics, WoI fixed the AI and ECM problems of WoV and WoE, SF2 made everything look better and improved frame rates for DX10 cards. If SF2 had retained the basic multiplayer of SFP1, I would have almost nothing to complain about. However, since I am not even trying to make time for multiplayer at the moment, SF2 pathced to the latest revision is easily my favorite version. Will the F-14 really bring in a lot of new blood? I don't know. The F-14 already exists in mod form and I can't imagine the new game improving much other than cockpit/avionics details (maybe multi target tracking?). Will Tomcat fans that haven't already bought some version of this sim to fly the mod F-14 suddenly decide to buy it for a stock F-14? The F-14 is probably the most popular aircraft that is missing from this sim's time frame. If it doesn't help TK get back in business, what will? Sooner or later TK will have to deal with modern aircraft. A decent F/A-18, F-22, and/or F-35 added to this game would probably draw a lot more sales than anything like the last expansion pack. I guess I am weird, because I would much rather see TK do the 1950s to 1970s aircraft than the modern types. I personally think the USSR aircraft should start being added as flyables. They are almost as well documented as the US aircraft as I have been able to get almost any info I want or need on the MiG-21, MiG-23, and MiG-29 (flight manuals, radar operaion guides, cockpit layouts, etc.). Korea would be a big deal, even if it started with only an F-86F and a MiG-15bis. It will be interesting to see where he goes next. As long as he keeps adding high quality flyables from the 50s/60s/70s at a decent rate I will be happy with whatever he decides to do.

As for TK's financial situation, he never gives too many details, but he has stated that sales plummeted with the economy which forced him to drop his prices. The combination of lower sales and lower prices means that he has to release more products in the same time just to break even. Open modability has really hurt TK's potential sales. Just from the various support forums I have seen many posts where the poster admits that they have just one or two versions of the game and rely on free downloads to fill in the rest of their needs. Additionally, there are a significant number of "loyal fans" that can not or will not upgrade to any of the SF2 sims due to financial constraints, operating system limitations, hardware limitations, or simply being satisfied with the original series. There are even a handful who won't buy another copy of the series unless multiplayer is reinstated. So I think TK's productivity reflects his eagerness to keep Third Wire in business despite the effects of the global economy on his already limited niche customer base.

Wasn't there a post a long time ago in which TK stated that the F-14 was enough work that it would be the only new flyable aircraft in its game whenever he got around to adding it? I would expect A-7s, F-4s, and possibly A-4s to be the other USN flyables in the 1973-1982 time frame. Unless he suddenly decided to bring the A-6 back, which is very unlikely. For the sake of variety, would he make sure the hypothetical scenario was geographically positioned to allow for other flyable allies besided USN using previously released aircraft? USAF, Israel, RAF, France? Korea would easily allow for USAF/South Korean support. Whereas middle eastern locations largely leave only Israel. A GIUK setting could get the USAF involved from Keflavik. Lebanon really looks attractive from TK's low budget perspective: reuse almost 100% of SF2I plus the naval components of SF2V, add a new map, the F-14, and a campaign or two and you are pretty much done. AI non-flyables would be needed to round out the 80's carrier deck and the F-4N/S would be extra work to do the flyables correctly.

As the F-14A in TK's time frame was only employed in air-to-air applications and photo recon, I would expect any F-14 sim to only assign F-14s to fleet defense (which is really a CAP), interception, escort, sweeps, and recon, all of which would fit just fine into a naval or coastal conflict. Libya would definitely support ground strikes to be escorted/swept by F-14s. I do see one other hypothetical situation that fits really well with what TK has already done: US intervention in Lebanon after Syria and/or Israel invade? A key factor is the fact that this will be some sort of new terrain. If Vietnam, Israel, and Europe are ruled out, what other area would be a good hypothetical conflict for a mid 70s to early 80s time frame? South America (Nicaragua, El Salvador)? Cuba? Africa? Japan/Taiwan/China? Korea? Korea would be a great choice as it would continue to lay the foundation for a 1950's Korean War game. Since South Korea mainly used US assets TK has already modeled and North Korea mainly used USSR/China assets TK has already modeled, the terrain would be the only big part to do.