streakeagle

Yummy!

Generations By streakeagle at 2010-01-10

I love the mods, but I have been focused on flying mainly stock aircraft way back when I hosted multiplayer all the time. I recently started using mods again for several reasons: 1) There is no longer any multiplayer in SF2, so I don't have to match the host and or have clients match my host. 2) My 3 year old son likes to "fly" (more like crash) airplanes that match my models hanging on the ceiling or those in his die-cast collection, which includes aircraft like the C-130, Jaguar, and Constellation. 3) The release of the F-101 and F-102 allow me to fly the entire the Century series. 4) I also tested all of the Razbam stuff for compatibility and still love flying the F2H. The SF2 series makes it so much easier to manage mods, especially weapons and fuel tanks, that I don't mind suffering through re-installing mods corrupted by patching.

Impressive work. It is a shame that TK doesn't use an accurrate shape for the globe instead of forcing you to deal with the same problems cartographers have always had converting a curved surface into a flat one. While there are a few other game engine design choices that annoy me, the flat maps with miles scaled down to kilometers is a big limitation keeping this lite sim from being turned into a great hard core sim. But, TK only intends for this sim to remain lite and fun, so who am I to complain about the world being flat and badly distorted?

Gotta love the Razbam F2H2 Banshee!

Going from XP to Win 7 with DX10 support gave me both better looking effects and higher framerates. None of my older games have had any problems running on Win 7 so far (still in the process of installing my library since I wiped my hard drive to go 64-bit).

To the best of my knowledge, never in human history has such a dramatic change occurred without terrible amounts of blood spilling. The Berlin Wall marked the beginning of a tidal wave that ended with the total collapse of the Soviet Union. There is simply no precedent of such a global power giving up its control so quickly AND peacefully. Though, to be fair, the UK did give up its massive colonial empire relatively peacefully with a little prodding from the USA during WW2. But, correct me if I am wrong, the UK did so over a span of decades slowly shrinking and with some fighting. On a historical scale, the collapse of Soviet Communism occurred in a flash with hardly a shot fired. I still don't understand how this happened. Traditionally, those in power hold out and fight to the bitter end, which in this case could have produced the expected WW3 scenario in Germany. Alternatively, the people rise up and kill everyone they blame for their problems such as in the French Revolution and Bolshevik Revolution. Of course the American Revolution was a one of a kind as well. Most people that rise up and fight in a revolution do so because their very lives are in danger. The French and Russians were starving and/or dying in unpopular wars. But, the people of the 13 colonies decided that they hated their tax rates so much that they would die to have the right to vote for lowering them. If only they could see how we are being taxed now despite our right to vote! Hooray for Germany! As bad as they were, the experiences of WW2 and the Cold War should make Germany an even greater country than it ever would have been otherwise. Reunification must have been painful in some ways (and to some extent probably still is). But it was not right for one people and so many families to remain so divided for so long. I would like to see Korea unified. They essentially have the same problem and both the North and South would have much to gain if the Communists collapsed and merged with the South.

I was entertained for years by the gathering of SFP1 haters at Die Sim Fanboi. Now it appears that Bard has shutdown his website and forum. While Stiglr is the favorite bad guy here at CombatAce, there was a whole cast of characters at Die Sim Fanboi that absolutely hated the Third Wire SFP1 series and the community that formed around it no matter how much the game and the mods for it improved. I think some of the less aggressive members are active here and at SimHQ with other sims.

CombatAce is not most forums :) Of course, it is nice if you pay a subsription fee every now and then if you are using bandwidth here.

I installed this without any problems, but the paratroops did not show up in the loadout selection screen. None of the files seemed to be right and when I finally got a paratroop to show up, he was huge, larger then the C-119. After much struggling, I made the paratroops work by going to Capun'a site and getting the paratroops from his C-47A. Strangely enough, the bitmaps matched. So I am not sure what was wrong with the C-119 paratroops which appeared to be the same model. Both the C-119 and C-47A paratroops call for an effect that doesn't exist. So, while the aircraft looks good and flys well, the paratroops part needs to be reviewed and fixed.

The bitmaps for the AA-3 missiles in this SF2 package were renamed to match the lod names, but that doesn't work. The missiles have no textures and show up black in the game. Both lod files for the ir and radar AA-3 missiles specify "aa-3.bmp", so either the bmps need to be renamed back to "aa-3.bmp" or the lod files for the AA-3s need to be edited to point to the new names. Renaming the bmps is by far easier. The Su-15 is one of the jewels of the SF series. What other sim allows you to try to intercept B-52s, B-1s, and/or FB-111s in an Su-15 or try to slip by Su-15s while flying one of the bombers? The model and pit are awesome. P.S. This is another candidate for the DirectX 10 effects edits.

I think it is safe to say that HOTAS setups have a lot of features and that no two people will ever agree on what the best feature set should be or which model available on the market meets their requirements best. About the only thing that I think the majority of high-end HOTAS owners might be able to agree on is that CH has the highest quality product backed with excellent customer support. But, to date, the first and only decent HOTAS with force feedback is the Logitech G940. Combined with the split throttle and assuming the quality of the product is acceptable, Logitech deserves and will get a bunch of new customers who already had CH or other competing products. I am not surprised to see RuggButt say he went back to CH after getting the Logitech, though. If you like the feel and functionality of CH a whole lot, force feedback and a split throttle isn't enough to justify switching. I like my X-52 Pro a lot as it is a product improved version of my still functional and much loved X-36. I know a lot of people can't stand Saitek and have had terrible experiences with their quality and support, but that hasn't been my experience. I would like to try a Logitech G940 in person before deciding to replace a stick that is already working perfectly and whose layout and button programming I have been using since August of 2000 (when I got my X-36). But, if I were going to get a new stick, the G940 is the best candidate for me. It has a lot in common with the Saitek X-52 Pro plus force feedback. The new Saitek stick with its rigid strain gauge sensor has no appeal to me whatsoever. So, I know for sure my next stick won't be a Saitek despite 9 years of enjoying my X-36 USB, X-45, and X-52 Pro. Despite all the positive things offered by CH, I just don't like the look, feel, or layout of their HOTAS, especially the throttle. If the pricing of their new military grade A-10 HOTAS isn't too unreasonable, they might actually sell me a stick. But the force feedback and similarity in layout to the Saitek still makes the G940 much more appealing to me.

The F-111's sure look good... but the afterburner effect isn't working for me. The only thing I see that let's me know I am in afterburner besides nozzle animation is the glow on the rear of the aircraft. I see the effects file is there and are pointing to the tga file, but no flames edit: this is in a merged SF2I install on Windows 7 using an ATi 4890 1GB.

There is a small problem with this package: the engine sound is in a folder called "Sound" which should be called "Sounds". So, if you install this package and try it out before installing the other F-101 packages, then you will have no engine sound. The other packages have it right, but then you will end up with a spare unwanted "sound" folder in your mods if you don't pay attention to your mods folder. I love the entire F-101 series. They may not be the best aircraft to knock down fighters, especially MiG-17s, but they are challenging to fly and look awesome!

I finally got the chance to install and try out this package. It is simply breathtaking to see a 1959 B-52G in SAC colors with hound dogs under the wings lifting off the runway with a 4x0.50 cal turret. These are B-52s the way I remember them: Cold War warriors. My son is going to love it too. There is a B-52 on display near the Orlando International airport that he has seen and he has a die-cast toy B-52. He doesn't know his airplanes by numbers, but when he sees a B-52 he knows to say "Stratofortress".

The old CVAN-65 was better than nothing, but after seeing the carriers in YAP2, it burns my eyes to look at it (especially the terrible textures). I want the CVAN-65 that I thought I was going to get with YAP 1. Given that the people that would were producing it are probably the same people that were screwed over by 05, I bet it doesn't show up in YAP 2 either.

That doesn't look much like an F/A-18E or an unmanned drone? That looks more like something the USAF is buying aside from the swing wing

My ATi x1800XT was a bargain and it still works fairly well, but I was shocked to discover when I went to download Catalyst 9.4 that my card is now a legacy product no longer supported after Catalyst 9.3. On the other hand, my 9800 Pro just now became a legacy product after 7 years! I think my video card and processor are well matched, so I don't think it is worth it for me to buy a 4870 or better since it will probably be CPU bound. Hopefully, I get moved to Kissimmee sometime this year so that I can start saving up to build a newer PC.

Upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7, now the 4890 really shines with DirectX 10 shaders and improved performance.

What happened to that character? Is he also known as ZeroCinco? YAP2 hasn't gotten any more $ from me for 2 reasons: 1. I don't fly anything less than SF2 now, and there is not even a plan to upgrade YAP to work with the Oct 2008 update. 2. I don't see my primary interest released yet, if ever: CVAN-65 USS Enterprise. Has Diego and friends sorted out their issues with Z05?

That isn't two pippers. The big one is a fixed reticle for reference (especially when manually aiming). The smaller one is the traditional gyro-driven pipper. It is quite correct, there is nothing to fix.

<S> I am in shock. I can only imagine what his local family and friends are going through. His presence will be greatly missed worldwide in this community. This is taking time for me to digest.

I didn't have a solid opportunity to do a solid benchmark before switching cards, but in SF2 series I was getting 20 to 40 fps in normal cockpit view with mirrors turned off and shadow on medium and now I am getting 30 to 45 fps, mainly in the 40s until some bases come into view. Aces High 2 apparently taps into to newer hardware pretty well, went from a mid 30 fps or less to a 40 to 60 fps, only less than 40 on the runway... but turning on self-shadowing (an option not even available with the other card), caused a big hit. If only I could give my cpu a boost... I might even be able to play Armed Assault. This will have to do until I can build a new machine. One thing I noticed is that the 4890 was barely longer than the x1800xt and in some ways smaller. So it easily fit into my somewhat large Antec aluminum case. I am pretty sure it would be a tough fight to get the 5800 series into this case unless I completely relocated the RAID 1 hard drive array. I bet a 4850 would have given similar performance gains given my CPU limits... but the 4890 didn't cost that much more and I can use it in the next machine to help keep my new build costs down.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! In a time of economic challenges, there are now three new high end HOTAS setups? There is also an independent company planning to market a high-end setup with a variety of stick and throttle grips. Okay, what is CH Products gonna do? I have so badly wanted to buy CH for its quality, but just don't like their throttle at all and don't really want an F-16 look-a-like stick either. If CH would put their name and quality into a HOTAS/rudder setup that has the best features of all the other sticks, that would suit me fine. If the independent company follows up with decent hardware and software at decent prices, they may open up a new market: interchangable B-8/F-15/A-10/F-16 stick grips and throttles including dual throttle support. Of course they don't have force feedback :( CH... get your but in gear and make force feedback stick AND rudder pedals (almost all planes have a real or artificial pedal shake that warns of stall conditions.

http://www.saitekusa.com/prod/x65f.htm I guess this is their answer to the G940. It looks like it might be cool, but at a glance not having tried either stick in person, I think the G940 wins hands down: Force Feedback! Real pilots hated the non-moving force sensing sticks on the F-16, so the sticks were modified to move a little bit. I haven't tried such sticks, but I suspect I would prefer to have a stick that moves. With no force feedback and no movement, I can't see where I would ever choose this stick over the G940 unless there was a huge price difference and I was on a tight budget.