streakeagle

The MiG-19 looked great on paper, especially compared to its rival, the F-100, but for many reasons, pilots hated it. With the exception of the Chinese, most Communist air forces went from MiG-17s to MiG-21s, buying/building as few MiG-19s as possible. There were numerous reliability/quality control issues that gave this plane a bad reputation. In SFP1, none of the real world problems are apparent and as originally modeled was an unstoppable UFO in online multiplayer mixing the power of the F-4 with the maneuverability of the MiG-17. By the 083006 patch series, the MiG-19 was a lot less dominant, the F-8E took over as the new unstoppable UFO. With multiplayer having been deleted in SF2, there is really no good way to evaluate the FMs on a comparitive basis. I need to fly against established human pilots that fly the aircraft to every limit to really know how the flight models compare to each other.

I love the looks of quite a few aircraft. Spitfires are true classics, but not far off are P-51Ds and F4U-1As. B-17s are clean and elegant despite their guns. A-5s are clean and sleek. Concorde certainly has lines as elegant as a Spitfire. Su-27s combine many of the best features of F-14s, F-15s, and F-18s (all of which are pretty nice looking too!). But if you press me to name one aircraft that is the "nicest looking", I would have to name an aircraft that is over 40 years old and still looks (and flies) faster than anything before or since: the A-12/SR-71. A close 2nd for me is the T-38A Talon with its big bubble canopies, coke-bottle waist, and sleek wings and tail surfaces... painted as a USAF Thunderbird even better yet.

TK has basically 2 types of aerodynamic co-efficients: simple constants and those that vary with some other parameter. In reality, a particular co-efficient may depend on many parameters, but to keep things simple, TK chooses only one that he considers most significant. The one exception I can think of is engine thrust, which varies with Mach and altitude. Most others vary with either Mach or Alpha (angle-of-attack). Lift, thrust, and drag calculations are not that difficult and are the ones that primarily determine performance such as max speed, ceiling, turn rate, climb rate, etc. So if you focus on these, you can quickly reach a point where you can tune existing flight models to be much more accurate. On the other hand, it is the stability and control variables that are the hardest to estimate or even tweak, yet are the most important in terms of the "feel" or character of the aircraft. As an example, I created a high fidelity F-4B flight model for the service pack 2a version of SFP1. I used a flight model editing tool I created to compare and tune TK's stock flight model to match the performance charts from the US Navy F-4B pilot's flight manual. My tool (AIDE) is focused on lift, drag, thrust, and weight under steady state conditions such as level flight, a sustained climb, or a steady turn. The results were very encouraging. Years later, I stumbled onto NASA documents that gave me very accurate tables for some of the co-efficients such as zero lift drag (CD0). It turned out that my estimate of CD0 was reasonably close, and the way the ingame performance of my flight model matched the Navy charts was somewhat impressive. But, I never tweaked TK's stability numbers, so despite demonstrating a lot of the flight performance to very accurate levels, the "feel" may or may not be correct depending on how well TK estimated those parameters. I got too busy with work and real life to fix the bugs that creeped into later versions of AIDE (causing crashes, especially if you open more than one FM at a time) as well as being overwhelmed by the rate at which TK changes the game's flight engine and stock FMs. So, don't be discouraged from tweaking FMs. Just be aware that it is a very complicated subject that can take quite a bit of time to learn and still take even more time after you feel like you know what your doing. The small group of die-hard FM modders for this sim will help as much as they can, but I have been mostly out of the loop since my son was born in Nov 2006. Good luck!

There is a summary of the basic meanings of the coefficients, but Third Wire sims essentially use real world linear approximations for aerodynamics. So the best way to learn is to actually study aerodynamics and then tinker with the flight models to grasp the concepts. At a minimum, you need to be good with trig and algebra, though it doesn't hurt to understand calculus and differential equations. So, to answer your question, there is no in depth FM tutorial unless you count the books available for learning to be an aerospace engineer. The book at this link: http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Combat-Aircra...e/dp/0870214268 is an outstanding primer, but as it was written by a German, some of the examples use different symbols/notation than mentioned in the text or compared with American/English equations as used in TK's sims. However, if you comprehend what is written, this book is like a bible to me, both for performance analysis and estimation of real world aircraft and for deriving flight models in TK's game engine. While the book is not enough to allow you to start writing FMs from scratch, it should give you the insights you need to delve deeper into the world of flight modeling.

Interesting that the aircraft involved is named as a MiG-19, but every aspect of the conversation indicates that it was a MiG-17. In particular, the Have Drill program named was the evaluation of the MiG-17. Also the F-86 is named as being the closest thing in US servcie to the MiG for evaluations against F-100 and F-105. None of the described info really fits the MiG-19, but the low roll rate and high turn rate easily describe the MiG-17. An F-86 is nothing like a MiG-19, but is a lot like the MiG-15/MiG-17 family. So, I believe it was a major typo (the whole article has tons of mistakes as typed onto the web).

C-5s are amazing aircraft to see flying low in take-off/landing configurations. Seeing something so large flying so slow. I miss the original MAC colors (white over gray with a blue stripe between the two). I know the C-5s have been overhauled quite a bit, but they have also done quite a few years/miles of flying. I wonder how long they can keep going? Obviously, this one's time ran out. Can anyone say "spare parts"?

I really like the look and feel of Space Shuttle Mission 2007 based on screenshots, reviews, and the free demo. As I am about to buy it, I notice that they have a recommended product: 3 spare activations. I immediately abandoned my order, as I like to "own" the games I buy. In general, I think I should be able to store the game on semi-permanent media, such as a DVD and reinstall it at will without having to buy any extra activations. I have had to rebuild many a PC in the past, and won't pay a hostage fee for re-installing/activating a game I already purchased. I don't mind copy protection that is based on some sort of license key (unless it can only be activated via the web). However, I don't want to lose the ability to install the game because the web activation is no longer available or I have used up my activations, etc. Other flight sim companies practicing the same type of policy have lost/will continue to lose my business as well. Star Force didn't stop me from buying Flaming Cliffs. Fortunately, it didn't appear to have a noticable impact on my home gaming PC. However, my wife installed another UbiSoft game with Star Force, Prince of Persia 3, on her work laptop and it broke her Windows so bad that she had to use Ghost to restore a previous image (system restore was not adequate). So, I am not going to risk buying/installing any more games with Star Force now that I have had first hand experience comparable to reports I have seen on the web (at least there was no hardware damage). On the other hand, Third Wire has the business model that works best for me: 1. Once purchased, download at will any time. 2. Copy to any desired media at will. 3. Reinstall at will. 4. No form of copy protection whatsoever, thereby foregoing the need to wait for a no-cd crack so I don't have to swap discs every time I want to play a different game. I have bought every sim ever released by Third Wire, some of them more than once.

You are preaching to the choir on this subject. Since the game was released, the gunsight pipper has wandered all over the place without regard for the sight glass. At one point, the pipper stopped wandering down into the instrument panel, but TK discovered that "bug" and "fixed" it back to the way he meant it to be: able to go anywhere. I think his intent is to help those who play with no cockpit. In which case, why can't he make a checkbox option for sight glass clippling so that people who want some sort of realistic immersion are supported, too? I just don't get his stubbornness on this issue at all. I can't think of any other sim, lite or hard core, that handles this so poorly. Oh, well, no sim ever has every feature I want, why should this one be any different?

It would be really nice if somehow DCS Black Shark and Flaming Cliffs coudl interface in multiplayer until the DCS series is more rounded out. Of course, jet getting a new patch is way better than nothing if it fixes/adds more things than it breaks

Based on my experience with the Radeon 8500 and 9800 Pro on P3 PCs, I would say that while framerates my not improve much, I was able to run the 9800 Pro on max quality settings no matter what the game was, so sometimes buying an overmatched gpu can be convenient. I consider the price difference between the 4850, 4870, and 4890 insignificant: I can get an OC (900 MHz) 4890 with 1GB of RAM from NewEgg for about $250 after MIR, a stock 4850 with 1GB of RAM is about $140... difference is about 2 hours of overtime pay (trivial since I just racked up 22 hours last pay period and will get about 5 hours a week guaranteed for a couple of more weeks). I am willing to bet there would be differences, even with my CPU being so slow, depending on the level of FSAA selected and I always play all of my games at 1600x1200 or 1920x1080. If I wasn't about to move, I would just go get another PC.

Actually, given the current prices ($230 to $250), why not get a 4890?

I don't know why you have to extract it... My controls ini is available for editing... in the new folder structure. The changes weren't for the sake of change. It was all about Vista and its enchanced protection of files in the program folder and provision for separate game folders for user accessible files. The only inconvenience to me is the change to unicode text files which makes the old cat extractor useless. Fortunately, some people have come up with tools to use until TK releases his own.

McDonnell built the F-101D, they just named it the Phantom :) The F-4 Phantom was a blend of the lessons learned from the F3H Demon and F-101 Voodoo. Putting J79s in F-101s made as much sense as putting PW1120s in F-4s: much better performance, but still not as good as the next generation that was built to use that class of engine. No amount of thrust would overcome the structural and aerodynamic limitations of the base airframes. Of course, I would have loved to see both of those aircraft modernized to the full extent possible. F-101s with J-79s and APQ-120 radars would simply have been F-4s with less maneuverability, but possibly faster! F-4s would have really gained in the areas of climb, acceleration, and range using PW1120 turbofans, though top speed probably would have suffered a bit going from turbojet to turbofan. Turn performance would have been improved some, but was largely airframe limited (max load).

1) The stick you have pictured in the ebay add is not the ever popular standard B-8 2) You have tacked on the picture and text about my stick grip, which appears incorrect. Having trouble moving your stick grip and renaming it as a B-8 to try to get more/better bids? I am disturbed by what I see and will make comments at eBay to rectify the situation... Read your eBay posting a little better, you did mention that the last pic was an example, but I still think you are partly misrepresenting the stick. Your stick grip is the variant used on later F-4J/F-4S and F-4M. The amphenol adapter you show in you ad could be very useful to someone trying to join the grip to an appropriately sized tube and is a difficult accessory to locate.

This is a great adaptation of a flexible game engine. I don't think TK ever intended or considered the possibility of his sim being used for this... But I can assure you there is a market for it. Another lone developer (the one that made Xtreme Air Racing) already sold a firefighting sim for training based on that engine. I am pretty sure TK's engine stomps the Xtreme Air Racing game engine in both realism and moddability. Maybe TK needs to see this as well as the industry that would benefit from it :)

If TK's world isn't modeled as a sphere, why would anyone want to fly an "orbit" that isn't one? I know for sure TK's atomsphere model isn't designed for super high altitudes, he did what he needed to do to support the aircraft he wanted in the game. Making a flat map large enough to permit re-entry/landings is theoretically feasible if you don't mind the limitations of the game: no physics to support extremely high altitudes including the drag/heat from re-entry. A mission where you start at say 70,000 feet and have to finish the glide landing is far more practical, certainly well within game physics limitations. Is the purpose to be able to shoot at a space shuttle? If not, then a sim like Orbiter still makes a lot more sense. If you have cash to blow, there are several options. At a minimum, X-plane will let you simulate the re-entry (and also permits you to fly the X-15 from under the wing of the B-52). There is an actual game/sim dedicated to space shuttle missions that is far superior to anything else, Space Shuttle Mission 2007, http://www.space-shuttle-mission.com/ Game engine limitations aside, what is wrong with someone asking for the Space Shuttle in TW sims? What is wrong with a modder spending his time making one? Modders working for free can do whatever they want without regard for anyone else's wants or needs. Modders working for cash are free to decide what they think will make them the most money if they want to maximize their profits, otherwise, they will behave as modders working for free. So who has the authority to decide what any modders should be working on other than the modders themselves? Is that same person the designated forum police to prevent people from asking for things not on the authorized list?

Nothing wrong with adding the space shuttle to this sim, but this game engine really won't handle it that well. I would say that the maps are too small even if it does let you go into orbit around a sphere. If you want to fly the space shuttle, I suggest you download the free spaceflight simulator, oribiter, whose game engine is designed from day one to let you experience everything from liftoff to orbit to spacewalks and re-entry. Like Third Wire sims, there are tons of addons. You can recreate Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. The Apollo simulation is amazing since it includes a very detailed cockpit that can be used to simulate the entire mission according to the NASA procedures. There are also some science fiction addons like the Eagle from Space:1999. Go here for more info: http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

I have been playing AH since version 1.03. I am presently a subscriber, but rarely play. My skills are not what they once were, so the little time I try to fly online, I get my butt handed to me. On a good night, I re-up over and over at a base under heavy attack and have fun trying to get up enough speed and alt to fight before someone can vulch me. As I always fly alone, when I try to take off from a safe distance and come in at a decent altitude, I usually get intercepted by 2 or more enemies with equal or better aircraft who then promptly bleed my E and kill me. Sometimes, I get lucky and get into a 1 v 1 duel and have a blast. I can only get online late, can't get online with any regular schedule and can't make any noise (sleeping 2 year old), so it is no fun for me to try to enjoy flying in a squad. Back in 2000-2002, I flew a lot when they had free 8 player head-to-head. I got really good and had tons of fun. By the time I could afford to subscribe, I was married and working a lot. Now I have a kid too. I still subscribe because I want to contribute to further development and to thank HiTech for the 3 years of free head-to-head. Now there are offline missions. Not quite as fun as flying with people, but pretty darn good. So now there is a good way to practice offline or play for free. I wish LAN play had not been disabled. This was a great game to introduce friends to flight simming since it has auto trim and stall limiters for begginers. At one point, I had my dad and three other friends playing this game with me on my LAN. Then we started playing Operation Flashpoint, and no one wanted to play Aces High any more. No one could learn to fly well enough to beat me in Aces High no matter what airplane I flew, whereas we could play co-op in Flashpoint where everyone could win and play missions with respawning to allow less skilled players to continue playing. I think Aces High has one of the most realistic flight models and gunnery models ever made. Aside from Third Wire sims, it is my favorite. Maybe as my son gets older, we will get to play it together.

Both look great, but I really like the T-6A.

Manually maneuvering the wings to lie about energy state would be bad. The original schedule was based on maximizing lift rather than minimizing drag. It was found to overstress the wing in dogfights. Wings out at high speeds while maneuvering hard = bent wings. Why would they risk damaging their wings? Doesn't make sense to me for F-14 pilots to do this on any regular basis. As for this particular incident, I think the footage shows the F-16s were able to swing their noses all around them. For that to be true, the speed should have been 350 knots or less, where the F-16s would absolutely own them in sustained performance. For a brief moment, the F-14s could turn with the F-16 (the wings out is actually very effective for turning until they lose too much speed), but they would bleed speed badly and/or have to ease off their turns at some point. Above 400 knots, the F-16 is limited by pilot and airframe to 9g, which the Tomcat can pull as well, so the fight would be a lot more fair in terms of turn rate and turn radius. This video shows the F-14s trying to spiral with F-16s, which just isn't smart at all. F-15s have no maneuvering flaps and fixed wings. They have to drop below 250 knots to use landing flaps... so they turn even worse than the F-14. But smart F-15 pilots stay above 400 knots and use their vertical performance in addition to good tactics to handle close in fights. A more interesting fight would be F/A-18A/C versus F-16A/C with equally skilled pilots. The YF-17 was very close to the YF-16 in maneuverability, but the thrust-to-weight advantage of the F-16 gave it better sustained turn performance. The F/A-18 ended up a bit heavier than the YF-17, but retained instantaneous performance over the F-16. Over time, the F-16 got heavier, but also got a much better engine. So, I would be curious to see which airframe could out maneuver the other for a guns kill. Could the F-18 yank its nose around and get a quick snapshot before its speed bled off? Are the aircraft close enough in performance that even the slightest difference in pilot skills and tactics would determine the outcome? Make no mistake, the F/A-18 has pitch authority comparable to the Su-27. So I would love to see both Hornets and Falcons in 1 vs 1 and 2 vs 2 gunfights pushed to their limits.

Wings out 100% = dead meat The wings being extended all the way out means that the Tomcat pilots got very slow. Despite the movie Top Gun and the beliefs of F-14 fantatics, it is not a dogfighter compared to the F-16. The Tomcat is somewhat more maneuverable than an F-4 and generally comparable to the F-15, but nowhere near the F-16. The way they should have tried to win was by keeping their speed up above 400 kts and using mutual support to cover each others tails (no different than the F4F vs the A6M). Well flown F4Fs smoked A6Ms: In 2 vs 2 or larger fights, good tactical decisions by the pilots generally cancel out the advantages conferred by speed and agility. In this case, the F-16s have the better pilots and the better dogfighter. Hopefully, the Tomcat pilots in this video learned some valuable lessons and got a chance to try a similar mission again. I bet if the instructor pilots had been in the Tomcats and the students had been in the F-16s that the results would have been the same. Now as always in air to air combat, the pilot is generally far more important than the crate he flies.

My first combat flight sim wasn't even a computer game, it was a strategic level board game from Avalon Hill called Luftwaffe (each counter represented 150 aircraft), which led me to the the much more tactically oriented Air Force/Dauntless WWII air combat game. Within 2 or 3 years, I collected nearly every air combat simulation game (board and/or miniatures) I could find ranging from WWI to the near future. But my first computer game was Digital Integration's Fighter Pilot, which was an F-15 sim for the Timex-Sinclair 2068, quickly followed by their Tomahawk game (an AH-64 simulator). Both used dual Atari style joysticks almost like a modern HOTAS setup.

I don't see co-ordinating air refueling hardly more difficult than carrier landing waypoints. Jane's USAF made air-to-air refueling both semi-realistic and fun: you had to fly very accurately into a specific position before it would trigger the auto refueling sequence. Such a system would be appropriate for TK's sim: not totally dumbed down and fully automated, but not too difficult either. Given the YAP work-around, I see no need for TK to implement this anytime soon. While I don't think I would turn down anything released by TK for the SF series, nor would I specifically want to pay more for refueling. There is a sizable list of things I would much rather see fixed/added first.

The Silent Eagle poses the same threat to the F-35/F-22 that the Super Phantom and F-4X posed to the F-15. No matter how cost effective, the improved F-4s were not what the USAF wanted and McDonnell also was more interested in selling new Eagles. McDonnell was the contractor for the F-4X Mach 3 Phantoms, and they quickly decided not the threaten their own sales by making an F-4 that was in some ways better than the F-15. Boeing was the contractor proposing the re-engined Super Phantoms, but everyone still wanting to operate F-4s was only willing to spend money on avionics updates knowing that no amount of thrust was going to make old airframes into modern dogfighters. As in the past, I would expect the USAF to do everything in its power to ensure the F-35 wins every contract rather than risk damaging its own plans/budgets for F-22/F-35 aircraft. A really cheap but effective "Silent Falcon" would absolutely destroy the F-35 market... since Lockheed makes both, you can be sure there won't be any chance of such an in-house F-16 variant unless the F-35 program fails to make sufficient sales. Given the present state of the world, we didn't really need the F-22 and could have gotten by with something like the Silent Eagle. But the development money has already been spent. We should buy as many F-22s as possible to drive down the unit cost and provide plenty of spares to operate them for 30+ years the way the Eagles have had to serve. Of course, the number of F-22s being ordered keeps going down and the unit price keeps going up. As long as the government is handing out billions of dollars to save industries, they should buy 1 F-22 for each Eagle the USAF has had and 1 F-35 for each F-16. That would keep a lot of people employed in good paying jobs and give us the USAF a strong fleet of young aircraft. In some ways, the end of the Cold War ultimately led the US to its current economic situation with massive decreases in spending on both arms and research and development. I can imagine a day when every US citizen has a college degree (just like high school diploma now), but seeing as how there will be few or no engineering and manufacturing jobs, all these people educated at government expense will be standing behind a cash register, flippling a burger, or greeting people at the entrance to Walmart... Instead, we could continue developing and building the world's best military tanks, artillery, ships, subs, and aircraft, employing millions of people to design, test, build, and operate all of this... Nahh, lets just tax the rich and give handouts to companies and individuals that can't balance their bank accounts.

While I agree with Lexx that having the 3d model provide the cockpit frame and view should be the better way to get the feeling of being inside the plane, I have some issues: 1) the low poly count of the cockpit frames as viewed from the inside in most 3d models is repulsive, especially when they are too thick. 2) the difference in the light and shadows creates a contrast that destroys the immersion this trick is supposed to provide. In the screenshot above, it looks like the instrument panel is real due to sharp colors and high polys while the canopy frame is projected onto a whitescreen due to washed out colors and different lighting/shadows. I think the ultimate solution will be for the cockpit and aircraft to be one single ultra-high poly model with the usual lower detailed lods for distant viewing by external observers and some kind of clipping rule to reduce the poly count for the in-cockpit view. I presume that the hardware currently available is more than strong enough to handle such an approach, but I haven't ever coded 3d programs nor built 3d models, so I am just venturing a guess based on what I have already seen in current sims.