streakeagle

I did not know about this. A lot of my games are there, which means I could get rid of the big boxes and paper, but still retain the ability to play these games... not a bad trade-off.

I still have a substantial collection of board games. I never have the time to even mess with them and even if I did, none of the friends that used to play them with me have enough time to play them anymore. During my countless moves in the Navy and prior to getting married, some of my games took a beating and a few are missing pieces and/or data cards. As much as I love most of these games, I don't really ever see myself ever playing them again. I am about to move again and may just save myself the hassle of hauling them to a new house by throwing most of them away. The one reason I have to hold on to them is the hope that my 2-year-old son might one day take an interest in playing some of them. Not knowing which ones he might like, I need to keep them all just in case... But how much interest will he ever have in playing games designed to simulate a war that never happened? A lot of my games were "modern warfare" simulations for 1970s-1980s air, land, or sea combat assuming massive all-out conflicts between the USA and USSR: Avalon Hill's Flight Leader, TAC AIR, MBT, Attack Sub Victory Games' Agean Strike, 2nd Fleet/6th Fleet/7th Fleet GDW's Assault/Boots&Saddles/Bundeswehr/Chieftain, The Third World War, Combined Arms, Air Superiority/Air Strike/Desert Falcons, Harpoon West End Games Air Cav, TSR/SPI's Air War, SPI's Foxbat & Phantom, FASA's Top Gun, GMT's Hornet Leader, 3W's Modern Naval Battles, Omega's Main Battle Area, Leading Edge Games' Phoenix Command, Timeline Ltd's Close and Destroy, Group 3 Games' Rolling Thunder, The Gamers' Force Eagles War, Enola Games' Warship Commander/Sea Command For the most part, the only games I had covering any earlier time frame were air combat games with a few land and sea types: Avalon Hill's Air Force/Dauntless, Luftwaffe, B-17 Queen of the Skies, Knights of the Air, Enemy in Sight, Wooden Ships & Iron Men GDW's Command Decision, Lou Zocchi's Complete Fighter Combat System, Falcon Games' Mustangs and Messerschmitts, Air Games Ltd's Air Sortie, Emperor's Press' Red Baron Clash of Arms' The Speed of Heat, Over the Reich, Achtung-Spitfire! Nova's Ace of Ace's/Wing Leader/Jet Eagles series of book based "3d" air combat games are worth special mention as they lie somewhere between a board game and a pc flight sim. But I also have a few RPGs and Sci-fi games: the original TSR's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Steve Jackson Games' GURPS, Car Wars Fantasy Games Unlimited's Chivalry & Sorcery Task Force Games' Star Fleet Battles/Federation & Empire GDW's Traveller 2300/2300AD/Star Cruiser, Dangerous Journeys I.C.E.'s Silent Death, Star Strike Fantasy Wargaming, Warlord All of these games pretty much became obsolete the day I got my first PC in August of 2000. I was constantly trying to refine the rules to make the games more realistic, but with no one else to play them and having to spend endless hours alone trying to recreate battles that would have taken only a few minutes in real time... the PC was a savior. Real-time flight sims. I already had experience with Jane's Fighters Anthology on a work laptop. But playing Jane's USAF, Jane's F/A-18, Jane's WWII Fighters, Jane's 688i, and Jane's Fleet Command were generally equally or more realistic than anything I had done with board games, much faster, and far more fun. Then I found Aces High, Operation Flashpoint, and SFP1. I have never really looked back. Until now. I just bought my first board game flight sim in I don't know how many years. Birds of Prey http://web.mac.com/philip_markgraf/Birds_o...ey/Welcome.html I have looked over the contents and this is the promised land: a board game that rivals PC flight sims in accuracy/realism of modeling 3d flight fully acommodating all three axis' of rotation (direction, pitch, and roll) and the four forces (thrust, drag, lift, and weight). They use some cool laminated charts with markers to do all they hard math graphically. But, I am still having trouble making the time to learn and play this, though if I do learn it I have one old friend that might actually give it a shot. I suspect I wasted my money buying it, but I couldn't resist since I own virtually every other board game/flight-sim ever released en masse and this one is clearly the best ever made. I will say that the best part of playing board games is having a small group of friends gathered having the same type of fun that occurs at traditional poker games. But I have achieved the same or even more fun by hosting Operation Flashpoint LAN game nights at my house (just had two nights of fun while my wife was out of the country). I think I need to let go of my nostalgia and simply dump everything, which would certainly make my wife happier.

Here is the most current version of my SFP1/WoX series multiplayer guidelines: http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1410

Without even knowing what game you are asking about, I will venture a guess as to what is happening: You have a firewall enabled on your PC, so when you click on multi-player and the game starts trying to scan for hosts, it hangs. Examples of games that I have witnessed with this behavior include the Third Wire SFP1 series, Operation Flashpoint, and Starfleet Command. Sometimes, you will see a dialog box asking if you want to allow the game to pass through the firewall (if so, say yes and maybe your problem is solved), but I have seen many cases where someone's firewall interacted in such a way that there was no dialog box to let you know what was happening. A quick test will tell you whether or not your firewall is your problem: turn it off and start multiplayer. If you stop getting the black screen, then the firewall is the problem. If so, you have two choices: 1) Leave the firewall off while playing the game. 2) Configure the firewall to open the appropriate ports for the game.

The Buffalo may not have a good reputation with anyone else, but Finland did an outstanding job with this aircraft. As the AVG did with the P-40, good pilots can make do with what they have. Of course, when they managed to get better planes, Finland did even better.

In addition to higher resolution textures, campaigns now inlcude a ton of more ground objects: aircraft parked at airfields, etc. At higher settings, this game is CPU limited. To tune lower end PCs to run these sims, I like to start with all LOW settings, then go to custom and tweak things one at a time to try to get the quality I want at a frame rate I can live with. Using this technique, I can get my Pentium 3 1.2GHz PCs with Radeon 9800 Pros to run about 18 to 20 frames per second in single missions that don't have too many things flying around, yet still have great cockpit and aircraft detail. Of course Shadows are set to Low (turned off) and Mirrors are off.

In order to have the bombs hit at a point that can be seen on the gunsight (such as the default depression angle) you have to dive fairly steeply and/or at high speeds. Otherwise, gravity pulls your bombs down in an arc that always falls short of your sight. I don't have the patience to line up exactly for every drop (only when I am down to 1 bomb or have to try to use 1 bomb per target). So I come in at whatever angle/speed and pickle about 3 bombs starting when the pipper is on the target and dropping the other 2 in at a steady even interval (knowing the first bomb will probably be short since I am not at the right angle/height/speed). Usually, the middle bomb gets the target. If I approached to wild, maybe all 3 fall short or all 3 fall long, or the interval spaces them out too far and the target survives safely in between. But if I start at about 8 to 10 thousand feet at 3 to 5 miles, this technique gets me a kill most of the time with Mk 82 500 lb bombs. With rockets, I use almost the same approach, but fire a lot more starting before the pipper reaches the target and ending well after the pipper leaves the target. When I am more patient, I can use fewer rockets, but when I am pitching wildly, the interval gets too large if I don't ripple off quite a few. I try to release at less than 1 mile from the target and at 3 to 5 thousand feet. Any further away or any higher, the interval between impacts gets too large. Any lower or closer, I have trouble getting the pipper in the right place without hitting the ground. I like my airspeed to be 400 to 500 knots, though I will use whatever speed I have as long as I have sufficient pitch authority and will be able to pull out without hitting the ground or getting fragged by my own bombs.

Don't listen to him! Take lots of pills, never sleep, and keep making all those planes that have long been desired but never been delivered to the community. Once a 3d model exists and has been released, almost everything else falls into place since almost anyone can edit ini files well enough to get something playable. Of course it is nice if a cockpit has been built as well since that is even harder to make than the aircraft model. I know what kind of time and effort it takes to make good 3d models. I am glad someone has the time to do it! As an added bonus, you are still doing it for free!

Prior to WoI, the way to do this was to edit the ini files to give aircraft a radar with no display and only a search/boresight mode. While it was a clunky way to do it, it did get the desired results: proper LCOS behavior. Of course, since I mainly had stock installs for beta testing and online multiplayer, I greatly appreciate this feature finally being implemented.

This capability was finally added in Wings Over Israel. It can be used in any of the TW sims patched up to the latest revision. It is actually a mode that should be available in most aircraft. Almost every US fighter since the F-86 has some sort of ranging radar and/or ranging mode for more capable radars. Essentially, using "boresight mode" on those aircraft that have a multi-mode radar is very similar to using range-only radar.

The gunsight functions as a bombsight, but unlike in reality, the sight is fixed at one angle (which varies with the type of air-to-ground weapon selected). So, you have to figure out what kind of profile makes that depression angle accurate, i.e. start diving from 10,000 feet and 3 or 4 nm from target then hold the sight on the target and release at 3 or 4 thousand feet. Alternatively, you can choose your own start height/distance and release angle, then adjust the depression angle in the ini file until it matches where your bombs are hitting. Of course, it would be nice if TK would allow you to set the depression angle to any value you want while flying, but he considers that outside of the boundaries of his "sim-lite" marketing approach. I find that if you use a steep approach angle and release at the lowest possible altitude that will allow you to pull up from that steep angle, you can get very accurate with just a little practice. Of course, when you use my super low release technique, if you spend too much time lining up the sight before the release, then you might go too low. You can take damage from your own bombs, but far more likely you won't be able to pull out and will impact into the ground.

Most likely, purely coincidence. I have had almost every aircraft with a gun have a jam at one time or another since this feature has been added. Firing long bursts definitely increases the probability of a jam. The F-8 Crusdader jams quite a bit (which is realistic) and the Mk4 Mod0 gunpod for the Navy Phantoms jams very easily as well. But I have had jams with F-100s and even the F-4E's 20mm Vulcan.

Most WWI guns and some WW2 guns can be recharged manually from the cockpit to try to clear a jam. Other than the fact that rotary cannons feed the next round whether the previous round fired or not, I don't know of any modern guns that should permit you to clear a jam while in the air.

This is a new feature that is borrowed from First Eagles, so I have no idea how it is implemented. I don't know the different jam probabilities or how jamming depends on what difficulty settings. I generally play on Hard settings, so I am not so good at providing tech support on the differences between Easy, Normal, and Hard.

Typically, jams are caused by firing the guns while under unusual g-loads. High-g turns can cause problems with feed/extraction mechanisms. Low, no, or negative g-loads can cause problems as well. The problem is the that most gun designs were engineered on the ground with a simple level 1-g load. Air combat really tests an engineers ability to feed ammo and eject casings rapidly no matter what the environment. Typical guns use belts of ammo chained together as in the classic 0.50 cal M2. Linked belts tend to break, twist, and/or bind such that the gun cannot load the next round. In conventional designs, casings are typically ejected by the force of the gases used to propel the round, possibly being assisted by gravity to help with the ejection path. Under high loads, the casings don't follow the intended path and get stuck in the chamber where the next round is supposed to go. Once a shot has been fired and the next round could not/would not automatically feed, there is usually no means to try to feed another round manually. The rotary cannon design went with a linkless chute type of feed: the rounds are essentially rolled through a chute into a chamber where they can be rammed into the barrel(s). While there can be some feed issues, especially under high g-loads, the whole process is driven mechanically and has a good chance of being cleared if a problem does occur. Fired or not, the rounds are extracted mechanically as well. Typically, on internal installations, the spent casings are fed back into the ammo drum. This eliminates any possibility of loose brass hurting the aircraft (think air intakes). So the entire process is from loading to extraction is precise and controlled as it needs to be if you are going to fire up to 100 rounds per second! The problem with the multi-barrel gatling gun is size and weight. A pair of single-barrel revolver cannons can produce nearly the same effective rate of fire (less mass to spool up, but more limited by barrel temperatures) for a fraction of the weight. So, if you have the room, a gatling gun is probably the best way to go, but for a small lightweight installation, revolver cannon get the job done (think F-5).

Some gun installations are more likely to jam than others. Take as few shots as possible and use short controlled well-aimed bursts to reduce the likelyhood of a jam. If you are using spray-n-pray, you will jam almost any gun in the game very quickly. Some weapons on some aircraft were notorious for jamming, notably the F-8 Crusader's 20mm cannons. There is a reason the "Last Gunfighter" got most of its kills with AIM-9s! The 20mm Vulcan rotary cannon has many disadvantages, but in most versions of it, reliability is not one of them. Without even checking the gun data, I am sure TK has modeled this advantage. Though I bet TK hasn't modeled the spool-up time that greatly reduces the effective rate of fire. While always quoted as having selectable 3000 or 6000 rounds per minute, the fact is over short bursts, the 6-barrels do not instantly spin up from 0 rpm to 500 or 1000 rpm. But even if the effective rate of fire isn't much better than most quad-mounted single barrel 20mm cannon, as long as the feed mechanism doesn't jam, the gun is self-clearing when hydraulically or electically powered. Of course, some would say the caliber is too small compared to many aircraft that have 23mm, 27mm, or 30mm cannon. If the purpose of the gun is air-to-air, the modern version of the 20mm round is more than adequate. Why else would the US stick with one design for so long when other versions are available in 25mm (AV-8B Harrier) and 30mm (4-barrel version of GAU-8 used in gunpods for F-15E)?

I hosted a 24-hour/7-days-a-week server for SFP1 and WoV for a couple of years. It does bring in more traffic than having no server at all, but you can only host a dogfight session unattended. Besides that, here are the key problems with hosting: Stability: a person with a bad connection can crash the server (typically those with dialup and some DSL ISPs exhibited this behavior) Settings: no two people want to fly with the same settings. I was a hardcore "all hard settings" host for most of the two years. The hard settings turned away many newbies and some veterans. I myself can stand anything less, since "hard" makes the weapons and flight models as detailed and realistic as they can be on this game engine. The number one settings issue is being able to see the "HUD" box and/or mini radar display versus having a "clean" realistic display with no text clutter, etc. TK solved that problem for me by adding the display toggle, mapped to "alt-d" by default. I set full hard settings except for HUD and visual spotting, but once in the game, each player can use "alt-d" to get the screen view he prefers... I must admit the targeting box with player ids is useful during training. Install options: which patch level and what addons? The average person comes online with the game as purchased, which is easily patched up to whatever level is desired. But expecting a noobie to install a ton of addons one at a time is unrealistic. In my experience, stock/patched is the way to go. However, special packages such as those by CheckSix! are very easy to install and can add important/fun aircraft that draw crowds: F-14, F-5, and Saab Draken. So, if the community can agree to an online package and someone puts it together into a single drag-n-drop or self-install package, that is really the way to go. Game: When I originally started hosting, there was only SFP1. Then came WoV and SFG. I figured out how to get SFG to work with SFP1 in Hyperlobby and would alternate hosting SFP1 and WoV nightly or weekly. I found more people would fly if I hosted the WoV and therefore stopped hosting the CheckSix! package which used SFP1 as its base. Now we have SFP1, SFG, WoV, WoE, WoI, and FE. While I have hosted and played all of those online, WoV is still the most popular. The stock planeset for WoV has a lot of appeal. If WoI was officially supported on Hyperlobby rather than requiring a hack to get it to work (i.e. copying and renaming the exe to WoV.exe and then pointing the Hyperlobby path for WoV to the WoI folder), WoI might be even more populare due to its planeset: Mirages , F-15s, and F-16s in addition to the typical TW F-4/A-4 combo. I personally like the merged WoE/WoV install for online MP: huge, great planeset with a stock install (even the F-104G is automatically included now). However, I only had a few people ever participate when I hosted that, maybe more people would support it now. Boredom: most people get tired of dogfight mode fairly quickly. Either they get burned badly by the veterans, or they want more realistic situations than the everyone for themself deathmatch. Once a group decides to fly co-op, it is just a matter of time before they get bored with that and leave for a more capable and interesting multiplayer sim like the IL-2 series. I have never seen a virtual squadron fly this sim series for more than a year, usually less than 2 months. However, there is a small core group that has been playing SFP1 online since its release. For people that like the half-decent stock flight models and somewhat realistic avionics/weapons/damage modeling of the 60's timeframe, there is no better sim. The number of people actively playing these games online is so few, that having more than 1 or 2 servers up is wasteful. Everyone needs to fly on the same server or you might as well be playing single player. I will gladly provide tech support to anyone trying to host/play multiplayer for Third Wire sims. I do not normally have the time to actively fly with a squadron, but I can pop in an out, especially if I get an email telling me when and where to be. Good Luck!

I got this stick to give to my parents neighbor. I promised him one of my old computers a long time ago and finally got it set up the way I wanted. He doesn't have the money to get PCs, as far as I know he is still using the last one I gave him (a Pentium III 650MHz). The one I am giving him now is built to the same specs as my longtime primary PC: P3 1.2GHz Tualatin with 1GB PC133 RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. I have set it up with most of my games: Third Wire series, Aces High 2, Operation Flashpoint, etc. So I got this joystick so he could enjoy the games as well as I have. I used to buy a Microsoft Precision Pro 2 USB for these situations, they were only $20 and better than most sticks except for higher end HOTAS setups. I got the AV8R for $40 at Best Buy. I was pleasantly surprised: It felt good, has plenty of buttons/switches, twisty rudder, and dual throttles.

For the record, I finally got this project working 100%. Every button/trigger is wired into a button on the MS Sidewinder board. My next goal is to build a reasonable replica of the Martin Baker ejection seat using wood (at least basic angles, shape and dimensions), then buy some actual seat cushions from eBay. If I get that far, I may build a similarly simplified wooden pit to the approximate dimensions of the F-4 pit... but that depends on how much space I have after I move closer to my "new" job I started back in February.

My wife thought she wanted a small laptop for checking email, facebook, browsing the internet, etc. while sitting in the living room watching TV... Then she discovered the main tradeoff... it may be fast enough to do routine chores, but it is much slower and the relatively low resoltion of the display doesn't give you much real estate to work with for browsing or reading documents. So now she has flipped 180 degrees. She wants a laptop that will let her play World of Warcraft while watching TV in the living room... and to give her the speed and quality of graphics she is used to, that means a 1600x1200 or 1920x1200 display with a graphics chip strong enough to drive the game at that resolution. Work gives both of us laptops (and her work laptop is probably strong enough to do what she wants), so I prefer to build my own desktop as a pure hobby/gaming machine.

You get one install of a 3rd Wire sim. So which sim? Easy choice: WoV has carriers, most diverse flyable planeset, and is based on history (the carriers are what make it a slightly better deal than WoI). 1 mod takes care of just about everything from planes to terrain to missions: YAP (even better carrier, much better terrain, almost every plane/object you could want, and of course 100 detailed historical missions). However, the arrival of SF2 changes the situation. I want WoV2. If I have to do it myself, I can force YAP/YAP2 to work with WoV2.

Great video. Showcases the wide variety of aircraft, weapons, and ground objects available in this sim in a way that is very entertaining especially with the choice of music.

Multiplayer has almost always been at the bottom of TK's list. He does infer he may someday make a dedicated MP version of the game (with flyable MiGs!). But, knowing what he is already committed to doing and that his financial stability depends on continuously releasing new titles, I don't see how he can do a multiplayer game anytime soon without subcontracting out the network code. I don't think TK will hire someone to code for him and I doubt he can afford to take the time to write his own multiplayer code. If Microsoft provides another free alternative to DirectPlay that TK can plug into his game with relative ease, then maybe TK might be able to squeeze in the multiplayer version. So here is the roadmap I see that must be followed for us to see TK release an MP version of the SF2 game system based on his own statements: 1) MS replaces DirectPlay with an easy to learn and use system that is up to date in terms of handling routers and firewalls. 2) TK finishes his current project list (which he revealed at his forums and is quite a big list when you count conversion of all the original sims to Vista plus the Suez addon and 2 or more other unspecified games/addons). 3) The available planeset from previously released games/addons provides fully flyable versions of MiG-17s, MiG-19s, MiG-21s, MiG-23s, Su-7s, etc. 4) A certain hot location run by Satan freezes over solid. With any luck, all of these conditions will have been met by the time my son is old enough to fly with/against me.

Once a working cat extractor is posted, I may look into whether it is worth merging my textures with TK's new cockpits. The new pits are great in details and texture resolution, but don't quite look photoreal. But the new cockpits are different from the old, so it may be too much work for me to adapt my textures to the new pits.

If you like multiplayer, try Aces High II from http://www2.hitechcreations.com/frindex.html It is free to download. There are offline missions to use for practice (you can create your own, but the game comes with a few and there are many available from other players). But it is mainly a subscription massive multiplayer online game, which you can try for free for 2 weeks. Warning: the free 2 week subscription will make you an addict! IL-2 has better graphics and more detailed/complicated engine management (not necessarily more realistic), but IMHO Aces High II has far better flight/gunnery/damage models. I prefer BOB2 over IL-2. BOB2 is truly amazing: graphics, terrain, realism, AI, huge bomber raids, etc. The only limitation to BOB2 is the planeset/map/campaign: you better like flying only Spitfires, Hurricanes, Bf-109s, etc. over the English Channel. Having said all that, the IL-2 series is the most comprehensive WW2 flight sim ever released, I can't imagine any combat flight simmer not having owned it/played it. IL-2 1946 has everything wrapped into one big package, so it is the way to go. While I own every IL-2 release (except 1946), I have never really gotten into it, but I thoroughly enjoyed taking off/landing on aircraft carriers with F4U Corsairs: challenging and fun.