streakeagle

Google "F-14 Tomcat glove vanes" to get lots of links. This is from Wikipedia: Two retractable surfaces, called glove vanes, were originally mounted in the forward part of the wing glove, and could be automatically extended by the flight control system at high Mach numbers. They were used to generate additional lift ahead of the aircraft's center of gravity, thus helping to compensate for the nose-down pitching tendencies at supersonic speeds. Automatically deployed at above Mach 1.4, they allowed the F-14 to pull 7.5 g at Mach 2 and could be manually extended at above Mach 1. They were later disabled, however, owing to their additional weight and complexity.

NASA had to solve several problems after the Challenger: 1) Convince the public and federal government that the problem was understood and that it could not happen again. 2) Get the shuttle flying as soon as possible and as often as possible to keep the program alive and not fall further behind (the shuttle was 2 or 3 years behind its original projected schedule before it even launched and never achieved the theoretical 1 shuttle launch per week rate that had been envisioned with multiple shuttles and landings at Kennedy). 3) Do whatever it took to make sure 1 and 2 would not be compromised in the future. Anything requiring extensive investigation and engineering would have been unacceptable. Whether it was the primary cause or not, the O-ring and Morton-Thiokol were the perfect scape-goats to permit rapidly arriving at a solution that would permit returning the shuttle program to flight status as quickly as possible. There is contradictorary data on the cause of the disaster. The official answer is that the o-rings failed due to weather. Some footage from the initial launch provides evidence that the liquid fuel engines had an inexplicable flame shooting out toward the solid booster before the shuttle even cleared the launch pad... But I never saw clarification why that footage was disregarded. If there was a conspiracy, it would have been to hide the engineering problems with the liquid fuel main engines that might have grounded the program permanently. NASA continues to struggle with the main engines and many launches have been postponed due to problems with them. I see space shuttle flights as being a lot like airline flights, for obvious reasons, you don't make your problems public. You solve them as quickly and correctly as possible while telling everyone else it is something minor. As long as you don't get caught making a mistake, such a policy results in much better publicity with no consequences. Of course Columbia proved that nothing had really changed since the Challenger: NASA procedures and safety were warped by the political/economic need for flights. Essentially, given key decisions involving risk assessment such as extremely cold weather on the launch pad or external damage to the airframe, the people making the decisions did not receive or ignored negative feedback from knowledgable engineers in the quest to stay on schedule and given the historically good success rate the shuttle enjoyed. I hate to see the shuttle program end... especially when it has no real replacement and our manned program is farmed out to the Russians until the Apollo rehash pseudo-replacement arrives. In order to save money and reduce risk, we our taking steps backward in our space program. The shuttle never met the original design goals of fully reusable launch vehicle, useful orbit altitude, and 1 week turnaround time mostly due to budget cuts and partially due to unwillingness to take the risks on new technology required to do it right. The next step should have been a program that overcame the limitations of the current shuttle and met or exceeded the original 1960s goals. A proper space shuttle design would be cheaper and safer than any conventiol rocket design: winged aircraft for the mother aircraft and orbiter mean less weight spent on fuel and structure while in the atmosphere. Fortunately, Burt Rutan got funding from someone other than the government and is proving that it can be done on a shoe-string budget compared to NASA programs. The private-industry is taking greater risks, but I'll bet it pays off and that their risk level will have to be much lower than NASA's before they can start taking passengers up on a routine basis.

His form DD-214 (discharge papers) would include a list of everything he was awarded while in the Navy. In theory, the Navy would have a complete copy of his records stored somewhere. If they do, you should be able to get help accessing them, but you will need his service number. When I was in the Navy, my SSN was my serial no. (circa 1989) but someone who served some time before that might have a unique number assigned by the Navy when they joined. I am not sure who you would contact, but a good start would be any YN (yeoman) on any active ship or shore station who might be aware of the process you would need to follow to get the info you need. On the otherhand, if your father kept his complete discharge paperwork and/or registered a copy with the local government's clerk (as I was directed to do when I was discharged and returned home), it would be easiest to start with the DD-214. Good luck. The Navy moves slow but steady. If you keep bothering the right people and wait long enough, you can get what you need... Unless they lost everything.

I have posted here before trying to raise awareness of this sim... and almost the only people that paid attention were other people who already owned it. MiG Alley and the original BoB by Rowan are both excellent sims only held back by unpatched bugs and the need for a poly/texture facelift. BoB 2 takes care of both problems with BoB, but deletes the multiplayer component rather than fixing it. I would like to see MiG Alley get the same facelift, but it seems their plans to do so have been abandoned in favor of expanding the BoB engine further.

There is no secret B/C/D model. The leaked model was the F-4E. Since the leaked model was already public, TK did not argue against modders using it as a baseline for public releases. It was the basis for the early unslatted F-4E. I believe it was also the basis for the F-4G, F-4K, and F-4M variants available for free download. One approach to creating a new F-4 would be to use another publicly available model as a starting point. I am not a 3d modeler, but if it is possible to use Alpha Sim's freeware models to create 3ds max source files, then perhaps what you need already exists, a freeware F-4N for CFS2: http://www.alphasim.co.uk/fwd.html Also it never hurts to inform TK about what you want or need. He may disregard or more likely forget about what you have asked for, but sooner or later he usually fixes everything he knows is wrong. I have mentioned to him about F-4D chin pod/ecm variants before, i.e. slick nose and no rwr in cockpit versus early chin pod and early rwr versus later chinpod with updated rwr. Despite the fact that the released F-4D represents a model that existed after Vietnam, he never got around to making more variants. I think I should bump my requests since he intends to redo the early models like the F-4 to catch up to the detail and fidelity of the newer releases. I don't know what improvements he plans to make? Texture resolutions? External 3d model details? Cockpit details? I (and several other F-15 fanatics) did successfully get some of the F-15A problems fixed by TK when WoE was coming out: animated intakes, canopy refinement, and underwing pylon positions... so it is possible to get TK to listen and take action on these kind of details... just a matter of when. But some of the other problems were ignored both externally and more importantly in the cockpit.

I have so many songs I love by so many different people. So many that evoke strong feelings/memories. But I have listened to Pink Floyd more than anything else, so I guess I should specify a Pink Floyd song. I have listened extensively to everything Pink Floyd has done, but my interest started in 1979 with the album, The Wall. Almost every song off of that album is in my top 100, hard to name just one as my favorite. But if I must name one, then I will name the one I heard first. Therefore, I name Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 ("We don't need no education...") as my favorite song.

While the French army may have funding and corresponding training issues... even the best funded forces with the best training will have accidents. Humans make mistakes... period! I felt during my time in the US Navy that too much time and money was wasted trying to avoid the unavoidable... human error. For instance, quality control problems led to the sinking of the Thresher (SSN-593)... so a new paperwork intensive program that tracks every critical part involved with the sea worthiness of submarines from manufacturing to installation to removal... the subsafe program. I was trained as a basic Quality Assurance Inspector. My job was to review both the part being installed (say an o-ring or a valve) and also sign of at key steps in the installation procedure. For each place I had to sign, there were at least two other places for redundant signatures. Finally, the CO had to sign off the paperwork... so everything was really done in quadruplicate. Despite this overwhelmingly redundant process... I still observed bad parts getting through and/or being installed incorrectly. In one case, the system did its job on the same valve 3 times! A check valve with an arrow on it was being welded into a pipe with arrows on it... yet the valve was welded in backwards 3 times! The diesel exhaust valve on AGSS-555 developed a problem and needed some maintenance, when they dissassembled it, they found a 2 foot piece of 2by4 (which wasn't the problem and had been there for at least a year or two). I can assure you that there was a stack of paperwork from when that valve was last worked on signed by dozens of people that assured us that the job was done 100% correct... so the 2 by 4 must have teleported in while at least 3 inspectors and 1 or more workers weren't looking. Changing regulations and training to the nth degree will not stop 1 or even 100 people who are tired and overworked (or even well rested and idle) from making mistakes. At best, it will minimize the risk... but as with anything there is a law of diminishing returns. Also, if you spend all of your time and money training... you won't get any of the real work/operation done either. If people in the armed forces are never allowed to make mistakes (even fatal ones), there soon won't be anyone left in the armed forces as they will sooner or later be punished. Certainly, there is such a crime as negligence and punishments for committing it should be enforced accordingly... but there should also be such a thing as forgivable mistakes. Drawing the line correctly in legal terms that can be understood and adhered to is the real challenge. I personally think the entire US has become too risk averse such that people are afraid to do their jobs because they know they will make mistakes and that there will be dire consequences for making those mistakes... this is not only a bad mindset for the general population of a nation that wants to stay strong and competitive, but a disaster in combat situations. Soldiers in a combat zone engaging what they believe to be the enemy should be able to pull the trigger without having to hesitate to second guess their own judgement... or the enemy who has no such rules will kill them while they consult their legal references. In the case of this French Army accident, I don't see enough info to know how this happened... But as a former armed watch stander, a civillian with a concealed carry permit, and a hobbyist with rifle and pistol shooting, I can't imagine loading my weapon without having checked that the ammunition is in the magazine correctly and in a good condition to fire when in a non-combat/life-or-death situation... whether loading live rounds or blanks. I don't know why the soldier didn't check... i.e. it may not have been his fault due to the combat simulation nature of the display... But unless someone handed him everything just before the demo and ordered him out to shoot in the demo, I would place 99% of the blame on him. The tragedy for the French Army is that because of his mistake, a lot of soldiers who could be spending their time on their regularly scheduled training and exercises are going to have to drop what their doing to comply with whatever new training/regulations come about due to this one mistake. It is this knee-jerk reaction to every single mistake that is made that was killing the US Navy. After Tailhook, the entire Navy had to stop for hours to watch sexual harrassment training videos because a bunch of officers (mainly aviators) acted in a way that was clearly unacceptable before Tailhook ever occurred. Of course, their behavior was traditional despite being wrong. The only reason it became a problem was because one woman decided to prosecute... which then had a domino effect as that encouraged a lot of the other women involved to come forward. So in addition to sexual harrassment training, we had to be trained on how to follow regulations rather than tradition. My question is, why were traditions and regulations so far in opposite directions? The same people who wrote and enforced the regulations were the biggest supporters and participants in illegal traditions ranging from drinking excessively to hazing to inappropriate sexual conduct. There are several reasons why I didn't stay for a full 20 to 30 years in the Navy despite already having 8 years in... among them were my complete loss of respect for the leadership above me ranging from my Chief of the Boat all the way to Washington D.C. If I am willing to risk my life for my country, I think the least my country can do is provide qualified leaders with honesty and integrity that will not squander my time (and life) with their ignorance, negligence, and career ambitions. I served under some very good people... but more often than is acceptable for submarine operations, I saw leaders that would have been "fragged" for their incompetence had they been leading a platoon in Vietnam.

My lack of commitment to working on the flight model is partially holding up the XB-70 project... Though the individual doing the 3d model hasn't finished either. I bet if I gave him even a half-decent flight model that was flyable, he might be more motivated to finish whatever parts he has left to do on the 3d model. If someone else wants to step up and provide an FM, I can hand over the tons of data I built up (NASA documents, excel files, etc.). It will take a lot of work to get it right, but the data is there to make a very accurate believable flight model.

Not only will I thank you with words (as I have before)... But I will put my money where my mouth is. If you need users to subscribe to keep this megadownload site open, then I will be a subscriber. I have used the TeamSpeak server, download section, and forums countless times. The other news, reviews, and interviews are great too. Thanks to Mad Jeff for creating BioHaz. Thanks to MK2 and friends for picking it up and making it combatace.com

When I joined the Navy in 1989, I was sent to boot camp in San Diego because that is where most of my schools would be. In that time frame, going off base in a uniform drew all kinds of negative attention. Almost every other car that passed you by while walking would shout some foul words and/or derrogatory remark. In one case, I was doing shore patrol duty and walking the outside fence perimeter with a club and a radio... I had eggs thrown at me. There was even someone making a hobby out of putting a laser-scope red dot on patrols at night, which the real base police were dying to catch but never could. I would guess that about half of the people doing the harrassment were other sailors. By November of 1990, I was stationed at Mare Island Naval Shipyard (near San Francisco) on the USS Richard B. Russell (SSN-687). I was sent back to San Diego for another school. I was eating at a fast food burger place off base with another sailor from my ship in uniform when an older lady came up to us. Desert Shield was on the verge of turning into Desert Storm and she just wanted to thank us for serving. That was a radical departure for me. Someone in San Diego showing respect and courtesy to uniformed servicemen? It was as if the first war in Iraq undid the damage done by Vietnam and Korea. Those in the military were appreciated and supported like they had been up to post WW2. Unfortunately, the lingering Iraq/Afghanistan situation that very much parallels the never-ending struggle against insurgents in Vietnam seems to be helping the pendulum swing back the other way. I feel sympathy/empathy for those still serving and bearing what is a much heavier burden than the twilight of the cold war that I served in. <S> to those who have served, are serving, and will serve. 21-gun <S> to those who didn't come back and won't ever come back.

If the purpose of a show like Star Trek is to portray our future, then the spaceships should be designed with less style and more practical engineering concepts. Sailing ships have graceful lines because they move through fluids: water and air. Why would space ships have anything other than whatever shapes are most practical for the function being performed? Look at all the spacecraft and space stations that have ever been launched from Earth: Boxes, cylinders, cones, spheres, and even open frame girders. I love the original NCC-1701. 1. It is what I grew up with. 2. I prefer its cylindrical warp nacelles. 3. Most of its design is practical/realistic: spheres/cylinders/rectangles rather than having arbitrary curves designed to be eye-pleasing. The original concept was based on NASA's concepts of nuclear powered ships with engines to the rear and the crew in a shielded pod some distance forward of the engines. 4. Despite 3 above, I find the curves that are there very eye-pleasing... the saucer is supposed to be aerodynamic, so some of its arbitrary curves do make sense functionally, though it should have been shaped more like a flying wing rather than the unstable saucer format. The stern/shuttle bay looks more like the stern of a sailing ship... somewhat unrealistic, but eye-pleasing. The NCC-1701A looked more appropriate for the time frame with the removal of the sensor dish that resembles old-fashioned parabolic radio antenna dishes. Arrays have replaced dishes, initially with flat panels, but can now also be conformal to the shape of whatever object is carrying the array... the open blue glow respresents some unkown future sensor technology? The rectangular warp nacelles and their support struts do not look as good as the orignals to me in form or function. If they had simply kept the original shapes/size engine nacelles, I might like NCC-1701A more than NCC-1701. All later versions appear to be arbitrary artistically motivated updates of the original shape made by artists purely concerned with style rather than making a shape that made any kind of engineering sense. Nature likes spheres and cylinders. People like rectangular boxes. The newer ships like flat oval shapes that offer none of the advantages of cylinders or rectangles.

I can't say it was expected or unexpected... But I can say that I have thoroughly enjoyed almost everything I have ever seen him in... stand up routines, movies, and more recently hearing him tell Thomas the Train stories that my son enjoys so much. I don't really know what kind of guy he was off stage/camera... but I love his stage presence/wit/sarcasm. The only thing to knock him for might be excessive use of profanity... and having grown up hearing Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, Eddie Murphy, etc., I don't see where he could be cited as being any worse... but I enjoyed all of them, too. Of course, some of the greatest comedians of all time managed to get plenty of laughs without being "dirty", "raunchy", or foul-mouthed... there are simply different types of humor and some are a little more universal than others. I am a big fan of British humor such as Benny Hill and Monty Python. My parents on the otherhand loved Benny Hill but didn't get much of Monty Python. I don't know which category George Carlin really falls into since I am strongly biased. But I guess he is more of a dark, sarcastic, adult humor rather than a lighter more universal one. One of his standup bits that I love the most is one about the invention of flamethrowers: “The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.” For the full version: To me most of humor was more intelligent than foul-mouthed... and I can laugh at any humor regardless of its political or religious slant, so I don't take any of the viewpoints he presents in his routines or movies seriously or get offended by them in any way. The only stand-up comic I can think of off-hand that I might like more is Steven Wright... now there is dry, sarcastic humor delivered with a dead pan delivery.

My OFP game night went well. 6 people counting me. We did a few death matches for warmups since most of us had not played in awhile. We did co-op including the much over-played Somlia mod mission. Finally, we did a little team vs team play, which was a lot of fun even if we didn't play to win. Everyone hopped into whatever vehicle they liked (helos, tanks, patrol boats, you name it) and tried to either take out the other's vehicles or cross islands to get to the flag or camp the bridge to protect the flag... lots of deaths with very little teamwork, just a lot of fun and shouting while consuming beer. Wish my wife could go an 2 week vacations with the baby more often I barely had time to install 1.14 ArmA. At a glance, I don't really see any significant performance improvements, but I think my Athlon 64 3800 single core is the bottleneck. I am watching the PC CPU and GPU market and looking for the next big hardware jumps before building a PC. Looks like WinXP is going away... so I may wait until Vista's successor is stable and patched as well (though if driver support continues for XP as long as it did for Win98SE, I may keep XP running on new PCs one way or another).

Some day... I will play online again. Probably when my son learns to entertain himself and won't press the power button or the reset button when daddy is on the computer.

No to question No. 1 from both a political and economic point of view: Any such program would only further threaten already depleted F-22 funding. For better or worse, the F-22 is now in inventory and would become even more expensive and wasteful if production were terminated prematurely in favor of an older cheaper less capable aircraft. Economically, if the US is going to build fighters, they should be based on US designs. If you don't use a capability, you lose it. Better to keep our own engineers busy upgrading existing designs like the Hornet rather than buying someone elses design and shrinking the US industrial base even further. An upgraded F-15 would be as good as any Flanker based design: new radar/avionics, new engines, canards, and maneuvering flaps would make it more capable than an F-22 except in stealth capability, keep the 2nd seat and it simultaneously becomes the best fighter and strike aircraft in the world if you aren't worried about stealth.

While I don't have the buttons wired up yet, I have flown the F-4 in WoV and the feel of the stick is impressive... Even without any kind of centering forces, I had no problems getting within the center deadband to maintain steady state flight. When I move the stick, I get very fine and precise control. It is amazing how much of a difference having the full shaft length makes compared to using the typical short grip on PC joysticks. Here are some photos: The entire project: Detail of the mechanical interface between the stick and the Microsoft Sidewinder USB: Closeup of the grip: The wires for the buttons (I need terminals, relays, DIN rail, and a 24VDC powersupply to finish this part:

Now that I have a b-8 grip with the amphenol adapter, I can list the pin map based on the letters on the connector at the base of the grip: A to E = Thumb Hat Left B to E = Thumb Hat Down C to E = Thumb Hat Right D is unused E = common for all Thumb Hat switches F to K = Bottom Button (pinky switch) G to R = Middle Button (side switch) H to N = Trigger (pulled all the way in to the 2nd stage switch) J is unused L is unused M is unused P to E = Thumb Hat Up S to T = Top Button (top switch next to thumb hat) The trigger feels like it has a two-stage switch, but the first stage does not appear to be wired... I ran out of time last night, but I will double-check again tonight to make sure the 1st stage isn't wired using a pair of the unused pins. The wires I am using come from the stick shaker box below the grip, which has its own connector with a few more pins (and wires). Two of the wires come from the nose-gear steering switch. Meter indications show that the nose-gear steering switch is normally closed and opens when the switch is pressed. I need to figure out how the stick shaker is wired and what kind of power it uses so that I can see if it is operational. My dream of having an F-4 stick for flying on the PC is finally coming true after waiting so long, I can't believer it!

Multiplayer co-op is always 8 vs 8. Players can fly on either side and any aircraft not flown by players are flown by ai. To try it out, simply start a multiplayer co-op session and play by yourself. Multi-player co-op is actually a great single-player quick mission generator where you can control the aircraft and missions flown by both sides and choose which aircraft to fly, including non-flyables like MiGs. While playing co-op by yourself, you can experiment to find out some of the limitations: Fewer ground objects (enemy defenses are only placed at the target). No clouds or carriers. Starting in air near the target (no ground starts or long transits). But, the two sides' aircraft will definitely cross paths, which is the intent for some of the limitations imposed on co-op.

Hook, line, and sinker... How could you?

I finally won a B-8 with an amphenol adapter on eBay. It looks like it is an F-4 grip. If the wiring and switches are fully intact, then I should be able to bolt this baby on and move forward with my project right away. If not, then I can mix and match with the other grip I bought to get one working with the adapter. YEEEEE HAAAAA!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080523/ap_on_...th_helicopter_2 It may not have weapons and does not look like an attack helo... but the real threat Blue Thunder posed to our society in the movie was the ability to spy on anybody anywhere without being noticed... until it was too late. This helo is doing an important job and if used properly will only watch people in public places where they are already subject to being watched by other people anyway... But powerful tools almost inevitably get abused. Is the threat of terrorists so great that we should entirely give up the pre-911 way of life and live under the watchful eye of big brother? George Orwell was a visionary... Animal Farm and 1984 showed the world for what it is and what it will be. The standard question for paranoid delusional conspiracy freaks like me is: If you aren't doing anything wrong, why does it matter if someone is watching me, what am I worried about? My answer is: If you don't understand what is wrong with the government trying to monitor everyone, everywhere, all the time, then you need to review human history and in particular the pros and cons of totalitarian governments even when they have been created for the good of everyone. Despite the apparent victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, the ongoing "democratic" process of the West (i.e. North America and Europe) is slowing transitioning our form of government into one is little different than the "Reds" we were taught to fear and hate so much. My mind is slipping away... all this psycho babble from one media story about a helo with big cameras and listening equipment. But didn't the cameras and listening devices used to be reserved for our enemies? Oh, wait, we allowed our enemies to freely come into the country and set up shop, so now we have to watch ourselves since any one of us might be the enemy. Babbling brook that I am...

He didn't say what he is going to do after the Vista releases... rather he explained how he might approach doing some of the requested material. I think he is leaning toward doing a series of smaller projects to build up the planesets needed to do the bigger projects like Desert Storm and Korea. Othewise, bigger projects will be broken up into much smaller parts. Alternatively, he may do some hypotheticals to fill certain gaps in the timeframe and planesets that he thinks would be popular.

It is a crazy world when someone can brag about a crime before they commit it in front of the entire world and the police may not actually be able to do anything about it in advance due to technical problems.

The ideology of politicians is usually very simple: Their goal is to make things better for the people who elected them. Unfortunately, a lot of politicians (perhaps rightfully so) feel the people that elected them are too stupid to know what is best for them. Therefore they feel it is the government's responisibility to decide what is best for them and make the people comply willing or not by passing appropriate laws. At the same time, in order to do the most good, they have to stay in power as long as possible. To get re-elected requires doing things that the people want even if it isn't what is best for them. I submit that in a democratic republic, voters should elect someone because they can trust them to make the right decision even when it is not a popular one. If, once in office, they perform as well or better than voters expected, then they should vote for them again until the politician violates their trust or hits a term limit. Instead, politicians running for office use polls to determine what they have to say to get elected. Once elected, they do whatever they want (which can actually be for the good of the people sometimes, but usually isn't). Then, when election year is approaching again, they start taking polls and coming up with cover stories for the actions they took in office that contradict the ideas they need to support based on the polls. So, the politicians who should either being keeping their election promises or making tough decisions based on what they believe to be the right thing to do are instead alternating between pandering for votes and pursuing their personal agendas whether it is what they people elected them to do or not. Of course the people voting are no better since they will clearly vote for whoever gives them the best short term deal like a tax break rather than choosing a leader based on their knowledge and experience. In my case, I have a tough time finding someone to vote for. The two dominant parties typcially field candidates that will never represent my interest the way I want them to and the independents are extremists and/or simply unelectable due to the dominance of the two main paties. I don't see a way out of this trap and both the Republican and Democratic parties are going to lead to this country's downfall if they don't start doing some good instead of just trying to maintain the status quo.

You have to remember, my idea of fun is reverse engineering TK's flight models to create an FM editor that allows you to predict in-game aircraft performance by scanning in aircraft data ini files. I am a part of the flight simming community (at least as much as time permits me) because I share the same desires as most of the other people here: to enjoy simulating flying various military aircraft in combat situations that are challenging and/or entertaining in some way. But what constitutes a simulation? What is challenging and/or entertaining? Calling me a liar because my defininition of simulator is different than yours is ridiculous. Claiming that the sim market was killed by the demands of people like Stiglr and/or me is also ridiculous. I can and have argue just as easily that the demands of people like us created the flight sim market in the first place. And for the record, I think we can agree that anything that is intended to replicate some aspect of reality could be called a simulator. Just some simulators are higher fidelity than others. The original Atari 2600 Combat game cartridge with tanks, biplanes, and jets was a form of combat simulator... hence the name Combat. Out of all of the Atari games ever made, that was not only the first one I had since it came with the system, but was one of my favorites... The problem is that most of my friends found it boring, they would rather play Pac Man, Asteroids, Galaga, ect. Ace Combat is a sim, and from graphical point of view better than a lot of PC sims. X-Plane tends to focus more on the physics and less on the graphics. Microsoft focuses on variety of aircraft and locations with potentially great graphics, though the physics can be good if someone works hard enough. They are also all games. Kind of like a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. Consumer combat flight sims are games, but not all games are combat flight sims. Professional flight sims are still little more than really expensive computer games, but their goal is to maximize training value rather than entertainment value. The US Army was so impressed by Battlezone, that they had it adapted to provide tank combat training, but they didn't get rid of the arcade scoring system. Operation Flashpoint is another excellent game that got adapted for real military training. So a game can be realistic enough to be a true training simulator AND a consumer grade entertainment system with minimal differences between the two versions. So why is it so wrong to want combat flight sims that are accurate enough to provide decent ACM training and/or flight operating procedures? Having a difference in opinion on a forum is normal and good... much better than everyone have to agree to one point of view or be banned. But resulting to insults and accusations because my opinions and viewpoints radically differ from someone elses isn't much of a discussion. I am not lying or trying to fool anyone nor was I even trying to rile anyone up... I simply disagree with your assessments of why the flight sim market is the way it is and what could or should be done to make it grow. My 5 year old nephew who plays Ace Combat right now will probably one day learn how to fly F-4s and F-15s from me. My own son is almost 18 months old but can already drive a radio control 747 forward or turn in reverse and has successfully made my $200 RC helicopter take off (he knows what the collective stick does and really loves seeing the helicopter go up and down at his command). In my opinion, that is how you build a community... it starts with exposing children to the fundamentals and taking the ones that show an interest even further. Not stopping production of state of the art sims like Fighter Ops and Black Shark to update old sims that no one flies anymore in the hopes that other gamers might see them as fun as the other shooters, racing games, or whatever else it is they normally play on their XBox or PlayStation. My son may not ever take up flight simming... or he may love growing up being able to try flying an F-4 with a hyper-realistic FM using his dad's actual F-4 stick. That will be his call not mine. To get back on topic, Fighter Ops hopes to be the mother of all flight sims. If you are mainly into flight operations and tooling around the countryside like in FSX, it will have that aspect modeled as well or better than FSX. If the future modules are released, then the combat parts become accessible. But just because there is an option to fly using clickable pits and detailed checklists, does that mean you will have to? The interview makes it pretty clear to me, they will let you scale the difficulty level to your liking, much as SFP1 does. Which, if you think about it, with the settings dumbed down a bit, the cockpits in SFP1 function almost identically to the ones in the F-15 Strike Eagle/F-19 series-- complete with 360 radar and the ability to identify your target and his stats. If you think Stike Commander and F-19 are the be-all end-all sims, get them running on XP and get as many people as possible to try playing them. Anyone who has played a modern flight sim may find them nostalgic, but won't tolerate the step backwards very long. Anyone who is happy playing XBox/PS/Nintendo games will wonder why you are wasting their time.