streakeagle

Actually, despite how unrealistic it is in some situations, I have always liked the super AI of the original OFP/Resistance and like the even smarter ArmA AI better. I don't want a game where I can stand in the middle of the street and single handedly gun down 40 people. In original OFP, I played on full hard settings (no white dot -- if you want sights you have to use iron sights) and played so much (both single player and multiplayer) that I could engage a full squad at short range on flat open ground and kill at least 10 and typically 12 of them without using sights... double tap, next target... double tap next target... If I didn't miss any I got all 12, if I had to shoot an extra round or two at one guy, then 10 was about the best I could get before they got me. With ArmA, I find it challenging to take on 4 to 6 at long range with cover (which would have been a piece of cake in OFP). I know they shouldn't find me so quickly and I would prefer more realism... but it is fun nonetheless. To beat the basic stock single player missions on full difficulty, you almost have to get single shot kills on everyone you see or they will react so fast that they shoot you or flank you, close, and then shoot you from behind at point blank. It is frustrating, but fun. I simply play the missions over and over until I don't make any mistakes and complete the objectives. Since I don't put the time into ArmA that I used to put into OFP, I am not as good, so the stock missions have kept me busy when I do play. That's a good thing when I am still having fun and getting challenged without even adding a single mod.

Worst case is that you deleted the original download and the email giving you a link to it... Even if this is the case, email Third Wire and they will probably resend you the email with the link. Then make sure you burn it to a disc before you delete it and save the email with the link in case you lose or damage the disc!

Not always about hardware limits... Console games have some outstanding graphics. Where do you want your cpu clock cycles spent? Where do you want your developer's budget spent? Decent flight models and functional 3d cockpits take lots of development time and money and with hi-res textures, cockpits take lots of cpu cycles too. The terrain really stands out in some of the console games, but they can't compete in terms of flight model fidelity and in-the-pit functionality. The SFP1 series may not have clickable pits, but in their present state, they are very detailed models (lots of polygons and animations) with fairly hi-res textures... the very things that sap your frame rate. However, having said all of that, some games simply have better coding: they look better, have decent textures and details, and don't kill frame rates. IMHO, Jane's USAF had outstanding terrain for its time frame and in some respects is still superior to the SFP1 series, but ran great on Pentium 3 PCs with 128MB of RAM and 32MB graphic cards. But I gladly gave up the eye-candy, advanced mission editing, and decent multiplayer of Jane's USAF for the much better flight modeling, sensation of flight, and far superior 3d pits. If only there was some way to take the best features from the past 20 years of combat flight sims and roll them all together into one fantastic game with awesome graphics, believable flight/weapons/damage modeling, fun AND realistic gameplay, fabulous single player action with AI so good you would swear you were playing online, multiplayer support so good you would swear you were playing detailed single player missions/campaigns but with people able to man anything and everything... backseats, guns, ground units, and playable on the typical PCs the average person buys at a retail store. I know its a pipe dream... but that's the way technology works. First you imagine something that seems inconceivable, then 5, 10, or 20 years down the road it shows up in stores for some petty low price.

I never looked close enough to notice... but given the photos... clearly a modded pit made to resemble a MiG-15/17? The repaint is welcome (better than seeing a standard A-4 pit for sure), but I was thinking of a genuine scratch built 3d model. Using some of the modder tricks, the A-4 pit could even have some items removed/relocated to make the pit more like a MiG-15/17.

Where were you when SFP1 was originally released? This is the most needed addon that was never provided, especially for online multiplayer gameplay.

US data is not hard to get in any way shape or form. The full details on radar/ecm capabilities are still somewhat classified, but flight performance is very well documented. Lockon favors Soviet aircraft for the same reason IL-2 favors Soviet aircraft. History favors the F-15 and US/Israeli pilot skills :) In the end, whether you play Falcon 4.0, LOMAC, SFP1/WOV/WOE series, or any other PC combat flight sim... their main purpose is to entertain you. The fact that the 3d models look very realistic and the flight/weapons/damage modeling is convincing enough to immerse you to some degree is the means of providing that entertainment. The developers reserve the right to take whatever slant they want based on their own goals, which certainly includes making a decent living by making a game they think will sell well in their primary markets. Personal preferences/bias is always going to be a factor given that the resources needed to achieve perfection are not available (not only technical data, but hardware/software technology, time, and money). I don't fault ED for the way LOMAC is balanced, but I do fault them for not making the game moddable enough for me to have option to balance to suit my own preferences/bias. A truly good game will either be open enough to allow modders to do their magic or have enough ingame settings to accomplish the same result. In the end, the main reason I don't play LOMAC is because I simply don't care for the timeframe/planeset (same as Falcon 4.0: the age of the AMRAAM and all-aspect heat seeker). The SFP1 series may be a little more arcadish out of the box, but provides the planes I want to fly in the environment I want to fly them in. With time and effort, the flight models in the SFP1 series can be tuned to be more realistic than most if not all consumer sims available, including MSFS and x-plane. But I am short on time and get most of what I want out of the box, so I pretty much fly just stock installs of WOV and WOI, with a little First Eagles and WOE thrown in for variety. I get my WW2 fix from Aces High. Every now and then I fly LOMAC, Falcon 4.0, Jane's F/A-18 and IL-2FB/AEP/PF, but it doesn't take me long before I go back to the others that are both more fun and in my opinion, more realistic.

Back to the original topic: As many have already said, WOE is easier since it is intended to be a "lite" sim that can be played right out of the box by a newbie without spending a week or two studying a manual and doing training missions. However, LOMAC is very scalable. You don't have to have it set to full hard settings. But no matter what sim you play, if you oppose modern fighters with modern missiles using realistic and/or hard settings (hard settings are not always the same as realistic settings), then you will face the problem of not being able to evade missiles without careful use of ecm, chaff/flares, maneuvers (break turns/dives), beaming maneuvers), throttle setting (idle vs. afterburner), and/or environment (sun, hills/ground, clouds, other aircraft etc.). Modern missiles are very maneuverable, very resistant to decoys/jamming, and much more reliable than Vietnam era missiles. LOMAC missiles, especially Soviet ones, are very effective on max difficulty (perhaps unrealistically effective). Until WOI, AIM-7E2 and later Sparrows and AIM-9L/M Sidewinders in the SFP1/WOV/WOE series were exceptionally effective as well against targets without chaff/flares and completely ineffective against targets with chaff/flares. WOI and the rest of the SFP1/WOV/WOE series are being patched to provide a very good environment for gameplay/balance and realism: Sparrows miss quite a bit, but no more than historical figures and Sidewinders remain effective, but can be decoyed/confused by good tactics if spotted in time once again closely matching historical effectiveness. I have never tweaked down the settings in LOMAC, so I don't know how well scalability works. I simply learned to accept the fact that if I make any mistakes at all (such as allowing an Su-27 Flanker to detect me on radar at all), that I would die by AA-10 Alamo. Personally, I prefer air combat prior to the F-15/AIM-7F/AIM-9L, so I have never spent enough time playing LOMAC to learn how to relaibly beat the AI in a head on at altitude where my F-15 can be easily detected and tracked by Su-27s. Given that the original game was focused on Russian aircraft and continues to be developed by Russians, it is no surprise to me that the Russian aircraft and missiles perform the best in that game. I want to be challenged by the opposition to an extended maneuvering fight (think F-105 vs MiG-17 and F-104 vs MiG-21), not have a lop sided turkey shoot like the Bekaa Valley (F-15/F-16 vs MiG-21/MiG-23). Once you get to F-15/F-16 vs Su-27/MiG-29, almost everyone dies quickly. Of course, there is no historical precedent for losses of F-15s in air combat (and F-16s have done almost as well), so perhaps LOMAC over estimates the reliability/effectiveness of Soviet equipment (or F-15s have never encountered well maintained frontline Soviet versions with well trained crews).

This sim has long needed a MiG-15 and MiG-17 cockpit. Your effort is greatly appreciated by me. Now, who is going to do the MiG-19?

I don't have any time to do mission editing any more, but when I do I always use a mix between KMD and wordpad/notepad. KMD provides a great way to create the different flights including duplication features. It is invaluable for assessing waypoints. But, there are some times when I would just rather open up the file in a text editor and manually configure things, especially once I have all the flights organized and waypoints assigned. Le Missionuer was never intuitive to me... couldn't figure out how to do anything with it. Since I was already proficient with KMD, I found it to be a waste of time for me to even bother to try to figure it out.

I can't stand the loss in vertical resolution. Cockpits need high resolution to make gauges very readable. I originally jumped from 1024x768 on a Voodoo 5500 to 1600x1200 on a Radeon 8500. I would rather play on a single large screen with no breaks and increased vertical and horizontal resolution. Right now I am using a Samsung 204B 20" 1600x1200, I wouldn't buy an LCD until I could afford one with at least that resolution. I also have a 46" 1080p LCD TV that has a DVI input. The 46" size is breath taking, but the 20" 1600x1200 definitely looks better, especially when looking down into the cockpit. I see 1920x1080 as a marginal decrease, 1920x1200 as a marginal increase, whereas 2560x1600 is a useful increase over 1600x1200 that might even get my money. I am more interested in finding 3200x2400 or the widescreen equivalent, I heard there is a prototype for $18,000. I think the virtual reality goggles would be the way to go, but their max resolution at this time is 800x600... and that is a real downgrade.

At $100 (the price gogamer.com had for some time), the X-52 Pro was a steal. I dislike the CH stick simply for the reason that I have no interest in F-16 style sticks (the closer to a B-8 the better for me). I don't like the CH throttle at all. I like the X-36/X-45 throttle more than any other availble in terms of layout/comfort and before I got rudder pedals, I liked the rudder rocker better than a twisty stick. I already had an X-36 USB and an X-45. I never bothered getting the standard X-52 since it didn't really offer me anything I wanted (the loss of the rudder rocker and addition of the twisty stick was a big issue with me). The X-52 Pro's internals and overall feel were worth it to me and I used the money I saved on the stick to get rudder pedals (I keep the twisty stick locked). The MFD tells me the time (useful while playing a game with no free hands) and what profile I am using (you can change profiles while playing a game, useful if you forget to select the right profile before starting the game). I still prefer the X-36 stick's shape (more comfortable) and it's throttle's configuration (same as X-45), but otherwise love the X-52 Pro more.

Nice work! B-52 and U-2 were the aircraft I had in mind when I brought this up at Third Wire.

For maximum dogfight capability, you want the greatest thrust, lowest weight, latted wings, and internal gun. Of the original production F-4 variants: F-4B/C/D/E/F/J/K/M, the F-4F would be that version. Later versions of the F-4E and F-4F may be better. F-4F ICE has great avionics, but I have no idea if its weight went higher, stayed the same, or thanks to technology, maybe got lighter? F-4E Kurnass 2000 I believe has a combat thrust enhancement, which may make it the better dogfighter for a few minutes until engine temps get too high. I don't know if any F-4E/F variants other than Israeli Kurnass ever got the combat thrust enhancement. In the game, using only stock aircraft, the F-4E is the way to go for maneuverability and use of the AIM-7E2 as a "dogfight" missile.

The problem with wireless connections is that you can't predict how good they are going to be. 1 minute you might have a connection that seems almost as good if not equal to being hard wired. The next minute, you might have no connection at all. In addition to the quality of your hardware, the environment really determines how well your connection will do. i.e., are there other devices nearby on similar frequencies? is someone using a microwave or blender that is causing broadband interference? I use wireless when I have no choice, but I use a hard wire connection whenever it is available. The only way for you to know for sure the answer to your own question is to try it. You should use some ping testing software that has repeatable results so that you can measure the difference between your hardwired results and wireless results. If you have a solid connection, there should be very little difference... but the question is how stable is that connection over time?

While I always upgrade when I have the time (sometimes I fall behind by a relase or two), it is not really necessary unless: 1) you have some glitch in 1 or more of your games and you think the new release might have fixed it. 2) the release claims to improve performance across the board by some useful % (typical with newly released cards). 3) there is some new feature that was previously disabled or broken (such as a new form of antialiasing that improves visual quality and/or reduces the hit for using anti-aliasing). While there are rarely any fixes for flight sims (maybe Microsoft FS at best), sometimes the problems with popular shooters and sports games are common to fligh sims too, so when they fix some major bug in other games, the flight sims get fixed too. I remember one case where I had a problem with Radeon 8500 series hardware T&L in Operation Flashpoint and when a release came out to fix a similar problem with an EA Games hockey game, suddenly my OFP problem was solved as well. Unfortunately, combat flight sims are pretty much small niche games, so the people who write the video card drivers generally ignore problems with them. In the case of the SFP1 series, TK actually had to change his graphic engine to accommodate problems with ATi hardware T&L way back when the 9700 Pro was a new card. I was able to manually disable the problem with the Radeon 8500 (using a third party driver tool), but people who bought the high end 9700 Pro were stuck and couldn't even get as good of framerates as I coudl get on my 8500 :) The problem with upgrading drivers is that there is a chance that something will get broken (typically a registry entry or a dll conflict). The ATi uninstall tool isn't as thorough as it could be (I almost always use it before installing the newest Cat and almost always have problems if I don't use it). Sometimes, I am forced to use a 3rd party tool driver cleaner to trouble shoot new problems. Somehow, my current PC has picked up a problem where my Catalyst Control panel settings are frequently ignored. I have to use the ATi tray tool (3rd party alternative to Cat control panel) to have positive control. No matter what I do, I can't get rid of the problem while my wife's nearly identical PC (same MB chipset, cpu, gpu) does not have the problem.

I have a 512MB x1800XT. I used to have a 256MB x800 XL. Depending on the way the game is written, the quantity and quality of the textures, and you choice of settings (resoultion, anti-aliasing, etc.), the extra memory can make a difference. If you actually intend to play games that benefit from more RAM, make your you get a card with at least a 256-bit memory interface to allow the card to use the memory fast enough and have something like AGP 8x or PCIE slot to permit the PC to transfer the data back and forth to the video card fast enough. The gpu's RAM also needs to be clocked fast enough for all of the other parameters to reach their full potential. Of course your PC CPU needs to be fast to send and fetch the data fast enough as well. It is easy to buy a video card and have it crippled by a bottleneck within its own design or in the PC you are installing it into. Some cards advertise large RAM, but one or more design parameters makes anything more the 128MB impractical (usually a 64-bit or 128-bit interface with older, slower RAM). The only game I have that uses all 512MB of RAM out of the box (or download in this case) is Aces High 2, and even then that is only is I download the hi-res textures and check the option to preload all of the textures before starting the game. The SFP1 series with hi-res textures (typical of current user mods such as Mirage Factory hi-def releases) sucks up gpu RAM, too. If several hi-res aircraft are loaded at the same time, you will easily benefit from large RAM video cards. To the best of my knowledge, I don't have any other games I play that use more than 256MB of RAM.

While you may not have time to think in the air when facing a situation live, you better have thought about it before you ever jumped into the cockpit. The point of playing board games (or attending Top Gun school) is to study the problem in depth before you encounter it so that you can get the results of in depth thinking reflexively. Better to get shot down on paper than learn the hard way :) Check Six! (later released as Flight Leader by Avalong Hill) was developed by a USAF pilot to provide a paper lab to teach pilots the basics of air combat tactics: mutual support/formations, yo-yo maneuvers, alt-speed-energy management, surprise, turn fighters versus energy fighters, etc. It is one of the simplest jet air combat games to learn and play and covers everything from Korea to the present. With all the optional rules and a few tweaks here and there, it can even be somewhat realistic. But it has very simple avionics/weapons modeling as the focus is on positioning your aircraft for optimum PK while denying the enemy any PK at all.

The new game will be the most detailed ever published. It is almost a PC flight sim simplified enough to resolve movement and energy state changes without using high level math. Even if the new game gets published and I get my copy, I am not sure I will ever get to fully learn the rules. Even if I learn the rules and play a few games by myself, odds are that I will never meet anyone else willing to play it. In this day and age, its hard to find someone willing to take the time and effort to learn a game like chess, much less study endless pages of rules and complicated air data charts to spend a few hours trying to recreate 30 to 90 seconds of close-in air combat. From the early pdf samples of this game I had years ago, I think this new game will accomplish what I was trying to do years ago with 1/144 models on wooden sticks: 3d flight sim with the most realistic physics possible without using calculators/computers to do the math. Of course, in most respects, PC flight sims such as the SFP1 series have surpassed this type of game in both realism and fun. But, there is a big difference that makes board games more popular with some people: You have time to think about your moves, i.e. the board games are about using your head to come up with the best solution rather than having good reflexes and thinking quickly. It is not a stick and rudder game at all, more of a super complex game of chess that requires log keeping and a vivid imagination.

For jet air combat purchase: SPi's Air War (re-released by TSR in the early 80's) GDW's Air Superiority (jet fighters from the 1980s)/Air Strike (attack fighters from the 1980s)/Desert Falcons (paper equivalent to WOI) by J.D. Webster Clash of Arms Speed of Heat (paper equivalent to WOV) by J.D. Webster Avalon Hill's Flight Leader (a commercial release of a USAF training game "Check Six!" designed by a USAF pilot) Read/study the volumes of rules associated with these games. Spend hours playing scenarios modeling mere minutes or even seconds of game time. Then you will come to understand a few things: 1) People were playing detailed, realistic jet combat flight sims using maps, paper, pencil, and dice long before PCs got beyond arcade versions. 2) The rules for the board games were as complex and error prone as PC sims (the errata for some of the rules were almost as extensive as the original rules). 3) People were modding these games to enchance the realism and expand the planeset by studying aerodynamics and real-world data on the aircraft and weapons. 4) TK was one of these board game modders whose work was published within the Air Superiority/Air Strike community. 5) SFP1 is a PC evolution of the board game mechanics with a similar balance between simple yet detailed modeling. PCs have almost killed board gaming altogether. If you think hardcore flight simmers are a small niche market, you haven't been a tactical board game wargamer. I became a wargamer when the market was at its peek: Avalon Hill, GDW, and a handful of other companies were competing to produce the best possible land, air, and sea simulations ranging from 1:1 unit scales with turns measured in seconds to global WW3 scales with turns measured in days or weeks. The arrival of PCs led to a slow collapse of the market and the big companies behind it. Sadly, the combat flight sim market is following the same path: sure you can still find new flight sims, but new releases are rare and are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Both single player and multiplayer combat flight sim fans who genuinely enjoy studying air combat can have a lot of fun and learn a lot about the subject by playing the old board games.

Despite the advantages of the radial, which aircraft served in Korea? Not the P-47. Of course pilots flying the P-51 in Korea for ground attack missions suffered the consequences. But, "best performance" doesn't win contracts. Lowest bidder usually wins with the US government. Some aspect of P-51s made them more appealing to the USAF. Another factor is that from the very start, the USAF has a history of choosing the better looking plane over the better performing plane, especially when the differences are relatively small. But overall price (both production and long term maintenance) has a huge influence. The USAF would have gladly built a fleet of F-15s, but lacking the funding, were forced to do a hi-lo mix with F-16s under pressure from congress. It would be interesting to see the politics behind keeping the P-51 in service while retiring the P-38 and P-47. Technically, engine types aside, the P-38 killed more planes than any other US plane in the war. Of course, with two engines, it would also be the most expensive to buy and maintain. P-38s were the F-15, P-51s were the F-16, and P-47s were the F-4/F-105. If I WW2 wasn't ending in 1945 and I was a bomber escort/air superiority fighter, I would have wanted the P-51H. If the British are to be trusted, their ranking of turn performance shows the P-51 turn rate/radius to be worse than the Spitfire but better than any other plane used in their tests including Bf109s, Fw190s, P-38s, and P-47s. The P-51H would have had not only higher speed and climb, but more maneuverability due to weight reduction. If I was going to pound the ground and try to strafe anything that moved, clearly the P-47 and its radial engine was the way to go. While air cooled engines air much simpler and more reliable... most car engines are liquid cooled. A big corporation like GM is very careful to engineer things to be cheap and reliable. There must be some reason why they have chosen liquid cooling over air cooling.

I don't know what you are talking about. I have played fully patched WOE on a 1920x1200 laptop and a 1920x1080 46" LCD TV. If you didn't see a resolution higher than 1600x1200, it is because your monitor or video card didn't support it or communicate it to the game.

I have a ton of data compiled for the b-70 flight model. But it all needs to be translated into data ini files... Been traveling/working too hard at work all day to feel like doing it at night. On the weekends, I spend as much time as I can having fun with my wife and son. I just changed jobs and will have a normal 40-hour work week/go home every night lifestyle. So, I may get motivated to make progress on the flight model again.

While I can't say for certain, it is my impressions from beta testing that the changes to radar ecm/eccm are universally applied to AI and player. I can say for sure, AI flys low and behind hills while approaching targets and MiG-21s do maneuver to break F-15 locks. It is hard (almost impossible) to get a Sparrow kill against a target that is aware of your presence and able to counter your shot. The best way to get a Sparrow kill is to get in relatively close while the target is head on or tail on so that the time of flight is too short for the MiG to turn his beam to you.

I have been unable to get online with any other beta testers, but having created hosts and done solo testing, I see no changes in multiplayer gameplay. However, the "Updating Network List" process is remarkably faster than previous releases. I don't know if the speed is intentional due to a code change or accidental due to being broken. When I get a chance, I will try multiplayer on LAN, but last night when the gold release came out, I didn't have a 2nd PC available.

Your eye doesn't lie... this is a screenshot from the final release version and that is what you will see when you see a bis. But the texture is nice compared to original SFP1 MiG textures.