streakeagle

I went to the warbird parts place in Tampa to buy a B-8, but was disappointed to find out that the website is not up to date. The only B-8 in stock was no where near new condition, but more importantly had a gun trigger that sticks. I probably could have made it work, but it is easier to find a whole new stick in better condition than to get spare parts. On the bright side, the X-52 Pro and Rudder Pedals I ordered from GoGamer.com arrive tomorrow afternoon.

I will buy any reasonably priced addon aircraft. I generally love all aircraft and want to be able to fly them. I have my favorites and will pay more money to see them done to the highest possible standard. I find RAZBAM's set up to be fair. My wishlist has largely been covered between TK's releases, free addons, and payware. But, the F-101 and F-102 are painfully absent from an otherwise great implementation of the Century series. Ultimately, I would like to see every jet fighter ever produced rather than just the principal NATO/Warsaw Pact front runners. The Mirage Factory is a blessing. They are giving away aircraft with quality generally comparable if not superior to any commercial developer. However, since they work for free, their progress is relatively slow.

The previous bidder exceeded what I was willing to pay for a grip in that condition. So, I decided to get an X-52 Pro at half price for $100 from GoGamer.com and threw in the Pro Rudder Pedals for another $100. With FedEx 2nd day shipping, the total was less than or equal to what I intend to spend on a "new" B-8 at the warbird parts place in Tampa.

Different people have different thresholds. Just because you or I don't see a problem doesn't mean its not there. This game is capable of handling relatively accurate hi-poly models, so why not strive to get them as accurate as possible? In fact, as the resolution of textures continue to increase, I think rivet counting is going to become important to those who want to claim to have the best skins. I can even see a day when the permissible poly counts get high enough that the panels and rivets will be accurately modeled in 3d, which would mean all the texture guys would need to do is apply weathering effects and perhaps some highlights/shadows if the graphics engine doesn't make them stand out well enough through lighting and shadows. I look forward to the day when rivet counters will find that the right number, shape, and size of rivets are on each model :)

I think he is talking about the shape of the nose... which is nothing he could really tell you. I am not an F-16 junkie, so I wouldn't notice a subtle variation (or any variation since I rarely have installed or flown it). But I suspect, that he is as sensitive to shapes on the F-16 as I am on the F-4 and F-15.

The SFP1 series is a survey sim, which by definition permits you to enjoy flying a variety of aircraft. I have purchased everything released by Third Wire and every 3rd party add-on which adds new aircraft since I want as many quality flyable aircraft as possible. To me, there is no difference between adding new flyable aircraft and adding cockpits to make AI aircraft flyable. Beyond the flight model, the most important part of any flyable aircraft is that which you see the most while flying it: the cockpit. I have LOMAC and Flaming Cliffs and had hoped this series would continue to expand as it had started as a Flanker sim but over time added the Fulcrum, Frogfoot, Eagle, and Warthog. Black Shark won't get $1 from me because no matter how good of a sim it may or may not be, I have no interest in flying a Black Shark. I would have bought Black Shark if it had remained part of LOMAC to get any enhancements it would have provided to the sim engine. If the DCS series ever gets anywhere and produces aircraft that I want to fly, then I will buy the appropriate modules. But I bet they won't get much further than the A-10 and AH-64 before they decide to create a new series incompatible with previous work (if the progression from Flanker to LOMAC to Flaming Cliffs to Black Shark is any indication). An interesting statistic from the poll results so far is that 50% or more are willing to buy addons. I am sure that if 50% of everyone that owns 1 or more Third Wire jet sim would purchase an addon that was equally compatible with all of the jet sims, that TK would be happy with those kind of sales. I think a solid MiG-17/MiG-19/MiG-21 addon complete with campaigns and missions could be that product, but obviously from the linked post at Third Wire, TK disagrees with me.

eBAy has an actual F-4 Phantom stick grip up for bid: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=270179153372 It is in bad shape, but it is the real deal with no hand rest at the base. MC-2 Grip Assembly Control, Aircraft. USAF 56C3002-1. NSN: 1680-00-064-5145 I have made a bid, if I don't win it, I will still get the one in Tampa, perhaps next week.

Sometime next year... April maybe... I am going to have a couple of weeks off and I intend to focus on playing online all day every day when not eating or sleeping :) From last night with FastCargo of (V)VFMA-531 a little formation flying before the bullets started flying :) Got one decent screenshot before switching to combat while flying with FastCargo from (V)VMFA-531:

While I wouldn't call myself a Tomcat fan (always loved the F-4E and its successor the F-15), I have always respected it for what it was: one hell of a AWG-9/Phoenix platform with a respectable secondary dogfight capability. It was never designed to be low cost or light weight and was designed when cold war fears generated virtually unlimited military budgets. It was purchased after the budgets started collapsing (hence the temporary TF30 engines became a permanent short-coming for nearly two decades and the advent of the cheap lightweight multi-role F/A-18). The design was a dead end: the resurgent cold war budgets of the mid to late 80's did not produce a single swing fighter or 70,000+ lb "fighters". The AWG-9 is obsolete, so the need to build an aircraft large enough to carry it is gone. The dimensions of the F/A-18E/F proves that McDonnell got it right when they designed the F-4 Phantom: a multi-role carrier based fighter needs to be about 30,000 lbs empty with about 500 ft^2 of wing area and 13000 lbs of fuel internally. Obviously the more delta winged Phantom was optimized more for speed/high-alt interception while the more straight-winged SH leans toward lower speeds and agility. The SH obviously has some design limitations, but the Navy clearly believes it is the best bang for the buck in a world where your primary mission is to bomb third world countries with a secondary mission of defending yourself against any 2nd rate aircraft that might oppose its primary mission with a shoe-string post cold war budget. If Russia starts fielding a large hi-tech blue-water Navy with Su-27 variants on carriers, the US Navy might regret their decision to save money buying short range bomb-trucks, but that's a big IF. How many 1st rate hi-tech fighters did F-14s fight in extended dogfights over the course of 30+ years? None? 1 or 2? If manned fighters are virtually eliminated before any more major wars are fought, the Navy will laugh at the USAF for spending all that money on F-22s. Who knows what the future will be, but past history assures us that the military is always prepared to fight the previous war and caught with their pants down when they find out first hand what is needed to fight the next war.

it is 8 pm est (daylight savings time) and I am at HL and CombatAce teamspeak server

I wouldn't start modding the addon until after it has been out for awhile. Typically, after a new release, a few major bugs are found and a hotfix patch is released. It would be a shame to put a lot of work into new mods only to find a hotfix breaks or fixes what you were modding.

On Fri thru Sun I will be at home with my wife and baby boy, who presently consume almost every last free minute of my time, especially since I am working out of town from mon thru fri. So for the time being, my answer is no to any weekend action.

The F-4X would have used water-injected air with advanced air intakes to increase J-79 turbojet performance. Spey engines, being turbofans, are less efficient in supersonic applications in comparison to turbojets. Spey engines enhanced the F-4's subsonic performance (very useful for climb and turn performance at dogfighting speeds), but decreased supersonic performance through a combination of increased drag (caused by the installation of the Speys) and turbofan inefficiency as speed increases beyond Mach 1. For a similar example, the F-16/J-79 intended for export to countries not elligible for F100 turbofan technology, actually had equal or better supersonic performance than the F-16A despite the fact that the F100 was rated for at least 5000 lbs more static thrust at sea level. Read up on the speed records set by the early F-4s and you will find that some were exceptionally fast (faster than F-15s Mach 2.3/2.5 limits) because they used alcohol spray injected air to get results similar to the F-4X (no small coincidence). Also note that Israeli F-4s have already been modified to use such a spray system to provide emergency power (comparable to WW2 fighters). The systems used by the Israelis and for the speed records could cause uneven cooling resulting in engine damage, which is why such systems were not standard in all J-79 engined F-4s. Presumably, the F-4X was going to solve that problem or else be very expensive to maintain.

I would not criticize Iran's design without knowing what it is actually capable of doing. Every design choice has a cost and a benefit, perhaps the costs in weight and complexity are offset by performance and/or stability enhancements? The F/A-18 is the bloated, heavy, underpowered navalized multi-role evolution of the F-17 lightweight fighter. The F-17 evolved directly from the F-5. Why don't you ask why Northrop added the 2nd tail? Yet when they made the single engined F-5G aka F-20 (the alternative to the twin-engined F-17 design), they stuck with the single tail. When the US wanted to experiment with forward swept wings, they canabalized many parts from other existing aircraft to keep costs down. The X-29 had the nose of an F-5. Iran should be applauded for maximizing the use of its available resources to do something few countries can do: design and build supersonic fighters. While they have copied the F-5's basic technology, what country hasn't copied another's technology at one point or another? Russia and the US certainly got a lot of technology from Germany. Russia also got quite a bit of technology from Britain and the US. China has warped the MiG-19 and MiG-21 into various arrangements to suit their needs and along the way developed the ability to completely design and build their own. The US was even influenced to some degree by the MiG-25 and MiG-21 which drove the design requirments for the F-15 and F-16. The F-15 even looks very similar to the MiG-25, both of which owe some of their layout heritage to the A-5 Vigilante. Iran is doing what it should be doing: learning how to build planes step-by-step instead of trying to build an F-22 killer with so little experience in aircraft design and manufacturing. With an adequate budget, 10-20 years from now, they might have very competitive new designs of their own.

I agree, BF Vietnam and BF2 are sims. Unfortunately for me, they are too arcadish to provide immersion for me. Whereas even with old, inferior graphics, I find OFP to be the most immersive "sim" I have ever played. Falcon 4.0 with all its button-pushing glory does not make me feel like I am in combat with my life on the line the way OFP has over the years. What is the qualifier for a helo sim? Does it have a cockpit? does it have collective and cyclic? Do the instruments provide correct indications? Do the helo flying qualities approximate the performance expected for the available control inputs? The OFP physics model is obviously toward the arcade side in terms of the response to the control inputs... But all sims vary in their degree of simulation of various aspects of reality. I have never played a helo sim that got 100% of the physics correct. What % does it take to be a sim? Operationally, OFP can simulate things none of the other "sims" can. How many flight sims have people in them? Combat helo operations involve lots of people be it a transport hauling people or a gunship strafing people/vehicles. OFP can provide quite convincing immersion in most respects with the exception of the physics. It should be noted that while the physics are not correct, they are very challenging. The helos in OFP are harder to fly than in some dedicated helo sims. Neither MSFS nor X-Plane are very good helo sims. What dedicated sim comes even close to modeling a UH-1 Huey correctly? Modeling fly-by-wire AH-64s and subsequent digitally controlled helos is quite different from modeling traditional helos. To me, a true sim is a program that has been designed to replicate some aspect of reality to train its users to perform a real task. Do any of the PC games available meet that standard? X-Plane and MSFS have been successfully certified for this purpose for small single engine fixed wing aircraft, but are more for procedural training with flight model replication merely being adequate for familiarization. PC helo "sims" (including MSFS and X-Plane) at best provide no better and at worst are intended purely for entertainment. So, if we can agree that the available combat helo sims are really more games than sims, then what makes them useful is how much you enjoy flying them. Having flown in a Huey hanging out the side door, I find OFP to give me a better sense of what it is like to fly and fight from a helo than any other game available and as such I consider it to be a superior sim head and shoulders above those focused high-tech cockpits and/or detailed physics models. Even for jet aircraft, OFP offers some unique experiences. You can walk around on an aircraft carrier deck and climb into your F-14. You can raise and lower your helmet visor. You can have another player fly with you as your wso/rio/gunner. Being able to pick-up/drop-off a squad of players and having another player as a door gunner is far more interesting and realistic to me than using a mouse to push panel buttons on a screen while listening to computer generated radio chatter. All the while, I am using a cyclic, collective, and tail-rotor pedals to fly in a way that reasonably mimics helo flight. Now would I prefer a game that has all the flexibility of OFP, the details of Falcon 4.0, and the graphics of LOMAC? Sure. Give me a game where I could crawl with an M-16, drive an M-1 Abrams, fly an AH-1, or fly an F-4 Phantom all with exceptionally good graphics and physics. But PCs aren't strong enough to do it all and development budgets for sims aren't so big these days, so each game designer makes the approriate compromises for their target market. Armed Assault improved the graphics and retained the flexibility of OFP... if they could just get the physics right for ground vehicles and aircraft and permit more detailed controls, Bohemia Interactive could establish a new class of super sim that would largely replace the separate shooters, armored warfare, and flight sims. The fact is that many sims are heading in this unified reality direction where you can experience warfare from many perspectives: Aces High: focused on hi-fidelity planes, but including somewhat realistic sea and land combat just short of infantry battles. Battleground Europe-WWII Online: focused on infantry, but including somewhat realistic air and armored combat, have they added sea combat yet? Dangerous Waters: A true simulator used as a cheap supplement to train real sonar techs in the USN covering in depth ASW operations from submarine, surface, air... add in the ability to fly fighters and operate cruisers and destroyers and this would be the ultimate blue-water naval sim.

Can you be more specific about what problems you are having? The game has a very simple folder structure: aircraft name->cockpit the F-4E folder needs to contain the ini files that are named F-4E****.ini and the supplied cockpit folder replaces the existing cockpit folder. If you extract the hi-res cockpits, this should be as easy as dragging and dropping the ini files and cockpit folder into the approriate aircraft folder (F-4B, F-4C, F-4D, F-4E, F-4J etc.). If you don't see the hi-res bitmaps in the game, then you haven't located the files/folder correctly.

An Mi-8 with a ton of rockets is very fun too. A recurring theme for me: rockets can be hard to learn to use effectively, but are so much fun once you do. There was a huge user-made mission one time where along the way you acquired an Mi-8 and then had to use it to get to your final objective. The more damage you did with the Mi-8 on the way in, the less you had to fight door-to-door after you landed since you needed to clear a town. I lost that mission after formatting a hard drive one time and never found it again :(

I have contacted "warbirds parts and memorabilia" about getting a B-8... the owner is out of town right now (in Reno) but I will be getting one of the T-219 sealed units. This is not the F-4 adaptation, but the generic B-8. I am working out of town almost every week for a while, so I may end up having to wait awhile before I can pick this up in person (the owner laughed at the idea of shipping it since his business is so close to where I live). Of course, I am watching eBay like a hawk looking for an F-4/F-15 B-8 in fair condition for a fair price.

If you can live with the flight model (which isn't so much worse than the so-called dedicated heli sims once you get used to it), I find Operation Flashpoint/Resistance to be the most immersive helo sim. I made a multiplayer Vietnam mission (using addons of course) where 3 UH-1D slicks have to land 3 squads in a small clearing while 2 gunships with miniguns and rockets provide support as an overwhelming number of VC squads surround the clearing. No dedicated heli sim ever made can compare with the experience. I have played this mission over and over as gunship pilot, slick pilot, and infantry squad leader. The VC can and do shred the helos with MG fire, but if the gunships can identify and strafe/rocket their positions fast enough all helos can survive the landing. My favorite is trying to hunt down VC in the jungle vegetation using the gunship with rockets. With good eyes, you can spot the squads and level them with rockets in a couple of passes. I have played the stock single player mission where you are in a Cobra hitting a defenseless convoy countless times. I like to kill the trucks using the 3-barrel 20mm cannon so that the crews survive and try to run away... then I revert to rocket hunting. However arcadish the FM may be, it is still extremely challenging to fly helos and land them exactly where you want when you don't use the "autohover" freature. Another stock mission I have played countless times is the cargo helo one where you drop troops off under enemy fire then pick up wounded soldiers before returning to base. The initial drop can be done from the air, but I have much more fun trying to land on one of the few flatspots in the assigned area. Due to the open nature of OFP/Resitance, the possibilities are endless (aside from a realistic hard-core FM). I have the newer Armed Assault and have played the stock helo mission in it a few times. Graphically, it is far superior, but I think the FM took a small turn for the worse. Still a pleasure to play though.

The target's aspect also affects the reliability of the shot. In the game, sparrows will frequently fail on either a beam or front quarter shot. They are most reliable for head-on or rear hemisphere shots. Strangely enough, the otherwise much more capable AIM-7E2 is even more sensitive to the front quarter aspect than the AIM-7E: it will self-destruct halfway to the target almost every time. The AIM-7E has a higher minimum range, but also has a higher maximum range. I love it when my F-4 is carrying two of each. I use the AIM-7E for long-range/head-on shots and the AIM-7E2 for close-in dogfighting tail-chasing shots. If I was forced to choose between carrying one or the other, I prefer the AIM-7E2 since its envelope is much more friendly after the merge... it is superior to any of the USAF versions of the sidewinder for close-in dogfighting until the AIM-9L. If you are only carrying AIM-7Es, you should really only be firing these under two circumstances: 1. The target is far away and is pointing directly at you with a high closure rate. 2. The target is close (but outside minimum range) and is flying directly away from you. Sparrows seldom hit hard maneuvering targets (i.e. a MiG engaging a target with sporadic high-g maneuvers). But if you use sparrows a lot, you will find they can be used outside the two cases I listed above with varying degrees of success depending on the circumstances. With patience, you can frequently get 75% to 100% success with the AIM-7E and/or AIM-7E2 when none of your missiles fail their reliability check at launch. No amount of patience consistently gets me those kind of results with the AIM-9B/E/Js of the USAF. This is one area where the game follows reality pretty closely: if you analyze the USAF and USN air-to-air kills from Vietnam, you will find the USAF was much more successful with the AIM-7 than the AIM-9. They had technicians from the manufacturers grooming their radars and sparrows to maximize their reliability. USN sparrows didn't fare as well with the hard life of carrier landings and they had much better versions of the AIM-9, so the USN scored far more kills with AIM-9s.

Daco had a military style throttle with wing-sweep lever: http://www.daco.co.uk/html/custom_built_controllers.htm Of course, you could get almost identical functionality out of the new Saitek throttle quadrant.

Ok, so having a baby slowed me down quite a bit both in time and money... but I have been working my butt off away from home and getting paid $30 per day per diem for food. If I ate $30 per day worth of food, I would be even fatter than I am now, so I am building up a fund for game controller stuff... I could get a Track IR 4 Pro, or a Saitek X-52 Pro, or whatever I want... I am on the hunt for an F-4 B-8. It doesn't have to be a real one... just identical in size, shape, functionality. Most B-8's have a hand rest at the bottom on the right side. The F-4's did not. So most of the B-8s available won't make me happy. I wish I had bid on the F-4 throttle levers and stick shaker (the box the B-8 is mounted on with the pinkie switch) I saw on e-Bay. I simply did not have the money to waste back then, but now I would do it. The throttle levers are nearly impossible to find and this was almost the complete mechanism except for the actual name-plate/panel mount with slots that the levers moved through. Ugh! I was stupid not to try to get it! Oh well. So do I simply get an old Thrustmaster for about $10 and mod it? or buy surplus for about $200 from the warbird shop that is close enough to my house to pick it up in person? Or patiently wait for another ebay opportunity? If I had a place to put it, I would sell my wife on gettiing the ejection trainer cockpit at the warbird shop for $3000. I could slowly buy real pane parts as they became available and convert it into a geniune F-4 cockpit. I want my... I want my... I want my B-8 stick!

You have been misinformed... internet play works fine through the multiplayer interface... you just have to manually specify the IP address of the host. (and the host has to have the proper settings for his router and firewall to permit you to find his pc). read my thread at thirdwire for the most complete description of online MP for thirdwire sims: http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1410 While having identical installations is a very good idea to increase the probability of successfully joining a MP host, not all files have to be identical... but the person trying to join MUST have every aircraft the host has, have every terrain the host has, and have identical weapons data. So you can have more addon planes than the host, but if the host is not using the weapons pack, then neither can you. Some addon planes automatically modify your weapons data to add missiles and/or fuel tanks when they are installed... if the host doesn't have that aircraft, then his weapons data will be different than yours. The best approach is to start out with stock installs, then have all involved parties download the same addons from the same links and install them in the same order. If done correctly, custom installations work well with MP. Personally, I prefer stock installations for MP, because it makes it easier for new players to join. If they have just bought the game, they may need the official service packs/patches and perhaps enable some port forwarding throught their firewalls/routers, then they can play just fine. But Check 6 made a good SFP1 MP addon package that included the Draken, F-5, and F-14. This added quite a few steps to installation, but added a nice variety to the mix for SFP1.

Same old routine: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

All you have to do is click on the store link, and it lists all acceptable payment methods: https://store.thirdwire.com/store.htm Per the website, Paypal is acceptable.