streakeagle

While you don't "need" Strike Fighters, I think you will want it. It has the desert terrain which is the basis for many addon terrains. It also has the F-104G and C-130A which are not part of WOV and WOE due to licensing issues with Lockheed. It can be found very cheap. The Value-Soft edition sells for $10 or less online, but I just bought SFP1 from Circuit City for $5 to send to Brazil... if you can afford WOV and WOE, what's another $5 or $10? Strike Fighters Gold is another option, but the cost-effectiveness is questionable. You have to order it from Europe, so both the price and shipping is much higher than buying SFP1 in the US. It is missing the F-104G and C-130A, but the F-104G is available as an official addon from ThirdWire. It does come with a few more campaigns (SFP1 comes with only one). I am an SFP1 fanatic, so I bought this version too. This had the side benefit of allowing me to provide good tech support for other SFG owners as well as support SFG when beta testing patches for TK. If you have money to burn and really want to show your support for TK, you could get this version too... but I am in a very small minority as a US resident who owns SFG.

The problem is that the behavior of targeting has changed. You used to be able to target anything detected on radar. i.e. if you had a blip on radar and pressed the 'T' key, you targeted it. However, the new patches with clouds changed the rules. Even though a text message appears like it always did indicating the aircraft that was targeted, it will not actually target the aircraft unless it is within visual range with a valid line of sight. Once targeted, if the aircraft goes outside visual range or the line of sight is blocked (clouds block line of sight!), then you will lose the target. Visual range seems to be about 6nm. It is easy to test this: acquire an aircraft on radar then lock on to the aircraft. Fly toward the locked aircraft and keep trying to target the aircraft using <CTRL><R> (which targets the acquired aircraft). When you see the target info in the lower right hand corner, check the range.

Those aircraft are also supplied in Wings Over Europe. So if you can wait until that release reaches you, you will eventually have those aircraft ;)

Well, you can change the standard loadouts in the ini files. But that becomes the default loadout in all conditions.

All sims have flaws. Name one that doesn't have flaws comparable or worse than these. Combat flight sims are really just detailed mathematical physics models and as such have plenty of room for errors. As it is, I don't know of any published data on the effectiveness of older missiles versus ECM environment, much less the AIM-120 (and I don't mean brochure claims used for sales and lobbying). Game developers have a lot of lattitude when it comes to modeling ECM functionality. I have never even seen an air combat sim that models ECM to the publicly available standards. In the absence of hard data, the developer gets to fudge the numbers as he sees fit. You may not like the 70% failure rate of the AIM-120 versus chaff, but that does not make it incorrect.

Some people never play campaigns. Personally, all I am interested in is quick and dirty dogfighting. So I could care less whether campaigns are dynamic or not. I prefer the variety and low-tech of SFP1/WOV (I am a Phantom Phanatic), but being a fan of the F-15 and Su-27, there is no better sim for flying these two aircraft than LOMAC. Falcon 4.0 doesn't do much for me since I never cared for flying the F-16, so I actually prefer LOMAC and have more hours on it than Falcon 4.0 despite the fact the Falcon 4.0 has a lot of great features going for it. In principal, I don't like the idea that known bugs were not fixed for free. In practice, I bought Flaming Cliffs anyway and thoroughly enjoy the improvements it brought. LOMAC is not all eye-candy either. Name another game that models the weapons systems of the flyable aircraft to this level of detail and realism. If it just had clickable cockpits, I would easily call it the equal of F4.0 and Jane's F/A-18. Why they would go to so much trouble to make such a detailed sim and not bother with clickable cockpits is beyond me?

I went one step further than you asked... I deleted all of my internet logins/passwords via the appropriate content tab of the internet options. No dice! If I try to log into the website, new cookie appears and connectivity to the combatace.com is immediately broken in response to the query after clicking to log in.

I deleted EVERY cookie that contained "combatace.com" in any way shape or form... a couple were associated with the website, a couple with the forum. This permits me to go to the website. But if I log in to the website, the new cookies cause the same problems as the old cookies. If I don't log in, I can come and go as I please. I have only one browser, IE6, and it is always patched to the latest updates.

deleting the cookie restores access, but if I try to log in, even without using the remember me button, it locks me back out again. obviously, I can log into the forums without any problem ;)

Thanks. I am trying to sharpen the lines a bit... but it seems the only way to do that is to make them too thick like TK did on the stock ones.

When are you experiencing stuttering? Fly random single player missions with light air defenses and see how it goes compared to using heavy air defenses. I play at 1600x1200x32 with max quality except for disabling mirrors and shadows on a much less capable P3 1.2GHz PC with a 9800 Pro 128MB. Your system should do well with mirrors and shadows enabled. However, when the air is full of SAMs, flak, enemy aircraft and is there are a ton of radio calls "SAM launched!", the game really bogs down sometimes (seems to be related to sound). I wouldn't drop the resolution to 1024x768 but you might try reducing the number of sound channels, especially if you are using the built-in motherboard sound which taps into cpu power.

The F-4E as depicted in SFP1/WOV/WOE has green radar graticule lines implying that they are being painted on the screen. This is correct for later F-4E aircraft (after TO 1F-4E-588, TO 1F-4-1056 and TO 1F-4Ej-614). However, prior to this, the graticule lines were etched into the glass. I have taken an image from the F-4E flight manual and converted it into the proper radar bitmap for the early style graticule. The in-game display resizes the bitmap to a lower resolution than shown here, but it still looks pretty good: Here is the image I used from the F-4E flight manual: The F-4B, F-4C, and F-4D all had the etched glass as well, so I modified TK's otherwise accurate green line bitmaps to have the gray etched glass look: Here is the image from the F-4D flight manual: You can download the appropriate bitmaps by clicking on the F-4 radar graticules link listed here: http://web.tampabay.rr.com/sflores1/StrikeFighters.html To use these files, simply extract the zip file into your Aircraft folder.

The slight change in growl tone is the indication you are looking for. When it gets louder, it has a target. Early AIM-9Bs are notoriously ineffective. They will generally track and hit a target only if the target is in afterburner and flying in a straight line or a very gentle turn. If you fly in later years in Navy aircraft, you get much better versions: AIM-9D, AIM-9G, and AIM-9H. While not all-aspect, these versions are more maneuverable and track much better. The improved USAF versions (E and J) are hardly any better than the B in comparison to the USN versions. While the AIM-9 is a close-in weapon, don't get too close to the target, give it enough room to maneuver after coming off the launch rail.

NIIIIIIIIICCCCCEEEEEEEE!

It is very hard to sell people on SFP1/WOV MP due to its many limitations. But the fact is, if you can live with the canned Co-op missions, it is very fun... even after hosting and playing it for years. I don't know why so few have tried to play it MP. Since the last round of patches, it has been working fairly well. It seems the biggest drawbacks are that you can't script your own custom missions and that you can't start on the runway. The AI is presently broken (fixed very well in WOE!), but if you could get enough people together to fly both sides, AI is much less of an issue. WOE MP eliminates several bugs and provides the best MP experience this series has ever had. But it still suffers from the aforementioned two big drawbacks.

If you loved Flanker, then LOMAC is a must have. Of course you have to have the Flaming Cliffs upgrade to get the latest version of the code, but in my opinion Flaming Cliffs is worth it. You can get LOMAC and Flaming Cliffs together as a package for less than what I paid for Flaming Cliffs by itself :( While LOMAC requires really high-end hardware to even try to run maxed out, it can and does run well on intermediate systems with reduced graphics settings and/or a few user tweaks to the files. Lower end PCs will not be able to handle more CPU intensive missions with more active units, but I could play instant action with the F-15 on my old P3 1.2GHz with 1GB of RAM and a radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. But even my newest PC with an Athlon 64 3800 and a Radeon x1800XT 512MB cannot run this sim well maxed out. Like any PC game/sim, LOMAC has its flaws, but overall it is an outstanding sim for the flyable aircraft it models. But supposing you were primarily interested in flying the F-15 and A-10 as opposed to the Su-27 and Su-25, Wings Over Europe (the successor to Wings Over Vietnam) is a nice alternative. WOE definitely has a lot less eye candy in terms of terrain, but in most other ways matches LOMAC in looks. But the avionics are simplified a bit (fewer modes and buttons to press) and it runs okay on low-end PCs. WOE should be released within a week or two if we are lucky.

Maybe you didn't understand what he said: LOMAC IS FLANKER 3.0. The makers of Flanker 2.0 improved the code and added the F-15 and A-10. It did not lose its focus on the Su-27. It covers the Su-27 even better than Flanker 2.0.

In SFP1 and WOV, you shouldn't have to do anything... when you start the game, it detects track ir and uses it. Perhaps you tried to "set something" and broke it :)

Enhanced mode should work with TrackIR 2. I have TrackIR 3 Pro and it works great, but I know others who have TrackIR 2 and have enhanced mode. Have you downloaded the latest software for it?

If you go back to my keyboard layout page, I have updated it to include my Saitek X-45 profile and a PDF of the stick mapping in it. Go here: http://web.tampabay.rr.com/sflores1/SFP1Keys.html If you open the profile for editing, you will note that every key command from the game is already available in the dropdown list for mapping. So even if you don't like my profile, you can quickly and easily edit it to what you like.

Another satisfied customer! The people that are unhappy with this game expect too much out of it. Given a chance, the whole SFP1/WOV/WOE line is really impressive and always improving.

Go here for my keyboard command layout (it is for SFP1 but the two are identical except for one key: to break radar lock in SFP1, it is <SHIFT><DELETE>, for WOV it is <DELETE>): http://web.tampabay.rr.com/sflores1/StrikeFighters.html You have two options, a smaller one page printout or a larger 2-page printout. I have an X-45 profile, but I have never bothered to post it. It is very much specialized to suit my needs and is largely based on the same profile I use for most jet sims. I can post it if you want.

It is quite a bit of overcompensation. He obviously never served on a US nuke sub and doesn't have the first clue about how they really operate. I served on SSN-687 and also served on our only remaining diesel, AGSS-555. While the rocket torpedo isn't an overwhelming threat, the fact is that subs were not detecting each other at 30 miles. While I was serving (from 1989 to 1997), the subs on both sides were so quiet that the threat of collision was the biggest threat while attempting to detect and track enemy subs. Detection ranges had gotten very short, even when using towed arrays. At close range, the rocket torpedo could be fired in a spread that no sub could escape given that it was going slow enough to be quiet. Sonar would easily detect and announce the threat... then the officer would have to give orders to evade, then the helmsman would have to respond to those orders. At short ranges and low speeds, the sub would have trouble accelerating and turning quick enough. Let us assume that both subs are doing 5 kts and that the detection range is 2000 yards (approx. 1 nm). If a single rocket torpedo is immediately fired down the bearing of the detection without any target motion analysis, it will travel 1 nm at 200 kts in 1/200 hours = 18 seconds. The sonar operator will barely have time to tell his supervisor "Torpedo in the Water!". The submarine will have moved at most 1/200 * 5 * 2000 = 50 yards in that time (150 feet) assuming that it is moving across the line of sight rather than toward it (an unrealistic assumption since the two subs had to be pointing at each other to some degree to get within detection range). Our subs are over 300 feet long. You could fire two rocket torpedos and easily cover the 150 feet the sub will have moved and have a fair chance of hitting in the horizontal plane. It is the vertical plane that is the problem. Unless the sound conditions are ideal or the subs are very close, depth is always a best guess and the hull diameter is ony between 30 and 40 feet. Unless fighting in extremely shallow water or in a narrow sound channel, you have a very slim chance of getting the depth close enough to score even a proximity hit. Is 2000 yards close enough to assume direct path and/or allow for the curvature of the sound propagation per an environmental measurement that may be over 24 hours old? I really don't want to find out the hard way. It should be quite apparent from the above calculations that a sub has NO time to respond to a rocket torpedo. If the attacker had sufficient time to get a solid solution before firing, he will get a solid hit if he can estimate the depth accurately enough. A MK 48 can be decoyed or even outrun. A 200-knot rocket torpedo fired close aboard gives you no time to react and is impervious to decoys/countermeasures. Contrary to what this guy is saying, US subs were very concerned about this threat while I was serving. Since the time I have left, my friends tell me that we have regained the acoustic advantage we once enjoyed in the 60s and 70s. If that is the case, then the rocket torpedo becomes useless since the platform carrying it will be detected and killed long before he is close enough to employ it accurately As for his assertions about how subs work as a team with other assets... Subs work best alone. When attached to a battlegroup, they have to move too fast to keep up with the fleet and the fleet makes too much noise to maintain an effective search. You also have to spend a lot of time at PD to be able to communicate with the battlegroup, which is not a good thing to do if you want to remain undetected and at an optimum depth for searching. Sub operations may have changed since I left, but I doubt it. US subs prefer to hunt alone deep in enemy waters... that way classification is a lot faster and easier: if you hear something it must be the enemy since you are the only friendly around ;) I left the Navy as an E-6 up for E-7 and stood Sonar Supervisor watches for 4 of my 6 1/2 years of sea duty. I can assure you that gives me some insight that Tom Clancy wannabe's will never have. Unfortunately, congress frequently listens to armchair admirals more than they do the real admirals when deciding on the Navy's budget :p

You need to extract the F-104G decals from SFP1 and copy them to the Objects folder of WOV... look at your screenshots, the skins are missing some markings ;)