streakeagle

I bought the updated Steam version a while back because it was cheap and I understood it was largely fixed compared to the original release. The graphics are nice. I like the plane set. For me, it is the one reason to fly CoD. The Beaufighter and Blenheim aren't flyable in any recent and/or mainstream WW2 combat flight sims. But I will hardly ever fly it. There are simply too many available options that are better, both newer and older.

There is an instant action for the Hornet in the Persian Gulf that is a guns only 2 vs 2 fight against the MiG-15bis. It reminds me of so many SFP1/SF2 fights with the F-4 vs the MiG-17. AI response is similar and tactics required to win are similar... Given both sims have fairly realistic flight models, here is why the combat feels so similar: Weight: F-4 41,500, F/A-18 36,970 A/B thrust: F-4 2x17,900, F/A-18 2x17,750 Mil thrust: F-4 2x11,905, F/A-18 2x11,000 Wing loading: F-4 41,500 / 530 = 78 lbs/ft^2, F/A-18 36,970 / 410 = 90 Wing span: F-4 38 ft 5 in, F/A-18 40 ft 4 in The Hornet's aspect ratio and maneuvering flaps make up for its wing loading, but a slatted F-4E has respectable AoA authority. The F/A-18C is really a slightly smaller F-4 with more agility, a bubble canopy, but slower and smaller stores load. The F/A-18E pretty much matches the size and payload of the F-4. Of course the MiG-17 is basically a MiG-15bis with an afterburner and wings swept back a bit more for better transonic/supersonic performance. At dogfight speeds, the MiG-15bis is a lot like a MiG-17F stuck in military power with a higher wing loading. So, beating the Korean War era MiG-15bis with an F/A-18C in a guns only fight is not much easier than beating a Vietnam War MiG-17F with a slatted F-4E. The Hornet can climb and turn using its power/weight advantage to spiral above the MiG-15 and then bleed that altitude pulling high AoA to saddle up for a medium to close range gunshot. It is a little bit easier than the F-4 vs MiG-17 because the Hornet can briefly pull some radical AoA to lead for a gun shot while the MiG-15 can't turn or retain energy quite as well as a MiG-17. If you try to beat the MiG-15 with a ham-fisted turn-n-burn fight, you will bleed your speed giving the MiG-15 a chance to gain angles or even get a decent shot. Of course flying an unslatted F-4 or better yet an F-100D or F-105D vs the MiG-17 is far more challenging, but the overall fight looks the same. You just have to be more proficient at exploiting boom-n-zoom opportunities given the AoA restrictions on unslatted F-4s.

I never bought CloD until the relatively recent Steam Blitz edition offer popped up in December of 2017. Patch 4.54 was just released a few days ago. The patch was so big (8 GB) that it was effectively a new installation. So I took it for a ride. The graphics look very good, especially for such an older game. The Spitfire feels twitchy, i.e. really sensitive to very small stick movements, but that is not surprising considering the DCS World Spitfire Mk IX pretty much feels the same way. The problem is that despite great graphics and what seems to be a passable flight model, I still like Battle of Britain 2: Wings of Victory more for the excellent dogfight AI and the option to fly in full scale bomber interception battles where the sky is truly filled with Nazi bombers. Additionally, the latest games like DCS World and IL-2 BoX support VR and generally have equal or better graphics. If I didn't have DCS World, I would probably be flying IL-2 BoX. But if I didn't have either of those sims, I might be playing CloD. But since I have DCS World and pretty much spend most of my sim time flying DCS aircraft, both CloD and IL-2 BoX just take up space on my hard drive. I will keep my eye on CloD to see where it goes in the future, but it will probably never be good enough for me to want to play it with any frequency.

Both BoB and MiG Alley were monumental sims for their time despite the bugs. BoB2 ensured the game would look good enough and run well enough for many more years. Unfortunately, MiG Alley did not get the same overhaul. Kudos to Rowan for releasing the source code for both sims allowing BDG to produce patches and ultimately deliver BoB2.

As DCS World is almost exclusively the sim that I fly and SimHQ has nothing but endless drivel about how bad DCS is, I have no use for SimHQ. At one time it was the place to go for Jane's USAF until Gulf Knight hijacked that function with a pay-to-be-a-member website. It was also the place to go for Strike Fighters Project 1 until the anti-fanboi's drove TK away leading to the rise of Third Wire's forum for official tech support and CombatAce for everything else. I like a lot of the long-time SimHQ members, but the site has been a waste of time for me for quite a while.

Update page if you have the Wings Over Europe CD: http://www.thirdwire.com/downloads_pc.htm

Download center for games purchased from the Third Wire store, which require an access code from your purchase email: https://store.thirdwire.com/mygames.php

If you purchased the game through Third Wire, then you should be able to use your original link provided in your purchase email to download the final version of the game. If you lost the email then you can contact Third Wire via their website. If you have the original CD, then you merely need the final patch, which is also at Third Wire's website. So go here: http://www.thirdwire.com That should point you in the right direction. If not, provide more clarification on exactly what it is that you need.

It has been confirmed for awhile. Belsimtek's F-4 was bumped to the back of the bus to focus on ED's preference for the F-16. For my entire PC/internet life, F4 has meant a hardcore sim for the the F-16. Belsimtek reveals screenshots of an F-4E that is pretty much exactly what I have wanted all these years, and its development is stopped to make way for another F-16. If it wasn't for TK/Third Wire, I would have been stuck playing Jane's Fighters Anthology and Jane's USAF up to now to be able to enjoy the F-4 in a realistic combat environment. Cheers to TK for keeping me entertained for a decade before DCS World started on the path of my ideal sim: a hardcore F-4/MiG-21 air combat study simulator. DCS World has actually bettered my vision by simultaneously providing both a survey sim and study sim of almost the entire flyable aircraft library with some of the most famous historical air-to-air matchups of all time. I would greatly appreciate it if they could just the the F-4 done before I die.

After the A2A poster got BoB2 running correctly in Win 10, he didn't need any special settings and got decent frame rates.

I would presume you have read this thread, but if you haven't, here's the link: http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=48817 Apparently the game can run perfectly well under Windows 10 without any compatibility mode with the videos disabled... assuming later video drivers haven't broken things that used to work. Good luck!

I don't have any Windows 10 gaming PCs, both of my mine are still Windows 7, so I can't really help you. But I hope you get BoB2 working as it is still a great sim. Excellent flight models, excellent AI fighter pilots, and the largest, most historically accurate bomber formations I have ever seen in a sim. Despite all the updated textures, the terrain may look a little dated, but the air-to-air combat against AI is unmatched by any other sim. I am not much of a campaign person. My favorite things to do were to either fly a historical single mission as a Hurricane trying to stop the bombers or 1v1 duels as either a Spitfire or 109 vs various levels of AI to see how they fought given different aircraft and skill levels.

NIce story. Glad you posted it or I may never have heard about it.

BlueSky FS facebook page back up. So they merely updated their remaining web assets to clean up their VEAO loose ends.

The purchase was made directly from VEAO, not ED, so ED owes me nothing. I bet on many DCS releases. The MiG-21bis was my first and mostly paid off. The WW2 debacle wasn't really a debacle for me, I got three planes, the new terrain, and asset pack for $40. I only lost the P-47 and the Me-262 from the crowd funding promise, but that was still a fantastic deal. Not only has the VEAO FB page and YouTube channel disappeared, but so has the BlueSky FS page and channel. They have gone kaput! Found this great video on YouTube:

Not happy with this, but not surprised at all. I have the Hawk and pre-purchased the P-40F when it was first made available with the announcement that it would be available for early release download in about "two weeks". When they changed their name to Blue Sky and released the P-40F for Flight Sim World, the writing was on the wall despite all the show appearances and promises that the Hawk was being completely redone and the P-40F was very close to release again. In less time than VEAO produced 1.5 aircraft, one a subsonic trainer with no radar and the other a "simple" WW2 fighter, RAZBAM released the very advanced and complex Mirage 2000, AV-8B, and have one more aircraft coming relatively soon, the MiG-19. VEAO bit off more than they could chew. I remember their project list that had countless aircraft on it with 3d models in various stages of completion for the F8F, Spitfire Mk.XIV, Meteor, Spanish Bf109, etc. I can't remember how much I spent on the Hawk, but at least I have something that is halfway flyable. Whereas the $40 I put on the P-40F is gone. ED has enough problems without third parties that are unable to put their money where their mouth is. I shed no tears for the departure of VEAO from ED's approved third party developer list. I am only sad at the thought of how much rum and coke I could have bought with the money I lost on the Hawk and the P-40F. From my email records: 2014/10/19 DCS:Hawk Beta (EFM) Pre-Sale 20% Discount $39.99 USD 2015/07/02 DCS: P-40F Kittyhawk (EFM) Beta (Pre-Sale) $34.99 USD

Historically, the USSR didn't like to issue any more fuel than required to execute the mission to prevent defections. Perhaps Russia still issues minimal fuel and sometimes they inadvertently use more than planned?

Aside from being able to copy a few useful files over to SF2 like the F-104 and A-6 cockpits, the only real capability SFP1/WoX offers over SF2 is multiplayer. If you aren't using multiplayer and have already extracted the files you need for you SF2 install, then there is nothing to gain from keeping any first gen games installed.

Well done.

If you don't buy it from steam, no. Of course steam has ways to import external games so that you can see them and start them from steam, but that is not the same as having full steam support.

The complete stock plane set available when you have all of the games is amazing. The biggest shortcoming being that none of the red side were flyable. Add in the free aircraft and cockpits available for download, and it is over the top. Razbam doesn't appear to be selling its SF payware any more. Their addons had a few minor glitches but provided some excellent aircraft. Despite YAP's announcement that they were going to cease doing business after Eightlein died, they are still selling their mods. Not my favorite company, but they have some great aircraft and carriers that cannot be found elsewhere.

Even after DCS World releases its F-4E, there is no substitute for the SF2 experience: pretty much every minor variant of very major F-4 that ever served except for the F-4S and the modern updates to the F-4E/F-4F series... and historically themed environments to fly and fight in. I don't fly SF2 very much any more after about a decade of flying for hours nearly every single night I was home with an operational PC, but I still love it and appreciate its many advantages over past and present sims. If you are tight on money, SF2 is rather high priced for such a dated sim that technically isn't even supported past Windows 7. There is too much content to fully appreciate if you buy it all at one time. I have everything TK ever published for SFP1/WoX/SF2 (except for a few of the localized versions released outside the US). But I bought them all piecemeal as they were released, so the cost was spread out over a number of years. The downloads from CombatAce make it possible to get an amazing experience out of SF2 after only owning one core version of the game, which may have contributed to the games financial demise. Unfortunately, SF2NA was more like a naval expansion pack focused on a new terrain engine tested with Iceland, ship-to-ship combat, improved carrier support, and adding the F-14 Tomcat with its unique avionics and weapons. You really need another one of the core games to get the full scale flyable plane set, terrain, and campaign options the game is known for. WoV/SF2V (Vietnam) was always my favorite with WoI/SF2I (Israel) a very close 2nd. Both of those historical settings are very much centered on the F-4's actual combat record. SF2V's inclusion of aircraft carriers makes it a natural match for SF2NA. If you want to focus on flying F-4s on historical missions, SF2V and/or SF2I are the games you really need. SF2I has a unique stock flyable aircraft that may interest you: the F-16A. It also has the F-15A. SF2I also has Expansion Pack 1 that adds the flyable P-51 Mustang. But for many people, one of the most cost effective and best ways to expand your SF2 install is to get SF2E (Europe). The big score in SF2E are the flyable F-15A, A-10A, and Harrier. SF2E also has Expansion Pack 2 that adds the flyable RAF Lightning series and more importantly includes the mission editor so you don't have to buy it as an addon. Once you have the SF2E/Exp 2 setup, you can come to CombatAce and get the free NATO Fighters addon that provides a comprehensive expansion of the flyable plane set in one package. SF2NA's core theme of a hypothetical Cold War gone hot at Iceland from the F-4 to the F-14 time frame overlaps the SF2E NATO vs Warsaw PACT Cold War gone hot in Germany from the F-4 to the F-15 time frame. So if you are enjoying SF2NA but don't have the money to buy all the core sims and expansion packs, I would strongly consider buying SF2E and Expansion Pack 2 as the most cost effective way to vastly expand the gameplay options. But if you have a strong interest if flying F-4s in historical rather than hypothetical conflicts like me, you might be better off with SF2V and/or SF2I. The odd man out in all of these posts about what is needed to enjoy SF2 when on a budget is the original SF2 game based on the original SFP1 game: a fictional war between two fictional middle eastern countries with one side backed by the US and the other backed by the USSR. On the surface, it is not historical in any way starting with the fictional terrain, but it represents many real world situations where the USA and USSR went head to head via proxy countries like Israel and Egypt. If you don't mind the fictional aspects, it is essentially the same as buying SF2I with one substantial difference: it is the only SF2 game where you can fly a campaign as a mercenary and build up funds to upgrade your aircraft/squadron. If you enjoy a dynamic campaign where you can make a difference and steadily improve your hardware as you successfully complete missions, you might like this one more than any other. I am not much of a campaign person. I like to recreate historical missions. But if I am going to fly a campaign, this is one of the most fun ones due to the ability to get rewarded with more than living to fight another day when you succeed. Whereas the Vietnam campaigns are historically accurate and therefore somewhat dull and repetitive, hitting the same targets day after day with limited air opposition that can be completely killed off in a few missions leaving you to face tons of AAA and SAMs. SF2I is a much more exciting campaign environment: a lot happens in a short time in the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur. But you don't have the fun of building up your aircraft and unit that a mercenary campaign offers. So, enjoy SF2NA and the many free mods you can use to expand it, but if you really like it and would like to get a lot more out of it, also consider buying one of more of the other core games and associated expansion packs as dictated by your interest and budget. There is nothing quite like owning all of the games/expansion packs which ensure maximum compatibility with all available SF2 mods.

But I can remember years ago, that if I typed in a book title... tons of pdf references would come up. Some sites required users to be paid members, but just about any book I could think of was showing up as a downloadable file. In the old days, I could go to a hobby shop or book store and check out a book's contents before buying it. Not many places carry the types of aviation books I buy and the ones that do can only afford to carry the most popular ones (i.e. Osprey books at hobby shops). Being able to check out a low-res poorly scanned pdf helped fill my shelves with tons more books than I would have bought otherwise... but then there were countless others whose content was worthless. It is very nice to see the entire contents of the book, especially when you know exactly what facts/specs/references you are hoping to gain from purchasing the book.

Have fun!