streakeagle

Click on the "Download Center" link on the downloads page. It is a no go, too.

It would seem Third Wire is in the process of trimming its web presence down. Others have reported the loss of the store and other links. The forum link I posted above is now dead.

It is absolutely smart to provide the most played aircraft. But multiplayer only works if the sides are somehow balanced to allow pilot skill to be the dominant factor in victories rather than aircraft performance. Even the best flown Sopwiths and Dr.Is were dead meat against well flown Spads and D.VIIs. Specific excess power allowing altitude, acceleration, and speed advantages guaranteed the later Spads and D.VIIs could dictate the fight to either win or disengage at will. Personally, I would still rather fly the Sopwith Camel or Dr.I despite any disadvantages just for the fun and challenge. But unlike most people, I am willing to fly a P-40C on a server full of Spitfire Mk.IXs, La-7s, and Bf109K-4s. I will accept being shot down a lot if I can manage a few good dogfights where I can take down a superior aircraft with my preferred ride.

Releasing the Spad and Dr.I first is a mismatch. Should have been Spad and D.VII or Camel and Dr.I. First Eagles had a great beta/initial release by having the Spad, Camel, Dr.I and D.VII... the four aircraft I would want more than any other. But I have a soft spot for the Nieuport 17, Sopwith Pup, Sopwith Triplane, and couldn't imagine a sim without various Albatros variants.

I would hope that what is happening at Third Wire is that TK has done so well on advertising income with his android games that he can afford to take a few years off if not retire completely. He appeared to have invested everything into SFP1/SF2 and was going broke aside from any money he put towards a retirement. So maybe android games have treated him so well he can go have some fun instead of just eating Ramen noodles and coding every day.

If you are a long time SFP1/WoX/SF2 fan, then you know there is a lot of useful knowledge stored on the official Third Wire forums. At one point, they completely disappeared, but TK brought them back. They have been largely inactive and TK almost never responds to any questions posted there, but they have been a link on the Third Wire community page for a long time now. The link on the official web page has disappeared. The forums are still up at http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/ But the question is how long are they going to remain? If there is any info you want to save when they are ultimately shut down, I advise you go copy the posts and paste them here.

It is just the current full DCS fighter set stripped down to Flaming Cliffs control model. Strike Fighters used to be superior to LOMAC/FC because of the simple flight models used by LOMAC. They have really fixed that problem. But SF still has a huge advantage in maps/objects for popular/major historical conflicts. The free Korean Air War addon for SF2 is much better than anything you can buy for DCS World. But the F-86F, MiG-15bis, and P-51D in DCS World are modeled better than any sim I have ever played. So if you want to enjoy historical missions over somewhat accurate historical terrain and ground objects, SF2 is still the only real choice for Korea, Vietnam, Israel, and hypothetical NATO vs Warsaw Pact in Germany. SF2 also lets you dabble in African, Indo-Pakistan, and countless other less popular theaters. But if you don't care what the terrain looks like beneath you or want more up to date terrain modeling even if it is the wrong historical map, DCS World is hard to beat. The main thing the Flaming Cliffs level offers isn't standardization of controls as that can be largely achieved by careful mapping of the real-world controls to your HOTAS setup. It is the price. If you are starting out and have little or no use for clickable cockpits, it is hard to beat the Flaming Cliffs 3 package. The new MAC package is an even better value with the included maps. You get the full blown professional flight models and generations of great fighters for one low price. Aside from the lack of historical maps/missions/campaigns, it is comparable if not superior to any of the SF2 games. Then, if you really like one of the planes, you can catch it on sale and get the fully detailed module. Not particularly useful to someone like me that already has everything available, but fantastic for people who have a basic joystick and would like to get into PC jet air combat with an up-to-date game engine in terms of graphics and hardware support.

If I wasn't so absorbed with DCS World, this series might have been my primary sim. But alas, despite enjoying what little time I have spent flying a P-40E vs a Bf109E in VR, I simply don't have enough time to fly every sim I have and DCS continues by far to be the most rewarding. WW1 flying will be great in VR, which DCS presently doesn't cover at all.

I wonder what the outcome would be like in real life. The missiles would be seeing a sky full of countermeasures as well as tons of alternate targets. The confusion and target management would be nearly impossible to overcome until the numbers thinned out. Only World War 2 saw air battles of this magnitude. A strength of the Battle of Britain sim is the ability to get a taste of flying towards a sky blackened by bomber formations and escorting fighters at great playable frame rates.

The F-100 was intended to be the supersonic successor to the F-86, and it was, just as the MiG-17 was to the MiG-15. That the F-100 wasn't powerful/agile enough to fight something like a MiG-17 doesn't change the fact that it was designed/purchased to be an air superiority fighter when speed was considered king. The F-104 was Lockheed's answer to the complaints of pilots fighting the MiG-15 in Korea: speed, acceleration, climb, altitude to control engagement/disengagement. Its sole purpose was air superiority when originally designed and flown. While the USAF eagerly accepted the F-4 after evaluating it, they did not ask for it. The F-104 was going to be the contemporary air superiority fighter. But the F-4 was generally as good or better than each of the different USAF aircraft it would ultimately replace. How could they not accept it? But it was really an interim air superiority fighter until the FX project could enter service. The FX started out being a large Mach 3 aircraft, possibly with a swing wing looking a lot like an F-14 Tomcat with similar weight. The Fighter Mafia was able to show that power to weight and wing loading were critical parameters for a successful fighter as well as a bubble canopy, so instead of building a Mach 3+ MiG-25 killer with limited maneuverability like the F-111, we got the Mach 2+ F-15 Eagle. Summarizing the above and ignoring production numbers and service dates, the air superiority role was fulfilled in the USAF as follows: F-51D->F-80->F-86->F-100->F-104->F-4->F-15->F-22. There are some big gaps in the F series numbers due to the numerous interceptors and strike fighters built in the early years and the crossover with the Navy numbering system in the 1960s. In many ways, the F-16 is better than the F-15 for air superiority other than a smaller/weaker radar. But it is employed as a strike fighter with a secondary air superiority role. Whereas F-15C pilots are almost exclusively trained for the air superiority role. If you study the service dates, only the F-4 and F-15 are significant. The technology changes so fast that the F-100 had barely entered service before the F-104, MiG-21, and F-4 were starting to fly. But exponential cost increases trapped almost everyone at the F-4/F-15 tech level all the way to the present with F-4s and F-15s still serving in significant numbers and F-22 production cancelled at about 200. If you go by service dates, the F-4 is king. But the F-15 has been flying since the mid 70s and claims to have a perfect record as well as remaining a front line air superiority aircraft of the USAF due to the low numbers of F-22s. Unless Korea or the Middle East goes really hot, the F-22 will never have the combat record of the F-4 and F-15. Due to their cost, the F-22 will probably never serve as long either like the F-117 that is already long gone.

Epic! But he didn't say who won or by what score.

You could fly an F-15 this way. While there was some very basic file checking for the old SFP1/WoX multiplayer, there were still a lot of files you could change that it wouldn't catch. Match the names/paths the campaign/game engine expect and just about everything else can be whatever you want it to be.

Razbam intends to do a Mirage III. With their experience with the AV-8B and Mirage 2000, coming up with a decent Sea Harrier should be much easier. It will be interesting to see how fast this develops and if they are able to provide assets similar to the WW2 assets for Normandy. I would love to see the A-4s, Super Etendards, and Pucaras, too. But with DCS level modeling, 5 to 10 years to reach anything resembling a playable theater? All I can do is wait and see what happens. Can't go any worse than the last Falklands sim that was in development forever, Jet Thunder. But based on the way Razbam has been working, parallel development may give up something useful in less than 5 years.

Forget differences in ECM capabilities, what you really lose by not getting the MLD is the improved maneuverability. MLA vs MLD is sort of like the difference between a hard wing F-4E and a slatted F-4E. I read on the forum that the MLA was selected because that is the version which they can access, so you can't argue with that. An MLD is pretty much equal or better than the slatted F-4E across the board, and makes it a little more competitive against US "teen" fighters. The MLA will be an energy fighter vs the slatted F-4E as a turn fighter, a fairly close match similar to the MiG-21bis (energy) vs the F-5E (turn). At least the MLA has the better radar/gunsight improvements.

I would have preferred either the latest/best MLD following the tendency of most other modules, or the original mainstream MF that was in widespread use during the heyday of the F-4E and F-15A. But the MLA is almost as good as the MLD and will make a fine addition to my DCS collection.

You can't really evaluate TrackIR very well from a single test. It takes most people at least a few days to get used to how it works and much longer to tune the profiles to suit your taste. The basic problem Is that it has to amplify your head movement to allow you to look 180 degrees behind you while turning your head no farther than you can comfortably see the whole screen. So, a head movement of about 20-35 degrees has to be scaled to 180 degrees in the game. The same problem occurs with the vertical axis, too. It is like tuning a joystick response curve for a fighter with a sensitive control stick. You may or may not want a deadband around the pitch and yaw centers. You may want a flat response or one that is soft around the center but really aggressive at the endpoints. You can have the software smooth out your head movement by slowing down the response or have aggressive immediate response to even the smallest movement of your head. A well tuned profile makes using the TrackIR a lot easier. While you can download other people's profiles for any given game, I think it is better to understand what can be tuned and end up getting exactly what you want/like. Different games may require different profiles. So if you get a TrackIR, be prepared to spend a little time getting used to how it works and learning what you want out of a profile.

I have flown TrackIR for many years, starting with a TrackIR 3, then adding "vector", then TrackIR 4 Pro, and finally TrackIR 5 Pro. Since I already had committed to a 1080 GTX when I saw it at Newegg for $470, I jumped on the Oculus Rift when it dropped to $400. My PC display is an old 46-inch 1080p LCD TV from 2006. I tend to pick one of the two ways I can play (VR or conventional display/TrackIR) and stay that way for a few days or even a week or two and then alternate. The VR experience is unbelievable, but I absolutely can't stand the low resolution not to mention some fatigue from having the head mounted display pressing on my face for hours (which is made even more uncomfortable because I wear glasses, which get pushed pretty hard into the bridge of my nose). When I switch back to TrackIR and the 1080p TV, the graphics of modern sims like P3d V4 and DCS World 2.5 are unbelievable, but I can't stand the limitations of TrackIR and the field of view of even a large TV after experiencing VR. As a general rule, I use VR primarily for "fun" flights where I am looking to feel like I am inside the cockpit and have time to look around and be immersed by the view and smooth, precise 1:1 head tracking. But with rare exception, I tend to use the display/TrackIR for any situations where I need to be able to read the cockpit instruments and spot/identify targets. If I had to choose only one, it would have to be TrackIR since the only real loss is a feeling of immersion. So, if the low resolution is bothering you in VR and you have the money to waste on TrackIR, I highly recommend it. I love the option of being able to switch between the two as I see fit rather than being stuck in one setup or the other.

But if you like online game play, try Aces High 3. If you can catch a good time when lots of people are online, it is a lot of fun.

The IL-2:Battle Over X series is very good. I don't play it much because I spend most of my time on DCS World. But I like the P-40 in AVG colors and it plays very well in VR on the Oculus Rift. It is slowly becoming a complete replacement for IL-2:1946. I was never a big fan of the original IL-2 for a variety of reasons, but I used to enjoy flying the F4U Corsair from/to carriers from the time Pacific Fighters was released. I am hoping this much better sim continues to expand to reach and even surpass the variety provided by IL-2:1946.

Some sims are starting to need more than 8GB of RAM with higher quality settings (here's looking at you DCS World), but you should be able to run most sims available perhaps with the quality levels turned down a notch or two. Steam shouldn't affect the speed of the game application, but it gets updates of one sort or another very frequently. I like some aspects of steam such as the portability of most games across multiple PCs and some awesome sale prices, but it is better for the game developers if you buy directly from them. So, if you like the devs and want your money to go to them rather than steam, buy direct. I am split about 50/50 between steam and non-steam games. In some cases, steam was the only choice. In other cases, the economics made steam the way to go. But whenever practical, I buy direct.

The Lightning was released with a more difficult/realistic flight model than any other SF aircraft I can recall. I complained to TK, why does the Lightning get a flight model with such wild stability and stalling problems when the core aircraft, the F-4, gets a more dumbed down easy flight model? My desired response would be to see consistency: preferably to have all the aircraft modeled to the same level as the Lightning. TK chose to level the playing field a bit by going the other way, making the Lighting a little easier to fly. Given that his goal was to make the game fun and had made even the most difficult aircraft somewhat safer and easier to fly and that it was easier to fix one aircraft than upgrade all of the other ones, this was the right response. But the Lightning, especially the earliest variants is still one of the wildest rides in SF2. This makes it more fun and a better simulation. But I still feel cheated that the Century fighters and F-4 don't have nearly as much realism/difficulty baked into their flight models. I don't know if he intentionally made the Lighting this way or just didn't have the time to polish the flight model as much as he did on earlier planes. When you fly AI planes like the MiG-21, their primitive flight models are somewhat comparable to the Lightning. The AI flight models were roughed in to be just good enough for AI to operate rather than be polished for player "feel".

The only hope for multiplayer is SFP1/WoX. WoI with the expansion pack and final patch provides a platform just short of SF2's original release quality. The problem is getting SFP1/WoX to run stable on Windows 10 at normal frame rates. At this point, I believe there is a DirectX dll drop in package that solves the problem. It is extremely unlikely SF2 will ever have multiplayer or have any more patches or expansions. TK is done with "PC flight sims".

It never almost never hurts to have the option to use drop tanks. It very much hurts if you need them but can't have them.

I hope the Hawk and P-40F are delivered in a decent condition very soon given the long wait. But they aren't full time developers and they have demonstrated DCS World level work is beyond their ability in any reasonable amount of time. The Hawk represented the easiest possible release: a subsonic trainer with no radar and relatively simple systems. RAZBAM started down the same path of developing a trainer... but then they must have realized the real workload is in the flight modeling and decided to start with a Mach 2 fighter with a decent radar and associated missiles. The MiG-21bis is another example of a Mach 2 radar equipped fighter being the first release. Both the Mirage and the MiG are far from perfect, but despite their supersonic capability and much more complex systems, they are still the best simulations of those aircraft available to the public. Whereas the Hawk has been and remains so buggy/low quality that people would probably be better off with an FSX or SF2 version than VEAO's Hawk. In the time that VEAO released the Hawk and still hasn't released the P-40F, Razbam released the Mirage 2000 and AV-8B and is nearing the release of the MiG-19. If ED's F/A-18C is completed in the near future and provides a radar function library that can be shared with the F-15E, you can bet Razbam will be heading down that road as fast as they can. Supposedly, Heatblur is going to follow up their excellent Viggen (my biggest complaint is that its mirrors don't work) with the F-14A/B sometime this year. In the meantime, the best VEAO can hope to do is deliver the completely redone Hawk 2.0 and finally release the P-40F that was "two weeks" from release when I pre-ordered it. Will VEAO even attempt to go any further with the Spitfire MkXIV or Eurofighter Typhoon? If they do, how many years before one or the other can be purchased/downloaded? I wish them the best of luck. I would love to see them complete their original planned series of releases. But past performance indicates we will be lucky if the Hawk 2.0 finally provides the product customers were expecting and even luckier if the P-40F is ever delivered at all no matter how many bugs it has.

There is one aspect of this that makes me chuckle a bit... VEAO didn't do so well with DCS World, still struggling with the Hawk, yet to release the P-40F, and with an unfinished projects list that rivals the number of flyable aircraft in the entire SF series. So a "new" company appeared, "Blue Sky FS", that delivered a P-40F to Flight Sim World and was nearing delivery of the Spitfire MkXIV. The spokesperson for Blue Sky FS, also the spokesperson for VEAO, made sure to proclaim that these were two entirely different companies... it was just the 3d models developed for VEAO were now being ported to FSW by Blue Sky FS. VEAO had already announced that they were slowing to a crawl if not outright abandoning DCS World as a platform for their products and seeking other avenues, so why hide the fact that they created a new company to limit liability. But in a market dominated by FSX with the rise of P3D as the 64-bit update to FSX and the ever present and improving X-Plane, VEAO/Blue Sky chose Flight Sim World. It looked like a good choice. Unlike FSX (and to a lesser extent X-Plane) there was literally no competition in FSW for warbirds. But what they failed to realize is that there was a reason most of the major third party FSX companies chose to ignore FSW: they were trying to grab to big a slice of the FSX addon pie and give a piece to Steam, too... the same way they have done with their Train Simulator series for years. If FSW had been the only game in town, this strategy might have worked, but quite a big slice of the market is still flying FSX and/or Dovetail Games' FSX:Steam Edition. The rest either migrated to Prepar3d or X-Plane. Most of those potential customers weren't interested in a new sim with less features, limited addon support, and little or no backwards compatibility with old FSX addons. VEAO/Blue Sky bet on the wrong horse... again. Which flight sim will the VEAO/Blue Sky roulette wheel land on next? Have they thought about SF2? It is a stable code base with all the features and bugs being fairly well documented. If you don't count the literally thousands of free addons already available or YAP payware, there is virtually no competition. Unlike FSW, SF2 and even SFP1 is still for sale.