streakeagle

The DCS F/A-18C Hornet has impressed me enough that I have considered ditching my quasi-F-4 home cockpit for a decent Hornet pit suitable for both VR and conventional monitor/TrackIR flying.

Looks great, but I am more interested in the MiG-19S, or more accurately the Chinese J-6 derived from it as flown by the VPAF.

While I very much want the A-4E in DCS World and I will have to settle for what I can get, I want a professional/external flight model. Also, I don't see how they will be able to model the ground search radar. With simple flight model and systems, SF2 A-4's remain the best way to fly in combat. Until DCS has a Vietnam or Israel map, SF2 still remains the best sim for either of those air wars. But a DCS A-4 would be nice for Nellis Top Gun themed missions.

They most certainly modified some F-5's to have twin tails, however crude it may look upon close inspection of the joints. The real entertainment was their display of a new stealth fighter which looked worse than a cheap kit-car conversion of a VW Beetle and taxied around like it weighed nothing. The test flight footage was clearly a small-scale radio-controlled model. I am not sure they could build decent jet engines even if they could make decent airframes. But the F-5E was an amazingly simple, cheap, effective design. It would be a good starting point for producing a first supersonic fighter and trainer. Suppose that they have actually produced one complete, functioning aircraft from scratch outfitted with modern avionics/sensors purchased from an ally... how many have they built and how fast can they build them? If it is only one aircraft built every 5 or 10 years, it is still nothing to brag about. But if they can finish one per month, they could start fielding a useful number of truly new aircraft. You know you are in trouble when they start leasing Su-27 Flankers from Russia for "flight testing/evaluation" like China did... then shortly thereafter announce a completely new airplane built locally that is a perfect copy of the leased aircraft.

If it is a re-manufactured existing fighter, it means nothing. If Iran can produce new F-5's from scratch, it is a huge step forward for Iran. Consider China, it has taken them decades, but they have finally transitioned from reverse engineering to designing their own aircraft. You can count the number of countries capable of producing supersonic fighters on your fingers. Despite the age of the technology and the fact that they copied it from, this is a real achievement... But if they just performed an overhaul on existing airframes, they haven't really achieved much more than they have already been doing for years.

I can remember when I got my first HOTAS, a Saitek X-36 USB back in the fall of 2000, not long after I got my first PC. I can't imagine playing flight sims all these years without one. T.16000M should get the job done very well. Enjoy! I hope you get the DCS F/A-18, it is incredibly fun to fly even with it being a feature incomplete early release will should be the perfect complement to your new HOTAS :)

Mostly off-topic... but I remember enjoying instant action on the original SFP1 Wallmart release over and over. I had an F-4E with an SEA Shark-mouth paint scheme with a full air-to-air loadout and a sky full of commies in front of me. It flew and played so much better than Jane's USAF and looked so much better than Jane's Fighters Anthology. It was the start of many years of fun.

Inspired by the off-topic derailment of the thread on flying the Arrow in SF2, I briefly clicked through the Third Wire online store for the PC SFP1/WoX/SF2 series. Something I noticed is that the prices have inflated. The games used to be $29.99 each and I think the original SF2 and/or SFP1 was only $19.99. Now they are all $39.99 and the SF2 expansion packs are $29.99. To own all the games and expansion packs would be 6 x $40 + 2 x $30 = $300, plus all the DLC (27 x $6 = $162 for just the aircraft variants/skin packs) for a grand total of $462! If you buy DCS World products when their prices are lowest (somewhere between 50-75% off over the years), you could pretty much own the entire DCS library for the same or less. I wasn't a beta tester for SFP1, but got invited in time for WoV. From that point on, I had always gotten a free copy of the game. But I always made the point of buying at least one store copy or later web store copy to pull my fair share of the weight of development for a game I spent most of my time playing for so many years. For me it was worth every penny. I am not so sure for people just getting into PC combat flight sims. They need and/or deserve a game that runs on modern hardware without having to tweek anything. But to date, there is no other combat flight sim that covers every thing from WW1 to the 1980s so well despite its dated terrain engine. Complexity aside, DCS doesn't have the maps or even the plane set to compete. FSX/P3D with TacPack is pretty cool for a civil air sim and realistic systems operation, but is but a shadow of what you can do in terms of missions and combat in dedicated combat flight sims. But SF2 is static. Whatever bugs remain won't ever be fixed. While a few modders are still at it and the Yankee Air Pirate Team is still scheming to make a few bucks off of modding for this sim, new mods are down to a crawl compared to its heyday. If I were 20 something and didn't have a lot of cash to burn, I don't know that I would buy even one SF2 title at $40, much less the entire collection... but my obsession with F-4s and nearly equal love for the century series and the MiGs they flew against would still probably push me to try at least one title... most likely SF2V so I could fly all the USAF and USN F-4 variants at their best and worst over the skies of North Vietnam. As for the topic of the best game cover, the original Wings Over Vietnam cover wins hands down for me as it reminded me of the cover for Avalon Hill's air combat board game Flight Leader.

While I had absolutely no need for this aircraft in DCS World, I bought it anyway. Like the P-51D before it, this aircraft is being used to develop new tech for DCS World. It was laser focused on producing the best possible flight model for a PC. One thing you can't say about DCS World is that the aircraft are even close to "feeling" the same. Even without force feedback, the response of each aircraft to control inputs with a "professional" or "external" flight model is unique. The F-86 and MiG-15 are very similar on paper, but they provide very different flying experiences in DCS World. This Yak-52 takes it to the next level. I only wish I had very realistic force feedback to fully enjoy all the work that went into this flight model. It may not be a fighter or even armed, but it is a joy to fly.

His only recent post on Third Wire FB was "Happy 4th of July" before that his last post was in Feb. Perhaps he is deep into coding a new project?

Like the other links, the Third Wire forums are accessible again, but the link from the Community page is still removed.

He may be abandoning sales/support of the old PC games, which makes sense given that the SF2 games were designed for Vista and Windows 10 just keeps moving further away from compatibility.

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.