streakeagle

One of my all-time favorites. I learned about it in the 3rd grade (1976-77) from the school library's Colby airplane books and was disappointed to find that it never went into service. I did find and build a model of it back then. Now I have a much bigger and better model of it hanging from my ceiling with the wingtips down and the nose raised up for Mach 3 flight :)

It flies like Airwolf :)

The advantage of purchasing on Steam is that the license will work either way. But I prefer getting stuff sooner rather than later and never imported my ED keys into Steam when that was still permitted. So I don't use Steam for DCS World at all. For many games, the advantage of Steam is the portability of licenses: i.e. install a game as many times as you want on as many PCs as you want, but you can only play on one PC at a time. DCS World does not get that advantage. The Steam version has Steam licensing AND ED licensing which means suffering the worst of both worlds. That is why I never imported my ED keys into Steam -- a total waste of time for me.

The reason I know her name is from Pink Floyd, The Wall: https://youtu.be/MummZBgO3Ek

One way to help create missions is to play a campaign and save missions that are similar to what you want in mission and scope... then merely adjust the aircraft, etc. to make it more like what you want. I just tested it. While I could not save random single missions, I was able to save a campaign mission (at least the option was highlighted and appeared functional). I used to use this technique in SF2 to see how carrier missions were set up prior to the official mission editor being released.

Something that might work is importing the FE2 assets into SF2 and using SF2 to make missions. I am not sure how well Kreelin's mission editor could be adapted to FE2. While I am (or more correctly "was") somewhat of an expert on mission editing in SFP1/WoX and SF2, I never really messed with FE2 missions. I was always happy with randomly generated dogfights. Good luck!

I don't have a Win 10 PC to experiment on, but there has to be a way to get it working. Win 8/10 isn't that much different from Win Vista/7. So what changed from 8 to 10 to break the old games? I would love to figure out the cause of the problem which might make for an easy fix/work around. Since all of my games still run well on Win 7 and none of them require Win 10, I refused the free "upgrade" to Win 10. Of course my next PC will have to be Win 10. But I can keep this Win 7 PC as a legacy machine because it runs every game I own and I started buying games with Jane's Fighters Anthology.

The look of painted on markings depends on the resolution of skin and how the mesh has been "unwrapped" into a bit map. They can look absolutely horrible being pixelated and/or stretched/distorted. One of the most common/annoying results is the US insignia looking like an egg-shape instead of a perfect circle around the star. While actually playing the game, it is rare to really notice any such markings... decal or painted on. More of an issue with taking screenshots. I like screenshots where there are no aliasing issues as well as no blurs or distortion caused by anti-aliasing graphic options. In any screenshot where you can see the wing tip insignia of a US aircraft, you can quickly see the kind of issues that annoy me. Because the insignia has rectangular, straight-line stripes/border, it can look very jaggy from the wrong distance/angle. These days, the graphics options that minimize this problem don't really drop any fps. Back in the day, it was a critical decision. Multi-sampling anti-aliasing suffered from this problem. Adaptive AA would anti-alias tga's, i.e. decals and help quite a bit but cost a few fps. the best quality comes from supersampling, but that really lowered frame rates. To this day, I cannot use supersampling with DCS World... too big an fps hit. But in SF2, it doesn't seem to drop my frame rates much if at all and looks great.

I generally prefer decals because they can be high resolution and placed precisely with little or no distortion. But, they don't look right compared to the results you can get with painting. The decals tend to look cartoony and like they really are pasted on decals. Adding a little transparency helps show panel lines or other details, but ruins the colors. Painted on insignia can show all the details and responds better to lighting an shadows. Painted on insignias also don't run into the mesh limits or cause weird graphic anomalies. The best solution is to have both. It is great to have dedicated painted skins for flying your very favorite aircraft while retaining generic skins with decals for the majority of AI aircraft to allow proper and unique markings right down to the serial/BuAer number. The fact is, I am so darn picky about everything (call me a rivet counter if you must, because I am), that no one is ever going to meet my standard: reality. But I am horrible at skinning, so I always have to settle for whatever the community provides. Fortunately, "settling" for many of the free community skins is frequently equal or better to anything available commercially. Here's looking at you Sundowner!

It looks great.

Welcome back. There are many still flying SF2 as well as some still flying SFP1/WoX. I recently tried to get anyone I could to play SFP1/WoX online via Hyperlobby and/or Evolve, the current equivalent to the now defunct Hamachi virtual network. The problem I ran into is that most people have moved on to Windows 10, which apparently doesn't work well with SFP1/WoX. So I only got three other people to play and one of those was in Europe on a very different work/sleep schedule. I have had FSX/Acceleration for a long time and had bought the Steam version when it came out for $5, but it took Simworks Studios F-4B Phantom to get me to fly it for any length of time. I also bought VRS TacPack and Super Hornet to enjoy the full combat capability possible with FSX and the new (technically still beta) F-4B. I looked at the Milviz F-4E and F-4S, but based on my experience with the F-4B and Super Hornet, I still don't have much use for FSX. If nothing better were available, I could live with this, but SF2 Vietnam is a far better combat experience even with the much less accurate/lower resolution terrain elevations. DCS World is where I have been since the announcement of the original MiG-21bis fund raiser. With a few careful button mapping options, DCS doesn't have to be much harder than SFP1/SF2: flaps, air brakes, landing gear and maybe some weapons/gunsight options. The F-86 and F-5E are absolutely as easy to fly in DCS World as they are in SF2. The MiG-21bis represents the other end of the spectrum. The technology of the time makes for substantial complexity... multiple switches and buttons just to get the radar, gunsight, and guns lined up for dogfighting. But I absolutely love it. I just have to review my control mappings if I haven't flown it in a while. I would like to fly multiplayer, but I haven't found a server that I like and haven't bothered to create a multiplayer mission that would be fun to host. As for configuring DCS controls, that has to be done for each aircraft type. The main thing is to get the analog axis controls where you want them and then map buttons as you need them (which can be done while flying).

I see a few editing errors, but the writing is great at creating visual images without being repetitive... very hard to do. Being a very short story helped me a lot. I don't spend a lot of time reading fiction as I much prefer studying history and technology with my limited free time. But this was a fun read and felt faithful to the traditional movie genre.

The link you posted leads me to "Gfantis vs Guest Monster Book 1". The price is right: free! The extended introduction explaining the history of such legendary monsters starts long before Godzilla movies is great stuff. I don't see a story titled "The Visitor", but I do see a story called "The Intruder", which has your name :)

The bug fix was needed because there were some bugs :) I got the bug fix version to work by first installing the bug fix version into an empty folder, then copying/pasting the files from the bug fix into the tv22 install.

http://janesscsfleetcommand.freeforums.org/nwp-download-archives-t180.html The version that worked for me appears to be posted there as well as several other older versions. NWP 19.2 Release TV22 is the one that worked. Others also had problems with the later, but here is the final release version, NWP 19.2 Bug Fix release: http://janesscsfleetcommand.freeforums.org/nwp-v19-2-bug-fix-release-download-t183.html

I know you are primarily interested in the SH-2, but the SH-60 simulation in Dangerous Waters lets you fly the same missions in very realistic detail, albeit with more modern hardware. Skip through parts in this video introduction to glimpse everything the Dangerous Waters SH-60 has to offer, no other sim even comes close for an ASW helo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNCp7Jdv-zE

You have keep in mind that Fleet Command is very old. This means the graphics are pretty ugly, even with the mods (the SH-2 has a mirror texture between left and right halves, so "NAVY" looks wrong on the other side). It takes some magic to get it running well on Windows 7, and is even harder still to get going on Win 8 and Win 10. The graphics are pretty ugly with only the following resolutions available: 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. On a typical 1920x1080 monitor, you have to choose between 1024x768 and 1280x1024 and whether or not to stretch them to fit the screen. The old NWP mod series provides an awesome array of old ships and planes, but is no longer being developed. The current release version, NWP 19.2 bug fix, has problems... it didn't work at all for me. Fortunately I had downloaded the previous NWP 19.2 without the bug fix some time ago, and that worked great. The game is still very entertaining and challenging if you like Cold War naval combat, but it is still unstable and can crash... especially on bigger missions.

Reverted to earlier version of 19.2 (pre-big fix release) and got a very stable setup. Here are some shots:

I am partially in error. Out of the box, Fleet Command doesn't come with the older ships. You have to download and install the "NWP 19.2 mod". I can remember having NWP installed almost as long as having Fleet Command. It greatly expands the ships, aircraft and weapons of Fleet Command. But upon attempting to play with NWP installed, I am having stability issues. I did get a Knox class destroyer to launch an SH-2... then the game crashed to desktop.

Helo ASW sims are very hard to come by! The closest I can get to your request is "Dangerous Waters", which has crewable ASW aircraft, including the SH-60R Seahawk. http://www.sonalystscombatsims.com/dangerous_waters/ The graphics aren't so great and you don't get this for the flight model. This sim was originally just 688i submarines, expanded to more subs, then in this final variant, covered surface and air as well. The next closest game I can think of is the even more dated "Fleet Command" still available on steam. It is a "you are the admiral commanding the fleet" kind of game, but retains 3d graphics and direct control of individual aviation units. You most certainly can perform ASW missions with an SH-2 in that game, just not very high fidelity and no cockpit view.

Well, it seems after all these years, there was no procedure for detecting or preventing this problem. But in my experience in the Navy, the military never allows the blame to not be assigned to someone even if a rational person would place the blame on circumstances beyond anyone's control. There will be a "root cause" and he will have a name. The detent is a safety to prevent the pilot from making a mistake, but the pilot still inadvertently moved the throttle per the report. So to place the blame on a tech that had no procedure to detect or prevent this problem... and it probably failed at this very moment, or it could have been noticed by the pilot on the ground during preflight/takeoff/flying the show. In a just world, such a situation would be a "lesson learned", but in the military someone will be part of the "root cause" and punished in some way. On a sub, the captain usually pays the price when anyone under him fails in a way that has catastrophic results.

Accidents happen. Fortunately, in this case the pilot lived. What the articles don't say is whether the pilot is being punished in any way for this accident. The real problem was the idle stop interlock failure, which wasn't really the pilot's fault. But someone is usually held accountable for the loss of a multi-million dollar aircraft, and it is often the pilot, especially when his own action, the "inadvertent" movement of the throttle, ultimately caused the loss. I know what it is like to make a mistake and be held accountable... it doesn't feel very good.

I am a big fan of MiG fighters. So many great designs serving so well over so many years. It is sad to see the passing of such historical figures... but inevitable. The USSR and its MiG fighters were (and are?) the enemy of my country, but I still love and respect the aircraft, and the men that designed and flew them.

Some shots with Sony Tuckson:

yubba is still showing up pretty much every night I monitor hyperlobby. I have enjoyed flying all the different aircraft. The flight modeling in the SF/WoX series did not match real performance as well as it could have. The engine was capable of very realistic behavior, but Third Wire felt fun and easy was better than realistic and hard. Having said that, the "Hard" flight model always entertained me. Each type of aircraft and sometimes even minor subvariants had quite unique flight performance and characteristics. It was only the tuning to produce a simple mushed out stall easily recovered rather than having most planes easily go into departed flight that made the flight models seem so similar to those who never flew them very much. In this screenshot, I am in a MiG-19 with yubba's MiG-19 in my sight. In multiplayer, you can only take a screenshot about once every minute or two to prevent cheating by taking screenshots to create lag. So, I couldn't get a good shot of the hits/damage/explosion that followed shortly after this screenshot :)