streakeagle

While multiplayer should be the appeal of this sim, I never even tried multiplayer with Lockon. My days of playing Aces High and SFP1/WoX online ended within a year or two of the birth of my son. But the MiG-21bis project pulled me into DCS. Along the way, I have found the flight modeling on the P-51 and UH-1 to be well worth the price of admission. The A-10 and Ka-50 are outstanding, but they don't really interest me. At some point I may go looking for multiplayer fun, as that is absolutely the best air-to-air you can get if you find some good pilots. The only air-to-ground work I might like online is flying the UH-1, but it is too vulnerable to really enjoy. Perhaps when the AH-1 would give me something to do online. If I get proficient in flying the MiG-21bis, I want to hit the multiplayer skies to see if I can get some Eagles. Once the WW2 stuff has more aircraft available, I might try flying the P-51D online. I just want some good ACM. I don't want to be killed within 5 seconds of every time I spawn, nor do I want to slaughter lambs that barely know how to fly. The best situation for me would be a mix of guys a little bit better/worse than me so that everyone could have some victories and maybe even improve each other's skills. I like the idea of P-51D vs Fw190 matchups, co-alt, neutral positions ranging from 1v1 to 8v8. Similar ones with: F-86F vs MiG-15bis and F-? vs MiG-21bis. The F-15C is too much an overmatch for the MiG-21 and no other contemporaries are going to be available any time soon :(

I saw the hound dog under the wing in the clip. Always thought they looked cool even if they were rendered obsolete by more modern cruise missiles.

DCS third party products are like a snow ball rolling slowly down a mountain. Hopefully, the ball starts gets pretty big before the spring thaw comes. Belsimtek is cranking some top notch products out despite the "beta" status. Even with features missing or still being tuned during extended beta development, these helos are better than anything else I have flown in any other sim. Throw in the F-15C AFM and F-86 Sabre, and Belsimtek will have pretty much matched or exceeded ED's output with equal or better quality. The MiG-21bis is supposedly just a hop skip and jump away some time in March, and if successful may lead to a MiG-23MF. With the completion of the Hawk, perhaps a Typhoon will pop up sometime in the next 2 or 3 years. The Fw190 shouldn't be too far off, with an entire WW2 map and several more aircraft theoretically available by the end of the year (not holding my breath, might even have wasted my cash on Kickstarter?). The other 3rd parties are still quietly chugging along. Hopefully, they overcome all the hurdles and get some products on the market this year or next. DCS development is painfully slow, but eventually pays off with great rewards (like the UH-1 and Mi-8).

Sorry that it is cancer, but even really bad cancers have been beaten if found early enough. Fortunately for you, yours is readily treatable. But I do not envy you for the battle you are just beginning to fight. Never give up!

Outstanding airmanship! <S>

Hey Falcon, have you ever listened to the Roger Waters solo album, Radio K.A.O.S. ? It is a theme album, like "The Wall", about a special boy who could hear "radio waves" and interact with computers/electronic devices by phone/radio. I have listened to it for years. It is Roger Waters' only "upbeat" work (which he greatly regrets doing!). Touches on some Cold War/Nuclear themes like "The Final Cut", but has a happy ending. I will think of you from now on whenever I hear it knowing how you use so many special devices and abilities to overcome your physical problems. I have no doubt you will come through your operation as well as anyone could!

By the way, SFP1/WoX was way more fun flying with/against real people. The AI fails to expose the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between all of the aircraft. An ace like doghouse and his friends can punish just about anyone no matter what the aircraft matchup by using energy/angles fighting to the limits. But they will also back off and coach you into being a better pilot, as they would rather have an ineffective novice that needs lots of training than have no one to fly with at all. The game really works best with the free-for-all infinite spawning single player deathmatch, as players can come and go as they please and respawn at will in any aircraft allowed by the server's date/time setting. But they also play team/co-op. But once you start a co-op mission, no one else can join and once you die you are dead until the mission is over, so its not too fun unless the pilots are good enough to survive the whole mission or finish it quickly to avoid the dead people getting bored/quitting. As long as you only care about air-to-air (that would be me), single player can even support teams with groups of player forming up for flight vs flight combat. But given the limited number of people flying SFP1/WoX online, you will be lucky just to get in some good 1 v 1, much less 2 v 2. While the lag caused by the directplay interface and internet latency makes it hard, simple formation flying can be fun and lead to some cool screenshots. Good luck on eventually getting multiplayer working online over the internet.

There are a handful still dedicated to flying SFP1/WoX online when they can find others to play. Look for "doghouse" on hyperlobby... he is there quite frequently flying any online combat flight sim his PC and phone modem can still support (likely IL-2 since that is almost exclusively what the majority fly in Hyperlobby). He is a multiplayer addict and loves to fly this series with anyone he can find. Any others out there pretty much fly with him, so if you find him, you have found the "handful". He can also provide some great setup guidance via Hyperlobby chat to get your install and PC working in Hyperlobby and/or Hamachi, though he is going to favor Hamachi since it works so well. Also, I forgot to mention firewalls and antivirus. From WinXP SP2 and on, PC firewalls caused even more havoc with SFP1/WoX setups. If you are going to leave them enabled, you are going to have to get the firewall permissions set up correctly as well. If you use a popular/common firewall like Microsoft Windows' built in software, someone can help you set that up correctly. Personally, I just turned all that stuff off when flying online.

SFP1 based games use the Microsoft DirectPlay API. DirectPlay was never designed with internet routing in mind. It works best when all computers are physically connected to the same LAN. Problems caused by the internet and routers can be difficult to isolate and solve. Hyperlobby is also subject to being blocked or degraded by routers. If you or other people playing SFP1 online are behind routers, you have to follow the complicated configuration directions for each person hiding behind a router. Furthermore, your internet provider may interfere in ways similar to home routers, which you cannot control. The best/easiest solution has been for everyone to have a Hamachi account, and for everyone to join the same Hamachi "room". This setup "tricks" all the associated PCs into behaving as if they were connected directly together on a LAN rather than hiding behind routers. However, Hamachi doesn't allow you to find new players. Hamachi only tries to solve the networking issues caused by routers. In my years of hosting SFP1 online servers, I found Hyperlobby to be the perfect way to communicate/find players, but too problematic for actually hosting/playing online. So, I used a combination of Hyperlobby and Hamachi. I opened my server on Hyperlobby while having an active Hamchi network. All of the regulars would meet via Hyperlobby, but connect via Hamachi. Newbies would come to Hyperlobby and see an active server. If they could join via Hyperlobby without any problems, great! If there were problems, but a veteran was able to notice the presence of the newbie, they would be helped as much as possible.

How/why was it a failure? I always thought it was an efficient design only held back by politics (i.e. US pressure to buy US planes or the fact that they rely heavily on US components).

There's such a thing as an F-22?

Keep in mind that they almost always have something that you don't know about So, given this thing has been public for quite some time, what else do they have that isn't public?

Latest Pics inbound: It may be awhile before I can make time to get the real switches mounted and covered with plastic plates, but it will be great once it is done!

It has been public news for some time. It is one reason that the USAF had no care about whether the NASA space shuttle was being retired... they had already developed one for their own purposes. They would like an upscaled version, X-37C, that could carry larger payloads including people.

Well, the only advancements from before are using your photos as an overlay for the previous black/white lo-res manual print-out and adding our old 46" LCD TV to my computer desk... no more dragging the PC out to the family room, its mine now! I will provide pics as soon as I get a chance.

I will gladly take any drawings you have! At some point, I want to ditch the Warthog throttle and put in a home-built reasonable imitation of the real one.

That pic is perfect! I am envious of everything you have. If and when DCS has a fully clickable F-4E/F Phantom, I will be wishing I had everything you have. But, over time, I hope to largely replicate what you have with wood and real switches minus the gauges. Of course, years from now, maybe I will be in a position to get equivalent PC driven gauges or maybe even get around to getting what you have. While my wooden box does the job, I truly regret not buying the authentic enclosure that was sold on eBay by the same person that sold me the stick mechanism. You even have the snap on "boot" that covers the base of the stick. At some point, I would like to have functional rudder pedals that move in and out with the hand crank on the center console. But I don't have the metal working / machining skills to do it right and can't afford to pay someone else either. Rudder pedals and throttles almost never pop up on eBay, and when they do the price goes too high for me. So if I ever want to do this, I have to come up with something I can fabricate in my garage with basic tools and materials from Home Depot / Lowes. I saw the ejection seat trainer cockpit on eBay once, and my wife even authorized me to get it. But I had no place to put it and didn't want to waste money on something I wouldn't be able to use or even store at home. The one I saw was ultimately bought by the USAF for training QF-4 pilots in Florida. Kind of ironic that the USAF had to buy and F-4 trainer at eBay prices that they had probably just gotten rid of for pennies on the pound through DRMS. Keep posting pics of your progress!

MiG-25s and MiG-31s look way cool and distinctly Russian no matter how well they do/don't perform in combat

I am very sorry to hear you are having such trouble. I hope that it is just a minor problem or at least can be solved with a minimum of pain and suffering. What is the recovery time if they operate? In particular, how long before you can sit up and play flight sims At the very minimum, even if you are constrained to lying down in a bed, you could always watch all the Godzilla movies. I won't wish you luck because you don't need it... you already have and can continue to overcome adversity better than most people in the world. But know that your friends here wish you the best health and happiness.

Isn't AC-100 the CO aircraft with the bright colors? The closest I can find for 1995 is March 1995 AC-204 at Leeuwarden AB ops: Also from the same time/place, AC-205: AC-101 in 2006: So, I am thinking, just apply yellow higlights on the tails of the 1995 204/205 pics to get AC-101 in 1995.

Thanks for the post. My son loved it!

In a word, "no". It is supposed to be possible to create an orbit waypoint in the mission editor (not sure if that even works), but you can't tell wingmen to orbit.

Fingers crossed.

Those shots do look pretty good... but it would be nice if there were more "Sundowners" doing that quality of work for every model ever released for SF2 Of course, being primarily an F-4 Phanatic, I am lucky to have had Sundowner and Ravenclaw keeping me topped off with goodies in recent years. But I have lots of SF2 flying time in all the century series birds, both stock and mods, as well as MiGs. It would be nice to have every aircraft I fly, if not every aircraft available, to the same standards as the best mods.