streakeagle

The limitations were tremendous. But Co-op could still have been pretty good if all 16 slots could be filled by real people. Despite my best attempts to gather a crowd, I don't think I ever saw more than 6 to 8 on a Co-op mission. No one else could join after a mission was started and once you died you were out, combine that with the connectivity/stability issues and you were lucky to keep 4 people together for an entire co-op mission. The dogfight mode was far better due to its flexibility. If someone had a problem, they could disconnnect, fix the problem, and rejoin the same session. If you died, you respawned. I think the record number of people online at one time on a single dogfight server was 12 as far as I know. I took a screenshot showing all the names in the briefing chat room and posted it back then. If you could get 16 people to show up for a dogfight server, but have them split into teams and form up before a dogfight, that would have been the way to play co-op. Of course, that wouldn't allow for any air-to-ground, but it would be the best way to have great fights with no AI. Unlike co-op, you could do something like pit 4xF-4Bs or F8Es vs 12 x MiG-17s or other odd ratios of interest. Oh well, it was not meant to be. Maybe DCS will eventually fill that niche of an any era online co-op or team air combat simulator.

I was flying BoB2 every night for a while, alternating between Spitfire and Bf109. The 109 is challenging to get started and off the ground quickly with a good verbal rating from the instructor. The 109 is hard pressed to beat the Spitfire in this sim, it takes a lot more patience and skill against a max Ace/Hero AI Spit. Whereas, I can beat an Ace/Hero 109 consistently even if I fly a little sloppy or make a mistake. Developments in DCS : World redirected my focus, but find the AI in BoB2 much more challenging and interesting than DCS : World. If I loved flying Spitfires and/or 109s as much as I love F-4s/MiG-21s, I would probably spend all my time flying BoB2. For me, the age of the game is a non-issue. The graphics are adequate and the flight model and AI are top notch. The clickable cockpits are icing on the cake, and I love having icing on my cake!

I am guessing you can't mix DX10 graphics with DX9 DirectPlay code, so to use the code, you would have to give up graphics quality and performance. Prior to the birth of my son, I played SFP1/WoX multiplayer as often as I could find others, which was quite a bit of the time with the small but dedicated hyperlobby/hamachi SFP1 group. I played a bit of WoI and FE online from hotel rooms until my job situation changed and I was home every night with my family. I had plenty of good times with dogfighting, co-op missions, and even some formation flying.

I don't own or play OFF, but I am a fan of its community and what they have to say. I do frequent SimHq just to make sure I don't miss any pertinent SF2/DCS topics, as there is a decent crowd over there that rarely or never migrated over here. But I have no interest in what the OFF devs have to say. So all of my OFF community knowledge comes from reading all the great posts by the guys that have stayed here. I would hate to see the OFF community slighted by CombatAce to punish OFF devs/SimHQ for the previous events, but I agree with Erik: They chose to migrate in a bad, very unfriendly way to SimHq, so SimHq should bear the burden of hosting all of the downloads. Otherwise, they are getting free support after making it clear that they are all about revenues. Maybe a bit idiotic, but I prefer to do unto others as they have done unto me rather than turning my cheek and setting a good example ;)

Third Wire has (had?) a loyal following for many reasons. Among them: 1) Unique era/planeset compared to everyone else. 2) Fairly cheap. 3) Fairly diverse plane set as of SFP1/WoV/WoE/WoI. 4) Highly moddable. 5) Tremendous amount of fabulous mods provided for free by the community. But none of that would have mattered if TK had not stuck with the game and continuously listened to and worked with the community to polish up the features and squash bugs. TK's current approach surely will not win him too many more customers and a lot of the current customers are slowly going to dwindle as the game ages and stops growing. Code stability could be a great thing (like FSX and SFP1/WoX patched to the 083006 level) as long as stability occurs after most of the bugs are fixed. TK's constant undocumented tweaking between SF2 patches/releases brought some great surprises, but make it almost impossible to identify a revision level that is best for any one person. Getting mods that comply with an end user's preferred revision level negate much of benefits 4/5, and may even retard purchases of DLC that are not compatible with earlier revisions. At least the game still principally works well for my needs in stock condition: DACT between complex heavy US aircraft like F-4s and century series and MiGs. I would still appreciate if SF2 had at least comparable multiplayer code to SFP1. The SF2 AI can be fun to fight, but years of flying against it mean I am rarely surprised, and usually win in close knife fights despite any disadvantages in numbers and agility. But whatever its flaws or its future, SF2 still remains the only decent sim/game for F-4 vs MiG era air combat. So it will remain on my hard drive and get used periodically unless DCS or another competitor steps up to the plate. The DCS : MiG-21bis gets me halfway there. If the F-104 ever gets released and is well-modeled, the combination of F-104/MiG-21 dogfights offline or online may almost entirely eliminate my SF2 time (it's already pretty slime between the UH-1H and P-51D). If a well done DCS : F-4 module ever shows up, that would pretty much be the final nail in the coffin for my use of SF2.

The current situation simply confirms my original fears: if TK went mobile, successful or not, SF2 PC development would get little or no time. The latest patch and DLC are indicative that "little" time is the end result rather than "no" time. While TK made plenty of statements to lower expectations for the future of SF2, I still hope that he is operating the way he has before: completely blind siding the community with the release of WoV and to a lesser extent SF2. At a minimum I expect an expansion pack with the Mirage F1C somewhere along the line. If you don't post your problems, he will not see them, which gives zero chance of problems being addressed with the next expansion pack/patch cycle. Some chance is better than no chance. If you genuinely believe TK has abandoned listening to his most loyal fans, then you should pick a patch revision level and stay with it from now until you ultimately abandon SF2. The people asking for an FE2 patch clearly don't understand what will happen. I think TK makes wishes on a monkey's paw when he is adding features/patching old problems.

Why not both a traitor and a defender of civil liberties? Clearly, the organization he worked for (US government) sees him as a traitor for revealing its secrets. However, what is legal and what is right can be two very different things. Additionally, if I swear to uphold the Constitution and the the government agency I am working for is contradicting the Constitution, then he really isn't a traitor. The dilemma he faced is similar to an enlisted soldier who is pretty sure he has been given an illegal order. If you follow the order, you will be as guilty as the person giving the order and potentially prosecuted as such. If you don't follow the order, you will be treated as having disobeyed a superior and punished accordingly. He chose to take the punishment believing he was right. If that is what really happened and he is right, I respect him for what he did.

No reply doesn't mean he didn't see it. While the odds of getting an effective patch or even an answer appear to be low, he surely doesn't not spend time browsing here. Low odds are better than no chance.

I am flying almost pure stock, and don't even fly that much SF2 these days other than some quick hops in F-4s, so I haven't seen or looked for problems. But if this patch is causing so many problems, how come I don't see much if any reports/questions about the problems on Third Wire forums? TK can't fix or at least explain what changed for problems he doesn't know about. Carry on! <Shuffles back to DCS World to practice landing UH-1s on oil rigs and smoking Fw190Ds with P-51Ds...>

Test satisfactory.

Can't post with Chrome (my normal browser). Trying IE. Works. So what do I need to flush from Chrome to restore functionality without dumping my cookies/etc. for all of my other sites?

Creating, owning, and running a business has nothing to do with being a drone. You have an idea. If it makes enough money, you can afford to keep doing it. If it doesn't, you have to choose to do something else. You can't always survive doing something you like or something you are good at. Regardless of what you or I think, TK has made his Third Wire problems and intentions in a very clear manner: 1) Third Wire lost too much time and money developing the mission editor and SF2NA. 2) Mobile games is where the market is going, so that is where he is going. 3) He will still do what he can to keep SF2 going forward at a greatly reduced pace with much less content per release. 4) There will be no SF3. The AI plane pack fits well with his current business model, which could be called being a drone since trying to make quick cash with many cheap DLC releases is the trend of many other games. Whereas in the past, these AI aircraft would have been freebies in a standard release with 4 or more new flyables, a new terrain, and one or more new campaigns. Basing your business model on economic reality is not being a drone, it is surviving in the real world. If "not being a drone" by knowingly sticking with a bad business model destroys your business and possibly your financial future, one should very much regret "not being a drone".

But businesses don't succeed based on what you like or want as owner/manager. They succeed based on profits versus costs. Obviously, as stated upfront by TK, the costs of PC development have far exceeded his profits as of SF2NA, hence the migration to mobile games. No matter how much TK loves F-4 Phantoms or flight sims in general, he has to put food on his table/pay the bills. I don't blame him for switching to mobile games. I just hate the fact that my preferences are always the unprofitable minority. I have watched countless hobby shops close, seen the end of many flight sim companies, etc. Why couldn't I just be like everyone else instead of loving hobbies that are such small niche markets.

Great pics! Thanks for sharing. No one lives forever. At least he had a great life while he was here. Pass on the love and memories to future generations.

I think it is more a case of parallel development: the mobile games added a lot of aircraft that were not in the PC series. Based on game play, I would say there is a lot in common between the mobile and PC games, so TK may have smartly developed all the new planes to the PC level before sticking them in the mobile games. As both would need flight models and the mobile game doesn't need cockpits... this leads to AI only planes for the PC version. Ultimately, assuming the mobile games keep TW in business, PC games may get DLC or expansion packs with cockpits for some of these aircraft. This is not too different from ED using FC level sales to help fund DCS development. But basic economic theory makes me wonder: if you are in business to make a profit, why would you use profitable products/services to support unprofitable products/services? Why not just focus on the profitable ones and make more profits and/or stay in business with lower risks of failure?

Good catch :)

I installed both games on my wife's old iPhone 3GS, which is now a portable iTouch game system for my 6-year-old son. I can do well, but gun combat is extremely difficult. I tried it on my mom's iPad, and I was an ace with the F-100D consistently getting 5-6 gun kills per mission. So, the cpu/gpu effects on smoothness/frame rates can make a big difference. If I am bored and the iPhone is available (i.e. car passenger on long trip and my son is asleep), SF mobile is good for a little diversion, but quite a bit repetitive once you get to the final year and just need to grind out kills to make level. It is so close to SF2 in so many ways... but the lack of a stick/throttle/rudder pedals and the gamey waves of enemies from random directions keep me from playing too often or too long. With a gaming PC available, or even decent internet browsing, I am not spending any time on mobile gaming at all. Having grown up with Atari Combat Jet and Biplane games as my principal air combat flight simulators, I could not imagine playing a game as realistic as SF mobile. So, I am amazed by it even if I have no use for it.

The F-15E is exactly the replacement for the F-4E: 2-seat, hi-tech multirole.

Patiently awaiting the AFMs. The F/A-18C will be a great ride: multirole, carrier-based, and a tad old-school. Would be nicer for me to have the F/A-18A, but they are so similar I don't really mind. Much more excited about having this version than the E/F Super Hornet. There is one skin I prefer on Hornets above all others: After that, I like the Blue Angels. Blue and gold are my favorite colors.

Loving the updated UH-1H FM. The original was fun and challenging, but unrealistically unstable. Now, the FM is nearly as hard as it was, but a soft touch on the cyclic avoids the wobbly goblin effect. I can land on the oil rig. I still can't beat the hard instant action ground attack since I am not accurate enough with the rockets at long range to kill both the ZSU-23-2 and the BMP before overflying the convoy and getting trashed by the BMP. I did destroy the entire convoy once, but was out of rockets and so damaged that I could not even begin to approach the static targets without getting shot down. On the other hand, I have the easy instant action ground attack down pat. If I practice on static targets with no return fire, maybe I can get my rocket pod skills up to a point where I can trash the convoy AAA escorts in the first pass and use miniguns to finish the soft targets, leaving me with a relatively undamaged helo and some rockets to do the same to the static targets. My standard night is: try UH-1H oil rig landing a few times to get warmed up. Fly UH-1H hard instant action ground attack until tired of dying. Finally, Enjoy chomping on a pair of Fw 190D-9s with the P-51D. Sometimes, I throw in some F-15C DACT guns only vs 2 x Su-27 just to enjoy the vulcan and the F-15's power/agility. I still haven't mapped Su-27 controls to my stick yet, so I haven't spent more than a few seconds trying out the new Flanker 3d pit.

But I don't want to see the lineage... I want the end result. Unfortunately, DCS is far from complete and it will be quite some time before I really see the end results I really want. But the UH-1H, P-51D, and MiG-21bis are a great start. Mi-8, Fw 190D-9, and F-4 are good compliments for those three. Having several major DCS level variants of the F-4 and MiG-21 and the historically correct environments would be perfect.

Flanker has come a long way. I never had Flanker, but I have LOMAC/FC/FC2/FC3. Love the direction the game is going and pretty darn happy with where it is now, especially since my hardware can run it pretty well. Bring on the AFMs for the F-15C and Su-27! Provide AFM upgrades for all the FC3 aircraft and continue to refine/improve the missile AFMs, and FC3 will be near perfect for my purposes. Of course, I will be happier with DCS:F-15C and DCS:Su-27. My flying rotation is pretty steady between UH-1H, P-51D, and the FC3 F-15C. SF2 is getting almost no time right now. I need to take the time to map the Su-27 controls to my stick/throttle, then I will put it into the rotation. The upcoming AFM upgrade will probably motivate me to get it working sooner rather than later. Can't wait to try the F-15C and Su-27 at the edges of the envelope: high AoA at subsonic speeds. I would also like decently modeled taxi/takeoffs/landings.

I have come a long way since I first sought to buy a B-8 grip to splice onto a USB stick... but I still have a long way to go. My son is going to visit family over the summer (about 6 weeks) and I will only join him for the last week, so I anticipate a tremendous amount of progress before the end of the summer. But I have not made any particular plans about exactly what I want to accomplish, so I might not get as far as I hope. I have been spending all my free time enjoying the current setup with DCS and SF2... with the release of the UH-1H and AI Fw190D9 focusing nearly every last minute on DCS UH-1H and P-51D missions. I love that the UH-1H used the B-8... I like it when the stick on the screen matches the one in my hand... right down to the button/switch functions. I may focus on eliminating the Warthog throttle by making an F-4 throttle, but I would like to get more time in a real F-4 cockpit before committing to that. So I may just sand/fill/paint what I already have and try to fabricate some ejection pull handles for the top of the seat and wire them to a switch on the BU0836X so I can map them to in-game eject functions. So many things to do, so little time and money to do them!

Sometimes, I can damp the initial oscillations and get into a great hover and stay in it with very subtle movements of the cyclic... but my lifesize real F-4 stick shaft length gives me a huge edge in precision/sensitivity. I have no friction or detents, and my centering springs have almost no pull at center. However, one wrong move and it takes me a while to damp down the oscillations. I can generally stay in an area the diameter of the runway width, sometimes almost perfectly still. But my ability to transition from forward flight to a safe steady hover and land on the oil rig is an explosive work in progress. I can land on the oil rig, but not very often. I am more likely to transition into a high, non-recoverable sink rate or snap my tail off on the tower or break a skid, or drift off the landing pad and settle down/explode on the larger platform. I have improved greatly with practice, but it seems to be a steep learning curve... which I love

If FC level aircraft can be created relatively quickly and then almost as quickly offered with AFM, that is a great strategy to expand the plane set and customer base while continuing to work on full DCS modules for the hard core crowd. While I love the full-blown DCS modules I don't really like the idea that it will take years before the flyable plane set expands to a useful level. But I can't stand the LOMAC/FC flight modeling inherited by FC3. An FC3 level aircraft with an AFM has most of what I want and potentially superior across the board to anything the SF series has if done right. So let's see how this plays out in terms of how realistic/fun/immersive the AFM is and how it is marketed. If a full blown DCS aircraft is $40 to $60 per module, how much is an FC3 aircraft and how much is an AFM upgrade? Of course there may only be two options: FC3 w/AFM or full DCS. This could be like Accusim, where there is a base aircraft and an Accusim upgrade. As long as ED stays in business long enough to crank out full DCS versions of significant aircraft from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts (i.e. F-86, MiG-15, F-4, MiG-17, F-8, MiG-21, etc.), I will ultimately be happy. Hopefully, this new approach will help make that possible by meeting the needs of a lot of people and thereby bringing in more money for development.