streakeagle

This is a fun and interesting airplane in SF2. I highly recommend it.

Logan's Run got it right: Live a glorious 30 years with good health and all the fun you can stand, then go to "carousel" to be "re-incarnated" if instantaneous incineration by a laser can be considered re-incarnated. Within a few generations, no one will know any other way and unwittingly accept such a harsh means of population control, health regulation, and resource distribution. An absolute Utopia if you don't realize you can live way past 30 ;)

The OFF crowd has been an active and welcome addition to the CombatAce site. I don't post in this forum much, but I read it all the time. I am sorry that the glitch in CombatAce forced the "official forum" to move. Perhaps the "official forum" should be hosted by the developers themselves (like most "for profit" games rather than putting the wheel of destiny in someone's elses hands if they can't handle having problems beyond their control. SimHQ is hardly different than combatace and can go down at times without knowing when it will be returned to service. The Strike Fighters modding community was originally based at SimHq. It was the place to go for info, even for official news from Third Wire. Things changed and everyone that was a major contributor to SF mods left SimHq with most of them being present at both the official Third Wire forums and CombatAce. I suspect it won't be long before many people figure out why CombatAce became so important despite the existence of SimHq and the official Third Wire forums. It will be interesting to see what happens to the OFF "official forums" as well as they adjust to the environment at SimHQ. The CombatAce community has its flaws (nobody is perfect!), but it provides a great place where you can upload/download just about any mod for any major sim without any major hassle and get technical support on those mods that may not be available from "official forums". It is also a place where you can talk about anything with a minimum of censorship unless you can't respect warnings from the moderators when unnecessary friction/spam is being generated (I myself have made posts that have resulted in entire threads being deleted... oops, sorry!). I had hoped the OFF crowd would continue to be active here. I have not been disappointed. Keep posting about history, game experiences, technical questions, or just sharing a personal thought. I will keep on reading and enjoying those posts

They got the syntax wrong: "All you need, love is!"

It certainly doesn't hurt to ask if his previous incomplete work is in any condition to make it worthwhile to pass on to someone who is able and willing to complete it?

SAAB aircraft... simply excellent! The Draken still looks sleek compared to modern aircraft, and I like the Viggen just as much.

Most of my knowledge on the Su-24 predates the avalance of information that has become public. I have focused primarily on the MiG-21 and picked up quite a bit of information on the MiG-23. Since the Su-24 is functionally a strike bomber, it never held my attention the way the fighters have. I was aware of the intakes (not unlike how the B-1 was slowed down since it didn't make sense to pay for high alt performance when the mission was primarily on the "deck"). I don't know too many details about the Soviet jet engines aside from thrust levels and the progression of the MiG-21 engine variants. Since the Soviets almost always do a large scale/small scale version of any given aerodynamic layout, to me the Su-24 is the large scale version of the MiG-23. In fact, my "knowledge" is so dated that to me, it is the Su-19 Fencer rather than the Su-24 Properly equipped, the Su-24 could have been their "Tomcatski". But major Flagon upgrades were bypassed in that time frame in favor of the Su-27/MiG-29 development that was already on the drawing boards. Even if it was underdeveloped/underutilized, the Su-24 looks very nice.

Offtopic: the 2nd photo is a really nice pic of the Su-24! This is one aircraft that doesn't look very "Soviet". In other colors, its appearance fits the lines of any Western country. Of course, it looks a bit like an F-111 with F-4 intakes, but it definitely has its own unique appearance. I guess it is really a V-G Flagon with a more Western "cut" to the tail surfaces. If they fly and fight as good as they look, they are an awesome aircraft. They should have made a tandem cockpit interceptor version. Sukhoi may not be as well recognized as "MiG" (at least prior to the Flanker), but all of their aircraft are very interesting to me.

If one company's cards were always the best quality and price, the other company would have gone out of business. Right now, both brands seem to get the job done with the SF series. Get the best card you can at the best price you can. I have used ATi almost since SFP1 was originally released. Over the years, there have been a few driver issues with SF2 here and there, but either ATi or Third Wire quickly addressed the problem. nVidia has had its driver issues, too. If you read the tech support entries in recent history, you will generally find more problems reported by nVidia users... but that stems from the fact that it seems more of the SF2 users have nVidia cards. The only recent issue I have seen reported repeatedly regards a "split-screen" effect in laptops that have both an integral low end Intel gpu and a discrete gaming GPU. Most of the reports are from nVidia users but ATi users have had a similar experience. It isn't the brand of the gaming gpu causing the problem. It is the mix of two GPUs available, how Windows 7 wants to use them, and how SF2 is programmed to select which adapter to use. Another typical problem as of SF2NA involves white terrain with no textures, which isn't a brand issue either, more of a RAM limit being reached which can usually be addressed by lowering the in-game graphics settings a bit. I don't recall any recent issues that are tied to either nVidia or AMD hardware or drivers.

Ironically, CombatAce is the SF site that was offline, but SimHQ is the one that shut down its SF forums. So, if McDonalds' were closed for a week or two, would Burger King go bust? edit: SimHQ has reopened their Third Wire forum in "read only" mode... effectively and archive. Which, if you have some time to kill (as when CombatAce was down) reading the old SF forum archives is interesting. The types of posts and conversations have changed little despite 10 years of game development.

The US Army has a high school to flight school program for helo pilots. Of course, good people are good people regardless of whether they went to college or not. But the US Army still makes the pilots go to warrant officer school rather than have enlisted pilots. I am not sure why the military believes only officers are capable of operating aircraft. Generally, the number of pilots needed is very small compared to the overall force, so pilot selection is an "elite" filtering process and by establishing officer criteria, you are already filtering out a lot of candidates. But, if there are pilot shortages, why would you set the bar too high? Hence the Army high school to flight school program that can more rapidly fill helo pilot slots. Even then, they have trouble finding enough qualified candidates based on physical and mental aptitude tests.

They were made part of the 3d model for the purposes of skinning. A big step forward so you didn't have to make a separate tank for each skin or even have to pick different tanks for different skins.

I saw all of the EAW stuff that was uploaded... wondered why Geo was suddenly so active. The end of another great site from early SFP1 history.

Equally important: On that same day, Oyster flight scored two kills with BVR Sparrow shots, but Robert "Bob" Lodge was shot down and killed trying to score another and his WSO, Roger Locher, survived on the ground for a long time before he was finally recovered by SAR. Another pilot/wso team in Oyster flight got a kill at the same time: Steve Ritchie and Chuck DeBellevue, both future USAF aces. May 10, 1972: "the most active single day of air combat over North Vietnam". It is the "Tet Offensive" of the air. "338 missions were flown by U.S. aircraft over the North. Sixteen planes on both sides were shot down; U.S. forces lost only four." Inexplicably, the North Vietnamese threw everything into the air that day. There is an old book: http://www.amazon.com/One-Day-Long-War-Vietnam/dp/0394576225

Check out Yankee Air Pirate for a WoV version of the RF-8... but beware, if you tell Zero-Cinco you are just buying his products for the models, he'll get angry and say he doesn't want your money (after happily taking it). You can only use YAP products the way Zero-Cinco specifies and if you ever release a screenshot showing the products being used in "unauthorized" ways, be prepared for hellfire and brimstone to rain down upon you :)

Jane's USAF really loves Win98SE the most. Everything worked as well as it could aside from some longstanding AI and FM problems. I thoroughly enjoyed Jane's USAF until I got SFP1 at Walmart. Even in the flawed, limited press-release version sold at Walmart, SFP1 was clearly better than Jane's USAF in most ways. Of course, if you wanted to fly modern planes, use a built-in mission editor, have decent multiplayer, and inflight refueling, then Jane's USAF was still the way to go. TK has finally provided a mission editor and has provided modern planes up to the F-16, but rather than improve multiplayer, it was deleted and inflight refueling remains out of the question. So, if you can live with dated graphics, slow ballet flight, quirky flight models, and suicidal AI that bounce off of a magical barrier rather than crash into the ground, Jane's USAF is the perfect game for you. Always loved the Jane's USAF music, user interface, training missions, ramp starts, and the free Thunderbirds addon. Many fond memories!

Jane's USAF never liked Windows 2000 or its later WinXP derivative. It was in the transition from Win98 to 32bit WinNT based OSes that the menus became problematic. If you hang out at the Gulf Knight forums, you can get comprehensive support for Jane's USAF: http://www.gulfknight.net/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=238

The question is, which do people value more: freedom or security? The FBI's job is to provide security and if our freedom allows terrorists and other criminals to communicate without any fear of being monitored, the FBI's job is much harder. They have already had the right to monitor phone calls and even made sure digital phones would provide a way for them to decipher any digital voice traffic. So, this is a no-brainer for them, just extending the rights they have already had to the latest technological advance in communications. I heard a discussion about this on the radio and it was pointed out that even with encrypted email, they get a warrant to put a key logger on your PC while you aren't home and get the info they need to access your digital information anyway. The new laws being proposed just make it easier to do what they have already been doing anyway. No one has really raised a fuss about the NSA continuously scanning phone calls for keywords, cameras being put up all over the place, or numerous other compromises in our privacy and freedom that should otherwise be protected by the original right to no unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause. It is quite apparent that a significant majority of US citizens want big brother to watch them, provide their health care, feed, cloth, and shelter them. Careful what you wish for... Famous quote cited by Ben Franklin:

I have had issues with HDMI scaling the PC images despite being set to 1080p and having the computer set to display the same resolution. Look at your desktop. Do the letters on the shortcut icons look as clear and distinct on the 1080p TV as they do on a PC monitor? I always end up with the letters looking a bit blurry which results from some sort of slight upsizing or downsizing despite matching the native resolution of the TV. When I switch to the VGA or DVI ports on the TVs, everything is crystal clear.

People appreciate animals more when they can get up close, which ultimately helps promote protecting wild habitats endangered by man. So, as long as people accept the risks, I am all for letting them "play" with wild animals or even keep them as pets. In some cases, the number of pets outnumbers the number in the wild, so these "pets" may actually help prevent total extinction. Where I have a problem with people mixing it up with wild animals is after an incident like this, they think they are entitled to some kind of monetary settlement or some entity calls for the animals to be killed. The animal should never be punished for the stupidity of people. Look at Sea World. They have a killer whale that has killed 2 or 3 people. They have correctly chosen not to kill or punish the whale for being itself. At the same time, they clearly aren't smart enough to keep clear of the whale to avoid further incidents. Killer whales are clearly too big to be held in captivity and be both mentally and physically healthy. But, Sea World has used these animals to promote awareness and respect for these animals in particular and ocean life in general. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

A very rugged design combined with a very determined crew and a lot of luck. How many more planes took far less damage and took one or more of their crew down with them? Did the 109 pilot make it?

MiG-23 and F-4 Phantom. Similar intakes, similar performance, similar radar and missile capabilities. Scaled down to 1 seat and 1 engine with VG wing for short takeoff performance. The A-5 Vigilante certainly set the standard for a practical Mach 2.5+ airframe (as opposed to the SR-71's Mach 3.5+ airframe), but aside from the basic planform and intake arrangement, the A-5, MiG-25 and F-15 have very little in common. look at how the horizontal and vertical tail surfaces are attached to the airframe and the underlying structures that hold everything together. The A-5's fuselage is rather unique due to its intended capability to lob nuclear weapons out of its internal center tube. The MiG-25 has intakes/exhausts necessary for its unique engine configuration and high altitude/speed performance. Its internal structures gave up strength and limited maneuverability to focus on top speed at high altitude. The F-15's budget was justified as a response to the MiG-25, but the original Mach 3 concepts looked nothing like the MiG-25. At the same time Boyd was calling for weight and size reduction, the Navy was trying to trap the USAF into buying the F-14 (as they did with the F-4). So, the resulting F-15 proposals had to meet very complicated restrictions: 1) Give up the VG wing to cut weight, complexity, and look as dissimilar to the F-14 as possible. 2) Add a large bubble canopy to overcome situational awareness issues encountered in Vietnam (didn't we already learn this lesson in WW2?). 3) As high a top speed as possible despite having a large bubble canopy, no VG wing, and minimal high-temperature materials. 4) Have a large wing area and turn like a bandit despite the high speed requirement. The F-14 variant for a fixed wing proposal looked a lot like the F-15/A-5 Mach 2.5 layout and was being drawn up well before the MiG-25s layout was evident. The original 60,000 lb Mach 3 VG F-15 proposals had spaced engines just like the F-14. I am guessing the engines were pulled back in for two reasons: the change to the fixed wing design with the twin tail booms was more practical and to not look like an F-14. So while the layouts already existed and the A-5 marked the first full-scale production example of that type, it looks like less a case of blatant copying and more a case of engineers facing certain problems arriving at similar solutions. The MiG-25 that landed in Japan gave the US an up close inspection that revealed how different Soviet engineering was to anything the West would have produced. There's a lot more to aircraft design than the basic wing/tail plan view. Now, for a nearly identical external copy: US space shuttle oribiters versus Buran. Soviet engineers arrived at an extremely similar solution, too similar!

The Warthog works fine with SF2. But I am not cutting it up to mix its internals with my F-4 stick. so I am primarily flying using my F-4 stick which is currently mated to my old X-45. I love the feel and functionality of the Warthog, except for the feel of moving through the center detent. It is not a stick I would use for delicate formation flying and is equally problematic when I play Steel Beasts and use it for aiming the main gun. I need to be able to make small subtle movements with little resistance and certainly no bumps from detents, whereas the Warthog requires a bit of force to get it moving and bumps to much around the center. For aggressive flying, it works great as you either move in a way that doesn't pass through the center or slam it around so hard that it doesn't matter. For me, it is the throttle that makes this stick such a good product. Looks and feels realistic and can be programmed to do almost anything. The ability to use the Target software to mix all the Thrustmaster products into a single virtual device is really useful for some games, but the lack of integrated rudder pedals is a big miss on Thrustmaster's part. Can't believe they would miss out on the cash flow for such an obviously useful accessory to complete this package. Since I got my Saitek X-45 working really well with the F-4 stick as opposed to the complicated 24VDC relay interface I had to use with the MS Sidewinder Pro USB, I kind of regret getting the Warthog. Could have used the money elsewhere. But when I start building a semiscale F-4 cockpit, the Warthog throttle will be a main feature unless I decide to cut up the Saitek throttle to make authentic F-4 throttle levers. Of course, if I stick with the Warthog throttle, then it isn't that hard to swap out the F-4 stick for the Warthog stick for DCS Warthog or throw it on the right side for some F-16 action. The Warthog throttle is very similar to an F-15 throttle and my F-4 stick grip is identical to the F-15A stick grip... so if I was smart, I would build an F-15 or A-10 pit rather than an F-4 pit. But guess which airplane it is I love so much that I acquired a real stick and adapted it for game use? I wish I had the money to get a real Martin-Baker MK7 and a real F-4 panel. But my semi-scale intentions should be more practical and possibly might look almost as good.

I know the cockpit is more important to me in actual gameplay, but that screenshot looks awesome... almost real! A decent 3d model with great textures and bump mapping take SF2 to the top notch of aircraft modeling. If it wasn't for the repeating patterns of the old terrain engine, even that looks very good.

The stock MiG-21 really should have been made a flyable by TK a long time ago. It is every bit equal or better than the F-4 in popularity, universal use, and an excellent dogfighter well suited to the game's fun flying/shooting intent. The data needed to model it well enough for this "sim lite" has been readily available for quite a while, too. Fortunately the community support has done nothing but improve the situation over time. Better cockpit modeling, many variants, and better textures. Special thanks to all of those who have contributed to making flyable MiG/Su mods over the years, from the early repainted stock cockpits, to the present dedicated external and cockpit 3d models! Always glad to see someone who appreciates the MiG-21 as much as I do and who also promotes its use in the SF series!