streakeagle

To be fair, targetware was in development forever. TK had at least a year of development updates before the Walmart release of SFP1... And even as a major fan (fan boi?) of SFP1, I consider anything prior to SP1, maybe even SP2 to be player funded beta testing. JetThunder is in a similar boat timewise... but they are asking for a dime prior to releasing a playable product. I understand why the developers of FigtherOps would create Area 51, I just don't get anyone who would subscribe to it? I have spent a lot of money buying Third Wire games... But every time I give TK money, I get something tangible back. All of TKs games may be pretty much the same core engine, but every release has new 3d models, new terrain, and/or new campaigns plus some sort of new and/or improved feature set. The download versions have obvious benefits over the original CDs like all of them being patched to the same 08.30.06 level, and some of them have hidden perks, like the download WOE which incorporates the F-104G from SFP1... so I found it worth it to me to buy all of the download versions. I am sure a lot of people feel like I have wasted my money buying all of TK's games at least twice, especially when you can mod a base SFP1 install to pretty much equal or better the later releases using free addons... but again, I got something much more than screenshots and developer comments for very low cost. I hope those who have subscribed to Area51 get some kind of discount on the final release... dollar for dollar credit would be a fair deal, but even a 50% credit would be better than nothing.

Hurry! Sign up fast. You don't want to miss out on the 5th year of paying for status updates on an unreleased flight sim. There must be some money in this or they wouldn't bother at all. Personally, I would rather have never heard of the product at all until it was released or very close to release. Targetware was a little different because it needed community support and for better or worse, it was finally released and continues to grow. It will be interesting to see if and when the initial sim is released and whether development will continue. While I am all for a hard core sim, I am clearly in the minority. I wonder how many people will invest in a sim with only 1 or 2 flyable aircraft that are both military trainers. Microsoft already offers the market leader in non-combat flight sims and has a huge selection of aircraft available. X-plane even permits combat now. If DCS Blackshark continues to expand their planeset, they will probably capture the hard core combat flight sim market, except for those hating/fearing Star Force copy protection. I think the market is going to be pretty tough on Fighter Ops unless it is truly revolutionary in its immersiveness and realism and quickly expands to cover the F-16, A-10, and F-15.

While I have a preference for WoV and WoI due to their historical nature, I have recently learned that my favorite game in the series is whichever one is the latest release with the best feature set. For instance, SF2 is the most fanciful of all with make-believe maps/countries/history, yet upon buying/installing/playing it, I found that it is so noticably better than even the latest released game, WoI, that I am pretty much only playing this version. Of course, this comes to a large extent from the fact that I am an F-4 fanatic and find the updated versions of the F-4s so much better than the original releases, but even the campaigns just seem to be more fun and challenging than ever. Now, when all the games have been re-released and have identical feature sets, I suspect my favorite will fall back to either WoV or WoI, but until then SF2 has my focus. My sole interest in flying the earlier releases is to play online, and right now I don't have any time for that.

I experimented with Vassal for Air Force/Dauntless, 2nd Fleet, and Air Power (which is Speed of Heat). I find that it works really well for Air Force, you can pretty much play without even having the game if you already know the rules. I don't remember enough about how to play 2nd Fleet to rate it, but the map and counters look good. It is at best just a map with markers and a few charts/diagrams for Speed of Heat.. adequate if you have everything else, but nowhere near as functional as Air Force.

While I am sure I saw him as Khan first in the original Star Trek TV episode, I remember him best for Fantasy Island. He was the circus owner in the 3rd and 4th Planet of the Apes movies that hid Caesar (Roddy McDowell), raised him, and died to protect him. As a huge fan of this series and Caesar, Ricardo's character was pivotal. He also was the voice of the Villain in an episode of Buzz Lightyear on the Disney Channel, didn't need to see the credits, simply knew it the moment he spoke.

Imagine I was a poor-starving-student from 1986-1989, so I was limited to my 10th grade computer: a Timex-Sinclair 2048 (Sinclair Spectrum modified for the US market). I played Fighter Pilot (F-15 sim) and Tomahawk (Apache sim). The next 8 years I was an enlisted sumarine sonar tech. Sure, other sailors had some PCs and Amigas, but I spent most of my time at sea sitting in front of green screens with a headset on playing the ultimate version of "Dangerous Waters" called real life in the USN on an SSN, so when I was in port I spent my money on two things: 1980 Corvettes and guns. I went through 3 1980 Corvettes from 1991 to 1995. The last one of the three surviving to this day as my primary driver to/from work. At that time in the Navy in California, gas was about 1.35/gal for 92 octane and I was spending typically $400 per month on gas despite my sea time. I purchased an AR-15 (technically a Colt Sporter HBAR) and a Springfield Armory 1911A1. Between the two, I spent $400 per month on ammunition. My credit card bills looked like this continuously repeating: Shell Gas Station $25 Sombreros Mexican Restaurant $8 The Living Room Coffee Shop $6 Mission Armory $50 I had no need or desire for a PC at that point. In 2000, I went back to school and had saved enough money that I didn't have to work and was able to get a PC. By doing so, I bypassed all the 386/486/Pentium/Pentium II/Pentium III upgrade cycles (though I had a Toshiba Satellite Pentium MMX laptop via work starting in January 1998 that played Fighters Anthology very well). My first real video card was a Voodoo 5500 purchased in November of 2000 and somewhere between the PC and the video card, I had gotten a Saitek X-36 USB. So, while I was late to the game and I never have bought state-of-the-art equipment at just-released prices, I haven't suffered from trying to play games like LOMAC on a Pentium II/400 either. Besides, up until my first PC, I was pretty much content with my wargames which I sometimes played in 3d using 1/285 for armor combat and 1/144 airplanes on sticks for air combat. To this day, I would like to build the Fulda Gap German map from West End Games Air Cav on a big train table and use it for 1/285 games. Of course time and space leave me settling for Suddent Strike... which isn't a bad substitute other than being WW2 when I would much prefer a 1970s-1980s time frame.

Use hyperlobby to find people, then connect the game via your own hamachi server. Then, you have the power to kick or even ban unwanted people... Though if they are determined, they can come in under another Hamachin IP address... But you can change the password to your server and only tell the people you want to play with you what that password is. In my experience, there were so few people playing SFP1/WoV, that I never refuse to play with anyone. Usually, anyone that was munching on the newbies changed their ways after being chatted to about the problem. I can only think of one or two "characters" that were trouble every time they showed up, but they got bored within a couple of weeks (probably moved on to other games where they could find more targets).

I did not know about this. A lot of my games are there, which means I could get rid of the big boxes and paper, but still retain the ability to play these games... not a bad trade-off.

I still have a substantial collection of board games. I never have the time to even mess with them and even if I did, none of the friends that used to play them with me have enough time to play them anymore. During my countless moves in the Navy and prior to getting married, some of my games took a beating and a few are missing pieces and/or data cards. As much as I love most of these games, I don't really ever see myself ever playing them again. I am about to move again and may just save myself the hassle of hauling them to a new house by throwing most of them away. The one reason I have to hold on to them is the hope that my 2-year-old son might one day take an interest in playing some of them. Not knowing which ones he might like, I need to keep them all just in case... But how much interest will he ever have in playing games designed to simulate a war that never happened? A lot of my games were "modern warfare" simulations for 1970s-1980s air, land, or sea combat assuming massive all-out conflicts between the USA and USSR: Avalon Hill's Flight Leader, TAC AIR, MBT, Attack Sub Victory Games' Agean Strike, 2nd Fleet/6th Fleet/7th Fleet GDW's Assault/Boots&Saddles/Bundeswehr/Chieftain, The Third World War, Combined Arms, Air Superiority/Air Strike/Desert Falcons, Harpoon West End Games Air Cav, TSR/SPI's Air War, SPI's Foxbat & Phantom, FASA's Top Gun, GMT's Hornet Leader, 3W's Modern Naval Battles, Omega's Main Battle Area, Leading Edge Games' Phoenix Command, Timeline Ltd's Close and Destroy, Group 3 Games' Rolling Thunder, The Gamers' Force Eagles War, Enola Games' Warship Commander/Sea Command For the most part, the only games I had covering any earlier time frame were air combat games with a few land and sea types: Avalon Hill's Air Force/Dauntless, Luftwaffe, B-17 Queen of the Skies, Knights of the Air, Enemy in Sight, Wooden Ships & Iron Men GDW's Command Decision, Lou Zocchi's Complete Fighter Combat System, Falcon Games' Mustangs and Messerschmitts, Air Games Ltd's Air Sortie, Emperor's Press' Red Baron Clash of Arms' The Speed of Heat, Over the Reich, Achtung-Spitfire! Nova's Ace of Ace's/Wing Leader/Jet Eagles series of book based "3d" air combat games are worth special mention as they lie somewhere between a board game and a pc flight sim. But I also have a few RPGs and Sci-fi games: the original TSR's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Steve Jackson Games' GURPS, Car Wars Fantasy Games Unlimited's Chivalry & Sorcery Task Force Games' Star Fleet Battles/Federation & Empire GDW's Traveller 2300/2300AD/Star Cruiser, Dangerous Journeys I.C.E.'s Silent Death, Star Strike Fantasy Wargaming, Warlord All of these games pretty much became obsolete the day I got my first PC in August of 2000. I was constantly trying to refine the rules to make the games more realistic, but with no one else to play them and having to spend endless hours alone trying to recreate battles that would have taken only a few minutes in real time... the PC was a savior. Real-time flight sims. I already had experience with Jane's Fighters Anthology on a work laptop. But playing Jane's USAF, Jane's F/A-18, Jane's WWII Fighters, Jane's 688i, and Jane's Fleet Command were generally equally or more realistic than anything I had done with board games, much faster, and far more fun. Then I found Aces High, Operation Flashpoint, and SFP1. I have never really looked back. Until now. I just bought my first board game flight sim in I don't know how many years. Birds of Prey http://web.mac.com/philip_markgraf/Birds_o...ey/Welcome.html I have looked over the contents and this is the promised land: a board game that rivals PC flight sims in accuracy/realism of modeling 3d flight fully acommodating all three axis' of rotation (direction, pitch, and roll) and the four forces (thrust, drag, lift, and weight). They use some cool laminated charts with markers to do all they hard math graphically. But, I am still having trouble making the time to learn and play this, though if I do learn it I have one old friend that might actually give it a shot. I suspect I wasted my money buying it, but I couldn't resist since I own virtually every other board game/flight-sim ever released en masse and this one is clearly the best ever made. I will say that the best part of playing board games is having a small group of friends gathered having the same type of fun that occurs at traditional poker games. But I have achieved the same or even more fun by hosting Operation Flashpoint LAN game nights at my house (just had two nights of fun while my wife was out of the country). I think I need to let go of my nostalgia and simply dump everything, which would certainly make my wife happier.

Here is the most current version of my SFP1/WoX series multiplayer guidelines: http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1410

Without even knowing what game you are asking about, I will venture a guess as to what is happening: You have a firewall enabled on your PC, so when you click on multi-player and the game starts trying to scan for hosts, it hangs. Examples of games that I have witnessed with this behavior include the Third Wire SFP1 series, Operation Flashpoint, and Starfleet Command. Sometimes, you will see a dialog box asking if you want to allow the game to pass through the firewall (if so, say yes and maybe your problem is solved), but I have seen many cases where someone's firewall interacted in such a way that there was no dialog box to let you know what was happening. A quick test will tell you whether or not your firewall is your problem: turn it off and start multiplayer. If you stop getting the black screen, then the firewall is the problem. If so, you have two choices: 1) Leave the firewall off while playing the game. 2) Configure the firewall to open the appropriate ports for the game.

The Buffalo may not have a good reputation with anyone else, but Finland did an outstanding job with this aircraft. As the AVG did with the P-40, good pilots can make do with what they have. Of course, when they managed to get better planes, Finland did even better.

In addition to higher resolution textures, campaigns now inlcude a ton of more ground objects: aircraft parked at airfields, etc. At higher settings, this game is CPU limited. To tune lower end PCs to run these sims, I like to start with all LOW settings, then go to custom and tweak things one at a time to try to get the quality I want at a frame rate I can live with. Using this technique, I can get my Pentium 3 1.2GHz PCs with Radeon 9800 Pros to run about 18 to 20 frames per second in single missions that don't have too many things flying around, yet still have great cockpit and aircraft detail. Of course Shadows are set to Low (turned off) and Mirrors are off.

In order to have the bombs hit at a point that can be seen on the gunsight (such as the default depression angle) you have to dive fairly steeply and/or at high speeds. Otherwise, gravity pulls your bombs down in an arc that always falls short of your sight. I don't have the patience to line up exactly for every drop (only when I am down to 1 bomb or have to try to use 1 bomb per target). So I come in at whatever angle/speed and pickle about 3 bombs starting when the pipper is on the target and dropping the other 2 in at a steady even interval (knowing the first bomb will probably be short since I am not at the right angle/height/speed). Usually, the middle bomb gets the target. If I approached to wild, maybe all 3 fall short or all 3 fall long, or the interval spaces them out too far and the target survives safely in between. But if I start at about 8 to 10 thousand feet at 3 to 5 miles, this technique gets me a kill most of the time with Mk 82 500 lb bombs. With rockets, I use almost the same approach, but fire a lot more starting before the pipper reaches the target and ending well after the pipper leaves the target. When I am more patient, I can use fewer rockets, but when I am pitching wildly, the interval gets too large if I don't ripple off quite a few. I try to release at less than 1 mile from the target and at 3 to 5 thousand feet. Any further away or any higher, the interval between impacts gets too large. Any lower or closer, I have trouble getting the pipper in the right place without hitting the ground. I like my airspeed to be 400 to 500 knots, though I will use whatever speed I have as long as I have sufficient pitch authority and will be able to pull out without hitting the ground or getting fragged by my own bombs.

Don't listen to him! Take lots of pills, never sleep, and keep making all those planes that have long been desired but never been delivered to the community. Once a 3d model exists and has been released, almost everything else falls into place since almost anyone can edit ini files well enough to get something playable. Of course it is nice if a cockpit has been built as well since that is even harder to make than the aircraft model. I know what kind of time and effort it takes to make good 3d models. I am glad someone has the time to do it! As an added bonus, you are still doing it for free!

Prior to WoI, the way to do this was to edit the ini files to give aircraft a radar with no display and only a search/boresight mode. While it was a clunky way to do it, it did get the desired results: proper LCOS behavior. Of course, since I mainly had stock installs for beta testing and online multiplayer, I greatly appreciate this feature finally being implemented.

This capability was finally added in Wings Over Israel. It can be used in any of the TW sims patched up to the latest revision. It is actually a mode that should be available in most aircraft. Almost every US fighter since the F-86 has some sort of ranging radar and/or ranging mode for more capable radars. Essentially, using "boresight mode" on those aircraft that have a multi-mode radar is very similar to using range-only radar.

The gunsight functions as a bombsight, but unlike in reality, the sight is fixed at one angle (which varies with the type of air-to-ground weapon selected). So, you have to figure out what kind of profile makes that depression angle accurate, i.e. start diving from 10,000 feet and 3 or 4 nm from target then hold the sight on the target and release at 3 or 4 thousand feet. Alternatively, you can choose your own start height/distance and release angle, then adjust the depression angle in the ini file until it matches where your bombs are hitting. Of course, it would be nice if TK would allow you to set the depression angle to any value you want while flying, but he considers that outside of the boundaries of his "sim-lite" marketing approach. I find that if you use a steep approach angle and release at the lowest possible altitude that will allow you to pull up from that steep angle, you can get very accurate with just a little practice. Of course, when you use my super low release technique, if you spend too much time lining up the sight before the release, then you might go too low. You can take damage from your own bombs, but far more likely you won't be able to pull out and will impact into the ground.

Most likely, purely coincidence. I have had almost every aircraft with a gun have a jam at one time or another since this feature has been added. Firing long bursts definitely increases the probability of a jam. The F-8 Crusdader jams quite a bit (which is realistic) and the Mk4 Mod0 gunpod for the Navy Phantoms jams very easily as well. But I have had jams with F-100s and even the F-4E's 20mm Vulcan.

Most WWI guns and some WW2 guns can be recharged manually from the cockpit to try to clear a jam. Other than the fact that rotary cannons feed the next round whether the previous round fired or not, I don't know of any modern guns that should permit you to clear a jam while in the air.

This is a new feature that is borrowed from First Eagles, so I have no idea how it is implemented. I don't know the different jam probabilities or how jamming depends on what difficulty settings. I generally play on Hard settings, so I am not so good at providing tech support on the differences between Easy, Normal, and Hard.

Typically, jams are caused by firing the guns while under unusual g-loads. High-g turns can cause problems with feed/extraction mechanisms. Low, no, or negative g-loads can cause problems as well. The problem is the that most gun designs were engineered on the ground with a simple level 1-g load. Air combat really tests an engineers ability to feed ammo and eject casings rapidly no matter what the environment. Typical guns use belts of ammo chained together as in the classic 0.50 cal M2. Linked belts tend to break, twist, and/or bind such that the gun cannot load the next round. In conventional designs, casings are typically ejected by the force of the gases used to propel the round, possibly being assisted by gravity to help with the ejection path. Under high loads, the casings don't follow the intended path and get stuck in the chamber where the next round is supposed to go. Once a shot has been fired and the next round could not/would not automatically feed, there is usually no means to try to feed another round manually. The rotary cannon design went with a linkless chute type of feed: the rounds are essentially rolled through a chute into a chamber where they can be rammed into the barrel(s). While there can be some feed issues, especially under high g-loads, the whole process is driven mechanically and has a good chance of being cleared if a problem does occur. Fired or not, the rounds are extracted mechanically as well. Typically, on internal installations, the spent casings are fed back into the ammo drum. This eliminates any possibility of loose brass hurting the aircraft (think air intakes). So the entire process is from loading to extraction is precise and controlled as it needs to be if you are going to fire up to 100 rounds per second! The problem with the multi-barrel gatling gun is size and weight. A pair of single-barrel revolver cannons can produce nearly the same effective rate of fire (less mass to spool up, but more limited by barrel temperatures) for a fraction of the weight. So, if you have the room, a gatling gun is probably the best way to go, but for a small lightweight installation, revolver cannon get the job done (think F-5).

Some gun installations are more likely to jam than others. Take as few shots as possible and use short controlled well-aimed bursts to reduce the likelyhood of a jam. If you are using spray-n-pray, you will jam almost any gun in the game very quickly. Some weapons on some aircraft were notorious for jamming, notably the F-8 Crusader's 20mm cannons. There is a reason the "Last Gunfighter" got most of its kills with AIM-9s! The 20mm Vulcan rotary cannon has many disadvantages, but in most versions of it, reliability is not one of them. Without even checking the gun data, I am sure TK has modeled this advantage. Though I bet TK hasn't modeled the spool-up time that greatly reduces the effective rate of fire. While always quoted as having selectable 3000 or 6000 rounds per minute, the fact is over short bursts, the 6-barrels do not instantly spin up from 0 rpm to 500 or 1000 rpm. But even if the effective rate of fire isn't much better than most quad-mounted single barrel 20mm cannon, as long as the feed mechanism doesn't jam, the gun is self-clearing when hydraulically or electically powered. Of course, some would say the caliber is too small compared to many aircraft that have 23mm, 27mm, or 30mm cannon. If the purpose of the gun is air-to-air, the modern version of the 20mm round is more than adequate. Why else would the US stick with one design for so long when other versions are available in 25mm (AV-8B Harrier) and 30mm (4-barrel version of GAU-8 used in gunpods for F-15E)?

I hosted a 24-hour/7-days-a-week server for SFP1 and WoV for a couple of years. It does bring in more traffic than having no server at all, but you can only host a dogfight session unattended. Besides that, here are the key problems with hosting: Stability: a person with a bad connection can crash the server (typically those with dialup and some DSL ISPs exhibited this behavior) Settings: no two people want to fly with the same settings. I was a hardcore "all hard settings" host for most of the two years. The hard settings turned away many newbies and some veterans. I myself can stand anything less, since "hard" makes the weapons and flight models as detailed and realistic as they can be on this game engine. The number one settings issue is being able to see the "HUD" box and/or mini radar display versus having a "clean" realistic display with no text clutter, etc. TK solved that problem for me by adding the display toggle, mapped to "alt-d" by default. I set full hard settings except for HUD and visual spotting, but once in the game, each player can use "alt-d" to get the screen view he prefers... I must admit the targeting box with player ids is useful during training. Install options: which patch level and what addons? The average person comes online with the game as purchased, which is easily patched up to whatever level is desired. But expecting a noobie to install a ton of addons one at a time is unrealistic. In my experience, stock/patched is the way to go. However, special packages such as those by CheckSix! are very easy to install and can add important/fun aircraft that draw crowds: F-14, F-5, and Saab Draken. So, if the community can agree to an online package and someone puts it together into a single drag-n-drop or self-install package, that is really the way to go. Game: When I originally started hosting, there was only SFP1. Then came WoV and SFG. I figured out how to get SFG to work with SFP1 in Hyperlobby and would alternate hosting SFP1 and WoV nightly or weekly. I found more people would fly if I hosted the WoV and therefore stopped hosting the CheckSix! package which used SFP1 as its base. Now we have SFP1, SFG, WoV, WoE, WoI, and FE. While I have hosted and played all of those online, WoV is still the most popular. The stock planeset for WoV has a lot of appeal. If WoI was officially supported on Hyperlobby rather than requiring a hack to get it to work (i.e. copying and renaming the exe to WoV.exe and then pointing the Hyperlobby path for WoV to the WoI folder), WoI might be even more populare due to its planeset: Mirages , F-15s, and F-16s in addition to the typical TW F-4/A-4 combo. I personally like the merged WoE/WoV install for online MP: huge, great planeset with a stock install (even the F-104G is automatically included now). However, I only had a few people ever participate when I hosted that, maybe more people would support it now. Boredom: most people get tired of dogfight mode fairly quickly. Either they get burned badly by the veterans, or they want more realistic situations than the everyone for themself deathmatch. Once a group decides to fly co-op, it is just a matter of time before they get bored with that and leave for a more capable and interesting multiplayer sim like the IL-2 series. I have never seen a virtual squadron fly this sim series for more than a year, usually less than 2 months. However, there is a small core group that has been playing SFP1 online since its release. For people that like the half-decent stock flight models and somewhat realistic avionics/weapons/damage modeling of the 60's timeframe, there is no better sim. The number of people actively playing these games online is so few, that having more than 1 or 2 servers up is wasteful. Everyone needs to fly on the same server or you might as well be playing single player. I will gladly provide tech support to anyone trying to host/play multiplayer for Third Wire sims. I do not normally have the time to actively fly with a squadron, but I can pop in an out, especially if I get an email telling me when and where to be. Good Luck!

I got this stick to give to my parents neighbor. I promised him one of my old computers a long time ago and finally got it set up the way I wanted. He doesn't have the money to get PCs, as far as I know he is still using the last one I gave him (a Pentium III 650MHz). The one I am giving him now is built to the same specs as my longtime primary PC: P3 1.2GHz Tualatin with 1GB PC133 RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. I have set it up with most of my games: Third Wire series, Aces High 2, Operation Flashpoint, etc. So I got this joystick so he could enjoy the games as well as I have. I used to buy a Microsoft Precision Pro 2 USB for these situations, they were only $20 and better than most sticks except for higher end HOTAS setups. I got the AV8R for $40 at Best Buy. I was pleasantly surprised: It felt good, has plenty of buttons/switches, twisty rudder, and dual throttles.