streakeagle

A further complication of the CPU intensive nature of this series is the fact that dual/multi-core cpus are not supported... i.e. the games run on a single core. An Athlon 4800X2 (2.4GHz) is roughly the same as my Athlon 3800 Venice single core (2.4GHz). So, in this case, your 4600X2 (2.2GHz) is a bit more like running a 3500 single core. I run everything maxed out on my video card (FSAAx6, AFx16) and max out almost everything in-game for 1600x1200x32, but limit horizon to near, shadows to medium, and mirrors off to keep my fps typically at 25 to 35, though it still drops below 20s under certain conditions. I can tweak a few other ingame items like terrain to sustain 40 to 50 fps. Not sure why your performance at much lower settings (lots of medium) is still giving you such low frame rates. How much RAM do you have? I am running 2GB. How much video RAM do you have? I am running 512MB. When SFP1 was first released, it ran fairly well (30-40 fps) at 1600x1200x32 with FSAAx2 and AFx16 on a 128MB Radeon 8500, prior to that I had it running well at 1024x768x32 on a 65MB Voodoo 5500, my P3 1GHz PC had 1GB of PC133 RAM. Each game release after that pulled down my FPS. I had upgraded to a 9800 Pro 128MB and a P3 1.2GHz by the time WOV was out. I played at 1600x1200x32 with FSAAx4 and AFx16 but still had to leave shadows and mirrors turned off to keep FPS at 30 to 40. WOE dropped me down to the 20s to 30s. I built my current PC, which allowed me to play maxed out with mirrors and shadows at 45 to 60 fps, only busy places like Hanoi could take down fps with all the sounds and effects due to AAA and SAMs... especially all the "SAM launch" calls. First Eagles added all the ground objects and droppedmy current PC to 15 to 30 FPS... with a few adjustments, I could maintain 50+. WOI dropped me solidly into the 20 FPS range, forcing me to go with medium shadows and no mirrors with a near horizon to get my FPS back to 25 to 35 (normal horizon is playable but costs me at least 5 FPS). Its all about an increase in the number of objects and an increase in the texture sizes. It looks really good, but comes at a price in performance.

The SR-71 still looks ahead of its time... the aerodynamic lines are unsurpassed. I would bet application of modern materials and engine technology would allow a similar aircraft to be built in such a way that operational costs could be dramatically reduced... Or if cost reduction was unimportant, it could be given much higher performance. The question is, does such an aircraft already exist? Aviation Week rumored that some kind of military hyperspace plane/space shuttle (presumably the notorious project Aurora) has already gone out of service for the same reason as the F-117: too old and too expensive. If we can blow $700 billion on bad mortgages, surely we can afford to pump some money into the aerospace/defense industry to stimulate the kind of technology revolutions that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s due to the cold war/space race (which were really one in the same).

The current patches fixed the CTD due to the terrain pixel shaders, but TK's stated intent is to release new versions of the sims for Vista which organize the game files according to Vista rules. I am hoping he does the DX10 upgrade and multicore upgrade as well to more fully take advantage of modern OS and hardware (better yet would be a 64 bit version). He also may update the games to some extent with higher poly models with higher res textures. No exact release date was ever specified, but by the end of this year was the original goal.

Carriers may not do 100+ knots, but they are much faster than the usual public figures of 33+ knots. Nuclear carriers were required to be able to generate enough wind to launch aircraft no matter what the wind conditions. The aircraft carriers are the fastest ships in the Navy counting the PHMs that did 55+ knots. Submarine sonar techs estimate the speed at about 70 knots, at which point, the aircraft carrier is hydroplaning (bow out of the water) and making a bit of a rooster tail. I have never seen such a thing, but during my service, I met people who had.

The next round of copies will be the "Vista" updated versions. Of course, I don't have Vista yet, but once TK supports Vista properly, preferably with multicore and DirectX10 support, I will finally be able to justify building a state of the art machine with Vista (or better yet, Windows 7).

While I am not particularly interested in flying the Black Shark, I am very interested in the first true hard-core sim released since Falcon 4.0 I hope it is successful enough that the series continues so that it ultimately becomes the first sim to simultaneously be hard-core study sim and multi-plane survey sim. I do wish that they had not selected Star Force for their copy protection scheme, but I won't let that decision stop me from getting the first decent combat flight study sim released in 10 years. When is the English version due to be available for purchase?

I don't have access to Red Flag excercise results, nor do I have access to the simulation rules... So I have no leg to stand on to dispute your Red Flag claim. What I can say is that in high threat environments against enemies that did not have any pulse doppler radar, low-flying, high speed aircraft still took unacceptable loss rates. Strategic bombers always flew high to avoid losses, ever improving SAMs forced them down low since it was presumed losses at lower alt, but stealth wasn't developed because the USAF just wanted to spend a lot of money... They didn't want to face the kind of losses encountered in Vietnam and 1973 Yom Kippur due to intense flak/SAMs/fighters. Pulse doppler radar and AWACS technology have only made the situation worse. Current Soviet radars were developed to try to detect, track, and kill Tomahawk missiles. I am sure they were successful to some degree and a B-1 is a whole lot bigger in size and RCS than a Tomahawk.

So, you think a lone B-1 could penetrate against AWACS with pulse doppler radar? The RCS of a B-1 is much lower than a B-52, but it is not a B-2... it can be detected and tracked on radar at respectable ranges. Beaming a radar to reduce doppler only works well if there is a single radar... a few well-placed AWACS make that tactic useless. Su-27 flights with active radars would further reinforce that. You don't need a look-down shoot-down missile to beat the B-1... you just need to know where he is. An interceptor like the Su-27 would have no problem catching up with the B-1 and closing to gun range, or even a WW2 style ramming attack if need be. A B-1 would be hard pressed to drop a nuclear bomb, or even a nuclear stand-off missile without being detected and shot down first. The goal of low-level penetration was to get in undetected. Low-level penetration was the stop-gap measure to penetrate until stealth technology could be developed. As stealth technology is defeated by new sensor technology (no doubt in my mind that it will be if it hasn't been already), we will be back to square one: How to penetrate defenses without taking high losses. In the mean time, the F-117 approach of flying high in the dark undectected by radar is the only safe approach against well-defended targets. Any bomb-truck with ECM and decoys available will do against undefended targets. In my opinion, the way to penetrate low level would be with very slow flying aircraft/missiles... Low doppler no matter where the radar is. So maybe something like a stealth blimp moving at 50 mph? Virtually undectable by doppler radar (if you turn the doppler filter down to that low of a speed, you get a lot of clutter).

Actually, Jimmy was quite smart. Why waste money on the B-1 which was only marginally more survivable than the B-52 when the money could be better spent on the B-2 (which he couldn't tell the public about). As it stands now, the collapse of the Soviet Union made even the B-2 a waste of time and money while the B-52 continues to serve indefinitely. While the Reagan era threw tons of money at defense spending and combined with his rhetoric suckered the Soviet Union into collapse, the money was not spent very efficiently. Contractors sucked the government coffers dry. The A-12 program is just one example. I would argue that the Sea Wolf submarine and ATF programs that dragged on forever at the cost of billions of dollars before delivering a single production example are further examples. Wiser choices would not have left us stuck with aircraft so old they are falling out of the sky or new aircraft that are either too expensive to buy in adequate numbers (F-22) or less capable than the aircraft that they replace (F/A-18E vs F-14D). The whole military procurement program has been out of control for a long time and there is no easy fix since the house and senate win great benefits for their states from all these programs whether they are successful or not. As for the Spec Ops disaster... the idea was great. If they had pulled it off, Carter would probably have been re-elected. The people that made the mistakes that caused the operation to be aborted were beyond Carter's control or responsibility. If you want to argue that Carter caused a collapse in national pride and a low military budget which contributed to the mission failure, I have two answers for you: 1. National pride and confidence in the military was destroyed by the military-political mess of Vietnam. 2. Congress set the budget and did so in response to item 1. While I loved Reagan's in-your-face responses to hostile actions compared to Carter's "can't we all just get along" attitude, Reagan suffered losses far greater than the failed Iran Hostage Rescue mission. Think about the bombing of the Beirut embassy. When faced with the same situation: Arab terrorists holding hostages, rather than trying a bold, risky rescue, Reagan tried to buy the hostages back by selling arms to Iran via Israel. Carter's response to Afghanistan was to boycott the Olympics (which I personally think was stupid as those games are supposed to be about the athletes and above politics), but Reagan's response was to have the CIA train and fund Osama Bin Laden. Carter succeeded where no President has before or since: he got Egypt and Israel to sign a peace treaty that has lasted. The end result has been a huge stabilizing factor in the Middle East. How many attempts have been made to destroy Israel since this treaty? There is a lot more to good foreign policy than flag-waving patriotism, dumping tons of money into the department of defense, and supporting any group that is an enemy of your enemies. The difference between a popular President and an unpopular one seems to be a combination of personal charisma, media support, and serving during a time when the economy is booming. Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton definitely had all that. Carter, George Bush Sr. and George Bush Jr. had neither once in office. I think both Carter and George Bush Sr. and going to be greatly respected and admired for the things they did both in and out of office as time goes on. As is typical of Amercian Presidential election politics, both were held accountable for situations they did not create and were not appreciated for the things they did right. Back to the real topic: The B-1 is a cool plane (much like the B-58), but it was just an alternative to the one we should have had: the XB-70. Operation expenses would have eventually forced its retirement like the SR-71, but it otherwise would have been a strong backbone for our manned nuclear deterence compared to the B-52s and B-1s hoping to penetrate at low altitude. To this day, a Mach 3+ aircraft at high altitude is a difficult target, whereas look-down/shootdown radar has made low-altitude penetration difficult if not impossible.

Why is the F-111 an F-111 instead of an A-? Simple: the mindset of the USAF was centered on strategic nuclear warfare and divided itself into two combat groups: SAC and TAC. Large, long range, subsonic, heavy payload aircraft were strategic bombers. Smaller, short to medium range, supersonic aircraft were tactical fighters. The F-111 was born of the tactical fighter experimental program (TFX) to produce a long range high speed nuclear strike fighter for the USAF to replace the F-105 and (thanks to McNamara) merged with the Navy's need for an advanced fleet defense interceptor. The resulting USAF F-111A was technically a dual-role fighter, a precursor to the F/A-18 and F-15E. In addition to its long range strike capability, it was intended to carry AIM-7s and act as a stand-off interceptor. While the F-111B was a design failure, I think it was somewhat unfair to General Dynamics for its subcontractor, Grumman, to take advantage of its inside information on the strengths and weaknesses of the F-111 design to produce a substitute (the F-14). General Dynamics did not create the specification for the F-111, they were merely doing their best to provide what the US government requested. The Navy had never asked for agility (they only wanted a 6g airframe not the 7.33g airframe that the USAF wanted) and were the driving force behind the side-by-side seating arrangement. Rejection of the F-111B while subsequently purchasing the Grumman F-14 was a slap in the face to General Dyanmics. The key to rejecting the F-111B was its weight and the F-14 was still extremely heavy for a carrier based fighter. Grumman was able to shed some weight because they didn't have to meet the USAF range specifications and they were able to re-engineer the variable geometry wing to be both lighter and stronger. The VFX competition for the F-14 contract heavily favored Grumman since the Navy had already been working together with them in secret for years, while the other key bidders had a lot less time to throw a proposal together without being able to recycle F-111B knowledge. On the bright side, every time General Dynamics lost a US military aircraft contract, it was a victory for the US military. GD designs almost never met the specifications, went through years of delays, and were way over budget. In addition to the F-111 fiasco, the whole F-102/F-106 program was even more of a disaster. The F-102 was such a failure that the necessary fixes resulted in the new F-106 designation. Even the plan to deploy the F-102 until the F-106 was ready failed, resulting in the F-101B being used as a stopgap interceptor. In some ways, the F-16 was a less than satisfactory product, but its high production numbers and resulting low price made it a pretty good deal if you didn't need a BVR missile. But high performance and production for a low price is not always better... the B-24 (made by GD before it was called GD) was faster, could fly farther, carry more bombs, and be produced more quickly and easily than the B-17, but it needed the faster production rate to match its higher loss rate. Pilots who flew both will tell you the B-17 was much safer and easier to fly. At the highest levels of the Army Air Corps/Army Air Force, the B-17 was much preferred over the B-24, but politics and wartime needs ensured both aircraft were produced and employed in tremendous numbers. The Navy should quite rightfully see the cancellation of the F-111B was one of their great political and financial victories. The F-14 clearly was a much better fit for Navy carriers providing everything the F-111B was to provide and so much more. Of course, the Grumman F-14 was never built in large numbers and is now retired, while General Dynamics F-16s have been built in tremendous numbers and will be serving for a long time to come... as a product of Lockheed. It is amazing how the aerospace industry in the United States has collapsed between WW2 and the present. Republic, North American, Chance-Vought, McDonnell, Douglas, General Dynamics (Convair), Grumman, Martin, Northrop, Curtiss... all gone from the design and production of military aircraft or absorbed into Boeing and Lockheed. From 1940 to 1980 was an amazing era of US aerospace engineering development that will probably never be equaled. I am glad that I was born early enough to see many of the aircraft produced in the era while they were still flyable and in many cases still in service.

Just dropped this baby in to my WOE install (without fuel tanks or nukes). Used the F-101A for two fighter sweeps. First sweep, I took a MiG-17 head-on and got him... but he flamed one of my engines which eventually blew me up. 2nd sweep, I got me 2 MiG-19s and a MiG-17, one of my wingmen got a MiG-19 as well. I lost two of my wingmen. As a fighter, flies a lot like an F-104 with no Sidewinders and less maneuverability, but also less drag (seems to retain energy and accelerate very quickly with afterburner and nose down especially after a bit of fuel has been burned). Realistic, maybe... fun and challenging, definitely! I think the F-101B will be like an F-4B/F-4C (gunless missile platform) with less maneuverability, worse radar, and much worse missiles. AIM-4s are really too weak to take down bombers and too many launch/maneuverability restrictions to be of any use against fighters. The F-101B could prove to be one of the most challenging US interceptors to successfully employ in this game. It will also be one of the coolest looking ones (though the F-101A/C is a bit more attractive with a sharper nose and smaller bubble canopy). This is an awesome mod for an awesome aircraft. Many thanks to everyone involved. I just wish this plane had been available from the day SFP1 was released. Now, we just need the F-102 to complete the Third Wire Century Series: F-100, F-101, F-102, F-104, F-105, F-106 If you include the F-111, then maybe the F-110 (F-4C) should also count... the F-117 would be a real stretch. I am also interested in the "what-ifs": the F-103, F-107, F-108, and F-109, but will be content when I can take a screenshot of the true Century series on the ground and flying in formation.

No apology necessary. Good to hear from you at all. I hope your site can be restored. If not, perhaps it can be recreated to a large extent under combatace partnership like the other websites already hosted here.

Finally got time to post a screenshot: I agree the runway is missing. I disagree about the problems with FPS as I understand what was changed and why and am still able to get similar FPS by toning down some settings (all of this started with First Eagles with new terrain features, more ground objects, etc.). As the screenshot shows, I also disagree about VMFA-531 being gone. It was available to me whether I chose an F-4E or an F-4B. As to the accuracy of the decals for the time frame... I will leave that to ghost to critique, I am just asserting that it does exist even if it changed in a way that is not liked.

While I am a part of the Online Multiplayer mafia for Thirdwire games, you are delusional if you don't think most people always want more eyecandy. You can always lower the graphics settings to get FPS back (the meaning of the Low/Med/High and the addition of Unlimited has changed how the game works). Someone that just spent $1500 building a gaming rig with a top of the line video card wants to play games with top of the line graphics. Someone that just spent $500 on an e-Machine wants the same thing... then finds out that they can't get it with a built in video chip... tough luck. Someone that wants to play todays games on a 5-year-old machine is being unrealistic. As it is, TK is still far from top of the line graphics and has bent over backwards to try to keep everyone happy. No one forces you to apply the patch. You simply make a choice. I have chosen: latest patch for me. I don't know what is wrong with Doghouse's install, but I see VMFA-531 in multiplayer. I do see the missing runways. If you have problems, you should be venting at TK's forums rather than here. He can't fix it if he doesn't know about it. My FPS was 60 in multiplayer while in cockpit, 45 in external view (shadows no medium activate on external view). My PC hardware is already 3 years old, but I can run it at 1600x1200x32 with FSAAx6 and AFx16.

graphics are not worse... WOV automatically used advanced card settings (such as antialiasing), but many people complained about having low FPS with FSAA enabled, so TK put it back the way it was with SFP1 originally: you have to force FSAA on via video card settings. Frame rates do drop due to new features, but this is nothing new... SFP1 originally ran fine on my P3 1GHz and a Voodoo 5500 and later on a P3 1.2GHz and a Radeon 8500 (at 1600x1200!), but each new game chomped into my ability to play on older hardware. My current rig ran WOV on max quality settings with mirrors and shadows, but after WOE came out, I started having to go to Near Horizon instead of Far Horizon or I took a huge FPS penalty. With WOI level of game engine, the same rig needs shadows on medium and mirrors disabled to keep frame rates up where they were. The latest code is written to run well on medium settings on a typical gaming PC, you have to have a fairly strong PC to run at max settings any more. The refinements in AI and radar and missile behavior are greatly improved... wouldn't consider flying SP4 level ever again now that WOV is up to WOI standard. Beta testers were stretched thin: multiple betas for multiple games at a very fast rate. I am sure TK will patch other problems as they are revealed, only question is when?

The Vista shader problem has already gone away for WOI. Patches with this fix for the other Third Wire SFP1 sims WOE and WOV should be out very soon.

TK found the problem in his code... just a matter of time before he releases a hotfix... Though more likely a full patch to squash additional bugs found during beta testing for the WOE/WOV patches that bring those games up to the WOI standard. So, be patient as a solution is on the way.

Third Wire has been unable to duplicate this bug (as with me). My gut feeling is that it is video card related, but video card experiments are much harder since it might involve trying different driver sets and at the extreme trying an alternate model and/or brand of card, so let's do some tests to look for sound related issues: Try shooting the gunpod from an external view (F5 chase view, F6, etc.) rather than from the cockpit. Does it still freeze? Sound gets processed a little differently in the different views and a change in stability with view might be an indication that it is sound related. Of course, the video clippling also changes... but it is still a useful symptom. Also, after that test, try disabling hardware acceleration for sound. Another thing to try is to set sound for simple stereo or mono rather than surround sound. If anyone can get rid of the freezing by disabling hardware acceleratin and/or surround sound, then we have our culprit. If no one benefits from either these, I am banking on some kind of video processing issue.

Is there anyone with an ATi video card that is having the gunpod freeze problem?

I am not having these problems, but many others are and I am trying to help figure out what is common between those people who are. I am thinking it is a hardware/driver issue, so please list what video card and sound card you are using as well as the version of their drivers. PS Make sure you have the latest DirectX 9, which I think was August 2008. This won't solve the problem but helps make sure everyone is testing from the same version of software.

I currently drive a blue 1980 Corvette L-82 (1995 to present) to work every day and the family car is a gold 2005 Altima 2.5S (2005 to present). I previously drove a mahogany 1980 Corvette L-82 (Jan 1993 to Sep 1993, totaled by a kid in a red Camaro that hit me head on). Before that a blue 1980 Corvette L-48 (stock engine, Jul 1991 to Sep 1991, totaled when I lost control on an exit ramp). All three Corvettes were purchased during my 8 years in the Navy (1989 to 1997). Prior to the Navy I drove a 1974 Firebird Formula 350 (in picture, 1988 to 1989, sold it after getting first Corvette) Prior to that a 1975 Firebird Espirit (not shown, I have no photos of that one, 1986 to 1988, drove it until the engine gave out and traded it in for next Firebird). In high school, I drove my parents Ford Econoline 150 van (351 Cleveland, 1984 to 1986). So, until I bought the Altima, I have never owned or regularly driven a car that wasn't a rear wheel drive American V-8 5.7 liter.

First you have to install teamspeak (and preferably test it), then you go to the teamspeak link at the top of the combat ace web page (right under the A-10). From there, you should be able to figure out where to go and what to do through trial and error. (i.e. click on a lobby, open a dialog box, choose a nickname, then join the selected lobby)

If only they had put the intake on the bottom... would have been a low powered precursor to the F-16 (much like a variant of the MiG-21).

I like Cobras too. The principal advantage the Apache had over the Cobra was its engines, and the AH-1W solved that problem. The beauty of the Huey/Cobra family was commonality, nice to see that being maintained with the UH-1Y/AH-1Z. These days cost-effectiveness is so much more important than absolute performance. I am sure the decision to go stay with the Huey/Cobra family will prove to be the best option for the Marines.

My old 19" CRT monitor at 1600x1200 is actually better than my 46" LCD TV at 1920x1080... my preferred solution would be a 2550x1600 (the best available at the consumer level) but for now I normally play on a 20" LCD monitor at 1600x1200. At 1024x768, I only got about 2/3 the detection range I get with 1600x1200. Resolution is half the battle: for a given zoom level (which is basically field of view), double the resolution to double the distance you can see one pixel. Zoom is the other half, and you can get good visual spotting distances using max zoom, but at the cost of a very narrow field of view. The 1080p LCD TV was a tradeoff: while the 1080 vertical resolution ensured I only got 90% of the range possible with 1200 vertical, it was super easy to see that 1 pixel target and identify the aspect of the target at it got closer (and bigger). The built in cheat is to use normal settings for HUD and visual targetting then use the <t> key (or others as appropriate) to locate any one target, then you can zoom on it as required to identify it and/or judge its aspect/energy state. While Track IR makes the process of zooming in/out very easy and intuitive, my solution prior to owning track IR was to have the targeting keys on a hat switch on the joystick and have the zoom in/out mapped to a rotary knob on the throttle. I was actually able to maintain situational awareness better using this method over Track IR since it is fairly easy to get disoriented with Track IR while zoomed in (i.e. not know which direction you are looking). But TrackIR is far more immersive. If people don't mind having 3d models rendered oversize to be viewable at long distances, why are TK's target boxes so bad? In fact, you can redefine the target boxes to be black spots if you want so they look like what you see in some other games at long distances and when you first aquire the target visually using the <t> key, you get an ID message telling you what type of aircraft you just acquired... which is no more cheating than having a glowing icon with the aircraft name. So if you don't like TK's choice on rendering aircraft at long distance, there are ways to work around it to get results similar to what you might experience in other games. In reality, US pilots in Vietnam had a very hard time detecting MiG-21s when they were coming head-on. 2nm (3.7km) was about the max range they could spot one... banked in a turn was another story. For comparison, when a jet airliner is contrailing at 30,000+ feet (almost 5 nm or 9.1 km), try picking out the engine nacelles on the wings. You could see the plane without contrails, though you might have to scan the sky a few times to find it after first hearing the engines. But other than the basic shape of the wings/fuselage/tail, not too many details are apparent. MiG-21s are smaller in diameter than the turbofans on airliners, from headon without any contrails, the thin wings and tail are invisible and the nose is just a speck on the windshield... while your eye may already see it at 5nm, it isn't until 2nm, the speck gets big enough to catch someone's attention without knowing it is there. While TK's implementation is annoying if you are used to the way other games do it, I find that it models reality very well: the Navy trains lookouts to perform focused visual scan patterns much the way radars sweep their beams with the same tradeoffs between search area, detection probability, and sweep time. Adding binoculars provides even longer detection ranges at the cost of longer sweep times for a given area. Some pilots with a combination of exceptional vision, excellent scan discipline, and good intuition on where to focus their search can detect targets at much greater ranges than typical pilots (look for some quotes about how far Chuck Yeager could pick out enemy fighters in WW2). TK's version (when at max zoom) seems to replicate typical detection ranges rather than the best case or worst case ones. Zoomed out