streakeagle

while the video card is normally the key factor to frame rates... WOI also pushes the limits on cpu bottlenecks with more objects. The entire SFP1 series can lose fps to sound issues... just fly over Hanoi in WOV, once the flak starts popping all around you, the extra sound loud combined with the visual effects really drops the system down in fps. WOI also has much larger textures, so the video card needs a lot of fast memory that has a big 256-bit bus... it also helps if you have a gig or 2 of very fast system RAM. Those with 8800 GTs and having issues are either facing a driver problem or have one of the above bottlenecks. My x1800xt is getting bogged down by the new shadows. Mirrors tend to get bottlenecked by the cpu, and my cpu is loaded down very hard by WOI, so I am leaving mirrors off for the first time in years. Balance your system... don't waste money on high end video cards if you don't have a cpu and ram to match... and a sound card that does not offload anything to the cpu can help quite a bit too. Unfortunately, quite a few sound cards are little better than an onboard chipset when it comes to processing 3d sound for games. The ones that do process game sounds without bogging down the cpu tend to be the more expensive cards.

Teamspeak Overlay is a cool utility available for free download that allows you to see what is going on in teamspeak while playing a game. But it doesn't work right with the Third Wire SFP1/WOV/WOE/WOI series. It only appears on the menu screens and disappears once you are in flight. I found a similar utility called VoiceOverlay that is also available for free download here: http://halb.servercamp.de/proggi/VoiceOverlay/home_en.php This works with Teamspeak or Ventrillo and it works the way it should. So if you are playing online and using Teamspeak, you can see who just talked on your channel, who is connecting/disconnecting, and list everyone in your room with an optional key toggle. The exact type of information and presentation is configurable on an options page, and there is even an optional key to toggle the display on and off in case you want to take clean screen shots.

While I have loved the idea of having a merged install as WOE permitted automatically with WOV, the game engine isn't designed to work very well in that format. I still like the idea of a fully merged SFP1/WOV/WOE install so I can create any matchup I want, but at this point I like to spend most of my time flying somewhat historically accurate situations generated randomly in single player. Random missions will be anything but historical with a merged install: screwed up nationalities and wrong aircraft in wrong place at wrong time. So, I actually prefer to have all my installs completely separate and stock/patched while keeping a spare install or two of SFP1, WOV, or WOE as needed for modding and merging. WOV and/or YAP have been my favorites, but I find WOI to be equally entertaining and will spend more time on it when I have a PC strong enough to keep 60 fps with all graphics settings maxed out. The differences between WOI and the others is just too great right now... I want the final patches before I even thinkg about merging any stuff to/from WOI. I want to play WOV with less reliable missiles, ground clutter, and AI that will get in close and spank you even if you come up from behind on a recon flight :)

Canards can perform several functions. In a tailless delta, if the canard is movable as on the XB-70, it replaces the elevator. It has a big advantage in this role since the elevator must push down on the tail to stabilize the aircraft and therefore subtracts from the lift of the wing. The canard on the otherhand, pulls up the nose to stabilize the aircraft, which adds to the lift. The Wright brothers chose to use a canard on the original Flyer for this very reason (they were struggling to get the best possible lift/drag ratio to make up for their lack of power). The disadvantage to the canard in this role is that having the stabilizing force forward of the wing is inherently unstable. Almost all planes after the Wright Flyer used a tail instead of a canard for this reason. Modern fly-by-wire solves the stability problem and makes the canard superior to having a tail in most situations. A movable canard is a huge advantage for tailless delta winged aircraft. Without the canard, they cannot have landing flaps, as the trailing edge flaps are the sole means of controlling pitch. With a canard, the wing can lower the trailing edge flaps and the canard can push up to counter the resulting pitch moment, providing the maximum amount of lift possible for STOL. Small fixed canards are not nearly so useful, but can provide much better airflow over a wing at high angles of attack for very little cost in drag and weight. They pretty much provide the same benefits as leading edge root extensions by helping the air flow stay attached to the wing at angles where is would normally separate and lead to stalling. The canard generate vortices which energize the air over the wing to keep it flowing despite the high angle of attack. Vortices are a drag penalty, but the turbulent separation of airflow from the wing is both a huge drag and lift penalty. So there is a useful net gain in lift and drag despite the drag caused by the canards. The only time you should see canards moving down on an aircraft is when the pilot wants to lower the nose and/or reduce the angle of attack. In level flight and sustained turns, the canard should generally be in a position to cause lift or be in a neutral position.

Like France never stopped shipping aircraft and weapons when their customers differed politically. Israel switched to US arms and produced its own Mirages after France cut them off. Argentina could have done much better in the Falklands if they had access to plenty of Exocet missiles. When you buy advanced aircraft from nations powerful enough to design and build them, they always come with strings attached... guaranteed.

I got the chance to win an F-4 grip with the amphenol adapter I need on eBay... and blew it. I didn't set my max limit higher than my public bid... and got busy at work today. At 7:30 am I was still the winner. By 11:00 am I was a loser... by $5. I couldn't afford to go much higher, but I might have jacked him up to $400 if I had been online at the time. The guy who won it just wants the grip, so I may get the amphenol adapter from him. But, I would have liked to have had the grip as well since it IS an F-4 grip with no hand rest at the base, unlike the one I bought. At a minimum, I hope to get the full part number for the adapter from the buyer and/or seller so I can try to find one through the same supplier that got me my grip. This is the only thing holding my project up. I have the x and y axis working fine and just need to mount the grip and wire up the buttons.

It depends on how you measure "better". TKs are not espeically realistic when you measure performance, but generally match relative values (i.e. the F-4E out of the box in SFP1/WOV flies more like an F-16, but is still easily outturned by the MiG-17). Addon aircraft FMs tend to shoot for realistic performance which makes them less capable than they would be against stock aircraft if TK had modeled them. Also, addon aircraft are far more likely to give the AI trouble. There are plenty of addons with enjoyable flight modeling... But none of the few doing FMs knows what criteria TK is using to build his and therefore will never have FMs that fit perfectly into TKs unique balance of playability, realism, and AI friendly... and when it comes to stability parameters (as opposed to performance figures), I don't even think TK has fully mastered his own game engine. From a technical standpoint and seat of the pants feel, the addon FMs frequently are much better than TKs, but in terms of game balance and AI when mixed with stock aircraft, I don't know of any addons that mix well with stock FMs. The only way to remedy this situation is to have the same group of people following the same standards provide FMs for every aircraft from stock to most obscure addon. Until that happens (which apparently already did for First Eagles before the addon screwed things up), I personally don't like to fly missions with stock versus addons. I much prefer having all addons or all stock and with multiplayer limiations making it favorable to stick with stock installs... that is where I spend my time.

The F-4 can and does continue to serve quite successfully on the modern battlefield... that's not my opinion, it is a fact. In the case of the now retired F-4G, no other aircraft has stepped up to replace it... certainly not the F-16s which are now attempting to fill the Wild Weasel role. Perhaps it would be futile to put F-4s up against F-22s, but according to exercises the F-15, F-16, F-18, MiG-29, Su-27, etc. are all woefully obsolete as well... Of course there are literally thousands of those other aircraft operational all over the world and only a few hundred F-22s are ever going to be built. You are free to believe whatever you want, but the many air forces still operating the F-4 obviously believe differently than you.

I agree with your advice... but it seems to a certain point, TK already has his own plans and isn't really looking for suggestiongs at all.

An F-4, like any aircraft, is a weapon system. Certain parts of the F-4 have been updated (radar, ecm, missiles), others still could be (engines). Both the age and the original design limitations of the airframe ensure that the F-4 will never be able to mix it up with agile dogfighters... but then that was the way the F-4 always has been from the start. Aside from agility, what does an F-16 or F-18 do that the F-4F+ ICE, F-4E 2000, F-4EJ, and updated F-4Es in Greece and Turkey can't do? The F-4's payload capacity has never been an issue... it is still a great bomb truck and 8 air-to-air missiles is still a decent warload for interception. If there are any weapons it can't deliver due to fire control lmitations, that is nothing that can't be fixed with some hasty re-wiring and a few black boxes or software updates. There are two ways to deal with stealth capabilities: 1) make your platform stealthy (which isn't going to happen with the F-4, but what aircraft currently in service are truly stealthy beyond the B-2, F-22, and F-35?). 2) give your platform sensors which overcome stealth (i.e. advanced radar and infrared/thermal imaging). The F-4 is no more obsolete than my 1980 Corvette... it is old and maintenance hungry, but otherwise does all the jobs it always did as well as it always did. For many nations, upgrading their F-4 fleet is so much cheaper than buying new planes. With the right upgrades, it is not a bad option as long as you don't frequently get into dogfights with F-16s, F-18s, MiG-29s, or Su-27s. In the case of Iran, it would be interesting to see how operational their F-4 fleet really is. Are they just stock F-4Es as delivered degraded by age and lack of decent spare parts? Or have they been updated to remain competitive against much more modern systems owned by neighbors? Even if they are pretty much stock, they still have guns and can still competently shoot down anything short of modern agile fighters (and could even do that with good tactics--think F4Fs versus A6Ms). If they face the US and their F-4s get toasted by F-15s and F-16s, they won't be doing any worse than any other air force that has faced the same combination, including MiG-29s. Part of the US success (and allies employing the same aircraft) has been the design of the aircraft, but more of it has been the improvement in weapons systems combined with excellent pilot training and outstanding maintenance crews.

I would not submit LOMAC as an example of a game that succeeded because it was focused on Soviet forces. LOMAC was actually an upgrade of Flanker which was purely a Soviet flyables game. While Flanker was an excellent sim, its lack of US aircraft held it back in this market. What made LOMAC a better option in the US besides the fantastic graphics was the addition of the F-15 and A-10 to the planeset. The refusal to make an F/A-18 addon and instead adding a more detailed Su-25 did not go over well in the mainstream US market. The idea of a Soviet helo being the next expansion, then ultimately breaking off into a separate game engine largely limits LOMAC's future given its limited moddability. IL-2 followed a similar path. While its graphics impressed many people and it had a good reputation as a complex/realistic sim, it was never going to be the success it has become in the US until people could fly P-51s, P-38s, P-47s, F4Us, and F6Fs. The European market is somewhat different, but the majority of the US market clearly wants the option to fly US equipment FOR the US as the "good guys". It will be interesting to see how Black Shark does in the US. As a collector of flight sims, it may go on my shelf. But like Falcon 4.0 AF, IL-2 series, and LOMAC, it may sit idle on my hard drive since it probably won't meet my current needs in a flight sim. Not to mention the fact that I am not particularly interested in flying that helo :P I personally like a balanced sim with equally modeled/detailed flyables for both sides. TK's sims out of the box don't meet this criteria, but the addons available clearly remedy this problem. The problem with addons is that they are not made to the same standard as the other stock aircraft. Only TK knows exactly how to balance the flight models so that they have the right amount of playability versus realism to be compatible and comparable to the other stock FMs. TK is also fairly good at providing the right amount of polygons/texturing to keep frames rates stable no matter which flyable you choose (WOI has set a new standard, so this isn't as true anymore until TK updates the older planes like the F-4 to conform to the new higher quality standards).

The F-4 is going to outlive the F-15 that replaced it in US service. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still F-4s in service when the F-22 is withdrawn from US service.

I am not sure where the WOI update is taking the series, but I find myself unable to go back to earlier revisions once TK gets everything nailed down until the next big release. In my opinion, SFP1 SP2a was better than any of the SP3 or SP4 (current state of SFP1/WOV/WOE) patches in terms of flight modeling and AI... but who wants to give up clouds, aircraft carriers, 1970s avionics, etc. ? A lot of things were arbitrarily changed or even outright broke in SP3. SP4 with final hotfix was a solid release, but some of the broken things remained broken. WOI didn't fix some of the things broken by SP3/SP4 either. I am sure the code is so complicated and large at this point, that every little alteration TK makes to add new features or fix broken ones somehow causes unintended consequences. TK also has a tendency to make a few typos in the ini files, which leads me to two concerns: 1. How many errors in the ini files has the community missed and are still causing some weird bugs? 2. How many other typo errors exist in the rest of the code that are causing some of the problems being reported, but we have no way of knowing they are even there much less finding and fixing such errors?

Actually, despite how unrealistic it is in some situations, I have always liked the super AI of the original OFP/Resistance and like the even smarter ArmA AI better. I don't want a game where I can stand in the middle of the street and single handedly gun down 40 people. In original OFP, I played on full hard settings (no white dot -- if you want sights you have to use iron sights) and played so much (both single player and multiplayer) that I could engage a full squad at short range on flat open ground and kill at least 10 and typically 12 of them without using sights... double tap, next target... double tap next target... If I didn't miss any I got all 12, if I had to shoot an extra round or two at one guy, then 10 was about the best I could get before they got me. With ArmA, I find it challenging to take on 4 to 6 at long range with cover (which would have been a piece of cake in OFP). I know they shouldn't find me so quickly and I would prefer more realism... but it is fun nonetheless. To beat the basic stock single player missions on full difficulty, you almost have to get single shot kills on everyone you see or they will react so fast that they shoot you or flank you, close, and then shoot you from behind at point blank. It is frustrating, but fun. I simply play the missions over and over until I don't make any mistakes and complete the objectives. Since I don't put the time into ArmA that I used to put into OFP, I am not as good, so the stock missions have kept me busy when I do play. That's a good thing when I am still having fun and getting challenged without even adding a single mod.

Worst case is that you deleted the original download and the email giving you a link to it... Even if this is the case, email Third Wire and they will probably resend you the email with the link. Then make sure you burn it to a disc before you delete it and save the email with the link in case you lose or damage the disc!

Not always about hardware limits... Console games have some outstanding graphics. Where do you want your cpu clock cycles spent? Where do you want your developer's budget spent? Decent flight models and functional 3d cockpits take lots of development time and money and with hi-res textures, cockpits take lots of cpu cycles too. The terrain really stands out in some of the console games, but they can't compete in terms of flight model fidelity and in-the-pit functionality. The SFP1 series may not have clickable pits, but in their present state, they are very detailed models (lots of polygons and animations) with fairly hi-res textures... the very things that sap your frame rate. However, having said all of that, some games simply have better coding: they look better, have decent textures and details, and don't kill frame rates. IMHO, Jane's USAF had outstanding terrain for its time frame and in some respects is still superior to the SFP1 series, but ran great on Pentium 3 PCs with 128MB of RAM and 32MB graphic cards. But I gladly gave up the eye-candy, advanced mission editing, and decent multiplayer of Jane's USAF for the much better flight modeling, sensation of flight, and far superior 3d pits. If only there was some way to take the best features from the past 20 years of combat flight sims and roll them all together into one fantastic game with awesome graphics, believable flight/weapons/damage modeling, fun AND realistic gameplay, fabulous single player action with AI so good you would swear you were playing online, multiplayer support so good you would swear you were playing detailed single player missions/campaigns but with people able to man anything and everything... backseats, guns, ground units, and playable on the typical PCs the average person buys at a retail store. I know its a pipe dream... but that's the way technology works. First you imagine something that seems inconceivable, then 5, 10, or 20 years down the road it shows up in stores for some petty low price.

I never looked close enough to notice... but given the photos... clearly a modded pit made to resemble a MiG-15/17? The repaint is welcome (better than seeing a standard A-4 pit for sure), but I was thinking of a genuine scratch built 3d model. Using some of the modder tricks, the A-4 pit could even have some items removed/relocated to make the pit more like a MiG-15/17.

Where were you when SFP1 was originally released? This is the most needed addon that was never provided, especially for online multiplayer gameplay.

US data is not hard to get in any way shape or form. The full details on radar/ecm capabilities are still somewhat classified, but flight performance is very well documented. Lockon favors Soviet aircraft for the same reason IL-2 favors Soviet aircraft. History favors the F-15 and US/Israeli pilot skills :) In the end, whether you play Falcon 4.0, LOMAC, SFP1/WOV/WOE series, or any other PC combat flight sim... their main purpose is to entertain you. The fact that the 3d models look very realistic and the flight/weapons/damage modeling is convincing enough to immerse you to some degree is the means of providing that entertainment. The developers reserve the right to take whatever slant they want based on their own goals, which certainly includes making a decent living by making a game they think will sell well in their primary markets. Personal preferences/bias is always going to be a factor given that the resources needed to achieve perfection are not available (not only technical data, but hardware/software technology, time, and money). I don't fault ED for the way LOMAC is balanced, but I do fault them for not making the game moddable enough for me to have option to balance to suit my own preferences/bias. A truly good game will either be open enough to allow modders to do their magic or have enough ingame settings to accomplish the same result. In the end, the main reason I don't play LOMAC is because I simply don't care for the timeframe/planeset (same as Falcon 4.0: the age of the AMRAAM and all-aspect heat seeker). The SFP1 series may be a little more arcadish out of the box, but provides the planes I want to fly in the environment I want to fly them in. With time and effort, the flight models in the SFP1 series can be tuned to be more realistic than most if not all consumer sims available, including MSFS and x-plane. But I am short on time and get most of what I want out of the box, so I pretty much fly just stock installs of WOV and WOI, with a little First Eagles and WOE thrown in for variety. I get my WW2 fix from Aces High. Every now and then I fly LOMAC, Falcon 4.0, Jane's F/A-18 and IL-2FB/AEP/PF, but it doesn't take me long before I go back to the others that are both more fun and in my opinion, more realistic.

Back to the original topic: As many have already said, WOE is easier since it is intended to be a "lite" sim that can be played right out of the box by a newbie without spending a week or two studying a manual and doing training missions. However, LOMAC is very scalable. You don't have to have it set to full hard settings. But no matter what sim you play, if you oppose modern fighters with modern missiles using realistic and/or hard settings (hard settings are not always the same as realistic settings), then you will face the problem of not being able to evade missiles without careful use of ecm, chaff/flares, maneuvers (break turns/dives), beaming maneuvers), throttle setting (idle vs. afterburner), and/or environment (sun, hills/ground, clouds, other aircraft etc.). Modern missiles are very maneuverable, very resistant to decoys/jamming, and much more reliable than Vietnam era missiles. LOMAC missiles, especially Soviet ones, are very effective on max difficulty (perhaps unrealistically effective). Until WOI, AIM-7E2 and later Sparrows and AIM-9L/M Sidewinders in the SFP1/WOV/WOE series were exceptionally effective as well against targets without chaff/flares and completely ineffective against targets with chaff/flares. WOI and the rest of the SFP1/WOV/WOE series are being patched to provide a very good environment for gameplay/balance and realism: Sparrows miss quite a bit, but no more than historical figures and Sidewinders remain effective, but can be decoyed/confused by good tactics if spotted in time once again closely matching historical effectiveness. I have never tweaked down the settings in LOMAC, so I don't know how well scalability works. I simply learned to accept the fact that if I make any mistakes at all (such as allowing an Su-27 Flanker to detect me on radar at all), that I would die by AA-10 Alamo. Personally, I prefer air combat prior to the F-15/AIM-7F/AIM-9L, so I have never spent enough time playing LOMAC to learn how to relaibly beat the AI in a head on at altitude where my F-15 can be easily detected and tracked by Su-27s. Given that the original game was focused on Russian aircraft and continues to be developed by Russians, it is no surprise to me that the Russian aircraft and missiles perform the best in that game. I want to be challenged by the opposition to an extended maneuvering fight (think F-105 vs MiG-17 and F-104 vs MiG-21), not have a lop sided turkey shoot like the Bekaa Valley (F-15/F-16 vs MiG-21/MiG-23). Once you get to F-15/F-16 vs Su-27/MiG-29, almost everyone dies quickly. Of course, there is no historical precedent for losses of F-15s in air combat (and F-16s have done almost as well), so perhaps LOMAC over estimates the reliability/effectiveness of Soviet equipment (or F-15s have never encountered well maintained frontline Soviet versions with well trained crews).

This sim has long needed a MiG-15 and MiG-17 cockpit. Your effort is greatly appreciated by me. Now, who is going to do the MiG-19?

I don't have any time to do mission editing any more, but when I do I always use a mix between KMD and wordpad/notepad. KMD provides a great way to create the different flights including duplication features. It is invaluable for assessing waypoints. But, there are some times when I would just rather open up the file in a text editor and manually configure things, especially once I have all the flights organized and waypoints assigned. Le Missionuer was never intuitive to me... couldn't figure out how to do anything with it. Since I was already proficient with KMD, I found it to be a waste of time for me to even bother to try to figure it out.

I can't stand the loss in vertical resolution. Cockpits need high resolution to make gauges very readable. I originally jumped from 1024x768 on a Voodoo 5500 to 1600x1200 on a Radeon 8500. I would rather play on a single large screen with no breaks and increased vertical and horizontal resolution. Right now I am using a Samsung 204B 20" 1600x1200, I wouldn't buy an LCD until I could afford one with at least that resolution. I also have a 46" 1080p LCD TV that has a DVI input. The 46" size is breath taking, but the 20" 1600x1200 definitely looks better, especially when looking down into the cockpit. I see 1920x1080 as a marginal decrease, 1920x1200 as a marginal increase, whereas 2560x1600 is a useful increase over 1600x1200 that might even get my money. I am more interested in finding 3200x2400 or the widescreen equivalent, I heard there is a prototype for $18,000. I think the virtual reality goggles would be the way to go, but their max resolution at this time is 800x600... and that is a real downgrade.

At $100 (the price gogamer.com had for some time), the X-52 Pro was a steal. I dislike the CH stick simply for the reason that I have no interest in F-16 style sticks (the closer to a B-8 the better for me). I don't like the CH throttle at all. I like the X-36/X-45 throttle more than any other availble in terms of layout/comfort and before I got rudder pedals, I liked the rudder rocker better than a twisty stick. I already had an X-36 USB and an X-45. I never bothered getting the standard X-52 since it didn't really offer me anything I wanted (the loss of the rudder rocker and addition of the twisty stick was a big issue with me). The X-52 Pro's internals and overall feel were worth it to me and I used the money I saved on the stick to get rudder pedals (I keep the twisty stick locked). The MFD tells me the time (useful while playing a game with no free hands) and what profile I am using (you can change profiles while playing a game, useful if you forget to select the right profile before starting the game). I still prefer the X-36 stick's shape (more comfortable) and it's throttle's configuration (same as X-45), but otherwise love the X-52 Pro more.

Nice work! B-52 and U-2 were the aircraft I had in mind when I brought this up at Third Wire.