FastCargo

The main screen is like what you see on Windows Phone...tiles that you can click (with a mouse) or press (on a touchscreen). However, if you click the desktop button, the tiles go away and it looks just like any other windows desktop. You can add icons, has the info bar at the bottom like Win7/Vista/XP, etc. Nothing cosmic...a few tweaks here and there. FC

Well, I think that's why TKs sims succeed...because he does those subjects no one else does. But it also means you'll never be huge because there aren't that many followers of the older stuff (who even knows what a British Lightning is...). TK certainly isn't infallible. But, in deference, he has been in the air combat flight simulation industry...watched it grow in its heyday with things like EAW, Longbow, etc. And then have an insiders view as the industry collapsed almost overnight. We all can certainly give advice as to what works and what doesn't in the industry. But how many of us make a living at it? FC

This is one of those things that really can go one way or the other. One can look at the MSFS aircraft library (both freeware and payware) to see the full range, with complexity and fidelity closely approaching actual aircraft. The SSW (now defunct) Airbus A310 aircraft for MSFS 2002/2004 was so accurate in terms of avionics and aircraft systems that I purchased it to help me practice my procedures on the real aircraft. Yet, MSFS has a very large freeware aircraft library available too. DCS has great potential...the developer has been around a while and has already put out good product. Other parties have committed to producing for DCS. The DCS series already has a large (relatively speaking) following. They have an engine that does air combat simulation. To me, DCS has been the only thing out there with the potential to have several of the advantages of the TW series of sims, but with the additional fidelity and multiplayer aspects that folks have been wanting. Nothing else out there is close in my opinion...everything else is tech demos, videos, or too small, too slow development, too many promises with very little to show for it. The toughest part will be getting enough numbers to hit that 'critical mass', where enough people play that developers or modders will want to jump in more, which then attracts more people, etc. etc. FC

Pffft...you guys are just too fast. Got the stock SF2V running on a Dell Mini 9 with the Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB DDR2 RAM, and the Intel 945 Express Graphics Chipset. The funny thing is...the settings aren't even on all low. It actually looks pretty good and runs decently fast...I'm kind of surprised. I'm not sure why...I could swear the last time I loaded it on this machine it either ran badly or looked like crap. But then again, the last time it was on this machine, it was running WinXP, not Win8. FC

Hey, that's pretty slick! It's funny, I actually did a F-15R which had rhomboid intakes, smaller ACTIVE-type canards, ACTIVE 3-D TVC and the Silent Eagle type CFTs and vertical stabs. The MANX actually looks easier...just requires a rebuild of the tailplanes. Yet something else to think about... FC

Unfortunate encounter with a Triad V: Quick and dirty test: FC

The big thing is that the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will share the same kernal. The idea is that a company that writes a program for one has basically written a program for the other. Potentially, this is huge...MAC OSX and iOS have been cross pollenating features for a while, but MS would end up leapfrogging both if they can pull it off. The other thing...because Win8 has been optimized for mobile, it screams on a PC. I'm running the current release candidate on a Dell Mini 9 with an Intel Atom processor. It friggin flies compared to WinXP...boots in 10 seconds (XP took over a minute), and so far, runs everything XP could run on it as well or faster. Will it be worth to upgrade from Win7...probably not. But from WinXP or eariler, I'd say so! Also, MS has done something interesting with their upgrade price. Upgrades from any version of Windows (XP, Vista, or 7) is only $40 USD...significantly cheaper than previous upgrades. FC

A lot of people seem to like Gmail (Google). I have to admit, I don't use T-bird myself much anymore...my phone and tablet usually get my email for me. FC

This reminds me that I need to fix the Classified Mission Mod at some point... FC

You're more than welcome to come by and say howdy anytime! And I promise I won't try to get you killed in traffic again... FC

Nah, y'all can blame it on me. I almost got DanW and TK killed once...and they've been annoyed at me ever since. FC

The light callout is exactly what it looks like. When the parameters are met, the node shows up. When the parameters are not met, the node is hidden. There is no 'movement' per se. FC

I don't know...what I see is a lot of tech demo. I haven't seen any actual gameplay. I haven't seen anything that can't be done in a rendering program. The closest analogy is something like Garry's Mod...makes for a pretty video...but there isn't any gameplay. FC

I have to admit, JM's insight is another reason I am coming to like the idea of the SF series coming to an end on the PC. Once the code is stabilized, there will no longer be the constant treadmill of keeping mods current. FC

Hey, we're not happy until you're not happy... FC

Folks, knock off the comments about your feelings on the TW series of sims in this thread. It's getting old, and it is not important to this thread. Constructive ideas on what to do about the monitor please. Clear as mud? Press on and come up with some useful suggestions. FC

Not necessarily true at all. I've enjoyed the following games over the years: Half Life series Team Fortress 2 Portal series Mass Effect series Call of Duty series Company of Heroes series MS Flight Sim series I could go on. But I have not joined the forums of any of those games. Because they worked well enough for my needs as they were...even some of the most buggy releases I have seen. FC

Now, just to be clear, this doesn't mean our voices have become irrelevant. But it does mean our needs for the more hardcore stuff may simply take longer to get done...or may not get done at all because there won't ever be the money for it verses the money it could make. Prime example was the mission editor, the DLC/Exp2 addon that TK himself basically said didn't come close to being cost effective unlike his other DLCs. And remember, TW sims still specialize in doing aircraft that no one else does (with the exceptions of the common F-16/F-15/A-10 - with a little P-51 thrown in). For the more exacting among us, maybe the DCS series will be what we are looking for in the long run...if the modding scene takes off. FC

Folks, he makes these skins because they sell. Because they provide a good cost/benefit ratio (less time/money for revenue generated). Because Stary, you are not a causal user. You are not the audience those skins are for. Because missiles with enhanced hit percentages are not meant for hardcore simulation fanatics. I thought more folks would have picked up on the fact that TK has been doing DLCs like this now for several months. If they weren't selling, making money, he would have given up on them. He's still selling them, and pumping them out quickly. Skin DLCs are a great money maker. Once you have the templates, throwing out a skin takes very little time. Oh, and it doesn't alter the game engine with a patch, so it satisfies those who do have modded installs because it doesn't screw them up either (as far as I know). To an extent, we have become victims of TKs continued success in the TW sims. The audience has grown outside of the original hardcore simmers that picked up those sorry ass Wal-Mart editions so long ago. There are more causal users now. We here are no longer the big fish in a little pond...the pond is at least a lake. Don't believe me? Look at the other, non technically minded things TK has done with the sim. In game update notifications, web based installer, DLC skin packs, etc. Our voices are the same...but they are becoming less and less relevant to the overall business model. This is all conjecture on my part. But someone here make a compelling, logical argument that what I'm saying isn't probable. FC

Exactly what RAVEN said...some of the cockpits have external parts as part of the LOD. Look in the cockpit directory and you may actually see the bitmaps used. FC

The bang could be an artifact of the recording... the phone couldn't keep up with the rapid upramp of volume from the high speed, non-supersonic pass, and just recorded it as 'bang'. In addition, I've witnessed multiple times of B-1Bs setting off car alarms... just on takeoff because the vibration was so strong. However, most large panes of glass on modern buildings are designed to take a significant amount of differential pressure before they crack... I'm not sure a pass of less than 0.95 Mach would cause such an event. FC

The Navy has spent seven years testing out the components of a way-futuristic weapon: a shipboard cannon that blasts bullets over vast distances at hypersonic speeds using bursts of electricity. But so far, that weapon, known as the Electromagnetic Railgun, has been more of a lab experiment than an honest-to-God weapon. It didn’t even have basic gun-like features, like a barrel. Now, however, the Navy is unveiling the first actual railgun guns, which it’ll test for another five years, in the hope of winning over legislators who consider it a waste of time, money and electricity. Previous versions of the railgun have been laboratory test models, stored in a hangar at Dahlgren Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia. They look like shipping containers or school buses put up on blocks, hooked up like Frankenstein’s monster to giant generators that pump dozens of megajoules of energy necessary to fire the bullet. All that has cost nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. And you couldn’t fit any of it onto a ship, and it wouldn’t actually be a real weapon if you did. At least not until Jan. 30, when BAE Systems sent its first actual gun-shaped railgun to Dahlgren. Competitor General Atomics will send its own design there in April. Both designs have 12-meter barrels. “Now that looks like a real gun,” said Roger Ellis, the railgun chief for the Office of Naval Research, which has inaugurated the next phase of tests to determine the gun’s practicality — something many in Congress doubt. The Navy released video of the first tests, viewable above, on Tuesday. The dramatic mini-inferno in the wake of the slug fired from the railgun is the result of “1 million amps flowing through” the gun, said test chief Tom Boucher, the hypersonic speed of the shot, and the actual aluminum of the bullet — “reactive in the atmosphere” — burning off. It’s the next step in a process — an expensive one — the Navy hopes will lead to a whole new era of self defense for ships, and way, way long-range strikes from on deck by the early 2020s. The Navy’s current 5-inch deck guns top out at 13 kilometer ranges. By 2017, the Navy wants the railgun prototypes to fire several shots per minute without soaking up a ship’s juice. The idea behind the Electromagnetic Railgun is to fire a bullet at hypersonic speeds using dozens of megajoules of electricity. The Navy wants it to guard the surface ships of the 2020s, unsubtly boasting to adversaries that messing with the ships will lead to bullets shooting across hundreds of miles of ocean in mere minutes. The Office of Naval Research says it will give sailors “a dramatically increased multimission capability,” like fire support for land strikes over long, long distances beyond the reach of enemy defenses, and defense against “cruise and ballistic missiles” that target ships. No wonder the railgun’s official motto is “Velocitas Eradico” — “Speed Kills.” Lab tests have pleased the Navy, if not Congress. In December 2010, the Office of Naval Research fired a shot with 33 megajoules of energy, a world record, sending a 23-pound bullet 5500 feet in a single second. The Senate Armed Services Committee still found the science too impractical, and recommended killing the railgun, until a Navy congressional counterstrike revived the program. Now that the Navy has an actual prototype railgun to shoot, the plan is to hook it up to sensors and cameras to test its performance at 20 and 33 megajoules’ worth of energy. Its goal is produce accurate shots from 50 to 100 nautical mile distances, which the Navy wants by 2017. Even railgun advocates concede there are a host of other challenges the hypersonic weapon will have to overcome. Its barrel will have to withstand repeated fires without wearing out. (The Navy wants to up firing rates to 10 per minute.) It’s got to fire smart bullets without frying the guidance systems during a blast. (The Navy says both BAE and General Dynamics are starting to design “a next-generation thermally managed launcher.”) And it’s got to be affordable. (The Navy has spent $240 million on the railgun so far, and it expects to spend about as much through 2017 on tests — before buying a single one of the things.) Another big problem: the current generation of Destroyers can’t produce the power to fire the railgun without diverting juice from the propulsion systems. One of the goals of the railguns over the next five years is to create workarounds, so the guns will be relevant to their intended ships. Those include “an intermediate energy store using energy-dense batteries, similar to [those on] hybrid cars,” Ellis told reporters on a Tuesday conference call. “That enables us to put the railgun on ships that don’t have larger power supplies.” Which should underscore how the Navy really, really loves its railgun — enough to go to the mat with Congress about it and win. That’s not going to relent now that it actually has a real cannon to shoot. by Spencer Ackerman Wired Magazine Article

It's feeling kind of Anderson Cooper in here... FC

Interesting Spinners! However, my comment would be the camo is a little too 'splintery'. I think all the individual coloured areas would be larger. My opinion only of course. FC

A sonic boom, especially a close one, is different then when a jet comes onto your location suddenly. The biggest thing you'll notice is a 'whump' sound/feel. Like someone dropped something HEAVY nearby, or you're standing next to your favorite loudspeaker putting out the bass...that 'thump' you feel in your chest with each beat of that speaker is what a sonic boom feels like. The other thing you'll notice on a real supersonic run...there will be NO aircraft sound before the aircraft is directly overhead. No air rush, no noise from the intakes, nothing. Based on what I see and hear...I'd say they were supersonic or at least transonic. FC