GwynO

Even John Wayne wouldn't take that job! Don't do it!

I saw this on my cousin's facebook, I couldn't see it the second time for tears rolling down my face!!! Think I just woke the whole house from laughing. Enjoy. http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=154122181057

I have been playing the Vietnam XP in SF2V that way since it came out. I had about 20 missions under my belt in an A-6.. I was getting sim combat fatigue, starting to take crazy chances so I took a break. First mission back in last night.. and 13 miles out from the carrier.. my wingman crashed into my arse lighting it on fire and thus ended my most successful campaign to date.. Next time I'm going to give him a fake address and post his widow some flowers, as for the wingman's wife.. . :(

I'm surprised few here have heard of Tom Waits.

The fin soup situation is indefensible, it gives fishing a bad name. Apathy about it is pure and simple double standards, most of the people who don't seem to give one about the gratuitous wastefulness of finning sharks would no way defend a land based equivalent like hacking the feet off an Elephant to make umbrella stands, or soup or whatever. And just like with Tigers, Sharks are at the top of the food chain which means they don't breed like rats, they take longer to reach breeding age and when they do they don't produce numbers that can cope with ever increasing levels of hunting. In pure darwinian terms, nature red in tooth and claw and all that, people could say so what? Why not just take the same approach as HIV to the natural world, kill or be killed so just be the best killer and if they go extinct so what? Well even HIV would be screwed if it managed to kill off all of the habitat it feeds on, likewise with the world's oceans, they are not farms, they're wild ecosytems and no one has a clue what decimating the top part of that will do for economically, culturally very important species lower down such as tuna, herring, sardines. Will there always be something left in the ocean to eat? Probably, but not necessarily. I enjoy seafood as much as anyone, enough to want to keep eating it in years to come and that means being responsible. It all smacks of when greedy trophy hunters took the same kind of wasteful approach (as in the past e.g. Tigers, White Rhinos etc) to the animals they hunt and gave the whole concept a bad name. I say hunt, and fish, out of need, not out of greed.

To get them to fire, what if.. they were built as SAMs but only able to fire at a huge RCS target, more than anything could trigger by flying over it.. but make an invisible aircraft with just such a mahoosive RCS and have it stationed at the airfields you want these things to attack, and make the "SAMs" guidance radar capable of detecting it from that far as well.. hmm i'm thinking aloud here and probably only making sense to myself.. but the hills and stuff in the way between these "SAM" sites and the target "aircraft" might require the invisible guidance radar being sat on top of a very high invisible structure so it can "see" out that far. I'm guessing that SAMs won't fire at a parked aircraft like a static, that would be cool because the fake aircraft could then just randomly appear as a static aircraft in the early phase of the campaign as the Enemy still have these things and they would be fired accordingly. Well if they won't fire on statics, the invisible "aircraft" would have to take off from the base, but stay really close to base.. that could mean a really, really slow flight model (is that what you call it?) obviously this thing wouldn't need to be realistic just abuse the possibilities of the data ini to make this thing virtually drift across the airfield like an asthmatic baloon, or just hover vertically even.. I don't know if that's possible.. e.g. if an AI plane had a flight model that meant it can only fly straight up to a certain altitude really slowly but yet it's tasked to go and do something, will it just do the best it can and fly hopelessly upwards, or will it not bother to get off the ground? All this might seem like a lot of bother but the results.. if it worked... and I can't see it being that much work either.. might all be ini work in which case even an idiot like me might actually figure out how to make it work. Problem(s) though... getting the radar on top of an invisible, huge long pole.. does the game even account for the height of the radar dish, or does it just count the radar dish as being at or slightly above ground level for that particular object, in which case making the object 200m high isn't going to work? So the other thing would be to put the radar object on top of another object, don't know if that's possible, kind of like SAM sites can be built around fortifications but this invisible fortification would place the object up high.. I don't think it works like that though, something tells me object on top of object is a no go. In which case it would have to be a terrain edit.. placing a really thin, untiled, invisible shaft of "ground" for these invisible radars.. trouble with that is it's a hazard to flying.. also would the radar still be able to communicate to the SAM if it isn't at the same altitude because all the SAM sites currently in game have all the component parts roughly at the same altitude? .... Then again.. don't networked radars work in this game now? If so... could the invisible ground shafts, if they are even possible, be set right at the Eastern edge of the map, just before "The Wall" and the radars looking out West with their mahoosive range and strength looking for one invisible target type wherever it appears (hovering over a Blue airfield) and netowork this data over to the "SAM" site silos?? Hmmm more questions than answers really..

I'd have said Fat Albert, in the lost episode of Coronation Street.. I would have been wrong

That's awesome, trust me to have been going around the houses with no need whatsoever, cheers for sharing!

I feel you CoopF4, I'm stuck with a laptop for the foreseeable future too. There are a few things that can ease your pain. If you're on Vista/Windows7 ditch the fancy DX10 stuff, force DX9 on via the game ini (can't remember which one, I'm sure someone round here can chip in on what it's called exactly), use the fake DX10 version via the .dll download linked to here somewhere (again forgot the name exactly as I'm borrowing someone elses lappy) It might seem strange, but the fake DX10 for DX9 ends up giving me better FPS than using DX10, maybe it will work for you too. Unfortunately the major thing with most of the best mods for me are the insanely huge skin resolutions. Even just one plane in there with 2048 or even higher skins pull my laptop down to a crawl even though it can handle everything else thrown at it from the bigger mod packs 99% of the time. It is a PITA but it is possible to go in and manually resize all the skins for all the aircraft to get them down to at least 1024 or less, that's when I notice a huge difference in playability from making a brew inbetween each frame to actually playing the game. Hope that helps.

nteresting article from Fortean Times about the military and the UFO phenomenon, I know, I know, yawn yawn been there before, but this one really is a refreshing breeze of sanity on an otherwise ever growing dung heap of BS fantasy written about UFOs. No cover ups of little green men needed to connect the dots here, just some very interesting and rational explanations of those oft cited "proof" cases of UFOs on radar. (Text from the Forten Times website)

One day!

Well not all clouds are bad news, but they do mark a difference in the consistency of the air, the relative humidity, temperature, air density and so on, which can add up to turbulence. Some clouds, no sane pilot would ever fly into if they had any alternative because the effects are so bad, like being picked up in an invisible fist and shook like a muscle shake. Have a look at this article for more detail on how and why aircraft use radar to avoid clouds

and plenty happy returns of the day!!

Aye,. it's going to be hot as hell down there, damp or dry depending on airflow, precious little fluid to wash the hands after wiping the behind into the latrine, not pleasant at all considering they have until Christmas to go until any realistic chance of rescue :/ I think I'd be pretty depressed too

Really Tasty Pics!! Like some kind of Avionic equivalent of a Teenage Russian Gymnast

With DX10 force disabled on my lametop integrated graphics POS running Vista Home 32bit, I find the Enb series .dll/ini combo invaluable! Running just the "Out of the Box" game then truth be told I think even with force DX9, my machine runs faster (FPS) without it but put anything remotely like the SF2Vietnam Ground And Air War Mod in and it runs like an asthmatic snail UNLESS said plug-in is enabled, in which case it runs like silk dripping from a spoon, not PERFECTLY smooth.. but SMOOTH enough!!

WoW!!! Hold on!!! So this thing *theoretically allows you to look around your virtual Cockpit/Sky and.. what does a simple tilt gesture of the head do>? Does it Zoom In or Out?? This could be revolutionary! If this is as Good as I Think it Is, then I need one! ,..... Waiting 'till someone with the mags to spare affords to try/review it here!

Huge Congratulations Man!! 2X as well Best wishes to Momma, Babies and Yourself Sakai! (edit) And be sure to update us every now and then as their hands grow ever more accustomed to the USB Fighter Stick control device of your family's choice!

Whatever you Guys find, please keep at it! One of the biggest realism detractors in this series thus far is.. we can float into a Dark, Thunderous looking CLOUD And"" Nothing! Not even a twitch! Hopefully, one day, we would be able to use the "Terrain Avoidance" radar as a kind of "Weather Radar".. looking out for clouds.. with some ACTUAL substance

Ahhhh! Man! I Love to see the Border (Welsh heheh) Collie appreciated for the out doors kind of spirits that they are! Awesome Pics WM!

Personally I have always had a sweet spot for the "spiritual" descendant of what my father always proclaimed to be the "kind of second fastest jet aircraft of all time common production!" I'm glad to see the MiG-31 in usable conditions for the Kazakhstan Air Force. How the Hell can they afford them though??? Well it isn't like the're pointing their search and acquire radars at US so it;s all gravy!

Amazing air force pics! Well done Kazakhstan!! Hopefully they won't be required to use their MiG-31s in the primary Interceptor role, i wonder if they'd have any use as high speed strike aircraft?

Ahhh! So Pretty! I wish my lametop could realistically handle O.F.F. (B.H.A.H.). I have, at last, managed to source a copy of CFS3 although given recent rumours it appears I may have been more productively disposed searching for my lost copy of Pacific Fighters. Whichever way the wind of Sims blows, I hope that on my next laptop I will be able to enjoy the O.F.F (B.HA.H.) Experience as even reading about it, or seeing screenshots and such show what a high quality product it is Carry on Guys and Gals, hopefully I may join you in the not too distant future!! (edited to remove drunken caps locks and so on)

A battle fought through the "tape reorders", and mores sophisticated, technology employed on the front. Less about flight geometry than about technology cadence one would suppose. Good Job Canucks! Clear Sxies!