JediMaster

I think MS decision to enforce their structure in Vista after a lax implementation for years before threw a LOT of people for a loop. TK just had fewer resources to deal with it than most. While DX10 has been a positive, it's interesting to speculate where the series might be now if Vista/7 had kept the XP-style structure in place allowing the old way to continue to work without issues. Instead of just slipping in minor improvements here and there as he switched to SF2, he might have had things like the mission builder implemented far sooner.

Yeah, that's who I was referring to. It's not that he has ADHD so much as he wants to spend every possible second playing his games and not mucking around with them. However, he does like some others have a bit of that "lead me by the hand" attitude insomuch as he doesn't want to learn how to do it, he wants it done for him so he can just play it or he passes. I'm really hoping Tomcat is a step forward for TK's series because as mentioned I think his preoccupation with getting everything ported to the SF2 engine took him too long to finish and set his vision back.

Oh, so only the F-4 had it? I'll have to make sure not to try it with another plane then!

I think a lot of the mods problems have to do with obsolescence. There are a lot of modders who've left, for various reasons, and their mods they made for SFP1 are now very buggy when using the latest SF2. The answer should be "don't use them", but people want to use plane X or terrain Y or effects Z and won't accept that. Instead, they blame TK for "screwing up SF2" so we have lots of people who either won't buy SF2 or bought one or 2 but now have reverted to SFP1 "where stuff works". I still have old SFP1-based installs for things like ODS and OTC and a FE-pre Exp 1/Gold install for those early war WWI-planes. Sure, some of these will "just work" with SF2, but many require changes. Some are minor changes but some require a lot of work and if you're not a modder at heart but rather just want to fly but want to fly THAT plane you're going to be disappointed. I knew a guy who owned all the 1st-gen titles but SFP1 and we played them MP from time to time, but he was a non-modder. He refused to read a readme, he refused to even literally spend 10 minutes thinking about how to mod. He wanted one-click installers for everything, and preferred the big ones like NF1-4 because that was a simple sequence of "double-click, point to install directory, click done, fly". I would tell him or even show him a screenshot for some new plane and he would be all interested...until he found the mod was in a zip file that had to be drag-n-dropped into multiple folders and heaven forbid weapons/decals/effects/etc had to go to! Dropping a plane into the aircraft directory was as far as he'd go, and if it was one of those instances where someone nested a folder in the zip (ie it had "plane/plane-A/cockpit" instead of "plane-A/cockpit" in the zip) so that it wouldn't work if dropped as-is into the aircraft directory, he was turned off. As a result, he mostly only played the stock games, and when SF2 came out without MP he just passed. TK has to compete not with any particular game or sim, just with people's expectations. Even at $20, if he fails to deliver on that, he won't sell. The problem is what people were fine with 5 yrs ago is now seen as insufficient by many, and let's face it but simmers are a stingy bunch. While they'll spend a lot for hardware like sticks or TrackIR, they HATE to spend on any sim but MSFS addons it seems. I mean, sims at $50 are seen as too expensive, when they cost $50 15 yrs ago?!?? DCS:A-10C going for $60 is an interesting experiment...how many will buy regardless of price vs those that only buy things $40 or less? At $60 they'll make the same amount for selling 100k copies as they would selling 150k at $40...but will the numbers break that way? Will they lose fewer customers at $60 than the amount they'll gain per copy? Only they will know.

I remember the novelty of the music thing in BF: Vietnam when it came out years ago. The only thing I disliked was some of the songs were low-quality live versions instead of the radio staples that actually WERE played.

Oh, so prior to the 9G the seeker couldn't be slaved to the radar? I really haven't noticed it myself because if I'm in a plane with a radar with boresight mode I always use it in ACM, no matter what weapon I use. If the plane has no radar, then I don't. However, I've never even thought of firing a 9 without tone.

Well, they DO need to cut back on the war.

I'm having visions of a skit with Obama in an old Monty Python episode...

Iran got its licks in too!

Now they're using the term "ignited" as opposed to "exploded." A big difference.

To paraphrase Mr Spock, graphics are the beginning of a simulation, not the end of it. If the graphics are sub-par, the immersion of the simulation fails. However, if the graphics are spot on but the rest of it is inaccuarate, you're left with a pretty arcade game, not a sim. The main difference is a sim doesn't need to look AS good, but it still needs to be at least competitive.

Well, I guess that depends on your definition of "front-line". The 29UB they're using I'm sure was built in the 1980s and likely hasn't had any OEM upgrades.

Only problem with that theory is you can do it from inside the game menu, so you don't need to "hardwire" it for air starts. Now if while he does his debugging he does something different to get in that bypasses the menus and their options, ok, but I'm unaware of such a method. Anyway, whether it was a deliberate action that he failed to reverse before the patch was released or just a side effect of something else he did, it's a glaring QA mistake that he really didn't need.

I tried importing stuff from SF2 into EAW and it didn't work at all. Obviously both programs must be crap, right?

Well, while speculation is hard to prove, I think it has to date prevented WWIII. If not for the threat of MAD, I think the US and USSR would've gone to all-out war in the 50s or 60s. My guess is even more would've died than in WWII. So, for it keeping the wars small and the casualties low, I think the nuke was a good thing.

Best thing about 2010...it's over, and can't come back!!!

There are already Airbus A320's that are...

It's just another example of animal mass suicides. These things all join up with cults, you know.

You don't think a C2D @ 2.4 GHz will overheat without a heatsink working properly? The one in my laptop sure spits out a lot of heat.

I've noticed some reversed nozzle animations on some planes lately, but I've not done enough checking to know if it's the patch (I'm still on Dec-B) or just a mistake in the planes itself, perhaps in the porting some had from SF1 to SF2. Specifically, I mean the nozzle opening wider as dry thrust increases instead of getting narrower and opening to max at full AB.

And they shouldn't be, neither were designed as anything but interceptors. The F-14 merely had a backup gun and an A2G ability that was ignored until the end of its career.

Just saw this, hadn't even heard about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbupyeGlBPA It has that 60s/70s look to it for the hair and outfits, but the FX are modern.

Are the people seeing this all running nvidia cards or do ATI people see it too? I'm thinking it's some glitch in a shader code that the video drivers are freaking out on. Whether the fault is more drivers or the game I couldn't say.

I think this all boils down to one thing: patch C broke something that not only was working in patch B, it's ALWAYS worked since the first in 2002. It's also a fairly obvious error that should've been spotted. The prop thing was irritating, but it didn't fundamentally alter the way you had to play the game. Ditto the wingmen disappearing heading home. Being forced to start in the air DOES alter things and I think people are a bit frayed around the edges now. Is it a major game-breaking problem? No. However, it does indeed appear to be a leading indicator of bigger problems to come and I guess people are hoping by raising the alarm now they can halt that decline and get TK back on the track he was on before.

If it's dead, no. If it's overheating due to faulty fan/HS it may.