JediMaster

On a side note, who wants to receive a rat's ass?? You do have to give them one thing at least...the guy is the grandson of an actual queen. Following that is 10x better than following people like Paris Hilton or the Kardashians who somehow became famous for being famous!!

Well, she looks OK and all, but I don't think she'll fit in a stocking...

They're hoping to get the F-35B ASAP to replace those 8Bs.

Yes, but it was done dozens of years ago! The concept was tried but proved far too risky so they gave it up and stuck with the C-2.

Yes, but no one really cares about the 557th person to climb Mt Everest. The first few were famous, after that it became like flying the space shuttle...no one cared unless something bad happened. At least the space program accomplished more for those risked lives than just climbing a mountain yet again.

Youtube is too low-res most of the time for you to see the graphical updates between the 2. The water at a minimum is far better, the bump-mapping on the planes, etc. Also, WOE is dead-end. There are no more patches coming for it, no more mods. SF2 is where it's at for the future, and you can integrate all the titles together to get as few or as many as you want. WOE only ever combined with WOV, that's all.

What was that, 2 months tops since the announcement? They are trying to cut their costs FAST.

Su-17?? The world's first privately-owned variable-sweep aircraft!!

That C-130 shootdown over the Caucusus was direct IIRC.

Delays are so much the norm now that I pretty much accept that any title that meets its release date will be a buggy mess!

FWIW, the map/fading sound thing isn't a bug or feature, it's just how it was designed. If you're in external view when you go to the map, wait a few minutes and then return to the external view, you'll see the view start in midair and "warp" to the plane. Basically, when you go to map view your FPS view is taken "out/off of the plane" and you hang motionless in the air (kind of like if you watch a missile or airplane that detonates and then you're just floating over the terrain looking at nothing in particular) while the map view is overlayed on the screen, but you're actually still wherever you were in physical space on the map at the moment you hit map while the planes have moved on. When you exit the view, you warp back to whatever you were doing before. If you were just in cockpit view, the snap is pretty much instantaneous, but if you're in an external view you'll get to see a bit of the motion as you move back.

Ditto. There are few games I buy on release, usually either sequels to games I already like or ones by a dev I trust to make good.

Another Russian dev I guess!

Yeah, I loved that flick growing up. I have the special edition DVD that came out several years ago, watched it a few times since then.

NOLF rocks!! I have to replay that, haven't touched it in at least 5 yrs...

My guess in the seas = black, lakes = blue thing is to make 3 categories--ground units can't go on either, but naval units can only go on black, i.e. blue excludes any surface units. I think the Tomcat title will have to have helos. Whether friendly SH-3s or enemy Kamovs, true naval combat post-Vietnam can't be done without them. BTW, anyone taking bets on whether we'll see AI-controlled Yak-38s from TK for it? We already have friendly carriers from that era, all he needs is one of the Soviet's and we have the potential for a great naval engagement.

Maybe the game is less restrictive on the 3rd party terrains (where you've all mentioned seeing out-of-place plane/nation matchups) compared to the stock ones?

I have no user named kevin on my PC!! Quick, I need you to come to my house and log on so I can get that!

On the contrary, it figured you out!

I don't think the Il-38 qualifies as a "jet".

The lower plane had to move in because there's no way the upper plane could move its nose gear up and over the nose of the lower plane. The crushed radome on the lower plane also wouldn't have been touched by the upper plane if it had been moving. In the foreground of the bottom picture, and lying on the ground to the left in the upper one, is what appears to be the boarding ladders from the lower plane. No one taxis with boarding ladders. While it may be hard to say with 100% certainty which plane was being towed (although I believe the fact the towbar is attached to the lower plane indicates that it is the one that was under tow), I think we can say neither plane was under power. There appears to be an Su-27 behind the 2 UB's as well (notice the green-tipped fins in the upper picture and the open canopy to the left in the lower picture). This looks like it was parked next to the upper UB. Ah! There is a wheel chock on the upper plane's right wheel I think, just visible in the lower picture next to the rear of the guy in the blue jacket, but none on the lower plane. Yeah, that plane was stationary. Maybe the lower plane wasn't towed at all, but rather had the towbar attached, chocks removed, and then rolled into the upper plane out of control? I mean, if it was towed, the tow vehicle had to pass UNDER the nose of the upper plane, and that should've damaged the nosewheel and/or ladders of the upper plane, but they're intact. Plus we see no sign of a tow vehicle, and I hardly think after this incident they would've pulled it out of there.

Where'd boopidoo go, anyway? I can't recall...

Just because it's on FB don't assume they used a PC. You can easily do it from most smartphones now, which many 12 yr olds have.

It was on this date in 1991, during my first semester in college, that Spectrum Holobyte released the first of the great study sims...Falcon 3.0. It cost $65 at Electronics Boutique, and you could get it in 5.25" or 3.5" disk versions. I bought the 5.25" one, got it home, and the install failed at disk 3 every time. Took it back, swapped it out, took it home, same problem. Said "screw this", took it back, swapped for the 3.5" version...ahhhh, it installs! Look at the awesome polygonal graphics, far superior to the bitmapped 2D objects-in-3D space look of SWOTL! So began an intense decade of the Golden Age of Flight Sims where no joke every month it seemed a new sim came out from someone, albeit few were good. What era did you like? It didn't matter, someone made a sim for it! Granted Korea and Vietnam got the short stick with few releases, but they did happen. Modern jets and WWII were of course the magnets with WWI well represented. Some great ones came out before F3, including F-19, SWOTL, TFH: BoB, and the original Red Baron, but they didn't start in earnest until after F3 came out. It let you fly H2H, but more importantly it had coop campaigns you could fly over modem or null modem or LAN. It was the first I owned with that feature and it became one I wanted on every sim after and since. Ironically, 15 years after the release of their first sim, Flanker, ED has yet to release a sim that lets you play a campaign in MP!

CYAC was released about 6 months before F3. The graphics weren't quite as good, especially the terrain but even the planes, but it did offer multiple eras. It was the only place I flew Korea-era and Nam-era jets for years. While it looked better than SWOTL, there's no doubt SWOTL (which came out the same time) was the better game. The strategic-level campaign and sole focus on WWII aided that. It was also easily modded and was my first experience with game mods, followed by the original DOOM.