JediMaster

I've been flying 1946 almost since release. Sure the game has its faults, and there are plenty of arguments out there about just which are really faults and which are "accurate", but if you want to fly literally hundreds of types of WWII fighters in pretty much every theater of the war from before it started to a fictional 1946 year from western front to eastern front to mediterranean to pacific there's no other choice. Other sims cover one area or another, but none cover ALL of them. It's a great bargain and unlikely to be replaced any time soon as the sequel in the works is starting with just the Battle of Britain and will likely NEVER cover everything il-2 does now.

As has been mentioned, payware implies a level of polish and support. Many modders go "free" because, like FC, once they release it they're really not interested in helping every drunk simmer get it working right on a Sunday afternoon. With the free ones, the community find fixes and contributes tips amongst itself. If the modder wants to revisit it later, they can with no pressure. Once you charge, as Eric has pointed out, you need to be responsible for your work. If the game gets a patch that breaks your mod, you better release an update, fix, or workaround to your customers unless you want to shoot yourself in the face. Let's be honest, some payware has been in such a poor state and so poorly supported that even if it were free it would only get mediocre marks. Some freeware is so good and the modders so responsive to changes and bug fixes that even if they charged it would be a good deal. I personally haven't bought any payware for the simple reason that I barely get any simming time in and I can't justify it to myself. I have bought all of TK's sims because I know if I don't they could stop coming as TK will have to make something else to make a living. However, to spend money on only a plane/family of planes or a terrain or even packaged groups of missions/planes when I KNOW I won't get more than a couple of hours in playing it doesn't make any fiscal sense. Also, unlike a commercial product, I've seen that payware modders aren't any more or less reliable than freeware ones ie if I don't support them it likely won't make them disappear and if I do I still run the risk of them disappearing anyway. I have most of the freeware mods on this site, but I honestly haven't spent that much time with any of them. I have a few hours with ODS, a couple with SF2V's A&G exp, a few with NF4+... The only one I really used a lot was NF1-4 as I flew that MP with a friend, but it was just the limited MP style of playing. So I try the free ones, spend some amount of time, and often never get back to them (I only spent a few with OTC before it was outdated by patches) before they get obsolete and I'm trying the next release/mod. The majority of my time has been spent with TK's stock releases. So just like it would be silly to buy sixpacks of beer and only drink 1 or 2 before throwing the rest out because they got too old, I think it would be silly for me to buy payware. Again, this isn't anything against the concept, it's merely a case of value...for my circumstance, I won't get enough value from them so I abstain. For people that fly every night, or only fly TK's sims (I know many here unlike me are in that boat), spending a few bucks to add on to your major time sink is a no-brainer. The only planes I ever would've considered buying payware were the F-22 and F-14. However, once both were released freeware and I happily installed them...I discovered I didn't really spend that much time with them, and if I'd bought them I'd have experienced remorse over it. I'm sure I'll fly TK's F-14 in his upcoming SF2 release more than I flew the modded one, but even then I bet it won't be THAT much!

I take it you're using the advanced flight model and not the easy one. While normally it's best to start with the hard one in most sims, in this one it's not at all. Get the hang of things with the easy one first, even though it's IMO overly easy (you can fly nose pointed right at the ground and not lose altitude), and then switch to the hard one once you've mastered it. I think it took me at least 3 hrs in Black Shark before I could take off with the hard FM and not flip, roll, or otherwise crash it. I'm still a bit iffy on landings and find it easiest to come to a hover (ie using hover hold) first and then lower myself slowly and correct positioning. Forget those rolling landings, I always wind up being slightly crabbed/crosswind and rolling over when the wheels touch down. I've lost count how many tires I've flattened, even when landing straight down! Use those training missions until you can recite the lines Wags says by heart. Sure it will get tedious, but they really do help you "get into the groove" of handling the thing.

All UAVs offer over manned planes is 1) endurance beyond what a human pilot could bear and still be combat-effective and 2) no POW in case of loss over enemy territory combined with no need for dangerous CSAR missions to retrieve the pilot. They were supposed to be cheaper, but there's nothing inexpensive about any of the ones that are used for combat. The recon-only ones can be cheap, sure, but a camera in the sky is a different job. Add more stuff, like Global Hawk, and you get something that costs $50m easy even without a pilot. So right now UAVs are exploding in growth just like manned airplanes did during and after WWI. We'll soon reach a balance point and it will stay relatively static in numbers vs manned platforms. When will that be? Just what will that ratio be? Too early to say, but manned planes aren't going anyway in our lifetimes. As for autonomous UAVs...have you guys actually ever thought your PC was even close to smart? SF writers used to think by the year 2000 we'd be vacationing on the Moon, driving around in automatic flying cars, and having philosophical talks with computers the size of a room that printed out on paper and took days to do anything. Instead we're giving up the Moon because we have to give more money to private industry bailouts, our cars suffer from such banal defects as gas and brake pedal issues, and computers are small enough to fit in your palm while being fast enough to do almost anything...and are still dumber than an in-bred meth-head with a head wound.

A fortnight?

Keep this man away from Russia! At the rate he works, they'd have had this plane in service 15 years ago.

Like Dave I have all the IAPR volumes (finishing up the latest right now, on the story of the He-111), as well as all of the predecessor series World Air Power Journal and Wings of Fame. Most of my books are technical, I don't have any that really talk about the pilots too much unless it's added in with the technical stuff like IAPR does. I don't have nearly as many as some other people because as it is my wife complains about how many bookshelves my books take up (I have tons of SF and other books as well as aviation) as it is. The best ones I have are the Classic books on specific WWII Luftwaffe planes. I have the ones on the Me-163 (2 books), Mistel, Hs129, and Me-262 (4 books).

Yes, probably one of the last good films Chevy Chase was in!

They don't. These things are just as automated as manned vehicles. They can takeoff, fly waypoints, and land by themselves, but they can't fight.

Even if they did, it wouldn't matter much. Venezuela has old F-16s with little in common with the current ones used by Israel and the US.

No one can guarantee that, unfortunately. Make sure you don't get a patch with "m" at the end, that means merged and that's not what your PF-only install needs.

A noble goal. Likely futile, but noble nonetheless!

Well I'm stumped! My TIR4 has never done that to me, fortunately.

You certainly put a ton of work into this, more than I could ever devote!

Have you installed the latest patch for the game after installing it? I think 4.04 was the final one, I don't recall offhand.

Try setting everything to high instead of ultd to see if that makes a difference. You could also alter the FSAA from the default 4 to 2. You don't have FSAA forced on in your nvidia drivers, right?

When you say "reinstalled", do you mean you uninstalled it first, or just installed over the top? This might be one of those things where you have to uninstall, scour the registry, delete leftover directories and possibly driver files just to make Windows think this is all "new". I'm guessing you're using XP as I don't think 3.13 was Vista-compliant.

I hope it's warmer there than it is here!

Yes, of course, lack of dialogue is easily worth blowing up innocents. How can India not realize that? This is why they feel, and are, persecuted. Because this kind of logic is stupid, broken, and needs eradicating...indicating the proponents of said logic!

Now they're saying Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the #2 guy to Mullah Omar, has been captured...in Pakistan, of course.

Now see, I had in mind something else. Something more...pole-shaped.

Not necessarily. Unlike the girls, the plane could last 30 years.

Meanwhile I continue to enjoy Arma 2. I recently reinstalled GRAW2 to do some coop with a friend...it has prone!

Anyone tried this yet? Is it for UK residents only?

On the one hand, you have the "let's not spend the money/risk our soldiers" mentality, which is that penny wise, pound foolish mentality. By saving now you're opening yourself up to having to pay more later. On the other, you have the "if we don't help fight them, they'll leave us alone" mentality, which is similarly flawed in that these scum link countries they're against by very flimsy reasoning. Just like bin laden said that everyone killed in the WTC towers was legitimate because although they weren't soldiers they were supporting a country that had policies that supported Israel blah blah blah... By their logic, it's ok to slaughter fertilizer salesmen because they help farmers to grow the crops that feed the leaders and soldiers that attack their people.