JediMaster

He was a minor character with a cool attitude and neat equipment, but he wasn't the end-all, be-all. His father was far more impressive, as he took on a Jedi with no weapons, pure melee, and technically came out ahead. Sure he lost later when he relied on a broken machine to save him, but the point is he did a good job. His son...not so much.

The JAS-39 is a great MiG-21/29/F-16 replacement. It doesn't carry the biggest combat load or have the greatest range, but for a short-range multirole light fighter it's excellent. That said, I think the F-35 will outclass it (aside from stealth) because it's bigger and designed to replace some twin-engined fighters. Yet the Gripen has been available for a lot longer now and has a known track record for costs and maintenance that let a prospective buyer know exactly what they're getting. I remember flying it in Jane's ATF/NATO Fighters in the 90s and loving it, other than its small number of missiles.

Also, stealth reduces the range at which a radar can see you. At a range of 13km ANY plane is visible...you're not supposed to fly that close to a hostile SAM unless you're attacking it. It was an embarrassment not because the plane was "seen" by radar (which it barely was) but because of the multiple failures (like broken comms and flying the same route) that let a trap be set for it. In other words, it wasn't a technology failure, it was a procedural one.

The Clancy book Cardinal of the Kremlin was about the Russians developing a laser like this, also ground-based, for missiles and even satellites. The ABL program has been semi-canceled, though, and is relegated to test status only. So this is the only one that will be built. It's the same size as other 747's, though! Except the -8, that's a little bigger.

Exactly. That's why the Herc + drogue system is ideal for the tactical fleet most nations have. Even the USMC goes that route.

No, your 4870 is a DX10 capable card, but you need Vista or 7 to utilize it that way. As for quack, remember FE2, like SF2, is simply a remake of the previous release with changes made for the way Vista/7 do things and a few new things tossed in as he gets them working. SF2 originally didn't make real use of DX10, now with later patches/releases it does. FE2 has intro'd the save mission feature which I think will be back-ported into SF2 with another patch/release. I believe TK even once flat-out stated to someone who asked "I have XP, is there any reason for me to get SF2?" a simple "not really." I'm sure he'll say the same about FE2 as it's the same engine more or less. With the release of FE2 he has now re-released every one of his SF/FE series in the new format for Vista/7 with DX10 utilized. Along the way new features he's working on have been slipped in quietly, like the crashed planes and now saving. This simply means that after over a year without any new material but a plane or two he's now on track to release new things for 2010, whether it be the long-delayed expansions for Israel and FE or whole new releases. I can't wait! I do wish he'd do a next-gen game with MP, though. It's the one major omission from the new engine I really miss.

FYI FE2 = FE Gold/FE with expansion pack 1 + new AI-only Strutter. There are the same 2 terrains (Cambrai and Verdun), the same flyables, and 1 extra AI-only. Strutter, RE8, and AEG are among the AI-only planes. Of course you can make them flyable yourself, just like any TK sim, but there are no dedicated cockpits for them.

Pretty much think of it this way--if the video chip has an "M" after it, it runs about as fast as the next-slower desktop equivalent. For example, GTX260M = GTS250. Unlike PC cards, though, it's pretty much impossible to change it later. So while you can get a better HDD, RAM, and even optical drive for your laptop later, CPU, GPU, and screen are fixed so get as good as you can afford with those. Skimp on the RAM now and buy more later when you get more $$!

Well, if it isn't I would think you could just rename the .exe to strikefighters2.exe or something and it would work. I'm using v5 but I haven't had a chance to try my TIR with FE2 yet. Pretty much I bought, DLd, and installed it last night, ran it to check the options like graphics and sound were right...then I went to bed without ever flying.

I bought my FLCS/TQS in 1995, and my gold anodized RCS are from before that...and they still work fine. The pot in the RCS needs replacing, but big deal. However, since they're gameport and not USB they've become useless to me. In fact, I think I finally got rid of the FLCS and TQS last year after they sat in the closet for a few years. The RCS I was still using with my Cougar until I got this G940.

I remember my father told me it's almost inevitable that every male will get some form of prostate cancer in their lives, unless they die from something else very young. The main question is always "what to do?" In some cases the cancer is very slow-growing and if the patient's health and age aren't good for surgery, they may instead skip it...the old "the cure is worse than the disease" situation.

Wow. That guy spent a lot of effort to get that done.

What I hate is how people always talk as if UFO = "alien spaceship." No. It's an object, that's flying, that you can't identify. That's it. So it can be quite obviously NOT an intelligently piloted spacecraft from another world, but STILL be a UFO if you can't figure out what it is. No one should be shy to say they saw a UFO, because it happens to everyone. I'm sure those who aren't aviation fans see far more than those who are because they don't recognize as many objects! Saying you saw an alien spaceship, though, is a different matter. So in short, while an alien spaceship IS a UFO, a UFO is NOT necessarily an alien spaceship. The aliens are a "subset" of the UFO group, if you will. Oh, and if it's sitting on the ground it's NOT a UFO, alien or not!!

Hercs are too small and slow to refuel anything big enough to need the higher flow rate of a boom. They don't carry enough fuel, either. They're tactical refuelers, not strategic. When it comes to receiving fuel, you can put a probe just as easily as a boom receptacle. However, the problem with drogues is getting a really large plane to hook into it and then getting the fuel over in a timely manner.

The problem with the plasma idea is it's active, not passive. So if you suffer some kind of malfunction, you're suddenly visible...like a cloaking device in Star Trek failing. All the stealth planes in US service have been passive, and as long as they didn't emit or leave a door open or suffer battle damage, they were fine. As for that Russian scientist, I don't recall when he left or his name, but I recall the paper came to light here in the early 70s I believe (regardless of when he wrote it, that's when it was noticed). I think his paper was on the "aligned edges" idea, as back then it was all that was really possible. I'm not sure if he took the stories of Northrop's flying wings being hard to detect on radar back in the 40s into his ideas or not.

Look in the options.ini in your users/username/saved games/thirdwire/sf2 directory. There's an advanced shaders= line you could set to 0 as well as a ForceDX9= line you can switch to true.

Well, if most of the effort went into the DX10 stuff I can imagine that DX9 would look pretty much the same. No changes in cockpits or 3d models at all that you see?

A GF9100 isn't capable of doing DX10 with playable fps. You're going to need to go into the .ini and turn it back to DX9.

The truth is RCS is more an art than a science right now, and until you have a real thing to measure it's guesswork. I should say you can mathematically work out the theoretical minimum RCS, but the actual RCS needs to be measured once you have a real object to be placed on a range. It will be higher based on paint properties, weather conditions, manufacturing process errors, etc. The comparison to an F-35 is probably valid in theory, but my guess is as this is their first (not black world, anyway) stealth fighter they're going to have kinks to work out like we did.

Generally brakes are applied once your speed is below 100kts AFAIK. Aerobraking is usually used to get the plane as slow as possible first.

Suh-weeet!!

You're right, I just noticed how much smaller it is than the final bird. Sort of like the YF-17 -> F/A-18 progression there.

I bought my first Thrustmaster FCS when I was in college, playing Falcon 3.0 and Aces over the Pacific...ah, the good old days... Of course I bought my first HOTAS, the TM FLCS/TQS combo, when I was in my senior year and I've never flown without a HOTAS since. Unless it was broken, that is!

I'd say just replace it to be safe since a busted lock isn't doing you any good anyway.

It doesn't come with one, no, because SF is too small for Logitech to notice I guess. It came with ones for Il-2, Falcon 4, LOMAC, and MSFS that I know of.