JediMaster

Vista's problem is backwards compatibility. If you don't run any old programs, or have any old hardware, it's really not too bad. Except for where I work, where the security changes in Vista have made secure websites that had no issues on XP a total nightmare. I also had FS2 from Sublogic on my Atari, and later FS4 on my PC, but that was it. I still play CFS3 from time to time as well as OFF. I dumped my Korea mod for it when there was enough done for TK's sims to be modded. I think CFS4 was in beta when it was canned, which really puzzles me. The shots I saw indicated it was really far along and couldn't have cost them too much more at that point to just finish and release it. Remember, though, with so many of these businesses now making a profit is no longer good enough, you have to make ENOUGH profit so that the stupid "analysts" don't say you "failed to meet expectations" and send your stock lower.

Iran's AF isn't a threat, but their SAMs certainly are. Of course, as they're only in their own territory that limits the threat to others. Their navy and IRBMs are another story.

The problem was the engines weren't powerful enough back then to make such a thing practical. Today they are!

Yes, Windows will scan every picture in a photo folder and generate a thumbnail for it. This shouldn't be a problem unless you have either A) very little RAM free, B) a googleplex of pictures or pictures that are massive in size (multiple MB each), or C) a horribly fragmented HD. If none of those 3 is the case, I also declare the OS install to be "hosed" and in need of a reload!

The main issue is spoofing a missile you don't have eyes on is VERY hard. If you're lucky enough to see it launch in front of you, you'll probably be able to break its lock. If not, radar missiles show on the RWR and help you find them with your eyes. IR missiles are just the hand of God swatting you from the sky.

I've not bought any sim twice, but I've bought every one TK has released, along with DCS, F4:AF, every Il-2 release, and so on. I don't go for MMOs or any online subscription based idea. I've never bought payware for any sim except once--Firepower for CFS3. I felt that was pretty much the unofficial CFS3 expansion pack. There are several I didn't get for various reasons, like Enemy Engaged 2 and Whirlwind over Vietnam, and I don't care about flight without combat, so I don't go for X Plane or MSFS. I will get a release from FO if it has combat (not trainers), good all around SP and MP, and is $50 or less. The rest is fluff I don't want or need.

I like Zep, Floyd, and the Stones as well as Metallica. I don't give two shakes of my cheeks over the bowl for Slipknot. There's no points for claiming you're great in music. (See Jerry Lee Lewis)

I doubt the lighthouse one only because I'm not aware that A) many of them are manned anymore and B) they'd be watching approaching ships or have a radio to use. That's more a harbor deal.

I'm going to guess that TK's engine doesn't support directed energy weapons yet.

She's a very kinky girl The kind you don't take home to mother...

The problem with the F-117 is it's a bit of a bore to fly. Onyl carried 2 LGBs max, don't think it ever used anything else operationally. Although it was never publicly stated, I don't think it had any ECM or chaff/flares. Antennas were a problem for stealth in the 80s until they came up with a fix, and dispensers require openings. The F-117 relied simply on HMS Training Film (No. 42, PARA. 6.) "How Not To Be Seen." One time it was, over Bosnia.

My geography meter is pegging. How does one fly thru Iraqi airspace going from Kandahar to Dubai? I would think they would fly over Pakistan (shortest route). Otherwise they're being forced to fly the long way around, like flying from LA to Miami thru NYC.

You have to wonder why so often things that work well aren't simply transplanted from one airframe to another but instead they make a whole new thing from scratch. At least the jammers for the EA-6 were used on the F-111 and now the EA-18G. Then there was that ASPJ fiasco. I know they still need to replace the older AC-130s, and something tells me we'll never find a better replacement...than a newer AC-130!

Oh, that plane. I never remember the name, I always think of it as "the twin-engined C-130 lookalike that's not a C-27".

I don't think the AI can make the plane fly faster than possible. I think they can make it fly as fast as possible 100% of the time. They always have maximum possible acceleration, as well as deceleration. Many a time has an AI been pulling away from me and while I'm trying to catch up it slams on the virtual brakes and I nearly overshoot it. No flaps, no speedbrakes, no maneuvers, they just seem to have ultimate control over that prop. I've seen the same thing from AI in racing sims. They don't use traction control or antilock brakes, but they can put the vehicle right on the edge where they get maximum traction for acceleration, deceleration, and turns. From a dead stop, they pull away from you. From a top-speed run, they can stop shorter than you. They lose a lot less speed in the corners. It's not the plane, it's the fact that the AI flies it like no human possibly could because we only have 2 hands. As for the .50s taking out a Zero, of course they can. My point is that it takes TOO MANY rounds to do it, and far too many areas of the plane seem to be "free fire" zones where you can pour in every round you have and get nothing but damaged textures to show for it with no crippling of the plane, let alone fire, lost parts, or a kill. Likewise the enemy bullets seem to be 2/3 "golden BBs" where every time I take a hit SOME critical system (or the pilot) is hit.

I was going to say, "I know that cockpit!" I remember it well from Jane's F-15 which I flew a lot of 11 years ago.

It's a typical problem. You need to upgrade a fleet of planes, but you don't have the money to do them all. Instead of trying to have 2 separate standards (which already exists enough in the USAF, USN, etc) they decided to retire 1/3 of them early. This meant you only had to pay to upgrade 2/3 of the planes plus the money saved from not operating that other 1/3 could be directed into the upgrades. It was a good plan, it just came off sounding bad. The B-52s fly different missions from the B-1 now, so they want to keep them still flying as well. In theory they could have dumped the B-52s and used the money for THOSE to upgrade and run the other 1/3 of the B-1 fleet, but as FC mentioned the B-1 is no longer nuclear while the 52's still are. We don't have enough B-2s to carry the nuclear mission alone.

That's a true oddity of Il-2 AI. They can't hit you if they're on your six, or any plane for that matter. I've watched them fire nonstop for a minute, every shot missing, and never correcting. However, make it a deflection shot, or make the mistake of trying to get them OFF your six, and they hose you every time? What always gets me is when a "real life" tactic fails against the AI. You can't out-dive a AI P-38 in Il-2, because as mentioned there's no effect on their controls. You can't outturn a Zero at high speed for the same reason. I watched Dogfights on the History Channel and an F4F pilot mentioned they liked going head-on with Zeros because their engine acted like a big shield while their guns would rip up the Zero in seconds. Yet in Il-2 the .50s the American fighters get are like BB guns and the Zeros have RPGs launched from their 20mm cannons that never miss and will kill your engine, or you, in any head-on.

I've not started it yet. I just finished Millenium Falcon, which I found a decent read as it really wove together things from all across the SW universe from prequel era thru the stuff between the trilogies and then out into the EU in a believable way. I must admit the direction the EU is taking in general seems to be confusing, too. After the whole NJO thing ends, they have a multi-year gap until that Swarm Nest trilogy. It was ok, nothing major goes on. Then you have another multi-year gap and this Legacy of the Force thing just didn't live up to what I hoped. I was expecting to see more of the "shadow Sith" or whoever that Alema finds and let THEM be where the thing leads to. After Mara died, though, I knew it wouldn't end well for "Darth Caedus"...whatever THAT means. MF is defniitely setting things up for later, though. I guess they're trying to work out how to get from there to the comics taking place a century later with Cade Skywalker where the Jedi are again wiped out and another Sith joins with the Imperial Remnant to make a new Empire.

Well, there IS SW:TOR MMO coming out, which is double irritating. I wanted a KOTOR 3 by Bioware that wasn't rushed like KOTOR 2 was. Instead they make it an MMO. So the only SW games they make for the PC now are MMOs. Before that, Empire at War was the last, and that was probably just because it was an RTS which still just suck on consoles.

If you use a program that needs a lot of RAM, it will move Windows stuff into the PF and keep it there until it needs it again and the main RAM is free. Are you talking about usage when you first boot, or after it's been on awhile?

Frankly, in F4 the IR missiles are 10x deadlier than the radar ones because of the lack of warnings combined with their shorter range giving you less time to react. I find my best bet is to make sure no enemy plane gets into range to use an IR missile in the first place, take em all out BVR! I'd say my survival rate against IR missiles is 20% at best. That's including times when I've suddenly exploded without warning and I assumed it was an IR missile launched at me that I had no radio callout or visual on. My survival rate against radar missiles is probably 90%. I think the only time I get killed by one is when I either A) am fixated on a target (air or ground) and try and rely on jamming and chaff alone to break the lock or B) they have 2 coming at me spaced out just right so that as I defeat the first one I'm left with no time to spoof the 2nd. Those warnings and RWR blips make all the difference.

Actually, that's probably more realistic than most sims. Even those of us simmers who rate ourselves as "poor" will get dozens of kills in a campaign. How many pilots in real life ever did that? I'm not talking about the ones that died (as all of us have at one time or another in a sim), but pilots that fought a whole tour, or in the case of some Axis pilots the entire war, and never even got 5 kills? More often than not there were long stretches without air combat, where planes would tangle and maybe one plane would take some damage, where over a dozen planes could engage and there would be NO kills, followed by them breaking off and going home. Only in sims do AI always pursue you until they die or you do. If you get in a massive furball like that, and neither die nor get a kill, I'd say that's a great recreation of the actual war right there!

If you call the split between Adama and Roslin a "holy crusade" you have a strange definition of the term. That was early 2nd season I think. The New Caprica eps and the later eps with the flashbacks were season 3. Other than the first season of 13 eps, all the others have been 20. So it sounds like you haven't liked it since the end of the 1st season, yet you continued watching it for the 40 eps of the next 2 seasons? I honestly don't understand people most of the time. There's like 2-3 good shows on TV at any one time (the rest are total crap) and BSG is one of them. If you haven't liked BSG since S2 I guess you just don't watch any TV. If I see one more person complain about how BSG is "too soapy" (because they focus on the characters? This is a bad thing??) or "too complicated" (the people who claim they want intelligent entertainment then disprove it by liking the crud) or has "not enough space battles" (which are very expensive to do and they can't do more then a few each season), I'm going to scream. Sure there were weak episodes, every series has them. On average however they're quite good and they have several every season that are just excellent. They're ending it now because after the way season 3 ended it became apparent to them the story was ending. They're only as good as they are because they're wrapping up everything in this final year. If they stretched it into 40 eps instead of 20 people would probably complain even more about weak eps again. BSG is a serial with a beginning, middle, and end. It's not a "planet of the week" show like Star Trek was or Stargate often was. It's telling one large story like Babylon 5 did. That's the story of the search for Earth and relationship between the humans and Cylons. It hasn't stumbled at all compared to shows like Heroes!

The major advantage of board games is also the major drawback...you need to have a group of people willing to play in one location with the time to do it. This is why online gaming is so popular...people can be literally anywhere!