JediMaster

I don't have this plane (or FSX), but the real plane had a turbo or supercharger (I forget which) for operating at higher altitudes. Thinner air and all that. The plane probably expects you to engage them yourself. Many sims have had such things kick in automatically, but FSX may not, so you may have to do it manually.

The problem really is F4's engine wasn't designed for widescreen, everything done since to help that has just been a bandage. I'm surprised it worked widescreen at ALL.

Not many people have a problem with the truth. However, if your manner of presenting it is to break into people's homes in the middle of the night naked, squatting on their face, and then shouting it at the top of your lungs, the message gets lost due to the tactics of the messenger. I think for a Xmas present to everyone here at CA you should take a hard look at HOW you are presenting your points. Just as "might doesn't make right", "RIGHT doesn't make right" either if you do it the wrong way.

I don't see Klingon there...

And in the end The love you take Is equal to the love You make

Ok, now I'm LOL. "Some" raised the question??? It wasn't "some", Stiglr. It was you. I was there. I remember. Way to try and make people think you're not all alone out there waving the flag by yourself. Also, bravo on managing to bring up arguments from SIX YEARS AGO, again. Talk about obssession. Do you have NOTHING else in your life to do but rehash the unpleasant flame wars on SimHQ when SFP1 was released? Are you persisting for YEARS on a subject no one else gives a damn about anymore in the forlorn hope that some day in the distant future there will be an upswelling from the masses praising you for your AWESOME foresight? A "God bless Stiglr" grassroots campaign to sweep you into the White House or something? Where's the vitriol for the awful 2nd patch for Aces of the Pacific? What about that lame MP interface for Flanker 1? That damage model for F-15 SE 2 was just HORRENDOUS wasn't it? Shall we go back farther? What was up with that Teapot Dome scandal in the 19th century? I mean what WERE they thinking?? It's almost 2009 now, Stiglr. Take a look outside for once. I'm not locking this thread yet solely for respect of Gepard and his attempt, with others, to get this back on track. Stop placing rocks on the rails of this train so you can cry about poor railway safety.

Have you tried adjusting the monitor? I think the menus and the in-game graphics run at different resolutions, so while it works fine in the cockpit you may have to fiddle with the settings for the menu.

The Super Hornet isn't a bad choice. AESA, good EW, decent range (if not great), stealthier than everything but the F-22, F-35, and possibly Typhoon and Rafale (whose RCS isn't really known). It also carries a bigger payload and is available today. I do think, though, that in any conceivable conflict, against air or ground, more Super Hornets would be lost than F-35s. It may not be a big deal, but in the public eye even 1 extra plane can be seen as "too many."

Unfortunately, as the F-35A has yet to enter production, it's all speculative as to what exactly it can or can't do. The truth, though, is speed doesn't matter too much anymore. Sure plane "A" can go Mach X and plane "B" can go Mach Y, but what does it matter if you burn out all your fuel doing it? Range is helped with tankers and EVERYONE uses them now, so there's no point in leaving them out of the equation. Ideally you'll have them based close to potential trouble areas, not clustered far away from everything. The F-35 will have an AESA radar, which means it sees farther, sooner, and with less chance of being noticed. Other nations are developing them, but none have them in service yet. Only some F-15Cs, F-22s, and some Super Hornets have them. It also allows other things like jamming and electronic attack. Disabling enemy planes/SAMs without firing a shot is an awesome capability. The F-35 is stealthier than any other plane but the F-22. That negates the supposed advantage of range of whoever's firing a missile at it. If you can't get a lock until you're under 10 miles, does it matter if the missile can fly 30 or 50? Against SAMs you can get closer, close enough to knock them out without being knocked out yourself under many circumstances. While the F-35 has a limited payload when "stealthy" due to the size of the bays, it can carry a lot more when it doesn't need to be. So stealth them up to attack SAMs and enemy fighters, then load them up with bombs and missiles under the wings when that threat is eased and take out the enemy. Even with stuff under the wings it will be stealthier than a Flanker anyway. The Flanker first flew in the 1970s. Its EW equipment is not as advanced, its radar is not as advanced, and it makes a big target. Of course, it's not in the same class as the F-35, it's in the F-22 class, and there it gets beat. The F-35 is 20 years newer. Designed to replace the F-16 and F/A-18, and it beats them. The Typhoon might have been as good a choice, but for whatever reason it didn't win. The Flanker is also an Eastern design. The infrastructure for maintenance and armament is 100% different from Western fighters. Any perceived cost savings goes up in smoke when you have to create a new one from scratch to support it. All new missiles and bombs, tools, carts, diagnostic equipment, etc. It's a great plane if you've got Fulcrums, Floggers, etc already in your inventory, which is why China and India got them. They were already setup to use Russian stuff. Oh, and forget trying to "Westernize" a Flanker. The amount that would cost, plus who knows what kind of resistance you'd get from the Russians, make it a moot point.

Not surprising, really, given how much they've invested in the F-35 already. Of course, if the F-35 performs as advertised it will beat the Gripen. If.

I don't recall ever hearing of any F-15 shot down by any plane, only SAMs and/or AAA. A MiG-25 did apparently shoot down a Hornet in Desert Storm, I believe, that being the most modern plane a Foxbat ever defeated.

Ironically the F-15 and F-22 lines may close down within months of each other, with the F-22 potentially going first! About a year ago I saw a source that said there were just under 700 F-15s. Although it didn't specify, it appeared to be talking about the Charlie and maybe the Alphas, not the Beagle, as it was about the groundings which never affected the Beagle.

You wouldn't say that about the Mirage F1 though.

They can't, Santa got one of the retired F-117s.

Are you kidding? I don't even have a favorite album!! Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Rubber Soul, The Beatles, Abbey Road... I guess those are my top 5. I have all the albums, the Past Masters, the 3 Anthologies, the 2 Capitol sets (of the US album releases), the 1 album, the re-released Yellow Submarine and Let It Be...Naked, various and sundry bootleg CD/MP3s, and even a very rare recording of John and Paul jamming in the early 70s with Stevie Wonder and some others. I only saw Paul in concert once back in 1990, but it was the best concert I've ever been to. The first time Sgt Pepper was performed live ever! Semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna Man you should've seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe I am the eggman They are the eggmen I am the walrus Goo goo g'joob!

Of course, that's one reason why they prefer suicide attacks so much..."dead men tell no tales." It's well known that terrorists tend to crack faster than true soldiers or spies, partly because of the brief training they get and partly because, well, if you think God is on your side nothing you could say can hurt His plan, can it?

Actually, while most nations couldn't do it, the US could. We just don't want to spend the $$ to do it. However, we'll burn up billions a month in Iraq for far less benefit than a massive space program would provide. So it's just about the will, really. I don't think anyone will argue that the aerospace industry's pace of development took a massive slowdown after 1970. Only 66 years from first flight to the Moon landing, but in the almost 40 years since we've managed only to make an unreliable overexpensive "space truck", a space station that DOESN'T fall out of the sky, planes still don't go much over Mach 2 including the only SST retiring... It's like the only thing still progressing at that rate is the increase in costs. We need 2 things--a materials breakthru (to allow higher speeds and more protection), and a power/propulsion breakthru.

Anyone here ever see the Robot Chicken skit where the producers of 300 do a Revolutionary War film, called 1776? George Washington in cape, hat, and tight pants but bare-chested and muscular? "THIS IS AMERICA!!"

Well, I saw the new BSG game at Best Buy this weekend, but so far I've not heard anything very complimentary about it. Considering its bargain price, I can't say I'm too surprised. All I CAN say is I don't know why they went this route. Between the awesome combat in the show and the depth of the story I think they dropped the ball here. Anyone try it? I understand it's on XBLA as well as PC.

It's like this...if you can't fly certain planes for idealogical reasons, it's your loss. Just like people who can't watch sci fi because it's not "real" enough for them, or dismiss NASCAR as "driving in circles." In every case, they're missing the point. However, that's THEIR problem, not yours. Berating them for it is like trying to get people to see the contradictions in everything else they believe in...it's pointless. They have no "reason", they make the decision based on emotion, faith, upbringing, whatever. So while the question is interesting perhaps in just seeing how many people are of one mind or the other (ie do more people have trouble flying "against" their side than those who don't), it's irrelevant because you're not going to change their minds. Oh, and simulation isn't a zero-sum "all or nothing" either. Just because you demand good flight, weapon, and damage modeling but will settle for simplified avionics doesn't mean you should go play a Wii. It's not F4 on one side and Crimson Skies on the other with nothing inbetween. There ARE levels and some people find the middle ground quite satisfying.

That's when you have some setting on very easy or something. I forget which it is. Just go in to the difficulty and max everything out, it should stop. Then slowly back down one setting at a time until it reappears and you know which it is.

Complaining about MS' combat sims when they haven't released one in 6 yrs is kind of silly. I saw some pre-release CFS 4 stuff that was never officially released and it looked good. I'm talking a lot better than Il-2, which came out the year before CFS3 but looked better. I think CFS3 made some good progress and CFS4 COULD have beat Il-2 in some areas if it had proceeded. Instead, MS canned it without a word (there was no official announcement of the game's development or its cancellation) and dedicated themselves to the air-truck sim that is MSFS. They've talked about releasing a new combat sim for years now, whether WWII or jet, but so far nothing.

The F-22 may die to prevent threats to the F-35, in that backwards gov't logic. If they can't buy any more F-22s, they HAVE to finish the F-35! As for a different EW suite, the integration would prevent that. What good is a plane that jams itself? Without access to the source code, any other jammer put in there would be nigh-on impossible to deconflict with the radar and REWR/sigint stuff. The truth is the hardware isn't really that specialized anymore, it's all rather generic, and the software is the special part. By modifying it and locking people out from seeing it, you can ensure the capability of various models. As for replacing 1/2 the F-15s, no way. There are like 700 F-15s, no way we're getting 350 F-22s when it looks like we'll barely get 200 now.

Jets without an infrastructure to support them (pilots, maintenance, fuel, ammo, etc) are useless.

People always say "humanity will evolve away from violence." What they fail to see is humanity evolved TOWARDS violence (see the beginning of 2001). The non-violent elements keep getting exterminated by the violent ones.