JediMaster

Yes, they changed the plot from "alien" to more "future human", but the difference there is slight. Really, the only BS moments I had were the CG F-16 (it just never looked right) and the very end with the space station. Sorry, that is NOT a secure facility! There are always Russian nationals on board and a regular parade of others from various countries. It's been years since I watched the original, but I'll do that again soon. I'll admit the ending wasn't as good as I would've liked, but the first 3 hours I thought were fine.

In Thief 2, when I went into the haunted library in that old castle...and a ghost suddenly appeared in front of me accompanied by the best spooky sounds I'd ever heard! I literally shouted and turned and ran out of the library! In Knights of the Old Republic, when you learn that after all that has transpired you are the former Dark Lord of the Sith Revan! In No One Lives Forever, when you overhear the guards' conversations for the first time and you can't stop laughing, or you engage in a firefight and for the first time see a guard turn and run for cover while shouting "Oh no, bullets!!" In Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, where after travelling down an aqueduct into a small town you find a secret passage behind a store that leads out to the largest panorama I've ever seen in an FPS, with a giant tower in the distance ringed by hangars with AT-STs on patrol that are so tiny due to the extreme distance you can barely see them! In WC3 when you find out the Kilrathi that's been fighting alongside you all this time was really a double agent!

That reminds me, how do they get them on those massive wings? I mean, I have enough trouble with the decals on my plastic models, getting the right amount of water and getting them straight with no wrinkles...how much water do you need for a B-52 wing???

I don't think I'd mind if he did fewer planes at higher fidelity. That said, it is a departure from his previous model. I don't see anything wrong with using old models to fill in the gaps, though. Just look at Falcon 4. That was a huge project with a massive budget and yet even there we had junky low-res/low-poly F-4Es flying around compared to how nice the F-16 looked. I don't care that much about ground targets because that's all they are--targets! The tanks and SAM/AAA as in WOI are plenty detailed enough for me, he doesn't need to spend more time on those. I think the 2 top priorities are the planes (and their cockpits, of course) and the terrain. THAT'S what you spend all your time looking at.

Remember that RB2 (how I'll always think of it, RB3D was just a big patch later that added 3DFx support) had a much larger budget and team than FE has had even today. I guarantee one programmer living in his car couldn't have made RB2!

On high levels this game looks light years better than OFP, so you pay for it in the performance. Gameplay wise, though, it's not much different.

I think many are willing to trade uber graphics for fidelity in their flight sims. Just look how many decade-old sims are still being flown! I think the last great sim-games (that fulfilled both sides wishes admirably) were Jane's F-15 and Longbow 2. They were as real as you wanted them to be (given PCs at the time) but they stayed fun and had a structure. Falcon, Flanker, LOMAC, Il-2--all are great sims, but not great games when compared to the previous 2. Others that were great in both ways were EF2000, F22ADF/TAW and the iMagic Hornet and Raptor sims. The JF series were great games, but never great sims, with the exception of JF3. That was the pinnacle of that series...what I think we need today. It was almost as realistic as LOMAC, but it had a great game structure that kept you playing, and it was also the only one of the series to get an expansion I think. I was very hopeful for that line until JF4 regressed and it started to become what Ace Combat is today. A sim cares about accuracy, button pushing. A game cares about fun, ease of use, and rewarding the player for doing well with noticeable benefits. To expect a game to look like Ace Combat while having the fidelity of Falcon isn't reasonable, but I'm willing to meet them halfway. The problem is there ARE no halfway choices. We get LOMAC, F4:AF, Il-2, and TW's sims. Many of these sims also failed at being games because they didn't offer enough to entertain the lite simmer. Sure you can flip on unlimited ammo and arcade physics in F4, but if you do you'll see the game is really shallow without that simulation aspect to it. It literally flops without it. It pales in comparison to Ace Combat. On the flipside, look how many games come out with lame realism that get "realism mods"! Once you've got the graphics and the game structure, all you need is some open architecture and people can increase the realism themselves (like the TW sims). However, look how much effort it's taken to improve F4's graphics to looking just 5 years old, let alone current.

Surface heating due to air friction doesn't become noticeable until you pass Mach 2.5 at high altitude. It's lower at low altitude, but air density prevents you from going that fast easily. Anyway, I think bursting into flames is probably the one thing he does NOT have to worry about!

You will need to do some light modding to your TW games to get them to work with Vista. It's in the Knowledge Base I believe, else it's in some threads.

The weird thing about Obama is that he hasn't DONE anything. One year in the Senate and then straight to campaigning? On the plus side, he's not "old" Washington like the other 2. However, I think McCain has done an admirable job of staying in the game without being changed. None of the other candidates looked worthy anyway. This country has been on this "left or right" kick for far too long. I want whichever candidate will bring us back to the center, where I am. I don't care a bit about those on either side wanting everything THEIR way. It's called compromise, and in the past couple of decades it seems like that idea has become TREASON! No, do not work with those on the other side!! No!! Whatever.

Heh, the most expensive CD I own is the soundtrack to an 80's film: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Released only on tape and LP in the US, I waited in vain for a CD release for literally 2 decades. Then one day I saw on ebay a 2000 release of the ToD special edition CD from the UK. It was $35 and I JUMPED for it. All the songs from my (now totally dead) tape plus a few more! Ahhh... They had some of the best comedies in the 80s, too. Airplane, Naked Gun, Cheers, Top Secret!, Real Genius...

Those things so break the laws of physics that it's not even possible to grasp just HOW wrong they are.

Has anyone mentioned how crazy this guy must be?? You couldn't pay me enough...

I will admit the idea of a training-only module excites me not at all. If I can't release my frustrations of the day by blowing stuff up, I feel...well, I feel the frustration continue to build! I'm in the "I'll possibly get it after the first combat part is released" camp, although if they make a demo for the training-only initial release I will try that. However, the amount of time I could spend in a tiny demo is probably all I could bear to spend in non-combat anyway!

I remember back at UM we had a capacitor bank there that put out more power than the nuke plant at Turkey Point did in one instant. However, it took days to recharge. Of course, there they were doing cooling laser research, which works a bit differently.

I have lots of DVDs and CDs from the 80s, and also a ton of MP3s I've acquired over the years from friends. Of course, the DVDs are big SF and action films, I never went for the teen comedy/drama stuff like Pretty in Pink or Breakfast Club really. I cared more about the music in the films than the films themselves! However, while I like the big stuff, I'm not really a fan of the more obscure stuff. Same with the 90s. For obscure stuff, I tend to prefer the first 2 decades of rock, up to about 1975. I grew up hearing the 80s stuff, but paying attention to the 60s. So while I love a good INXS or Duran Duran song, I get what I need of them from a greatest hits CD. In fact, many 80s groups are no more than one hit wonders to me, like Flock of Seagulls. Just don't care about any of their stuff other than "I Ran" because that's the only one I heard on the radio! I spent my jr high and high school years listening to the 60s on my tapes and records, and then the CD revolution happened in 1987 with the release of the entire Beatles catalogue on CD. I still have those 21 yr-old CDs today, and the cases are all scratched and worn (but the CDs are pristine!) from how often I've listened to them. Of course, when I went to college is when alternative broke out, especially as Nirvana's "Nevermind" was released my first semester. I also got cable on the TV in my room for the first time and started watching MTV and Comedy Central regularly, discovering MST3K, Beavis and Butthead, and many music videos from the last great era of videos. Let's face it, starting about 1997 MTV really because "teenager TV with occasional videos" and NOT "music TV". For awhile VH1 picked up the slack, but by 2000 it was in the same boat.

Well, to be fair GRAW was made by GRIN which is as you say infamous for ignoring its beta testers. I never played Blazing Angels, so I can't say what it's like. I want RSE back. Was Raven Shield the last thing they did? Or was it GR1? I remember Ubi Montreal created Black Thorn at the same time GR1 came out, and we then had 2 expansion packs for it. Really the main issue is people accepted playing FPS games with a gamepad so the consoles became a viable path, unfortunately. When mouse+keyboard was your only choice, PC FPS were big. Now even PC-only FPS games are becoming the minority! That makes flight sims on the PC a niche within a niche and these companies just aren't interested in that.

I don't know, I think TK's sims are perfect in the area of "serious for beginners". None of the arcadey 36-missiles and mid-air rearming crap but not too demanding on learning buttons and switches. I will concede the lack of compelling story, however other than SFP1 it's all historical campaigns anyway. I guess he could shine it up some with briefings/debriefings having more flash to them, like the old MPS and Jane's sims did. However, it's obvious he spends his time on things that happen in the cockpit and the whole UI/presentation thing takes 2nd place. With his limited resources, that makes sense. I don't give the Russian dev teams the same pass, though, since they DO have more people working on them and could give them a little more soul! My favorite sims from past years were my favorite because they didn't FEEL like sims. From the time you loaded into the main menu I felt more like a pilot prepping to go on a mission, then flying it, then seeing what came of it afterwards. These current ones on the other hand FEEL like simulators! I have immersion in the cockpit (if you're lucky--Il-2 and LOMAC often miss there too) but anytime I'm not in the cockpit it just SCREAMS "this is a simulator." Jane's Longbow 2, for example, made me feel like an Army aviator learning how to fly the Apache and then going out to fight in a real conflict in one. LOMAC, to contrast, makes me feel like a Russian pilot trainee in a simulator at an airbase training for the day I'll get to REALLY fly them. It's a simulator simulator!

"Enhanced" = "Not Very Much" I guess.

I guess I'm most surprised they found X-Plane's code insufficient to the task and that starting from scratch was easier. Of course, I'm no programmer.

Using a laser to fry a guidance system in a warhead is a bit different. Also, taking out anything the size of a plane or larger requires an increase in power by several orders of magnitude. Rockets are easy, they're fragile. Put a small hole that leaks fuel or buckle the side and ruin the aerodynamics and it will tear or blow itself apart. The power problem is also nontrivial. A chemical laser generates the energy by mixing the toxic fluids, but a solid state one uses electricity...from the engines? Not even a 747's 4 engines with alternators driving it will power a SSL directly. You need banks of capacitors charging for one shot...then a looooong time to charge it up again. I think SSL's are topped out at 1kw right now? Not enough, not compared to the chemical one. The day when we can fire a SSL from an airborne platform at a fighter and take it out without getting "lucky" and igniting an external tank or blinding the pilot in the cockpit is still far off. Actually, IIRC the threat of lasers to pilots' eyes is the predominant concern right now. Who needs to shoot them down if the plane will crash on its own once the pilots are blind?

Heh...rain. Don't move to FL!!

I see them every day here, with the 920th Rescue Wing, and they're always flying over my house too. In fact, several of them had those water buckets slung under to help fight those fires here last week. As for Marine One, that flew OVER my house (wow what a racket those 53s make) after W showed up for a rally with his brother Jeb at the local stadium (local = 4 miles away) on its way back here where AF1 was parked. The best part was during the rally some old clueless guy flying VFR flew RIGHT past the stadium and got an F-16 buzzing him for his trouble! Forced to land at Merritt Island Airport and got questioned by the FBI and company for several hours! D'OH!!!

Argh! The wait is killing me! However, it looks like no Su-25 in DCS anytime soon, so I guess we'll all be hanging onto LOMAC for quite some time!

Narrow view? Some might call it pessimistic, but I call 'em as I see 'em. 2001 was a great film but one of the worst predictors of the future ever made, even with a genius like Clarke behind it. Within a year of its release we had man walking on the moon! Within 5 years, the last man left and no one has returned since... Computers you could talk to that took up a room! We get computers you can hold in your hand that can't tell you anything except it's crashed! The only problem with the "black world has it all" theory is that some of the things they supposedly have would HURT the US if they stayed black. Besides, I can name a dozen things out of SF that I KNOW haven't been done because they're either impossible according to the laws of physics as we know it (hyperspace, lightsabers, transporters) or they require a tech we've not been able to create yet (getting around on something other than primitive rocket propulsion). Messing with an idea in a lab and saying "done that" is NOT the same as having practical, operational vehicles. The space shuttle, for instance, isn't really practical and is barely operational. On that I would say we don't YET have a good reusable space vehicle.