JediMaster

Did you also know that a MiG-27 is crap against an F-15? It's true! It's amazing anyone even BUILT MiG-27s when F-15s were out there! See, that "analysis" totally missed the point--the F-35 is designed to attack ground targets, with AA being a secondary capability. The Su-35 is designed to attack air targets, with a secondary ground attack ability. If the F-35 was designed to attack air targets...it would be an F-22! Or rather the F-35 is an F-22 scaled down to do a different mission. Complaining the F-35 isn't AWESOME in AA is totally missing the point that it's not SUPPOSED to be. It will be better than an F-16, aside perhaps from some corners of the dogfighting envelope, which it is replacing, like it's replacing Harriers and F/A-18Cs. An F-16 BTW is even worse off against an Su-35 than an F-35. And if anyone is trying to say that after the F-22 the best possible fighter is the Su-35, well that's just speculation too since the Su-35 isn't in service either. Oh, and I think it safe to say that in any possible engagement it doesn't matter how much small percentage better the Su-35 might be because it will be outnumbered by F-35s, something you wouldn't be able to say about F-22s. The number of F-35s to be built far outnumbers how many Su-35s will be built, and the countries buying them will have more F-35s than the countries buying Su-35s will get. The fact the the DoD is willing to get just 185 F-22s but wants over 2000 F-35s says something about where it believes the future threats will need to be addressed, as opposed to some armchair analysts giving their opinion based on unclassified data. Fighters just aren't shooting down fighters anymore. It's all about airplanes attacking ground targets while ground fire attacks airplanes. SAMs are the #1 threat, not an enemy fighter, and the Su-35 will be shot down by a SAM long before an F-35 would. Bombing enemies on the ground are the primary mission, and an F-35 is far more likely to be successful and precise in that then an Su-35. In fact, IIRC the USAF has spent a lot of time and money making sure the F-22 is up to the job of intercepting cruise missiles, especially hard-to-detect ones, because they're more worried about that than some "super fighter" shooting them down.

A point I've made time and again. The real planes are concerned with finding where targets are and hitting them. In a sim, the game knows where everything is, precisely, all the time. So for older planes it's actually about modeling when they would NOT be able to know where a given target or friendly is. For the F-35 you can just make some determination that it will just "know" any air target in a bubble of range X and any ground target in a bubble of range Y and leave it at that. Of course, many simmers don't like the F-22 and F-35 precisely because they've been designed to let the pilot fight like it's a video game, without needing hours of coursework, instruction, and practice to learn the arcane inner workings of their systems to get the most out of them and avoid their pitfalls. The design objectives of the F-22 and F-35 was to make a REAL pilot have "god mode" and know where everything was without being seen.

You only needed to reinstall stock LOMAC, no patches, no FC, to install FC3.

Oh, this guy is the same guy that was doing Combat Pilot? I honestly had forgotten about that. I wasn't really interested in what it was going to do, and using FSX was a negative for me, not a plus, but I had no idea it sputtered to a halt like that.

For good or ill, ED tied the new terrain to the release of the new terrain engine. No, they didn't need to do it that way, but I'm sure they thought EDGE would've been done long ago when they made that decision. It's too late to reverse it now, they're committed. However, that's ED, and the F-35 is NOT ED.

The issue isn't "is your hardware bad?", but rather "does the program now have a problem with your hardware?" Usually this is an issue between the drivers and the game. I don't know if you've updated your sound and/or video drivers lately. If not, you might try that. If you have, you might try rolling back to the previous version(s). Some games have been notorious for hating AMD video cards, for example. Usually this sort of thing manifests just as poor performance and not lockups or crashes, but that's not always the case.

How are you throttling up on takeoff? Are you firewalling it in a split second, or are you taking like 5 seconds to go from 0-100? Il-2 and ROF taught me long ago you never slam the throttle forward in a prop!

IIRC, the Spitfire had landing-only flaps. You didn't use them for taking off. Many planes have 3 positions for flaps. Retracted, take off (intermediate) and landing (full down). The Spit only had full down and they were used for landing only. If you try to takeoff with landing flaps, you have too much drag, too much lift, and it wouldn't surprise me if it acted bizarrely under full power (when it was supposed to be at low power for landing).

No, the 787 is the new one. The 777 has been around for almost 20 years IIRC. This one was 7 years old.

The problem is there wasn't a law that said "you cannot reveal the PRISM program". Then it would be exactly as you said...an illegal law, or rather a law protecting an illegal program. Since instead it was "classified", that puts it into a different category. Now it's about running afoul of the laws dealing with breaking classification, which as noted here and elsewhere is a serious matter. There's no clause that says "however, if you reveal something that is classified that is illegal or immoral, that's different." Depending on the level and the information involved it can be considered treason, which is the worst crime there is according to the Constitution. If a foreign spy had found out about PRISM and this story had broken in a Chinese or Iranian paper, no one would say "whistleblower." It's the same deal as not following an illegal/immoral order. YOU determine your CO gave such an order, and refuse to follow it. Yet technically that's insubordination and you can have varying degrees of reprimands for that. I suppose a courts martial would determine if the order you failed to obey was illegal or immoral, and if they side with you you're in the clear (and I guess your CO is in trouble?) but if they do not then you're screwed. Snowden broke the law by what he felt was whistleblowing (and yet in reality was nothing more than specifics on a program pretty much everyone already knew or suspected existed). I can only determine by what I've seen in the news that this guy was a real naive idealistic clown who actually feels that he's being a hero by doing this...even though what he did will arguably not change a thing for the better, except embarrass the US in foreign relations and cause the program to be renamed, retooled, and rehidden. He just isn't smart enough to realize that his "sacrifice" was unnecessary and futile. Will this stop this program? Of course not. Will some people perhaps lose their jobs in an aim to appear to be doing something? Probably. Yet they'll just be shuffled around and given other jobs elsewhere for the same or more money. The only thing that is certain is Snowden has ruined his life, and seriously screwed up the lives of those close to him, for a cause that was doomed to lose.

Well, it's wasn't about NOT paying taxes. It was about paying taxes but having no say in the gov't the taxes were funding. No taxation without representation. Ergo, with representation taxation is ok.

Perhaps the paint was slightly faded and it looked blue? Some types of black paint do fade to blue.

It's the whole balance between survivability and controllability. If they're close together and one dies due to a technical issue, your single-engine yaw isn't that bad. If they're far apart and you get one hit by enemy fire, you're likely to have the other one still working. HOWEVER, single-engine yaw in an F-14, 29, or 27 is much harsher, and the likelihood of battle damage taking out more than one engine is higher in a 15 or 18. It's a toss up.

I didn't even know there was a WWI addon for the DBW mod! Not bad looking at all.

The Channel Map, too, first time it's ever been on sale.

Canada originally picked the Hornet over the F-16 precisely because of the twin-engine safety idea. Several others like Switzerland and Australia did as well, IIRC. After 30 years of operational history, I think the modern single-engine fighter has proven to be no less reliable than the twins.

How much you want to bet when those sims were coming out in the mid-90s there were people at the DoD that saw and played them and said "why can't the real planes do this?"

No, I think that was Major F$^#up.

If Finland isn't wedded to the idea of twin engines, I'd say the Gripen NG would be a good bet.

Which is the idea behind the JSF program...make it real easy for our guys to fly around and blow stuff up. See, the DoD doesn't strive for "hardcore realism" when they're making their requirements...

So, if Greece bought that model...would it be the F/A-18HH?

Welcome to the New Way of Doing Business. Unless you're a tiny developer like Thirdwire, who really can't afford to bother with any DRM, you're going to have software-based DRM on your product. Disc-based is dead. It was too easy to crack by far, so there was no point. Plus it was so damned finicky about your drive.

Looks like the pod holds 2 AMRAAMs or SDBs. No, certainly not a large payload, but if you want that you send a B-2.

I guess it depends on how TK views it. I had bought some older titles with one email address, then switched to another. So I sent TW an email to support asking for the 2 accounts to be merged under the newer one and he did it, so I was able to log into the SF Installer with that email and PW and DL all titles and DLC I own as well as patch them. If you sell your collection to someone, and tell TK to transfer the rights from your email to theirs, then technically you would be giving it up and handing it someone else. So I think he would be ok with that as you wouldn't be able to get it again that way. However, I can't say anything with certainty other than "you'd have to ask TK". Now if he says "no", I'd say you could DL the latest installers for all titles and DLC and stick them on a DVD or thumb drive and sell it to someone...but they'd never be able to use the autoinstaller and would have to always grab the patches individually off his site which has become a big PITA now with so many titles and DLC.

Other than the initial install file, FE2 requires no further internet connection. I think it's under 300MB? Of course, if you go with a bunch of mods, that's extra. For example, the N28 doesn't come with FE2, that's a plane mod you have to DL and install separately.