JediMaster

William Devane just played the President (for like the 35th time) in The Dark Knight Rises. Barry Bostwick is making Hellen Keller vs Nightwolves. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000960/?ref_=tt_cl_t1 Easy to see whose career is at a better state right now.

If you think we'll see DCS: F-4E and DCS: F-4J and DCS: F-4S, you're dreaming! We will get one of those if we're lucky. Maybe we'll get a couple FC-level variants in a Vietnam-themed area. But at the rate it takes to make these things, there's no way we'll see DCS level planes in the numbers and variety of an SF2 sim. A-4A, B, C, E, F, G, H, and numerous subvariants, even done to FC levels is pretty much not going to happen. Maybe we'll see one A-4 at some point. We've got the UH-1H, but I can guarantee you there's no UH-1S or Y or any other coming. The market won't support it. To have more than one variant of a plane, there will need to be a big difference, and it will have to be very popular to boot like the F-15C and E. ED has stated that FC titles have outsold the DCS ones by a significant amount. There's no way they're going to neglect the money market for lower-selling niche releases alone, and same with the 3rd party devs. Some may do one as a labor of love, but who's going to spend weeks and weeks making another F-4 that will sell 1/3 as many copies (because having one DCS F-4 will be "good enough")?

Flanker 1 was a long way from LOMAC. For one, it was the only one of their sims to model only a single airframe. F2 introduced the Su-33 and F2.5 the MiG-29K (which oddly has yet to return in any form). F1 was one of the first Win95-native flight sims, and I think that hurt its adoption as there were a LOT of Luddite flight simmers that refused to give up DOS then. Honestly, Win98SE was the first really good consumer WinOS, so I don't blame them per se, but they missed it as a result. I'd say the best thing about it was its feel of flight. It had what seemed an AFM in a time when no one else did. F3 was old and F4 had been delayed, and nothing else challenged it until 1998 I'd say. Worst thing? Easy, the UI! Also, there were no comms in the pit, so the world felt a bit sterile, and it was HARD. Still, I liked it enough to buy F2 and that was really a LOMAC predecessor. Play F2 and LOMAC and you'll see the lineage.

An FC3-level aircraft's pricing must make sense in that context. If it's $50 for A-10A, F-15C, Su-25, MiG-29A/G/C, Su-27, and Su-33...that's roughly $8/plane. Ok, the Su-25 is pretty much a simplified Su-25T which is already free, so if you make that a "gimme", then it's $10/plane. If you call the 27 and 33 two sides of the same plane, and the A-10A just a simplified A-10C, then FC3 becomes: F-15C Su-27/33 MiG-29A/G/C So now that's 3 major planes for $50, or $17 each. Makes sense to me. For just under $20, get the F-15C or Su-27 in DCS World. As it is many people got the Ka-50 and A-10C on sale for $20, so full price for the others given that during sales they'll drop to $10-15 depending on sale size makes sense. Now it sounds like there may not be a "DCS F-15C" or Flanker for quite some time, but if this is just going to be "FC3 versions + AFMs" I do believe the AFM upgrade for current FC3 owners is justified. Honestly, FC3's level of avionics and cockpit is what I consider an ideal middle ground between DCS-level and SF2-level. Sometimes I feel like doing all that extra button-pushing A-10C and Ka-50 require, sometimes I feel like the simplified way SF2 offers, but often I'll want something in the middle.

I'll admit I'm still puzzled why SF2 doesn't have MP because SF1's MP will work with Vista/7. It's especially funny as the .ini files still refer to it! Maybe it's not an "ideal" solution, but it DID work, and yanking it seemed like a "I don't want to deal with the support requests" move more than anything else.

I didn't prepay for A-10C, I bought it later, BUT I paid the full $60 so I get nothing. Unfortunately, I never saw the announcement that only pre-release purchasers got Nevada for free when it was released, I thought it was part of it that they were just holding back to finish without holding up the rest. Had I seen that, I could (and would) have waited and bought it on sale just a few months later for maybe 1/2 or even 1/3 price. Instead I'll have to decide whether to buy Nevada or not now. So I would say that I'm the one who got hung out to dry, not people who are still going to get Nevada on release. They're covered! I have no sympathy for them just because of a delay. I also preordered the MiG-21 via Indiegogo, although I admit I didn't think a year later it still wouldn't be out and the UH-1 (which wasn't even announced until much later) would beat it. Still, I'm confident it will come. I have no confidence in any others as of yet. No one is going to replace SF2 or DCS with Arma. It's great if you want to do a Falklands conflict based on the infantry side, with fighter support and all for immersion, but it's not going to be a decent representation of the air war. Not with Arma's stunted map sizes and limited draw distances (compared to other flight sims).

I heard this was like Air Force One but in the WH instead of on a plane. Except no Harrison Ford.

Can we get planes with frickin' laser beams yet?

That was a 747, no FBW there. This same thing happened a couple of times down here. One I remember vividly crashing just outside the airport perimeter west of MIA, I think it was 15 or so years ago? Another commercial cargo jet with a weight shift, nose high, stall, crash. That was a smaller twin jet, though, I forget which. Maybe a 767, maybe smaller.

It took me around 7 hrs to DL the patch.

Maybe the pilot held a picture of Muhammad up to the UAV's camera and it self-destructed in anger?

I will admit I always liked the 190A over the Dora. The Dora was a good interceptor, but sucked for AG work and I'm always up for some mud moving! However, the 51D was never really ideal for mud moving either, some opinions to the contrary. It's a good match for the 51D.

I believe that's jet kills, not props. #3 is wrong, they need a rocket to do it!! #5 is a non-issue. Israel has a west coast, but not an east one. To launch sats in the "right" direction the boosters would fall on inhabited countries, so they launch the other way. This does reduce the size of the sats they can launch for a given booster, though.

Sounds a little dated now, as it was written in the late 90s, but takes place in THEIR future which is now OUR past. Regardless of the book's details, though, the idea of a modern-day repeat of that conflict is certainly good fodder for an SF2 campaign.

Sounds good. Last thing we need is a 1.2.4 that breaks things working fine now, so a delay is perfectly acceptable. Impatience will not serve well here. If it's a case of holding up a patch because of something that's ALWAYS been buggy, might as well leave that fix for 1.2.5, because we're already dealing with it in 1.2.3 anyway, right? As long as it's better, I don't care if it's only 1% better and not 2% as planned. Just no new bugs!

After decades of simming with fixed sights in many sights, I'm more used to them as well. The only time it sucks is when you have a gun with very limited ammo (eg 37mm) and you don't have any to waste "walking" it to the target when range is uncertain.

Are they sure there wasn't a tiny pilot inside?

I'm pretty sure the A-10's FM was a LOT easier to make than its cockpit systems. It takes all of a couple of hours to learn to fly it, but you can't say that about learning to fight in it. I don't disagree the AFMs are nicer, I'm talking about systems modeling. For WWII birds there really isn't any systems modeling, but there's no way I can ever get a good WWII sim buying one plane at a time @$40+. You can sell additional planes like that maybe once you have a core set, but there needs to be a foundation. To buy the P-51...then later buy a FW190...then later buy a Spit...then later buy a 109...then later buy a P-47...each at $40+? Spending $200 over a few YEARS to get a WWII sim with 5 planes? Advanced modeling is well and good, but that cost to entry is too high. I wish the plan would be FC-level for a large number of planes with certain "stars" done to DCS level. That way we flesh out the theaters with a great set of planes in far less time and cost.

No Il-2-style "center to gunsight" option? I fly most of the time in Il-2 that way with the German birds. I'd rather be sitting to the side in the cockpit for T/O and landing and centered on the gun than vice versa.

Personally, I would've been thrilled had the 3rd parties ceded the "DCS" market to ED and stuck to making Flaming Cliffs-level aircraft. I know some of them are in fact doing that, such as the F-22 for one, but far too many seem to be jumping in head first to DCS and I think it will be a big problem for some of them with complex avionics. I'm not a DCS snob, I enjoy FC for what it offers, I don't demand every plane I fly to need 200 hrs of classroom instruction to fly effectively. The UH-1 I don't think will have that problem because its avionics were never complex, just the FM, it just has the same issue as the P-51D in being a platform looking for a mission and not the other way around. On the other side of the coin, the F-15E is going to fill a need in DCS, I know it will sell well. I'm presuming it will be the first true multirole plane for DCS World, but one of the others could easily beat it out of the gate...but that's what DCS World needs. We have great ground attack planes like the A-10 and Su-25, and great AA planes like Flankers, Eagles, and Fulcrums...but no swing role birds. F-15E, F/A-18, anything like that will sell like wildfire. The 190D is a great move, although I wish it was flyable. However, a WWII Flaming Cliffs featuring half a dozen flyable WWII birds at a lower fidelity than the P-51 would sell great IMO. Maybe P-47D, Bf109G, FW190A, F4U, Spitfire, and Typhoon? Or a similar distribution. Combined Arms I see as the foundation for something to come. I agree in its current state it's a bit limited, especially in SP.

That's because intelligence is not only not a prerequisite for holding high offices, it apparently is often considered a liability. For one, "smart" seems to all too often be stigmatized as "liberal intellectual elite" for some reason I've yet to figure out. Apparently the GOP ideal is rich and stupid? Like smart people can't make money, you have to be stupid to do it? Anyway, if the overwhelming majority of people in your area aren't liberal themselves, it's a black mark. Also, seeing as so many in office ARE idiots, they know putting a smart person in will make THEM look bad, so they're at least smart enough to try and keep the smart ones out. Don't want to blow the curve! That said, this was engineered from the beginning. The Constitution specifies a gov't that is both "by" and "of" the people, so if the people are stupid, the gov't MUST be. Otherwise, it's not representative, is it? The US is not a meritocracy. Well, politically. Business wise it is. Usually.

Ugh, Borowitz is exactly the Onion. Look at this one: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/04/no-information-found-on-cnn.html Obviously very tongue-in-cheek.

Try googling Glenn Beck. Read up on him, and you'll see it's not your English, you probably did understand him just fine. He went from being moderate right wing when he was on CNN (sensible) to WAY far right when he went to Fox to the point that they asked him to leave! I think there are some Republicans he even calls left wing socialists because they're not enough to the right for him.

Numerous SSE changes? What's SSE? I thought that was the old P4 command set Intel made. No idea what it refers to here.

The idea that it's ok to kill or maim others because you perceive your "way of life" is merely threatened needs to change.