JediMaster

In Homefront it was a trick/forcible reunification, mentioned in the opening cinematic, that gave them the access to the South's economy fueling their power rise as they tried to make the idea of N Korea being able to invade the US sound NOT laughable.

We are not the Judean People's Front! We are the People's Front of Judea!

Sweet!

Use lots of misspellings, SMS abbreviations, and be rude. You'll get results!

Carrying 50+ Mk82s means never having to aim well.

Ah. So the L is a C upgraded to almost being an E/F. Kind of like a Euro MLU F-16 is almost an F-16C. Except those were frontline for their countries, and this was pretty much only reserve.

pssssst...... I can see the strings Just FYI

Flankers and Frogfoots and Fulcrums, oh my!

For the same reason Homefront switched the enemies from China to N Korea...N Korea doesn't buy crap from us, and we don't buy crap from them. China is a BIG market, and not only do they hope to sell these things there, they also don't want to offend Chinese authorities and risk their other products being cut off. In short, it's 100% business-related concerns. If it means they won't be able to make a buck off/in China, they won't do it. Gaining a small percentage of customers here will NOT offset the Chinese market, not even close.

There have always been issues with things in the cockpit when switching from internal to external view, time skip, time compress, etc. You usually can clear it up by cycling the views or affected systems. One that always bugged me was selecting a weapon to use (ie Mk82s) on ingress, getting to the target area, using ECM/chaff/flares, finally getting over target, press button...and nothing. Cycle to guns and back to bombs, press button, bomb away? It's like master arm turns itself off after awhile. Switching to another weapon, AG or AA, and back will then fix it. I gave up waiting for a fix for that sometime in 2007 I think.

Also keep in mind that screen is much lower res so it's easier to fudge detail, even given the lower power of the CPU and GPU.

Be aware that MS officially dropped support of the gameport as of Windows Vista. Naturally 7 and 8 don't either. While you CAN get one working it's VERY difficult and largely depends on the hardware ie is it on the motherboard, a sound card, or a separate card? It's pretty much a USB world now for joysticks.

They'll likely be flown by top pilots with lots of experience, not trainees. They'll be deadly in the scenarios they use them in, even though they'd be of questionable use in actual combat.

Well, if it's $50 to start (for the software and first month) and then something like $15/month after it would be like iRacing with planes which IMO seems to be the direction they're looking to go. It's unclear if you also need to buy a copy of FSX first or if that's included in the $50. I'm unemployed right now, so I won't be trying it at any rate, and I'm all about the combat anyway. Training holds little appeal to me. I DL'd the NW Range for SF years ago and spent maybe 30 mins on it!

Ok, so it does seem like quite simply TK isn't seriously looking beyond what he's doing right now. He's committed to that and spends little time on out-year planning. That's fine, he's got stuff to do for now. Modders simply have to gamble. As for why he thinks a feature will cost more than some of us do, my guess is he HAS planned those features out already. He figured what he wanted to do to achieve it and then how much it would cost. Some of us might have thought of a "simpler" way that may or may not be cheaper or feasible, but I think after all this time we should recognize that while TK may listen to our suggestions for features, he doesn't listen as to the method of including those features we suggest. His plan says "X costs $Y" because that's how he'd do it, and while we might think "but if you do Z to implement X it will cost only 10% of $Y!" he's tuning that out. It's hard to argue with success. Maybe it's not a runaway success, but it has been succeeding enough for now that it makes sense he wouldn't listen to others advice when doing it HIS way has enabled him to carry on. So all we can really do is vote with our wallets. If the product is a good value to us, we should get it. If not, skip it. I WILL comment that I hope NA isn't a sign of the new direction his releases will take. Previous titles featured multiple flyables, some unique to that one (F-16 in Israel for example) and others appearing elsewhere (like F-4E). NA only gave us ONE new flyable (granted it was more than just an earlier/later model of an existing plane) and just one previously released flyable, if you install it alone, with a new terrain (and the new naval features). The 2 expansions offered more new planes (albeit using existing terrains)! The previous titles generally were 6-8 flyables + a terrain. If current economics mean TK will be releasing an expansion as 2 flyables + some AI on an existing terrain, and a new title is 2 flyables + some AI on a new terrain, that's not looking so good. How can there be a Korean War game with that model? We'd get the Korean terrain, a flyable F-86 and P-51 and some AI friendlies, MiGs, and Yaks? Oh, I suppose we'd have the FJ-2 one, too, flying off a carrier? I'm sorry but that sounds anemic to me. I hope I'm wrong about that, but unlike NA and the others Korea wouldn't merge well. Sure we could use the terrain with more recent planes for later scenarios like the USS Pueblo, but few existing planes will work then. Most of the ones for Exp 1 would be too old, the jets are all too new. He'd have to make at least 6 flyables IMO to make it worthwhile.

Yes, but other sims out the same year (SWOTL) were still using sprites! The failure of F4 to come out when it was first supposed to (late 95/early 96) and getting pushed back did allow for 3D tech to get in there, but frankly that should've been Falcon 5 by then. It would've been 3 years after F4, if that had come out four years after F3. Of course, you could argue F4 didn't REALLY come out till the end of 99 when the 1.08i patch was released, as that's when the development actually stopped.

SF2:NA is one of the most interesting, but as it only offers 2 flyables (F-14 and A-7) I'd not recommend it as a first purchase. Definitely 2nd, though. The others have given good ideas on where to go as far as what interests you most (Vietnam, WWIII, Arab-Israeli), and I will echo the idea that SF2 itself is only interesting as a part of the larger whole, I never felt it stood alone all that well.

One thing to consider about that DCS MiG-21 being made. He's not starting from scratch. Go on over to lockonfiles.com and you'll see about a year ago his most recent version for Flaming Cliffs2 was released. For free, yes, but the point is the leg work is done. He's got a cockpit and 3D model, weapons, all that. He asked for another $13k to get the plane refined and updated to DCS levels. REFINED, not built from scratch to DCS levels. And he lives somewhere in Eastern Europe, I forget where exactly, where his costs aren't as high as someone in TX, that's for certain. So yeah, I guess it costs money. The exception I suppose would be an out-of-work modder living in a relative's basement with little in the way of costs who could probably do it cheaper, but how many of those are there? And Dan, we all knew that's what's being worked on now, that wasn't the question. That's concrete, even if release dates or exact details aren't. The point is...and then? Once the mobile game and Exp 3 are done, with the DLC sprinkled around, where is he going? Is the open nature of it going to be scaled back farther and farther, with the DLC turning into "TW released mods" as the only option? Modders don't want to work on something for a year or more, release it, and 2 weeks later have a patch come out that not only breaks the mod but means it will NEVER work again because such-and-such has been cut off. If that's what's going to happen, say it now so the modders don't spin their wheels for nothing. They'll be a lot more upset if it's presented as a fait accompli with the September patch for example as opposed to being told TODAY "modders will lose access to XYZ". They'll be upset today, yes, but far less than in September! Granting that we don't know what sales Exp 3 or the DLC will have, but hypothetically assuming they'll be on par with the previous ones, where is he going from there? An "SF3" seems ludicrous, as other than Exp 2 and NA there's been no new content for SF2, just SF1 stuff ported over, so it's apparent the time has come to leverage that work, not (hopefully) to toss it aside and once again start porting it all over. So we're anticipating that he's going to release new planes/theaters for SF2, pretty obvious thing to assume. He's mooted a Korean War-era title for some time, will that be first up AFTER Exp 3 and the mobile? Will he go for Exp 4, for NA or Vietnam perhaps (since Israel and Europe got 1 each)? Will there be another full title like NA but differing from the Korean War? Or is it simply "don't know"? If he simply has his sights set on the triad of Exp 3, DLC, and the mobile version, and hasn't seriously planned beyond that since it's going to take the rest of this year say, that's fine. He could just say "no plans set" or "always in motion is the future" or whatever. Perhaps that invites lots of unwanted suggestions he'd rather avoid, I don't know, but in this era it's common for customers to hope their wish lists are taken into consideration.

Exactly. Unless it's a plane that's been done only approximately because it needed coding changes and he can deliver it more accurately than what the modders have to cobble together (like the F-14's multi lock, for example...although the A-6E's systems cry out for it but he's shown little interest in planes that can't fight A2A), whether a given plane is needed or not is purely subjective. There are some pretty old planes first made for SFP1 that were never revisited because the modder left and no one else bothered because it DID exist that could use some attention, but I don't recall any offhand. People really wanted the F-102 and F-106...well we have them now after a long wait, so no big rush.

The costs idea is relative. So far, UAVs have an appalling amount of attrition. Outside combat losses, which aren't all that different so far, they're being lost on t/o, landing, and to general technical issues (like the one over Iran) that manned planes don't suffer from. What good will it be if the UAVs cost half as much but we lose 3 times as many? The Global Hawk Blk 30 was canned because of 2 reasons: it wasn't better than the U-2, and in fact was possibly inferior; and it cost a LOT more than it was supposed to. Stealthy UAVs will always be expensive because stealth is, and I don't think they're good enough at keeping themselves intact yet. Sure you can make swarms of the cheap ones, and in fact they are, but they have their own limitations. They don't go as far, they can't do as much, and you're always losing them in droves so you never stop building them. Also, there's no secret. We send a few dozen Predators into Iran and there's no hiding it. UAVs have their place, but I don't think we're even close to their place being "totally replacing manned aircraft". The software is not good enough yet, not by half.

It can't be moddable. Number of Players: 1 - MMOG It's online, which means everyone has to have the same setup. There's also this: Sign up for an account today and get FREE TRAINING and Fly for ONE MONTH FREE. Oooh, the excitement that did NOT generate in me. As for realism, who can say. It might, but there's others like Aces High and Warbirds still out there, isn't there?

Real Genius was the 2nd film I saw him in, but granted it was great. The first was Top Secret! from the makers of Airplane! and Kentucky Fried Movie. That was a great film too.

The rover has reported an appalling lack of cell signal. "Like downtown NYC" it said.

I'm beginning to think TK doesn't WANT to get any bigger. Yes he's hoping to bring home more money with this, but I don't think his "dream" is a Thirdwire in TX the size of ED or 777 or anywhere CLOSE. When he says "don't have the resources" he's not saying "if we sold more we could", he's saying "I don't think that will ever happen". It's easier to blame money because everyone gets that, but I think he likes his job being his business and vice versa and controlling everything himself. So when he says "no", it means it would take him so long to do he'd not be able to release anything else in the meantime, the cash influx would slow, and he'd go broke. Unless SF2 sells like Minecraft or Doom and makes him rich overnight, no normal increase in sales from any of his programs are going to sway him. TK seems to like where he is now, whether consciously or unconsciously, and I don't think we're going to see an SF2 or SF3 heading towards LOMAC levels, let alone DCS. He'll continue to throw little things in as time goes on (like TWS radar) while at the same time slowly locking away what can be accessed (because he's realized he can sell mods for his own game), but if there's an SF4 that is released in 2020 for example, it will be closer to what SFP1 was on day 1 than LOMAC was on day 1. Because that's what TK wants, and no one can make him do different. Let him sell all the mobile games he wants and make the money. If I was him, I would. I wonder if he can get it running on iOS if that means he could get it onto Macs? Not that it's a big market, but it would likely sell well given how few sims there are for Macs.

Nope, but I have them in SF2 already anyway, so whether those come along or not is no big deal to me. Of course, at this point pretty much ANY plane TK would find popular enough to do has been done by 3rd parties, so... I think the only one I can imagine that I don't have is the failed Boeing JSF submission!