JediMaster

I'm not getting in either, but there are a large number of possible reasons.

I'm sure Jason doesn't intend RoF to be the single product that 777 releases, so perception of the company is important above and beyond RoF's sales.

RoF went from being "that nice-looking WWI sim I'll never get" to "that WWI sim I'll get at some point when I have more time" due to the updates and positive attitude of 777. Now granted to them someone who says they won't buy is no different to someone who says they will because in both cases the product hasn't been bought, but I'm sure it's always better in the long run to have a potential customer that will talk kindly about your product to an avowed never-customer who talks down about it.

While I never recall seeing before that the original RoF business model was to be an MMO, and in fact I thought I saw an early interview pre-777's involvement denying it, many including myself did suspect it from the way things seemed to be setup. There was nothing wrong with that except perhaps that flight simmers and MMO players tend to overlap only slightly. I myself haven't played an MMO since WWII Online's debut in 2001! I played it for a few months while it was free and when it went pay-to-play I stopped because frankly the game wasn't up to par. Before that, I think Air Warrior was it for me!

So, it's good to see RoF is continuing to grow because the WWI market is pretty much a 2-horse show now with RoF on the "pro" side and OFF on the "amateur/mod" side. TK did FE and FE2, but it's obvious that's not his focus and I have doubts we'll see more in that area.

Wow, in just a week too. That really sucks.

So it's the Super Hornet's radar using the Golden Eagle dish...makes sense, allows economies of scale.

So, seeing as this patch seems to get things back on track, I wonder how long till the Tomcat struts its stuff? Exp 2, its mission builder, and the patches delayed it, but that's all over now so...

Other than its odd shape and the RAM coating, there was nothing spectacular about the 117. It was basically an F/A-18A without radar when it came to the avionics I think.

Of course, getting a sample of RAM and making it yourself are two different things. The bigger deal is getting a piece of it makes it easier to learn how to defeat it than to replicate it. However, since the 117 is out of service and I don't think any of the stealthy trio we'll have now (B-2, F-22, F-35) will use the same RAM, that info will prove rather low in value.

If anything, the interior of the 117 probably simply showed the Chinese how easy it is to make a stealth plane as long as you have no radar, low agility, and good RAM.

Somehow I missed this over the weekend. Oh well, too bad as I had some time then to do it, but I guess I'll have to look into it this week now!

For games it supports (I don't think it works on unsupported games), Xfire will take screenshots and videos in game. I've never tried the videos but the screenshots work fine.

And it's free without being trialware.

If that wasn't photoshopped then it was brilliant.

I preferred the limited war missions the most. The Cold war ones were also good, but the inability to attack anything but your main target, even fighters trying to shoot you down, was frustrating. The all-out war missions were fun at times, but lacked the tension of the limited war. Sneaking in watching that radar detection bar as you tried to "thread the needle" around ADA was so great.

I liked to sneak in, hit the target, and then when all the radars and fighters came looking for me, I'd use up all the rest of my weapons on anyone in the way!

Another interesting fact--F-19 was the last flight sim made where West and East Germany were CURRENT theaters, not historical.

Oh, how about flying off a carrier in the F-19? Or getting a gun kill on a MiG 6km away?

BTW, anyone play the sequel, F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0? Even though it had better graphics (true VGA), the correct plane, and more theaters (like Vietnam), it just never felt as impressive to me as F-19 did.

Still waiting for that demo/beta/whatever I get early access to as an owner of Borderlands...

The Russians may have had some real jerks as leaders, but the people have always been great.

I thought you wouldn't have any fingers left to give Apple after having to sell them all to pay for their products...

Well, the difference there is you can be stealthy OR you can carry a gun...not a great choice!

You want loud? Watch a shuttle launch from a couple of miles away.

I'm partial to the Blue Angels myself, even though I like the F-16 more than the Hornet...

North Cape FTW!!

I used to exit and reload missions until I got one attacking a Typhoon or a sub base because I loved those so much!

The other thing I loved that no modern sims have is the excellent debrief, showing you flying around the map with little pop ups of incidents like getting detected by radar, your firing of weapons, their firing at you, etc. The TW debriefs are that in paper form, but I liked seeing the "Indiana Jones" style line moving around the map!

Gobble my nuts!

When you look at that and you look at other planes that were NOT cancelled, it certainly smells weird. Of course, with the claim of state secrets preventing the release of other reasons, we'll never know. However, considering they didn't even have a plane flying yet it certainly never seemed like it had the chance, just that it was cancelled because in a post-Cold War era the price seemed too high just for the USN to get stealth.

Well, considering the advances in SAM ranges, the Taiwan Strait might be considered "SAM-infested hostile territory" very shortly.

Besides, our track record of figuring out where we will have our next conflict is pretty bad. Who in 1985 would've guessed we'd have a massive conventional war in Iraq in 6 yrs? Who in 1987 would've guessed combat in Somalia in 6 yrs? Who in 1992 would've guessed combat over the Balkans in 6 yrs? Who in 1995 would've guessed we'd be invading Afghanistan in 6 yrs? Who in 2003 would've guessed we still wouldn't have finished with neither Iraq nor Afghanistan in 6 yrs?

I'm not showing decades in the future scenarios here, I'm just talking 6 yrs, the length of time many people get for car loans now! Considering planes take 2 decades to get in service, the likelihood is you'll be in and out of a conflict you never predicted between first flight and IOC!

You don't buy F-22s to replace F-16s and A-10s and AV-8Bs. That's like replacing a fleet of Chevys with Lexus. The Chevy will get it done for less. The problem is they screwed up on how to get the Chevys built.

I concur that calling it Il-2 when there are ZERO Russian planes in it is the height of stupidity. SoW was much better even though I wasn't really a fan of that either.

Calling it Cliffs of Dover instead of BoB is fine, it conveys a similar if less accurate meaning.

You can fight it, Stary. Just remember one thing...you're not "smart enough" to beat it. You can't out-think it. You can't beat it, no one can. You'll never be "cured." You can't let your guard down and think "well, now it's ok" because you'll find yourself back at square one.

Realize that you will be involved in a struggle the rest of your life, but that you can persevere if you hold on to what that life means to you, and you will come out better for it.

LOL, I can just imagine small UAVs with MAD stings out the back, like a fleet of RC P-3's, flying over the battlefield and marking the location of tanks for destruction by PGMs...

The tanks would have to keep moving to avoid that, and something tells me that would instantly defeat this camo...tanks kick up a lot of dust and stuff that is easily seen.

There's really only one thing to consider...at what range can you attack the enemy vs the range he can attack you? What range you "see" each other at is irrelevant if you can't do anything about it.

The 120D is supposed to have significantly better range than the 120A/B/C did, and they're supposedly working on an even longer-range version. If the F-15 doesn't enter range of the attacking stealth plane until after that plane has already been able to fire on the F-15, what does it matter? The F-15 won't be able to hide from the attacker, between its non-stealthy powerplant faces in the middle of giant intakes and large fins, so it has to rely on being able to take them down first.

If anyone here read Debt of Honor, there was a great chapter in there where F-15s and F-22s did a neat deception with the F-22s hiding amongst the 15s and then breaking off and coming around from another direction to take down the AWACS and other forces in the rear while the Eagles provided a big "here we are" diversion.

Again, though, fighters don't operate in a vacuum. Sure, in the middle of the ocean the non-stealthy plane may appear equal to the stealthy one, but near enemy ground forces the nonstealth one has to worry about SAMs as well. So our F-15s are dodging SAMs AND enemy stealth fighters, while the enemy stealth fighters only have to worry about the F-15 getting too close...sounds like a recipe for disaster for the Eagle.

The problem is the materials needed for flight at that speed in atmo aren't cheap or easy to make. For a small missile it's one thing, for a manned plane that doesn't cook the people inside it's a whole other ballgame.