JediMaster

I decided to stay 32-bit this upgrade round. There's really not enough native 64-bit stuff for it to be important, and I'm only losing about 500MB of my 4GB of RAM. I also run a lot of older programs and I just figured I didn't want to deal with the hassle.

Come Windows 8 or whatever MS calls it, that's when I'll take the 64-bit plunge and will likely get more than 4GB of RAM.

Anyone remember Origin's lone historical period sim, Wings of Glory? It was Wing Commander in WWI.

The flying was great, it was the first sim I remember which had the straining wood and fabric sounds of the plane when you pulled g's, you had incendiary ammo that was great at starting fires and jammed the guns a lot, and between missions it really captured that aerodrome feel better than RB ever did.

Its failing was the missions were designed like you were still flying Wing Commander! First waypoint, 3 enemy fighters. Second waypoint, 3 enemy fighters. Third waypoint, Zeppelin...escorted by at least 3 enemy fighters. Time to go home? You'll have to fight at least 3 more enemy fighters to get there! In a space fighter with recharging lasers and shields you can do that...in a Camel you can NOT. I was always running out of ammo during the Zeppelin attack and having no way to defend myself to get home...

Actually, bagels have long since replaced donuts for cops. Less sugar!

"Everything's free in America, for a small fee in America..."

It can do both at once!

It's a direct threat to NK, but a reminder to China.

I'll grant the 90s sims had a feel to them outside of the cockpits that current sims lack. The in-cockpit experience has overall improved (with specific exceptions) but instead of feeling like a pilot at a base in between those missions you feel like...a shlub sitting at his computer.

The Russian sims from ED and Oleg are extreme examples of that. TK's sims at least have the hangar screen which makes an attempt, but he's a small operation and really couldn't spend more resources on that.

Some classics for the "out of plane" experience were F-15 SE 3, Longbow 1 and 2 (which had the best tutorials ever in a sim), and a WWII one that I can't recall the name of now but I can still remember the screens!

They've had solar-powered planes before, many times. The trick was getting one that could have batteries strong enough and charged enough at nightfall to last until sunrise. In the past, the solar cells didn't contribute enough and the batteries wouldn't make it thru the night.

I recently replayed the first DE and loved it. I tried to replay the 2nd (I played it on release) and was unable to spend more than an hour on it before I just got bored.

The story was uninspiring, the level design was uninteresting (and tiny to accomodate the cross platform Xbox release), the graphics were low-res and poor (ditto Xbox, although a 3rd party texture mod helped)...

In fact, the ONLY area in which it surpassed the original was in having a modicum of realistic physics although quite wrong at times, and that the models had higher polygon counts so that everyone didn't have cubes for heads. In fact, DE was behind all of its contemporaries graphically, but after 10 minutes you just forgot about that.

Frankly, I think FPS games are "good enough" now in that area. Crysis is 3 years old and still looks awesome. They need to spend more time on GAMEPLAY like story and combat and a living world and less on the latest buzzword technical aspect.

I find that extremely easy, myself! This is why child acting is so bad because too often they grow up to be asses. Of course, in this case the parents are just as bad and I think her life would've been largely the same just without the money and fame. Still would've been in jail and rehab...

I always thought having a mullet should be a capital offense, instant execution. That would've taken out Billy Ray Cyrus years ago so we wouldn't be subjected to his lousy daughter's singing NOW.

Except for the dew off of leaves and grubs from the ground bits...

The experience depends a lot on the mission designers/scripting. So far the campaign in OA is the best since the original OFP's (well, and its Resistance addon), but I'm still early in it.

The campaign in Arma1 was pretty lame, the Queen's Gambit addon campaigns being quite a bit better. Arma2's campaign was a little meandering, hurt by scripting issues/broken triggers that I understand may have been fixed in the 1.07 patch, but I've yet to try to finish it since I got stuck just past half way several months back.

MP is dedicated or local servers, whichever you'd prefer.

There is nothing like MP combined ops in Arma...inserting via UH-60s or CH-47s, watching AH-1s or AH-64s taking out tanks threatening you on the ground while YOU take out Shilkas and MANPADs threatening the helos, an A-10 making an occasional missile and/or strafing pass, then having your armor come over the ridge and start blasting away at the enemy infantry is just the ultimate thrill.

I can't make out a thing on this!

That's because it's the coffee machine, sir. THIS is the radar.

I know that! I always have coffee while I'm watching radar!

The Origin "Commander" series of games had you doing stuff like that between missions. In fact, Wing Commander had you on a carrier...in space, but a carrier! As for the FPS when not in the cockpit, JSF even gave you a pistol with a few rounds (DCS doesn't). I think the Battlecruiser 3000 series which has become Ultimate Combat or something now offered space ships and FPS as well?

Anyway, the best hope now is to mod a game like Arma into having more realistic flight stuff as there's no way to tack FPS onto a flight sim later.

Awesome but for the choice of song. I am so sick of her and her annoying voice! Argh!!

Only one man would dare give ME the rasberry!!

No, no, no! It's the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator!

Only silly Earthlings would try and use something as weak as plutonium...

I play Arma2 and OA all the time MP. There are TONS of mods for it. OFP only had more because it was all we had for years and years. They finally got moving again and released Arma, Arma2, and now OA at a more regular pace.

Depends on what you're looking for. If you played/enjoyed OFP 1 or Arma 1/2, a definite YES. I leave out OFP 2 as that is more like GRAW than OFP/Arma.

The thermal sights are excellent. If it's a couple guys sitting in a stationary vehicle, they're bright and the vehicle is black. If the thing starts moving, you'll see the engine area glow as well as the crew, but the rest is dark. After it's been going awhile, the whole thing will show up bright.

All in all, it's an incremental improvement on the series, but it IS an improvement. Only the framerates are worse, and after a patch or two I'm sure they'll have those going better.

FWIW, BB.com lists the first RoF release only, not ICE, and it's listed as "online only" anyway, so they don't stock it on the sheves there.

Well, when inexperienced riders are on the horse you ALWAYS tell them to use both hands.

I also think there's a difference because the Western saddle was designed for long-term occupation while the English one was more short-term, hence its usage in competitions and running and so on.

That saddle horn also makes a convenient place to anchor your rope when hog-tying.

I first saw Troops years ago and thought it was just brilliant. I think the one guy who did a trooper voice was also the voice of one of the Warner Bros in Animaniacs?

Oh, now I see it has a movable-LERX like the Sukhoi Pak-FA instead of a separate canard. You can definitely tell the landing gear is bigger, like when the YF-17 became the F/A-18.

No folding wings? Is the span that short, like an A-4? I know the carrier isn't all that big, but the LCA is a lot smaller than the Flanker which it could hold when folded.

Did you check Gogamer, Falcon? I'm pretty sure they always have it.