JediMaster

Have you considered consolidating this into story form? Alternate WWII history scenarios are very popular reading.

You could call it "the novelization of the sim".

I work in IT, and there are some software programs that would make our jobs 10x easier and websites with resources that would make it 50x easier...we're not allowed access to either because they're "not authorized". Instead, we either should simply explain to the user they're screwed and wipe and reload the system or make them keep using it broke.

You've got a PCI express slot, but I don't know how powerful your PSU is which will likely be the limiting factor on how powerful a video card you can get. The fact that it's MicroATX suggests a small case as well.

I'd say any second-line card should do okay, no point in a top-end card as your CPU and PSU won't use it to its max potential. Something like a Geforce 9600/9800 or Radeon 4670/4770/3850, around that range, should do you well.

I've always been partial to Raging Rudolph.

Thumbs down on the half-hearted paint job!!

The C-27J and C-130J use the same engines at least, I don't recall offhand what other pieces they may share.

That's been an issue since...almost the beginning. I think it was the patch before the expansion came out that broke that and it's been broken ever since.

When the last FE patch didn't fix it, I just forgot about the SE-5 in MP. You can fly against it as long as no human player tries to use it, of course.

Of course, as MP won't work for Vista and Win 7, and TK has switched to the 2nd gen engine (without MP), I think it was at the bottom of his fix list and will never be.

Well, I didn't just want to say "AI cheats!!"...even though it does.

I know a lot of people bashed FC2, but I thought it was pretty good. It wasn't the revolution the first FC was, but it was a decent open-world FPS with a few flaws like the respawning checkpoints marring it.

Well it's done for 2009, we'll see how things fare in 2010!

I've been using it for flying everything, from prop to jet to helo, since I got my FLCS/TQS combo almost 15 years ago (never got the old TM WCS which preceded it).

You won't need to program much for the old crates, but I still have things like flaps, wingman commands, gear, tailwheel locking, etc mapped to it because frankly reaching to the keyboard is far less comfortable/easy for me than it was for the pilots in those birds to reach the real switches. Of course, in the modern jets/helos I still have to just because quite frankly I can't memorize 3 functions for every button and hat!

For one thing, costs are far higher here. By making the gov't pay to cover all these people, well, the money has to come from somewhere, so that means it comes from the taxpayers. Our gov't is so inefficient and poor at running things thanks to tons of bureaucracy and stupid laws quietly passed by special interest groups that we have no confidence in their running this well.

It's sort of like the difference between starving or having just horse manure to eat. Neither option is appealing! The problem is neither side seems really eager to tackle the main problem--skyrocketing costs. If it was cheaper, a lot more people could afford it and those (far fewer) who couldn't could be more easily covered by the gov't...for less!

So instead of tackling the root of the problem, we have them bickering over a bandaid that will likely not solve anything, but whatever it MAY solve will be offset by the NEW problems it causes. As it is we can't afford what we're doing, and Medicare is a program that only still exists because of the laws that say doctors and hospitals can't refuse it. Medicare pays them a fraction of the real costs, so what does that mean? It means they have to charge everyone who's NOT on it far more to compensate.

Neither hospitals nor doctors are getting rich (other than a few surgeons), the lawyers are. Even the lambasted health insurance companies aren't making that much. Percentage-wise their profits are in line with many other industries and actually far less than you might think. I think Tupperware makes more profit!

Malpractice insurance is a major cost factor but it's not being considered in these debates at all.

I bet no one in Europe can retire on the money they get from a malpractice suit for the death of a spouse, can they? You can here, if your lawyer is good and the evidence is strong. Sorry for your suffering, pal, but just because a HUMAN error was made you don't deserve to live well for the rest of your life without working while the rest of us foot the bill in higher insurance payments, taxes, and bills.

Nice to see the Tomcat get its own holiday, even if the name is unflattering.

I thought it was supposed to be LazerCatz?

It disturbs me greatly when people are only willing to laugh at one side and not the other. That is the blind vision of the fanatic and it deserves to be exterminated.

If you're looking for a HOTAS that's not as much as the G940, I think you're in Saitek territory. The X52 or X52 Pro, I forget which, is about half the price of the G940 or comparable setups from TM or CH. You can look them up around the net and see. Not everyone likes their feel, but enough people obviously do!

It's doing it because of that wacky nonstandard URL. Commas and periods? Their IT department should all be forced to play My Little Pony Island Adventure for 100 hours straight.

I dislike everything on that list!

For full disclosure, I also dislike about 85% of the menu at any restaurant I go to, so...

I've heard nothing, but I'm pretty sure FE2 is coming next, before anything else.

A city-wide spaceship over the stadium!?!?!?

This is for show. There's no way Russia will spend close to $1 billion for a Western naval vessel when they can/did build their own. A smaller vessel perhaps, but this costs way too much and is far too visible for it not to have negative repercussions on the home front.

This is just like the mentioned exercises with Venezuela...letting the world know they still have the will.

Falcon is 1998 and Il-2 is 2001 while LOMAC was 2003.

DCS:BS is newer but still looks a few years old. Birds of Prey took the Il-2 engine to the next level and looks great, while Storm of War should blow everything out there away.

Transformers' changes are easy to explain...the original paid no mind to things like physics. The movies attempted to. That's why you don't see Megatron turning into a gun that Starscream can fire, and it's why Optimus changed...so he would be big. If they made him out of the original truck design he would either be much smaller or the truck itself would need to be absurdly large.

Besides, when people complain about things like that or the omission of Tom Bombadil from Fellowship of the Ring, they only prove they care more about details than the final result. In other words, the film world's version of rivet counters. There are so many other things to complain about that are legitimately wrong, like story or character, don't pick the irrelevant stuff or you risk your arguments being dismissed as nitpicking.

Take Dune. Almost everyone liked the 1980s film more than the 2000 miniseries, but the film was wrong in 10x more ways than the miniseries. It was more accurate, but it was still a lesser effort.

Well, one is a skit, the other is clever editing and graphics which was unique for SNL.

Dune may be DOA, so don't worry too much about that. Ditto the Bioshock movie.