JediMaster

So, does this mean the ThirdWire site will be down tomorrow AM and no one should freak out because of it?

One thing my wife and I learned the hard way--just as much as asking for too much can get you dropped, asking for too little means you can get hired and underpaid! After all, why pay you more if you're willing to work for less?

Best to leave it unsaid!

Her suffering finally ended. She'd been declining for some time now.

The reversal of the wheelie is quite funny to cover up their continuity mistake in DaF, actually. It's amazing comparing Vegas then with now, too.

I know the first was called F-19 Stealth Fighter on the PC, I think it might have had a different name on other platforms. Yeah, "threading the needle" around radar detection circles, trying to evade the fighter patrol... The limited war was the best of the 3 ROEs (along with Cold War "don't shoot anything" and All-out War "kill em all") as you'd sneak to your target, blow it up, then bolt and try and hide while the hornet's nest you stirred up behind you tried to find you...

The carrier ops was fictional, but it was fun. In fact, it was one of the most fun flight sims I ever had. I spent more time on F-19 in the 4 or so years I played it than I have on Falcon 4 in the decade since it came out! I only stopped playing F-19 because it got so dated and sims like Falcon 3 and the Aces series eclipsed it.

I think the only modern bomber I ever enjoyed flying was the B-1...dropping all those Mk82s on an airbase and leveling it just rocks! I've flown a lot of the WWII bombers over the years, though, including a lot of time in MPS' old B-17 (not B-17 II in 2000 which I never got).

Oh, RB2 most certainly was a mess when it came out, but you could see what they attempted to get done. It took till the mega patch/rerelease as RB3D to make it the classic by fixing everything, yes, but all the pieces were there.

My issue with RoF is that in the interest of generating a continual revenue stream they seem to have underdeveloped the initial release. I doubt Quake 3 would've been a mega hit if it had released with 1 player model carrying either a pistol or shotgun and 2 maps!

I think a game should be complete on release, and if they want to release more stuff later in the form of extra planes, theaters/terrains, etc, that's fine. It shouldn't look like it needs it, though, and that's what the case is here. I think 4 flyable planes is the minimum number a WWI sim should have, 2 per side. This seems to me more like an attempt to be the iRacing of the flight sim world, and I neither want nor need such a thing and I know many others who feel the same way.

I'm reminded of a bit they did on Mystery Science Theater 3000 back in the day, with the Mad Scientist's invention of "Johnny Long Torso--the action figure that is himself sold separately!" You start with the Action Torso, then you get the Action Head and Left and Right Arm and Left and Right Leg expansion packs (only $9.99 each). Then you get the Action Hands (left and right) and Action Feet (left and right) accessories (just $4.99 each!), the Ears Combo pack, the Action Eyes expansion... "Sold in one piece, this toy would go for $15, but sold this way he can cost up to hundreds of dollars!!"

Ouch. Sounds like the plot to a crappy reality show "We replaced their cruise vacation with a stay in Weston FL! Let's watch!"

There was talk of a tilt wing/rotor-type C-130 sized plane, looking like a cross between a C-130 and a V-22 with 4 rotors/engines...2 on the front wing, 2 on the rear wing. Doubt anything will come of it.

I remember when MPS released their updated version of F-19 Stealth Fighter, F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0, which gave you the chance to fly the "real" Lockheed F-117 with 2 bays, no gun, radar, AAMs, or AB, and uber stealth. Compared to the "MPS" version with 4 bays and all that other stuff it was boring. The enemy NEVER saw you, all you could do was drop LGBs and go home... I went right back to the less stealthy but more entertaining fictional variant.

I haven't been there in a long time, I don't recall when. So no, I don't recall if that was there or elsewhere.

What, you don't like the Sat nite races?!?!

Unfortunately that's not a "real world" test. The tests I saw were done on laptops running on battery power with both standard HDDs and SSDs performing a variety of tasks. In every case the SSD-equipped laptops ate up the batteries faster than the HDD-equipped ones. Depending on the drive brand some were slight, like 30 mins, but some were actually severe with like 90 mins less time.

Now I don't know if this was a hardware or software defeciency that improved drive controllers or drivers would alleviate. The given explanation was that the SSDs in the test were unable to just activate that portion of the memory where the data needed was located and had to activate the whole thing during that request. This test was done about a year ago, however, and it's possible these listed drives have indeed solved that particular problem, but I know in 2007/8 it was a real issue.

I can only compare it to one thing: Back 2 Baghdad, an old F-16 sim released in the mid 90s.

It was the most accurate F-16 sim ever made, some argue even more than F4 which came some years later. I don't know if the latest Free Falcons and whatnot have made them more accurate or not, but in the 90s B2B was as real as it got. It also had a premium price. I can't remember now if it was $100 or what, but whatever it was it cost 2x the average sim of the time.

If you wanted to experience taking off, flying, landing, and shooting weapons in an F-16, B2B was tops.

Unfortunately, they neglected the rest of the sim. Terrain bordered on poor for the day, AI was almost nonexistent, and mission/campaign options were anemic. Some people raved about how great the F-16 was, and how you couldn't experience it on the home PC any better.

The game flopped hard. People didn't want a faux MSFS with an F-16 with working weapons. It was a good flight sim, but not a good combat sim.

My definition of "great" means the entire package. Very few flight sims have managed it. Red Baron 2/3D, Falcon, Longbow... those were "great."

Far more common are the ones that have some aspects perfect but miss the mark in other areas to the extent that people continue to complain about those particular failings years later, despite the games' success. Things like solo play in Il-2, multiplay and terrain in TK's sims, campaigns in ED's sims, etc. Il-2 survived because of the online MP side. TK's survived because of the open modding. ED's with good AI and modeling.

They are good, don't mistake me, but they're not "great".

It sounds like RoF is the perfect game to experience WWI dogfighting action for those 2 planes, where you take off, fly around, shoot and get shot at, and land. It doesn't sound like it's even coming close to achieving what RB2 did over 10 years ago, given the technical limits of the time, with regards to making you feel like a pilot in the war.

To put it another way, when I go to buy a car, just because the engine gets great mileage and it handles like a dream I'm not going to get it if the tires are cheap, the interior looks like an arts and crafts project by a kindergarten class, and the thing is beset with rust. I'm willing to accept a reduction in some of the "excellent" qualities to improve the "acceptable" or even "lame" parts.

Sorry, decent TV costs $$ and cuts into their profit line, so PFFFFT!!! on that...

I haven't visited there in literally years. I think the last time was shortly after F4:AF's release. I found the place unpleasant, filled with wannabe's (easily spotted as those who indignantly claim F4 isn't a game, but a sim, because I guess they're too good to play a game) who enjoy pouncing on anyone who isn't as obsessed with F4 as they are. I don't know why that attitude is allowed to prevail because it discourages newcomers, but it's their site and if they want to alienate all but the hardcore, that's fine.

I guess they don't picture doing strafing runs much anymore.

Yes, but what about your CPU? You can put the suspension from a Ferrari into a VW and you're not going to get a VW that drives like a Ferrari, just a slightly better VW.

To be accurate, the good OS were 95B, 98SE, and XP SP2. I also ran the original releases of 95 and 98 and XP (then SP1) and all of them were BSOD city. I never saw a reason to run 2k at home and ME was just worthy of laughter.

Well, if they follow industry practice in a year or so we'll see compilation editions with more planes and features than it has now for the same or lower price as the release.

The only TK sim I didn't buy on release WAS First Eagles because it only had 3 planes! I felt the price was too high for that. When I saw it at GoGamer I think for $20, I picked it up. I bought the expansion pack on release, though, because it had MORE than the release game (including the necessary Camels and Dr.I) and I felt it was worth that price.

I don't doubt they've got the foundation for a great sim here, I just doubt the sim as currently available is great.

BIS has become notorious for needing at least 5 patches to get the game in the state it should have been at release. That's why I'm waiting for now, although I'm considering getting it in time for SimHQ's July 4th game.

I'm waiting for them to get at least one more generation down before I try one. Price should drop further and performance should increase. I've heard they're not as good for laptops right now as you might think because they actually take more power than a standard HDD. After decades of work, they know how to make an HDD use the bare minimum of power necessary to work in a given situation. The issue with an SSD is the entire thing runs on binary power, it's either ON or OFF. So anytime you access the drive for the slightest thing it uses as much power as booting or loading a program or even watching a video stored on it.

I think hybrid drives might be the future, with large multi-GB caches for the boot/system side and the rest a standard spinning platter.

My 2003 4Runner is running great, almost have 50k miles on it and other than some scratches/nicks in the paint and that gritty wear on the windshield it still works like the day I got it.

I won't see it till Saturday, when I plan on heading in right after lunch!

Yes, but there's no camera in the world that will let you get a clear picture of a watch right in front of the camera and a distant vista in focus at the same time. The pictures were obviously not all taken by the same camera.

However, they are astonishingly clear and provide an important narrative.

Weston?? Good god, man, what were you doing there?? Aren't there enough overpriced overhyped cesspools of wannabe-snobs in Mass??

That would be a great trick as UPN went off the air a few years ago.