JediMaster

PCI E 2.0 cards will work on PCI E 1 mobos, the interface is just a bit slower. The 2.0 card simply runs slower than optimal, otherwise fully backwards compatible.

If you're willing to spend $250, go for a GTX 260. Of course, you need to have a minimum 500w PSU for that, so check what you have first. Sites like Newegg list the recommended PSU ratings for most of the video cards they sell under the specs tab.

E-machines were the PCs stacked in the aisle at Walmart for $350.

Then Gateway bought them and it was only downhill after that!

The moral of this story--make scientists happy, not mad. Don't go around pissing them off.

The T-6 is a modified Pilatus design.

Looks like textures are on a low setting to me. If your PC can handle it, try increasing their quality.

Enterprise's final season was excellent. Too bad the earlier ones had already killed its ratings so it died.

Well I watched them all last night.

The Land of the Lost film is a lot bigger budget than I was expecting.

GI Joe may be worthy, hard to know yet.

Transformers 2 should be good.

Star Trek looks good.

PH has some great battle scenes. It's worth watching about 45 mins of the film.

There is a new longer-range version of the Slammer in development, no idea when it will be in use though.

I don't know if anyone remembers, but the F-14 WAS supposed to be replaced by the NATF, which in theory was supposed to be a naval development of the winner of the ATF competition (which was the YF-22). I suppose there's a chance they might have gone with the YF-23 (like what happened with picking the losing YF-17 over 30 years ago), but I don't know if that was ever in the cards.

However, the 90s budget drawdown and impending retirements of the A-6 and A-7 fleets compelled them to go with the Super Hornet, which also wound up replacing the F-14s so they didn't have the money/will to go for a true successor.

I have absoultely no memory of how or why I arrived here when it was Biohaz. I used to pop in now and again, but I was far more a SimHQ guy.

I remember I won a copy of Dangerous Waters when it came out, and that sort of "bought" my loyalty to visit more often.

I have to see all those trailers still. GI Joe is done by the same guy who did Mummy 1 and 2 and Van Helsing, so it could go either way.

I see no reason to pick one or the other, it's not like anything stops you from watching both.

My shelves are full of DVDs of ST (movies and TOS), SW (all the movies), B5 (all of it), Firefly (all the little that was made), Terminator (all 3), Predator, Alien (all but AvP2), and so on.

None are perfect, all have flaws. What I find humorous is people putting down franchise A for flaws 1-10 while not acknowledging that franchise B's flaws 11-20 are just as great. Ratings and box office returns are a gauge of how popular it was, but not how good.

In the end, it's about what you enjoy watching, and that's like music or books or any type of art...it's personal preference.

What about Starfighters, a horrid piece of dreck featuring no less than 45 mins of F-104s refueling?

My pick was Memphis Belle, but I think Tora Tora Tora should've been in the list.

Really? That looks like the standard "stretch" variant to me.

Well, there's the "Golden Eagle" program, where a number of low-hour F-15Cs are to receive AESA radars and other upgrades to serve alongside the F-22s. This is basically to compensate for the shortfall in numbers of F-22s bought.

However, there's no need for single-seat F-15s on ground attack. We have almost every plane in the inventory doing it, the dedicated interceptors are far fewer.

There is one exception...birds on non-standard ops. I've seen pics of planes like SR-71s with "spurious" numbers on their fins so plane-watchers wouldn't know what plane was where.

"You can't stay in there forever..."

I think the move to a new engine would be great for a "Phase 4" and/or "OFF 2". A 3d model is a 3d model. A texture is a texture. Things like FMs and DMs and such may have to be redone from scratch, but it's not ALL from scratch.

I think the inexplicable slowdowns you experience are a side effect of taking the CFS3 engine and trying to do all this great stuff with it.

I can't remember exactly what PC specs I had when CFS3 came out, maybe a 1.8GHz Athlon and a GF4 Ti4600? Anyway, it was built a bit "future proof" so that 3 years later our updated PCs ran it far better...stock. When you put more polygons and larger textures into it, though, inefficiencies from the code rear their head. Unlike the Free Falcon people, these modders have no access to CFS3 source code to tweak things.

I fully expect you could have a newer engine with more detail perform better than CFS3 if it knows how to take advantage of things like shaders and multithreading.

No, few people in FL are southerners.

Most are Hispanic. Some are Haitian. Some are NE'ers.

Most of the southerners in FL are not FROM FL either!

Maybe we'll be lucky and the core guys will go into business for themselves during their unemployment and a make a new sim. Granted they can't use any code from MS, but they know the process and the ideas and the whatnot. If TK can do it by himself, I think a handful of those guys can do something a little bit grander.

I'll just give them a taste of my BOOMSTICK!!

LOL, and my wife complains about how much I can spend on Amazon some times!!

Of course, between DVDs, books, games, and even electronics I get a wide variety of stuff from them.

As long as they're in range, yes.

FYI I've seen some stats on comparing XP vs Vista vs W7 in games and it's a mixed bag. A couple of games ran faster on 7 than the other 2, but in 75% of the cases XP was still the fastest (in DX9). In DX10, Vista usually won, but that's likely because of the drivers and beta situation.

Maybe bring a large stockpile of Harpoons back and let them loose against the Japanese Navy? Some P-3's and S-3Bs for the Atlantic?