JediMaster

Sleep in, do some simming, watch some DVDs. Same old same old. With the wife ready to deliver within a month we're not very mobile.

Yeah, what with the whole holodeck-flashback thing and the cavalier death of a major character...well, I'll be honest it felt more like a poor TNG episode than an ENT one.

The idea that they were basically in-between scenes from an old TNG ep where they looked MUCH younger didn't help.

Almalgam Warrior

Heh.

Brings me back to the good old MST3K days. "I am a Grimald warrior!!"

I've been waiting for this for quite some time now. Unfortunately, I have in my mind's eye how I want this to play and I feel I'll be sorely let down if it turns out to be "Il-2 v5.0"

Yes the visuals are much improved, but how about the FMs, DMs, and the AI?? Will .50s work as well as they should? Will every big radial engined plane still flip on its back when you pull back too fast? Will the AI still have the ability to outaccelerate or outdecelerate you at a whim like they have airbrakes and afterburners?

While I enjoy the time/theaters/planes of Il-2, I often find dogfighting more enjoyable in TK's sims because of how much they do NOT frustrate me!

Quite simply, if the laptop has a video chip with full DX8/9/10 compliance it should run. Performance may vary.

However, if it's an Intel integrated video chip, whatever the designation, good chance you'll get artifacting and weirdness and maybe lock ups.

Well, now I know!

Steam now has preordering ($2 off the $20 regular price, or off the $35+ price of the combined Race 07/GTRE bundle).

The game is to go "live" on 9/1/2008. So that's Monday, a holiday, how great!

Red Flag is "conventional warfare" training.

Green Flag I believe is centered more on EW training.

No, I just meant "on a wooden-decked A/C carrier."

I have no doubt the problem with the CIA is at the top, not the bottom. The rank and file care about doing their job, not making sure this or that political decision is supported or disproved. They collect, collate, and present to their superiors. It's the superiors who write/edit the final reports to make sure THEIR bosses are happy and don't look like fools. They'll always say "we were mislead" or "intelligence was faulty/lacking" over "we had the proof but threw it out".

I don't get it...how can a controller where you aim with your thumb be better than a mouse where you get the precision of your entire hand? Ever since 1994 I've been playing FPS games with a mouse and I find it 10x more precise than that overshooting I get when aiming with a gamepad.

Of course, to compensate many console games make it far easier to aim via "autoaim" or larger hitboxes or something. On PC FPS you're usually forced to actually HIT the target yourself, which is quite hard without a decent mouse, of course.

It's not the only problem. Another is "instant ratings." A decade or more in the past, ratings were taken during "sweeps", which was basically 2 months a year, once in the fall and once in the spring. Many series were given their first season to prove themselves. Now shows can be cancelled in the blink of an eye because the ratings aren't good, even if the show is just starting to find its audience and get going.

Firefly had 2 problems--one, the pilot wasn't aired until well after the show was cancelled. The Train Job was ok as a "second" pilot, but I think it really would've done better had the first pilot been first to air. Second, as aired the show was weak in the first half. I for one watched the first 3 or so eps and then stopped. I tried watching again about a month later and found it much improved and started watching regularly...and it was cancelled. How many like me stopped early but unlike me never went back?

Rewatching them on DVD and SFC later on I saw just how promising a show it was. We got Serenity to sort of "cap off" the series, like the Farscape miniseries did for that series, but like FS it's just as gone now. The film didn't draw in enough people. I know a guy who watched Serenity never having seen FF...he said it was just "meh." Then he went back later, watched the series on DVD, and rewatched the film on DVD. He said, "Wow, it's so much better when you know the characters." The 2nd time he also cared when characters were killed. In the first film viewing he just shrugged and said "Ok, they died." So far as bringing people who didn't know the show into the fold, the film failed. He only watched FF on DVD later because of how much I liked it and he couldn't see why based on the film alone.

Same thing with Enterprise, the only ST series since the first to be cancelled, but it was cancelled after it got better! Its first 2 seasons were just as poor as TNG's first 2 years, but people tuned out sooner because unlike TNG it wasn't "fresh" anymore. They found their footing a lot faster than the previous shows did (good in S3, great in S4), but that was too late. It's really a shame because I think its final year was one of the best ST ever did...except for the series finale. That was an abomination brought about my last-minute notice of cancellation and having to throw together a finale real fast.

A big shame there.

Has it been used since 1950??

Unfortunately, naming is inconsistent everywhere, even within services.

I've still never heard a satisfactory reason why the 2-seat Harrier is a TAV-8B while the 2-seat Hornets were 18B and 18D. It might have meant combat capability, but AFAIK the 18B was never meant to serve in combat (unlike the D). Actually, I seem to recall it originally WAS going to be F/A-18A and TF/A-18A...

Then we have F-111, F-117, and A-4 for more mis-designations.

I will say I found the Swedish Viggens the most confusing with their AJ/JA/AJS/JSA/JJA/ASJA/JASJA/JAJAJJSA deal.

If it is, that would make it the highest priced combat flight sim here in years. Maybe CFS3 was $50? Most have been $40 (or less).

LOMAC sits between TK's sims and Falcon 4 in terms of difficulty. Unless you fly the Su-25T in the Flaming Cliffs addon, as that's closer to F4.

I bought the game new for $40 on release, and bought FC new for whatever it was on release. $25 I think from Natural Point? Anyway, all these years later I've not regretted it one bit. I've got more hours in it than any other sim in this century except maybe Il-2. Certainly more than F4 or any single TK sim, although if you combine them all TK may have the edge.

You can name a dozen WWI sims? That are Windows-compatible? No DOS!

Another victim of ACME Corporation's Mega Trampoline.

Firefly and Crusade both lasted a half season, with just over a dozen episodes a piece. Unlike Firefly, though, which was doomed by poor ratings, Crusade was DOA thanks to TNT. One of the rare shows to be cancelled BEFORE the first episode aired. Stupid focus groups/marketers.

"And so it begins."

Yes, you'd have to be a little more specific than that. Did you mean the ST series? The SG series?

I mean, you can't get much different than the original ST and B5. Or Dr Who and S:A&B. Not just premises but tone, characters, scope, etc. Taking a "little bit from each" of all of those would likely leave you feeling like you watched just that--a mishmosh. If you want to see what that gets you in the comedy world, watch something like Epic Movie, just bouncing all over the place leaving you with a big empty feeling!

I'm sorry to say that Intel integrated video chips are probably the WORST thing you could try to run a game on.

I know it's a little late now to find that out, but you would've been better off with either an ATI or nvidia chip in that laptop. Of course, models coming with those start at higher prices. I doubt you can find a laptop under $750 or so with them. I just bought one myself from Dell with an 8600GT in it, but it's costing me $1300 or so.

I thought I just read somewhere KotS has been renamed?

Ah yes, here:

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=31255

Are you insinuating AL thought Russia invaded the state next to them a couple of weeks ago??

Just once I'd like to see the leader of some major nation called Putin a big baby.

"WAAAHHHH! We want influence there!!! WAAAAHHHH!!!!" The short-sightedness they've been displaying lately is stunningly awful.

S:A&B is available on DVD in the US, not sure about elsewhere.

SGA will be replaced by the just-announced Stargate Universe, with a new cast and crew that can be paid less to satisfy SFC's "cheap bastard" needs. No series has ever lasted more than 5 years on SFC and none ever will because casts get paid more with time and they don't want to have to pay. They're more interested in their lame F-flick (they don't even qualify as good as B) of the week like Mansquito, SS Doomtrooper, Flu Bird Horror, or the single most awful remake of War of the Worlds to ever be shot on film with C Thomas Howell practically begging for a real job like making a Burger King commercial.

B5 is my favorite SF series of all time, followed by the new BSG. The old ST was great for its day and what it was, but it certainly created the cliches we now see and deplore in other series. I think I liked DS9 best of the spinoffs, especially after Worf joined the cast, followed closely by the last half of TNG's run. Voyager was just meh, and Enterprise was good it's last season and ok the season before that, but the first 2 were lame.

I'm currently rewatching B5 for the 4th time (on the final season) and DS9 for the 2nd (just finishing the 4th season). Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis have definitely been more about the characters than the plot--if you don't care about them, the rest is just window dressing.

There was also Farscape, which at times could be the most baffling SF show you ever watched. It was like the shows had a good 10 mins cut out of them that helped explain WTF was going on sometimes.

Oh, Tennant's Dr Who run has been enjoyable as well most of the time.

I know all the newest models of ECM are almost purely software-driven. I think the hardware-only capabilities types were phased out in the 70s?

Of course, it's all moot without good intelligence. Wasn't it over Bosnia we were having trouble with the cobbled-together mash of French, Russian, and other systems? After the entire EW scene was created over decades in monolithic blocks ("US" systems, or "Soviet" systems, or "French" systems), you suddenly had countries using that emitter with this receiver and that exciter and nothing was black-and-white anymore.

ADA SIGINT is critical info if you're thinking about flying in the other's airspace. Just look at what happened in Georgia to the Russian planes, and those were THEIR systems! Yet somehow they failed to counter it adequately and they lost a bomber, amongst other planes.