JediMaster

Oh, I was JUST going to say that! Dammit!

Less than a year away for me, and the wife has only 5 months or so (she's a few months older), and neither of us are looking forward to that.

Turning 30 was a nothing more or less (although the wife discarded some of her outfits I quite liked because they were no longer "appropriate" ).

I always wondered why the 101 had 3 engines when helos much larger have made do with 2. Are they just using smaller engines for economy sake? Was it decided that in case of an engine failure 1 larger one wouldn't do, but 2 smaller ones could?

Only other 3-engined helo I know is the CH-53E and that's a LOT bigger.

Wow, those flaps have had their size massively increased. I wonder how much that lowered the approach speed compared to the earlier K.

I was running it on Win 7 32 bit and I got so frustrated I reloaded with 64 bit. Simply put unless the mission is small and you have your graphics options set low, you'll run out of memory FAST. DCS wants more than 2GB almost all the time, and a CTD on loading happens when it hits that mark.

LET ME BACK IN!!!!!

Sorry, but there is NO amount of money you can pay me to stand under a helo hovering THAT low!! I'm not capable of trusting another human's piloting skills THAT much!

S-92 ran for and lost the competition. Would it have been cancelled had the S-92 won? It certainly would've been fought for harder.

I've not been informed of that, but I'll recheck my emails. It locks in the price AFAIK, so if he winds up selling it @$25+ on release, I got it already for $20.

I find it puzzling how many people don't think Goldeneye was Brosnan's best. I grant the score sucked (aside from the main theme by Bono and Tina Turner which was the best of his 4), but Sean Bean was the best Bond villain of the 90s!

I'm sorry, I see that you strung several words I recognize together, but they form a concept that does not compute. You're talking complete nonsense, nothing but jibberish!!!! The old ways are NEVER wrong, they will ALWAYS apply, forever!!!!111111111111

Yeah! Lemme see that sim from McMurdo!!

Part of it is data accessibility. These devs will only trust a certain narrow set of sources, and "outside" information will be treated with suspicion, skepticism, or derision. Russian devs get better data for Russian planes than Western, Western devs have better data on Western planes than Russian, etc. I too experienced the FM disparity. I was in full burner at 20,000 ft with nothing but IRM missiles and I couldn't catch a MiG-29, fully loaded without burner, at 1000 ft. Not only I couldn't catch it, it was pulling away from me going about 50% faster!

In Il-2, for example, Oleg went with "trusted Russian sources". That meant "captured Luftwaffe test data"...as recorded by Russian pilots who weren't trained on the planes, learning them as they go, flying planes in a dubious state of repair maintained by likewise untrained and making-it-up-as-they-go ground crew. Meanwhile, the Russian sources all date from the Stalin era where everyone lied about how good their stuff was and did to keep from going to the gulag or worse. Then the MP community started whining, and next thing you know EVERY plane was getting its FM changed, some multiple times! Yet somehow, from the beginning, it was as accurate as can be...yet then would get changed 3 times. Why is an accurate FM getting changed multiple times??

Most sims use manufacturer's published data simply to level the playing field. If everyone lies about how good their planes are, then everyone has the same stat boost and the planes will operate against each other as they should. Split from that and use captured test data here, manufacturer data there, and anecdotal data back here, and you get planes that historically had a 0-100 record overpowering every plane around them!

ROF has avoided that largely by not having any Russian planes in it, so every plane has that "no bias" applied to it. They have no emotional attachment to a Spad over an Albatross or vice versa.

Frankly I think ED should now stick to Russian planes or ones they have detailed data on like the A-10C and leave the Western planes to the 3rd party devs. But honestly the weapons are the big thing. While on paper the AA-12 looked better than the AMRAAM, the reality is they're not as reliable, they should be MORE susceptible to ECM than the AMRAAM, not less, and their aero performance should be at best equal to, not vastly superior.

I'll float that idea, maybe "Falcon 4 family".

I too have experienced the single-mindedness of the AI in WVR combat. To be fair, I think they optimized it for BVR. MiGs and Su's are deadly with their radar missiles and IRMs, but get in guns range and it's over for them. I once had a 29 on my six for multiple minutes once he'd run out of guns ammo and he just stuck to my tail like we were doing an airshow. He never realized he had no missiles or gun and should break off.

I'd say air combat in F4 is like boxing with Mike Tyson: if you can survive the initial engagement and get into a prolonged fight, you will eventually win. The only way you lose is if you fail to evade the initial onslaught.

There are 2 new ones being bought IIRC. One will be Mil-171s I think, and the other will be open to several possible Western contenders.

The Dhruv isn't performing as well as hoped (I believe its hot-and-high performance is lacking, making mountains, deserts, and mountains in the desert a problem) so its production is being curtailed last I heard.

Yup, the more your official stance is puritanical, the worse the underbelly of society is. As politicians and clergy continually fail to learn, you can't legislate morality. You can teach it, but if the student bucks your teachings, you can only jail them or kill them.

Obviously they hope to intimidate by such jailings and killings, but people will ALWAYS think they can get away with it. Of course, the ones in charge trying to legislate this stuff are often the WORST offenders!

Lazenby learned too late about loose lips sinking ships. Same thing happened to Richard Donner and Superman 2. You don't get quoted in the press badmouthing your bosses and expect to work with them again.

I'm surprised, I thought the French only flew their planes like that in Chad where no one is looking!

Stupidity: act now to stop the plague from spreading.

I think GAU-8 gas ingestion was the only noted problem I've heard of regarding weapons fire interfering with engines. Considering most missiles fall away from the airplane as they launch, the plane would have to be in a <1g dive for the plume to be ingested for more than a passing second.

Not that I could see.

OHMSS is very underrated, had some of the best action sequences of the series. I didn't care for Savalas as Blofeld, should've been some OTHER bad guy and not overused Blofeld. Besides, there were too many actors playing him. Pleasance, Gray, Savalas? Come on.

Diana Rigg I felt was underused, but Lazenby did a good job for a guy trying to replace a legend!

As for Dalton, the films are very good IF you don't think of them as "Bond" so much. However, you can see the seed of what the Craig films will be. They are far more brutal and realistic than the Moore films which preceded them or the Brosnan films which came after. While I still don't think of Dalton as Bond, he was more like a British version of Bourne before Craig was officially given that title. Also, Robert Davi was one of the best Bond villains of the 80s with some great quips (which most villains didn't get).

AFAIK, no. DCS carries over the same MP style as LOMAC from what I've seen.

There are two types of MP missions sims use. One you have planes that are flyable by players, and every plane not taken is instead flown by AI. Il-2, SFP1, Falcon, and many others did that. The other merely defines the max number and types of planes to be used, but if only 2 people fly there are only 2 planes but if 10 fly there are 10 planes. AI planes are defined separately. The latter is LOMAC/DCS. My problem with that type is the missions won't scale well. If it's just right for 2-3 players, 6 can win in too fast. If it's good for 6 people, 2 could be overwhelmed in minutes.

I think ROF does both. Coop missions are the first way, and dogfight are the LOMAC way.

Modern CPUs have temp sensors, and I know of no quad core that isn't "modern". If it gets hot, it should start by throttling back. If that doesn't work, it will shut down.

So if it's running, it's not too hot.

 

 

X WIngs, Speeders, AT-ATs and Tie Fighters

 

 

...oh my!