JediMaster

That's what I've determined and been told by others.

That's egregious. It really sucks IMO that the MP mode the game shipped with has been made the redheaded stepchild in the triad with SP (getting career and campaigns now) and Dogfight (the afterthought that unfortunately everyone flocked to).

If only they would cater to us coop players again equally.

I will never play Dogfight because I have NO interest in flying against humans. Not in ROF, not in DCS, not in Il-2, not in ANY sim. I dislike it because frankly everyone else out there has more time to devote to it than me, so I prefer to fly against AI I can adjust to my level instead of just spend my MP flying taking off, flying for a time, and then quickly dying. Rinse and repeat. Devoting an hour or two a week will never get me good enough to compete, and I don't want to nor do I get any entertainment out of it.

So 13.5 yrs since release and F4's development is STILL not done. So much more to refine.

And people ask why other sim developers never attempted anything this ambitious again? They can't afford it. They could put as much money as EA put into SW: The Old Republic and probably still not get it "perfect."

It's good that people can work on it in their free time, though. That's the only way F4 can continue to work towards its ultimate promise, the promise made over 20 years ago when F3 was getting ready for release!

Nice of ED to finally take up that banner with DCS World, but like F3 after MiG-29 and Hornet, the future may seem bright but then suddenly dim.

I was surprised to see MadCatz enter the FSX addon market!

http://combatpilotseries.com/aircraft/

Actually, on reading it I think MC is doing what Fighter Ops was supposed to (YEARS ago) except it will be totally online, subscription-based.

Ah, I've got it. This is trying to be the iRacing of flight sims. iRacing based on rfactor, Combat Pilot using FSX.

LOL, what if TK makes planes for DCS World at the lower fidelity level and just uses their netcode?

You want challenging, try going OVER some of those ranges in the Ka-50 while flying NOE! There are times when you can't get the altitude because you can't get the speed and you start to just wallow around... It's not optimized for hot-and-high, that's certain!

So your entire install was only on an external HD? Sorry to say external HDs don't have the life or reliability of internal ones for numerous reasons, but they basically boil down to excess motion, inadequate cooling, and IMO the use of lesser-quality drives. They're good to backup your internal HD because you're only using the thing a few hours a week at most, but as a primary HD they don't stack up.

I would use an internal for the game and b/u to an external...in fact, I do!

Well, oxygen IN the air won't cause planes to crash, although the LACK of it would.

However, birds IN the air could.

Yes, but the A-10C doesn't even HAVE a radar!

I just know a DCS: F-15E would be a ball-breaker with radar usage.

Yup, I've known a few people to lose their canopies on T/O in LOMAC/FC during MP. It's because the default cockpit view doesn't emphasize the thing is open unless you have TIR and look up/left/right and see the frame.

Makes it louder, too.

Another sim that fit in the LOMAC mold was EEAH/EECH (before the mods). I remember getting in and compared to the almost-DCS-like fidelity of LB2 being taken aback by the simplifications made. That said, it worked great in MP and I flew quite a bit of it. The later mods have upped that fidelity to closer to LB2, although still not quite.

Not bad if that's all he needed.

Makes TK's quarter million for MP seem steep!

...birds?

Actually, I'd say my main problem so far has been (compared to LOMAC/FC/Black Shark) the sheer number of controls I need to map to my stick.

Trying to keep DMS Forward long = hat 2 up-with-long-press and TMS Forward Short = hat 3 up-but-short-press straight in my head has proven taxing. Then to remember that it's TMS and not DMS I need to use for this function but I need to use DMS for that one is the part that gets me.

I suppose the main issue is that I've not had the time to devote to it yet really (but now I've got DCS World and 1.2.0 of BS2 and A-10C in, so I mean to spend more time) and it's not like FC or others where you just map S2=lock on.

Using the MFDs when not in combat is fine, but you can't be clicking around when fighting, so the HOTAS is where you go and I've just not got it down yet.

Been shot down by tanks in my Ka-50 about 10 times too many! Never get closer than 2km to a tank! As soon as you get the laser warning, RUN.

Yes, although do that with care. I had an MS-provided driver update screw up a device once. I had to roll back the driver and remind myself to never let it DL it again! I think it was related to the 3rd party HD controller on my mobo, it made my CDROMs stop working!

As for supporting SSDs, there's not much to worry about. As long as your laptop uses a SATA drive it should work. If it's PATA, well, I don't know how many 2.5" PATA SSD drives there might be.

Cost is another matter.

There are lots of people that aren't "normal" that never harm a single person. You advocate regular mental health screenings for the entire population? Seeing as mental health can go from "fine" to "disturbed" in a relatively short period of time, not even annual screenings would cut it. Maybe quarterly? So, that's over 1 billion screenings per year in the US alone.

And I'd bet a good chunk of the money that would cost that people will STILL slip thru the cracks.

Just watch some idiot propose metal detectors at movie theaters now.

Two words: Combined Arms.

Being able to control ground units in first/3rd person and not just "flying by at Mach .9" is a great reason for that detail. Imagine how those things would look thru the zoomed sight of an M1A2 before you blast it!

Who's going to try and take it from a pair of 20mm cannons??

You're running Office 2010 right? I think you'll have to wait for Office 2013 for Metro integration.

As for your laptop problem, I have three letters for you: SSD.

For my desktop I really don't care yet as long as the HDD is fast enough, but for my next laptop I'm getting an SSD because of both speed (which laptops need more help in the storage area than desktops do) and the whole shock reliability thing. Only thing I don't like is I prefer SOME audible indication of the HDD doing its thing...hearing access when you shouldn't be having any is a great way to troubleshoot a problem in many different areas before it becomes a BIG problem. SSDs just have a light that is on or not!

Oh, I get it. For a second, I was thinking "racing in slo-mo? isn't that just....driving?"

In other words, you'll need to extract the .ini from the CAT file if you don't already have it out there for another mod.

Yeah, with that much horsepower you shouldn't be getting those hiccups. I'm going to peg that Intel setup as the problem absent any further info. My guess is either the sounds are NOT getting cached due to a glitch in how it's caching, or there's some latency in accessing when going from stuff cached on the SSD to what it isn't on the HDD. Also, "green" drives spin down within seconds of you ceasing to access them. So if the files you need are mostly loaded into RAM or the SSD, but the sound files are left on the green drive, when it has to spin up to grab them...bump.

I'll also wager you may be the only one playing TW sims with that setup, and I can guarantee TK isn't and wouldn't have seen it himself!

I just recently bought a 1TB WD Black HDD and I deliberately skipped the green version for 3 reasons: although the Green was like $20 more for a 2TB drive, it's slower (some people said they're all 5400 even if the listing says 7200); the warranty was only 1 or 2 years compared to I think the 5 this one has; and the failure rate for the Green drives was higher. Larger percentage of DOAs, large number failed during warranty, large number failed once warranty expired.

I paid a bit more to get the reliability and speed I wanted.

In addition to your HDD speed, how much RAM do you have? You might be running on the low end of what you need.

Wouldn't her hair look worse if she was a real pilot? Stuffed in those helmets and such?

Yes, LOTS of time to learn the A-10C unless you fly simplified, and like I said that's like SF2.

I don't know what other changes FC3 will have other than "FC2 for DCS World", but I hope it's something worthwhile.

By the time I retire it will likely be 75 to be a "senior citizen"!