JediMaster

It's an admitted flaw that RoF runs best on dual-core machines under WinXP and quad-core (or more) under Vista/7. Reverse combos work less well. I know a guy with dual-core and 7 and he gets acceptable performance at med/hi levels, but I can max it out on my i7 and it still runs better than his.

I await the reviews to find out if this is easier to get into than X3, which I tried but failed to get into.

Be aware that for the last 7 hrs or so the site is down, as is a ton of Amazon-hosted stuff as they're having a major outage.

The problem with jet fighters is most of them have their CoG shaped by their engine. That means a glider model will need a lot of ballast to get its CoG properly placed, which drives up the weight.

SF is the true "sandbox" sim. You can fly almost anything versus almost anything and blow up, well, almost anything!

Well, to be fair the first release of First Eagles was pretty limited. I think it gave you maybe 4 or 6 planes? It wasn't until the expansion/FE Gold that it became well rounded, and of course FE2 was just FE Gold redone. So, it's true that those who started with ROF:ICE got a better deal than those that started with plain ROF...but that's pretty much par for the course for all games. Pick any game, wait a year or 18 months for the "game of the year edition" and you can get more stuff than it had on release for probably a bit less or you can pick up the original game at 1/2 price or less (I saw RoF non-ICE going for under $20 when I got ICE). Therefore, by getting it at the beginning you basically were an "early adopter" and you paid for that privilege. As for the extra planes, when the 2 bombers were close to release a few months back, they had a mega-sale on all the other planes and I was able to pick up every single seater ICE didn't come with for just over $30 (and I paid $30 for ICE itself from Gogamer). So, for $60 I got a WWI sim with a ton of planes. While it's true that OFF and FE are cheaper, they're not the same type of product.

Yeah, that's the thing that some devs get nailed on when they release a game with DLC planned for later...is the game a worthwhile experience and value if the customer NEVER buys anything else again, and will they recommend it? If you get it wrong, you get a lot of angry people! Also, unlike EA or Activision, you won't have other stuff to fall back on or a built-in audience for some of your stuff. So, not to say you'll have to live up to a higher standard but...well you'll have to live up to a higher standard. However, by phasing it in you can spend more time on the polish and less on a deferred feature now, which will help make the favorable first impression!

Argh, the Il-2 modding scene is getting as bad as the F4 one! The only way to do Il-2 was always OGL, the DX renderer was just there so they could say it worked. It looked horrible. However, the water=4 I recall wouldn't work on ATI cards because Oleg said they wouldn't cooperate with him to enable him to get it working. Not sure how that worked, but whatever...

As long as it's not an obvious beta (cliffs of dover anyone?) but simply more limited in scope I think people will be able to choose to buy or not with confidence. I know some people will wait for the "full" release while others will get enjoyment from a trainer/school just fine. I think all can agree having fewer features that work great is preferable to having all the features heavily bugged.

The red zone has always been for the dropping off and picking up of passengers. There's no stopping in the white zone.

Don't put your finger in your ear! You don't know where that finger's been...

The KC-135s aren't bad anymore thanks to the newer engines, but when the E-8s land here (rarely, but on occasion) they're admittedly just as bad as the DC-8.

Big Safari, the USG equivalent of the Skunk Works. They do good stuff.

That reminds me, is the top-end water in Il-2 still nvidia-only? I've got 4.10.1m installed, but no mods.

Well, TK's poll indicated he basically is going to switch to planes instead of full-fledged expansions now so people can pick and choose what they want.

That's right, I remember. I had the lasagna.

The shuttle will be stored in a new hangar to be built near the carrier, it will not be on it. The orbiter can't be housed outdoors, anyway.

Considering what the USAF didn't do for the shuttle, I'm not surprised. I suppose if Challenger hadn't happened and Titan had been phased out instead things would've been different. Instead, they gave NASA a dine-n-dash and left them with a big bill.

Big bully!

I hope you have a lot better luck with your plans than certain other unnamed sims that are yet to see the light of day!

I don't know about the X45 or Saitek myself, but that yellow excalamation mark on the HID entry is an indicator of a driver failure there. So your setup is only partly installed.

All ABM systems have been designed that way...to take out a small number of missiles in a limited attack. The Reagan-era idea of a "shield" to protect against any possible threat is just a fantasy because no one will ever pay for it. The fact that Russia has always complained about it is pure theater because they know nothing we develop could possibly stop a determined attack. Unless they had a grand master plan that involved launching only 3 ICBMs out of their untold hordes, the US ABM system would likely cause slightly greater warhead loss than pure failures alone. The only way an ABM system could be a true "shield" is if we had like 10 interceptors for every warhead out there, so if all launched at once we could fire 10x as many up to stop them. Now a laser-based system is different, but we'd need almost as many of those to make sure they were in position to get them all because they have cycle times between firing.

The difference here is that these things only benefit those who pay for them. The planes are only flyable by those who buy, but if you don't you will still see them added to your game as AI and increase the immersion. That said, none of this is crucial. You may feel like plane X was very important to simulating a battle in Nov 1917, but an Aldis sight isn't, it's just a nice extra. I suppose the reason they're charging is this was more difficult to add than a day of work for 1 guy. So, if you don't want to buy them, you don't have to. You can enjoy the game fine without it.