JediMaster

The facts are very interesting, the conclusions are not. So, the Su-35S can defeat F-35s 10:1? Uh, ok, "independent analysis" my tailbone. Seeing as both planes are in the development stage, this boils down to a "who would win between the USS Enterprise and a Star Destroyer" argument. Sure on paper you can prove or disprove a dozen things, but it's not until you know how things work operationally, like whether or not that conformal AESA on the wings ever works right let alone is funded for production, before you can start saying "this thing will kick everyone out of the air!" There's no way a 4.5 gen fighter can beat a 5th gen fighter with those kind of ratios. Tell me the F-35 would knock Flankers down at 10:1, ok, I can buy that. Tell me the PAK-FA will knock F-16s and F-15s out of the sky at 10:1, ok, I can see that POV. Tell me an F-15 is going to knock PAK-FAs out of the sky left and right because it's got bigger engines and an AESA (which some F-15s do)? Really? The part left out is that it's carrying the same missiles as the older models, so even if it can get closer and track, if the target spoofs the missile what good is it? Is this guy a paid marketing director for Sukhoi?

AFAIK the AIM-54 was the only AAM that cost over $1m, which is one reason why it was so good and also why it was not made in massive numbers.

Cool. It might be nice to include which sim/terrain or mods you used at the end or start as well.

There have been rare instances of "bad drivers" in the past that either disabled the onboard fan or made it run too slow or conversely made the chip work far harder than it should. Those have been pulled from distribution AFAIK, so you should be safe with the latest WHQL nvidia drivers or whatever HP has for DL.

It's your video card, no doubt. The 9600 GT was never a powerful card, it was a "good enough for the masses" card. Oh, whoops, I just noticed you have a laptop. Your laptop is remarkably similar to mine, except i have the 8600GT in my Dell XPS. That's good enough for older sims, but I'm afraid RoF is newer and needs more from the video card. I don't think you can upgrade it, unfortunately, few laptops allow it. You can always check with HP, though.

I know, and I'm very impatient for it to come out already!

I wonder how often there will be beta updates, and how long until they reach final. BTW, which shots in particular represent the "tooling"?

My guess is they stopped looking at Russia's because they know when it happens years from now that Russia's missiles won't be in good enough shape to actually launch, just sit there rusting. Anyway, while the grandfather paradox, first introduced in HG Wells' Time Machine AFAIK, does seem to preclude that possibility, it's also possible we are constrained by our outdated modes of thinking and hundreds of years from now they'll figure out a way around that. Perhaps it's as simple as burying the tech in the past, perhaps it means that while they'll try to stop it, they'll only succeed in mitigating it, ensuring that they will still try to stop it later.

It's quite possible disabling was a side effect of their investigation. Likewise I've heard stories of deactivated ones going active during such an encounter, so it works both ways. However, consider this possiblity: what if they're not aliens, just people...from the future? If in 50 years the planet is devastated by a nuclear war, it's conceivable that hundreds of years later man could develop the ability to travel thru time and start making trips to see what they might to do avert that disaster aka the Terminator premise or the 4400. If they know the day a nuclear war happens, they could arrive the day before and disable them all and prevent the disaster. Coming from a post-holocaust future they've lost lots of the records from the era, especially the classified military stuff that would give them details on how the nukes work, requiring that they first visit numerous military bases looking for the nukes and then run tests to see how their arming/disarming works. For all we know they've been in contact with the upper echelons where they've told their story to disbelieving generals and presidents. Sounds SF? Sure it does, but telling someone during the Civil War that man would walk on the moon while under a President from Texas while the whole world watches it lives on TV would be even more farfetched, and that was just 100 years.

You don't kill him, you take all his money (since that's obviously what he'll care about more) and then force him to live in the mud.

I don't know how it will go for the A-10, but I personally found that only 2 levels of flight modeling for the Ka-50 was overly restrictive. The full-real mode has a VERY steep learning curve, but the easy was too easy to handle. My main issue with it was you could point the nose 90 degrees down or up and the altitude wouldn't change at all, the collective would set an altitude that no maneuvering would change. While it made it easy not to crash, it was so counterintuitive I couldn't take it! I wished there was an "intermediate" option. In the end, I just committed to learning the full real mode. Avoiding vortex ring state is tough at times and I've lost a few helos to it! The A-10 being fixed wing the easy FM might work better.

I watched the first 3/4 or so of MWC's run, it was one of my favorite sitcoms because it broke all the conventions of the time. It paved the way for many later shows, because prior to that you generally got "sappy" sitcoms and only a few could pull that off without being lame. I will say, though, that Fawlty Towers did it 15 yrs earlier but simply failed to break those conventions.

They've said there will be. I've not acquired the beta, so I can't say for certain. I will say this, though--DCS is harder than Lockon was. A LOT harder and far steeper learning curves. I'd recommend Flaming Cliffs 2 as an intro to what DCS will be like, since it's both cheaper and easier than DCS (albeit harder than the LOMAC 1.0 release from years ago). You need to invest a lot of time, though. Landing in LOMAC is far easier than in DCS. The only plane I ever mess up on landing in LOMAC is the Su-25/T from Flaming Cliffs because of the advanced flight model. The other planes have a standard, simplified one that means you can make MISERABLE approaches and land successfully. I mean, I've taken that A-10A on a steep dive and touched down at the center of the runway, but off center-line, not properly lined off, and come to a nice rollout onto a taxiway with battle damage! In DCS, you'd be dead on impact.

When I say "officially" I meant "possible routes bandied about by people in ED or TFC online as hypotheticals." The fact that they brought up those specifically meant to me there were seen as feasible products. The ones Gwyno mentioned were NOT and therefore I doubt their probability is in the double digits. I flew F-22s in games in the 90s and they were pretty fair about it. You know it can supercruise over M1.5, it has powerful engines with TVC, it's hard to see on radar but IR missiles still have a chance, agile, and has a LPI radar and datalink that lets it see enemies and fire on them before they see the F-22 and fire back. The cockpit is all glass, so whether or not the symbology and pages were accurate wasn't really that important as I've heard they can be customized by the pilot to some extent anyway, it's just software. I don't anticipate seeing the F-22 in DCS as a flyable (although perhaps as an AI like in Falcon), but I thought iF-22 was a very good sim from about 12 years back. No, my guess is DCS will have 4th gen fighters and equivalent attack, transports, and helos. I think 3rd gen and earlier will be left to TK and others.

There's a cultural tendency to believe that if they build it, it's better than when foreign-produced, even when it's not. Also, the whole issue with IP not being respected seems to be based on a similar attitude, sort of "there's no idea we can't make better, so we don't need to pay for it". They've sort of made lying to oneself an institution.

Here I was thinking we could go a whole month without a natural (or not) disaster of some kind...

Those artifacts belong in a museum!!

I watched the pilot and wasn't impressed, only had 1 real LOL moment. Did they get better later?

I think Calais/Normandy is the closest map to that area, don't think I've seen a mod for the UK area itself. I'm sure the stutters are the video RAM choking on the textures. You're either going to have to lower the landscape detail or turn off the FSAA (which uses more video RAM) I think. I'd try lowering the detail first as I personally find little extra value in perfect over excellent anyway and the game really does need FSAA!

Other than the 2 released ones, the only ones I've heard mentioned officially were the A-10A and AH-64 (but no model letter). I'd really like the Apache to complement the Ka-50, but I'll go for pretty much anything they're likely to pick. I must say A-6, F-4, and F-111 are not likely.

With all the talk about how the 330 was so much larger than the 767, I don't think something significantly bigger than a C-5 will cut it. Besides, not all transports make good refuelers. The wake turbulence has to be within acceptable limits for small fighters to slide into and out of position smoothly.

I've not gone thru the site yet to find out if my Dell laptop is on the list (although the model and manufacture date are in the right range), but as to date I've not had any problems with it I doubt I'll be eligible or that I'd bother even if I was. I've not done a massive amount of gaming with it, just on trips, and so far the 8600GT in it has held up fine.

Well, it has the ski jump so it's obviously designed to be able to launch Harriers on operational missions. How many it can carry below decks and service properly, I don't know.

I have a cunning plan...I'll climb to the top of a 1763ft mast...