JediMaster

Still don't know what happened with LP. F4AF by all rights was a sales success, and they were working on a new plane (Beagle IIRC?) for it, and then...nothing. Died with a whimper.

Hasn't done a great job so far on JFK's assassination. It's been over 50 years, not sure how much more "future" we need.

I think the "order" left behind by a rocket strafing pass can be debated!

I also think people need to fly the 1998 F4 again and forget about BMS for a minute. F4 was made with a bigger budget than any current sim, and a fairly long dev cycle. And it fell short in a LOT of ways. Not talking about graphics, as they were competitive for the day (although not the best), but in the other areas. It took a year of patches to make it basically work right, forget about accuracy. After that we've had 15 years of post-release work by tons of modders with no release date, no financial stake, no need to make money off it. This is not something to compare other commercial products to, you can't compare. F4 WAS an FC-level sim. It had a dynamic campaign, yes, a better UI and all that appearance stuff, but the SIM part for the F-16 was no better than the F-15C we have in FC3 right now. Yes, the BMS F-16 is now A-10C level, but that's not what we got for our $50 in 1998. What we got in 1998 was a broken mess that showed potential but was no better than CloD in actually WORKING. Once we got the 1.08 patch and it worked, it was basically a FC-level F-16C.

Here's my main question: Does anyone at Boeing really know what the F-35 can do? Sure, they know the requirement it was built to originally, but they lost the competition a decade ago and as has been noted before, there have been changes to the contract and such in that time. So do Boeing people really know all the classified abilities of the F-35 to compare to, or are they banking on the fact that most people do NOT know, so they can just go on and on about the respective unclassified abilities and no one who knows different can prove otherwise without breaking the law!

Perhaps, although it would be relatively simple for the Russians to realize that and turn theirs on.

Harrier pilots are likely the most skilled pilots in any military today. Other planes' pilots may be better dogfighters, better at using LGBs, better at conventional traps, and so on. But Harrier pilots need more sheer piloting skill than any other because of the lack of aids and singular difficulties experienced in vertical landings.

I'm waiting to see what these are actually like on release before I judge.

The problem is the market itself has contracted a lot, but the range of desires is the same. So while before you had (for example) 1 million people wanting a hardcore rivet-counting sim, and 2 million wanting a Flaming Cliffs-level relaxed one and 5 million wanting a Jane's FA/SF2-level game, now you have like 10,000, 20,000, and 50,000. The rivet counters have always been the most vocal, and as a result they've had things more their way than not, but you can't make a good modern sim for 10,000 people at a regular price and make a profit. Even 100,000 is hard, and all those people aren't going for it anyway. This one says "too complex". That one says "not complex enough." Another says "I don't care about pushing buttons, all I want is WWII birds" and his friend says "I don't want history, gimme something that at least has flown in combat THIS century." The niches all still exist, and the occupants are as stubborn and ornery about what they want as ever...but all of them have shrunken while dev costs have gone up (because more can be simulated now). It's frankly entering a death spiral, and if something doesn't reverse it...since a simple halt of decline IMO isn't going to cut it...we'll all be flying sims from the last 10-15 years FOREVER as nothing new will come out after 2015 or so. Our grandchildren will see us on these decades-old PCs still running that prehistoric Win 8.1 and want to know A) how we can stand visuals and interfaces that are so primitive while B) the sims are so impossible to learn and enjoy.

Before or after the modders have all moved on?

I fear what we have today in SF2 is all we will ever have in SF2.

I remember a comedian in the 80s talking about his cat and how he'd buy it the cat food and then just stare at it, then go lick his butt. He pondered why they didn't make butt-flavored cat food. Then the cat will scratch and meow at the door till he opened it, then sit there and stare at him like "so you're going outside?" Then he would close the door and the cat would dart through at the last second, almost getting its tail caught!

Look for gameplay videos. It's possibly the stupidest and yet funniest game ever made.

And that's a central difference in opinion for many simmers. Some think it's not good enough unless they do it ALL. Others, like me and apparently you, think that a certain level of automation/shortcuts are allowed to compensate for the fact that this is NOT our job, but a hobby, and we don't have dozens of hours per week to dedicate to memorizing how everything works and honing those abilities. I remember someone talking about using CEM in Il-2 and saying that after a few months it took them so little effort it was about the same as just letting the game do it itself, he didn't even notice. To which I responded "so why bother?" If you get something out of it, like driving a sports car with a manual transmission instead of automatic, great! But if it's meaningless in the big picture, like driving a station wagon with a manual transmission, why not just drive it automatic? So I prefer to automate engine management, radar modes, and some other things because they detract from my enjoyment, they do not add to it. If I was flying MSFS, sure, what else is there to do? But I'm flying (DCS in this case) to fly in combat, not to be an employee. I do enjoy complex flight models because I enjoy the planes' more nuanced handling (most of the time!), but there is NOTHING I hate more than being shot down by an enemy fighter or SAM because I'm struggling to remember how to employ the ECM or radar to attack back and get killed while fussing with it.

Many said the same thing about JPATS. Seems to be one of the few programs to NOT be embroiled in a million scandals in the last 20 years.

Wow, way to bring ME down!

It has some pretty big teeth, you know. And those main legs have some muscle behind them!

I'm still trying to reenact an even older battle--T Rex vs triceratops! All I need is a T Rex, a triceratops, and a suitable arena. Other than that, I'm set!

I glued two Su-17s together. It wasn't satisfying.

At least EDGE is free to existing users.

I don't know if ED themselves know why FC3 sold better. Is it "less complicated"? Is it "F-15C and A-10A and Su-27 and MiG-29 OMG!!!"? Is it "several planes for the price of one"? Is it some combination of those that appeal to different people in different ways but in the end results in all of them getting FC3 instead of a single module? Who knows? With FC3 coming out long before they started selling the F-15C and such separately, we may never know without an honest 100% response to a survey sent to every FC3 owner AND non-owner to ask "why"? Odds of that happening make successful navigation of an asteroid field seem more likely.

B-1 = B - one = Bone B-1er = boner

No. The F-35 will do some of the precision targeting. Some attacks will be done by UCAVs. Some by AH-64s. Some by other means. The F-35 was never going to wear a boar's mouth and go strafing tanks, that just makes no sense. Rather the various attack profiles the A-10 can do will be divvied up amongst other assets.

Want a corny but good sim?? Goat Simulator!

I think it safe to say that the PC side of SF is mostly dead. Is it totally dead? Only an expert could say. However, I no longer check weekly or monthly for updates or things. It's been two years since NA, and it's obvious that TK's roadmap didn't work out as well as we'd hoped. There's nothing more to say about it, he needs to make money and SF2 isn't doing that well enough. No sense blaming ourselves (unless you're one of those who bought a single SF2 title and then just "made do" with mods ), we tried to spread the word and give people ways to get more out of it than TK provided alone. It just didn't work. You can speculate if Steam's extra exposure vs the Valve cut would've been worth it, but it's too late now.