Zurawski

There is a "minimum view distance" that is defined in the flightengine.ini (this has to be extracted to edit)... There is a variable in there that you can reduce to allow this to be corrected. However, bare in mind... that if a plane is relying on this minimum view distance to hide parts of the plane, they will become viable. (there are a few WWII birds that do this) If you wish to experiment with this, I have a modified flightengine.ini file included with one of my P.11c packages... Go here: Zur-TECH.com and download the P.11c (Not the one for use in First Eagles)... and you'll find it in that package. Good luck!

Good point and well stated. I agree... I imagine we both followed simular paths in our birthing into flight simulations? Started off with something simple like RB or Jet Fighter or BoB... Then advanced into CYAC or Aces or PAW1942, then advanced into Falcon AT... through to 4.0... Maybe Lock-On... finally back to sims like SF, WoV and FE. So in summary, we started simple (Gamey / Arcade) advanced our knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the air-combat... with this, grew our desire to dig deeper into meatier simulation experiance and steep ourselves in ACM glory... (hardcore sim enthusiasts / gronards)... having done out duty and quenched our desire to wrap ourselfs in our simulations, we now happily "play" with all our simulations to varing depths that provide us appropriate levels of enjoyment. We've "been there done that"... and enjoy "playing" with our simulations. We choose to leave the "work" part of our simulations at the doorstep and revel in the "fun" aspect of it now.

Well... I tell ya one thing Stiglr... you and I sure have differing ideas of "fun"... Honestly, I've been siming since the days of Air Warrior (Man, am I getting old...) I did all the switch twiddling in every sim that offered it... I read virtually every aces biographies... I read every ACM handbook I could find... I immersed myself "in" air-combat... After all these years, the only thing I still find enjoyable is the "engagement". I love a well executed merge... I live to get on my targets tail within 2 turns... Win or loose I appreciate a fundamentally sound engagement where the better man or AI wins. I agree the "set-up" prior to engaging is important... I suspect most sim enthusiast who have a cursory understanding of trying to enter the engagement with the advantage do this instinctively. I argue that this is more an understanding of ACM and knowledge of it's importance versus strict adherence to realism. In a nutshell: What happens on the way there and on the runway post landing no longer means anything to me... Your idea of realism to me is the equivalent of a racing simulation that includes obeying posted speed limits and all traffic lights... with the mandatory stop at the quick-lube every 3000 miles. Not a knock on your play style... It's just simply "Been there, done that"... deja'vu sort of thing. Not to mention... I no longer have time in my life to fly 4 hour sorties.

Alas... we meet again... ;) In this pole I believe "realism" is subjective. What "is" realism? Is it modeling the entire start sequence of a plane or simply the adherence to documented flight specifications? Does the modeling of the start sequence make the simulation more real or does it simply make it tedious? Obviously, giving the user the option is ideal... question is, considering the limited dev budgets... does it's inclusion enhance the simulation enough to justify the time expenditure or the cost? Will the "typical" user go through the start sequence once... twice... maybe three times, then choose to bypass it by selecting the "start" key in the future as it added nothing the the enjoyment of the simulation? I know... I know... there ARE some folks like yourself who find fun end enjoyment in the mundane areas of flight simulations... I suspect you'd find enjoyment in blowing a ring and spend the entire flight struggling to keep up with your flight... but I digress ;) Realism I believe is a simulations ability to give the impression and experience equivalent to the real world. Mind you... not necessarily "everything" that a real-world pilot goes through... as much of what they do is lost in the actual encounter/experiance... IMHO... I suspect most sim enthusiast strive for the exciting encounters... regardless of how they got there, what they did to get there and what they have to do when they get back.... So long as for that brief moment when they engage the enemy, the plane does what it's supposed to do, as they expect it to, based on common knowledge and known specifications. The rest is ancilary... For some switch twiddling is fun... for others its a tedious endevor... neither party is wrong, they just enjoy their simulations at varying cerebral depths. I can guarantee for almost everyone the fight is more important than the forplay... :D

Your idea of a "perfect sim" is part of the very reason flight sims do not attract the droves of enthusiast as other genres do... The very thought of massaging manifold pressure, managing engine temp and wiping oil off their face after a grueling flight hold absolutely no appeal to the vast majority of gamers. You imply that catering to the potential gamers who would rather "kick the tires and light the fires" is quietly killing the genre? I argue that people like yourself are far more detrimental to the genre. There is absolutely no reason there cannot be both flight sim pilosophys... They go hand-in-hand IMHO... Lite sims will attract more enthusiast into the genre... keeping them fueled with "new blood"... who eventually wish to delve deeper into the intricacies of harder-cored simulations... It's a natural cycle. Man... I appreciate your passion, but if I were a newbie I be scared to death to fly a hard core sim for fear I wasn't flying to your expactations... I'd switch off my PC and fire up my X-box where there is no judgment of my moral fortitude... because everyone can play Smash Bandicoot...

I don't think anyone is attempting to ban or stifle anyones opinion... especially if it improves upon the existing experience, be it incremental improvements or holistic changes that would bump it from "sim-lite" into something more palatable to expert pilots... The friction (at least from my perspective) is some on this particular thread have made a point of insinuating that TK / Thirdwire is somehow wrong, lazy, incompetent for designing the games the way they are. As Erik eluded to previously... this genre is a niche one... we ultimately need to support both schools of thought in regards to design.... We "need" sim-lites as much as we need hard-core simulations. Without both... we can never accommodate the two extremes and the genre will slowly starve it self to death.... Hard-core pilots will either fade out of the genre (Read: pass away or loose interest/ability) ... and new comers will find the learning curve to steep to make it accessible.

Hmmm... The sticker on my brand new Chevy Avalanche said I'd get 19 mpg in the city... Funny... I'm only getting 17. Point being... find me packaging that doesn't paint it's product with broad strokes? As I eluded to previously, Thirdwire sims have been around long enough for so called "expert pilots" to know what they are getting into... I'm not buying the whole "we were mislead with fancy packaging jargon" tripe.... Ya know I wish my truck got 30 miles to the gallon... But I "knew" it didn't based on the type of vehical is was. Didn't have to read the sticker... it was a fair assumption based on common knowledge Personally I see this type of thead as a compliment to TK and his products... obviously his titles have enough of the right stuff to keep you "expert pilots" interested... but it's obvious many of you want it to be so much more than what it is.... or ever designed to be. This is IMHO, the crux of our impass... I guess it 's enough to agree to disagree.

Mission Statement?... Now your just being an (Expletive removed to protect sensitive ears). It doesn't take a mensa candidate to see the audience Thirdwire is catering to, let alone have to spelled it out. Your metaphor of a book is actually quite good... Except one doesn't read non-fiction if one prefers fiction? Same can be said of Thirdwire games... Thirdwire has been around long enough for "most" sim enthusiasts to know where they fit in the scheme of things... I've got an example for you... Do Ford drivers buy a Chevy and wish it was a Ford? (Not on purpose I assure you). Thirdwire sims "are what they are"... It makes absolutely no sense grousing over what Thirdwire sims "are not"... when they clearly never intened to "be" what they are not. Your right TK, HAS incrementally improved his titles as he goes along... I suspect it is core in his design philosophy. But if you look at the content of what he's updated/improved... little has to do with moving his titles out of the "game" catagory and into the "Hardcore simulation" one.

Stiglr, sometime you crack me up... Do you ever step back from being a Tagetware zealot and listen to yourself? TK / Thirdwires core logic in regards to their stable of simulations is simply "keep it simple". They are designing "games" that they hope are available and accessable to everyone, regardless of their previous experiance with air-combat simulations. A "lite sim" is not a cop-out... it's by definition exactly what the Thirdwire series "is". However, there is a deluge of sim enthusiast who wish it to be otherwise... Doesn't make them bad or wrong... just different. One can pine over what Thirdwire games "could or should" have been... or except the fact their titles lean more toward the game and less toward the simulation side of things. By your logic, if a developer chooses to forgo the switch twiddling flight models that require manifold pressure massaging, they are essetially "not doing the job right"... When in all honesty... what I read from your diatribes is "I want all simulations to be like Targetware". Which is not a cheap shot... I've played with the sim for a while and it was good in it's own right... It's just that the reality is, you can't make every sim exactly like Targetware. Thirdwire sims "are what they are"... there are a number of us who push it beyond base design... which makes is "more that what it was... but somewhere less than Targetware". This is not a bad thing... Aside from a gaggle of hardcore folks like yourself (which has been quickly inflated with the new infusion of the WWI enthusiasts)... There is a large contigent who are happy with the slot that Thirdwire fills. ...Thirdwire simulations fill a void somewhere between game and simulation... for folks who like the thrill of the action with non of the cerebral burden. IMHO... Thirdwire has done their "job right".

You may be right... I believe they did eventually "eat it" in the end... However, they were one of the last big efforts to have the flight sim genre compete with the "other" genres of the time... Rememer the big, meaty manual... authenticity endorced by F-16 pilot (His name escapes me)... the Mig-29 add-on... etc. It was quite a big deal back then... marketing to rival the other genres.

Actually... there is a solution... one I've personally held for many years... that few actually agree with. (Big suprise eh?) As I see it, in order for combat flight simulations to survive (read: be lucrative enough for a pub with deep pockets to support)... these sims have to become more lucrative... a hurdle not easily cleared. We continue to demand higher fidelity graphics, physics, sounds... historical accuracy so deep to choke even the most staunch gronard... to include every concievable plane, ship, building, foot soldier etc... YET, we continue to expect to pay the typical 40.00 to 50.00 US dollars for it... IMHO, the only way a publisher would be willing to to commit the kind of capital, marketing and publishing that is typical to top-selling FPS... would be to CHARGE more for the product. The way I figure it... in order for a publisher to take flight sims serious as a investment, would be to produce equivenlent net profit. Concidering the typical number of sim purchases compared to the typical FPS purchase number... I estimate our sims would need to cost 2 to 3 times what we now pay. Obviously my theory is not very popular...

In all honesty this myopic though process is actually one of the flight-sim genres biggest down falls. We tend to see our genre through rose colored glasses, convincing ourselves that the next big sim title will compete with the likes of the EA battlefield series etc... When in reality the typical revenue from even a perceived block buster like IL-2 is but a blip on the pubs net profit record. Frankly it's neither Stiglr’s nor like-minded sim enthusiasts fault for believing consumer driven economic pressure would change a publishers mindset toward simulations... Basic economics theory leads then to believe this is how we the consumers educate/motivate manufacturers/developers about what we are willing to pay for.... Sadly, like you alluded to, software is not a demand driven commodity. The publishers are fiscally smart... they seek out and peruse titles that are proven money makers. Something few simulations has done to date... with the exceptions being the MSCFS and Falcon series... And even they paled in parallel to the other game genres. Fact is... if we stop buying them... they will stop making them. We as a genre are truly nothing more than a pimple on the software entertainments butt... Thankfully we have a handful of small independent developers and a few non-conformist pubs who choose to continue to buck the norm... ...Reality is thought... if just one of their projects bomb badly... I fear that will move onto project far less risky and far more profitable too.

Stiglr, You misunderstand (or I simply explained it poorly... which is usually the case)... When I say "we" I'm implying "combat flight simulation enthusiast" in general. We are a very small niche genre in general when compared to fantasy, sci-fi, FPShotters, and even RTSs. If it were not for MS flight sims I suspect we would be even more obscure. It's not the lowest common denominator... it's just we are a niche that is hardly on the fore front of pulishers "profit radar". Between development costs, publishing, marketing... it's no longer cost effective for a publisher "hope" for a reasonable return on their invenstment... when they can cookie cutter the other genres and make notable profit. Mind you... in our minds, IL-2 etc... sold wonderfully... the reality is these sales were minuscule comparably Hey, I don't like it either... but them's the facts. "Switch stiddlers" is nothing but a generic reference to those of us who expect more from sims than eye-candy... and know the difference. No insult implied or intended... Hmmm... Actually I suspect they would just continue making the products that make them money... You put too much faith in the idea that that actually care what we want then to make for us.

Boils down to semantics... TKs projects are not simulations in the conventional sense... they are games. Stiglr, you have always been a dyed-in-the-wool hardcore realism advocate... Problem is whether you can admit it or not... this high fidelity, highly accurate, micro-management simulations you crusade for are sadly becoming ultra-rare... for no other reason than consumer based wants and expectations. The days of twiddling knobs and flipping switches are dying in our simulations because our publishers HAVE to cater to the lower common denominator. Our button mashing, A.D.D youth have no true desire to sit down an learn the intricacies of a fighter jet, when they can shove in a CD to their console and twitch. I applaud you for your desire to keep simulations pure as they were 20 years ago... It's just not what's going to see copies to todays consumers. OMHO, TK is doing the right thing... He's providing a solid air-combat simulation... and leaving it completely open to "US" to make it as in-depth as we wish to make it.

Well... Considering TK's development group consists of roughly four to six full-time (including himself)... and a small handful of independent contractors... what he develops with little to no publisher support is no small feat. Even more impressive is his fundamental belief of incremental improvement in ALL his titles as each new project brings new and improved code. (Advantage of building off the same engine foundantion)... Flight simulation enthusiasts have always been one of the most demanding genres... which is all the more reason TKs approach is the most viable... "Provide a solid flight-sim foundation and the community will improve upon it and make it flourish". TK sims "are-what-they-are"... "WE" the community, ultimately determine whether it is a flop or not. I have absolute faith that this WWI project with succeed... IMHO, I believe it will eventually become the most heavily modified project yet... So there ya have it... not go forth and contribute!

I feel your pain... I'm presently struggling through my own "trial and error" method of figuring out the nuances of cockpit magic... As gabilon stated previously... 1.) make sure your cockpit entries match your avionics. 2.) Make sure your textures are present in your cockpit folder and they are sized correctly. Sorry... wish I could be more help, but I'm in a similar boat as yourself.

Naw... I plan on releasing the same'o tripe with a new version number... just to yank enveryones chain... "Yes"... "Yes"...and "Yes".

Hey guys... Sorry, missed this discussion. I'm currently having a hella'va time getting the "exploding engine" thing under control right now... Current build has it under better control and the proper working gages help... but it's still a flaming arrow over 2.2 mach. I'm at a point where I think is may be a hard-coded game issue... I've got an email out to TK to see if there truly is a resolution to this. I'll be releasing a new BETA soon... so you guys will have a better idea of how and where to push the bird. Stay tuned Zur-TECH.com

What you have here is "ghosting" of the shadow LOD... Basicly the 3D model used for the shadow does not "exactly" match the geometry of the 1st level LOD file... certain 3D cards will show a ghost or alpha-looking issue like this. If you look at my F/A-37 Talon, my shadow LOD does this as well... (It will be fixed..I swear!) ;) So to answer your question, it's not so much your 3D card as it is more the shadow 3D LOD file. ...If you turn shadows off, you will not have this problem. Zur-TECH.com

Would love too... but Between my existing projects, the ones I have waiting in the wings, and the updates I NEED to do to my existing stable... I fear it would be a long..long time before the EDI ever saw the light of day. Sorry...

I'm with USAFMTL on this... Your first release was top-notch... Really looking forward to this one too. Thanks for your efforts!

Actually this last release is an "ALPHA".. which basicly means it's a work in progress. I'm finishing up on ALPHA 3.0 now... which will include a more complete/functional cockpit. Thanks Zur-TECH.com

Ask and ye shall receive... (Thought everyone knew about this?) Zur-TECH.com

I've been swamped with real life, but wanted to share the progress made up to this point... Download here: Zur-TECH.com Well... What are you waiting for? GO DOWN LOAD IT!

Ask and ye shall recieve... Find all my stuff here: Zur-TECH.com