mosherec

First of all I absolutely love the Mirage factory F-14A & B for the Strike Fighters 2 series. Awesome work by all involved, to include the skins and such that have been added lately. I cannot wait for the F-14 based edition of the SF2 series to come out. The only thing that I just cannot get past is the really thick canopy frame work in the new F-14. It just blocks too much of my view. I know the canopy frame in the Tomcat was somewhat of a problem for maintaining visibility in the F-14. But the canopy and windscreen frame in the MF F-14 cockpit seems a little too thick. Having sat in an F-14 cockpit a few time myself I just don't remember the canopy frame being quite so thick. Anyone tried to modify it? I would give it a shot myself but I am not much of an experienced moder at all. I wouldn't know where to start? What would be the procedure if I wanted to try? Thanks.

I have several add-on aircraft. When using them for a single mission, even though the aircraft have several years for which they are available in their data.ini, only the first year , or "start year" of availability displays as selectable in the single mission year drop down menu for these add-on aircraft. All other aircraft have a range of years selectable as normal. Anyone else encounter this and is there a fix? I tried adjusting the options begin & end years for single missions in all four version of the game (SF2VN, SF2EUR, SF2I & SF2NA) that are on my PC but that didn't help. Thanks much? Ed

Okay. That got it. Now I am tracking like an AIM-9X. I get now how the mod folder works in series 2. Thanks gentlemen for the assist.

Thanks Wrench, Read that. Tried putting edited INI in Flight mod folder and several other places in the mods folder and it has had no effect. I did notice that the only map INI that does not have a Specified range of allowed years by default is the GermanyCE one. Israel, Vietnam, and Iceland all have [AllowedDates] lines. Consequently any add-on aircraft works with all of its available dates selectable when choosing the Germany map but not with the other three. So it has to be an issue with the [AllowedDates] line as previously discussed. I just cannot seem to figure out how to work. I am thinking simply extracting the INI and deleting the [AllowedDates] line in the Israel, Vietnam and Iceland maps will eliminate the date limitation as in the Germany map. But I cannot figure out where I need to put the edited INI after I have extracted and edited it so that it has the desired effect in game.

Before extracting and messing with [AllowedDates] in game .INI's, I tried adjusting the available years for the aircraft giving me problems to earlier dates. For example, I changed F-14B(96) from Start-1996, End-2006 to Start-1976, End-1985. This fixed it, as the full span of years then became available from 1976-1985 per my change in the F-14B(96) DATA.INI So I am guessing that it has to be, as you said, somewhere in the allowed years in the game .INI's. Next I extracted them using Third Wire file Extractor and adjusted the [AllowedDates] dates as you suggested, but this had no effect. Not all of the Games have an [AllowedDates] line in the .INI. Only Vietnam, Israel and North Atlantic did. Europe did not. So I adjusted the ones that did, to no avail. Then tried removing these lines from all of them all together with same result. After extracting and editing the files do I need to put them somewhere else or do they stay in the extracted files folder? Or am I just way off course all together? Thanks.

Thanks. I will give that a shot.

Hey Eric, Thanks. I thought that would work too and tried before but result was the same. I still only get one year in the drop down list to pick from and it is always the first year the add-on aircraft is available, rather than the full span of years the aircraft was in service. Not sure what else to do. Wondering if it could be a file path issue or something.

Can anyone tell me what each of the three empty inertia numbers listed in the aircraft DATA.INI mean? From other posts I undertand they are calculated from multiple factors and basically represent the empty mass that must be moved by a given control input along a given axis. What I have not found is which number represents which axis? Thanks.

Thanks for the tips on the "Stan". I will see if I can do the same. But we are headed to an area where there are no FOBs or COPs yet. Soon as we can get power there maybe I will be able to get some flight sim time in. Going to check out the Afghanistan terrain for the sim. Thanks.

Thanks for the assist. You seem to understand exactly what I am saying. I am certainly not "rivet counting" and I am in no way trying to be critical of the SF2 Tomcat or it's creators. As I said to begin with I absolutley love the new F-14 except for that one little detail. I am not convinced that the upper canopy framing is accurate in dimension. But supposing that it is, we do not have the advantage of being able to lean to one side or the other or maneuver our heads around in the sim to see whats behind it. So if it was made somewhat thinner to compensate for this, I think it would make flying the thing in the sim more enjoyable. Yeah I could try to use the older Mirage Factory Tomcat pit instead but I would rather use the new one, with just a little better visibility. Thats all. Maybe one day I will try to mod it myself and see how it turns out. Unfortunately it will have to wait as I will be spending the next year in Afghanistan pounding sand. In the mean time I will just enjoy the sim as much as I can before I head out as there ain't no computers where we are going I hear.

I have concidered that also and I still believe it is too thick, even taking into account the inch and a half or so of the canopy rail that projects into the cockpit. Perhaps if you were looking at the canopy frame from a position that would have your line of sight perpendicular, or 90 degrees incidence to its surface that is flush with the canopy glass then maybe it would appear that way. However sitting in the pilots seat your point of view is probably closer to a line that intersects the canopy at this point about 30 to 45 degrees of incidence to the canopy plane.

This is the difference that I am talking about in the new SF2 F-14A&B canopy frame and the real Tomcat canopy frame. Clearly the canopy framing in the SF2 Tomcat cockpit is much too thick in comparison to the real thing. Keep in mind that the camera this was taken with is monocular, so no "paralax" issues here making it appear thinner due to looking at it with binocular vision. The first image is of an actual F-14D cockpit taken from eye level from the pilot seat. The second is a screen shot from the SF2 F-14B cockpit. The framing around the windscreen that contains the hud looks fairly close to the real thing. However I think that it is obvious that the upper canopy fram is clearly too thick, causing it to obstruct entirely too much of the forward field of view. I estmate that the upper frame shuld be about a third as thick as it appears. This is what I would like to fix if there is any way possible. Otherwise I wonder if it would just be possible to use the old Mirage Factory F-14 A cockpit with the SF2 F-14A & B aircraft models?

What about using the SF1 series Mirage Factory F-14 cockpit with the SF2 F-14? Not exactly the most desireable solution but could it be done? What would I need to do to make it work? Thanks.

I recently downloaded the F-4S for Strike Fighters 2 series from "Dave". Works wonderfully and looks great except that in cockpit view I noticed that ground objects blink in and out constantly. It is especially noticeable when overflying airfields, as whole sections of the runway will blink in and out. The F-4S is the only aircraft that has this problem. Any ideas what this might be and how to fix it? Thanks.

Thanks to all for all of the tips. Setting the "OpenCockpit =" line in the F-4S_Cockpit.ini to FALSE seems to have worked. Since this is the only aircraft I have had this probelm with I am satisfied with this solution. If it continues to be a problem in the future perhaps I will try the other solutions later. Thanks to all.

Why is it that add on aircraft I added to SF2 Europe are not available in single mission for any year other than their start year when choosing Israel or Vietnam as the theater for the mission? For example the F-14B(96) is only available in 1996, the F-14B is only available in 1988, the FA-18 is only available in 1988, etc, when choosign them for a mission in the Vietnam or Israel theaters of war. How can I make them available for other years in Vietnam or Israel? Thanks.

Thanks for the advice. I had already tried that and it did not work. The problem exists only for the add on F-14B, F-14B(96) and the F/A-18C. All other aircraft diplay all of their available years in single mission. But these three aircraft will only show their start year as an available mission year in single mission mode when using the Vietnam or Irael theaters of war. In SF2 Europe they work fine. I thought it might be a users.ini issue but adding this to their .ini file and adding the users.ini to each aircrafts folder did not fix it either. However I could have done it incorrectly. Not sure what else to try.

Is there a MiG-29 available for SF2 yet? I cannot seem to find one. Love the MiG-29 for SF1 series by Mirage Factory. Can it be made to work in SF2 series? Thanks.

How do use use the GBU10's with the Mirage Factory F-14B? For the life of me I cannot figure out how to get them to come off of the plane. Thanks.

I have a fresh install of WOV and WOE. I have the latest patches, WOV_Update_Oct2008b & WOE_Update_Oct2008b on them respectively. I have installed the latest Weapon Editor from Third Wire for the, weaponeditor_022008. This is all done over clean installs. Then I have downloaded a dozen or so add on aircraft from column five. All is set up and working fine. Now comes the problem. I decided to go ahead and download the Mirage Factory Weapons Pack for WOV/WOE, the one dated 01-02-08. Works fine except when I fly US Navy F-4 Phantoms I get USAF two tone green and gray 370 wing tanks on them instead of the solid gray ones they should have. Anybody else seen this? If so how do I fix it? These are stock Phantoms so I don't know how to edit their data.ini. to make them use a different tank. Please help.

Update for anyone interested. I figured out that I could replace the original AIM-54a Bitmap Image in the weapons folder with the Mirage Factory PAK (FEB 2008) AIM-54a Bitmap Image. (This is after I replaced the entire WOE program file with the one I backed up prior to adding the MF pak. Saved the MF pak weapon folder to my docs so I would have its files available to pate into WOE weapon folder.) Then used the editor to make sure it was directing use of the correct image. Since they both had the same name this worked flawlessly. So now I have AIM54 Phoenix with the MF AIM-54a skin. Consequently it applies the same skin to the AIM-54c. So I decided to try pasting the MF AIM-54c Bitmap Image in the weapon folder to and have the weapon editor direct the game to use that image for the AIM-54c. THIS DID NOT WORK! The result was invisible AIM-54 missiles on the aircraft. Not sure why this is. So I deleted that Bitmap and set it back to using the AIM-54a Bitmap. The good news is I have better looking skins for my AIM-54 missiles now without having to sacrifice my US Navy F-4 Phantom wing tanks to the Air Force ones. Next I will try to see if the same procedure will work for the Tomact drop tanks. MAY THE FORCE BE WITH ME!

FYI, I checked out this new community weapons pak. It does not appear to have the updated aim54a & c images from the Mirage Factory weapons pak (FEB 2008). It also does not have the updated drop tanks either. Looks like all of the Tomcat stuff is the original Tomcat hardware provided with the first MF Tomcat.

In fact there is but they are way down near the bottom of the list. The green and gray one is called Tank_F4_370 and the all gray one is called Tank_F4_370_cr12. What I don't see is a .LOD by the same name for either. Anyway if anyone has a fix to get the gray tanks back on the Navy Phantoms as in the stock version of the game it would be greatly appreciated. In the mean time I will keep working on it. If I cannot figure it out I suppose I can live with the Air Force tanks on my Navy Phantoms.

Forgot to mention that that MF pak is available here in this site in the downloads section. Here is the link http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...um=10&st=10

Hello, No, this patch I am using is not new. It is the MF pak dated early 2008 for SFP1/WOV/WOE. I had been using it with WOV and WOE prior to the latest Third Wire updates for WOV & WOE. Even then it would cause navy F-4 Phantoms to load AF 370 Gal two tone green and gray wing tanks. Never could figure out why. It remains a problem with the newest patches from Third Wire.