Gunrunner

FC, while it's true that most underestimate the cost of coding, TK has proved he sometimes uses it as a rational excuse not to implement things he has no immediate interest in doing and for which he thinks the monetary rewards are low. I understand that it's an argument easier to sell than "I'm just not feeling like doing that right now because I have no interesting way to do it and it fits nowhere in my long-term plans yet" but it is the real core of the matter. It's not meant as an insult to TK, I perfectly understand that it is part of the luxury of being an independent developer and the guarantee that he'll continue working on the series without seeing it as just a chore or a way to make money. I also understand that some modders might find it frustrating, but I'm sure they can easily see themselves in his shoes and understand why he takes that stance. Also, for the nay-sayers, think of ALL the things that needs to be coded for air refueling to work properly (and not as a make believe trick using scripted missions and an engine bug), it's not only about getting fuel transferred, but planning refuel zones, making sure they are properly generated (far from danger, yet close enough to be useful), having AI routines dedicated to refuel procedures (because while the tankers would run a pattern, they'd have to adopt another behaviour once you show up to refuel), then there's routine for collision and detecting how things go and how to deal with problems or successful operations, then there's AI routines to be added so your wingmen can refuel too... And for each step you must validate your code, check, test, again and again... It may be true that hands-on testing might have been somewhat lacking in recent times, but don't think that's it's the only testing done and the only one that matters. It's an incredible amount of work for something that would be used by only a limited portion of players and not entirely justified by the scale of existing maps and mission planning algorithm.

Maybe because it was an obvious bug and a nightmare to have that around... As a coder, not checking properly the constraint on your input variables is a recipe for disaster. If all your code expects unsigned or positive values within a certain range but gets fed negative values or values outside of the range for which your code is valid, you're asking for troubles. It may be inconvenient for tinkerers and modders, but on that particular issue TK did what he should have done a long time ago.

Awesome, I just can't wait but... No SF ? Please... pretty please with a cherry on top... I know I may be the only nuts loving recon planes but still... tactical recon deserves some love.

I guess the cost of development and doing business for iOS is somewhat higher to TW than doing so for Android.

Russo, the problem is only on Hard with the one they use (the early version) not the one published here and pulled quickly afterwards, which flies well, even in Hard. Just in case, here's the most recent occurrence of the file I have in store, I'm not sure it's much better from a realism point of view, but it certainly works better than the old one. su50_DATA.7z

Yep, definite FM trouble... On level flight there's a strong tendency to roll left (can't recognize my left from my right this morning, brilliant...) on flaps down and gently left with flaps retracted, in certain conditions it seems to revert to right, haven't figured out the altitude, speed and pitch combination for that one; on pitch up there's a roll right tendency, whether it's gear/flaps up or down, and with the gear double entry and rudders asymmetry corrected.

Ok, only happens in Hard FM, clearly not gear related.

Yes, the double gear entry is an anomaly but I doubt it's the case here. Is that happening only in movement when using rudders ? They are asymmetrical, the Right one has a control rate of 1.0 and the Left one of 1.5, that may explain part of it. Also, both engines have the same centerline thrust point, which should not be the case and may increase the asymmetry (the wider apart they would be, the less influence it would have). The rest seems correct but my code for main aerodynamic surfaces is a mess right now, so, short of a visual inspection I can't guarantee it's valid.

or maybe at least have the pieces tagged *innocent look*

//Shameless plug Just in case you're interested, my RF-84F pack now includes the Taiwanese Thunderflashes and modified campaign files to include them in Formosa Freedom 1.1

Yep, already part of my sources, I think you pointed me to it originally. My current obsession are 15th and 45th TRS nose arts, but I really lack good sources on that, I guess I'll have only one decorated plane for each squadron.

Working on the RF-84F again, I'll be uploading all finished and verified skins tonight (4 more skins at least) as well as altered campaign files for the Suez Crisis and Formosa Freedom.

Hi guys, does any of you have any solid documentation on the nose art on the Thunderflashes used by 15th TRS (at Kadena) and 45th TRS (at Misawa) ? I know they often sported some but so far haven't found enough information or detailed enough photographs to reproduce them. The basic scheme are done, or almost, but I'd love to include the nose arts as well.

Just a bump and to note that I already have Mr Magoo (FS-900 45th TRS) and What, me worry ? (FS-421 15th TRS). And... Mr Magoo decal done :

You mean that one ? Part of the the Israel 48-56 mod...

Capitaine, I was about to post along the same lines, also including the Quebec/Canada situation and positing that Switzerland works for two different reasons, the first historical as the various linguistic communities were drawn together naturally and not somewhat artificially and also because the economic disparities between linguistic communities are far less important in Switzerland than in Belgium (with a role reversal in the late 70's) or Canada.

I don't understand, weren't they supposed to be new models ? I must say, the Panther and Shooting Stars are a huge improvement.

Well, it can't be worse than France. While it's true that received pronunciation is supposedly the standard used for learning English in France, you also have to consider that most English teachers barely practiced it beyond their own studies, most of them haven't spent any significant amount of time in English speaking countries and many of these don't even have a clue how ridiculous that situation is, correcting bilingual/bi-national students (which would be fine if the student was wrong, but that usually isn't the case). I was raised in posh private schools, but still, very few competent foreign language teachers where available, the only decent ones we had were foreign nationals. There also is a problem in the teaching methodology consisting of making students constantly translate between the foreign language and French, making it that much harder to learn anything and increasing the syntactic and vocabulary interferences between both languages. Of course, with teachers far from fluent in the language they teach, it is a necessity but it is holding students back. You also have to understand that in France there was a perception* of a hierarchy of foreign languages learnt in school. *Hint: The description below doesn't represent what I think of these languages or the cultures, just how it was perceived and "sold" to us as we had to chose our foreign languages at school. The three main languages learnt in school were English, German and Spanish. You had to take two, one of which was English and you did start by the one deemed to hardest of the two, so you had the choice of taking German-English or English-Spanish. English was seen as a pragmatic, useful language, simple to learn, but a bit crass, boring, a language of commerce, not culture. Spanish was seen as the language for the lazy, the economic interests in learning Spanish are smaller, the cultural ones limited, only "poor" countries use it beside Spain, it was mostly here as a concession to children of the Spanish immigration, so they can get easy credits. German was the noblest choice, the hardest, the one good students would take and it represented our commitment to the European ideal and reconciliation with Germany. Nowadays, in regard to English the situation is getting better, with better access to non-translated books, non-dubbed movies and series and a better generation of English teachers who spent at least some time abroad, it also is far more common to have native speakers teaching. In my time, the only way to seriously learn a foreign language was to do it yourself, but the "exception culturelle" and our dub-culture limited the potential motivations to do so, until the advent of computing, leading to a whole generation of early geeks learning English by themselves. However, the situation in that particular case has worsened has computing resources are now also widely available in French, leading to a situation where geeks and engineers can get by without any serious grasp of the English language, leading to very nasty situations with code commented in French or French engineers barely able to participate in multinational projects because of it; it's somewhat pathetic.

Anything from the Strike Fighters Series 1 download section should work (unless it specifically needs Wings over whatever). A few older downloads for Strike Fighters 2 may also work, but most of the recent releases are incompatible.

What I also find funny with these "rape culture" people is that to them, it's not a romantic picture in any way because it lacks consent, thus a stolen kiss is tantamount to rape... Have they thought that the only alternative is that before engaging in any behaviour that can be construed as sexual or romantic in nature, both parties must first sign a contract in triplicate clearly defining what's going to happen, otherwise it could be interpreted as assault ? No, of course they don't, otherwise they'd have to admit how ridiculous their posturing is.

But who is thinking of those poor GIs being forcefully kissed by women from liberated European countries, I mean, I'm sure that must have been quite a traumatic experience to them... But hey, what do we know, as supposedly "entitled white males" our perspective's and arguments are by nature invalid (and no, the hypocrisy and nauseating implications of that kind of argument is lost on these people).

Well, what it is is obvious, it's one of MacDonnell F3H Demon proposed follow up, in a twin engine configuration, to address the issues with the original and that led to the Phantom, what the official designation if it ever got one though is beyond me...

WK, given the wide range of frequencies usable and the ability to deploy a large number of cheap receivers, using active radars as confirmation sources, with enough processing power, good algorithm and connection between the elements, even jamming and decoys may be of limited use, but we probably are far from that point yet. Nixou, it would only help for planes interconnected, because the active radar would illuminate a zone and the passive receivers on other planes or other parts of the network will not receive the expected echoes, therefore deducing the presence of something. So basically it's the active radars increasing the efficiency of the passive system, not the other way round.

Well, the groundwork for that dates back at least 20 years now, however it's only recently that we've reached the point where processing power and more efficient algorithm (and battlefield networks for military applications) may make this a practical real-time solution and not just an early warning system (also, we now have a larger number of emitters and over a wider spectrum to work from than before, making the system that much more efficient and less susceptible to failure or attack). Also, while it may render current stealth technology obsolete, it is still theoretically sensible to jamming.

We've had other heavy weights, however, given the download instability in certain conditions for some people, it might be a good idea to release it in multiple parts, because having to download a very large archive to have it failing at the last moment and having to restart all is a real pain... (btw, Erik, if you're around, is the fact that Range doesn't seem to work for download resume a configuration problem with CA's server ? I never had it working properly on CA and never bothered to check, also, having checksums for downloads would help).