Gunrunner

GreyCap, i'ts a wombat, and as you might notice, he's an ace, a wombat ace...

I know, but you know I just delight in forum drama. :D

Well, we all have, let's say my douchebagery knows no bounds and is ranging far and wide... ^^ If I'm that insufferable, as I told you, just say the word and I'll only come for the downloads.

BPAO> I do undestand and respect why you use it, all I'm saying is that from a pure technological point of view this is a stupid choice. Ecoute, je comprends et respecte les raisons qui vous poussent à utiliser cette approche, mais cela ne change en rien que d'un point de vue purement technologique c'est une connerie monumentale. Dave> The point is that we don't care, they can be made compatible... it's an issue of perennity and ease of use. Installers are trading ease of use in a limited time-frame and environment for the inconvenience of being a nuisance outside that particular environment. 30 years of computing history will tell you that semi-proprietary installers with no means to extract content without execution are a bad idea. Do you know how many software would work fine under Vista, if only you could get them to install ? Alas, the installer were either coded in 16bit, or were using a now deprecated part of windows, hence, even though the software is compatible, the data valuable, you can't access it (unless you have enough knowledge, which is against the philosophy of ease of use and access of such installers). Sauf que cela n'a pas d'importance, avec un peu de travail ils peuvent être compatibles... le vrai problème est un problème de pérennité de la solution et de simplicité d'emploi. Les installeurs sont un compromis entre la simplicité d'utilisation dans une période limitée dans le temps et dans un environnement logiciel précis, et le fait qu'ils deviennent à la limite de l'utilisation une fois sortis de cet environnement. 30 ans d'histoire de l'informatique te démontreront que les installeurs semi-fermés sans moyen d'extraire le contenu sans les exécuter sont une très mauvaise idée. As-tu la moindre idée du nombre de logiciels qui marcheraient parfaitement sous Vista si seulement on pouvait les installer ? Hélas, soit les installeurs ont été codés en 16bit, soit en faisant appel à des composants de Windows depuis longtemps abandonnés, par conséquence, bien que le logiciel soit compatible, et les données toujours utiles, on ne peut y accéder (du moins pas sans un minimum de bagage informatique, ce qui va à l'encontre de la philosophie de simplicité d'accès et d'utilisation de ces installeurs). Anyway, that's not the topic, sorry for hijacking this with one of my pet peeve...

BPAO> This is indeed exactly why you should stop using this dumb executable idea, it's not perfectly compatible with SF2, it's a nuisance when it "updates" already modded files, it frankly is more of a hassle than a solution, even though I agree that the installer is the safest way to ensure the mod is installed as intended. You also have to take into account that the installer format doesn't allow for simple extraction without execution, which is a problem on the long term. For exemple, Vista dropped support of 16 bits executables, if the installers were in that format, they wouldn't be usable under Vista. Of course 32bits support won't be deprecated for quite some time, yet it is a compatibility issue. For security reasons, some systems do limit the executables and the actions they can perform, in which case installers are a hassle when there's no real justification for them. C'est très exactement pour cela qu'il faudrait arrêter d'utiliser ces foutus installateurs... Ils sont en partie incompatibles avec SF2, une vraie plaie quand ils cherchent à mettre à jour des fichiers déjà modifiés, c'est franchement plus un problème qu'une solution, même si je conviens qu'ils sont le meilleur moyen de s'assurer que la production de la MF est installée proprement et telle qu'elle doit être. Prend aussi en compte que le format d'installation ne permet pas d'extraire les fichiers sans exécuter l'installateur ce qui est un problème à long terme. Par exemple, Vista refuse d'utiliser des exécutables 16 bits, si les installateurs étaient dans ce cas, alors les installateurs de la MF ne seraient plus utilisables. Certes ce n'est pas demain la veille que le 32bits sera déprécié mais tout de même, c'est un véritable souci de compatibilité future. Pour des raisons de sécurité, de nombreux systèmes restreignent également les exécutables et les actions autorisées par ceux-ci, une fois de plus les installeurs deviennent un problème quand ils ne sont pas absolument nécessaires.

I guess we could "solve" this by adapting WoV/E F-105D FM for AD's D/F/G models, as they are quite old indeed (or we could just do our puppy eyes to C5, but he's busy enough with NF4 etc...).

The thing is... it could be any of the three... If Windows got corrupted for software reasons, in certain circumstances you can get that error, and reinstalling will help, changing hardware won't. If the hard drive is faulty, then you might get away with it by reinstalling, but it will crash again sooner or later, changing the motherboard won't help at all, changing the drive will (but will mean reinstalling on the new drive anyway). If the mobo is faulty to the point of not even booting, then there's chance it won't even let you finish installation or fail in the first reboot cycles, depending on the age of the mobo and associated components, changing it might mean changing other components as well. There even might be multiple failures... Do you happen to have another computer on hand, or at least another hard drive, even small and old, as long as you are sure it's functionnal ? If you do, the empirical testing procedure is simple... 1) Try booting the hard drive A on computer B, if it's not found or gives the same error, there's a good chance hard drive A is the culprit (verify the drive is supported by computer B though). 2) Try installing windows on hard drive B, installed on computer A, if it works, then the motherboard is fine. If 1) and 2) fail, then it's time to change both. If 1) only fails, then it's the hard drive. If 2) only fails, then it's the motherboard. If none fail, then you can probably safely keep drive A in computer A and simply reinstall or repair windows.

Good point Jug. But wasn't the F-105F one of AD's too ? It should have the same (or nearly) FM as his D model.

To understand the difference between the two speeds, you have to consider how IAS (Indicated Air Speed) is mesured. IAS is usually measured by the air pressure against a membrane... knowing that, and that air pressure decreases with altitude, you can understand why you should not trust IAS as a way to measure your speed (if you don't, just think about it, if you go at a certain speed at low level, there is a lot of air to push against the membrane, giving you a high number; now, you go to high altitude, you have the same real speed, alas, there is a lot less air to push against the membrane and thus the indicated speed will be lower; So, the same reason that allows you to get a higher real speed (thinner air and thus less friction) is what makes you have a lower indicated speed). The cockpit might have a Machmeter, it is, barring an indication of True Airspeed, you best point of comparison with real world performances, keep in mind that a machmeter doesn't indicate a speed as you usually understand it, as the value of the Mach is not a constant, instead being relative to altitude, air pressure and temperature. If you are really into comparing and understanding the various speeds and their effects and simulation ingame, search how to activate the debugging display, it will show you all speeds as well as a host of aerodynamic and physics data.

Oh dear... 1) There is no publicly released Alpha Jet yet, there are at least one WIP CA-side and a "3-years in beta" Capun-side. 2) The Super Etendard, while not publicly available alone anymore (it's a Capun-side plane), is part of the Malvinas campaign, you can get it here (http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=6700). 3) The Rafale, once again, there's at least 2 as WIP CA-side, and one "long-beta" Capun-side. More importantly... 4) Don't yell, ever... using all caps on a forum is yelling. 5) Try to get more informative thread titles. 6) Try to word your questions so they don't sound like demands (the numerous interrogation marks in this case)... especially when your first post got you in trouble for that very reason... Since the numerous threads have been regrouped... 7) Take your afternoon and study the Knowledge Base (http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showforum=99), if you can't find your answers, do a simple search on the forums, it will bring up answers to most if not all your questions. 8) Avoid double-posting or mass-opening of threads. 9) Be as self-reliant as you can, it tends to irritate people to answer the same questions again and again, especially when they have already spent time to explain it previously or made a KB entry so that newcomers don't have to ask anymore. However, if you still can't find the solution or get it to work, you'll find someone to help, but it's easier if you have shown a will to try by yourself first. 10) For your missions, you can do that using either Le Missioneur or Kreelin's Mission Builder, you'll find tutorials in the KB or with the program IIRC.

Probably the same way they looked at the Mirage G, only to have a sense of what other countries were doing and trying to get ideas and elements for their own requirements later on.

KB> It gets it through Windows/DirectX... nothing really special here. Also, regarding textures the "strategy" seems to be : - Try to load the texture outside the CAT - If the texture is missing or too heavy to load, try to load the texture inside the CAT - If the texture is missing or too heavy to load, use no texture A cunning plan might be to add intermediate steps where the engine uses a degraded texture derived from what it finds too heavy. The code is partially there, as it is used for the various texture settings, however, it is probably targeted to be subtype-wide (all textures of a given subtype get degraded) and lacks the necessary logic to be used only for specific textures. Interestingly there seems to be no evident logic in the loading of textures to optimise this strategy, making sure the most important objects get the better textures and only the rest get degraded. On a related note, the texture-loading optimisation features sometime have strange effects; for instance, have you ever tried flying TMF F-16A-1 with TMF F-16A-10 as a wingman (both using the default USAF texture) ? You'll notice that your wingman inherits the black nose even though it should use the grey one, weirder even, you'll notice that while the tail of your wingman starts with the proper red band, the band on the moving part is the blue one of the F-16A-1 texture. Try it the other way round and you'll see the F-16A-1 "inheriting" parts of the F-16A-10 textures... What I can't remember though is if the problem is limited only to your flight or is inherited by all TMF F-16s throughout the game (and it's not TMF's fault, it's clearly an engine "feature", although the fact that the texture folders and filenames are identical triggers this behaviour (renaming one of the folders solving the problem)). It probably comes from an optimisation to avoid loading the same texture twice, except in that case it doesn't seem to be quite clever at discriminating what should be loaded twice or not.

I knew Kirovs were big, but not THAT big... Very nice work though, we do lack some serious soviet navy opposition for the Iceland, Black Sea and Bering Strait sets.

Was your WoE patched up to the latest standard ?

Not too appear too greedy, but is the model easy to convert to Mirage IVP (flat underside with centerline pylon for an ASMP missile) or Mirage IVR (with a recess in the underside for a CT-52 reconnaissance gondola) standards ? You really are the most prolific strategic bomber man around. :)

Lindr2, I think it's Babelfish translation for something like "I can't wait for this aircraft" or something along those lines ^^

The thing is, CA_Stary Desert update doesn't work out of the box with SF2 Desert... I had to do a little ini dance (to change various rendering and shader settings) and CAT extraction/rebuilding to get it to work (but maybe I missed something, all I know is I couldn't get it to work in the Documents folder and just used the rebuilt CAT method).

MigBuster> My point exactly... I was just pointing out that the F-35, export or US, was not designed to be true stealth, and that the export F-35 will be even less so due to export restrictions. Yet it is a pathetic sales pitch and/or a grim omen for JSF partners if the claim ends up anywhere close to the truth.

1) The F-35 is not a "true" stealth fighter, IIRC it's optimised for minimal frontal RCS. 2) The quote specifically cites the export F-35, supposed to have lowered specs, especially in the stealth department. What bugs me is that I thought we were March 19th, not April 1st... how time flies

Oh dear... That can be read two ways... 1) Reject Boeing RCS claims : Boeing engineers were high, thought that was a good idea, then the marketing department got high too and made preposterous claims. 2) Accept Boeing RCS claims : JSF partners you're being fogged off with second-rate american junk by smart-aleck salesmen from Pittsburgh while british factories stand empty and british workmen queue up for the dole.

The Yak-38 have been out of service for quite some time now, they were probably retired along with the early Minsk carriers in 1993 or at very last with the Baku (Gorshkov IIRC) in 1996. The Yak-141 never entered service as the program was terminated in the 90's, but AFAIK the development aircrafts are still kept in flying order in case the program got reactivated. There would be little point in reactivating the Yak-141 program as the remaining carrier in Russian service can operate more cost efficient types (Su-33, MiG-29K).

The low altitude tactics makes sense in the WoX world as the missiles have a harder time tracking and following you, often crashing while tracking you, an advantage you don't get when flying high. The idea is not to avoid detection, but to get your opponent to exhaust his supply of BVR missiles (most of them running into the ground) and then getting the advantage of a clearer shot to your target afterwards, or forcing the enemy fighters to fight at low level, where the player usually has an advantage over the AI (who still valiantly runs into the ground). Well, at least that's why I often adopt the low level profile.

Blackbird, IIRC in previous discussions on avionics, it came up that TK decided to simulate that by having the scanner covering the whole deflection range all the time in both planes (as in spatial planes, not aircrafts ^^).

Should depend on the plane, doctrine, equipment, needs... For recce birds available in game I think the usual altitude over target are : U-2A : Very High altitude Yak-25RV : High to Very High altitude Canberras : Medium to Very High altitude RA-5C : Low to High altitude RF-100A : Medium to High altitude RB-66B/C : Medium to High altitude RF-86F : Medium altitude F9F-5P : Medium altitude RF-101(A/C/G/H/B) : Low to Medium altitude RF-4(C/E) : Low to Medium altitude RF-104G : Low to Medium altitude F-16A® : Low to Medium altitude RF-8(C/G) : Low to Medium altitude

You know what ? We should turn that into a regular game... Once upon a time in a French aviation magazine, a dozen pictures were published every month, only parts of airplanes (a nose, an air intake, a landing gear) and we had until next issue to send our guesses on which aircrafts these were from, that was quite entertaining.