Gunrunner

Do335, with all due respect, it's not only not a good idea, it's also a potentially community destroying idea. Basically you're diminishing the efforts of volunteers and incentivizing less dedicated and scrupulous ones to take action potentially leading to decreasing quality control (discouraging existing high quality volunteer modders) and creating a host of problems (reverse engineering, use of asset without proper permissions, downright theft of models). I have no problem with an unofficial fund to help fund source material, fact finding trips and cover other expenses for recognized and high quality modders, or even a sort of Patreon for modders (even though most here would shudder at something they'd consider a handout I think), but your idea as it is formulated is unfortunately a recipe for disaster (remember, the community is not just us nice and reasonable forum-active people). I think the DAT schism is detrimental enough to the community, we don't need another one because we tried to implement a bad solution to a misdiagnosed perceived problem. As mentioned by others, it also puts the community into a whole other dimension from the legal and licensing point of view, and what were nice, tacit, gentlemen's agreements (or ignorance) will turn into a legal nightmare very quickly.

@Snailman, but the pre-purchase came with the season ticket, which would include the laser weapons and opponent plane hacking DLCs. It might be a bargain (or extremely expensive for no good reason).

Slick Cowboy, is that a 2GB or 4GB GTX 960 ? I have issues with a 2GB GTX 950 (which unfortunately can't use anything earlier thant 355.xx drivers) but none with a 4GB GTX 970 (even with 355.xx drivers). I'd wager this has to do with a combination of the game and drivers memory management on cards with "low" memory quantity/bandwidth when playing on high/unlimited with highly modded installs (large textures, modded environment.ini etc).

If you intend to use the dhimar decals included with the game, Dhimar HAS to be [nation256] to correctly use level 0 (country/service) decals. Also make sure that in decals.ini decals supposed to be insignias - and other country level decorations using the country numbering scheme - are set to DecalLevel=0. Another way is to create a nation specific skin duplicate and add 256 at the end of the FilenameFormat of concerned level 0 decals (i.e. FilenameFormat=Insignia should become FilenameFormat=Insignia256 if it's a Dhimar skin). Yet another way is to extract the Dhimar decals and rename them with the nation number you used in your modified nations.ini, but that's the least graceful way to do it. P.S.: The same applies for Paran, except that Paran should be [nation257]. Also, use placeholders between your last nation and Dhimar/Paran, if you skip numbers in the nations.ini it won't work properly.

Sex-ed for war planes, brilliant.

Nice; She's usually F-111B Manatee on my installs to match the equally ridiculously named Aardvark, but that wouldn't make for a nice patch...

Paran will invade Dhimar... again ?!

@russo, yeah, so Wrench has BIG hands, got a problem with that ? :)

Any chance of a 4000-5F (same pylons as the N, same nose as the M, with SPIRALE dispensers at the wingroot (at the back)) ?

Straw-man is already at least 200 years old. It's been used in it's current form and meaning in English for at least a century and with another (somewhat related) meaning in French for twice as long. Furthermore, unlike most other informal fallacies there is no other name for it anyway.

Wait, the door pops UP ? Of all the solutions they chose one probably requiring the most energy to actuate and creating the most problems when it fails (as it won't open cleanly naturally, neither would it close cleanly, while staying in the airflow) ? Ok, to be honest, it's probably the one adding the least weight. I just love this program...

Myth 1 : Can't turn, can't climb, can't run Answer: Doesn't really deny it, only puts it in the context where the F-35 will most often be "unladen" even though they carry coconuts while previous fighters were "laden", and reiterates the idea that "pah with all its gizmos it won't need aerodynamic performance anyway". It completely ignores the fact that over the life of the aircraft : A) changes in needs and requirement will mean that the plane will probably over time not rely only on internal carriage anymore. B) potential opposing planes will not be at a technological disadvantage, making the probability of classical engagement higher over time. Myth 2 : Can't fly at night or in the rain Answer: That's been solved, and thunderstorms are nearly solved too. I'm willing to accept that one. Myth 3 : The F-35B melts through decks Answer: No, it only diminishes their lifespan, everything's fine if we change the deck material. BULLSHIT, that's a straw-man, most serious commenters never suggested it did instantaneous, critical damage, but that over time it would wear it out much faster... which it does, to the point that they're acknowledging that they'll change deck material to solve that issue. Now on concrete spalling... this is entirely dismissed, however, to my knowledge this has not been tested with a fully loaded plane (requiring more thrust thus more heat and/or over a longer period) and not on every type of concrete revetment, I would not wager that all air bases are safe from F-35B yet. Myth 4 : The F-35 can't do CAS Answer: If we redefine what CAS is, provided all our gizmos work as intended and use expensive ammunitions, yes it can. It's all good on paper, but I don't see it working in a real war... Then there's the bullshit about using the gun without exposing itself to AA or MANPADS, the bit about the payload being higher than an A-10, yeah, with external payload, meaning you lose stealth, you can't run, you can't climb, you can't turn... It's enough to fight insurgents, but not a high intensity war. Then survivability... yes, on paper, let's wait their first conflict to say it actually works as intended shall we ? Myth 5 : Stealth doesn't work Answer: Noooo, LF radars need large antennas, we'll destroy them with cruise missiles before using our precious, precious planes... entirely missing the development of ground based radar networks since the 90's (granted, none of these are operational anywhere officially). Then this beautiful bit about advances in radar, making stealth not moot, but still an advantage over non-stealth aircrafts... yes of course, "stealth" aircrafts will still be detected later, but as long as they're detected far enough it doesn't matter anymore. And the final, "No stealth isn't a dead end, we've got event better things... for the next aircraft"... that will do a lot of good to the F-35 for sure. Myth 6 : The B variant compromises the others Answer: Straw-man, straw-man... the real claims about the compromise are about weight increase over the program and the development delays due to the focus over the F-35B and it's engineering problems. Myth 7 : A single engine us unsafe Answer: Non-sequitor about reliability of older engines... Nope, which is true, except that at present the reliability of the F-35 engine is not exactly at the point where it's entirely "safe", but even the most alarmist reports points that it's getting there... whether it will end up being the most reliable engine of all time as intended is another matter entirely, but it certainly will be safe enough. Myth 8 : The F-35 is too expensive, concurrency doesn't work Answer: All true, but only valid for the US and other air forces buying the F-35 over at least a decade. Doesn't address at all the cost problems for early adopters in low numbers like most european customers.

Thanks, guess I'll have to find a way to get my install files or abandon the idea of playing SF2 during my vacations, damn, guess I'll have to content myself with Kerbal Space Program...

Trying to reinstall everything from scratch, far from home, on a test machine, and unfortunately TW's download page seems to be down, as are the servers for the auto-installer (they fail to respond). Am I the only one facing that ? How long has it been going ? Seems like the end is nigh for SF2 on PC...

Deep Blue, without a doubt, any giant great white that can nearly beat Kasparov ought to be a force to be reckoned with !

Typhoid, care to detail your problems ? SF2 seems to work fine for everyone else so far, but you never detailed what your problems were. Likewise when it comes to display, on one hand you say quality is bad, but pictures are great then blame quality and complain about performance... Could you care to elaborate and have you tried updating your GPU driver before doing the rollback ?

It's not dead, it's pining for the fjords.

Campaigns are ok now, thanks.

July 2013 (which is probably the reason for the Mirage 5 recurring fuel tank "bug"), with all plane DLCs.

Excellent job, however, two bugs so far : - Mirage 5PA double fuel tanks, as almost usual with your campaigns, the Mirage 5 suffers from unskinned fuel tanks from the model appearing along the skinned ones. - 1965 campaign, Indian side, you'll end up playing Pakistan with Indian planes, I have no clue why.

No no, we are reasonable and not greedy at all, we'll be satisfied with the Clemenceau-class carriers and their escorts instead... are we not merciful ? Joking aside, seems to be top notch work as usual, can't wait to try them out.

I think that at some point the community will have to either negotiate with TK for a crowd-funded project, acquire the code or a licence to it if we want to move forward beyond simply new content.

Yep, you don't have to but it's much better for decals and offers you greater flexibility if/when you'll be working on your damage/destruction model.

The moddability and the resulting vast, unrivalled choice of brilliant mods making almost anything from the 40's to now playable, it's the only sim out there offering good to excellent Phantoms and Mirages. The devilish, mostly non-cheating AI (even when shot down it's worth sticking around and enjoying the spectacle). The right mix of arcade and serious simulation making it the perfect survey sim. The fact that it's almost as playable with a mice and keyboard than with a full stick set.

AFAIR TK stated he abandoned the PC market some time last year. The reason isn't because mobile is more profitable, but because it is profitable, period... SF2 in general and SF2NA in particular were large investments - from the perspective of a company the size of TW - and I'm willing to bet they've not been recouped, worse TK ended up facing rising piracy - both of the games and the assets (aircraft models) - as well as rising criticism from the community for the direction he took trying to make SF2 more profitable (delayed expansions, locking down of content, hard wiring of settings etc...), even DLC didn't end up being as profitable as hoped. I can't fault him for deciding to cut his losses, he gave us a lot in an era where flight simulators, especially hitting the right sweet spot, are few and far between. It's just a pity there isn't enough of us to make his business model profitable. Sure I'd love updates, expansions and an updated engine, but not at the cost of TK endangering his own financial situation (which apparently was the case at some point pre-SF2NA). Maybe we can persuade him at some point to come back after he made enough money with low risk, low investment mobile projects or to sell/licence/abandon the source code (even though we lack the type (and number) of people to make it useful in the short term), but for the time being we're on our own with a tacit approval for community patches.