Gunrunner

Basher> Oh, you changed the picture, too bad I didn't see it earlier... Wrench> He actually WANTS to get rid of contrails and smoke emission for whatever reason, probably "immersion", like having thousands of missiles launching at extreme range, with all seeing sensors... Or maybe just because in a sim he knows already, things aren't done that way; in which case I don't quite get the point of playing another sim if you are going to make it a replica of the game you left. I don't get what he wants or why he would break a game to the point of it being utter nonsense, but I just don't care anymore, it's easier to help him in his "experiments" than trying to talk some sense into him.

That's because you commented both the ExhaustEmitter and the ExhaustPosition, which is needed by the AB IIRC as there is no specific position for AfterburnerExhaust; Use : //ExhaustEmitterName=CleanExhaustEmitter ExhaustPosition=-0.70,-6.50,-0.00 and //ExhaustEmitterName=CleanExhaustEmitter ExhaustPosition=0.70,-6.50,-0.00 for the other engine and you should get the AB back. Also, it is strange that you would get smoke in static missions but not dynamic ones with the same plane, there's no way to tell that to the engine AFAIK, I'll test it. PS : Couldn't reproduce it with a stock, patched install; The F-15A uses the CleanEmitter in both cases. Are you sure you were not in afterburner when you didn't saw the exhaust trail, or that you were not shot by something, it may happen that a lucky shot kills your engines without setting you aflame, you then would effectively be flying without engines and thus you wouldn't have exhaust trails, which might be more logical if you didn't saw it in static missions, as the stock ones pit you against close bogeys on a frontal approach, giving them a chance to shoot you fast.

CleanExhaustEmitter still has smoke emission IIRC, the absence of emitter is actually the solution used by TW for the A-10A in WoE ^^

I suppose you could nicely ask Armourdave (or Sundowner, who seems more active around here) if he still has the 3ds files for his F.6 and if he would allow you to use it as a basis, provided he still has it. That way would be nice and friendly without raising any touchy subject.

Yes, if you wish to make clean engines you'll have to edit the /objects/aircraft/[aircraft]/[aircraft]_DATA.ini (or extract that file from /objects/objectdata.cat and place it there then edit it). The lines you want to edit are those starting with ExhaustEmitterName Then you have 2 options, the easy one and the hardest one. a) The easy is simply replacing the line by a void line : Change "ExhaustEmitterName=DirtyExhaustEmitter" with "ExhaustEmitterName=" (you should think of adding the void line and commenting the original one for easy reference, meaning the entry would look like : //ExhaustEmitterName=DirtyExhaustEmitter ExhaustEmitterName= b) The "harder" would consist of the same as above, but instead of removing the emitter name, you would change it to something like VeryCleanExhaustEmitter, and then create a INI file for this emitter in the /effects directory. That would also allow you to add emitters either dirtier or cleaner, per plane, instead of using the same for every (class of) plane, but that needs a little more work and is not necessary if your goal is to completely get rid of those trails. From a realism point of view, I advise not removing them, and making checking some replacement effects for "more beautiful" trails, I think Deuces and CA Stary made some. I never tried removing condensation trails so I can't give you pointers for these, I doubt they are plane dependent and are probably something you'd find in the FLIGHTENGINE.INI

A picture might be needed for a definitive answer, but the answer's probably yes. Jets from that era had smoky, or even very smoky engines, even today most engines aren't completely clean. At high altitude you also have white condensation trails.

OK, I'm curious, does Razbam tileset allow for highway strips ? Does it add anything in term of objectives, features, airbase design ?

I would suggest something, but since some people would deem it illegal, piracy, heresy and would launch a holy crusade to cleanse the surface of the earth of the very mention of a program able to open a WAV file (do you realise ? With that you could open a file created by someone else, modify it and release it, without crediting the original author if you are a complete jerk, this kind of thing should not be allowed), I'd rather not. Kidding and bitter sarcasm aside, have you tried Audacity (link), it's overkill but would allow nearly any manipulation you may wish, but most audio softwares should suffice to manipulate a WAV file.

Wrench> Bah, happens to everyone. On the plus side that allowed me to add a site to my bookmarks.

Wrench> Google, when well used, is your best friend (http://ed-thelen.org/loc.html). ;)

The last and only time I remember it in a sim was with F-15E Strike Eagle III.

Well, I finally ported my entire Central European setup from WoE to WoI and am putting some finishing touches like the new parking system, getting some coherence in the weapons and the menus, and then modified cities to have better use of neighborhoods, with "historic" centres, better defined suburban zones, projects on the outskirts and commercial and office large buildings. So, I decided to search for a "better" tileset than the one I was using so far. I've found a few : - TW's original, of course, a tad on the pale and yellow side. - Deuces' enhanced tileset, used in NATO Fighters, with darker, richer color, that I'm using right now. - Max188's high definition tileset, which seems to be an enlarged, blurred and modified version of either the original or Deuces' tiles. - Brain32's photorealistic tileset, which is absolutely stunning but seems more repetitive than the others. So first, which one are you using yourself, and then, why did you chose that one over the others (or if you use one I'm not aware of, a link would be nice ^^). Anyway, many thanks to Deuces, Max188, Brain32 and the other tilemakers for their great work.

Q-5 in chinese service, A-5 as an export designation. The same for the fighters, using a J designation in China and a F designation for export.

Craig, that's a AW 681 (or HS 681 as written on it). It was one of numerous insane projects of the 60's to have nearly everything VTOL, including tactical transport planes, the AW 681 was the british entry in the category, supposed to be using, IIRC, variants of the Harrier's reactors to obtain VTOL capabilities.

Oh, yes, like with Home Server, the famous Data Cleansing feature, the whole new concept in Backup technology to solve once and for all storage capacity troubles, you send it to the server, the server trashes it...

From what I gathered so far, it's more a case of "not completely fixed but rare enough we will release anyway". It concerns a subsystem theorically only used by retailers that may end up with losses of data, it apparently also affects Vista's SP1. The paranoid would wait (the really paranoid would not touch a MS product with a 10 feet pole anyway), the rest of the world may probably go ahead with little if any risk on that front. I upgraded one machine, and so far nothing catastrophic happened...

There has been a major bug with it a few days ago, which forced MS to pull it in a hurry, I'd rather wait for independant confirmation that everything has been corrected if I were you.

Welcome aboard, to know how to add content, just have a look a the Knowledge Base : http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showforum=99 It should answer most questions a beginner can have. Otherwise you'll always find someone to help you for matters not covered. As a rule, do a copy of your installation pre-modifications (or after a succesful one you'd like to use as a basis), so you can freely experiment with the game without fearing to break anything. Have fun.

Sorry to contradict you Spectre, but CAT files are not compressed at all, they are concatenated (meaning, they are just files glued to each other into one big file, which is why it is extracted so fast). As a matter of fact, the CAT file is actually bigger than the sum of the files concatenated, as the CAT file adds at the head of the file the names and offset of the files it contains. The goal of the CAT format is to have something cleaner to work with, as well as to save space by using less small files eating up clusters (with the CAT you'd only lose one cluster max.). It IS possible to create a CAT file that would be read by the SF engine, but there is no tool for that at the moment, and doing it manually is a bore.

Well, with BPAO and/or Russo on the case of the S.2B, that might end up nicely done... Now, dear sir, if one day I could interest you in adding, say, a Buccaneer S.1, maybe update the Scimitar F.1 and Sea Vixen... With the DS map, changed to reflect the 60's era, that would make a nice what-if in 1963 (or 1961, in which case we wouldn't need the Buccaneer, but where is the fun of that ? Especially when that would leave Iraq with only Vampires, Venoms, Hunters and a handful of MiG-17F, while 1963 gives us a handful of MiG-19 too), with a British intervention to stop the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait by the flailing Qasim regime seeing the move as the last chance to regain some kind of internal support.

Ah, the Buccaneer, another "strange" (well, not that strange given the rounded nature of the beast) omission from the community... Great find...

Well, the program does say where the files are extracted, but you can't chose where that is, and that is in the directory of the opened CAT file, so say you wanted to extract files from C:\program files\strike fighters\objects\objectdata.cat, the files would be in C:\program files\strike fighters\objects\ If they are not here, then something didn't work right...

Oh, so that was not funny, even once explained , and that would be a nice name, for an AWACS killer...

Viper6> Nope, this clearly is a Targa (forget the geeky pun, I'll explain if needed). cgold> My guess without being able to test right now would be that it is indeed an issue with the tinting of the canopy, through a TGA file IIRC, meaning it's either missing, incorrect, uncorrecly named etc... From memory, there is 2 TGA needed for WOI's F-16, one named GoldCanopy.tga and another CanopyGlass.tga or something like that, I guess you only extracted one and not the other. BTW, why spending time backporting WoI's F-16 into SFP1/WoV/WoE when the Mirage Factory version is quite adequate ?

Longestpants> Outis, I sure get the reference, what I don't get is the relation to the topic. Polecat would be nice and open a whole new range of mustelid names (ferret, mink, marten, otter, weasel, badger, rattel or for the lovers of "cool", wolverine) while keeping a bridge with the Grumman cat tradition (well, the non-cat cat name would not be a first as the bearcat is a viverrid IIRC).