SkippyBing

Don't know if the planning got that far, but was the F-111K due to have the USAF style of air-to-air refuelling or was a probe going to be fitted? Edit: Just did a quick google, probe was stowed just in front of the windscreen and raised up for fuelling. Can't believe they'd actually started two of the airframes when it was cancelled!

To be honest you're hard pushed to tell the difference between the locals and zombies*. My plan involves boats and tropical islands. And beer, lots of beer and strippers, strippers would be nice.... *I'm Cornish I can say that. We'll sort of Cornish I mean I don't have webbed feet or anything and I've only got 10 fingers and toes.

Australian tactics involve night formation/rejoin?

True Dave, true. To be honest I really do have better s**t to be worrying about, but when I see one of his cut and paste rants slagging off the community on another website it just pisses me off.

When I made a carrier for FS9 (before the series got a working ball) I basically did it by putting some point lights in angled boxes. It's not perfect but it does a pretty good job, if TK would let us attach lights to ground units it should be possible to use the same technique. Obviously it'd involve adding stuff to the source model but once a standard shape was made it could be copied to each model.

Err.. actually they are supported, although I notice people are developing mods for Targetware that they must know aren't supported by the code. Ignoring the cockpit red herring which you keep throwing around, give us some concrete examples of aircraft whose flight model is woefully lacking in accuracy. It is after all a flight sim, so if the aircraft doesn't fly like the one it's supposed to that's a downer, the cockpit I can live with as I know from experience what a bitch they can be to make. And incidentaly the aircraft I tried in Targetware didn't have the greatest cockpits, sure they may have been for the aircraft depicted, but it'd be nice if the instruments were more than static bitmaps. Seriously you read other peoples posts or just spout your default rant every time you log on, a number of aircraft available here have been tested by people who DID fly them and they've found them satisfactory. Here's an idea, install the latest patch, download some of the better add-ons and stop basing your opinions on three year old versions of the sim, I'd recommend anything from the Mirage Factory for starters.

Targetware - Well I spent an hour playing with it and couldn't get an aircraft off the ground, the ailerons and elevators wouldn't respond to my joystick (which the sim recognised and had assigned to those controls) or the keyboard, so not cutting edge realism unless there's a control lock button I couldn't find and that's just anal. Instrument in one of the aircraft didn't actually do anything they were just bitmaps, which is less useful than a stand-in cockpit in my book*. You can taxi on the water which doesn't scream realism to me and the rest of it just reeks of beta project. I'm not slamming it at this stage but so far I really can't see what it's got over the TW series, maybe the 'fanboi who's name we dare not speak' is just jealous that his favourite toy hasn't been adopted with the fervour of ours. *My book may eventually be available if I get around to writing it, I'll try and remember to include that.

Well just out of boredom I've created a TargetWare account so I can see what he's always getting his panties in a twist about. Sweet Jesus is it a badly designed interface, no I'm not talking about the game I'm talking about finding out where to download the thing from the website. There's a link hidden on a page in the Wiki and the registration details require your full address. Of course they don't actually check it's a real address or more than one character long but still, it's a bit of an imposition. If I actually get round to playing the game sorry simulator, I'll let you know what it's like....

What I'm most impressed with its that that c*** Stiglr is basing all his opinions on SFP1, to quote Ultimately he seems unhappy that the rest of the simming world don't want a product that conforms to his obsessive compulsive desire for 'accuracy' and upset that we're happy with a game. Obviously he only uses simulators, of course they're not they're just games that are slightly more 'realistic'. I mean seriously I've been in four different simulators, Tucano, Sea King, and Lynx 3 and 8 and I can assure you they wouldn't please Stiglr, the AI was err.. non-existent the sim instructor told the op-for where to go and what to do, there was hardly any multi-player and the flight model in the last two is only remotely related to the aircraft it represents. And the seat doesn't go far enough forward in the Lynx 3 one. Now if the government throwing all the taxpayers money at the problem can't get an accurate sim how the **** does he think a desktop PC is going to pull it off? Quite frankly he bores me, if people are happy with the Third Wire series, and I'm guessing they are, why does it affect him. He keeps saying if we really studied a detailed sim then we'd get more out of it, except I already have a job so I don't have a spare year to do the conversion to another aircraft type. And then he mentions Targetware. It's all so predictable. And I've just wasted 10 minutes typing this out, every six months....

Gentleman to your Wildcats! Looking very nice Veltro.

It's definitely a slow speed aerofoil!

O/S Tart!

Sparky, I installed 7 on a second hard drive on my desktop, but the principal should be the same for installing to a partition, when you boot you get the option of starting Win7 or XP. I don't think XP includes a disc partitioning tool, however there are a couple of freeware ones floating around these days. Oh yeah and back-up anything important before hand just in case!

The Aim-9B had a fairly low chance of success in real life unless you were within some fairly tight parameters. I've found you need to be on the targets 6 o'clock within a few miles and wait until he's straight and level, that should get your success rate up, although it does limit your firing opportunities a bit!

Sparky, I've been running it for a couple of weeks now. So far I think I've got one device with no driver support (scanner) and an MS web-cam that works in anything apart from the capture application it came with! To be fair I haven't looked that hard for drivers as there's nothing I desperately need while I can still dual boot into XP. So far I'm liking it, I've only used Vista briefly on my Sister's laptop, but as far as I can tell 7 looks like Vista but has the performance of XP and I've started loading it up with software etc. to make a fair comparison rather than just running a bare bones install. My WoI works fine running it off the XP hard drive in 7 (Oct 08 Patch) without any dicking around with security settings etc. although I've set them one up from the bottom in the User Account Control (would have been bottom but there's a bug that stops the desktop gadgets displaying if you do that). Like I say, I've never really used Vista so finding some settings is tricky as they've moved from where they were in XP, but it's nothing major and the UI is just so much prettier than XP I actually don't like going back to it! Oh, not sure which version you're getting, I'm using Ultimate 64 bit, I'll probably regret this when I realise I can only afford Home Basic 8 Bit when it's finally released!

Just read on another site FSX made ~$14 Million in sales, vs Halo 3's $300 Million in it's first week. Certainly gives you a feeling for the size of the niche we're in these days.

To be honest the marketing department said Vista was better than XP because they had to shift the damn thing. If you look at the un-seemly haste with which they're trying to kill of Vista, to the extent of giving away the beta to anyone, it's becoming apparent they know it's a bit of a dog. I must still be drunk from Friday, I've been defending MS left right and centre today....

It's certainly a disturbing development. A lot of the MSFS forums are declaring the end of the world, personally even if MS do abandon FS completely, rather than merely delaying the release of the next version by a few years, I'm sure another product will emerge to fill the gap due to the demand for a civil aviation product.

Let me google that for you

I have: Swordfish ~80% done Also some FSX stuff that may get converted to WoX: Buccaneer S1/S2 HMS Victorious, four versions

That's what I like lawmaking being done in a bar, we need more of that sort of thing. Might not be in quite such a mess...

Most navies base their rank structure on the RN's which goes back hundreds of years. Initially it only comprised Midshipman, Lieutenant, Captain, Commodore and Admiral for the officers ranks but over time it evolved which is why the 1st Lieutenant is normally a Lieutenant Commander.... Why is it different from the Army? Couldn't say, suffice to say the navy had a functioning rank structure when most armies consisted of whatever peasants you could get off the land and marching in the same direction. In the UK to add to the confusion the air force uses some bastardised amalgamation of the navy and army's rank structure with Flight Lieutenants and Air Marshals.

The only game I've got that I 'know' uses multi-cores is FSX, you can see it with the performance monitor. Other than that the advantage I've found is the ability to run more programs concurrently, but that's normally because I'll have 3DStudio, photoshop and a few other things open at the same time. Reference the AMD quad-cores there's apparently a problem with the ones ending in 00 which was rectified in the models ending 50, it's nothing terminal they're just not as fast as they should be, mines a 9500 so I'm not overjoyed by this! The Black Edition is nothing special as I understand it, just designed to be sold to overclockers etc. rather than OEMs.

Fair one it is Wikipedia! I was trying to find an on-line version of the guide in the front of Janes but no joy. Fortunately I can work on the principle of saluting anything with that much gold... Commodore didn't used to be a substantive rank in the RN at all, it was basically used for Captains in certain appointments to give them seniority. They didn't even get a pay increase for a long time. At some point it became a substantive rank to help align us with the other services, at least one Commodore at the time tried to hide this from his wife to avoid her spending his pay rise. Suffice to say he was stitched up by his oppos!