SkippyBing

The code key isn't an issue, you get 5 installs before you even have to ring the nice computer at Redmond to free up some more. What will probably be the problem is that your desktop's registry won't know anything about FSX being on the computer which'll cause more problems than you can imagine. However, what you can do is set the laptop's DVD drive as a network drive on your desktop and then install from there. If you don't have one already you'll need a network cable, or wireless networking on both machines. The cable that connects your computer to your broadband box may be the right type if you're not using USB.

Hmmm, weird works in SF2 under Win 7 as well....... Solves that problem then!

A work round I use for SF and FS is to set the desktop to horizontal span mode so the desktop is two monitors wide, rather than two linked ones. Then it's just a case of setting the resolution and aspect ratio. I know you can do this with nVidia cards in XP, it doesn't work yet in 7 and I'm not sure about Vista.

Well it's about all the action the air to air guys are gonna get for the next few years so might as well make them feel special! You should see the number of mission markings on the UK's Harrier fleet, they're going to need bigger aircraft to paint them on soon!

FC, If you need any help modelling stuff I'd be more than happy to knock some stuff up for you, just let me know what you need.

I tend not to go for limiting what people can do with their lives providing it doesn't adversely affect others. Otherwise you end up with the kind of nanny state we're getting in the UK where they feel it's their right to monitor every aspect of your live, tell you how much fruit and veg to eat and remove any responsibility from the individual. I'm sure you can argue that pot smokers destroy the lives of those around them, but large numbers of people smoke pot, drink alcohol and inhale tobacco without screwing up their lives so should they be penalised to protect a minority who'd probably find another way to mess up anyway? Maybe the ones around them should step and do something? Again it comes down to taking responsibility which I thought was a bonus of living in a free democratic society? ..and if anyone tries restricting my alcohol supply they're in big trouble...

Military aircraft tend not to have TCAS because it's not exactly stealthy, and it was in '89 so I'm not even sure it was invented. Pretty much all of Europe is a populated area if you're doing 400kts+, seriously look on google earth, there're little villages everywhere. As for AWACS there aren't the numbers available to provide ATC to aircraft in the low flying system and carry out their primary role, during an exercise there probably would be one on task but both these examples were day to day training.

I saw a program in the UK last week where they mentioned pot being sold for medical reasons in California which may be what they're talking about.

In real life it should cause problems as the moisture will attenuate the IR signal, actual results will depend on the seeker head, which IR window it's using, density of the cloud etc. I'm guessing the newer imaging seekers may fare better. Not sure about the game, but as you loose padlock if a cloud gets between you and the target I'm guessing it could be implemented.

Tends to make it a bit confusing when you go to war and suddenly find ATC aren't playing though. In the Brueggen example it sounds like the Tornado was lost, I'm not saying it's impossible but most ATC services wouldn't have been able to track him at 200 feet. Also there's no requirement for anyone to use an ATC service outside controlled airspace, heck there're large areas of the UK where ATC don't actually have you on radar and you basically get a traffic service which consists of the controller telling you what he thinks is in the area.

Nice paintjob! Spinners I'm 99% sure they're still down there although they should be replaced by Typhoons in the next couple of years if not sooner. Vaguely reminds me of the story when Portillo became Defence Secretary*. Portillo to RAF "Where's you're number one tip top up for it squadron"** RAF No. 1 "RAF Mount Pleasant the Falklands" Portillo "and what's your number one tasking?" RAF "Air defence of the UK" Portillo "Bit inconvenient from down there isn't it?" * For out younger readers this would have been under a Conservative government around the time people were playing with this new fangled thing called the internet and dinosaurs roamed the Earth. ** This may not be an exact transcript of the conversation...

Ahhh....FS2002. To be honest I'm not 100% sure what format it uses. If it's not plain bmp it'll be dxt1 formatted bmp which should be one of the options with the plug-in. If not get a coy of Dxtbmp from here which does everything you need for the earlier versions of FS.

Is this for FSX or the old one? Basically FS uses DXT format bmp rather than the plain old vanilla ones Strike Fighters uses. As you're using CS3 the easiest thing to do is download the nVidia plug in from here that let's CS3 open and save the format. Couple of things to note, opening and re-saving a DDS format bmp will degrade the quality as it reapplies the compression algorithm so if you don't have access to a template it's best to save a working copy of the texture as a psd and make all the changes to that and then save it as a dds to check in game and then make any further corrections to the psd. Also for FSX before you save the dds you'll need to flip it vertically (flip vertical under the image->rotate options), this is to speed up loading in game as otherwise the game engine would have to do the flipping before loading it into graphics memory. Hope that all makes sense!

We don't have low-level routes as such in the UK, basically if it's not an avoid or part of an avoidance area (e.g. around London) you can fly where ever you want. There are a few choke points where the traffic direction is controlled but even there you don't book a time slot, the low flying booking system essentially books aircraft into a geographic region for a given time slot. I think there is some upper limit for each region but I've never been told I couldn't book into an area although I think some of the tac training areas may have stricter limits as they also have stricter timing i.e. +/- 5 mins vs +/- 15 on your entry and exit time. Has to be said most of the time it feels like the system is there to deal with complaints from the public rather than de-conflict aircraft! Happy memories of carrying out a dummy attack on a cargo ship in the Bristol Channel only to be overflown by a couple of Tornado GR.4s blissfully unaware of our presence. We called a guns kill.

Good lord woman what setting do you use on the washing machine, I always find my twenties freshly laundered and ready for spending. I have found that shipboard laundries do an excellent job of destroying confidential briefing forms though, which saves me doing it!

I'm trying to do a simple mod on the burning sands campaign, just changing the default textures for the Mercenary force. So I extracted all the campaign blah from the cat and moved it in to the Saved Games/Thirdwire/Strikefighters2 directory but I can't get it to recognise the change, I put it in a Campaigns folder but no joy. Does anyone know what the correct folder set-up is to mod them in SF2?

That's the one! I'd called the campaign folder Burning Sands! Many thanks.

LMAO

I'm not totally sure how declaring SAAB bankrupt is supposed to make it easier to sell, but then that's probably the management genius we've come to expect from GM. I'm not really sure where you're going with that but most European countries have far stronger workers rights than in the US so I'm fairly sure that tactic wouldn't work.

Takes balls of steel to play Chicken with the deterrent onboard! I won't even bother to debunk the carrier/lighthouse story....

They are working on getting a carrier though so it'd make sense in the medium term.

The video is about two years old. I'd say both aircraft were conducting independent training, i.e. not part of an exercise, the low flying booking system would have informed them that there were other aircraft in the general area, but then it always does. It'd be pretty hard to train effectively if you had to remain under ATC control and at those sort of altitudes it'd be a very intermittent radar contact at best.

I did toy with getting the phone but I would have had to change mobile operator and pay a higher monthly subscription so instead I got an ipod touch and a free phone upgrade so I've got the best of both worlds. Although I do seem to carry more electronics around than a branch of Dixons....

If you get the latest version of google Earth you can roll back the years and check out previous coverage, kind of neat now but if it goes for a few decades or more it'll be interesting to see how areas develop. The Canberras at Davis-Monthan are probably Martin B-57s, license built Canberras.