harryleith

Yes. My immediate thought echoed Dave72 that I have played many games as Germans and Japanese, as well as alien races in Halo so the only difference with the Taliban is that it is more recent. I even joined in enthusiastically in the Russian airport massacre in CoD:MW2 - hunting down helpless civilians. It's just a game. Personally I would have liked to play "6 Days In Falujah" too. I hope no-one thinks I am making light of the war. Australia has lost quite a few servicemen in Afghanistan recently and we have all felt their loss keenly. But a game is just a game.

Just for fun, I downloaded the F-302 and Death Glider add-on aircraft for SF from the A-Team's site. The Death Glider has a nice skin, but the F-302 is bare. Does anyone have a skin for the A-Team's 3D model of the F-302, or a Photoshop template I could create one from? (Forgive my ignorance, but is the template file created by 3D Studio Max, or how do you know where to map the skin BMP onto the model?) I am flying them in SF2 and they work OK, but the missiles for the Death glider ride above the wings, not below. Does anyone know if this an SF2 thing, of just that it is a beta product? I can fiddle with the pylon positioning in the data.ini file, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Ah, exploding wingmen! Yes indeed I have seen this phenomenon. Not the best way to start a mission! I worked on a body.bmp image, but it only maps onto a small area surrounding the F-302 cockpit. So only decals, I guess. However, one could make an interesting full-wing decal with panel lines etc. I suppose? This is just a curiosity for me, and I probably won't fly this aircraft much, but it was fun having a go and digging through the code to see what made it tick. I wonder if there is a 3DS Max model of it out there somewhere. I actually taught 3DS Max at uni once, but 3D isn't my thing. I was only ever 1 tutorial ahead of my students.

One less than last week, unless i miss my guess...

Hi Wrench, I didn't add the missiles, I just stopped them floating above the wing surface. I know missiles aren't authentic, but given the Pulse Cannon don't work, I needed something other than harsh language to defend myself with! If I understand correctly, you are saying you built some skins for the F-302 a couple of years ago, but you aren't sure where they are now. I might have a fiddle around and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the info!

Looks like I got the weapon placement sorted.

I rather enjoyed the rakishness of flying my Meteor F.8 with the canopy open, but I will look into converting it to an animation.

Crony is a slightly pejorative term for a group of friends or associates, usually signifying of like mind or opinion. Despite the creative use of spelling, I think that's what our friend was trying to get across. Crony: A member of a group of friends or associates, usually loosely organized, brought together by common circumstances or activities. Members are often prone to a group mentality. Crony: Derivation. 1660s, Cambridge student slang, probably from Gk. khronios "long-lasting," from khronos "time," and with a sense of "old friend," or "contemporary." http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cronie

I recently added a new range of soviet SAMs to spice up life in the air - and boy, it sure worked! Instead of staid ZSU-23-4's and SA-2s, I was getting blasted out of the air by accurate, hard to dodge and decoy modern anti-air systems. It was a nasty surprise, but great fun, even if I did go home with my arse in a brown paper bag more times than not. As soon as you fly into the area, there are literally dozens of "SAM Launch!" and "SAM inbound!" calls. You really have to work to avoid those SAMs. If all you are only seeing is boring SAMs and AAA when you fly, sprinkle some modern systems in the Ground Objects folder. You will regret it - but you will have a great time!

The SF2 series doesn't do multiplayer, so if you are looking at co-op missions, you will need WoI. My understanding is that the SF2 series (including SF2:I) is strictly single player.

G'day Moongoose. You sure found the right place to hang out here. I am relatively new to SF2 as well, having been away from flight sims for years. SF2 is a great game, and the third-party mods you will find here just make it even better, not to mention the helpful advice and guidance. I have found the discussions, help and advice on this forum to be excellent, and an invaluable aid to getting to grips with the game - so don't be afraid to ask - (after checking out the knowledge base. of course!) Too bad all the advice can't make me a better pilot! Guess I'll have to look after that myself!

I spent a very enjoyable week of reserve service in the 1980's blowing up out-of-date ordnance. We got tennis elbow from throwing so many grenades - hundreds of the damned things! We got quite artistic with piles of old cordite shell propellant, small arms ammo and C4. C4 goes all crumbly as the wax desensitising material degrades, but it still goes BANG just a treat. We moulded it into shaped charge strips and blasted our names into granite rocks. We also used it to cook most of our meals that week. It was an amazing mix of range safety and reckless explosive abandon. Happy days.

I have seen a few people speak about backups, and with all the tweaks and changes I have made to the game and aircraft I would hate to lose it all in a crash. I advise small businesses on backup solutions and I am currently testing a free backup utility called FBackup. (http://www.fbackup.com/). It allows you to very simple automate backups on your computer, and is free to use and has an easy wizard to help you set up a scheduled or manual backup. (The company also makes a commercial version, but this is the light and simple alternative). I set up a quick backup to copy my SF2 install, and back up any incremental changes weekly. It seems to be working OK at the moment, but I will post again if I have any issues. Anyone else want to give it a go?

I recently added lots of modern AAA and SAM Ground Objects to my SF2 install to spice up the SEAD missions. However, it has had a funny and unintended side-effect. While flying a CAS mission with an RAN A-4G Skyhawk, I rolled into the attack, only to find that the ground troops attacking my friendlies were rank upon rank of FireCan radars! The radars are immobile vans, without any armament whatsoever. Suffice it to say they didn't put up much of a fight, and the ground friendlies went through them like a knife through butter. Nevertheless, it was a bizarre sight to see. I think I need to go get some more offensive-capable ground forces for the Red team.

I downloaded and installed the B-58A Hustler for SF2 from Column5 into my merged SF2 install. When I select Mk-43 70kt nukes, there is no visible weapons on the wing pylons when I start to fly. However, the Mk-43's can be selected by cycling through the A/G weapons and dropped as normal. They even give a satisfying KABOOM! (I learned to drop them from greater altitude after the first time...) I re-expanded the download in case the Mk-43 LOD files were corrupted, but to no avail. The texture files, ini files etc. all seem to be there. This isn't a major problem as I can still deploy the weapons, but does anyone have any ideas for a fix? Has anyone heard of this issue with this weapon/aircraft before? As a supplementary, I downloaded the A-5A Vigilante SF2 update v3.0 by NeverEnough to try and get an alternative Mk-43 to use. The Vigilante shows no weapons available in the loadout screen, even though I copied all the weapons to the weapons folder. I know this isn't much information to work on, but I was wondering if anyone had similar issues?

Actually, the model name in the INI file was misspelled. matched INI file to the real file name, and Mk-43's are GO!

Changing the GroundObjectRole to EW_RADAR seems to have helped. The FireCans are back, but under control and leaving the fighting to T-72s and BMPs. Thanks!

Erik, it sounds great, but I know of so many services that offer free backup online, even for Gb of data, and hard drives are relatively cheap these days. Check these out: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-online-backup-sites.htm The problem I have with my business clients isn't where to backup, but making it seamless for them. They always forget to do it. I was suggesting FBackup might be useful as a scheduling tool. I have been trialling using FBackup and DropBox together, one to do the backup, and the other to make a copy off-site. I would hate to lose my data, especially the tweaks to aircraft like the A-4G Skyhawk, where I have skins from several sources and custom loading/hangar screens.

Thanks Wrench. The overly aggressive FireCan is the version that came with the latest Libya terrain (v375). Installing this lovely terrain initially inspired me to do some SEAD missions and I piled in a whole lot more SAMs and AAA to spice it up a bit. It was when I switched back to flying CAS that I noticed this little oddity. My install is SF2 combo merged and patch level Dec2009. I am doing single mission CAS with RAN A-4G Skyhawks, trying to perfect my Mk20 Rockeye and Mk82 Snakeye delivery Since I have removed the FireCan, the game has started using T-80s and BMPs in ground attacks.

OK. The FireCans have to go! I shovelled my install full of BMP-1s, T-80s etc. and I still got row upon row of radar vans lining up for ground attack. Is it something to do with the weapon type? It said it was an AAA_Battery, not a Tank or APC, but it kept getting selected in preference to any other vehicle type. Once I got rid of it, lots of lovely T-80's to drop ordnance on.

I was sending a friend a link about cluster bombs and went to the usually reliable wikipedia. I was astonished to find that the article on the CBU-24 was two sentences long, and no images. Horrified, I did some hasty research and added some more detail, but I was surprised at this gap in what must be an interesting set of topics. If the entries in wikipedia are inadequate, can we, as a community with a wealth of knowledge, help out? I am not just thinking of CBU-24s but of all modern aircraft weapons systems. Pick your favourite and have a look. If it isn't covered, or not covered well, help to update it. AAMs appear to be well covered, as are SAM systems, but I am guessing air-to-mud might have a lot of holes we could help fill. And does anyone have any images of CBU-24s? I came up dry. The image needs to be your own copyright, or public domain. Does the US military make public domain images available?

Thanks for the link. Looks like a couple of useful images and the USAF photos appear to be public domain.

It also makes SEAD missions much more hairy and rewarding, too!

No loadout image at all, Gocad. no.tga, no .bmp

Great aircraft guys. However, I don't get a loudout image when choosing my weapons load. I have checked the .INI file and it is looking for F-14A_loadout.bmp but I can't find that file anywhere. Is anyone else finding this, or is it just me?