Arrow

OK cool; good to hear and best of luck with this project. Something I'm wondering...if being an 80's era bomber means the only missiles it can mount are A-G cruise missiles? Or in other words, will this aircraft only be able to use the simple A-G targeting and weapon avionics in SF2, as opposed to the more sophisticated targeting and acquisition we have for A-A missiles in the F-15 or F-14? And would it possibly have something like a CCIP?

This project is looking terrific! I'm never been much of a fan of flying red side other than the old Flanker 2 videogame, but the Blackjack has always impressed and intrigued me. Does the team really want to attempt the cockpit though? I viewed this Image of the cockpit on the wiki page and it looks damn complex! Correct me if I'm wrong, but this jet has instrumentation and controls that are considerably more advanced than any flyable aircraft in the game. I wouldn't know what kind of modding effort is required, but that image just looks intimidating.

Gosh no; it's long been the mantra of the wise PC customer to buy and use hardware/hardware drivers that successfully runs your software/games. IBM learned that painful lesson back in the late 1980's with their PS/2 PCs, which could successfully run SFA - never really clawed back their lost market share. My Nvidia drivers are almost as old as yours, but since my gaming rig isn't capable of running bleeding-edge games, I don't bother updating them often. That said, I'm running on Win7 64 which is no longer an OS of focus in terms of updates that optimize performance. If you're running Win 10 YMMV. Anyhow, I'm wondering if anyone knows if there's a process where Nvidia can be made aware of this and potentially fix it? I realize that's very wishful thinking and would probably require some willingness on Third Wire's part, but just putting it out there anyways.

I was mistaken about this; the A-6A already has an internal chaff dispenser and the A-6E has internal chaff, flares and ECM. I was actually thinking of the 66 Thud, which I'd read could take both chaff and flares via a hardpoint dispenser by the early 70's. I was doing a what-if of the RCAF in the North Atlantic, where the procurement team weren't theoretically as bone headed/cheap and selected the Thud over the F-104 Starfighter. I used Sundowner's "The Other CF-105" mod. It was a mission of Thuds out of Keflavik to attack a USSR ship, where all my wingmen got shot down. Anyhow, good thing it got me investigating the DATA.INIs, because now my RCAF 66 Thuds have counter measures. :)

I managed to bring over my A-6A cockpit from WoV and integrate it with Homefries and Malibu43s' A-6 Superpak for the A-6E - haven't gotten to the A-6E 79 or A-6E 90 yet. I followed Wrenches's guide in the KB re. using cockpits from other aircraft and the A-6E is working well, with the 1 exception that my pilot has his helmet stuck out of the windshield like he's expecting to fly up to a Starbuck's take-out window and pick up an expresso. I'm loving the CCIP bomb site by MigBuster - previously was dive bombing in the Thud and that Intruder CCIP seems seriously, deadly accurate in comparison! It was a steep learning curve for a n00b like me, for navigating the INIs and figuring out where edits needed to be made. In the end, I'm still left wondering if I got it all right? The mock-up DIANE screen and scope seems to be correctly situated, but the scope on the bottom pilot side is just blank and never displays anything. As well, the radar in the TV windows above is also different than what it was in my stock A-6A. So...I'm wondering if there's anyway to take it 1 step further and make that blank scope function, or is it that just due to some limitation when integrating a WO cockpit or a limitation in the SF2 engine? I've attached screenshots of how the A-6E looks and what my converted, stock WoV A-6A looks like. If anyone can give feedback or suggestions, I'd be appreciated.

Many thanks Nyghtfall for finding that component and providing the example text to edit it out. I just loaded up the LOD-Viewer again with the A-6A_PIT.LOD and can see now how I missed that the nav_panel node had sub-nodes. Looks like I'm over the last hurdle. Um...actually, I still need to figure out how to create internal counter measures, but that will be a fun challenge once I find the time. IIRC the last mission I ran was in North Atlantic in the early 70s to bomb a ship and my Intruder wingman all got shot out of the sky by SA missiles. [Edit] Flew a mission with the A-6E and the cockpit looks terrific - no more skewered DIANE.

It's been some months now, but I'm fairly certain I was using that LOD-Viewer to try and determine which component was the source of the toggle switches. With the idea of doing exactly what you sugggest, disabling them in the cockpit.ini. Despite giving it a good college try, I couldn't find the source component.

Sorry I missed your post earlier this month. Everything is working for the Intruder including the computer bombsight addon. I had to abandon trying to fix the cockpit panel so that toggle switches no longer protrude through the right-side DIANE. Despite going over the model in one of the fan-made viewers, I could never identify the component that had the switches on it. So it still has the switches protruding out, but since there isn't anything displayed or interactive on that cockpit section, I just live with it. I haven't configured any internal countermeasures, which I'm thinking should really be done for the AI, considering the type of missions this bird flew. That of course isn't realistic, but from my reading here it appears to be the only way to work around a limitation with the the game, where AI can't dispense external countermeasures.

I didn't see anything in the News or File Announcements forums, so I'm wondering if players who currently play, or have every played the series, are aware that Blitz was released last December, 2017. For those who aren't, Blitz is Team Fusion patch 4.5 and has a number of significant improvements over Team Fusion 4.312; last & highest patch number for the original game. The most significant change is that DirectX 11 support has been added and a complete recompile of the code as a 64 bit application. This is the announcement thread from Team Fusion's announcement on the Air Tactical Assault Group website. Anyone who bought the original IL-2 CloD on Steam, receives Blitz for free. That may well be true for those who bought it from other sources too, but I wouldn't know for certain. I only flew CloD 4.312 for about 10 hours, but I've recently deeply immersed myself in Blitz and are really enjoying it. The things I've noticed are improved flight models, equivalent frame rates but with far better graphical detail and more realistic modelling in every regard - especially damage. I'm an offline player, so I can't comment on multiplay improvements, but from my read of posts the online play experience on the larger maps has been improved and is the main beneficiary of the app now being 64 bit.

I'll just add that if you ended up buying Milberry's CF-100 book, it'll probably be well worth the $ and wait. I have his Canadair Sabre book and it's top shelf stuff.

I owned the original SF, WoV and WoE and played the heck out of them, including the mega Gulf War patch for WoE. I never did own WoI though and it's a theater I'm really interested in. The thing though, is that these days with a lot of my flight simming activity dedicated to GA piloting in FSX:SE and X-Plane 11 on full realism, when I fly combat sims I tend towards those that are more simulationist with full start of procedures, etc. Currently I'm playing Falcon BMS 4.33 and IL-2 CloD Blitz/Team Fusion 4.5; also own DCS+Flaming Cliffs, but aren't currently playing it. Those don't scratch my itch though to get some stick time flying as a pilot in the legendary IAF. Heck; I had Janes IAF back in the day and despite all its shortcomings and warts, still managed to get some enjoyment with it. Israel and vicinity is available as a theater for BMS 4.33 and it looks real promising, but it features a more recent era than SF2 Israel and an in-depth experience can truly only be had flying an F-16. The big problem for me with sim purchases these days, is that I'm in Canada and the exchange rate is truly sucktastic; SF2 Israel ends up costing about $53 CDN. Of course the draw to fly the legendary Mystere IVA in the Suez Crisis would be too much a lure, so I probably should factor in the $40 for the expansion pack. And with that were talking close to $100; yikes! Having never flown in the SF2 series though, I'm wondering if it brings enough new stuff to the table over WoX for me to give it a whirl? I wouldn't mind the more relaxed simulation if the sim could give me some sense of the IAF history. I run Win7 64 Ultimate w/DirectX 11 on my sim PC, so I don't expect many issues with compatibility. Anyhow, I'm looking for some feedback: save my money or strap in?

I purchased SF2 Europe and the Mission & Campaign utils about 3 months ago and then SF2 North Atlantic the next month. My email from TW with the product keys arrived within minutes in both cases.

I decided upon SF2 Euro, SF2 NA and the Mission and Campaign utils as my initial purchases. With NF5 and the 2 additional terrains I downloaded for those as well as the Intruder super pack which I got working with my old WoV A-6 cockpit, I'm content with that for the time being. I'm currently on a sort of 80s cold war theme inspired by a reread of Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising. So I'm tooling up to run campaigns in SF2 and are currently playing similar themed scenarios in a strategy game called Command Modern Air Naval Operations. I also dug out my old Dangerous Waters naval sim game, installed it and downloaded the fan-made Red Storm campaign. So I'm way too spoiled at the moment with all I have to play. :) SF2 Israel still beckons to me though and it'll certainly be my next purchase in the series. And hell yes the F-15 which IIRC the IAF still has the best ever kill ratio with, will be awesome to fly!

I went looking to buy it a few months ago when I was looking for a cockpit for the Intruder Super pack, but I couldn't find a retailer. Sure looked to be discontinued to me. The WoV A-6 + Intruder Super Pack, makes for a good SF2 Intruder though.

Maybe those tanks appear to be rolling on top of the water, because they're actually the vastly improved 2nd gen hover tank. Because we all know the original 1st gen really needed some improving upon....... ...

Are we sure this is a kludge? Perhaps it's an attempt to model a X project version of the Cobra, where a 3rd air/ground man with a modified bionic body could pick up the helo when landed and walk with it. Seems like a good idea if you ever have to put it down and quickly move it under cover. Heck, there was a lot of projects like this buried deep in that mountain military lab in New Mexico - overheard a conversation about those projects recently at a rally for a certain famous politician. I'm just sayin, there's people out there who are in the know!

NICE, I so want Soviet super-amphibian tanks in the North Atlantic to strafe and rocket! :-P Is it really just as simple as plunking a waypoint down on the water and would it be doable with TW's mission editor?

A Russian Ilyushin IL 20 transport was shot down over the Mediterranean by Syrian Air Defenses, but Russia places the blame on Israel who were conducting air strikes with F-16's in the same region. Here's 3 different news reports: BBC News Military.com The Military Times I guess it comes down to whether you accept that 1 minute is, or isn't adequate warning for an impending air strike. Or whether you believe Syrian ground forces have the sophistication to have averted it with better warning. Based on all I've read about the Syrian civil war, I'm skeptical that official Syrian forces have such capabilities.

I only queried about seperate USB ports for mouse & KB, because I get similar behavior to what you experienced with my PC if I have them connected to my USB 3,0 hub. Typically USB 3 hubs are better at handling multiple USB 2 devices, but my KB & mouse are no goes for being connected that way -TracIR 5 isn't cool with it either. When connected to the hub they'd work fine in some games, but as soon as I launch a game that uses my USB gaming devices they wouldn't work. Meanwhile my throttle quadrant, rudder pedals, joystick and an old USB 1.1 gaming keypad are perfectly fine connected via the hub. It took me a while to track it down, but I discovered that some motherboards with early gen Eltron USB 3 chipsets, don't handle some USB devices well when connected via hubs. Even worse, I've read that some of those defective chips are still being socketed onto more recent mboards. Anyhow, glad hear you got it fixed in the end because this game is too much fun to be missed. ;)

If you're running the game on a desktop computer, are your mouse and keyboard connected to their own USB ports?

Well to be fair to Third Wire, for the majority of the radar avionics modeled in this game, conveying the sort of information you're suggesting for a radar lock wouldn't be that realistic - probably not even for a "normal" setting. Until you advance to the targeting radars available in the early 4th gen aircraft in this series like the F-14 or F-15, the most the radars provided was a single target acquisition strobe. Even those early 4th gen radars only symbolically conveyed a bit more info. There were some specialized exceptions with more info such as the Intruder's DIANE, but it was ground targeting. I'm not sure if it's in the download section here anymore, but if you google Buynaps Range Opertations Guide, there's an excellent section on performing an intercept with the Phantom F-4E radar. It illustrates a lot of what a pilot had to do with those early radars, to tactfully maneuver into position on a target where they're close enough to ID it.

Something else to be aware of; the Boresight radar mode can auto-lock a friendly target with no information warning you of that. I recommend mapping the 'Deselect the current radar target' command to your HOTAS or some other convenient device, so you won't be committing any unwanted fratricide.

I wanted to change my TrackIR 5 integration in my recently enabled A-6E Intruder, which felt far too restrictive. So I did some searching and came across the LimitPitch=FALSE, LimitYaw=FALSE, and LimitRoll=FALSE edits for the VIEWLIST.INI. Extracting that INI and making those edits has allowed me head tracking movement that's less restricted for all my aircraft, which I'm perfectly happy with despite it not being realistic in all cases. The less restricted forward / backward movement however, has revealed something that I couldn't see easily before - that I can't view anything internally on the cockpit floor other than center and side consoles. My TrackIR 3 broke before I got much stick time in the WO series, so TBH I can't recall if that was also the case for the earlier series - something tingling at the back of my brain is telling me it was the case. So just for some clarification - has it always been the case that you can't view the cockpit seat internally and only externally?

Ah OK - that makes sense. So am I correct in assuming the seat -which has it own LOD- can be attached to one LOD only?

The fan-made patch out there for Comanche Vs Hokum (EE 2) includes the content of Apache Vs Havoc (EE 1.) From what I recall, that content was released by the owner of the IP to the creator of that patch . If memory serves me correctly, the owner of the IP is Empire Interactive while Razerworks was the dev studio. I wouldn't be surprised though, if that green light for EE 1 content only applies to it's use with EE 2, because one of the big complaints by fans at the time of C vs H's release was that it didn't bring enough new & shiny to the table. I certainly wouldn't assume it's open source to be used in other flight simulation games. [Edit] Well apparently memory doesn't serve me too well - dug out my old flightsim disk caddie and noticed that I have disks for 2 Enemy Engaged games. There's disks for Comanch Vs Hokum and a 3rd game just called Enemy Engaged 2. I think I forgot about that latter game, because it was pretty much just a repeat of C Vs H with the added fan stuff.