tank03

I've got a 2 year old Dell with a 40G hard drive. The hard drive is nearly full (s**tload of mods and music)and I'm not sure what to do about it. I can't/don't want to buy new computer. Can I replace the hard drive with a larger aftermarket drive? Could I, a computer moron, do it? What are my options? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks! I was getting ready to do all kinds of complex file editing. I guess the simplest solution never occured to me.

I thought I read somewhere here instructions on how to have more than one copy of WOV installed. I'd like to have one completely stock and the other modded. Any ideas?

Love the jetpit sound mod you did! It makes for a quieter ride and I can now clearly hear my wingman over the roar of the engines. Thanks for sharing it.

Glad you got it worked out. I would still take the time to read the article over at simHQ. It's very informative.

You need to back up any modified files before you install the patch, so yes- in a manner of speaking you will have to reinstall. Installing the patch will erase any aircraft you added and reset the files to the stock settings. Therefore make sure you back up any planes/terrrains/effects you have downloaded before you patch. That way you just have to copy them over from whatever folder you used to back them up. Just download and install the weapons pack. It comes with installation instructions. It gives you access to most of the third party weapons that have been released. Most aircraft can be used with all the games, but there are some limits. For example, the A-6A from WOV can't be copied over to SFP1. But most third party planes can be used in all the games.

Have you downoaded the weapons pack? To change the loadout for a particular plane you can edit the loadout ini. found in that a/c's folder. You can also edit which weapons a plane can carry in the aircraftdata.ini. Check out this tutorial on weapons editing found in the database: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=12099 I think column5 has a lot of F-4 skins at his site here: http://www.column5.us/index.htm Lastly, the knowledge base has some really good newbie tutorials that can help you get started with just about every questioned answered. Good luck and have fun.

I know the exchange rate will be a killer, but at least we won't be paying for hotel/airfare. I've wanted to visit England for years, so my wife is willing to let me plan our sightseeing since she doens't really care one way or the other.

I'd recommend the simHQ article as well. It significantly increased my bombing success in WOV.

Yes, please post it. It's a great mod that adds a good deal of realism to the game. Thanks for sharing it.

It looks like my wife and I will be taking a short trip to London in the spring to visit a friend (can't say no to a free place to stay and airfare). Anyway, well be there about a week and will do the major tourist stuff. But I was wondering if there were any natives who could give me an idea on something we should see/ do that only the locals really know about and most tourists miss. You know, the whole "get the true flavor of the place" kind of thing.

Got it. Thanks.

How can I find out what my graphics card is? I've check My Computer/Properties but it doens't give that info. Is it possible to update any of these variables on any given system?

I believe it was established in another similar topic discussion that the wingmen aren't just doing nothing. They are leaving the enemy in your capable hands while they wing down and share wine with some french country lasses in a yet to be discovered tavern.

I was fiddling around with some ini files when I realized that I spend most of my precious little free time tinkering with the game and experimenting with mods, rather than actually playing. To my amazment I think I enjoy puttering around and trying this and that more than I like the actual game play. Does anyone find this to be true, or am I just foolish?

I watched the Croc Hunter video at work and laughed so hard people were coming into my office to see if I was OK

Never mind at night, I can't even find the damn thing in the daylight.

WOV doesn't have the desert tiles, therefore you have to downlaod them from somewhere else. Use Deuces enhanced desert tiles; just put them into the Israel folder. They are found here:http://www.sfmods.com/terrain.html Then go in to the Israel.ini and change the Desert.cat to VietnamSEA.cat That's what I did and it works fine.

I found the A310 over at Avsim.com

If you have WOV or WOE you can use the Isreal or the Israel 2 terrain, you just have to change the cat. from desert to vietnamSEA or germanyCE. Then you have to use another set of desert tiles to fill in the blanks. Deuces has a set that wroked for me. I've been running both Israel and Israel 2 in my WOV. The knowledge base has step-by-step instructions here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=12230

I think the tu-22 just needs a cockpit to be flyable,, but I could be wrong.

keyboard="K" cycles through the HUD display from normal, to normal with FPS at the top, to no HUD at all. I use it a lot to cycle through to the no-HUD to take uncluttered screen shots

I've no idea what the difference between the two framerates are. I see it myself when I cycle through the "k" key. I used a really good mod found in the knowledge base that allowed me to use most of the graphics setting on high, despite my crappy system. Check out this article by Charles and Chip: "Sundry Graphics Tips Kill the mirrors in graphics, they are monster frame-rate killers. Kill the dynamic shadows, too, they kill the frame rate, and apparently also cause CTDs. In the flightengine.ini file (in the flightdata.cat) there is something interesting! Under the section for: [HighDetailOption] HorizonDistance=75000.0 DetailMeshSize=6 DetailLevel=1 WaterEffect=1 NoiseTexture=1 MaxTextureRes=0 (you will read -1 here) The last line is the texture resolution aka mipmap LOD setting in the graphic card control panel or any tweak tool. The thing I wondered about is that the stock setting there is -1. That means that the game uses it's own mipmap setting rather than the one I set in RivaTuner. I have set the mipmap LOD to 0, cause a negative value will automatically decrease the fps rate quite a bit. Even -0,5 is too tough. When you know fly with the max detail settings in SF, you will automatically forced to fly with a mipmap detail of -1. That's a heavy load on the CPU cause the standard setting is always 0! On the ground I had around 25fps, now I have 38 with the mipmap distance to 0 and Vsync on. You can set the mipmap distance in OpenGL but not under D3D, so you need a tweaker. Always wondered, why the fps is so low in the cockpit, now I know why. It only affects the highest detail settings cause for the lower detail, there are numbers around 265 which is pretty low. Set it to 0 and you can turn on the cockpit mirrors while the game stays smooth and you can use the highest detail in the game! It runs so much smoother now. Don't know why TK decided to use -1 cause there really is almost no viewable difference in the terrain quality. Hope I could help some of you who had notoriously low fps rates. You can even try a positive value like 0,5 which wouldn't look much different either. So there is no need to drop the detail." The full post is found here in the knowledge base: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=8786 It really helped increase my graphics settings without really effecting myFPS.

YAP=Yankee Air Pirates As far as I know it's a group of modders who got together and developed some WOV missions based on actual missions flown in Vietnam. They charge for the missions (I think their prices are really reasonable) and they come with tons of add-on planes, ground objects, effects, targets, weapons, etc. I guess they plan on making 100 historically accurate missions. The link to their site is below. I don't want to seem like a commercial for them, but they have good stuff. I've only got the first ten missions, but so far it's been worth it. http://www.yankeeairpirate.net/

Is it Burns Night, as in Robert Burns, or Burns Night, as in let's burn stuff in the street? Getting drunk, I would imagine, is an appropriate endeavor for both.