Lexx_Luthor

You can do alot with Viewlist. I mean a whole lot. There's a story behind TK and the old EAW game, TK making fancy camera views to sell his new team's work to the game company, but I think that fancy-ness filtered into the SF. You don't need to "sell" to customers who already bought the game. Anyways, TK works for Thirdwire now. The "fancy" example I'm thinking of here is the slow external object view translation. Its cute the first time you see it, but after that you want to make the camera just go immediately to the next object instead of waiting for the camera to fly across the map (imagine a 10,000km map). That feature is .... I think... SmoothPositionTransition=FALSE. Its been a few years since I turned this OFF. External free camera is my specialty. I use it to explore details in models and airfields, and to cross a 10,000 kilometer map in a snap. The settings allow fast acceleration to very high speeds, or not, depending on what you need it for. The most important control is camera translation speed -- called the zoom scale here. ZoomScale=0.001 .... for slowly exploring short distances inside aircraft models, runways, etc... Just one keystroke...Add a leading 1 to the 0.001 and... ZoomScale=10.001 .... for rapidly zooming across a 10,000km map for testing terrain. Delete that leading 1, and you are back to the fine short distance travel camera with one swift keystroke. My external free camera...SF1 [ViewClass001] ViewClassName=FreeViewClass ViewType=FREE_VIEW ViewGroupID=0 DefaultView= AllowFromDiffGroup=TRUE SnapView=FALSE InsideView=FALSE FOV=90 PitchControl=CAMERA_PITCH_AXIS YawControl=CAMERA_YAW_AXIS RollControl= ZoomControl=CAMERA_ZOOM_CONTROL RememberFOV=FALSE LimitPitch=FALSE LimitYaw=FALSE LimitRoll=FALSE ZoomFOV=FALSE StepZoom=FALSE ZoomScale=0.001 PanScale=0.01 MinFOV=90 MaxFOV=90 OffsetDistance=0.0

That said, some say ~7 is just Vista renamed. I don't know and never will know, but SF1 works the shnizzle now. -- This sounds like a good idea Ticket. I assume SF1 2008. I think alot of big AI features came in 2006 where I'm stuck at, and then some in 2008. So I'm interested in this even though I'm 06. Whta mission editor do you use?

Vista Shmista. I'm thinking software devs (including TK), panicked over Vista, not realizing it would fail and be replaced by ~7. SF1 is lightning fast on Win~7. I know.

That is the best working description of the paper bank-financial system I've heard yet. Thanks!!

MiGbuster:: I wonder how OFF and ROF do it. I never played CFSn. DR.1 vs SPAD Ki-43 vs P-38 For the latter WW2 pair, Oleg eventually, well after PF releace, did fairly well here as I recall. Not perfect but not bad. He did have a dedicated AI programmer working for him in the Moscow Bureau.

FC:: FB-PF. Oleg eventually programmed into FB/PF the ability of AI to choose to fight at high speed or low speed. With the built-in mission editor, I ran lots of tests on this. At the start of engagement, each AI "examines" its selected opponent and chooses one style of fight or another. I'll give one test I ran alot, but my memory is fuzzy after...6 years? LOL. Head on starting from beyond visual engagement range. During closure, A6M2 vs P-40, the P-40 would go high, climb slightly, the Zero would maintain altitude. Switch to A6M2 vs I-153, the Zero climbs high, the Polikarpov does not. Against the biplane, even the Zero becomes a BnZ fighter (so to speak). To me, this was evidence of at least scripting behavior given relative performance between planes. Now, for after closure I don't recall my tests but general in-cockpit gameplay I never forgot. I went SF shortly after this, and never went back. For after closure dogfighting, in general, when I was in a slower, significantly more manueverable aircraft relative to my opponent, the enemy would stay well out of range at high speed, and not turn tightly and lose speed nor altitude. It was frustrating, as it should be in a slower plane. However, Oleg should have gone even further and allow the AI to extend farther to gain enough room to reverse and bounce the slow opponent again. But as it was, it prevented the SF situation of every plane dropping to stall speed at sea level, although Migbuster's MiG-23 WoI description above is an interesting counterpoint. That said, TK nailed AI terrain avoidance. IL-2-FB-PF terrain avoidance was notorious, best exemplified at the PF realeace with the AI formations running into New Guinea mountains, ruining campaigns. TK's terrain avoidance is so effective, a low level strategic night/all-weather penetration campaign screams out to be modded here. I'm into high altitude, stratosphere stuff -- sorry about that.

Tiger -- CompUSA is great, but Newegg often has more unconventional stuff I like now, but also frozencpu for DIY stuffing that you won't find at Newegg or Amazon. They're a great operation, highly recommended by [H]ardocp. But if I can find "normal" stuff at CompUSA, I'll go there. A few years back, Compusa had all their motherboards lined up on a shelf, out of box, and you could examine them, feel them. Tiger stopped that. Basically, every motherboard put out like that is a write off. The enthusiast -- gamer -- stuff can be very expensive with low sales numbers, and its the enthusiasts that would most like to touch them, not the buyers of the higher volume low cost stuff. Anyways I liked the setup but I understand why they stopped it. Basically:: Its easy to write off one 50$ motherboard when you sell 100 of them in a month. Its painful to write off one 200$ motherboard when you sell 2 of them in a month.

If you have not, try reseating the card. Sometimes things come loose. One good reason to have a low end cheap card laying around is to confirm an expensive gaming card is bad, and not some other component like motherboard.

Yea I didn't catch the hint you dropped about your last card being a 256. That must be Nv so yea stay there and avoid the driver conflicts I've heard about. I never learned Nv's designation system for their cards. Until this year, I was running SF1 on lower settings with fanless ATI 4550 (about 40$ now) but it kept me in the air so to speak. If you can't wait six weeks, can you get a cheap lower end last generation Nv for maybe 40$ now? What happened to your last card? Besides fried. Did the fan stop working? I made the decision to go totally fanless because of crapp like that in the past. Gigabyte made a fanless 4850 and equivalent fanless Nvida card. They were designed to run movies I guess without a loud dedicated card fan (silent movies haha), with some case airflow though, but I keep mine (4850) very cool with a case fan blowing directly on it -- a case fan I choose. They both (Nv & ATI versions) shared the same titanic heatsink which was the best video card heatsink out there. They are gone from Newegg though now.

If I recall, PVO 25s never carried the tanks. If I'm right, the loadout is right. In my strategic game, I plan to enable the tanks for later versions (including hysterically non built versions with upgraded R-15s).

Thanks Dave!! Ticket, he's right about AI turning and turning and turning, once closure is made. Although, streakeagle may be the one to ask if SF2 has offered improvements on this. It may have. Do you use a mission editor to create test missions? Share them with others. Mission editors are the only efficient laboratory equipment that allows us to discover details about AI behavior. AI dumping chaff and flares may not be intelligence, but simplified scripting. I assume it always happens given the approach of a missile. Not complaining, hay it works. I can't use ECM in my game since I plan to use nuc warhead SAMs and AAMs. ECM deflected SAMs always self-destruct not far off the launch pad. In the game, self-destruct is the main warhead. The SAM site gets nucked. Chaff works though, as the missile is confused as it approaches the target, far from the launch point, and just keeping flying and flying like Duracell Bunny without self-destructing. Later!

Why six weeks? Lack of funds? Get a last gen 4000 series card, if you are fundamentalist ATI camp. 5000 series is phony *now* -- maybe 0% to 20% faster per comparable 4000 card, at about 150% price over 4850s. I don't know anything about Nvida. 4850 screams StrikeFighters and you can gettem at Newegg for maybe 100 Ameros (lol dollars) -- they may be goin up in price now; getting rare. Get one soon and avoid 5000 price until they drop and maybe by then DX~11 will offer major improvements to games. A working used 4850 would be good also to keep you going full burner.

avionics.dll -- I suppose that file has data on how avionics works in game. I never got deep into Windows programming so I never used dll files. I still do DOS programming though (Fortran90). -- Ticket:: Forget firing. Think engaging. With no radar directed R-23R or -24R onboard, the MiG-23 sleeps like a baby unless it comes within your F-4's defined MaxVisibileDistance. RHM again. More important, any Player can engage with radar from 100nm out when carrying IRM or guns. With no RHM aboard, AI won't engage unless within a target's defined MaxVisibileDistance. We're back to SF1. Yawl fellas/fellattes might want to look into some style of fake RHM method described earlier for that F3D in Korea mod. I suppose TK took a programming shortcut as the Cold War era he covers was heavily populated by big western fighters with big radars and radar missiles. F3D had all that, except the missiles. -- Tick, I gather you can't help Pfunk because the problem is not flight modelling, but AI programming. I agree with Pfunk's poast after yours, but I can deal with it and not squeal like stuck pig. And Pfunk is stuck here, and most likely isn't going anywhere (go where?). Now, I have *fixed* the AI issues -- for my purpose -- but they may not be what tactical dogfight gamers want. Download Timmy's MiG-9 and the readme I wrote (hopefully) explains the workaround I came up with -- gutting the flight model and severely limiting gee so AI can fight without ending up at sealevel. Gutting flight models also allows more realistic numbers of aircraft to be in the air at one time (hundreds of them), which I consider an equal trade for "FM realism." I also sacrifice terrain detail for map size, so those sqwealing about TK's terrain may not like my ideas on that at all. But then, only I, and no other, can fly from every SAC airbase surrounding the Soviet Union on one map. Another air combat TheSims First, only in teh SF!

Exactly Fubar. AI engages BVR only with radar missiles, like the two example missiles you poasted. They won't engage when armed with infrared (MiG-21PF), nor with guns (F3D), until the AI get within the target's defined visual range, so we are back to square one on that. You might consider creating "fake" RHM missiles that get expended near the target, so the AI can then switch to close visual engagement with (real) IRM or guns. F3D escorting B-29s in the new Korea mod will need some kind of workaround like this so they can engage targets far beyond gun range with the purpose to get within gun range. I'd say TheSims market has declined big time. If TK can do as well as he has with his simple grafix, a larger company can do far more programming, and hence gameplay developement, using the same grafix. But they waste their resources on the newest grafix that never seems to work at game releace (ie...LOMAC). It seems the larger TheSims developers think they have to compete grafix wise with the ground shooter games -- WretchFest Maximus. They can't and never can.

You can also set the visible extra pilot location to infinity -- a very high value -- and so not worry about seeing it. One limitation is rotation. At least in SF1 you can't rotate the pilot. Addon fake weapons can rotated in all three axes.

Dave:: Nah. There was a time you'd poast every 6 months or so, that you were giving up the game. Never happened. Never will. There's no where else to go. I read it, I agree mostly. But that's why TK goes out of his way to say this is a game. I've internalized that so well, knowing its pretty much a one man operation, I'm still stoked using SF 2006 for my singular, never varying purpose. The big advance in the game is emphasis on Cold War jets. That happened at the beginning, but no other sim out there does it, so after as much modification as possible, this is still the best and only game out there, and has been since the SF start, and may be for a long, long time. Although AIM-4 Falcon in a "lite sim - fun game" never made sense to me, I was happy to see TK include the thing because it was an ancient artifact never seen before by TheSims players. I'd patch up to 2008 or better get the SF2 but (Fubar) the recent BVR advances are "crutches" themselves requiring deep workarounds for non-RHM BVR engagement (AI night gunnery with that F3D planned for Korea campaign, AI night IRM engagments, etc...), and TK's Crimson Tide camera glare at sunset, I can't handle. Recall that at night, BVR can start at zero feet. I know there's some complaints about lack of out-of-box, so to speak, flayabal MiGs. TK poasted that someday that will happen, which means it will happen (Dave, its just a game). TK also said there will be no "strategic level game" so ya'll be flying TK's MiGs long before you fly TK's SAC bombers (all you CA Peacenukes, it would be a game). Why play MiGs anyways?

Somewhat related in dynamic vs static philosophy: In the top silver and bottom antiflashwhite airplanes (B-47), I set reflection and shine to the max possible in game. It gives a real metal shine to the top under the SF Sun, but not the bottom where the SF Sun don't shine. So the bottom looks bright but non-shiny white. If the plane rolled over the overall effect would be ruined, but SAC bombers didn't normally roll over so its not so bad. What would be nice if we could assign textureset variables independently to each mesh. This is only spiritually related to what yawl talking about but thought I'd drop it in.

Dave:: lololololololol made my day Thanks for that. :good:

A cute trick is making a decal waaaaaay oversize, say 100 meters in size, then some small section of the decal will still completely cover the outer_wing, or vert_tail, or what_ever. Then you know its working -- you have the correct mesh_name and correctly typed in the ini stuff. Reduce the decal size until you can see more of the total decal structure and as you make it smaller you see where its off position, often entirely off the part and you'd never know it otherwise. As you make it smaller you see what direction to push the decal until you get it on the part at normal size. Then position correctly. This beats guessin the location hands down which is a frustrating procedure.

pfffftt I got a million of em. Here's how you solve Kesselbrut's Knot. The YakPit (Yak-9, Yak-3, etc...) has a metric airspeed guage texture, but its balled up into a cosmic Knot. The two cosmologies don't get along. The following unties Kesselbrut's Knot: [AirspeedIndicator] Type=AIRSPEED_INDICATOR NodeName=needle_Speed MovementType=ROTATION_Z ValueUnit=KMPH Set[01].Position=0 Set[01].Value=0 Set[02].Position=16.4 Set[02].Value=100 Set[03].Position=180 Set[03].Value=300 Set[04].Position=355 Set[04].Value=800 To test, use the speedbar IAS set to km/hr, and compare to what these new settings indicate.

Now, make it a radar target?

When you merely wish to bury bombs, there is no limit to the size.

See if this works in cockpit.ini Only one translational Move allowed per mesh generation. Thus, we Move the clock and hour hand up (+Z direction, 0.0115), minute and second hands to the left (-X direction, -0.0135), so they all meet together. : : Instrument[031]=Move1 Instrument[032]=Move2 Instrument[033]=Move3 Instrument[034]=Move4 : : [Move1] Type=AIRSPEED_INDICATOR NodeName=clock MovementType=POSITION_Z Set[01].Position=0.0115 Set[01].Value=0.0 Set[02].Position=0.0115 Set[02].Value=1.0 [Move2] Type=AIRSPEED_INDICATOR NodeName=needle_clock_hour MovementType=POSITION_Z Set[01].Position=0.0115 Set[01].Value=0.0 Set[02].Position=0.0115 Set[02].Value=1.0 [Move3] Type=AIRSPEED_INDICATOR NodeName=needle_clock_sec MovementType=POSITION_X Set[01].Position=-0.0135 Set[01].Value=0.0 Set[02].Position=-0.0135 Set[02].Value=1.0 [Move4] Type=AIRSPEED_INDICATOR NodeName=needle_clock_min MovementType=POSITION_X Set[01].Position=-0.0135 Set[01].Value=0.0 Set[02].Position=-0.0135 Set[02].Value=1.0 : : If you have the time and desire to figure out what's going down here, study the first page of this thread ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4410 It has all the details needed to start Moving things around the cockpit. The first three pages have worked example problems. The other 50,000 pages are fluff. Even if you fly the cockpit "normally" you can still Move things around to Taste, like the Dora's clock parts here. Have Fun!

Wow, thanks for the link. Really impressive. UK:: They may not be consuming much. And now with the small hole lowering supplies, waste might could be removed on the up.