Lexx_Luthor

This is a great new feature starting in SF1 Patch 2008: AI attacking BVR without us changing target MaxVisibleDistance. If its been changed so that its even better, it would help TK's customers to know. I have a hunch it hasn't changed (hopefully it has).

I didn't ask a question in that quote. You may have misread me or, more likely, I miswrote you. -- SF Patch 2008 introduced a new AI engagement mode allowing a radar and radar guided missile equipped AI aircraft to switch from normal following waypoints to RHM Attack if an enemy aircraft is within the radar's defined range and within the radar's defined forward detection cone. If I recall, these variables are in the DATA.ini under detectsystem. This AI engagement feature takes effect even if the radar's defined range is greater than MaxVisibleDistance defined for the enemy aircraft, thus allowing AI to conduct BVR engagements without us needing to pump up the visual engagement variable MaxVisibleDistance. However, this feature works only if radar guided missiles are carried, or it did so with SF1 Patch 2008. This does not work if there are no radar guided missiles loaded. The two examples you offered, radar equipped MiG-21s with Atolls, and MiG-17PF with guns, have radars that should not differ as much from a target's visual detection range MaxVisibleDistance, hence that might be causing some confustsion here. Becoming a politician? No. But I did play StrikeFighters last night.

No, what I need is a KMD/LMD created test "mission" with, say, a loaded AI F-4 pointed toward an enemy AI aircraft at well beyond the MaxVisibleDistance set for the enemy target. No Player plane. I need to do this myself: Today I delivered a 12lb jar of Wildflower honey to a friend for her daughter's birthday. I dropped her jar on concrete, glass BUSTED, so I gave her my 12lb jar of Gallberry. The jars were 20 FRNS. That could have been a jar of Thudwire SF2. :good: I was thinking today, and I suspect that in your SF2, you are seeing the normal SF visual range engagement, where radar equipped aircraft "use" radar, but only inside the target's MaxVisibleDistance range...ie...within visual range. The MiG-21Pf's radar is comparable to visual ranges. That early Fishbed version was made for night I suppose, where even the short ranged radar could vastly exceed visual range. In my SF1 2008 KMD tests, I set F-4E head on against MiG-19.... Starting distance about 50km. MiG-19 data.ini had visual detection range about 15km I set F-4 radar detection range at maybe 60km. The F-4 entered afterburner immediately and the huddata text switched from WAYPOINT to RHM Attack. I set starting distance between the two aircraft to 100km in KMD. F-4 would fly WAYPOINT until within radar detect range -- 60km -- then switch to RHM ATTACK. I loaded the F-4 with only AIM-9s (plus guns) and the F-4 would comfortably fly WAYPOINT until closing to MiG-19 MaxVisibleDistance, and only then would enter afterburner and attack (forgot which weapon). I *think* I did try other orientations, so the front or rear aspect of the Sparrows or Sidewinders are not an issue. Even if they are, the F-4 should go afterburner and the hud text should display some type of engagement/pursuit method. Its been a while since I did the SF1 2008 tests. Thanks anyways. If you'd like to try it, go for it. I should get a jar of SF2 and do it here.

they are low priced ~> https://store.thirdwire.com/store.htm Okay I might have to try one or two of these out. SF2V and/or SF2E. I like how TK brought back the StrikeFighters name. I never liked the "Wings Over" naming theme.

Indeed tell us more. Maybe that changed between SF Patch 2008 and SF2. Thanks. That could be a game changer for me. Does the new ECM spectrum feature apply only to Player plane for use on the player's RWR, or does it somehow effect AI aircraft behavior as well? The lack of documentation is a big problem for today's TheSims developers. I should poast the Patch readme for Master Of Orion I from 1994. It gave full details of all game changes, to the tiniest detail if a player would observe any difference in how the software functioned in game, It was several pages in the 55 line VGA mode, including full description of numerous AI behavior changes.

usafmtl:: The feature I like most is the half hemisphere sky glow in the direction of the rising/setting SF sun. That was very tweakable to get results far beyond the stock game. TK did an amazing job with that. In Patch 2008, and SF2+, this was replaced by the blood red camera lens glare that washes out terrain and planes. I can't tolerate this, at all. You can take this out but it leaves a barren sky. TK went for the "camera" look. I always assume we look through the eyes of air crew, not cameras. this...in the twilight after sunset, the smooth transition from blue to yellow closer to the horizon near the SF sun. But that's not enough to keep me from upgrading. I loved the new high altitude sky darkening that TK sneaked into Patch 2008 and pleasantly surprised everybody, but I found my own method of varying sky colour with altitude. Even in olde SF 2006, I can have light blue at sea level, Oxcart blue at 80k feet, and various shades in between. I like TK's [HighAlt] method better, but my own way is close enough so this feature no longer pulls me toward upgrading. Even so, I was almost ready to finally upgrade to SF 2008 and then SF2 (I could use the Loft feature) until streak let out about the AI visual look angles. TK deleted this feature at the request of some players looking for more "challenging" dogfights. I was hoping to use them in my project for my own purporses -- tweaking them for day or night interception including searchlight guided intercepts (Wild Sau, used in Korea) among other things. Why TK couldn't make this an option in a config file I don't know. That's another reason for me to live in the past. In Patch 2008, TK let out RHM attack for AI controlled aircraft -- NOT an airborne radar attack. The feature only works if the aircraft is armed with a radar guided missile. So, this new feature can't be used to let AI fly guns-only radar attack (F3D Skyknight ) or radar guided infrared missile attack (MiG-21PF + atoll). I figured out a workaround involving a "fake" radar guided missile with minimum range near visual range of target, but it would work best in combination with tweaking AI visual look angles. But as noted above, this feature was deleted. Still, if TK brought some of these features back as options, or created new features that I need, such as the map wide combat results recorder, I'll bite. Man I really REALLY like the RHM attack feature's ability to set 0 to 360 degree coverage for simulating long range GCI -- the angle could be reduced to very small angles, including 0, to simulate the crippling of PVO ground radar stations in a campaign. Man just thinking about this makes me want to upgrade. Thanks alot Dave. Loft too. I know about the ECM settings which are really cool. But, I assume those are for Player plane only. If not, that's another thing that could get me to upgrade, dam the environmentsystem.ini But...I can't use ECM in any of the SF games new or old, because because breaking lock causes immediate missile *full* warhead self destruct, just off the pylon or SAM launcher. If there's a nuc warhead involved, that full destruct takes out the entire SAM launcher of aircraft flight. So I don't use ECM. Chaff works though, as the missile gets close to the target before being affected, and then flies well beyond before self destruct. Anyways, its a fun challenge molding TK's sim however he does it. He got mad at me for not upgrading, but like I said, its his business decision so that way there should be no hard feelings. TK is still the best. Like he told us; there are enough sims that do post-modern all digital superHUDjets and WW2 props, and there are enough things to do in between to keep him busy for many years ahead. So TK is staying Cold War. Ya gotta love him for that alone.

I've forgotten ALOT of this stuff, so maybe we'd better move along, nothing to see here lol. ie...put my poast here on Ignore. It may be 4th root. I'm guessing here so ... You consider only the difference in volume. Also consider the work or energy expended by the blast pushing through air 10x the distance. Assuming that work expended goes up linearly with distance, we are dealt one more distance unit to divide the final blast damage ability by. Using this, 1MT over 1kt would give 5.6 times the distance, instead of 10 times. Or the exponent could be between 3 and 4 or whatever (the complicated "real life" thing). If I recall, another consideration is that high yield weapons have more flash to blast ratio. ie...less blast more flash than you would expect from scaling the yields linearly. Another hassle is when you get large distances, difference in air density with altitude comes into play. I think at high enough altitudes (and high yields), blast damage can be ignored, leaving flash damage the most significant factor. Hence my favorite colour anti-flash white which they started using with the high yield weapons. The point with high yield weapons is the area of damage to all objects in that area is still pretty good. When restricting consideration to a single object, high yields do look bad. I've seen it noted somewhere that if you want to create destruction over as large an area as possible using minimum total yield, you have to use multiple small yields. Aiming and dropping them all correctly is not possible, at least not back in the Day Of LeMay using a single bomber. Also, from 1kt to 1MT+, yields scale up fantastically with increasing weapon mass. Both taken together explain (to me ) the popularity of using a single high yield weapon for wide area destruction instead of many smaller yield weapons.

Pretty smooth there. Back in Forgotten Battles, I printed out the maps, instead of using the little ingame map. Doing this gave the game a new dimension. Very nice. You had to pay attention while flying long distances.

Yes

streak:: Thanks for poasting this. I had no idea. There must be a way. Oleg Maddox has hinted at allowing 3rd Party aircraft and other item modders sending their mods to the Moscow Bureau for "official approval" by his team. TK could provides basic out-of-box aircraft, say the original series, and the basic desert terrain and campaign, and focus on developing the basic game engine. Lowengrin single handed saved Forgotten Battles for the offline players with his own dynamic campaign engine. That's impossible in the ThirdWire series. TK's greatest blunder has been never making a map wide combat recorder that outputs all combat events to a simple text file.txt. This has kept the sim closed to 3rd Party dynamic campaign engines, where FB/PF was open to this by virtue of the map wide eventlog text file. I mostly fall under: "loyal fans" that can not or will not upgrade to any of the SF2 sims due to simply being satisfied with the original series. But not entirely. I would love to go SF2 but need features of the old game that have been either deleted for reasons that hurt me, or replaced by "new" features that I cannot tolerate at all until I can find a fix. I take these changes as a business descision by TK.

I still have SF Patch 2008 laying around. As for the variables, they were my last settings before retreating to SF 2006. Experiment to Taste. [HighAlt] HighAltColorStart=0 HighAltColorEnd=30E+3 HighAltSkyColor=0,0,0.0 HighAltHorizonColor=0.00,0.00,1.00 HighAltFogColor=0.4,0.5,0.6 SunLightModifiler=1 AmbientModifiler=1 SpecularModifiler=1 But, set the last three Modifilers to 1 if you don't want planes and terrain turning FLAT BLACK in the bright SF sun as you gain very high altitudes. Don't know why TK tossed these in, as things don't work like that up there. Interval is 0 <= Modifiler <= 1 I think TK fixed the (Modifier) spelling. Not sure since I went back to SF 2006 and never saw what came out after initial Patch 2008.

Experiment to Taste. Try End clear 1.0 as a test of limit. Not exactly sure what these two variables do, especially StartClear. Setting EndClear to 1.0 seems to take the beginning of hazy fog to the defined horizon distance -- no distant haze seen. If this is causing the white distant mountains. Not really sure now, as its not so much softly fogged out just not textured. Poast your HorizonDistance in the Flightengine file, and the difficulty setting you are using. ie...what HorizonDistance are you using.

Then the stock is diluted, worthless. No more games.

Bee wax candle might be okay. That's all I use. If you can't burn a bees wax candle in your own pad, what's the whole point?

Look up some sites that discuss effects of nuclear weapons. Sources I used are listed here ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3970 Atomicforum seems to be gone. Atomic Veterans is gone too apparently. Or they changed iNames. I need to edit that poast but it seems TK disabled editing. The glasstone blog takes some time to load, as each page is very very long but rich in contrarian detail.

tr:: Vast thin 3D cloud layers with holes in them may be possible. I've always hoped to see 3D towering cumulus clouds, either single or in clumps, and they now can make good use of the new bump mapping. These would interact well in the SF Sun....and have flat bottoms in shadow of the SF sun. The old Su-27 FLAKER 1.0 sim of 1995 had simple polygon clouds that were more realistic than the puffy non-existent textures (pure texture, nothing else) found in all TheSims since then. Flak puff tiny "cumulus" cloud non-textures were a huge step backwards in sim development since the 1990s.

Flav, the not very distant mountains in that Mandrake shot, goto Environmentsystem.ini and play with... [Fog] StartClear= EndClear= I use 0 and about 0.9 to or something -- experiment with limits you know 0, 0.99, 1.0, etc... Also goto Flightengine.ini and play with HorizonDistance= (in meters). Granted Vietnam could get humid and hazy in the distance I suppose.

FC :: this^ Experiment to Taste until Happy.

It could be caused by the [NearSceneClip]'s NearClipDistance in Flightengine.ini. [NearSceneClip] FarClipDistance= NearClipDistance= I had terrain tga flickering when I set NCD to very small values (0.05) to see inside the external models when I dreamed up the stargetic cockpit thing.

If I recall, the most unique role of F-14 used by Iran, Shah or Ayatollah, was MiG-25 killer. To do F-14 justice, TK would have to releace a Thudwire MiG-25.

I have not been to a movie in years. Maybe this one would be worth breaking my prinicples for. I do miss the theater popcorn. Can't beat it.

3 yrs this was it ~> http://combatace.com/topic/20073-robin-olds/page__hl__robin+olds

Sold to me! Fairey Delta III or something similar is another, far more fantasy possibility. FD3 profile ~> http://rp-one.net/f_155_t/fd_iii.html Very nice Just found this, F155T competition ~> http://rp-one.net/f_155_t/f155t.html

Veltro your Vautour (and Mirage IV) are the Shnizzle thank you so much. Vautour and Mirage IV make me want to include France on the Ring Of Fire map (strategic strike bases totally surrounding USSR). Even if I don't include France, I've read RAF (or politicians I don't know) gave some thought to adopting Mirage IV, given TSR.2 cancellation. Just a possible campaign variable to spice things up.

I Approve it.