Lexx_Luthor

Widow, there is confustion here. by "HDD" do you mean one hard drive? If so, you need to backup to multiple hard drives. Online data storage works by storing data on -- multiple hard drives. That's what you can do at home for reliable backup: Independently back up to a number of hard drives. One benefit of online storage is keeping the data "safe" in another place, far away. The popular RAID backup hobby seems to violates this. One Power supply explosion and all the hard drives in a RAID get blown in a shower of sparks. I've seen it. To find the benefit of distant storage, unplug the backup hard drives when they are not being backed up to. Storing the hard drives in different locations is possible. As far as my understanding goes, the potential to lose all RAID hard drives in one event is why I don't use it for backup. With SATA, so far I'm happy with the speed of non-raid drives.

Never thought of this -- Backup vs Copy. I make backup copies. I never used any backup software. I'm pretty simple. Like when I spent hours working my new terrain, I get an "itch" to make backup copies of it, just in case. I get this foreboding feeling haunting me until I do it. Swap multiple hard drives, DVD disks, USBs, copy paste data, everything I worked that's new. It may be overkill but I'm peachy with that.

Yeah I hear ya. I just don't trust the DVD "medium" any more than I trusted floppies as a "stable medium." I rely on DVD backups, but only partially. You keep saying "a hard drive" is not a backup. I keep agreeing by saying many hard drives are independent backups. DVDs make additional backups. USBs make backups beyond that. Granted, I'm not in IT. My goal is to never need IT service for data recovery.

Yeah I see what you mean now. I like SATA DVDs now for backup. Reasonably fast and like you say they are just a "medium" and not mechanical/electrical working devices. However, I trust them as much as the floppy disks years back. They often went bad, which was not a problem because I made spare backups. I don't like tapes -- too slow for me I suppose. Never used em anyways. For me the most reliable primary backup is multiple hard drives stored away from the computer, but as always in combination with other methods for independent--independent data storage. Drop hard drives on a table or rug and they are fine. Always think of static electricity. When you do, they are unbelievably reliable and last forever when used a few times a year. Just assume that they aren't so have multiples!!!!

I don't want backups hooked up to a computer. Power supplies can blow them all away. USB drive is a backup to the backup to the backup. Just that extra extra little thing, and stored someplace else in case of fire, theft, killer asteroids, F-16 pilots like the guy who missed a gunnery range at night and shot up a nearby hi school so they had to close the school and so made the Air Guard insanely popular with hi school students , etc...) ANY hard drive is not a backup -- Yep -- Many hard drives are independent backups. Its trivially easy today for home PC backup, several inexpensive methods. Not sure about large businesses. Manually swapping hard drives in and out of a case is no work at all. Work is forever losing data.

I got the 250 last year. Upgraded from Semperon and 2G ram. Decided to go AM3 lifestyle all the way. Man its very much faster in every way. But your A64 is a step up from my old Semperon so you may not see as much increase as I saw. Since processors development has staganated, you could get away with waiting. When you do upgrade, go at least 4Gb ram minimum. You'll need it all. I do. The dual processor actually seems to help with old apps. Win-7 may be running on one core, the app on another. That's my guess anyways.

paulo, grey paint -- even so, ramp up the Texture set shines/reflection a bit. When they polished these things, the grey was like a mirror. If I recall, I've seen F-106 shots with wings mirroring the fuselage USAF markings, although this was at a low angle. Most likely most planes were somewhat dirty though. Not sure. It might be something you want.

I've found MinPixelSize=0.0 gives an increase in distance before aircraft models vanish. More here on this ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7030

Chuck Norris backs up his computer data. Dave, maybe this FACT about Chuck Norris will help the flock understand...?

1000 FRNs for a tape backup....? Wowww!! My "RAID" -- Over a dozen hard drives stashed round about: Some newer, some older. They last forever when used only here and there, but I always assume they will fail right now. So I have lots of them. Turn off computer. Plug one or two drives in and copy stuff over. Turn off computer. Plug em out. Toss em in the closet. I cycle through them every few weeks or so, and only when I've been productive with new stuff that needs backing up. SATA DVDs are good now for backups of the backups. I always hated backing up to old IDE CDs, but the newer optical drives I like. So I cycle through some DVDs here and there. I cycle through a number of OCZ flash drives as backups of the backups of the backups. In 15 years of computing, I never lost an every-day working hard drive except for a power supply explosion (sparks flying across room and all -- open computer case) that fried most everything else in there too. I think one reason is I never get the latest and largest/fastest drives. I always use drives that have been out on the market for maybe three years, or a newer drive that is considered very "small" in gigabytage, or megabytage back in the 90s. Nothing cutting edge. The other reason -- I always assume a drive will fail every time. Maybe its a Xen thing. My oldest drive is a 125MB Western Digital Caviar from 1993 which was old and tiny and slow when I got it. Its too small for today's Windows data -- *one* SF aircraft mod with large skins could fill this drive -- so I have DOS 6.22 installed on it. Sometimes I'll rip out the Windows drive and plug the DOS drive into my current AMD X2 250 box and boot up DOS to play Master Of Orion 1, which is still the best space strategery game today. lol Its sad because backing up home PC data has never been easier, faster, and so inexpensive with today's gear. UK Widow's poast here is why I never bother telling people to backup. They just won't do it until they pay the price and find out for themselves.

"parious" -- would they mean perilous? I can't find my dictionary and haven't found it online. I do see it used so context may be available. Say What, I'm guessing Aussie is not alone. All modern western militaries are funded by debt, and as we are in some kind of global debt collapse everybody's gonna get bit, well maybe except the very largest banks. So it may be like the 1930s and "democracy" forces get small again. I'd replace F-111s with Tornados and air refueling. Not saying it would work in the Pacific area but its my best guess. I'd go for a small Gripen fighter force but purely because of classical SAAB "kewl"~ness. That's assuming SAAB developed air refueling since earlier times.

That's not silver. This is silver.... Specular=1 Glossiness=0.1 Reflection=1 0.2 Gloss works okay also. Experiment to Taste. Assuming SF2 works the same here as SF1. I'm still back at SF 2006. I also tweak the Enviro light levels down some so there is sufficient difference between the brilliant silver surfaces that directly reflect sun/moon light to the viewer and the much darker silver surfaces that do not, depending on view and sun/moon angle. DON'T set any of those 3 variables to 0.0. That can cause a game dump on some models at certain angles between the model and the sun/moon when the later are in view. Reflection=0.0 is the one I'm thinking of, I think.

The Thunderbirds will have to get some Rappers. Honestly, they need F-106. I'd like to see the Blue Angels upgrade to F4D. There's something un-earthly about a delta wing blotting out the sun, like a solar eclipse. I've seen the apparition before, long ago. We did the same thing, and for a far better reason. A friend and I saw one of the last flying apparitions of the F-106, back in Mississippie. It wouldn't fire up and the mech rolled out the aux cart to start it. After the F-106 landed, all the sheep herded over to await the Thunderbirds. We were the *only* ones to stay at the F-106 and we talked to the pilot and mech. Two men, one soul. They loved that plane no matter how old and squirly. After that, we left the show without waiting for Thunderbirds. Told the pilot/mech we had just seen everything. They got a kick out of that. When the F-106 lands, the air show is over. Never been to an air show since. If you haven't seen this, czech it out... ~1960 Flight Congress ~>

* thumpsies * Forgot to thump this. I just got an old copy of US Electronic Warfare, 1946 - 1964, by Alfred Price. Interesting story. Yea you fellas/fellattes want a polar campaign for back then, and tweak the sim's AI for it. I'm still back in SF 2006. But I do know that SF 2008, and I suppose SF2, have the AI "radar" feature which allows AI radar homing missile engagement independent of visible distance to the target. Now, this might could be hacked with a "fake" RHM missile with weird range paramaters to allow this distant RHM engagement to get the AI within visible range of the target where the fake RHM missile is expended and the AI goes to "visible" range engagement. All this would allow a way to simulate night or bad weather IRM/guns-only radar guided interception from a long distance.

My fave... ~> http://www.airliners.net/photo/Sweden---Air/Saab-J32B-Lansen/0475987/L/&sid=bde5214118e62090ad76b5a797438762 Another...thick surfaces http://www.airliners.net/photo/Sweden---Air/Saab-J32B-Lansen/0767055/&sid=bde5214118e62090ad76b5a797438762

I got Yefim Gordon's big MiG-21 hardback (get it). He spends a few pages on this. F-5E was far better in every way, although maybe not theoretical top speed. Gotta love the double delta wing. There is a picture of one -21F used for wingtip Atoll missile launchers to test the concept for the (much) larger Ye-152. It had a slight double delta, so there was somewhere to hang the rail. Similar, but less extreme, to the Chinese double delta MiG-21 version -- forgot what that's called now -- *edit* J-7E I think. MiG kinda failed to develop their design. Added alot of weight, and a little thrust. Fail. I think the Chinese did far better with it, of course far too late. I always wondered if Su-7 if developed as much as the MiG-21 would have made a better tactical fighter, considering the swing wing series as an Su-7 development. Su-7 was originally created for this role.

Serious potential...? Well, no. You still can have fun with this though, if you enjoy hard work. And that's what its all about.

UK Widow:: Yeaps. You just learned how politics works. In that way, you did good here. Another one are "quotes" from long ago leaders you see poasted on teh internets forums. Don't trust them without your own research.

Bah don't listen to these fellas. They always told me "it can't be done" but I did it anyways for many things never seen in a combat flight sim before. Aurora Borealis, afterburner plumes visible to 20 miles at night according to pilot accounts, hour long nuke effects, 1000km size cloud systems, etc...Hey they are Old Timers, so give em a break, okay? You can make 15,000km size maps, full scale. I know, I've done it. I think you can make far larger maps if you sacrifice tile size and terrain detail. ie...you *might* could make 120,000km size maps. Flat square but it would allow "orbiting" for a few hours. What you do is make a bmp image with repeating Earth terrain east-to-west and load it into Terrain Editor. In the old SF 2006, you could set negative world boundaries and fly east - west with no limit, the terrain repeating over and over....just what you would see if you orbited. Combat AI didn't work fully off the east/west map borders, but everything flew normally. I'd rather make a real oversize map though like described above. The thing is, can thrust vectoring be made to work? Maybe through the engine tables? I wonder if two triggered gun directions could be made to provide a reaction in two different directions. For player only of course. Weird stuff like that. But you are on your own and you have to want to become old timers yourselves and that means doing your own experiments with the game, and that means SF1 as well as SF2 if needed. Alot changed there, and some things in SF1 may be more space friendly. I can think of one thing (negative world boundary).

:good: rcs, I've done some of this. You will have to do your own experiments. It *might* work but it would be a rather simple simulation. You can increase the playable altitude ceiling. At least in SF1 2006, the "flight" physics works basically at orbital altitudes. There is not much going on aerodynamically, and it shows: No control. Perhaps the vector thrust theme can provide some help, if the jets can be made to provide thrust in thin air. That might be edited in the thrust tables. But, there is no structural modelling for this. Years back, I set up a hand made mission with MiG-21F at 150km or so. No indicated airspeed. Fell down out of control, flopping around like a flipped coin, canopy opening and closing automatically (this was SF1), but eventually with very slowly increasing +|IAS|. Survived to regain control at about 10km and pulled out. The "flight" physics is there, for what its worth, but the structural stuff is not. Terrain: SF1 2006 lets you set negative map boundaries without limit, so you can fly east/west practically forever, with the map repeating. AI does not work fully beyond the map edge however. North/South is a different story. Just don't try it. Long, fascinating story on that, the Great White Abyss extending to infinity beyond the map when camera view is less than the horizon distance to the map edge, which can happen if you set world boundary less than horizon distance...or something like that. TK must have seen us discuss this, as he hid it from us after PATCH 2008. SF 2008 and I assume SF2 force desktop dump when camera view is in visible range of the map boundary (TK hiding the White Abyss). So, you can't fly east/west beyond the map edge anymore. A truly large map would be required for SF2 space operations. However, I *think* you can create any size map you like. TE can do 15,000km map with 4km tile size. I know. I've done it. Larger tile sizes may allow larger map size. I assume with 8km tile size, you can make a 30,000km map, with 16km tile size, a 60,000km map. And on up with no known limit. I have not tried this so I can't really say for sure. I would take free camera to 1000km altitude to test the randomized warm front cloud layers. Good Luck!

lol 76 the Ye-152 is gone? This keeps happening to ya'll. Everybody ignores Dave when he tries to get ya'll to back up. But then, a backup mindset *only* comes through our own individual experience, which we define as a tragic loss of our data. The trick is having this experience happen while losing nothing too deep. That requires luck. I only lost one thing, ten years back. I never have since. And I never will again. I got the lucky card since it only cost me a few hours work. But I paid attention to the event and its significance. That's another thing. I wonder how many lose -- say -- a day's worth of data, ignore what it means, and so later lose a year's worth of data. I think here it helps to build your own computers, so you know how they work, and how they don't. Allow me to Witness a FLAKER parable. A decade back, I'sa building an oversize extended mission in DOS Su-27 FLAKER 1.0 with like 1000 planes, worked a few hours on it, and the mission editor locked up. Had to reboot. I lost a few hours work. But it taught everything about data safety. That was just a running volatile memory loss. Now I have multiple hard drives laying around different places, varying from 125MB drive (from 1993) all the way to 120GB -- old ancient drives that will work forever. Plus a few cheap small modern SATA drives. I plug em in and boot up and backup, then plug em out. CDs and DVDs, and now USB thumb drives, that I cycle through backing up the stuff I work on.

I have SF1, running PATCH 2006. Enbseries doubles frames here. ATI4550 I think, no cooling fan. But I screwed my own fan (old AMD cpu fan) into the card's heatsink. This one ~> http://www.calpc.com/catalog/full_tower.html It has *real* switches. Barebones but that means its perfect for a frame-up modding job from scratch.

ZEMA Zombie Emergency Management Agency. Thanks for serverforcer for that one. What we supposed to have "2 weeks" of beer on hand if there was half a case of emergency or something?

Yes he's very good. Amazing.

That's the one. I'll use it on The Sims forums when they poast "mig21 version." Should get the idea across. I just got Jay Miller's SR-71 AEROFAX. Flipping through it tonight I see a size comparison drawing of Lockheed CL-400-13 and its twice as long as the B-52. I was poking around for a SR-71 book. I saw Miller wrote the Aerofax, so I knew from his B-58 fax that is the one to get. Get it. FastCargo you got Miller's SR-71?. 76 Thanks! Wazzup with the retro Anabs?