KiwiBiggles

Holy s**t Wrench! U have 4 brains???

Thanks fellas, this F-16C is a really nice bird. I never knew Oli, but I bet he approves. All the best KB

Very cool! Thanks for the link Xrearl, I've bookmarked this baby.

Hi fellas I have SF2E and Exp2 with the mission editor. My question is: the resolution of the planning map in the mission editor isn't fine enough to accurately plot waypoints for ground objects. For example, what would be the best way to accurately plot the waypoints for this truck convoy so that it drives down this highway rather than just next to it? I don't mind at all if I have to manually add waypoint co-ordinates in the MSN file if that's how it's done... but how to find the correct co-ordinates? I'd like to improve the immersion of my missions generally by having my vehicles 'use' terrain features on the map. Here's some details of the mission: [GroundMission001] Name=G002 GroundObjectType=ZIL-157 Nation=Soviet RandomChance=100 ObjectiveID=1 RatingForSuccess=50 Size=6 FormationType=TruckConvoy MobileObject=TRUE Position=525604.249374,480560.303948,0.000000 Heading=90.000000 Speed=5.144440 StartTime=954.917969 Alignment=ENEMY PilotTrainingStandard=NORMAL Waypoint[01].Command=WAYPOINT Waypoint[01].Position=532379.151735,480560.303948,0.000000 Waypoint[01].Size=500.000000 Waypoint[01].Speed=5.658884 Texture=Green ObjectNumber=0 Any help appreciated! Cheers! Kiwi

Thanks for the help everyone. I got the 'Hell's Highway' effect I was after! I tried a couple ideas, but in the end a fairly straightforward approach works best for me. I'm using the TW Mission Editor to set the mission up, test fly it in debug mode, then adjust the Ground Object waypoints in the MIS file manually. I found with more than two waypoints (start and waypoint 1) the way the game handles pathfinding was working against me, and the effect I wanted was achievable with just the two. Choosing a section of highway on a cardinal heading avoids complications with the heading parameter in the MIS file too... not an overly sophisticated approach I suppose, but that's not noticeable in-game and it's quick and easy to set up, which is a definite plus. After that, I can just change a few things up quickly in the editor to make a bunch of nice missions from the initial 'template'. I've got Stary's effects and SARCASM mods installed, which are really nice... so the next step (job for next weekend maybe) is to try some upgraded tiles. Then, I'd like to see if I can dress things up some more with a few CA object mods - add some custom SAM sites maybe, and make a nice custom airfield scene to return home to? Oh, and some carrier missions with Ark Royal, Buccaneers and Phantoms too! I'm a kid in a candy store really. Hope everyone's having a great weekend! Kiwi

Ah... thanks Wrench. I think what I'll do is 'fix' this simple little mission in the MSN file first, so these trucks trundle down the road for me. If I can do that, I will have sorted out the co-ordinates bizzo. Doesn't sound too bad? - I'm boderline OCD like most flight simmers anyhow! Then it seems like I need to research these 'routes' in the _movements.ini etc. Once a 'route' is defined, what does the mission editor do with it? Can a route be selected in TW's mission editor, or more likely it's linked to the 'Target Area' selection? In the route you posted Wrench, the StartArea and EndArea are defined - are these the same as the Target Areas in the mission editor? How does one read the correct name for a particular area? (Edit: thinking about it, perhaps by just creating a StartArea or EndArea name in the movement.ini that defines it as a Target Area in the mission editor too?) I'm guessing there's a convention that links all these items together - maybe something like when a Target Area is selected in the mission editor a route with the matching EndArea is selected by the game engine, and the route calculated using the route waypoints and the time on target - something like that??? Sorry for all the questions! I'm away from my gaming rig right now, but I'll have some time to work on this on the weekend - wife and kids are away!!

Thanks gents, I'll give it a try.

Cool vid IronRoad, and nice sounds too. Are those sounds an in-game mod, or post-processing?

Well, my boys arrived safely earlier today and had a lovely flight by all accounts, just a little bit of turbulence on approach to Palmerston North Airport. Jitters over for Dad! timeanddate.com tells me it's early morning, 02:30 on the 10th in Grand Rapids, Michigan - it's 18:30 hours on the 10th here in Aotearoa New Zealand - so let's hope the boy's uneventful plane trip is a good omen for Jeanine's op later this morning. Kei konā kei a kōrua ngā whakaaro Our thoughts are with you Kiwi

Best wishes Major Lee. My sons are flying today. It's just a short hop down the North Island of New Zealand to their Uncle's farm for the school holidays, but it always makes me a bit edgy, and I understand a little of how you feel about your wife's op. So... may all our loved ones be safe today. Kiwi

Nice post Dave. Respect to both of you.

This looks pretty cool Jonathan! I'm not familiar with all the concepts you describe, so I may need to get back to you with dumb questions. Aside from that I'm sure I'll be able to follow your instructions ok. First dumb questions: will this work in the TW mission builder too, or only campaigns? Will I be able to specify an element of one plane only? Whats the invisible wall (I'm guessing the edge of the map or is there a '3D bubble' like in Falcon4.0?) and what happens when you hit it? Cheers Kiwi

A-4K for me. A dream come true!

Very nice Spinners!

Loved Alien (real SF for me) even quite liked Aliens (action movie for mine, SF not so much) but really looking forward to this. Looks to have a bit of an existential bent too - a little bit 2001 maybe? AvP - oh my god - how bad were they! Even my kids couldn't watch them! About the 'ants' thing - so many movies get this wrong nowadays. Once the creature is revealed in all it's CGI glory... it just aint scary no more. For mine ya gotta save it for the climax, and even then reveal only so much to maintain the sense of threat and danger. Alien got it right. Jaws got it right. Even (the original) Predator got it right! The producers and directors must know this (they all go to film school at college don't they?) so I figure we can only blame the dumbed down consumer market that just has to get it's CGI jollies. The last movie I saw to get this badly wrong was Super 8, which I watched recently with my boys. In the brilliant first act the creature is never seen - just noises, bodies snatched by an unseen assailant, a car tossed headlong into the night, a shipping container destroyed by something inside. Spoiler Follows: ... adios suspense and (human) character development! Super 8 was just daft from that point on in my opinion (even allowing it's a kids' movie). Given that the producer was Spielberg himself, and the director was JJ Abrams in full on Spielberg homage mode - they must have known what they were doing, right?

... oh, and the other thing I did was edit out the on-screen radar display (which will come back if you reset your HUD setting to NORMAL I think?) . [Display004] DisplayType=RADAR PosX=0.865 PosY=0.015 Width=0.125 Height=0.16666667 Alpha=0.60 InitTime=2.0 From memory I just reset the Width and Height to 0.0

Hi there! I'm new to Strike Fighters, but I posted at KiwiSims about my noob SF experience - here's a bit of an extract from the blurb on how I set up the sim - might give you some ideas for your own setup? Hope it helps! The bit that applies specifically to your question is this: "I've got the HUD Display and Visual Targeting options set to NORMAL, and subtitles OFF in the sound options." With this setting you'll see 'technical' messages like which weapon you just selected, but not all the 'sub-titles'. Cheers Kiwi EDIT: When I think about it, you would still need to hit the next weapon key to see the 'message' so maybe this isn't much help after all, but I'll leave it up anyway in case there's anything useful in there.

Thanks Wrench, that's a really nice pack. I'll check it out! All the best Kiwi

Hey Dave, That's a really generous thought, but honestly we're fine - just have to be bit thoughtful about the family budget is all, and we get by OK all things considered. Man, when I think about the hours of enjoyment I've had flight simming, mainly with the IL-2 community, and now here at CombatAce, I'm already very, very grateful. I've been paid forward many times over by all you guys who devote your time (the most precious resource of all!) to the communities. I don't begrudge TK either, I really appreciate the product he and his crew have put together, and understand the difficulties of running a business. Flight simming has become an important activity in my life, whether it's to relax and take my mind off the day to day challenges of our world, or to appreciate the sacrifice of service people all over the world. It's been well worth the time and money invested. Really, thank you for the offer though, I'm humbled. Kiwi

I'd been thinking about buying SF2 for probably a couple years, and never found quite enough justification to jump in with some cash. It wasn't just the game, I needed an upgrade to W7 and a RAM upgrade. It actually took a mobo blowup to get me to the computer store. Once there I barely managed to loosen the purse strings just enough for the long awaited upgrade (with a young family there are ALWAYS other priorities) ... and it was the just released A-4K DLC that did it for me. Here's why.... When I was growing up, these A-4Ks were based just down the road from the town where I lived, and they would sometimes exercise at the local civvie airport - which I could see from my bedroom window. When these Rhinos came to town for Triad 76(?) my old man was working on base at Ohakea (on a civvie contract) and chanced to meet the pilots, a lady freind of the family had something to do with it - pilots huh? Anyhow, they were really nice fellas and my brother and I got to go on base and sit in those very F-4s on the apron. I've seen the A-4Ks at airshows and elsewhere many times since, though sadly now they're gone forever. I've wanted to fly these birds myself ever since, and flying them on the 'puter is just fine by me - I'm convinced I'd be a "smoking whole in the ground" in very short order in a real jet. To be sure, my virtual flying bears this theory out! So once I got home from the store and confirmed my 'puter was back in running order - it wasn't long till I slapped down for SF2E. I found BeachAV8Rs training missions at SimHQ, and they led me here for the various upgrades required for the training missions. Being a mission editor nut, of course I soon needed a better mission editor, I'm keen on fifties cold war scenarios anyway - the early Bundesluftwaffe is fascinating with guys like Erich Hartmann, Günther Rall and Gerhard Barkhorn involved - I'd even created a campaign in IL-2 - so Exp2 was a no brainer. Funny thing is - it's been over a month now and I'm having such a blast I still haven't bought the A-4K that started it all! Very, very soon though...

Cool! Thanx Stary - this is a really nice immersion builder and very cleverly made in my opinion. And another step closer to a quality build like those I've seen I've seen in the screenshots thread. Planning to try the SARCASM mod and some terrain upgrades next. :) I did a lousy job at getting a good close up piccie of a deployed chute, but I did get this quite nice 'mood' shot with a chute deployment in the background mid-left. Thanks again Kiwi

Hi Stary, I'm a bit confused about this too. I'm an SF2 noob but already have some of your very cool mods - thank you very much! - and after seeing the 'Ejecting Pilots Mod' mentioned in the F-14 Hot-Fix thread I found the 'Ejecting Pilots v1.0 update' mod in the SF1 downloads section. I had a bo-peep at the files and to my uneducated eyes they looked like they might work in SF2, so I gave them a go but no joy. Presumably because of the shaders you just mentioned. Can I extract the effect from the F-14 hotfix into my SF2 install (or just add the F-14 I suppose?) and expect it to work on all planes? How do I test it properly? Last nite I tried the SF1 effect with the T-6A in my SF2E install - I hit Shift-ESC to try the effect. It didn't work of course, but was that even a valid way to test it? Does the aircraft have to be on fire first (say from hits on my plane by the bad guys) before the effect will work? I also saw 'ejection' files in your unified effects mod - I assumed they were similar - but maybe not seeing your comments? Sorry for all the questions - I'd really like to get this working in my install. Cheers Kiwi

Very nice Fubar. I'd be pretty happy to fly that Mustang.

Cool! Just this minute found the Kiwi F-16 upload by dtmdragon - so I'm very happy about that. Been a noob I didn't imagine there was a New Zealand terrain but I see Baltika has released a beta terrain. So now I'm a doubly happy chappy! Cheers KB

There was more to the RNZAF's air combat wing (it was more like a squadron and a half) than just defensive counter-air. Just one of the capablities lost was the ability for the NZSAS to train in the terminal guidance role, previously an important task for them, designating for the A-4K's laser guided bombs. The combat wing also contributed to counter-air training for both the Australian and New Zealand navies. Another important capability was the maritime strike role, prosecuting targets for RNZAF Orions. A role I'm sure the leaders of the NZ Defence forces would have considered very important was coalition operations with New Zealand's allies in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly Australia, and while the A-4s were getting a bit long in the tooth for real world operations, and some of our alliances had been shaky since the break-up of ANZUS (over US nuclear ship visits) they were better than nothing. Since we're really talking joint exercises (and not a shooting war thank goodness) the A-4s still had a role to play, and the F-16s would have been able to make a genuine operational contribution had it ever been necesary. It was a case of being a responsible international citizen and pulling our weight, something that's important to our allies, and not something we have a great record at - with a per-capita defence budget significantly less than many of our allies. For mine though, the most important aspect is that even the A-4Ks maintained a level of air combat capability and a cadre of skilled air and ground crew that would have been available for expansion if the strategic situation was ever to deteriorate. That is lost now, probably forever. And the F-16 deal was such a good bargain that even Hawks would have been more expensive I'm sure... so it really was an opportunity lost. Don't worry though, I downloaded the RNZAF Tigershark from Combat Ace just the other day, and very nice it is too. If hostile planes ever appear in our skies I shall go outside in my backyard and shout 'bang' VERY crossly. Cheers all Kiwi