beachav8r

With the early morning strikes out of the way, and the sun peeking over the edge of the desert, it is time for some daylight action. First up will be the F-4G Wild Weasels. In the first night alone, F-4Gs expended 118 HARM missiles as they systematically started the destruction of the Iraqi air defense network. Our two-ship flight heads toward Kuwait to start our patrol.. It isn't long before our radar warning receiver starts lighting up... After identifying the SA-8 vehicle I back off a bit and lob a HARM at him... The SA-8 is down and I move on to a radar guided AAA vehicle.. I get stupid close and the AAA reaches up and tags me. No problem..just one engine on fire, I can limp back to base on one! Errr..OK, maybe not. I point toward the Gulf and hope to make the coast before I have to eject.. It doesn't work out so well, and after a minute of burning my F-4 explodes. Elsewhere in the theater the air-to-air action is heating up.. After the first three days of the air war, commanders weighed the effectiveness of the bombing against the aircraft/crew losses and moved to restrict bombing to above 10 to 15-thousand feet. I probably would not have been shot down if I'd have stayed above 15,000'... BeachAV8R

January 17, 1991 - 0210 The kickoff of Operation Desert Storm started in the early morning hours of January 17 when a pair of MH-53 Pave Low helicopters escorted a strike force of AH-64 Apache helicopters to a jump off point near a pair of Iraqi radar installations. The mission for the Apaches was to blow a hole in the Iraqi sensor network to allow droves of coalition aircraft to pour through. Though the original mission originated in Saudi Arabia, for our purposes we'll start near enough to the origination point. The MH-53s had precision navigation capabilities and they ended up marking the final waypoint prior to the attack with clusters of chemical lightsticks from which the Apaches were able to take a final position update. * FSX MH-53 - None available for SF2! Skimming low over the desert is demanding flying. The SF2 helicopter modeling is rather poor. Eagle Dynamics or Belsimtek - we are waiting on you! (Or Combat Helo please!) I have no idea how to get my wingmen to turn their lights off. Approaching the attack area we hover behind some high ground to the south... Target acquired: "Party in ten..." Hellfire away! Missiles ripple off the rails and it is all over in a minute... Closing in to clean up with the canon... Send the code messages for mission success: "California AAA, Nebraska AAA" Through the gap in the radar coverage, F-111 and F-15E aircraft entered Iraqi airspace on missions toward the interior. The air war offensive has begun. BeachAV8R Yes, I'm pulling a Brett Favre/Michael Jordan..

It's just a quick mission I put together. I'm thinking I'll fly a full AV-8B campaign with some sorta specialized single missions thrown in for story-telling purposes.. BeachAV8R

..and some unrelated A-7 shots.. SweetFX did the in-game filtering..but I need to tweak the one for the Israel install since it desaturates too much.. BeachAV8R

Sundowner recently updated the stock F-105D skins with 2048 x 2048 and new bump maps! They look awesome... HERE! Really nice work there.. :thumbsup: BeachAV8R

Figured I'd post this in case anyone was interested in dorking around with this stuff. While searching for some ocean color palette tweaking I came across the great thread by ArturR about SweetFX and how it could be used in SF2. Discussion is HERE! SweetFX is sort of an ingame DirectX filter system that works like post-processing, except in real time (is generally how I understand it). I followed the instructions in that thread and had it up and working in no time. I put the files in my main SF2 directory (c:/thirdwire/strikefighters2/) and also put them in my MOD folder in the FLIGHT and MENU directories. As Stary indicates I think later in that thread - when tweaking the settings, you really only need to mess with the SweetFX_settings.txt file that is located in your MOD/FLIGHT directory to see the results. Allegedly you can even tweak the .txt file on the fly, but I've never been able to ALT-TAB out of SF2 without losing the ability to get back into the sim (I get a brown screen where the sim sounds like it is still running but I can't see anything unless I hit ESC and exit the mission - can anyone else successfully task switch when running SF2?) Link to most recent version of SweetFX: LINK! It is quite fun to mess around with the settings and get some image changes that suit you. I personally set mine to do some mild vignetting and slightly adjusted things like the saturation, HDR, bloom, and some other factors. These will allow me to basically (almost) just take my screens right out of the screenshot directory without having to post process them in PhotoShop for the AARs I write. Your mileage may vary of course. Separately, I also changed the waternormal.bmp file a bit and dropped the levels down a bit and decreased the saturation to give a bit of a darker tint to the ocean off Vietnam. Messing with the .bmp file in PhotoShop and running the sim can give some odd effects..so it was a bit of trial and error before I decided on the following color. The left side is the modified color and the right was the original from the Green Hell 3.5 install (I think tile was part of that mod?).. The new color gives an interesting reflective band according to where the sun is hitting the water - so it may or may not look good through all time phases of the sim (I'm still evaluating it), but overall I like the sunlight on the water look (sort of dramatic).. These two screens are with the new water tile and with SweetFX running and include all the running SweetFX effects that I have selected - this is what it looks like in game and these images are not altered: They look pretty good IMO - but I might tweak SweetFX to lighten them up just a smidge... I've attached my SweetFX configuration file and the water file just in case anyone wants to mess with them. Back up your originals of course before throwing that bmp in your mod folder.. BeachAV8R WATERNORMAL.zip SweetFX_settings.txt

Yeah - that's what I've got - those three locations. Someone had mentioned something about perhaps Anti-Aliasing causing problems - try turning your AA off on your card settings (like via NVidia Control Panel) and letting SweetFX do the anti-aliasing. Second suggestion would be to set all of the SweetFX settings to off (0) in the configuration file and then see if the game still crashes upon launch. If it doesn't, incrementally turn on settings until you isolate what is causing the problem. Hope you get it squared away.. BeachAV8R As far as I know - SweetFX runs automatically - there is no turning it on/off with a hotkey. The nice thing is that you can change settings "on the fly". Simply ALT-TAB out of the game while you are playing (pause it), adjust the SweetFX configuration file, save it, and you will immediately see the effects in game. Pretty cool...

This will be our first night mission - a two ship armed recon against targets of opportunity along what I'd imagine would be the Ho Chi Minh Trail... I've lightened the screens up a bit in post-processing to allow us to see what happened. The mission as flown was quite a bit darker.. The lights from my wingman illuminate my cockpit as I roar down the catapult into the darkness.. With no idea what kind of targets we'll be finding, I've brought along a mixed load of Napalm, CBUs, and Snakeyes... We pick up our waypoints and it is pretty evident that no other carriers are launching strikes or fighters at this hour. Looks like we are on our own this evening... The radar picks up the coast and we are soon in the target area. Flak and AAA is very, very light - I don't know if this is a reflection of operating down near the DMZ or if they just don't shoot as much at night... Our target turns out to be a few troops pushing carts down the trail.. Without the aid of labels it would have been impossible to find them - so I rationalize that I might have had a long-range patrol down there helping mark the targets for me. I select a napalm canister and roll in on the target... The explosion rips across the jungle below - I have no idea if I hit my target, but the explosion is awesome! The view from my wingman as he circles the area... Suddenly, Red Crown gives me warning of enemy fighters in the area - but way too late. The MiGs are already screaming down from above us! I should have been keeping an eye on my map! I quickly dump all my stores, and push the throttle forward until I fear I'm going to bend it. I point my nose south hoping I can drag the attackers into friendly anti-aircraft range... Only one of the two MiGs is on us, and he has taken an interest in my wingman. I query the TAC for help and they do have some fighters to the north they vector down toward us. I see the flight on my map and reverse course and hope to drag our tails up toward the oncoming friendly fighters... As we make the turn, I can see tracers behind me as the MiG starts to take shots at my wingman! The F-104s are trying to get into the fight as quickly as possible, but it is a race against diminishing time as the MiG gets ever closer to my wingman... The debrief will later show that my wingman survives for 30 seconds after the initial burst, but the racing F-104s get there a few seconds too late.. In my haste, I had forgotten to give my wingman his "drop tanks" command that might have squeaked him out some more maneuverability and speed.. The flaming trail of my wingman arcs across the sky to my right as I continue north toward the intercepting fighters... As I fly under the fighters, they take up the fight... The MiGs are quite skilled and keep the F-104s on their toes for a bit. But it is four on two and though it takes a bit of time, eventually the Starfighters triumph.. I take advantage of the distraction to beat it toward the coast and soon I'm back over the safety of the ocean, but alone in the sky. It is a short, but long flight back to the boat as I mourn losing another squadron member... To my surprise, we get a mission success just for destroying those two lone VC bike transports with a single napalm strike. I also get a promotion but I'm still upset I lost my wingman - and this time he is KIA and not MIA. The campaign continues, but attrition will be creeping in... BeachAV8R

Well, it doesn't get any more hairy than this. Our mission for today is to head "downtown", crossing over the heavily defended Hanoi to the west side of the city. There we will engage in one of the most dangerous missions of the war - suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) otherwise known as Iron Hand. Our loadout consists of a pair of Shrike missiles, and CBU-24/B cluster bombs... Note - these screens are unaltered except for a 2% noise added. The desaturation and vignette are done in real time, in game, by SweetFX. Stary was kind enough to share this awesome water texture with me..it looks fantastic! Heading for the coast it is just my wingman and I this time from our squadron. Dozens of other aircraft are pressing toward the coast as well from other carriers... Keeping the flight director box centered up on the TV display... The fighters push forward on reports that MiGs are in the area... And indeed, they are lining up to meet us over Hanoi... Thuds come in from land bases in the South (or was it Thailand?)... Scooters crossing the beach... I radio my wingman to give me some space. The threat receiver (again - I don't know if this year Intruder actually had them) is audio only and it shrieks. In this mission, the blaring whistle turns to something more ominous and I guess that means I'm getting launched on by an SA-2 site. I blunder around the skies and do see a couple missile trails go whizzing by. I turn my ECM gear on and just hope I'm lucky... While I'm F12 viewing the theater this little truck park comes into view. Wish I could mark it for later... The AAA and flak over Hanoi is just murderous. I had the house to myself today, so I cranked up the sounds system and the subwoofer was rattling the windows as the explosions hit all around my aircraft. It was really intense... As we approach our area of operations, I'm a little unsure how exactly to employ the Shrike. I get the primary target padlocked, hit the launch button and my missile roars off. I track it down and it destroys a AAA artillery piece, but I'm not sure that is how it is supposed to work (I thought Shrikes would only go after emitters?)... I cut my wingman loose and he starts to make a run toward the target area as well.. Things snowball quickly though and he is hit by something. His aircraft crashes just beyond where his cluster bombs are exploding... It looks pretty horrific... I pull off, intending to exit the target area to the southwest, but when I query the Tactical Air Controller she responds that "..the mission is still in progress.." It is then I realize that the "Primary Target" is, in fact, a cluster of a whole bunch of different anti-aircraft units. Oh crap.. The enemy tracers and flak are just unrelenting (I now know what the meaning of "you could walk across the flak" means..) but I roll back in after selecting my CBUs. I get good hits on several CBU passes, but each time I check with the controller the mission goals are not fufilled... It is only a matter of time before I'm going to get hit and each time I drop down toward a target I know I'm going to get blasted from the sky.. Finally, I've dropped all of my ordnance and the mission is still not complete. I need a Skyraider! With no choice, I have to head south under the cover of the other aircraft and accept that the mission is not a success... As I set up the wing leveler autopilot to cruise toward the coast, I hit the F12 key to watch some action. As I'm watching this MiG getting set up to kill this Crusader - it happens: CTD! Argh!! It is unfortunate that I lose the details of the mission - but at least I don't get penalized as far as getting data written to my logbook. In an attempt to recreate faithfully what happened, I cycle though missions in the campaign until I get a similar one to the same area, and refly the mission. On the second run through I get the same results as far as not being able to bring enough ordnance to the table, but this time m wingman doesn't get shot down. I preserved the outcome though by not adding flights or bombs - so in that respect the mission represents close to what the outcome would have been anyway. My penchant for the F12 key can cause lock-ups occasionally as the camera zips around the theater. My 2008 system might need some updating.. The mission was a real nail biter right up until I decided to head back to the carrier. The flak and AAA was just incredible and the thought of an SA-2 inbound was ever present. This sim has the AAA from Jane's F-15 beat by a long shot.. BeachAV8R

Strike Fighters 2 - Vietnam Green Hell 3.5 + Trees - Stary SF2V Air/Ground War Expansion - eBurger68 CVA-63 Kitty Hawk - MigBuster RAZBAM A-6A - Payware Formations.ini - SixGun/PureBlue A-6 SuperPack - Homefries Unified Effects 1.2 - Stary SARCASM 1.5 - Stary A-6 DIANE CCIP - MigBuster Water texture - Stary Sunday Puncher's Skin - CrazyhorseB34 ..and a whole lot of help from the kind people here at Combat Ace...

This will be the only time I do a video AAR as opposed to a written AAR. The time to put together something like this is prohibitive, but it was a fun experiment. Apologies for the low framerates - playing the game while simultaneously recording full resolution FRAPS on my circa 2008 system is just about maxing it out. The video is a "single take" of the mission and all the events captured happened exactly as they did. I simply paused the sim and moved the camera around to try to tell the story. Apologies for the low voiceover audio too - for some reason my mic input levels suck. BeachAV8R

California Dreaming by the Mamas & the Papas... BeachAV8R

That should work - and as far as I know, you probably don't even need it in your MENU folder. Options.ini: --------------------- Flightengine.ini -------------------------- Latest SweetFX settings (this will likely be way to undersaturated for most people...mine is this way for a reason..) Hope that helps.. BeachAV8R

Alrighty..problem solved (whew!). Did a little poking around the internet(s) and came up with this post on the 1C forums: "I've found that repeatedly tweaking sweet FX can eventually muff up your d3d9.dll file which it uses. Downloading SweetFX and installing it again will fix you up. You can use all your favourite settings still, just refreshing those other files will do the trick." So I replaced all of the files in the USER directories, and the main c:/ThirdWire directory and then just put my custom SweetFX_settings.txt back in and everything worked like a charm! So there might be something to what Feathered posted above! Yay.. BeachAV8R

Damn..I'd buy NA and patch it into my current install for the parked aircraft on deck..but I'm really worried I'd pork my current install mid-campaign.. argh..

I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.. <g> * You should hear me narrate Surgeon Simulator.. Just noticed the video intro title says Mission 06 - when, in fact, it is mission 07.. LOL.. details..

[size:9pt]Note - In an effort to continuously improve the sim, starting with this AAR I've also enabled SweetFX, which basically does post-process work in realtime through DirectX (PFM if you ask me). This allows you to change HDR settings, colors, saturation, and add various effects that you see in realtime while playing the sim. A fantastic tool that can be used in all kinds of sims. More Strike Fighters 2 specific SweetFX details found HERE![/size] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's mission is to strike the enemy PT boat base at Loc Chau. At first I get excited thinking it was the PT boat base I had spotted on a previous mission, but I soon realize it is not the same (that one was on the coast, this one is on a river). Our pair of A-6As is tasked to take out the barracks buildings in a coordinated strike with other assets. The sense of being involved in a true "Alpha Strike" in this sim is very good. With a gleam in my eye, I hatch a little plan. So far in this campaign I've been a pretty good sailor, sticking to the script and the mantra of "one pass - haul ass". BUT, I'm pretty sure this target is going to be pretty juicy, so I plan for that eventuality. My target is the barracks building, so I equip myself with six 1,000 lb. bombs which should do the trick. I also equip my wingman with four 1,000 lb. bombs as a backup. I knock my fuel load down to 75% and decide to load up on Snakeyes for targets of opportunity. With fourteen of the 500 lb. retarded bombs loaded I'm a flying bomb truck! There is a high overcast at around sixteen thousand feet today, giving us a little bit of room to get some altitude for the initial bomb drop. Ahead of us, the Phantoms get to work on the MiGs that are converging over the target area... Alpha strike inbound! As we climb toward the coast I configure my bombs for release... We press toward the IP and I see some shapes go scooting down the right side of the aircraft. Fortunately the CAP flight is on top of things but the action gets uncomfortably close as black smoke puffs and trails mark the demise of MiGs and Crusaders... I offset the target area slightly to allow me to keep it in view out the front corner of the canopy. I've found this to be a good technique for keeping the target in sight while planning the pop-up and roll in maneuver. Of course, as we cross the coast every gun in North Vietnam opens up on us. To increase the odds of a successful mission I give my wingman the weapons free command. To my surprise, he must take a more direct line to the target and as I'm finishing my roll in I can see his bombs starting to ripple across the site. Wow! Other explosions are hitting the site, so there must have been another flight tasked with other portions of the facility... My DIANE reticle crosses the target and I press and hold the pickle button. It always seems to take an eternity for all the bombs to ripple off. The exploding flak illuminates the bottom of my aircraft... As tracers zoom behind me, I pull off hard to the left (south) fleeing toward the coast... As I climb away my bombs hit the southern shoreline... I have no idea if I've hit my target, but it looks pretty good! The smoke from multiple strikes is extremely heavy, so it is impossible to see much down there, but I can see a few PT boats moored in the river and tied up to the docks... I proceed offshore and perform a split-S to drop down to low altitude for the follow up (unauthorized) strike.. I setup for a low altitude, jinking flight down the river and zoom in on my HUD to see if I can spot the boats.. We are so low I think I can hear the guns firing at me. The flak is tremendous as the whole compound fires wildly into the air. I try to steady for a couple seconds and jab the pickle button... Whoosh! The explosions rip down the river... An enormous pull to the left blacks me out momentarily... I roll out heading for the beach and take a glance toward the site..all flames and smoke.. I query the TAC for a mission status and she reports the mission is indeed a success. I check in on my wingman and he is intact. I'm using a modified FORMATIONS.INI, but for some reason my selection #9 (RETURN TO BASE) does not seem to work. I had wanted to send him home prior to my second pass to make sure he stayed out of trouble. Fortunately, he was resetting out to the east anyway and wasn't even close to me on my second run. I need to look into why the RTB command isn't working... We cross offshore and my radar picks up the fleet about 50 miles offshore... While I'm on the wing-leveler autopilot I watch some more action with the F12 view. This cool little rapid firing gun is gonna get extra rice tonight for taking down this A-4..! Soon we are passing over carriers. I keep checking for numbers to make sure I get the right one.. There is the Oriskany - <S>..she is now an artificial reef off of Florida if memory serves me correctly.. Finally I see my carrier, the Independence, conveniently steaming west alongside the Coral Sea... As I line up for my approach I suddenly notice that I've taken a little damage to my tail feathers! Wow..didn't even know it..! No controllability issues, but scary nonetheless. I'm in a perfect groove and as I touchdown I'm actually a bit shocked when I bounce over the wires. Bolter! I jam the throttles forward and milk the aircraft off the angled deck... That was embarrassing. I roll around on a circling downwind and get back into the groove once more.. I *think* that distances in the SF world are compressed, so I think the distances to fly to targets and the overall size of the theaters are smaller than real life (I could be wrong about that). So fuel seems like it is never an issue. The sim would be even more immersive if fuel became more critical faster. Both Jane's F-15 and Jane's F-18 were pretty cool about that..fuel was really critical to monitor in those sims.. We come back in and catch a shallow, crappy one wire due to me not wanting to bolter again... The mission is a success. Turns out I was wounded on the sortie. At least I didn't kill Morgan! Looks like I was tagged by a pissed off PT boat. Fortunately my "rogue" secondary strike didn't cost us too much. The debrief states I destroyed eleven torpedo boats. That felt good... BeachAV8R

I've not had to refly any of them yet - but I don't know if I'm going to play it as a true "one life to live" campaign or not simply because I'm sort of just telling a story. If I do get shot down - I'll post the AAR of the shoot down, and then I'll post the corrective AAR of how not to get killed if I choose to continue the campaign. The F-111 is another of my "favorite" aircraft. Anything that is a dedicated ground pounder is my cup o' tea.. The only exceptions are things like the multi-role capable F-15E and the F/A-18 of course..they do both rubble bouncing and air-to-air fairly well (the -E probably a little less better..).. I think last issue of Flying magazine had a great little article about one of their staff writers who went along on an F-15E mission in Afghanistan I think it was.. I was trying not to wake up the family with my slightly lowered volume voiceover. "Mommy..what's Daddy doing?.." "Oh..he's just bombing villages in Vietnam again...drink your milk son.." It would have been great if your handle was "Ivan Kutchercokoff" or "Sum Ting Wong" or something... Does SF2 take advantage of any of the newer rigs out there with multiple cores and more RAM and stuff..or is it definitely a software bottleneck? One thing I found curious about this mission when I flew it. I'm missing one squadron member who was shot down a couple AARs back - so my squadron strength is 15 instead of 16. As I was inbound I was able to give commands to my wingman and the other flights..but as I was egressing the target area I pulled up the comms menu and flight #4 was greyed out. I though - oh crap - they ALL got shot down! But when I got my debriefing, the report was only two A-6s damaged. What would cause the loss of communications with the 4th flight? It was a great mission.. definitely loved the feeling of going "Downtown"... BeachAV8R

..after too much SF2 Vietnam...all I see is targets! * From my flight(s) today - ..seems my CitationUltra.ini doesn't have entries for hardpoints! BeachAV8R Edited so the humorless NSA doesn't raid my house...<g>

That is one of my favorite sayings ever.. Nobody ever gets it.. ...it ain't over now..!!!

Our planes are too small to have real lavs.. If you haven't read this story you should. It gives a great example of small private jet problems when it comes to dropping the kids off at the pool.. BeachAV8R

Just curious - how hard coded are the wingman commands? I'm using the excellent FORMATIONS.INI modification that allows me a little bit of flexibility with directing wingmen..but I was wondering if it would be possible to have an "ORBIT HERE" command? Actually, DCS has a great command system that allows you to send wingmen to a SPI, a steerpoint, the tanker, or orbit in your current location. For campaign missions where preserving resources might be a concern, it sure would be nice to park a wingman in a safe location for a bit... Just wondering... BeachAV8R

Then I will have to continue to send my wingmen after air defense targets. If they are going to get shot down - they might as well go during a noble endeavor! BeachAV8R

Question - Can anyone hazard a guess as to why I can't get SweetFX working with my ODS install? Just as with all the other variants of the game, I have the SweetFX files placed in my /USERS/SAVEDGAMES/THIRDWIRE/SF2-ODS/FLIGHT directory, but for some reason no effects are being seen in game. I can tweak the SweetFX all I want but the effects just don't show up in the game. I have no problems with Vietnam, Europe, or Israel..just ODS.. ?? BeachAV8R

Was that you out in the river crabbin'? Or were you down there making Marines turn wrenches?