Phil Colvin has posted a review at flightsim.com of justflight's CFS2/FS add-on. Here, Phil discusses the options and performance:
"You can choose "free flight" or "quick combat" just as in regular CFS2 play, and you can also choose single missions and campaigns as either an American or German pilot. These are very well written and there's plenty going on to keep you on your toes! I particularly enjoyed the bomber escort and enemy airfield attack missions. Lots of bombers and fighters in the air, lots of enemy planes on the ground, some of them taking off to meet you. These do have a downside, though. On my 15-month old P3 Alienware system these missions gave me slower and more badly stuttered gameplay (once the action got hot and heavy) than any other Microsoft flying game ever, and I've got 'em all. I ended up playing European Air War for awhile afterwards just to ease my frustration!"
The Falcon 4.0 HQ have posted an article from "Hanger 18", a GCI controller at Osan airbase. Here's a snippet:
" Flying takes SO much out of you, I literally felt like I just ran 10 miles. It was freezing in the cockpit because we had the cold air full blast, but I was still sweating. So, we land and I'm still kinda queasy, but holding it down. I have the bag with my mask off just in case, but no worries. As I said, you'll heave a couple of times, but it's more like dry heaving. It's just your body getting used to such a dynamic environment, since this was my first flight. One time in particular while I was doing this, we got spiked, and Mojo notched south, so here I am, my head pinned to my lap, in a 4 G turn, and I'm pinned there until we get settled back. It was hilarious! The hardest part isn't the Gs, it's the straight and level flying, believe it or not. I loved turning and burning...it was literally the ride of my life. The angles of bank are what's going to get you. While in the merge, I was good to go, kicking ass and loving it."
Well, it seems a disproportionate number of flightsim nuts choose to eventually take the ultimate plunge and Joe Zuzul took that first step and detailed his experiences in an great little article on flightsim.com. Here's a snippet:
"My stomach did a little flip-flop and it took my brain about ten seconds to catch back up. It was during those ten seconds that I had serious doubts about how bad I wanted to be a pilot. I wasn't disoriented; it was more of a "Holy S---! What the hell was that!" sort of thing. I was hoping we'd just fly straight and level for a minute, but I guess I was more afraid of telling Larry that than of doing another one. Of course, he just looked straight out the windshield as he said nonchalantly, "Now you do one. Uh, go to the left.""
FYI really, Shadow posted the following on the FV forum:
"Falcon 4.0 Operation Infinite Resolve has proved to be more complex than originally anticipated when we announced at E3. It now looks like Q2 of 2003 for release.
An old axiom says "There are two things you do not wish to see being made: Sausage and politics." I propose to add to that "computer games" Sometimes it isn't pretty.
It is unfortunate that the delivery date had to slip.
Opener has released a new utility to edit UI screens in Falcon 4. Here's his description:
Like most F4 users I like to customise my F4 setup with various skins etc. to suit my taste. Anyway I decided it was time to update my SP3 installation with a custom UI screen similar to those from eF1.10. Anyway to cut a long story short I was using the Perl script to produce these and decided that I wanted someting a little easier to use and without the need to install Perl and so the Falcon 4 UI Screen Converter was born. Originally it was just intended to make my life easier but it crossed my mind that others may find it useful so I decided to release it.
Basically it allows you to create F4 UI Screens (standard and hi-res) from 256 colour Windows BMP and TGA files and also allows you to create these from existing UI screens. Anyway for more details about what this does etc. see the help file.
While writing this it became a bit of a programming exercise in the more interesting apsects of OO and C++ and manipulating graphics. The version I'm releasing has all the basic features I originally intended to include and a few more but there are still a couple of things I'm planning to do when time allows. I've released it now because this represented a logical point in its development to release a copy but I haven't exhaustively tested this yet. AFAICT its working as I would expect on the handful of test images I've used but it may still have some bugs so if you do find any let me know.
He has added the following features to the USAF Blue
- New dirtied effect and I shine of certain areas of the airplane. - Softened of some of you line them structural according to my dear friend's good advice Basil Greber (SwissFlight) - It improves in some details and effects 3D such as the canyon M61, grills, sensors, etc.. - Added new stencils and localization (+ or -) exact of the same ones. - New pipe but realist. - Substitution of the emblem modern USAF of the wing for the classic USAF.
The official LOMAC site has posted a producers journal by Matt Wagner. Here's a snip:
My first indication of the bandit group appears on my tactical electronic warfare system (TEWS) scope with a 27-search strobe at 12 o'clock. What was one then grows to two and they are both on a constant bearing-coming at us or directly away. Punching the throttles up, I put the jet through the sound barrier and give Enfield 1-2 weapons free orders. Enfield 1-2 calls a contact consistent to the Olympus calls and soon after he calls that that he's offensive. At this time I get the first hits on my radar at 75 nautical miles (nm) using range while search (RWS) mode and it appears to be a two ship on an intercept vector. Pushing to 40 nm (and still approximately 20 nm to go to reach RMAX for an AIM-120B shot) the 27 (Su-27 Flanker B) strobe transitions to a steady in-ring strobe and I get a tone alert that indicates a single-track target (STT) lock on. Not a moment later, the strobe begins to blink and the TEWS is calling a missile launch. Apparently the Flankers have AA-10C "Bigstick" long-burn Alamos which out-range our AMRAAMs. Like me, my wingmen is also forced defensive and we both notch out and force the Flankers into a lookdown Doppler notch. Lighting up the ECM and releasing pre-emptive chaff, I trash the Alamo and the Flanker's lock soon after the shot was taken. My wingman was equally successful. At this point we're down to 15k feet AGL.
The Wargamer have posted a review of Aces High 1.10. Here's a snippet:
The graphics engine has not undergone any major changes this go around, but some nice-to-have items have been added. Custom gun sites, which can be created by players and shared with others, now accept a 64x64 256 gray scale file to control alpha. This ability to do alpha masking on gun sights allows players to make some areas of the sight more transparent than others. To improve the ability to keep those gun sites on the target, HiTech Creations has added an "enemy bias" to the object refresh scheme so that enemy planes and vehicles have a better update when nearby than friendly planes ones do. They've also replaced the old polygon-type smoke with particle smoke generation. This makes for more three-dimensional looking smoke from burning buildings and damaged aircraft. This last is eye-candy pure and simple, but adds to an already immersive experience.
I have posted Kosmo's review of Vipers In The Storm: Diary of a Gulf War Pilot. Here's a snippet:
In a world of cutting edge technology, large and loud war machines, life and death, “Rosey" does not take the humanity away from war at 20,000 feet. A particularly powerful experience stands out in my mind in which he bears down on an unsuspecting fuel truck. Speculating about the life of the man behind the steering wheel as he makes his approach. The man, a father who’s war beaten family struggles to sleep amidst air raid sirens and bomb explosions, has no choice but to fight or risk persecution and death, meets his end as the fiery result of 3 well placed Mk-82’s.
Golf33 has updated his Realistic SP3 Cougar Profile.
The new features of v3 are:
- Fixes TMS-Up so the AA RADAR Spotlight function now works correctly
- remaps left & right mouse buttons for better ease of use
- opening fuel door now reduces stick sensitivity 30%, just like the real bird (check the graphic and readme for details)
The rest of the features are still there, including:
* unshifted commands replicate the real F16 HOTAS as closely as possible, including pinky switch (doubles as SHIFTBTN as well) and AP OVERRIDE (doubles as Look Closer key as well).
* radio switch is set to use Roger Wilco and Text Chat. Unused IFF positions are used for Glance Forward and Check Six commands in padlock/3d cockpit view. In-game Voice Comms code can easily be activated instead of RW.
* H1 is reserved for view commands so trim has been placed on H3+S3.
* Wheelbrakes are automatically activated by reducing throttle below 5%.
* Idle detent is programmed into the throttle with safety interlocks to prevent mid-air mishaps.
* AA/AG master modes and weapons cycle are placed on H2+S3.
* Non-implemented SP3 TMS-Left position has been used for additional radar commands.
* SP3 .key config file rewritten to prevent key combo conflicts on the HOTAS and to allow UNSHIFTED ICP KEYS, DCS, Drift C/O Switch and MASTER ARM CYCLE!
I have posted BBalls report on the first annual FUKAMAL. Here's a snippet:
To explain what I'm talking about, let me harken back a few months in time. Our LAN group here in the Twin Cities (the VFS 32nd Arctic Knights) have been meeting for roughly three years now, and about two years ago we flew in the current "guru" of the flight sim world (at least in our opinion) to fly a LAN with us. Yep, we're talking the "F" word....Mark "Frugal" Bush himself. As we began to bang the idea around to import Mark for another LAN, our XO Terry "TBob" Keesee coined the acronymn the seemed perfect to describe the event: "Frugal's Unforgettable Kinda Annual Minnesota Arctic LAN" (or FUKAMAL). Now that we had a name, we had the beginnings to a legacy, the dawn of a tradition (Woodstock? Watergate? Oshkosh? FUKAMAL?)
The PMC Tactical Fighter Wing has released an update to the Operation Desert Storm v0.3 Theatre for F4 SP3
The small 704 KB update fixes the amount of F-16CG squadrons that all default SP3 players can choose. The update also addresses loadouts to more realistic 1991 data and some tiny adjustments for ground units. Additionally it adds a "few" more A-10 and F-16CG squadrons into the Black Phoenix campaign. Note: You must delete your old campaign save games and start a new campaign with this update.
The 100th AFW Buddy Boys just completed their LAN tour of duty in Janes F-18. A debrief of the weekends activities have been posted HERE
Also the Buddy Boys had their first annual Family Day aboard the USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier Museum, and the USS Pampanito. Both are moored in the San Francisco Bay Area. A debrief of the weekend festivities can be read
HERE
SimHQ have posted a preview of this long awaited sim from TK. Here's a snippet:
The MiG was below me, but much faster. I selected ‘burner’ and went up over the top to meet him on the other side of the circle. It is apparent this MiG driver only understands two dimensions! He wants to fight me in a level turn! He continues a near level left hand ‘Bogie gathering turn’. That is a fatal mistake! I select ‘Heat’, do a quick belly and tail check, and I roll in for an AIM-9 shot. The geometry works out perfectly.. I slide into the ideal AIM-9 ‘cone’ for a high Pk shot. The ‘growl’ is strong and confident. I squeeze the trigger and away the ‘winder’ goes! It looks like it is tracking perfectly, and sure enough it connects. The warhead detonation and accompanying airframe fire is gruesomely pretty…
Chunx has posted a great article over at SimHQ about a tanking training exercise......
"After quite a few attempts we eventually racked up five night plugs. Our fuel was now dwindling down to our "bingo" fuel to get home, and lead was becoming impatient. "Come on, Sluggo, hurry up or you’ll just have to come out here and do it all over again," lead callously said, which only made Sluggo all the more nervous. I came back with – "you’re doing fine, don’t listen to lead. Fly your own jet. Relax." And to add a little levity I added a line from the comedy movie ‘Caddy Shack’ - "Be the ball, Danny." But I could feel by the way he was rigidly controlling the jet, Sluggo was still pretty anxious about getting this last plug in. "Here we go" came over the ICS and Sluggo started in. I went into my standard chant of "up…right…little up..right, right" as we inched ever closer to the basket rim."
AVSim have posted a review of Just Flight's CFS2 add-on. The reviewer, Liam Coyle, had this to say about the panel:
"The panel is quite nice and functional with many a gauge to cast your eye over. If you use the guide to the panel in the provided booklety you shouldn't have too many problems in getting to know what's what. The virtual cockpit is always a nice extra that not everyone includes. It provides a much more realistic flying position and is always great for VFR. The one provided with Mosquito Squadron is fine, but I think could have been done to a better degree."
Over at SimHQ, Andy Bush has posted the second part of his series, this time he concentrates on the use flaps in air combat. Here's the intro:
"In our ever-present search for realism in our sims, we continue to ask developers for more and more realistic flight models. They have done a good job in responding to these requests. One aspect of the flight model issue has been the introduction and refinement of flap and trim use. Today, we routinely use these features to bring out the most in realism in our sims.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that our sim documentation is pretty lacking in any significant information on how to use these features properly. A second potential problem lies with the programming of the sim itself. Flap or trim systems for our sims should replicate real life since the sim pilot will most likely attempt to use real life procedures and techniques to operate these systems."
Nick J. Ross has posted a review of Justflight's CFS/FS add-on over at flightsim.com Here's an extract:
"Sounds are indeed some of the best I've heard, and they are also some of the loudest. While they are many in their number, their quality is let down by the occurance of very strange noises, some of which are more suited to the milking parlor of the farm you just departed. Some are sporadic and can cause problems with the engine noise. Although they do seem, for the most part, random, they are part of a very complex panel which senses many inputs and acts on what it finds--yes, the flashing lights do mean something, and they don't go off until you hit the master caution light, or act on what they tell you."
Bubba "MasterFung" Wolford has produced a review of Matrox's latest. The review also takes a look at the possibilities of "Surround Gaming" with the use of three monitors. Here's a snippet:
"When I took the Parhelia from the box and got everything hooked up, I loaded the Reef Demo up for some three screen 3D action with 16X FAA running with Anisotropic Filtering. Not since I saw a Voodoo 5 5500 run F4 with 4X FSAA has my jaw hit the ground but it did the moment I saw the Reef demo run on three screens right in front of my face. The effect of three screens is mesmerizing. I think I watched that demo loop for about 30 minutes before I moved a muscle. To make sure I was not the only one amazed with the image quality and features of the Parhelia, I invited over Doug "guod" Atkinson who recently wrote the OS Shoot-out article over to get his impressions of the Parhelia. We spent hours going over Parhelia (most of which was spent in racing sims and Flight Sim 2002) so we could get a good feel of the true potential of Surround Gaming."
