ARM505

You must be using only the wing gunpods (ie all except the internal gun), you must have locked onto the target, and the laser must be on. Hey presto, 23mm firestorm for the target!

I find it incredible how often this gets repeated. I assure you, you can easily notice the difference between 25 and 50 fps. Try it and see.

Congrats Shepski + family! I remember we did the -200 conversion at about the same time. I'm about to finish (today) the last sim ride for the -500 conversion, should start on the line this week sometime. Nice to have an FMC and some TV screens at last! Good luck and fly safe.

He was making a (well timed) joke of the typical forum one-upmanship.

I would imagine that Oleg Maddox likes to think that ALL of IL2/BoB SOW's FM's are AFM's! What defines an AFM from a FM? Adding the word 'Advanced' in there is totally subjective...they're all just simulations of reality. At what point does the level of fidelity in any one model suddenly surpass the level required to go from being called a FM to an AFM? I've been curious about this kind of definition for a while - to us the difference, practically speaking, is clear (Su-25's vs everything else), but if you ask somebody who plays another sim "Does XXX sim have AFM?", they'll be baffled! :)

It's more of an issue than just making the trees solid. The damage done to the chopper has to be correct - a helo doesn't just explode if one blade clips a tree, it can actually cut through smaller branches etc. And that's a real problem - thats quite a CPU load to implement that. Plus, there's the AI LOS issues. Currently, the AI sees right through trees. How would it be fair if we couldn't see them, yet they could see and target us? Obviously it wouldn't be, so quite complicated LOS calculations would have to be performed. And we already know what a load it is just to even draw the trees, let alone do all these other things....I don't see them changing the solidity of the trees just yet, unless there's some bright solutions to these kind of problems, that are feasible with current hardware. (Please can we not have another FSX 'This software is made for computers built three years from now!') And I'm not even mentioning synchronising all of this in MP (it's been mentioned before).

And thats precisely the point of all this - less copies of FC were sold. Paranoid or not, right or wrong, they didn't buy it. I have plenty of SF protected games (GTR, GTL, SH3, Splinter Cell CT, FC) - but I still don't like it. And the fact of the matter is that Starforce CAN be circumvented, full stop. Anyway, as has been said, we've been down this road before.

In the BShark video by Glowing AMRAAM (great!), the helo clearly flies through a tree after gunning something. Or at least through the top 1/4 or so, so perhaps that doesn't speak for the lower section of the tree. Of course, things can still change I suppose...

Julle's nie die enigste Saffers hier rond! Daar's 'n paar van ons wat speel hiersoe. Meestal speel ons IL2, soek vir ons op die SGS forums. As julle dit nog nie gedoen het nie.... Verskoon my kak Afrikaans asseblief, ek is eintlik 'n soutie. :) P.S. Wat de hel is 'n Koeiseun?!

On a semi-related note, I see the IL2 successor, BoB Storm of War seems to have a modern aerobatic aircraft for formo practice. (Su-??) Nice.

The much publicised shot of the lake with the mountains, sun rays etc is NOT FROM FSX. It's some kind of photoshop impression of what somebody *thinks* FSX would look like with DX10. I can't believe a relatively mature market such as the sim market still falls for the 'don't worry, it'll all be brilliant and all problems will be solved with the next patch/with the next DX iteration/with a driver update'! Personally, I'll just wait and see what the actual product delivers instead of saying 'This will be the greatest thing ever!' Surely most here are experienced enough in this hobby to take that view? Edit: Loneranger (naturally!) a bit quicker on the draw there than me!

TS doesn't simulate the warbling garble that is a double transmission. Perhaps thats good though! Did a large bomber formo mission last night in IL2, about 13 B25 pilots, plus some fighter escort (on another channel thankfully). What chaos on the radio! IRL it would have been one long screech!

FSX is a truly terrible fps hog. The demo is bad enough, and apparently the full version is worse since you won't be flying around islands with plenty of sea around them. At it's best, it may arguably be better than LOMAC (although the new BS models seem quite a bit more detailed graphically and the BS helo itself is, systems wise, a hell of a lot better), but if you turn the sliders up, it's a complete slideshow. Plus, people are touting DX10 as FSX's saving grace, once it's released. As far as I understand it, FSX is DX9 software at the moment. Merely installing Vista and DX10 is not going to make it run any better. Quite the opposite, apparently, since almost every game runs 10-15% slower on Vista. FSX will require a DX10 patch in order to use DX10. I know I'm speculating to a degree, but that's how it looks to me at the moment. I'll be sitting on the fence on this one for the moment.

Then you'd better not get FSX - Observe the whine-fest (rightly so it sounds) on the MSFS forums such as avsim.com, as FSX squashes high-end PC's like bugs, to the point that a stock install of FSX (without any addons) must be run at settings that make it look worse than FS9! I am VERY happy sticking to LOMAC, IL2, and FS9 (for the 1 minute average I spend on that per day) right now, thanks Microsoft! At least those run at very playable levels right now.

And since the chopper will only do about 100-120 knots (less if flying NOE), you'll be in the region of the smoke for a lot longer - even if you're running away!

Some info on the delay: http://games.saix.net/cgi-bin/sgsbb/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=163;t=43435 This is from our local website. As a Saffer (South African!) I'm obviously going to be supporting it 100%. After all, there aren't any other SA themed sims, at all, ever! These guys are really trying hard. It's pointless trying to compare it to Lock On, or complaining about lack of modern graphics etc, as it's clearly based on what is/was available, ie the F4 engine. I'm sure some aircraft will be using the F16's avionics (esp. the modern stuff), but they've been doing some interesting stuff for the older Mirages/Impalas etc. The supporting material on the DVD is worth it anyway. It's not just video's, pictures etc, but complete books. I've already read Vlamgat (literal translation: Flaming Ass (!) The Afrikaans slang name for fighter pilots), and it's well worth the read. The SAAF managed to achieve quite a lot with limited resources, and of course despite the arms embargo. Having worked in Angola for a little while (flying for the Red Cross), I've seen plenty of wreckage lying around, and wondered exactly what went on there. After all, it was my fellow countrymen doing a lot of the wrecking, albeit an older generation. The current government wants nothing to do with anything from the 'bad old days', so of course much military history is ignored or forgotten, since (by their logic), *anything* to do with the previous government is automatically worse than anything the Nazi's ever did in WW2. And of course witness their ridiculous police raid on the military history museum in Johannesburg (which has some very nice stuff, FW190, Me262, Spitfire, Mozzie, Hurricane, Sherman, G6, etc, amongst other newer SA hardware) claiming "one of those cannons could raze Soweto to the ground in minutes!" Have you ever heard of such immense cluelessness??! I am (of course) utterly uninterested in the SA politics of those days (also a bit painfully clueless), but only in the military side of the history, so books like these, and sims like this potential one, have my attention. I do understand that not everyone will care - but hey, if it's for free....

Yes, and smoke doesn't just 'stop' either! I mean that both in terms of the height to which the smoke rises, plus a vehicle doesn't just instantly stop burning and producing smoke. They could make the smoke thinner (texture more tranparent or something like that) over a random time and height, plus some slight randomness in how it drifts, just to make the smoke columns look more natural.

I think IRL it takes time to warm up, however it seems as if it's instant as it's modelled in LO now.

You mean this no doubt (an actual video!): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5982808370410134840 Hmmm.....that looked like....a loop - with the top of the loop being completed at fairly low speed. It was difficult to judge scale, to get an idea of the 'micro-ness', if you see what I mean. The target jumping in and out of focus didn't really help either. Must be that stealthy paint scheme! ;) To be honest, the quality of the video is so bad, I could barely tell it was an F22!

We really, *really* need BS to be released. This thread is so much better than the 50 similar threads before it, really! Promise! Perhaps we could now start comparing how the F22 pwns everything else in, say, 'green' recyclable materials, ie how much more environmentally friendly it is? Or perhaps we could have a 'pilot comfort' shoot-out, where the F22's seat is shown to be much more superior to any other seat ever made! Or perhaps we can have an argument about how it has superior tyre life to all other planes in the known universe! Or possibly how superior its paint schemes are! Or.....perhaps I should just not read these threads :) Doh! I just can't keep from hoping that there may be nice video's, or (heaven help me!), actual information in them!

It's not an IAS/TAS issue, it's hitting it's critical Mach number (the airflow over parts of the aircraft, esp. the wings, is becoming supersonic). As mentioned above, in a more verbose post than this one!

LOL! I don't know if that one would stand up in the court martial: Convening Authority: So, were you aware it was in violation of the Geneva convention when you shot the bad guy with your 30mm cannon? A10 Pilot: Of course I'm aware of that! Duh! Thats why I wasn't going for him though, I was trying to shoot his rifle out of his hand, and his helmet off his head. About 50 of the rounds missed though, hitting him and turning him into dog food. Most regrettable, terribly sorry about that. Convening Authority:........ (Stunned silence)

Read my previous post, and the answer.

Do the MANPADS still smoke and eventually blow up when hit? I always thought that was hilarious!

Just out of interest's sake, I've always been working under the assumption that people who do these models are either 3rd party, or dedicated 3D modellers, and cannot/ do not program in C++ (or whatever!). ie, They could do a million new 3D models, and no programming resources are wasted since they could not have done that anyway - is that true?