Moa

VNAO mod has working AGM-65K. Download the mod to check out what it does: http://www.virtualnavairops.com/ And click on the "Mods" link. The F-14D in the VNAO mod uses the F-15C cockpit. The F/A-18F uses a MiG-29G cockpit since that cockpit can do air-to-air, air-to-surface and uses Imperial units (knots, feet) - which means all the US Navy NATOP manuals can be used without conversion (which VNAO folk like to read and train to).

I might have the source fellas (I have some ancient pre-Kenai versions of Leavu around). Will look for it when I get home. Great to hear some more mods in the pipeline.

I'd guess they'd also use the best option of the ordinance they were carrying at the time (eg. if they were on station for hours waiting for calls they would probably have a general-purpose CAS payload, and a bomb might have been the best option out of what they were hauling at the time).

I asked the same question yesterday, in the following thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=68848 The ever-helpful Nate--IRL-- responded extremely quickly with the following information: So, please bear in mind that when the A-10C patch is released the location will change again (at least you know where to).

Interesting. Shame you have to pass through BVR to get to BFM.

@Sobek: as far as I have monitored the resource usage goes down significantly. @Aylward: sometimes I flip stallturn over to A-10C when server is quiet. @Grimes: Servman is great, but it prevents the default LockOn logs from getting written :( sux if you rely on those log entries for stats. @Tez: Thanks for point out that a server requires a separate license. I realise this. However, I think that may be a bad move since it will probably result in fewer 'dedicated' servers (servers without a player also on the same computer). My ideal is that there be many servers out there to cater to all sorts of tastes. This is less likely to happen if people must buy two licenses to do this.

@Druid. I think that it was released since it is 'good enough' and getting a money stream going is important. Personally I was concerned by the betas (which I argued were actually 'alphas' IMHO) but the final product is head and shoulders above the betas. This is not to say there aren't a few things that need adjustment, but I don't think anything serious enough to stop shipping. @Zomba: your post was right on the money. However, unlike physical production it is a lot easier to patch software out of the gate. When you build something physical an enormous amount of time goes into getting the design right because the effort and expense of changing the process or tooling (expensive!) later is so high. In software projects the entire project is often completed on the budget and timescale of only the 'design phase' of many physical projects (eg. a multi-storey building). Unfortunately this is the expectation in the industry for software (exception being the Space Shuttle flight control software, which took 10 years and is the *only* moderate size piece of software to be defect free). Since software is a bit different I think ED made a rational choice to release the product. What matters now is their commitment to patching the issues that arise (and all sorts of wierd an wonderful stuff happens when released in the field - stuff on client machines you simply cannot design or test for - unlike server-based software or a production plant). So, the software certainly will need some adjustment. Fortunately this is a well established process (software patching) and ED are very experienced in this and appear very willing to support the DCS line. I'm not going to ride them too hard at this time, instead I hope to give (polite) reports of what I expected and what the software is observed to do. We can all help in this way - since software is impossible to get perfectly right the first time (especially as the multitude of cockpit switches in the A-10C have a combinatorial complexity of interations, which must have been fiendishly hard to get as few defects as they seem to have in this area).

No politics here please (although I agree with your sentiments). Incidentally, weren't the pilots that flew to Malta (and another pair that ejected) Libyan rather than Iranian?

Another trick to running a server is to edit the graphics.cfg and set the maximum frame rate limit to around 15 fps. This means the server spends less effort updating its display (just enough you can see what is going on) and more effort devoted to the players on the server.

Please note, as of the release version of A-10C it appears possible to run a server using the same license as the license used on a separate client machine. This is a change from the A-10C Beta releases where connecting as a client on a separate machine immediately disconnected a server that had the same license. I was very glad to see that the final version allowed a client and (separate) server to use the same license - otherwise only a few people would purchase the second license for a server (I like having a great diversity of servers about). If this is correct then a big thank you to ED for making that change. Note: I tested that a client and (separate) server can use the same license last night with release A-10C. I did get drop outs, which I presume to be due to network issues (big earthquake in country, so network overloaded a bit at moment), so can't fully confirm this is permitted. It is possible that my observation is incorrect and the drop-outs are due to the Master server revoking the logins after a short period of time.

lottu 1.3.2 released This version changes the operation of the "Generate TacView on playback" button to do the following: * Alter Config\Export\Config.lua to set EnableExportScripts to true or false as needed (earlier versions of lottu already did this), and * Alter Config\Export\Export.lua to add or remove the "dofile()" include for the Tacview 0.95b script "TacviewExportDCS.lua" white preserving the correct whitespace and no newline at end-of-file (required to pass exoprt.lua Integrity Check on servers such as the 104th, 51st, etc). This should make generating Tacview ACMI files from tracks easier without having to manually add and remove the "dofile()" include - which could result in Integrity Check fails. Credit Thanks to AldoUSMC for posting about this. This prompted this change. Downloads Download lottu 1.3.2 from the following links: * lottu-1.3.2.exe (1.1 MB) - most people should download this. * lottu-1.3.2_debug.exe - a version with a logging console. Useful if you are having problems getting lottu to run. * lottu-1.3.2.jar (631 kB) - a pure Java 1.6 version of lottu. Can be run on Windows, Mac, Linux etc. Allows track file to be manipulated, although tracks can only be played back (and Tacview ACMI files generated) on Windows. Note: all versions of lottu required Java 1.6 or later to run. You can obtain the Java Runtime Environment as a free download from http://www.java.com For older versions of lottu and more information about it please see the following page: http://stallturn.com/wiki/en/lottu

@AV8R: > My question is around why did they allow LockOn and not DCS run in VM modes? This is probably not deliberate. It is probably just a result of some change in DCS (for example, no DX11 support in your VM, or any of many other possibilities) and no effort has been made to make DCS work or testing in VMs. Completely understandable with EDs resource constraints and the marginal nature of those wanting to run A-10C in a VM (incidentally, I'd love to run it in Parallels on my 17" MacBookPro, but realise the priority for the required testing is simply too low for ED at this time). I bet it is more than enough work to make DCS work on the Windows XP, Vista, and Win7 flavours; then also check both the 32 & 64 bit versions of each, yada yada.

Is your solution within the license terms of OS X? AFAIK MAC OS X is only licensed for use on Mac hardware. "Fixes" that are not legal never "count".

Kia Ora metalnwood! Linux still beats Mac OS X for general development. For example, Apple's JDK is stuck at 1.6.0_u22 and they've abandoned it for Oracle to pick up the pieces. Wouldn't be an issue except there is a deadlock in the JDK that just happens to affect the superb GUI builder ('Matisse') in Netbeans. At this time there is no known fix date for the Mac. On Ubuntu it is often easier (eg. apt simply cannot be beaten, and the range of dev tools is huge - including bleeding edge JDKs) but doesn't look as slick. That said, I moved from two decades of using Linux for development to Mac OS X and the transition has been ok (although there is plenty of Linux stuff that Mac OS X simply doesn't have, but the Mac is good in other ways). PCs are King of gaming. The question is, with phones and consoles, how long is the single-environment dominance going to last? (answer: we're already in the middle of the tectonic shift but not everyone can see the continent they are on moving).

No! it's a mistake to back a single horse. The idea is to back them all by favoring cross-platform and open technologies where there is a choice between possible implementations. Then you are better positioned for the future no matter how it turns out (and earlier I gave examples of how other companies were smart by doing this). Having to develop a native version for each possible platform is prohibitively expensive - so you have to design for as much platform independence as you can from the start (some parts usually end up being native, but you minimize these through conscious effort and good design). Then the marginal cost of building for additional platforms is lower than the extra revenue you get for each platform (essentially, there is a core development cost that is amortized among all platforms you manage to sell to).

Both Parallels and VMware have *hardware* graphics acceleration that is pretty good, but generally not quite as fast as 'native' access. The more powerful the hardware (eg. newer machine) then you don't notice that much. With regard to expense of Apples. They are generally as expensive as PCs with comparable hardware specs. The difference is that there are no low-end Apples like there are low-end PCs (same with iPhones, they simply don't make low-end phones since they want to command the margins of a luxury/status good). This is because Apple simply doesn't care about the low-end masses, they're going for the higher profitability of the high-end segments. Financially they are benefiting as a result. All that said, while Apple hardware and software are great their business ethos completely sux. They regularly screw their early adopters and are quite awful to developers (eg. draconian, arbitrary and quite selfish AppStore rules - which always favor Apple over any potential competitors). For this reason Android will eventually beat Apple (just as Microsoft eventually beat Apple with a more open ecosystem two decade ago).

While I have a PC as my main LockOn client and another PC for my LockOn ("stallturn") server I find I can uses Parallels on my 17" MacBook Pro to do mission editing just fine. I also did track playback and run LockOn a little when I was doing development of the lottu program. The main reason I don't do LockOn on the MacBook Pro is thermal output when running that game for a few hours, plus my other computer is so much more powerful than any laptop (my Radeon HD 5970 my itself is twice as high as my MacBook Pro, longer from front-to-back, and about 1/3 the width). Incidentally, there are many games that gave been ported to the Mac to run natively (eg. I have Portal, Civilization V, Hearts of Iron III) and they run wonderfully. More and more are coming as developers wake up to the fact that if they write the game properly that can target many platforms, including Mac and iPhone/iPad. X-Plane is primarily developed on the Mac and runs better there than Windows. So basically, it is all about what the developers put time into making work right. Games that are developed cross-platform tend to be better quality. Developing cross-platform also has other advantages in that those with products developed solely for the Windows made sense a decade ago but doesnt now. If you have the *skill set* to develop cross-platform then you develop for Windows *and* Mac *and* consoles *and* smartphones. That's a lot more money if you choose the right cross-platform technologies. Because Austin Meyer of X-Plane had that skill it personally meant he made $3.5 million dollars in one month when the iPhone came out and completely blew away all the PC sales he had made in the last decade. Please read the following with an open mind: http://techhaze.com/2010/03/interview-with-x-plane-creator-austin-meyer/ Similarly, IL-2 was able to be moved to consoles (as well as Windows) in the form of Wings of Prey, and make a large number of sales since it was written in portable Java and OpenGL, with only a few non-portable C++ chunks. 'Exclusive' is generally a bad word in business, and developing 'exclusive for Windows' is bad for everyone except Microsoft. No one knows what the next growth platform will be, so it is best to try and use technologies that allow you to have flexibility in your choices (eg. OpenGL skills are worth more than DirectX since you can also program phones as well as PCs, Macs, and industrial Unix etc). Windows is great not because it is better than Mac, Linux or Unix at anything in particular (generally it is worse) but because there is so much good software (eg. games) that works on it. This is no accident, Microsoft have encouraged developers in all sorts of ways to get them to work on Windows and lock them in there. Unfortunately those still stuck on Windows are now paying the price as growth in Windows is far lower than in other forms of computing devices.

Nice one 51st!

Yeah, it's easy to maneuver to defeat a single missile (provided you know about it) but hard to also retain enough energy after this to defeat another a few seconds later. Same goes for SAMs.

stallturn had the EFA mod for a while but it wasn't used so much. Now it runs VNAO full-time as a result. Work will start soon to merge the EFA and VNAO mods and the result will run on stallturn full time.

Incidentally for those who aren't aware. The J-20 looks like it is an adapted version of the MiG I.42. Since MiG is struggling (many countries are choosing the Flanker over the Fulcrum, even returning delivered Fulcrums) they probably sold the tech to China (makes sense). While China is increasing in capabilities the J-20 does not appear to be a native design (just as the J-10 is a direct incarnation of the Israeli Lavi). As EtherealN points out, the Europeans could easily build such a thing (assuming they had the political will). They much prefer to spend their money on increasing quality of life. It is a shame that big countries feel that they ought to waste money on prestige projects rather than improving the lives of *all* their citizenry.

.. unless the community (eg. me and whatever suckers help) comes up with one first. I'm only gonna worry about the aerial war with 'budget' action for the ground - although I saw a book when passing through RNZAF Command & Staff college many years ago (no, I wasn't attending, just part of officer school) and have been itching to implement it (it's the reason I picked up programming). The book is (US Army Col. ret.) Trevor N Dupuy's "Numbers, Predictions and War" (Hero books). There are some theoretical mathematical concerns about his work, but it is good enough for a sim game. I picked up the revised 1985 version from Amazon. The 1979 version is available at: http://www.amazon.com/Numbers-prediction-war-history-evaluate/dp/0672521318/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296354912&sr=8-1 The book is not about the "art" of war, it is about the "science" of it and modelling battles based on historical data, rather than starting with the Lanchester equation (which gives a poor correlation with actual historical results).

Well, with multi-threading you get to use all the cores that those shiny new CPUs have. @Sulman: it is realistic that you would kill a single AAA on a mission. Doing pass, after pass, after pass, is the unrealistic play for strike (except maybe for low-threat CAS missions, eg. the "Highway of Death" in 1991). The shame is not that you hit your target then had to scram, it is that the AI were unable to hit theirs to produce a realistic strike result.

That's wonderful you're considering it. Wouldn't have to be perfect (although you've done such a fantastic job on the Bae Hawk itself I can see how you're a bit of a perfectionist - in a very good way). Would be absolutely brilliant to teach folks US Navy style carrier traps in a T-45 and let them graduate to the F/A-18 or F-14D (already in VNAO mod) once they get their VNAO 'squadron assignment'. Plus, I must confess I have a personal soft spot for using light attack aircraft in that role (not always as trainers). Means every shot has to count! Edit: If you do make these aircraft available as a public mod I'll certainly do the work on my end so that my 'dynamicscore 2' stats system (running on the 104th and stallturn servers, and eventually to be publicly available) will include support/icons for the Hawk/Goshawk.

OldCrow, if you don't have the manuals for the Bae Hawk I have the manuals for the T-45. This might help to get For that you are pretty much limited to gun, rockets and bombs (that's all the HUD will do).