Commissar

How about having the pilot breaking out a bottle of vodka and taking a shot after successfully finishing a mission and shutting off the engines? That or having FFARs that have better fragmentation. I'm guessing most of us would choose the latter (not to say vodka is not an important beverage in the armed forces of Mother Russia).

I recently bought TrackIR5. If smooth and quick ability to get and keep situational awareness is important to you then yeah, it's worth it. However, I can certainly understand anyone's hesitation due to the cost. I've been playing sims since the days of the original Gunship by Microprose. Not having to fumble with an 8-way hat while in any kind of dogfight is truly freeing and allows you to perform a lot better. I've gone back and reinstalled IL2 now that I have TrackIR. Just amazing. Half my battle was just keeping my eye on a fast moving enemy and now I can focus on other things than trying to use a hat to do that. At some point I will reinstall old MS Flight Simulator so I can use TrackIR to fly the Mi-24 over San Fransicso.

You can fly BS with a keyboard as well as you can fly MS Flight Simulator with a gamepad. I've done the latter and believe me it isn't pretty.

I tried doing a search, but didn't find a topic specifically about this. From my understanding, the Vikhr can be used in an AA role and you can activate a prox fuse for this purpose. However if I am perpendicular to an enemy helo (for example, he is flying West-East and I am flying North-South) and I try to use the Vikhr to shoot him down the Vikhr never hits. If I am directly at the enemy helo's 12 or 6 or something like this, the Vikhr works fine. It makes a very nice boom and splash one helo. Is this because the target helo is too fast to work effectively when flying perpendicular to the target or am I just missing an important step in this condition? Anyway, I am loving the game. It reminds me when I first played Longbow. Wish I had TrackIR back then.

USSR_Rik I did as you requested. There is nothing in the temp folder to send you. I've connected both my Xbox 360 gamepad and CH Fighterstick USB into my computer, cleared the temp folder, and started the game. I got the error message of course and closed the game. I went back to the temp folder and there is still nothing there. I have refreshed and closed and reopen the explorer and still nothing in the temp file. The way I have my computer setup is this: Fighterstick USB is connected directly into one of my motherboard's USB port. The Xbox 360 gamepad is connected to a powered USB hub and the hub is connected into another USB port, directly into the motherboard. In my case, my gamepad and fighterstick are on totally seperate USB ports and are not going into the same hub. Also just to be thorough, I am not using the official PC drivers for the Xbox 360 gamepad.

Sure thing. Let the Vikhrs fly!

Okay, I just solved my own problem. Here is what went wrong. I have both a CH Fighterstick USB and Xbox 360 gamepad. I noticed that my gamepad was plugged into my hub along with the Fighterstick. I unplugged the gamepad and then tried to restart BS. TA DAH! It loaded up like it's supposed to without the forementioned error message. I just double checked the result. Gamepad plugged in with Fighterstick plugged in at same time, game won't start and aforementioned error message pops up. Gamepad unplugged, BS starts up like normal. Basically just an input device conflict P.S - I just redownloaded the previous MS updates that were released on April 15, 2009. I made sure my gamepad was not plugged in along with my Fighterstick USB. BS starts up just fine without error.

I'm afraid to say that my problem is back. Yesterday I uninstalled the MS updates of April 15, 2009 and everything worked fine. I played some BS this morning and again everything worked fine. I close it down and left my computer for a few hours and tried to restart BS. Again, I get the same Visual C++ error that I detailed in my first post. I double checked to see if those MS updates reinstalled themselves and they didn't. I also have automatic update turned off anyway. I have cold rebooted and tried to start BS again. Same error and won't start anymore.

I went ahead and uninstalled all the MS patches of April 15, 2009. Black Shark works like normal again. But, now I'm vulnerable to hackers. Damn you Black Shark :) Yeah, yeah I know the fact that I use windows that I was always vulnerable to hackers :P

I have the US boxed version of BS. Double-clicking on BS desktop icon for single player results in this error (same error when double-clicking multiplayer desktop icon as well): "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error! . . . This application has requested the Runtime to terminate in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information." BS was working fine before. However, I recently downloaded and installed the various patches MS released this week or last for XP and Office. Since then, I get this error and cannot launch the game. Everything worked fine before this. My current config: Intel P4, 2.8mhz 2gig memory 256meg GeForce 7600GT, Driver version 181.22 Windows XP, SP2 I have already tried reinstalling, but I get the same error.