britgliderpilot

I picked up FSX recently, and liked it. The helicopters are fun to fly, but the performance leap to the Ka50 is utterly staggering. Most addictive thing about that sim, though, is the Red Bull Air Race mission . . . I'm still battling with that thing. Back to topic. I don't know of anywhere that sells a true cyclic/collective system for helicopter sims . . . . and the real deciding factor in the control system you'll need is the number of switches and buttons you'll need to have access to. AFAIK that restricts you to a good HOTAS system. If you can find an affordable cyclic/collective system with sufficient knobs and buttons, though, be sure to let us all know . . . would be a really useful bit of kit :)

The release date hasn't changed yet. It's still "When it's done, which we sincerely hope is 2007". I don't know if such a one-button procedure has been finalised, but it would be exceptionally cruel to release the sim without such an option ;) Efforts are being made to enable gamers without the time to learn everything there is to know about the Ka50 to have fun with Black Shark, and hopefully a one-button start will be one of them. A Hotas joystick will still suffice for flying and fighting the Ka50 (i.e. 95% of the time you needn't use the clickable pit if you don't want to), but you'd have to be very inventive to fly and fight BS on full realism with an ordinary joystick. A Big Printed Manual for BS will be pretty much essential - ED seem to have found somewhere to print their FC manual, so expect the same for Black Shark :) This is still best-guess stuff, so don't take it as fact . . . but I wouldn't be too worried at the moment :)

There is a unit named the Avenger, and there is a weapon named the Avenger - the GAU-8/A as fitted to the A-10. I'd much rather attack a T-80 with the latter ;)

Even the Avenger isn't a guaranteed kill. See the following link for some scanned pages of a seemingly light-hearted tome by the name of "The A-10 Pilot's Colouring Book". http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_053c.html Written for the USAFE some time ago, basically details good aspects from which to hit a T-62. A direct hit on the front is counted as completely impossible for a kill. And that's for the T-62 . . . . . likely that there've been armour upgrades since then. Should an Avenger really be able to kill a T-80? Don't know . . . . not sure who would know. Assume a rear aspect shot is possible, but a front aspect shot should remain ineffective.

It's Stalker, cranked up a bit. A superb first-person shooter . . . . one of my all-time favourites, just for pushing the genre boundaries. It has it's limitations and bugs, but if you haven't bought it . . . . go out tomorrow and do so ;) I think ArmA scenery is a tad more realistic for a flight sim. And even then, it's pushing it when you consider the size of the FC map. Even neglecting texture size, the amount of work you have to put in to model the terrain and area properly . . . . Stalker's supposed to be something like 30 square kilometres. Work out how big the Crimea is ;) The good news is that for a helicopter (inevitably flying at low altitude) you don't need as big a view distance - allows for greater detail in the immediate scenery, certainly helps on the hardware performance aspect :)

Solid fuel's a different world from air-breathing. Manned, air-breathing, hypersonic transport aircraft will probably remain the stuff of sci-fi for a little while longer, though . . .

Oh, how true . . . . Before release everyone nags on and on about how it's taking so long, and they wish the devs would just hurry up and release it, and they'll deal with the bugs, and take a patch later . . . . And at the moment the gold CD is burned, there's a magical U-turn as everyone says they could have waited a little longer as long as there were no bugs :P . . . . I generalise, but no doubt you can sympathise with the general principle ;) I'm just being cynical, of course. ED will take their time over this, and those of us doing the testing hope as much as the rest of the community that they'll draw a satisfactory line between time and quality :) If they release a truly great chopper sim, my own opinion is that the pre-release bitching will be forgotten. Guess time will tell one way or the other!

I'm worried that people are starting to blow this out of proportion . . . . . There will be a significant announcement in July, yes. But don't expect it to give a release date of yesterday, a flyable Harrier/Tiger/B-2 Spirit, and a dynamic campaign to beat Falcon 4's ;) Stay grounded, people. Black Shark will remain the best helicopter simulation I've ever heard of, spectacular fun (I'm a fast jet jock and it's converted me to helos just like that), and an incredible demonstration of ED's ability . . . . but try to stay focussed on the realities of it all . . . .

Remember that for a PCI-E card you will need a new motherboard with a PCI-E slot - PCI-E is NOT compatible with PCI. Blaze is absolutely right, too - CPU power is the biggie. The Intel Core 2 Duos seem to handle Lock On very well - they all overclock very well, and the chips with 2Mb cache are preferable.

There will most certainly be a big announcement around July time. Regarding getting close to a release candidate, you may infer from ED's previously stated aim of releasing information and steady updates on content when the sim is beginning to be nailed down . . . . and the lack of such information so far . . . . that the announcement will not give an immediate release date. But it will be a big one.

Had a quick look - the skin belonged to the Kamaz-Fire model. However, if you open the Kuznetsov model, the Kamaz model is on the deck at that point - it may be part of the ship model and just using the Kamaz skin.

Workaround time! You can't place vehicles on a carrier - but IIRC the vehicles that are already present are separate shape files. IIRC the Merzifon mods that added Turkey to the game, in the process of reskinning a fire truck for that NATO base, also re-skinned the truck on the Kuznetsov . . . . if you can find that model then you might be in business. I'm not particularly well-versed in the world of 3D modelling - but if you build the figure offset from it's nominal 0,0 co-ordinates, I imagine you could hence displace it in XY so it appears out on deck rather than beside the island. Including several deck members could be a possibility . . . . Thoughts? ;)

True - but that shouldn't be that much effort for a decent skinner. Adding a new aircraft requires diving into the MeInit.xml file - controls a list of units and assigns them to countries. Towards the bottom is a great big list of countries, each containing the set of units allocated to that country. If you go to - for instance - Russia, find the entry dedicated to the MiG-29A in the Units/Planes section (referred to as the 9-12(RUS)) in the Countries section, copy and paste the whole entry (including colorscheme entries) . . . . and then paste that entry into the Georgian Units/Planes section . . . . you'll have a MiG-29A on the Georgian side as well. A word of warning, though - if you break the tags or the formatting even slightly, your mission editor will do odd things and refuse to work. So back it up first and work carefully ;)

You mean . . . . movies with The Volleyball Scene and The Underlying Tones Of Alternative Lifestyle Portrayal? :P Yeah . . . . How DID that all happen? It's one of those things . . . we never seem to get on despite being so closely related and neighbours for so long. But when we do work together . . . Concorde, Jaguar, Gazelle, Puma, Lynx, Airbus . . . it's awesome! Here's to the entente cordiale ;)

Personally, I think rockwelder's Sim Art looks pretty good ;) Does lack the whole hot naked woman thing. And that's serious, y'know - you can make games about death and war and anyone can buy them, but put a naked woman on the cover, and you'll have to sell it in a sealed box to over-18s only . . . . .

That'll be the low LOD model for the original vehicle - should be able to overwrite those with the soldier model if you find out what they are. I think they're the model file with the _P_1 suffix on the end. Let me know if you have any luck renaming them :)

Positive waves, man, positive waves . . . Has entered family culture over here :P Happy Birthday PA, and props to Zuki for the beard . . . .

Whoa! That's in the new Airspace hangar, right? Last time I was at Duxford was for Flying Legends last summer, they hadn't opened Airspace then . . . . it'll be open this time, looking forward to it. Flying Legends is the one weekend of the year for me that is reserved for nothing else :P For all those who aren't yet aware, btw . . . Duxford's big Flying Legends weekend, chock-full of warbirds (last year the highlight was a twelve-Spitfire-scramble) . . . . is run by The Fighter Collection. The same Fighter Collection who are responsible for Eagle Dynamics in the western world ;) If there's any chance at all of anyone making it to Duxford on the 7th/8th July this year, do it. The sight (and sound) of twelve Spitfires scrambling is like nothing else you'll ever see in this world, and MUST be experienced . . . .

What you're hearing is most likely a reflection on the raw power of Intel's Core 2 Duo . . . . which handles Lock On in all forms really rather well.

That is what the lockon.ru website says. However, until the game's released nobody really knows for sure - it's a big mystery and is inevitably going to be a thorny one to solve. Just bear in mind that FC was never compatible with Lockon v1.02 - why would BS be any different?

Wow. The pace of technology! Mate of mine just got a new mobile phone. The thing is not only a phone, but allows real-time video calling, has a five megapixel camera, and has GPS. For god's sake . . . . that kind of technology has been science fiction in MY lifetime!

I hate to say it . . . . but do you not think that might be a bit boring? ;)

I think it'd be fantastic for gameplay, but with a sim of Black Shark's complexity will be difficult to both implement and use . . . . There's something about the network code that makes it difficult, too - I can't remember exactly what, though. v1.02 included some experimental code that allowed control of an aircraft in a LAN game by two players at once - I made a little mod for it and at least one squad used it for training flights in an Su30 :) However, I understand there was a significant difference in the LAN and internet coding - and the LAN code got junked at v1.1. Just thinking about the amount of information that would have to be passed back and forth between the two players of a two-seater gives me a headache . . . . With all that said, the Ka50 is the only single-seat military chopper . . . well . . . ever, really. So if ED want to move on to other helicopters then they'll have to crack the two-seat idea :)

First aircraft was supposed to be in 2003, but the service date moved a bit . . . . . The "OMFG none of these airframes are the same!" moment apparently came as a shock to BAe - I don't know why, they were different marks of 1960's Comet to start with - but for all kinds of reasons the deadline's now moved. I was involved in some of the MRA4 jetpipe manufacture last year - big stuff, those. Saw an MRA4 flying at Farnborough, along with the other goodies. All very impressive.

I believe, technically, it will work. Where you obtain the download from is unimportant as long as you have a code that Starforce can verify. . . . . but that's a technical point, and I do not in any way condone piracy of this most excellent of flight sims. Obviously VVanks doesn't either, since he seems to have paid up-front anyway.