britgliderpilot

Saw it at Farnborough this year. It wasn't quiet then ;) The engine-loss system is all well and good - what worries me is damage to the hydraulics . . . . Still - maybe there's something I don't know about it ;)

Why would the new Nvidias help him so much with Lomac? They're both powerful and DX10 capable - but Lomac doesn't even use DX9, and right now performance is limited more by the CPU than anything else. For future games perhaps it may be worth it, but we're talking Windows Vista and another hardware upgrade before we get to DX10 and the next generation of games . . . . . And as with any other hardware choice - if you're waiting for the next big thing to come out before upgrading, you'll be waiting forever ;) I haven't seen benchmarks for the 7600, but I've seen benchmarks on the X800XT and the 6800GT and they are both pretty respectable cards - be happy with either one of them :)

I've seen it done in front of me before. It's a beautiful sight . . . . . a very large, very stationary target growing rapidly larger in the center of the HUD. A quick burst of 30mm and it's all over :D

Whoa, you're fast! Ideally, the flameholders should be V-shaped in cross-section - the pointy end goes into the oncoming hot gases, the open end is facing backwards. It's to provide a region of turbulent, lower speed air so the afterburner flames burn without blowing themselves out. I'm not a modeller - what'll that do to the polygon count?

Further thought - if someone's modelling the Kiev, is there any chance someone might do a Yak-38 model for it? ;)

We can't modify existing models - the tools ED have given us only go one way. If someone wanted to build an Su30MKI they'd have to do it from scratch . . . . unless ED wanted to do it themselves. There's a problem with making it flyable in that modelling it fully would be a nightmare. Take Black Shark's development time as an example. Information on it is a bit sketchy, too . . . . Thrust vectoring engines - I honestly don't know whether they're within the limits of the code. AFM may cover it, don't know. I'd guess you could animate the nozzles simply using the control surface movement arguments - same for the canards. IRL these are both controlled by the FBW system depending on what the aircraft's doing - the canards serve a different purpose to those on the Su33 and there's much more complexity in their movements. Be nice to have, for all that!

Nitpicking - but you shouldn't be able to see the turbine blades at the back of an afterburning engine. They're hidden by the injectors and flameholders for the afterburner :) I believe this is an AL-31F - the thrust vectoring version of the engine, with the movable nozzle, otherwise identical AFAIK - observe for comparison: http://www.araxfoto.com/gallery/data/media/20/AL-31F_AB.jpg Nice model though :)

IIRC SuperVasya is one of ED's ace modellers - talented chap indeed! Very, very nice video . . . . .

I concur with GGTharos' assessment.

Two Kiev-class carriers were sold to the Chinese, one being the Kiev itself. Suggest the W is a misspelling that's crept in since then. One more is being modified and sold to India for operation of the MiG29K. Awaiting arrival of JJ-Alfa for corrections and the Definitive Answer ;)

FC will stay with Starforce, BS will use Starforce as well. That has been specifically stated by ED. Sorry mate - looks like you're going to have to miss out :( The details and mechanics of the BS release still seem a touch sketchy - that link TekaTeka provided is the only place it's really been covered, so assume it's going to be that way. That link says that there will be no flyable Su25T if you do not already have FC. If you do already have FC, then you keep your Su25T. It seems fair to me. Comprehensive list of features for a sim still in development are inevitably going to end up disappointing someone. They always change ;)

It's going to work any way you want it to ;) As you'd espect, setting things up for a helicopter AND jets in the same sim gets complicated regarding the input options - ED are on top of things here, don't worry :)

I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that - I know it affects the way the aircraft flies, but I don't know how they've done it. It could, of course, have been underway for some time - don't automatically assume that it's something that's been coded only between Flaming Cliffs and Black Shark.

In Black Shark the AI will indeed get the Standard Flight Model like you and I have - so things will improve. This doesn't guarantee that they won't still bend the laws of physics to account for the fact that they're not human from time to time . . . . . but things will be better :) There is of course another possibility - that a complex 3D damage model has been used, but a simplified aerodynamic damage model has been used that doesn't necessarily correspond to the damage you see. But that's speculation. SFM is most definitely coming.

So the track would be playing on in all respects, but you'd be free to do what you wanted with your aircraft? Pretty sure that's not possible. Suspect it would confuse the hell out of the game :P

Let's get the obvious out of the way first - have you clicked on the "Lock On" on the Windows task bar and tried to get it to maximise? The next answer is to uninstall Lomac entirely, and then install FC over a new installation of Lomac v1.00. Your machine should cope with Lomac just fine, just looks like there's a bit of a minor hurdle to overcome first.

Ah, but you'll also have "Ice" written on the side of your plane beside the cockpit. Although, hold on here . . . . I'm assuming it's Ice's name so the other guy knows who's just shot them down, but I could be on the wrong track. With the 169th being held in such high esteem, I suspect that they've had some Su33s custom made for them. In much the same way that there's a triangular warning label directing people to recue hatches and access on a normal fighter, I reckon the Ice label here is to direct the groundcrew to the high-capacity, industrial-strength, on-board beer fridge on landing, so that the elite pilots of the 169th can enjoy a cold one no matter where they end up. Am I along the right lines? I want one! Oh, yeah, nice skin, too.

Searching the forums (always useful) says people have had success running FC with XP64, yes. From what I can gather, you should install patch 1.12a and run it in XP compatibility mode.

It is? Now that's useful to know . . . . . just so happens that my brother's looking at buying a Macbook Pro, may swing things for him. Bored one day, I did actually go and look up how much you could spend on a Mac Pro if you wanted to. I got to £12,000 . . . . . . .

There's at least one system that does that all on it's own - the Racal Kestrel, as fitted to the Merlin helicopter. There are plenty of ESM systems out there that are supposed to do the same thing, too. See any ELINT aircraft.

It is technically feasible - has been since the days of the Wild Weasels in Vietnam. I highly doubt that it was implemented on the Su27 and MiG29, though - if they did, there'd be a rather different RWR display.

You mean . . . . . . how far away can you turn before the laser designator you don't have reaches the gimbal limits that aren't programmed, so the missile you can't carry loses lock on a laser spot that isn't there, and the limits of the Lomac code cause it to do something different to what it would do in real life? ;) There's no answer - trial and error mate :) The E-model Maverick is for the USMC - who don't have any A-10s. The A-10 doesn't have a laser designator, so it should be relying on someone else's laser designation which isn't there. Laser-guided missiles in Lomac just explode when they lose their guidance. The real AGM-65E will just go ballistic when it loses guidance - but of course, that's not modelled here either ;) I'd be intrigued to know who put the AGM-65E on, and which coding loophole it actually uses.

Purely by chance I happened to be passing by this morning . . . . grin. And I'm afraid not - the skins for the F-111 model (from Flanker 2, no less . . . . it's old!) are set up so that there is no way you can assign a colourscheme to the bottom. Will see if I can find the original thread where it's discussed in detail. A new model with a better skin setup would probably fix it, if you want to set someone going on that project in the 3D modelling forums ;)

Probably not possible to mod - the possibilities here aren't all that great. You don't always get the vapour cloud behind the shockwave - depends a lot on ambient conditions that aren't modelled in Lomac so to do it properly would require a fair bit of effort. Lot of effort for some ear candy, it's rather more complex than the sonic boom. You may have noticed that the wingtip vapour trails aren't exactly complicated in their modelling, possibly also that the LERX vapour clouds have disappeared since Flanker 2 . . . . . . graphical effects on the airframe are in fact getting worse. Maybe in time ;)