First, let's start with the subject matter. It's interesting and I really felt like I was learning something new when I read the briefings. The missions are crafted well enough within the capabilities of Thirdwire's engine. It was too bad that you have to keep alt-tabbing for new accurate briefings, but the recon pictures and the briefs actually had substance.

Next, the objects. Some objects were really needed, like the A-1E, KA-3, UH-1, and RF-8A. I have the first pack so I haven't tried the new stuff. It's safe to say that some fly better then others and a lot of imagination is required to carry out some of the functions, like A2A refueling (while your plane DOES refuel, you have to do it without real tanker help or a 'legit' connection. But there are other things about the objects which I really do like. I like that the steel works in Hanoi are 100% custom and not easy to kill. I liked the city of Hue, that took me back to Full Metal Jacket. I really felt like I was helping these poor, pixelated Marines out with my CAS.

Now here's a couple of things about the objects which I didn't expect when I payed 20.00 for an add on: At least one cockpit, and a few of the ground objects are already available as freeware! The UH-1, which I was most excited about, was nothing really new (at least the cockpit wasn't)! The NVA, VC, US Army, and USMC infantry are already available on CombatAce.com! While I'm on the subject, I was a little impressed at the new lucious jungles I had to fly over, until I realized it was actually a FREEWARE mod called "Green Hell." But I have no problem with the new sounds and as far as I know are completely YAP original. Now, I'm not throwing allegations around as for all I know YAP actually contacted these modders and got permission to sell their mods, but I certainly don't think that the first installment should be priced at 20 or 25 dollars.

Overall, the experience of flying over Thirdwire's lifeless Vietnam was improved with mods that YAP2 bundled together, but a some of the 'meat' of this add-on is already available by other developers as freeware, and that puts a damper on things. I do not think I got a good value and maybe, just maybe if YAP2 was compatible with WOV2, and bundled more ORIGINAL add-ons and missions together, I would continue buying installments.

Originality/ subject matter: 3.5 Stars
Add-on Content: 1 Star
Value: 1.5 Stars
Overall: 2 Stars (out of 5)

E - The jungles are NOT Green Hell. They are original creations and planted by me. Completely different trees and completely different layouts.
And just for the record, out of the box WOV had abosolutely no trees until my original release 3 years ago. While your review is of course your opinion, please do not confuse the freeware with the original work of others.

You have got to be kidding me. This is going to be a two bagger.

Let's try some other opinions from another source. Try this month's Aviation History Magazine.

"Missions come straight from history" (then he goes on to name the events since he knows history.)

"To experience all YAP2 will ultimately offer will cost some money but it is a cheap price to pay for a twice in a lifetime experience."

A whole page of compliments. Get it? Aviation history, not doodads.

You miss the point of Yankee Air Pirate and you miss it so far that I wonder what you were expecting (or what your background is in aviation or history). For one thing, WOV had no tankers and no means of making an episode contain the elements of a real air strike. That was not the point of WOV. It is the point of YAP so we fixed it...in hundreds of ways. You wanted what? The smell of JP4? We rely upon the imaginations of our players very much. After all, none of this stuff exists any more. We all have to pretend.

Legit connection? The reason we feel comfortable in not providing an actual F-4D Phantom II or an actual KC-135 for a refueling segment is because we cannot fit them into a laptop. We were forced to provide the essence of the act which is...adding fuel while flying in formation with a tanker so that you can make it to the target and home. I guess we can make it go "clunk" but that's all that's missing. I know. I did it about 300 times.



Personally, I can hook up almost every time but it is a lot harder than in reality so why complicate things? That takes the player away from what we want them to experience.



There were no targets anywhere other than North Vietnam. Remember? Now the subcontinent is speckled with villages, forts, and bases. Targets are where they are relative to the map. The carriers are not flat shingles with rotating numbers. The bases, countryside and seas are populated. You missed that in your appraisal. About 2 gigabytes of omission on your part. YAP did that. Others may follow but it came from us. I have to give you one star for accuracy.



This is a simulation that uses a very good game engine to tell stories, not sell doodads. If you want doodads, go to Turbosquid and buy some. I think you can get a Sikorsky SeaKing for $140 that is not licensed for gaming. We include one when we need it and that package will cost $14.95. It will contain the USS Mahan from which it operated in the story. One mission (of 18 in the set) that took 4 months to build and required us to make 5 ships, piers, a helicopter, animations, effects...just to let the player "be there". We didn't do it so we could hand out doodads. And if someone steals it and posts on a file-sharing site, that does not make it theirs. It's still ours.



Let's address your allegations: Everything we hand out is ours, is native to Wings Over Vietnam or is licensed to us. If you think it isn't, you should contact the FBI. They deal with theft of intellectual property and they should know about this. Since we have all the information in writing, not just the forum gossip, we welcome their communication. I have their number.

You need to be specific in your accusations. The soldiers that we hand out are ours. If someone has posted them on Pirate Bay or Bit Torrent, we cannot stop them now that they are out. But we certainly released them almost 3 years ago. I don't go to Combatace so I don't know what is being distributed by whoever is doing it. Our whole 2 gigabytes might be there for all I know. I know it is passed around because one of our people was offered the whole thing. Obviously thieves are not anyone's market.



And the UH-1 is NOT new. We released it years ago. And the flight model along with it. We did that, exhausted. We made helicopters fly...in a Vietnam War game. What a concept!

The pit? Freeware? Kesselbrut lets us use it and several others. It couldn't be any better if we made it ourselves...so why bother? We don't sell pits. We don't sell his pits.



Hueys and Cobras and Jolly's and Big Mothers and Sea Stallions and Chinooks...and more to come...because we need them to tell stories.



And the world in which we play...TK and Deuces. World, geometry, clouds, jungle, ocean. All original. Ours to use from TK and ours from Deuces. I hear Green Hell is nice. I have never seen it. I'll stick with Mr. Wizard for my terrain.

TREES by Deuces


CLOUDS by Deuces


And I forgot to mention TERRAIN by Deuces and OCEAN by Deuces.

What we sell is stories. If you did not like the stories, then by all means DO NOT BUY ANY MISSION SETS. Our stories are real. We talk to the participants. This is how we tell stories. If we need the New Jersey to tell one, we will buy the New Jersey. If you are seeking new models and have paid no attention to the planes we have put out, buy them. (Check Wikipedia under Wings Over Vietnam where someone thinks we are VERY generous.) I think you will find that YAP is an amazing bargain...an amazing bargain, exhausted.



Actually, I don't think our customers want to go scrounging around looking for 2 gigs of stuff. I think they are happy to just start the mission and fly it. I hope they buy YAP for the stories told by combat pilots, deck monkeys, mechs, armorers, grunts, Red Crown, Seabees, and authors...because that is the product.

Authors and artists like this illustration from the October 1967 Esquire magazine by Ken Dallison:



Was twenty bucks too rich for your blood? I think we timed that first set of missions to take about 14 hours to play through. Did you go see The Hurt Locker yet? Take a woman? That's two hours for $20 (plus popcorn). Great story. But not much of a bargain compared to YAP.

BY THE WAY, ALMOST ALL OF THE OBJECTS IN THESE PICTURES WERE NOT PART OF WINGS OVER VIETNAM. ONLY THE F-4B/J ARE AND THEY HAVE SUNDOWNERS PAINT ON THEM.

That's probably a bit unfair - one thing you fail to see is that while some of these add ons are maybe free you will find that if you download them (like the infantry pack)- and stick them into WOV - you can, well use them to replace tanks in the games defined CAS missions - and that's about it!!. The man hours required to create, manually place and continually test the objects into villages in various locations etc are the reason even the modders buy this. If you don't believe this try it - at least you will see what I mean.

I can confirm that if you find Greenhell2 it is totally different and works on a totally different terrain and looks completely different to the terrain in this mod.

For me the positive:

The missions
The effort invested
The complete and utter game change.
Many New objects, including the exceptional carriers
Thirdwire will never put this detail into the baseline game - and there nothing else out there that comes anywhere near in this theatre of combat.


But - wish it was done for SF2:Vietnam!


PS: on the note of carriers the person who does these needs to do a clear deck payware version so they can be used in the standard games too!!.

Yeah, I do have that right, and I used it to express that I don't think it's worth all the cash.

I think you missed my point about having a legit connection for A2A refueling. I respect you for being a veteran pilot that did the real thing several times, but there are some differences (correct me if I'm wrong). In a refueler the crew guides you to contact and you listen to them (not the other way around) to start taking on fuel. Your system has you "pretend" to make contact, "pretend" to know the pattern of the refueler, "pretend" to take visual cues from the 135, and "pretend" the crew is fueling you up while you vector your imaginary engine around to start taking on fuel. Your system has you pretend everything except that the tankers even there. If I said that this takes a lot of imagination then I was telling the truth, so why are you attacking me? Just because I respect your efforts doesn't mean I think that alone is worth $15 per installment, and I am just one of many.

I apologize if I thought the objects you are releasing look so much like freeware objects out there (like GH2 or the infantry, or the UH-1.) I can see that there was a passion that went into making a lot of this, but it fails me to see why you would think that it's worth it for a consumer to keep paying, on an almost subscription basis (and a very expensive one it is indeed), for a mixed bag. That what it is to me guys, it's a mixed bag, and that's why I gave it the rating many feel it deserves.

The honest truth, zerocinco, the honest to God truth is that the majority of your customers, both on and off the board, already have more then 2+ gigs of freeware in add-ons, in addition to the quality payware for SF, WOV, WOE, WOI, SF2, WOV2, WOE2 setups on their systems. It is a great pleasure for us to create things with just as much passion to share with each other. That is why the Thirdwire series lives, and that is why the improvements that are sold with YAP2 (never tried YAP but I presume it's not as up to date as YAP2) do not warrant a 159.50 total purchase when the WOV game will not even retain it's full functionality after YAP2 is installed.

$24.95

Ya know what? That is too much for me to start paying a $160 investment. I'm not a USAF officer, and I can't justify $160 on add-ons to an aging game engine - I'm a junior Marine who works on Harrier engines in the shop.

YAP2 crew, it's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. Take it with a grain of salt. Besides, this objective review isn't meant for the creators of YAP2, it's for those thinking about buying it.

You seem to know a lot about the majority of our customers. We will give you a call before we make our next move.

In the mean time, here's my opinion (which I am welcome to): If things are that tight, you might want to put off buying video games in the first place...certainly historical reproduction like ours.

I personally have two installs of YAP2 - one with the stock WOV install as intended, and an experimental one with the October patch. I really like the shadows and weapon weights/drag with the patch, but like 05 says, the helo flight models are ruined with the patched version, and possibly other things may be affected that I have not yet found. SF2-V shows me nothing over the October-patched version, except a mickey-mouse filing system if you need to be a Vista user and .ini files for add-ons that require re-saving in a different file format for no good reason. Spend the money to have XP put back on your PC and dump Vista.

As a modder myself, I can attest to the hours of work and experimentation that goes into creating almost anything worth having for the Third Wire series sims. For what you get for your money with YAP2, how can you not buy into it? When I see MS Flight Simulator add-ons for twice the price with only a single plane or scenery offered (and no one complains of "value"), or look at the price of any kind of entertainment that you can buy these days, I am amazed at complaints about YAP.

I was not quite old enough to get into the USAF to be part of what was going on in Southeast Asia in the 60s, but as a flight simmer and historian, YAP2 allows me to get closer to it than ANYTHING else in flight sims that I have yet found.

Mike Druzolowski

YAP team,

As someone who frequents Combatace, I just want to reassure you that (to the best of my knowledge), none of your YAP specific work is available there.

I was very disappointed and somewhat annoyed by the very misinformed post made by exhausted. Like MigBuster said, the original poster obviously does not recognize that while similar individual mods may be available out there in little bits and pieces, what YAP does is combine them all together into an immersive and historical experience.

I am not a YAP customer, but I wish the best of luck to you guys. I enjoy seeing screenshots and AAR's from your missions.

-Gregg

malibu43, you should try YAP2 --- you'll like it. Anyone who has any interest in flightsimming that time period needs to get into YAP2 as fast as they can.

CB