I have to admit, I am almost totally confused now with the offerings from Thirdwire. Rising Sun runs on SF1 and SF2. SF1 on XP is perfect. SF2 on a Win7 has some problems that were corrected in a patch that nearly killed our ability to launch a strike from a carrier. Obviously, that's not something we can work with.

YAP has always been an add-on to Wings Over Vietnam. SF2V is kinda, sorta WOV but really isn't. The only advantage I have seen in Rising Sun on SF2 was the rising of the sun and a slight increase in clarity...while a huge decrease in the sky condition back to cartoonish.

To take YAP2 to the October 2008 patch, we think is the best we will get out of it and it has been grueling to create our own patch. It has shadows and aerodynamic drag. Deuces already made the jungle that brought the ground to life. Deuces made us a sky that looks real. We populated the carriers. We are populating the air fields. We are replacing the worst models. We don't see any improvements since then.

The glaring problem now is the unrealistic water and the fuzzy ground. But even if those were opened up for modification, we would still get dinged because it is not as good graphically as the new ground games. A point we cannot make because our customers are not combat pilots, is that it DOES look real...certainly more real that knurled knobs to adjust the Kohlsman window or feet on the pedals. This is because to fly these missions the first time, the real time, the pilots average what they see. They make judgments and adjustments. You do not concentrate on details or you won't make it. Refueling requires you to NOT look at rivets but to see it all at once. A2A maneuvering requires you to keep your mind fluid. So we are impressed by what we see and are quite comfortable saying "this is what the pilot saw who flew the mission". In that respect, TK has it nailed.

So anything that will improve that experience...the experience of being in the story, we will embrace. The other stuff? Not so much.

And, yes, we have several SeaWolves missions. And with our improved helicopter flight model, taking off and landing on an LST is simple. There's a picture on the last page of a UH-1B taking off from an ATC.

Zerocino. I love your attention to detail and dedication to history.

But I would dearly love to see you guys working with a newer game engine platform. The SF engine does look dated.
Having said that, I'm not sure what the options are. Will they ever work the bugs out of the cliffs of dover engine? Is it practical for you guys to build a sim based on it? I don't know. I love the business model and engine for rise of flight, but again, I'm not sure how practical that would be for you.

I would love to see you guys build a full switch, vietnam or korean war senario based on a modern game engine.

That's my dream sim. Your passion for history, and cutting edge flight models and graphics. I'm sure I am not alone.

Keep up the great work mate.

I know the feeling. We went looking for a game engine years ago. It's a long story.

You already know the chant: "There is no money in flight sims." Well, there isn't for big game companies who sell at Wal-Mart. But profit is profit even if it is not enough to satisfy Blizzard. I would do it in an instant but the skillset required resides in very few heads. The quite obvious choice of people to make a new flight sim involving our models, stories, the game's campaign engine, our sky, our trees, our objects...all that? TK.

Our new set of planes just landing at Takhli. I have been painting all day, have a headache and am going blind. If I paint the G first, the other two will be easy. So I am about half done with it now. The aluminum one is going to look nice.

To me, the Thud was always THE Air War in Vietnam. It's our Crown Jewel.



Note: drag chute hatch. Upper and lower petals close when gear is down.



A couple more tricks not ready to show yet.




Now check this.



We can make it spin.



New ejection seat is so good, we need to make a new pilot.



Lots of placards and aging and continuity but we are now all ready to break the Bombing Halt.

'scuse my ignorance, but what is TK?

Thud looks great by the way.

T Kawahito, the programmer who wrote Strike Fighters.

I would recommend the Feb 2010 patch level of SF2, this is the last patch level before TK began his campaign of hard coding (locking the modders out) of the environment system settings and randomly breaking other things and just saying screw it you'll take what I give you.(LOL) I have ported my Yap2 terrain over to my SF2V install and brought it up to sf2 effects shader compatibility and it looks very good... the water still needs some work to look as good as you had it at the 8/06 patch level but for the most part the terrain looks awesome.

I really liked the mission sets and the terrain... I'm really looking forward to playing this on SF2 because the new shaders make a huge difference in graphics.

From the screen shots you have posted I notice an odd ghosting issue between the trees and skyline, is that due to TKs hard coding with the latest patches? I'm not getting any of that with my modified data and the Feb 2010 patch, Id be happy to share my data settings with you if you are interested.

No. I think he solved that but when we increased the tree size, it made that one pixel band more prominent. We might be able to reduce it before release. One way is to decrease the tree size but it stops being a jungle right away.

We will look at SF2V as you suggested. But I am afraid that the farther we move from his original games, the more we doom ourselves to being screwed over and over again. I mean, it's his game. He sells a flight sim that has a very specific purpose...which I will not define because I cannot make it come out sounding positive.

The new shaders look good in Rising Sun but every patch causes problems. You can imagine how we felt when we had spend a fortune in time and money developing the US and Japanese fleets and watched all our aircraft fly off the end of the deck and into the water. Giving them the power to take off without benefit of the "wind" made them perform crazy. So, we said to hell with it.

I imagine he has other irons in the fire and comes back to this one when he can. I think he could have made something great but it costs money and the money is in not in flight sims.

Is the engine used for cliffs of Dover unusable? Would love to se someone make a deal to take all those Korean war models they made that will now likely rot on a hard drive somewhere

I don't know much about it. I talked to them about the original IL-2 engine long ago but their price was absurd. They have done some smart selecting. IL-2 was fought over the tundra as SF1 was fought over the desert. When IL2 made Pacific Fighters, take a look at their version of Pearl Harbor. When the polys went up the game met its limit. That's the same with this game. But since this one started, the power of the average computer has increased at least 8-fold.

Getting people to operate a virtual airplane requires skills that the bulk of the gamers don't have. It's the same in real life. It's a lot easier to point a gun than to point an airplane. I think the general market is no place to go. That leaves history and aviation nuts, like us. There are a lot of them.

Send me your settings. I'd be more than happy to test them out. Zero is swamped in paint. He's going to audition for the "Blue Men".