I am new to the third wire series and was wondering what would be the pest one to start with SF2, SF2:Vietnam, SF2:Israel, or SF2:Europe? I was thinking ether Vietnam or Israel. any advice?

Start with SF2: Vietnam. It's got native carrier ops as well as land-based aircraft. It's a good game.

pfunk

Take a look at Thirdwire the combo pack for one low price get them all and Combatace.com has many things to make them all even better, Hope this helps happy flying!

cheers

Combo pack is no longer available unfortunately. It was a limited time deal.

That's too bad. I wonder why? I just bought it last week.

Does the "NATO Fighters" mod only work with the old version and is it specific to SF:Europe or can it work with any of the four?

NATO Fighters 4 is, as far as I know, only engineered for Wings Over Europe, the first gen one.

NATO Fighters 4 Plus (NF4+) is built for SF2: Europe.

pfunk

SF2:Vietnam downloading now.

You'll enjoy. It has the best aircraft set, IMO.

pfunk

Just flew a fighter sweep in an F-100, 1968. I got two kills, Mig-17's. One with cannon and one with Sidewinder. I lost two F-100 though. My wingman and I both made it though we got separated and we each sustained damage.

It took a little bit to get the hang of the controls. I am glad to see that there are not that many differences in number of keyboard commands than I encounter in my space shooters. I wish they had a simple tutorial that walked you through them. Still they seem easy enough. With only a brief exposure so far I would say my negatives are the lack of the ability to set up more detailed quick battles like in IL2 and despite TrackIR my field of vision was a bit limited even though the F-100 should have some decent rear and vertical viability. Also should not Red Crown's controller be male? It is 1968 after all and so no women should have been on a USN cruiser at that time.

probably would have been - there is a mod here - just create a "Speech" folder in the correct place and stick em in.

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=3369


for a less limited head movement you can extract and alter viewlist.ini which then goes in the flight folder

Oh yes,
Where to start? http://forum.combatace.com
Which sim to start whith? - WW1 - First Eagles

Definitely Wings Over Vietnam!! For variety of aircraft and missions. Then when you're really feeling confident get Yankee Air Pirate (YAP)add on for WOV. YAP has more relistic historical missions and more formidable AI. Or after you've become proficient in WOV get Wings Over Israel(WOI) SF2. The most fun of all. LOOKS GREAT and your in day fighter heaven. Since I got WOI I gave up IL-2 which was my favorite from an immersion and realism standpoint.
Only problem encountered in WOI is fact that for some unknown reason it insists my imported F-4Js have no gas. So to fly missions with F-4J (Sixth Fleet Visitors ,heh ,heh) I change Fuel setting to "easy". AI is very good and once you mod a Mig or two to be flyable you really have a challenge.
Now if they could only replace the Chuck Yeager wannabe voices with those of some "nice Jewish boys" immersion would be even better.

KJakker and other new guys:
Another Websight for Thirdwire series of sims is WWW(dot)CombatAce(Dot)Com.
There are a dozen other sims featured there.
There are many helpful people who hang out there and there are
thousands of mods and downloads.
On the forums page scroll down to Knowledge Base and get ready to read.
It will tell you how to do almost anything in the sim.
TK the designer and owner of the sim made it to be highly moddable.
IMO SF2Vietnam is the best to start with.
As others have said it has a lot of different aircraft and missions.

There aren't as many mods out there for the second-gen games, but TK's quickly made a good portion of them useless. The new cockpits alone are better than just about anything that's been done before and the flight models and external models are just about superior to anything that's been produced to this point and there are decals and liveries just about every unit that ever used the stock aircraft.

The only weakness now is the terrain. TK's got the Tomcat in the works and it apparently comes with a new terrain built by a new terrain engine, so it's looking like there may be some shortcomings that are being addressed.

I'd highly suggest getting familiar with the flight characteristics of the stock aircraft. Those are enough to keep you entertained.

pfunk

Very interested in Strike Fighters 2 Israel. Assume its still got that awful, hillbilly intercom banter? Be that as it may, given I am very interested in A/C from that era, particularly the Mirage et al, have a few questions. It looks good. It would seemingly capture the essence of the thing, without getting into switchology. How are FMs on the stock models? Are the "feel", the numbers, in the ball park? Weapon modeling? Damage? The campaigns built around 67, 73 etc? If I my eyesight is not bad, it can be dled for 20 bucks? Is this right?

Bought it. Very accessible. Seems to improved somewhat since I last played SF around 2002 or thereabouts. Cannot go wrong for the DL price, for sure.