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".

I understand the frustration. Being a ship builder, the 'sea' annoys the hell out of me. Moving 'waves' have been an industry feature for sometime now............. along with moving ensigns/flags. Pretty shifting tga shaders are very much 2001.

Sure, it's a flight sim, but if you include complicated ground/sea objects........... said objects and environment need to be 'complicated'.

Once TW includes real shifting seas, proper ship movement............. I'll build complete hulls to compensate.

Some of those little details. Like reg numbers for the 707's. Just a nice touch.




Or a skin for "Streetcar 304."

8! Look what a Thud looks like neked! I just slapped the aluminum on and took a look. I remember a friend who was a test pilot in Thuds had one like this on his coffee table from Republic.





I will rig it up right and send along.

Hey, I just saw one of those silver models at the museum at Republic. They also had a clearcast cube with three Thuds inside. Ah for the days when companies could hand out quality gifts rather than just pens and foam squeezies.

I know what you mean. I saw one of those on eBay once and bid on it but my position on the who-gets-what-list was about two pilots below the Thud line. I thought for a fighter pilot it was a little like wearing a Boston Marathon jacket when you haven't run the race. McDonnell-Douglas gave us a sort of nice plastic model (which my dog ate). I don't want to sound unappreciative. But when I deposited one of their aircraft into the jungle (thereby initiating a re-order), I think I should have been given a set of steak knives anyway.

That was careless.

There is A lot of greatness in TK's games, But the main problem is TK himself (He does not listen to his customers) and his vision. He just does not "get it". TK is stuck in his own head... in his world the dated "cartoonish" sky and terrains he provides his customers in the stock releases are more than adequate. In reality his models are excellent and his flight models are very good, the vast majority of things he has put together in the game are excellent however the sky, the terrain and his refusal to fix various bugs or give his customers the tools and new features they have asked for... hundreds of times... and his refusal to use beta testers to work out the bugs... have to go.

He has a loyal following of fanbois ... they do not care that virtual world that they are flying in looks nothing like the world we live in. Nor do the scold him for locking out out the modders (with hard coding ) that have turned his sim into something that looks like the earth. They only seem to care about getting their hands on some new official TW aircraft DLC. The only DLC for SF2 I would be willing to pay for is a modders pack that unlocks all of the things that tool has hardcoded in the last year or so. And how about an upgrade that simply ads multi core support to any previous patch level of the game with out changing anything else... I'd be willing to pay for that too. It's time that the members of this community come together and give TK a figurative shoe to the nuts.

John

You are right. Looks about the same.



I agree with you on the steakknives. Maybe the Oriental Wind Chime given your location? My brother-in-law is a picker, so I will let you know if I find one like above. Would be great getting it into the right hands. Happy Thanksgiving!!

That seems unjustly angry. It's a game. It's his game. Buying it doesn't necessarily make your one viewpoint valid.

A few tidbits. Final details. Mission tweaks.

It's important that the tanker shows up in front of you instead of twenty miles behind you.
And the peace-loving AI enemy goes on the attack.
And the cool weather doesn't obscure the target so badly that you cannot find it...realistic or not.
And that the trucks you are to bomb don't park under a karst mountain...realistic or not.
And that the door gunners hammer away at the ground targets all by themselves.