Thanks for the great tips, Andromedius.

That's very kind of you, HomeFries !!!
But I guess it's me who should thank you and all your friends for your amazing work on TAW and EF2000.
Thanks to your dedication I enjoy immensely those two sims again.

I'm really happy to humbly return the favor with Jane's USAF and F-15.
If I find some other tips, rest assured I'll gladly share them with the community.

Over and Out,

Andromedius.

Zeus from nGlide really knows his stuff. You can find many hints how to run older games with his wrapper on modern systems.

Here's a LINK.

Thanks again Andromedius for puting spotlight on the old Jane's sims. I installed recently USAF under Win 7 64-bit and it worked with the Tackleberry patch that you have linked. Next I'm going to test Jane's F-15. Kepping fingers crossed...

Yeah, this link is great. Lots of good ol' games playable again ! As for Jane's F-15, I 'm pretty sure you'll have it up and running in no time.

Right now, my desktop looks like a fricking Sim Museum !!! :
I currently have Jane's F-18, Jane's F-15, Jane's USAF, and Jane's Longbow 2 on my rig. Also got EF2000 V2.0 and TAW working nicely, courtesy of the magnicient dedication at Combatsim.com.
Despite their old age, these sims are insanely fun, especially now we can run them on Seven 64 (and surely most of them on Windows 8...).

For the record, I'm also flying modern sims such as DCS A-10C, FC3, BlackShark 2 in the DCS World environnement. They are pretty terrific but I must confess I missed the 'old birds' and I think it's high time, we revive the old threads about these amazing sims.

I'm currently prepping for a mission with Jane's F-15 (I'm still at briefing stage, studying map, targets and threats). Once I'm done with the planning phase, I intend to fly the whole mission, record it and edit it as an AAR documentary.

Here's what to expect :


Excerpts from the initial briefing of 'the First Night' Mission, by Eric 'Snacko' Marlow :





1/ General mission and objectives :





2/ Mission Map including waypoints - refueling 'spots'- target site :





3/ Target view : Scud launchers protected by lots of AAA and Roland SAM. That looks promising...





4/ Detailed scenario of the mission: supporting forces and threats.







Take-off time 01:00 - ETA on target 3:05 - RTB roughly 5:05. Yeah, that's about a 4 hours real-time flight including 2 air-refuelings. Lucky me...




This will be my tribute and love letter to Jane's F-15. If everything goes according to plan, I'll upload a nice and smooth video.
Who knows, maybe some of you would like to give it a try, too ?

In the meantime, stay tune in the coming weeks for more fun...

Over and Out,

Andromedius.

Hi Andromedius

I am stoked by getting Jane's USAF up and running on my Win7 Desktop and Win8 laptop thanks to your thread here. . .

S! for that.

But, had a go at getting Jane's F-15 running on your instructions here, and sorry to report no joy for me, so far anyway.

F-15 will install fine on my Win7 rig. Running it, not so good.

With base install, I get the usual menu bugs, and CAD trick does not work for me. I get a black screen, that's all.

I tried your Steam trick - no dice, still the frozen menu glitch.

This is where it gets interesting. I tried your suggested ddWrapper patch, and after applying that all the menus in F-15 work perfectly.

Result! Or so I thought. . .

When I apply ddWrapper, the menus work, but I get a CTD on running the mission.

Bummer!

I have messed around with another utility called DXwindower, and Microsoft's Application Compatibility Toolkit, but so far, no dice.

It's frustrating, because it seems clear the problem is DirectDraw incompatibility with modern MS OSes.

The core game will run fine, if you can get past that hurdle.

I haven't tested F-15 on my Win8 laptop because it won't install on that rig for some reason - although installing on Win 7 64 is no problem.

AArgh!!

But, hey, at least I can fly USAF, after a long absence.

My plan B?

I have an old Win 98 rig (with 19" CRT attached) that I need to re-install to see if I can get these golden oldies running. Here's hoping!

Slainthe!

Baltika

Aaaaand I've discovered i'm pants at landing the Strike Eagle. Is the up-and-down pitching motion normal flight modelling? It's quite annoying.

Hi Baltika,


It's really great you're having fun getting at Jane's USAF !!! Regarding Jane's F-15, I'm kinda surprised you're still having issues, but then again we're talking about computer, old games and OS compatibilites...

Here are some 'ideas' that could help you fix your issues, or so I hope :

- First, did you get rid of ALL the files in the 'Movies' folder ? Sorry if my question surprises you, but you didn"t mentionned it clearly in your post, so I had to ask.
Initially, I had the same issue as yours when firing up a custom mission or the campaign. Have you tried playing a training mission ? If you can fly any training mission without crashing, then the crash is Movie and animation related. Check the content of your 'Movies' folder.

- Second, did you deactivate eveything in the Miscellaneous Menu ? Even without the movies, the game could try to access them and crash.
Obviously, my menu is in french, but you'll recognise easily what I'm talking about, here :




- Third, if lauching the sim via Steam doesn't work, try without it. For some people the game would work just fine.
As for me it only works with Steam... Strange enough but that's just the way it is.

- Last, if you can't install on Win 8, have you tried copying/pasting the whole Jane's F-15 folder in your Win 8 installation and try to launch the game? Can't really hurt to give it to go, can it ?...


Other than that, I don't have more ideas. I sincerely hope this will help you getting the sim up and running.
Good luck and feel free to report your results or hopefully your success with Jane's F-15. I'll do my best to help.


Over and Out,

Andromedius.

Yeah, landing the mud in Jane's F-15 can be frustrating...
Went back to the Expert Manual and practiced a lot these last few days. As always, practice, practice, practice.

There's an old and interesting thread on the LockOn Ubisoft Forums regarding this 'issue':
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/135...l=1#post4058010

I find the posts pretty illuminating, especially the #4 and following ones.

Also this, taken from the jane's patch notes :

F. Flight Model enhancements and changes:

- The fidelity of the pitch trim curve was refined. This has significantly improved the performance of the Pitch Trim Compensator (PTC) at speeds below 300 KIAS. Slow speed pitch up with forward stick input has been eliminated as a result, and slow speed flight in general has been much improved.

- Expert landings now incorporate sink rate, which had been inadvertently disabled. The maximum allowable sink rate during landing is based on aircraft gross weight and is shown in the following table:

Gross weight (lb) ------ Allowable sink rate (fpm)

up to 35,000 ---------------> 900
40,000 -----------------------> 828
45,000 -----------------------> 756
50,000 -----------------------> 702
55,000 -----------------------> 648
60,000 -----------------------> 603
65,000 -----------------------> 558
70,000 -----------------------> 522
75,000 -----------------------> 486
80,000 -----------------------> 441

- Landing above the maximum allowable sink rate may cause damge to the aircraft or may even cause it to explode, depending on how much the limit is exceded by. '


I can tell you the one thing that did really turn things around on this matter, though : I'm using my good old Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 and that makes all the difference !
With Force Feedback enabled the plane is really 'easy' to handle, especially when it comes to pointing your nose on the runway or adjusting your pitch angle. That also helped me a lot with air-refueling. Still, landing in Jane's F-15 remains difficult.

Nothing you don't already know, but I'm following closely the instructions on the 'Expert Flight Manual' :

Here are some critical points :
- Depending on your controls, HOTAS, your throttle should be at around 25% (I use the 'menu' options on the UFC to display the throttle % on the HUD, a little bit unrealistic but it helps greatly). Intially, Final approach speed is at 300 knots. I used to be too fast or to slow and that ended up badly (though I didn't take an arrow to the knee... ). So I started making frequent speed adjustment whith my throttle, slowly bleeding of speed. Things got much easier.

- I display the ADI page on one of my MPD so that I can monitor Air Speed and AoA. This is the most useful tool when landing ! Obviously I know you can see the AoA on you HUD but it never hurts to have another reference point.

- Lowering the landing gear is at about 230 knots. You can deploy flaps a little while after that.

- Descent on glideslope is to be maintained at a 3° angle.

- One crucial point is to keep your AoA around 21 units before touchdown, and your pitch angle should be about 12°.
That was the main reason I often crashed on the runway at first. Soooo frustrating, especially after a successful mission !

- After touchdown, maintain your 12° pitch angle to soften the nose wheel landing and use wind resistance against the plane to bleed some speed.

- When reaching 80 knots, you can drop down the nose of your plane onto the runway. By then you can use the speedbrakes to slow down the aircraft more efficiently.


Have fun, fly - and land - safe.


Over and Out,

Andromedius

I initially also had problems until I patched F15 with f15d3d17

Good luck

Richard

Great suggestion ! You obviously need your game to be fully patched... Sorry for omitting this.

Just refueled for the first time in this on the first try

Kudos, Lion !

But no suprise, here, since you're a seasoned pilot with Jane's F/A-18E ! My skills sure pale in comparison with yours. Plus, if I recall correctly, I think refueling in Jane's F/A-18E is more complex, isn't it ?
Today, in Jane's F-15, I had some really interesting time air-refueling with a full strike loadout (Mk-82 clusters)... The weight of the bird fully equiped makes for a pretty challenging exercise!!!

Anyways, it's so great to see people getting back to theses games and having such a great time. When it comes to these fantastic classics, I think it's somehow a little bit like true love : time can't dull your feelings and emotions. It keeps coming back to you. Always.

Over and Out,

Andromedius.

Wow, I just had to register and give a huge heartfelt thanks to Andromedius!
Thank you for posting all of this information! I'd chalked these two wonderful games up as unplayable quite a few years ago.

I loved the Jane's series of games, and it's great to able to play USAF and F-15 again. A couple of notes that I'd like to add, in case anyone is having issues.

USAF: For some reason I couldn't get the installer to run in Win7. I had to boot into safe mode, install, and then follow the directions for Tackleberry's patch. The game looks and runs amazing!

F-15: Followed all of the above directions (especially removing the movies), with the exception that I noticed that the game menus do not function properly when I run the game from a shortcut. Odd I know, but it only works for me when I navigate to the game directory and run the exe directly. I don't need steam to run it. With the glide wrapper (nGlide), I'm running F-15 at 1920x1080 and it looks awesome!

Again, awesome post and I highly recommend fans of the Jane's series give it a try!!!

Thanks a lot, MillerTime, that's really appreciated!

The idea was to help people play these games again in all their glory. And I couldn't be more happy right now.

Your notes are pretty interesting as they offer some effective workarounds for the people who might get the same issues as yours when installing Jane's USAF. Rest assured that they're duely noted.

The point is that the PC community has such a vast array of machines and configurations that you can never be certain that a fix will be effective for everyone. That's why, as always, we need feedback and testing.

Once again, I want to point that these solutions or fixes already existed but were dissiminated on various websites which made finding them often tedious and difficult. A lot of passionate and talented people posted 'fixes' for Jane's USAF or Jane's F-15, but most of those were hidden in the deep jungle of the internet forums.

I have the feeling that there's a good chunk of people, curious or nostalgic ones, and of course true fans, that are willing to give a go to Jane's USAF and F-15.

In the near future, I intend to write the more exhaustive document I can come up with, regarding the fixes for theses sims. We need to have an easy access to this info and that means a fully documented 'How-To' guide is of the essence.

So if anyone has ideas or tips, please, feel free to report them.
Eventually, I have no lead on this matter (I just want to help and have some good time flying) so all the help/ideas/tips you can give is appreciated. Plus, my english not being the best, I'd appreciate if someone could take a look at the final document when I'm done with it.

In the meantime, enjoy, fly safe and have fun !

Over and Out,

Andromedius

Its very frustrating that just a few (of the very best IMHO) sims have issues with modern hardware and OS's

@Andromedius

Thanks a lot!!!!!!! Finally USAF is Working AND F-15 is Working too

My Specs:

Windows 7 64Bit
Nvidia GTX260
Newest Drivers (331.65)
8 GB Ram

USAF runs Perfekt when i apliyed the patch.

And F-15 also! Menu is working fine and the Mission and Campaings also!

I first tried nGlide. But was not working for me. Then i tried ddwrapper and folowed youre instructions.

Still messed up menus. Then i added the game to Steam and is was finnaly working for me.


You dont need to add the game to steam just start the game from the exe inside the Game folder not the shortcut. Like MillerTime wrote before.

But wait it gets even better now i also have a fix for you


Delete the Shortcut on youre desktop and create a new one from the exe data in youre F15 folder.

Just click on the F-15.exe and choose "Create new desktop icon"

Now you dont need to start the game from steam or to go you F-15 folder anymore just start F-15 like you used to be




Maaaaaaaan i can t belive it this game realy works again under Win7 after aaaaaall these years

Janes F-15 was my first Combat Jet Sim EVER! So much good old memories

I realy already gave up on this game but now its all good again


Again THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Merci beaucoup mon ami tu a me vraiment rendu heureux


@Mods

Can you mark the whole tread as a sticky?

Well, things keeps getting better!:D

Turns out we don't really need Steam, after all !!! I guess the reason it worked initially is that you had to use the original F15.exe in the main game folder to add the game to Steam.

As El Mudjahed cleverly explained, as long as you create a new shortcut (and delete the old one) with the main exe, you're good to go.


@ El Mudjahed
Tout le plaisir est pour moi ! Et je te remercie pour ton astuce à laquelle je n'avais pas pensé.
Amical salut depuis la France et bon vol !


Now, let's fly some missions to celebrate the rebirth of our beloved sims, shall we? I'd love to read some AAR from you with Jane's USAF and Jane's F-15.




Over and Out,

Andromedius.

Thanks Andromedius & El Mudjahed - happy to report I finally got F-15 running on my Win7 rig.

I feel a Duh facepalm moment coming up...

Turns out I was trying to run the sim in software renderer mode, and it was crashing out every time I tried to start a mission.

So, selected 3dfx Glide renderer in the graphics settings menu, and all is now good

Also, having created a new shortcut, I don't need to run it through Steam.

Off to configure my stick for some F-15 action.

Slainthe!

Hi, baltika
These are indeed terrific news!!!

Don't be too hard on yourself, baltika. Happens to the best of us. Navigating through menus, fixes, settings can be misleading. Trust me, I know the feeling !
But now, you can enjoy Jane's F-15 in all its glory again !
Have fun !!!

As for me, I'm happy to report that I have successfully completed 'The First Night' mission (links to the mission file in my very early posts). I'm now in the process of editing a 4 hours video to create a more suitable and shorter AAR video documentary. It's almost as fun as flying the mission (almost...). When I'm done I'll post the video on this board. I hope some of you wiil enjoy it.

Over and Out,

Andromedius.

Soooo JF-15 crashes when I try to load a file in the mission builder.