Hi ya Pretzel,
I certainly respect your opinion. As much as I like the Ready Room and Cockpit features in PSF, I admit they do make the game look dated. It must have been really impressive when it was first released, though. Heck, I'm STILL impressed! PSF feels to me like it has allot of content or something. Oh well, "speed" menus = modern progress, I guess.
My biggest hang-up about OIF for newbies is the lack of any training videos. The PSF training "classroom" is very well done, IMO. The narrator doesn't sound very excited but the info is good – what counts.
The OIF 3D cockpit is going to be my favorite F/A-18 feature once the front view zoom factor is remembered. My front view is about perfect by just squeezing in the fuel Time display. Zooming out the front view enlarges the outside view area on the snap views which is REALLY nice! My NAV / Map screen is cropped in half though, so if I have to do a look-down, my front view is lost . Zoomed out, the OIF cockpit looks really good. The plain HUD housing and canopy bow vs. PSF is a small thing, I guess.
Sometimes the water in PSF looks a bit fake to me (am I watching too many LO-MAC videos?) but most times, it looks really good. The sun and moon lighting effects make it look drop-dead gorgeous! Overall, I'm very impressed with PSF's water, especially considering the game's age. Man, this game must have blown people away half a decade ago!
It's too bad they simplified the enemy damage levels since Hornet 3.0 and Hornet Korea. I thought Hornet Korea = PSF with better graphics and that everything else was exactly the same. I guess not.
I hope some of the missing PSF features find their way into OIF and that some long-time missing features are eventually added (i.e. dynamic campaign(s), moving carrier, A2A refueling, coherent ATC). I personally would pay top gamming dollar (+/- $50.00) to have all of this stuff added and issues corrected in a re-release of PSF even without any graphic enhancements! Graphics aren't everything (excluding your add-ons - man those clouds are nice). I just wish the time and effort creating OIF would have been put into improving PSF. What an awesome game!
Thanks for commenting on this.
--
Mark