What's happening?

I'm still flying the odd bit of Hornet Korea, but it gets harder to do every day. The graphics, without a 3DFX card, really, REALLY suck. We're talking almost 256 colours here (in fact, it might actually be 256 colours ). I've tried a Glide Wrapper, no joy there, graphics get all trashed and discoloured .

This is the only jet sim I have with carrier ops. I missed the boat on the others, I'm thinking of resorting to eBay. I still like HK, but when the graphics are so lousy it's very hard to stay with it.

How are you guys going with HK / PSF / OIF? Not many posts lately.

Cheers

Mr B

One piece of good news I forgot to mention though:
It's a real joy to use with my new Afterburner II joystick! Being able to slam open the throttle when doing bolters on a carrier is great fun .

Cheers

Mr B

Easier (and less expensive) than buying a Voodoo card would be to buy a new sim. I thourougly recommend Janes F/A 18 for carrier operations and excellent avionics! Although it has outdated graphics, they're on par with Hornet Korea or better and there's a slight chance EA might release the source code to the community. If so, a Falcon 4 like phenomenom might happen...

Mr B, I'm pretty sure right now that PSF is NEVER going to leave my hard drive, EVER!

I've been playing lighter sims lately, from F-22 Lightning 3 to USAF, but I also continue playing PSF for a few reasons...

1. The avionics are more in-depth than USAF and I love the Carrier Ops. This is what I call a true mid-level flight sim and I like the complexity sometimes. Not really interested in learning the really hard core sims just yet.

2. The mission recorder. It's less robust than the one in USAF but playback is always available upon ending a mission (keep forgetting to push the Record button in USAF) and seems to play back at a higher resolution than USAF (although PSF can't touch USAF's graphics).

3. The ALT-N key-in. I love being able to change dawn/day/dusk/night on the fly. Nighttime in Hawaii still looks gorgeous to me.

4. The extremely small install, especially after deleting the ...\Textures folders except HRO. I know I'll never need to remove this game to make space.

5. Runs well in XP, although I usually play it under ME with my other flight sims.

6. The training videos and Korea Manual (not the Manual included with PSF). I still love reading this VERY well written documentation, and I feel I as if I'm really learning something about this plane and air combat in general vs. just playing a game.

PSF is still a very cool game IMO, and although the graphics are seriously dated, they still look pretty to me. Now if only Pretzel could add some more clouds.

There's a new add-on for USAF called Super Pro 9.2 (by Slikk) that I've been messing around with lately. It adds so much stuff to USAF that it'll make your head spin! You can fly helos, vertical a/c, reconnaissance and cargo planes, and even drive a freggin' tank! There's an F/A-18C included (with 2D pit based off of Aeyes' work and beautiful 3D model) that can even land on a Carrier!

But it has limitations. It's still nice to have a dedicated and more detailed F/A-18C sim in PSF, plus having a meatball and LSO adds greatly to immersion (simply not possible with USAF).

I also play F-22 Lighting 3 because it's fast and easy and I love the weather and nuke effects.

But again, I have no intentions of ever retiring PSF and I hope Graphsim continues the Hornet series or at least makes a substantial patch for OIF as I'd like to enjoy that one as well. I'm not holding my breath for either.
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Mark

Perhaps one of the better manuals ever written for a flight sim.

Hey B, what did you decide to do?
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Mark

Keep flying HK. Ebay and all that stuff is too much of a pain, and HK is nice and simple and easy. And if I fly at night, it doesn't look to bad, and also makes it more challenging. So, I guess I'll just stop whinging and put up with it . Perhaps if I run into PSF I'll grab that.

Oh, and I've also started using a little program that really helps improve immersion in HK's rather silent world. It's called BackTrax, and FNG2K pointed it out on the Helo Sims board. I've had it for a while but forgot about it. Anyway, it plays a bunch of random aircraft noises, communications chatter, and other sounds. If you turn it down low, it sounds good.

Here's a link if you'd like to check it out:
http://www.simwarrior.com/sfp1/BackTrax.html

Cheers

Mr B

LOL! You and I discussed this sweet piece of freeware almost a year ago...
http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=003033

Wow how time does fly!

I've fine tuned my sound files for Hawaii (lots of commercial traffic) and Korea (military action comms). I've also added a LOT of silent (blank) sound files so that my comms are much better spaced apart and more random. However, I got lazy and stopped using this some time back.

I REALLY miss AWACS giving me information as in Jane's USAF and Nova's F-22 L3. Both of those sims also have a lot of comm chatter from other flights around you which is great for immersion. Well, the "Yahoos!" in USAF can be a little irritating, but F-22 L3 sounds GREAT, and comms even includes radio static.

This is just another area where I wish Graphsim would have put time into vs. a satellite-based terrain. All of HK's sound files need to be re-sampled(?) IMO, and to stop using the same sounds for different things (i.e. flaps and gear). And if possible, match the sound with the situation (i.e. on playback it sounds like you're still in the cockpit even if you're using Tower View to watch a fly-by).

BTW, did you see my PSF screenshots? The Hornet Korea demo (which does support OpenGL) doesn't look quite as good to me as PSF. It's really close, but PSF's glistening water effect (vs. HK's fake wave effect) and more trees and stuff wins the comparison.

It's hard to say why I even still play PSF when I've had a taste of newer sims. Just something about how complex, yet accessible it is I guess. I figure if someone like Pretzel, who appears to own every flight sim, still feels this game is worth playing and even modifying, then there must be something to it.

Check out his collection halfway down this thread...
http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=003151

I saw the Korea boxes before I noticed who posted the pic and I had an idea who wrote the post before I confirmed it.
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Mark

*slaps head*

I knew I'd discussed Backtrax with someone before .

I agree with you about the radio communications. The USNF series, in it's later versions, also had a large amount of radio chatter, which was very enjoyable. I haven't played either USAF or F22 L3, but I have heard good things about them. If USAF's chatter is anything like that in the other Jane's sims it must be very good.

I did check out your screenshots, they definately look nice. PSF does have much more to offer graphically. I'd like to post some screenies of HK, but I can't get anything to take screenshots properly.

And Pretzel's collection sure is nice, isn't it?

Cheers

Mr B

Do you mean that you can't find a good looking scene in HK to take a picture of or that you don't have the software to do it?

Here's how I did it...

1. Flew around until I found a nice shot to take
2. Pressed CTRL-G to take screen shot (puts .BMP in main folder)
3. Opened BMP in MS Image Composer (came with FrontPage 2000)
4. Saved as JPG (without any editing)
5. Uploaded to website

I'm guessing that picture quality was slightly degraded converting from BMP to JPG.


Ok, what happened to the edit date stamp when I edit a post?
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Mark

Thanks for that Mark! I tried using the PrintScreen key and FRAPS but neither of those would produce anything other than a black page. I'm going to go take some snaps right now.

Oh, and the date stamp got taken away. I miss it too .

Cheers

Mr B

OK, here's what Hornet Korea looks like:

Waiting for Takeoff:


Final Approach to the Enterprise, slightly low and right:


Nowhere near as nice as your PSF shots . HK on PC doesn't support OpenGL, only the Mac version does. I might post some more pics later when I get a chance.

Cheers

Mr B

These Graphsims don't seem to like my 9800 Pro. They (PSF and OIF) ran fine on my GF 4 ti4200 but run crappy on this card. Everything else runs much better though.

Mr. B, please send me an e-mail at markgonzales at comcast.net (regarding Jane's USAF).
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Mark

Email sent .

Cheers

Mr B

Mr B, if there ever was a testament to PSF's (Hornet Korea's) playability, that would be you, still playing this game with no textures! Yuck!

I have all of the GSC demos beginning with Hornet 3.0 which also doesn't support textures (OpenGL) on my PC. It's fun to fly around to see how things use to look a long long time ago. But I wouldn't want to make a habit of it.

Amazing how good the cockpit has always looked though.
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Mark

That's too bad. Both my Rage 128 Ultra and 9600 SE cards work fine. I wonder why that is?
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Mark

Hey Mr. B, did you get my response to your e-mail?
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Mark

Just sent you a reply . Sorry about the delay, I've been extremely these last few days.

Cheers

Mr B

You know, I think I've been confused about the different Hornet releases until now.

I have the Hornet Korea "Gold" demo which does support OpenGL on the PC. However, looking back at Pretzel's Hornet timeline...

"1997 1997 F/A-18 Korea is released for PC/Mac.

2000 2000 F/A-18 Korea GOLD is released via patch and boxed ver for Mac. PC Gold ver was planned as an upgrade via web site.

2001 2001 GSC gives the rights to Xicat to publish Korea Gold for PC. Xicat changes the name to F/A-18 Precision Strike Fighter and boxes the upgrade and sells it at full price. The ploy by Xicat is not well like by the flightsim community."

http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=59;t=000285#000001

...there was never an actual Hornet Korea Gold released for the PC. Apparently, GSC made the Gold demo (for PC), but then turned the game over to Xicat who called it PSF.

So my Hornet Korea Gold for PC demo = PSF minus PSF's increased ground objects (i.e. more trees) and slightly better graphics (i.e. glistening water).

So you are running the PC version of the 1997 Hornet Korea which supports only 3Dfx, while the Mac version supports OpenGL (as you explained). And that's why my Hornet Korea demo has no textures on my PC (I was wrong about that in an above post), yet my Hornet Korea Gold demo (which actually = PSF) does.

I think I got it! Until now, I thought that PSF was the first Hornet game supporting the PC with textures. But so did HK, but only 3Dfx (while the Mac version supported OpenGL). So PSF was the first Hornet game supporting the PC with OpenGL.

It all makes sense now!
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Mark

Edit: I was still confused when I first posted this. Only after a few edits have I finally gotten it right (I think).