pharoah1, PSF is my favorite flight sim for several reasons...
1. PSF was still available in stores (i.e. CompUSA) when I started flight simming in mid-'03. Unfortunately, I've not come across a copy of TAW yet.
2. PSF features one of my favorite planes, the F/A-18C! I watched one fly over my house just yesterday (usually they fly in pairs) and I'm looking forward to the Blue Angels show later this year.
3. Carrier Ops.
4. Graphics (dated but sharp, IMO)...
http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=002219#000000 5. Very low hardware requirements. In addition to buying a new cutting-edge desktop, I'm also about to purchase a very cheap (sub-$500.00) laptop for traveling which should still run PSF beautifully.
6. Now here's a BIG one, and it's a feature that's hard to come by in a flight sim…
…a Mission Recorder!
IMO, there are two things that stand out about PSF's mission recorder / playback system versus some of the others I've tried:
- It's always on (you decide to save a playback AFTER the mission, not before). And even though the recorder is always on, frame rates are never affected. Tape size is really small too.
- Replays display at game resolution (1024 x 768). Jane's USAF (for example) allows up to 1600 x 1200 game resolution but replays are limited to 800 x 600 and with screen clutter.
As much as I enjoy flying a mission in PSF, I equally enjoy watching a full-screen high-res replay of the entire mission from any view or angle I choose, including from within the cockpit or from the object I've locked on to (i.e. plane or SAM site). I also enjoy watching other people's replays and have learned from them (i.e. learned that you can padlock an incoming missile).
Sometimes I re-watch my mission while panning the 3D cockpit just to see what was going on around me from the pilot's POV. Or I'll choose an external view and elevate it a few thousand feet to see where a missile or enemy came from. Or, if I had a great dogfight, I'll save it and watch it from the enemy's plane.
Watching a replay of your Carrier landing is also fun, especially from the LSO's POV, and also while dynamically changing the time-of-day during the replay.
There's a lot about PSF that makes it FUN to me and the Replay feature is at the top of my list!
F4:AF is my high-maintenance mistress though, when I have time for her.
I really wish Falcon had such a replay feature to watch what others are doing in the cockpit.
Polish glider, Pretzel made a relatively simple mod by enhancing the cloud TGA files. Such a simple mod makes a BIG difference to me (see my link above for cloud screenshots). Imagine if he could increase the number of cloud location points or trees and buildings (located in the EXE, I believe).
He's done many other things too (i.e. created a Persian Gulf theater for Korea Gold [doesn't work properly in PSF]). He's still here in the forum so I guess, like myself, he's still interested in HK. I only wish Graphsim would give him some help and the "OK" to take this sim further. They don't seem to be very interested in HK anymore so why not turn it over to someone who is (within reason)?
And if I shouldn't try to put the burden of an improved PSF on the shoulders of only one guy, then my greatest wish is for Graphsim to re-release PSF (not OIF/ODS) with a more open Architecture for the PSF community (all seven of us?) to mod. At LEAST make the sound bites easily replaceable!
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Mark
Do you have info about new projects from graphsim???
And it's not like Graphsim has been in a big hurry to fix OIF/ODS (i.e. cockpit optical zoom factor still not saved)!