Jane's F/A-18 FAQ (updated 2013/Feb/24

Thread authors: Joe, Doc and Nicolaas

Thread Contents
A. Problem Solving
B. Install / reinstall instructions
C. Updates / Add-ons
D. Training / Missions / Tutorials
E. Virtual Squadrons
F. Related links
G. Joystick files
H. Supplemental Documentation
I. Track IR
J. Multiplayer Ports


===============================================================
A. PROBLEM SOLVING
===============================================================
1. View panning up
Remove the line JOY1_HATUP=CAM_ROTATE_UP from the f18keys.ini file. The change must be made for each mapping that is used in-game.

2. CTD upon exiting mission
This may be the result of a "bloated pilot file". Occasionally a pilot file can increase grossly in size, from 40-70KB to over 1MB. If this pilot flies in a mission, not just as a human but as any member of any flight, then the mission may CTD after the debrief. Although you can avoid using this pilot, it can be difficult to police or remember, so the recommended solution is to delete the pilot file.

3. Fixes and workarounds for graphical problems
FAQ for graphics issues

4. Crash to desktop when pressing the PB (pre-briefed) button on the HARM MDI page.

• Click on your Start button.
• Select "Run..."
• Type "regedit" and press enter.
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Jane's Combat Simulations\F18\Config
• Select the entry "AvionicSaveData" and press the Delete key.
• Press the "Yes" button.
• Close the registry editor.
• Start the sim and reprogram your AGARM program settings if you wish.

5. Nonfunctioning keyboard commands for TDC pushbuttons 7, 8, 11, and 12
These buttons do not work when the UFC is in CNI mode. Switch the UFC to MDI mode.

6. Backing up and Re-flying Campaign Missions

• Fly a campaign mission.
• Exit the sim and navigate to /FA-18/Resource.
• Sort the files according to "Modified".
• Select all of the files that were modified at the time you exited the campaign mission and copy them.
• Paste the files into a backup folder.
• If you wish to restore your campaign to this point, copy the files from the backup folder and overwrite the files in /FA-18/Resource.

===============================================================
B. INSTALL / REINSTALL INSTRUCTIONS:
===============================================================
Team Superhornet Add-on Installation Guide

===============================================================
C. UPDATES AND ADD-ONS
===============================================================
Team Super Hornet
Rudel's Jane's F/A-18E Resource v2
Check Six (french)
Complete wishlist

================================================================
D. MISSIONS / CAMPAIGNS / TRAINING / TUTORIALS
================================================================
TACOPS
Campaigns and Mission Sets at the TSH website
Single Missions at the TSH website
Radar tutorial

===============================================================
E. VIRTUAL SQUADRONS
===============================================================
VFA-41 Black Aces
United States Virtual Navy
VMFA-531 Grey Ghosts
ECV 56

================================================================
F. RELATED LINKS
================================================================
Setting up multiplayer
SimHQ Feature: Jane's F-18 Revisited

================================================================
G. JOYSTICKS
================================================================
Cougar World
Cougar profiles
James Hallows' website
DonUlfonso's webpage

JULIAN DATA'S JOYSTICK SETTINGS (tweaked for Cougar HOTAS):
Pitch (deadband 1):
12 23 36 48 60 72 84 96 100

Roll (deadband 2):
12 23 36 48 60 72 84 96 100

Yaw (deadband 30)
3 9 15 21 33 45 57 69 90

Cougar X and Y axes - Lower DZ 25%, Center DZ: 4%, Upper DZ: 25%, Curve 5

2. CH HOTAS
CH Hangar

HORNIT'S JOYSTICK SETTINGS (tweaked for CH Flightstick):
Pitch (deadband 10):
12 22 34 44 59 69 79 89 100

Roll (deadband 8):
13 22 34 51 65 79 89 94 100

Yaw (deadband 20):
40 47 56 61 71 74 76 79 82

================================================================
H. SUPPLEMENTAL DOCUMENTATION
================================================================
Jane's F/A-18 PDF Manual
Gameplay Guide - Carrier Operations
Gameplay Guide - Jammers and Decoys
Gameplay Guide - Buddy Lasing and FAC Lasing
Gameplay Guide - Employing the ADM-141 TALD
Gameplay Guide - Employing the AGM-88 HARM

================================================================
I. Track IR Enhanced support
================================================================
Naturalpoint TrackIR homepage
Naturalpoint Jane's F/A-18 page
Naturalpoint has a forum that requires registration. You are better off posting Track IR questions here or on the TSH forums
TSH v4 Manual Page discussion TrackIR

================================================================
J. Multiplayer Ports
================================================================
The following ports needs to be opened for Jane's F-18 Multiplayer:

• 47624 TCP
• 2300-2400 TCP/UDP
• 21000 UDP (for Hyperlobby)

I vote for sticky Joe.

Hey great list guys As a side note, my faq site is not just for the cursor blinking problem, but for overall problems with the game BTW, the link for the time accel problem doesn't work?

Hi, Nico.

Since your initial post was a copy and paste of the post at Frugal's, some of the links are not full links, in that some of the links have been abbreviated with "..." inserted in them--Frugal's Website does that. You'll need to go into Edit for that post at Frugal's and get the full links from there and then copy and paste them into your initial post in this thread.

I will also edit this post (later), and format it so that it looks good on the JF-18 site.

Unless people strongly oppose, I will remove "credits". I beleive a FAQ should be as eay to use as possible, and credits clutter it up.

Stuck, updated, and cleaned up.

Nice edit joe.
It looks better and you have fixed all the links.

FAQ updated with Hornits' joystick settings, Julian Data's joystick settings, and recommended TSH downloads.

FAQ updated with a link to the Art Manager download.

FAQ updated with HARM PB CTD fix.

Edit 16 may 2005.
Add snowraver.org with all janes patches
Nicolaas

Hi, everyone.

I noticed that the FAQ in the first post in this thread is missing links to a lot of the other Websites that contain add-ons (like aircraft skins, terrains, cockpits, etc.). Give us the links to such Websites that you are aware of, and Joe can add them accordingly to the FAQ in the first post in this thread.

HI F/A 18 fans.
Thanks to Joe, the post is replaced and complete revised.
Any comment is welcome.
Enjoy

Updated the FAQ with TrackIr related links.
Enjoy

Folks:

Windows 2000 tips for JF-18, from recent personal experience on updating our older home PC.

1. Make sure you're updated to Win2K SP3 or preferably SP4:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/servicepacks/sp4/default.asp

2. Install the MS Application Compatibility toolkit 3.0:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...&DisplayLang=en

3. Install JF-18 by navigating to the setup program on the CD and running it in Win98 compatibility mode (right-click, select Properties, pick Compatibility)

4. Run the game in Win98 compat mode...

5. ...unless you're having trouble getting FA-18 to find your throttle. In this case try the Win NT4 SP5 compat mode.

You should be good to go.

Note: All this advice was garnered from old posts here and on other forums. But it can't hurt to put it in one place.

Nico Heertjes and any others that are flying Jane's F/A 18 using CH Products. The links to my .cmc and profile have been moved to:

Profile ---> HERE
And my .cmc: HERE

the .cmc would naturally have to match your Jane's F/A 18 keys.ini to take full advantage of all the available in game commands.

Ghost: I D/L'ed this file " Game Title: Jane's F/A-18
// Written By: Ken"Ghost"King
// Date: 02-01-04
// Updated: 08-17-05

and have 2 questions. Let me explain where I am. I am just reinstalling Fa18 and have one problem and one question. problem: what do I have to do to get rid of the joy1 hat up sticky.(running XP pro) I deleted the joy hat 1 one files but still stays "sticky"
question 1: why didn't you include "trim" in your CMC file?

fixed sticky by setting the hat to pov in CM and setting the device to "CD 1" with nothing below that. then sliding commands in the the positions in the game

Asside from my flight sim skin booth, I've added an add-ons collection of almost every single skins that was created since the begining of JF18. They can be found here:

http://fa18resource.vmfa-531.com

Hi Folks
New guy in town.
I've been on Lomac for a couple of years and am interested in diversifying into this great sim as well. My son is keen too.
I have the cd but cant get it running on win 2K sp4. I have read the sticky where it say we need ACT 3 from MS...they don't have it anywhere. I have tried several sites. Looked at the ACT v4.1 but there is no info saying it is compatible with win2k. It only says earlier versions can't update something..so can you guys help? Looking forward to thowing myseld into this sim.
Cheers
idhazza

idhazza, what are ACT 3 and ACT 4.1?

Never seen that one either... I originally installed on Win2k. Did you have all the apcompat tools package??

ACT is the Application Compatibility Toolkit. Windows contains a database with old apps that need some patches (called qfix) to run well. With ACT you can read and modified this database. The different compatibility modes (we talk about in the banding thread) are predefined sets of qfixes. With ACT you can assign only the qfixes that are needed.

Updated the faq. Link to a very good australian site with groundschool and other essential information.
See section H documentation in the Faq. The last link.

I was about to post... glad to see a compiled list of very useful info. Thanks very much to Nico!

Your'e welcome ice.
Nice reference site with lots of detail foto's added. See documentation. There are other planes covered as well.

Added some new links:
- Warthog's skins
- Jay's Campaign builder
- F4 Tacref manual with nearly all modern weapons.
Enjoy

This can be added as well. I found the guy that I created a CD-R for aloooooooooooooooooong time ago. He managed to make a copy of that same CD for me, since I lost all of it when my HDD crashed. I uploaded it once again to my server.

http://fa18resource.vmfa-531.com

---

the link for TSH v1, and v2, doesnt work and i couldnt find them on joes site either, anyone have it?

Those links are working for me, Blade. What happens when you try to go to those links?

Me thinks the TSH website is down currently

The TSH website does appear to be down right now, although it was up just a few minutes ago. Those links should work fine when things are up and running again.

That's odd. Those links worked for me when I posted here a couple of hours ago, but they aren't working for me now. I wonder why that is.

And now everything's fine again.

Big FAQ update. Cleaned up some dead links, corrected others. Used the new SimHQ text size formatting features to make the reading easier.

Removed not working links.
Frugals is gone, so all files and cougar related documents can be foud at the website of James Hallows, flyfoxy.

There are also cougars files on frugalsrefugees's site:

http://frugalsrefugees.yuku.com/topic/264/Cougar-Profiles

Hello all, I'm new to this site and am very excited regarding Jane's F-18 issue. I believe this game IS the BEST combat flt EVER (my opinion). When I 1st bought it I had Win 95/98 and it worked fine. As I upgraded to the latest Wins (2000, XP, Vista) I was NEVER able to get the game to work. So I bought ANOTHER Jane's F-18 and that didn't work. So I held onto one game and hoped ONE DAY I'd figure out how to get the game to play. I finally was able to get a small computer shop to build me a Win 98 computer from scratch and I now have a Win 98, XP and Vista computer. So if I want to play F-18 I have to unplug whichever computer is currently hooked up and hook up my Win 98 computer (limited space due to wife issues... lol).

After finding this site by accident I was hoping someone could provide me with answers/directions on how/if it's possible to run F-18 on XP/Vista sys computers.

Oh and I'm NOT very computer literate/savey BUT will give it my best shot for this game.

Also, I have the same issues with Jane's USAF which is also very entertaining.

I seem to remember there being a Jane's F-15... and if so does anyone know how I can get a hold of a WORKING copy of Jane's F-15 AND ANOTHER F-18 copy? I enjoy the game so much I ALWAYS want to have a working backup copy just in case.

Thanks

Hi Marine1,

I think your comments would best be addresses in a seperate thread, not a years-old FAQ thread. Please post a new thread and I (and the rest of the forum) will help you out.

Updated a couple links.

URLs updated. One or two I'm still looking for...

OK, got it up and running, at least stock and with TSHv4.

YEars ago when I was running the game I used to have to install the IraqPaq w/JF15 and then manually switch to the Iraqi theatre with World Swapper. Things have changed since; now how does one go about switching to Iraq?

v6,
boNes

is there a way to upgrade janes F15 the way TSH did with janes F18?

Hi
I have slowdowns when I go air to air mode and in the begining of the thread there is a link for graphical issues and I found the same problem in there along with the suggestions to fix it....I'm not how I can run directx 8.1 if I already have directx 9.0 or higher.. wouldn't it interrupt my new games to run?

Anyway. ..does anyone know a better proven solution for this issue?

I just have a question. Does anyone think that the new Oculus Rift would work with Jane's F/A 18. It is basicaly a monitor with a head tracker in it?

I'm not sure anyone visits here anymore, but I have some problems neither the F-14 Cockpit nor worldswapper seems to be working anymore, I ran Iraqi installer and used worldswapper when the installer told me too but there were no changes in game I still was on the Ncape map with vanilla
Jane's F-18.

Admittedly, I rarely drop into this forum anymore, but for some reason, here I am. Just going off the top of my head, I think worldswapper will write values to Window's registry. Have you tried running worldswapper as an administrator? I have no clue what might be wrong with the F-14 cockpit.

Wizard

Thanks for your answer. No I haven't tried worldswapper as an administrator maybe I'll try that thank you. The F-14 Cockpit isn't the only mod not working no mods at all works from the TSH pack for me.