Anyone know a good modern combat flight simulator?

Anticept Guest

I am looking for a good modern combat flight simulator. I have tried many places to find reviews on them, but all I get is "Lock On". It doesn't look very appealing to me, I want a sim like good ol' Jane's USAF and USNF. I would still play them had it not been for the buggy API in Win XP.

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Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

No one is building anything as complex as the old Jane's. The closest you mat come would be this.
Try a demo, I bought it but it wasn't what I was looking for at the time.

Radar

Anticept Guest

That is so sad to hear. My belief: too many n00bish @$$ holes in the world who want ONLY point, shoot, and die games with a learning curve of .01 seconds and an IQ requirement of half that. Can you say FPS? I play em, but they need to be more complex. The days of professional gaming is going out the window due to those people. Today with the air combat sims, I say something as simple as RWR (detects radar sources that are targeting you), FLIR (for guiding laser guided bombs), and S.E.A.D. (Suppression of enemy air defense), people think I am a straight up nerd. I say it is the sign of TRUE gaming dying.

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

Like it or not gaming is being concentrated on consoles not the PC. I knew a guy who had problems loading Jane's let alone using it.
No most complex games are not made any longer, hot graphics is what they are shooting for.
Maybe when 64bit becomes the norm well see those "difficult" games again.

Why don't you work out another h/d and load 98SE to play them. Duel operating systems are not unheard of.

Radar

Guest

Yes that is another reason, graphics. I like em, but only those related to gameplay. It annoys me to have 75 % of my system resources dedicated to a shader system. Yes, it add nice touches, but graphics alone doesn;t make the game, as it seems that most companies believe anymore. Whats the first thing you see in a review? A rating on graphics. And is there is one little detail off, devs devote their life to fixing it. But yet, look at gameplay, if there is a bug, it would take months for a dev to fix it (Battlefield Vietnam Sound looping bug, fixed in v. 1.02, after more than 7 months of complains all over the forums). But, yet companies wonder why game sales go down after a buggy game takes so long to fix (tribes vengeance had only 47,000 copies sold, while it's buggy predicessor Tribes 2 had 402,000 copies. It took them TWO AND A HALF YEARS TO FIX THE MOST MAJOR BUG IN THE ENTIRE TRIBES 2 GAME, which accounted for more than 90 percent of the crashes. And they wonder why Tribes Vengeance didn't sell, despite the fact that people were posting about more bugs on the Vengeance forums.)
Another example: Homeworld (original) had decent graphics for its time in 1999 when it debuted at E3. But it was not the graphics alone that killed the crowd. It was the GAMEPLAY. They introduces a form of 3D movement to the RTS universe that was never seen. And they did it well, not F***ing half @$$ed like other developers would. This made HW one of the greatest RTS games of all time. Then Homeworld Cataclysm came out, and it had a lot of features removed from gameplay, like fighter maneuvers. People still loved the game, but it didnt compare to HW. Plus it had some bugs. Then the death of the Homeworld Series came out: Homeworld 2. Why? They COMPLETELY CHANGED GAMEPLAY. Wonderful graphics, nothing compared, and extremely smooth framerate. But the bad side: no more fighter formations, research now was costly, repairs to ships were slooooooow, etc. They had some wonderful new ideas, like fighter squadrons, but it wasn't fitting for the new gameplay, and soon, Homeworld 2 was nearly dead, not even 6 months after it's release.

My point? Gameplay needs to be a more considered factor, in many ways, it's a dying art.

Anticept Guest

sorry, that was me above.

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

The two major companies Nvidia and ATI will give a game away with a new card if the software developer is willing to put graphics ahead of everything else.
Go to Tomshardware, they put up graphs on the latest cards according to how they play (FPS) the latest games.
If they don't have super graphics they don't get reviewed, that equals=no big sales.
That's why the consoles (I don't have one) are dominating the gaming industry. They cost a bundle and have to have hot hot games to make you buy them.

I just hope that the next OS from MS ("Longhorn") will bring back good gaming because of 64 bit.
If they start to make PC games (64 bit) now they'll be ready by the time "Longhorn" comes out.
All the great stuff came out when W95 did, I had Air Warrior II.

Radar

Anticept Guest

That is correct. It really is sad to put graphics ahead of anything. Oh well, just means the games that do mean something more than graphics will have fewer retards playing them right? 😀

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

Yep, now we have to get a life.

Whatever goes around comes around, what you want will be back in style again. The dorks writing the stuff run out of ideas and come back full circle, look at TV what was old is now new.

Radar

usafseeker Guest

Does any one know where I can get a copy of usaf?
fantastic game trouble is I threw out one of the discs by mistake once.
Anyone know where I can get one?

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

usafseeker wrote:

Does any one know where I can get a copy of usaf?
fantastic game trouble is I threw out one of the discs by mistake once.
Anyone know where I can get one?

Here you go.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00001IVB6/104-0831586-2261569?v=glance&n=468642

Radar

Pro Member Chief Captain
CRJCapt Chief Captain

Falcon 4.0

Pro Member First Officer
Alec Stelloh (Thunderbirdman2) First Officer

Lockon I heard was good for combat and teamflying but the online is lagggy i heard unlles they dont have on line but i think they do. Other wise if you go to stors like walmart or target they have games for ten dollars that are good only one aircraft tho usaly but i bought F/A-18 wich is awsome my freind has f-22 wich im gettn of him

Pro Member Trainee
David Mathew Covarrubias (David_MC) Trainee

Falcon 4.0 is good but if you want aircraft variety then get lock on, wings over vietnam, or wings over europe is a new one, you may also be interested in jetfighter V. you can also get all of those a amazon.com

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