They are made by TK, who was the main engineer on European Air War, a late microprose title. You should give them a go, but do not expect too much out of them. Essentially they’re a one man show, and that shows. Bit of jank, bit bare here and there. But for what they are they’re excellent. Last of a breed of serious but not hardcore flight games. The AI is fun to dogfight, and there is far less switchology than EF2K.
Best enjoyed with mods, lots of mods.
What I basically want is just enough realism to be fun, plenty of planes to fly and dynamic campaigns.
The kind of realism I appreciate is in how the planes fly and how their systems operate behind the scenes. I do not appreciate switchology. That’s (a small but real) part of why I really enjoy WW1 flight sims, even the hardcore ones: not many switches on those old crates.
TW’s sims are light on switchology and bells and whistles. The graphic engine is barely early 2000s. They’re great “kick the tires & light the fires” sims, but TK’s frugality shows through quite often. And he charges way too much for them. (Note: even though TK did a failed half-ass Kickstarter to update the sims to Windows 10, they generally already run ok in that OS.)
But the mod scene is absolutely off the charts. Want to fight a complete 50’s (early or late) war in the appropriate aircraft? The modders have you covered. A full Vietnam conflict? Some brushfire war with weird French aircraft on both sides? WW3 in the 60’s-early 70’s? It’s all there. That in itself overcomes the sims’ antiquated presentation.
Where does one get these mods? And are they easy to use? And how are the dynamic campaigns?
CombatAce is your one-stop shop. The dynamic campaigns are… well, not like Falcon 4 (there’s nothing like Falcon 4), but more of a random-mission generator kind of thing that has a “lines on the map move from side to side” kind of influence on the conflict. In short, not as good as F4 or EF2000, but pretty much better than anything else out there.
What is up with the missile on that harrier? :)
I think the campaign stuff works well enough. IIRC you basically are a pilot in a unit and it generates random missions for you. So with the NATO mod you can fly in a unit of tornados and go bomb wp airfields in east Germany.
That’s a Sepecat Jaguar. @schurem chose two planes that put things above wings that by all rights should hang below them. :)
/me hands in geek card
lol, what an odd design.
Oh man, I don’t know if that old thing still runs on my machine, and if it even has multiplayer…
<.edit:> …and it don’t… and it doesn’t. (I still have my heavily modded copy of the game sitting on my games drive, I loved it that much!)
TK is working on a compatibility patch for windows 10 so we’ll have to wait for that. I don’t think it’s likely he’ll manage to hack in multiplayer. Be cool if he did, I’d love to get my ass handed to me by you @scharmers in a 1v1 MiG-17 vs Lightning Mk5.
Yeah I chose to screenshot a couple of odd duck planes, to show the NATO fighters glory of the thing. It was the first sim to allow objects to cast shadows on themselves, IE see the tail’s shadow on the fuselage.
I’m talking about Bodenplatte. :)
There is no multiplayer in SF2, correct.
Oh right, yeah of course. I’m dizzy as fuck from work and told myself no VR tonight, but for you I’ll make an exception :D What server do we pick?
It’s going to take me a while to align the stars with my HOTAS on the mount of my choice.
what…what kind of work do you do?
Currently I do gardening/landscaping. I have no idea why today I’m dizzy because I have worked longer days, worked harder than today and eaten less on a day. Very odd. Perhaps I drove the shovel more than on other days? I don’t know.
I threw up a server, the password is qt3. Y’all are welcome to have a go!
I think, before I dive into SF2, I’ll try this:
Way cheaper, and if I like what it’s putting down, I’ll dive into the big pond.
NO NO NO NO NO
STOP @BrianRubin
This is SF1, not SF2!!!
Buy one of them at Third Wire. Steam doesn’t sell any SF2 stuff!
SF2 is old, but SF1 is positively ANCIENT. You will be sad if you buy this.
It’s that VR shit doing weird unnatural things to your prefontal lobes and pineal gland
Must be, you comin’ or what? I just took the server down because the game does not support hotplugging a HOTAS. Meh. I also need to look up a mission that containts the new map, if there even is one yet. Perhaps you could host?
I’m on mudspike discord if you want voice comms.
