I also like Micros0ft's FSX as well. Sometimes it's fun to play, "Hey, this could really be me," as I pick up a Mooney from PDX, practice touch-n-goes at McMinnville Airport then land at the Aurora FBO and park my plane. Fun, relaxing, no one trying to kill you, etc. But boring after a few runs so it's back to the combat-related flight sims.
But that's one of my personal, major frustrations. I am a stereotypically picky flight simmer, and right now, there's not to satisfy! How can it be so frustrating for a Wanna-Be/Coulda-Been Air Force nerd to find a good, accurate F-15 Eagle simulation?
I mean, granted, its not THAT narrow a market now, while it's still nowhere where it was, say, 20 years ago. But still, the pickins are good.
There's the Falcon 4 Grandson, BMS 4, that's out now. Fantastic effects, great (well, the best) AI, perfect comms with AWACS, Flight members, etc. The campaigns are awesome, the effects, atmospheric, reflective water, cumulus and cirrus cloud models. And, you can fly a pretty stinkin' good-looking F-15 cockpit in it, with shadow, reflections, etc. But the F-15 cockpit has F-16 symbology in it. I know the F-16's a stinkin' good jet. I fear it as an opponent, and for the few years I was an emotionally disoriented Viper fanboi (from the Ego-ripping I'd gotten from an Eagle pilot at an air show), I flew the Falcon 4 series a lot. But when I re-found my Eagle passion anew, I wanted to fly an F-15. In an F-15 cockpit. With proper F-15 HUD, MPCD and drool cup symbology. Which for me, is kind of a killer. If the BMS makers went and made an F-15C mod showing all the proper icons and layouts in all the screens, I'd be happy as a... as a... as a thing that's really, really happy after it gets what it's really wanted after a really long, long time.
The other best sim out there, tactically and strategically and every way except graphically, is Jane's F-18. Tactics, performance, campaign, AI, wingman commands, etc. are among the best, and tie the Falcon series as the best. But graphically, it sucks on 1990 graphic cards, and let's be honest, it is a Navy sim. That meant something back in the Tomcat days, but not today. It's still a great sim of a great Naval bomb truck. And if that's what you're into, I'm not gonna judge you. No, not one bit. Made by the same company that brought us the F-15 Eagle, however, it's good. But not there. But I digress. And I digress because I like to rip on the JF-18 crowd. Here I am, resisting a digression. So I'll move on.
I will not say a thing that justifies the JF-18's A-10 and F-14 mods for this sim, except to say I think it was embarrassing to simulate an A-10 and/or F-14D with a Super Hornet flight model.
And move on I did. Right on to Lock-On Modern Air Combat. At first I rejoiced- the graphics were great, the models, the wingman commands, not as full as F4's, but very good. The non-repeating terrain graphics, the weather options... it was great! But then the pickiunes began to emerge from within me. The F-15's gun mode HUD does NOT have a line going from the gun cross to the pipper zero-mil dot. I couldn't climb past 30,000 feet, and needed afterburner to stay there. Wingmen, while normally very good, would occasionally just fly off somewhere after takeoff. They'd never form up. I'd order them into formation, they'd acknowledge, turn a few degrees, then continue their hapless flight out over the mountains or over the Black Sea. Then they'd run out of fuel and eject hundreds of miles away while I was eating Alamos from a flight of Su-30 Flankers. And then there's the MiGs, Flankers, Vipers and Hornet flight models. I could turn with any of them. Even on highest difficulty- I could get in the knife fight with 2 Flankers and gun them both, without breaking 7Gs. That shouldn't be possible. Those things just never worked their circles the way they should have been able to. Basically, I had to really, really screw up my BFM to die by them. One day I finally took a naked F-15 Eagle with only a little fuel and tried to make it up to 50K'. After three tries, I gave up. I even flew an exact flight profile.
For a while I've been flying Strike Fighters 2, heavily modded, including the F-15 Eagle Pack. And with a mod and tweak or two, these guys got the F-15's RADAR and HUD blinkies right. Nice, fun, etc., but I got tired of stupid wingmen who wouldn't fight, and a RADAR that was pretty much useless beyond 5 miles (again, especially the wingmens' radars). The graphics were good, the dogfights fun, and so on. The mods for this go on and on. Then after installation, I found that my installation, mods included, took up almost 30 GB. That's THIRTY GIGABYTES. That's too much.
to be cont’d
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