To take pictures in Flanker2, you have to use the PRINTSCREEN button to take one picture per game session and paste it into your graphics program. I dont recommend ALT-TABing with F2. It crashes a lot with this method of going back and forth.

The other way is to set up hot keys that are NOT game key sequences. I use CTL-ALT-Z in HyperSnapDXpro (http://www.hyperionics.com).
This way you can take lots of pictures per session. But it does freeze the game for a second or two. Not recommended in formation flying or dogfights.

Now I want to know how you guys are doing those cute little faces [8^/

Disregard the preceeding, aborted rant.

Thanks for the review. I like your candid style, especially the fact that you didn't pull any punches when it came to F4's shortcomings:
"...Quasi-finished production mega-code that may or may not prove to be a run away bug train." I love it...how friggin' true!

Thanks for the feedback. I _try_ to callem as I see them. But Im just one opinion albiet a vocal one. Falcon4 is an unbelievable simulation, so dont get me wrong. In fact if I had to just own three sims they would be:

Su27 Flanker
Falcon4
Longbow2

With that being said, think of the hundreds of thousands of hours of pain and suffering customers all over the world have had to endure because of buggy code that should have been tested and fixed before releasing it. Which is why I think we should all stand up and cheer for Flanker2 even if this sim itself isnt your cup of tea. That was my point, and not necessarily Len's or COMBATSIM's. Again, I applaud SSI and the direction under Carl, who Im sure had many a sleepless night to bring us this product. And of coarse, lets not forget the unselfish Beta Testers who obviously did a superlative job. F2 is a product of love, and it shows.

I have very recently started following your website and your excellent forums. I had never taken time to read reports and such on the internet before for fear of discouragement. On strong recommendation from Mr. C. Norman, our most talented executive producer at SSI and friend I have read all of the messages on the Forum and have found it most constructive and would like to thank everyone who spent time to assist other users or newcomers to get to grips with this often complex product. I have also just read your article and enjoyed its enthusiasm.

Our team in Russia led by Igor is hard working and most devoted to recreating some of the magic of flight in such aircraft as the Su27 which I have had the pleasure of flying and I am confident that we will continue to improve what has been achieved to date. Flanker 2 is one step to further developments we trust. We have a wish list for this product range which now contains more than 300 points and grows with all your good ideas. We are as such very aware of the numerous inexactitudes and suffer the frustations that are created by them very personally. Please accept our apologies.

It is often with regret that one must fall short of the perfect product and as such suffer the written rage of many. It is however always with enormours pleasure that one is rewarded for such efforts with good words of encouragement.

Thank you for motivating article. From our perspective and with some time, luck, good marketing and tolerance we will have more for your review and a better product for our customers.

Yours,

Carl

BTW, who exactly is Nick Grey, and is he with SSI or ED? Forgive me for asking.
And why did he gets to fly the SUe and I didn't? heheh

I believe that F2 is in a world of it's own as a combat simulation - i am very impressed with it.

However there seem to be some serious shortcomings which need to be addressed ASAP IMHO.

My main grip is the padlock system and the inability to padlock missiles - this makes missile evasion very difficult indeed. It promotes switching to external views which a) are simply no good in helping a player dodge a missile and b) completely ruin any sense of immersion in the sim.

The manual has an excellent description of the best way in which to avoid missiles - keeping the missile at one's 3-9 line and trying to fly out of the missiles FOV/LOS - this simply cannot be achieved without being able to padlock the missile.

I just loaded it, and have only flown for a couple hours, but I wanted to come here and write my first impression. The last jet sim I played seriously was "JetFighter II" (1992, I think). Since then it's been props only, WW1 & WW2.

I must say, I'm very impressed with this sim. It is quite obvious this sim is first rate. It really feels good flying this plane. The control and balance seems just right, I really feel I have excellent control of it. I also really like the simplicity of the HUD, seems to me how one should be. (if only I can get used to those rear-view mirrors).

This sim has a great immersion factor in so many ways. One example is that switches, gauges, and many other things are in Russian (although you can change them to English, I'm not going to).

You also get the very friendly voice of "Natasha" reminding you to do things you forget, or when you try to exceed the envelope in some way. Actually, she's always telling you lots of things. The funniest thing was while I was just flying around sightseeing and Natasha starts singing "Bingo fuel... Bingo Fuel" with her Russian accent. I almost crashed just laughing so hard. It's worth the price of the sim just for that.

Anyway, this sim seems to have everything, and an abundance of it. Campaigns, Navel and Ground targets, and of course Dogfighting and Carrier Landings. It also has great little training sessions so you can learn the planes flight and weapons systems very quickly without having a lot of reading to do from the manual.

The really important things of a flight sim [ FM and gameplay] is what this sim seems to have accomplished with excellence. I don't think we'll be hearing many complaints in that area. Graphics are very good, although not as beautiful or realistic as other sims of the last few years. But its accurate and does the job nicely. But it's a flight sim, not a sight seeing tour of the landscape.

I also like that the game developers are here reading and posting to flight sims boards like this one. I think that is really important, and it makes me feel much better knowing that the developer cares about what we think and that we can talk to them.

I haven't tried dogfighting or carrier landings yet. I will be taking my time and will learn this sim thoroughly. Hope to see all of you in the friendly skies over Russia in the coming months.

Now, if only somebody can figure out how to combine both Falcon 4 and Flanker 2 so that the two sims can play against each other in the same Multiplayer game, THAT would be the ultimate!

Salut!

I was thinking to be good at combat simming.

I mean, I flown every combat sim since fighter combat on ZX Spectrum (48 Kb RAM !).

With the exception of Flanker 1 - 1.5.

Flying now Flanker 2.0, I understand why SA is important, why energy management is important, why I have to think ahead of my adversary.

I'm toasted and grilled by everything flys in Flanker 2.

But I'm learning. And I'm far away to be frustrated, since every time I do somenthing better than the previous time, I'm really happy.

So, just a suggestion: if you think yourself as a good sim pilot, if you want to learn what is a/c combat, if you want to understand why all the manuals of the sims you bought in the past had those fancy figures about ACM, but you ever won by doing simple circles, well, try Flanker 2.

The second mission of the campaign involves flying CAP for a joint F-16 / SU-25 strike package on some artillery pieces. I have flown this mission about twenty times, shooting down all the opposing fighters, and successfully protecting the package.

But I wanna reply regarding the missile padlock issue. While I do agree that it would be a nice feature, the purpose of a 3D cockpit is so you could swing your head around where and when you need to. You can keep track of missiles manually. In some cases it would prove even better then padlock since you are in control of where you are looking. Anyway, please go over to PaleRiders Flanker page and download the .trks (6 of them I think) of him evading both AA and SA sticks. http://users.bart.nl/~willem/

Thanks for the path to PaleRider's TRK files. I think that learning to avoid sams and a2a missiles is a key skill to accomplish in F2. I suggested to Carl Norman that they consider making an option in the mission editor (as is recovery) to enable missile padlocking or not. In this way you can satisfy both the hard core manual panners, and those that feel that limited SA in sims makes missile padlocking a necessity.

Carl is a reasonable guy, I think they will do the right thing. Ive also asked Mark STINGER to consider making a training tape for this purpose as well. Let's keep the polite pressure on him till he submits. 8^)

Personally, Id like to see those blasted chat windows that pop up during a dogfight go away before the kill me! I know about the turn off switch, but thats too drastic. I hope that F2 will use an integrated chat line like unto F15E or F4. The pop up chat window is perfect for preflight set up though.

Ive also been informed that the instructions
to make our own voice training for F2 is included in the game's README.TXT

Check 6... and 12, and 3, and 9, and......

Is your version availible at the store...my version doesnt seem to work that way. My enemy AI flies in formation while I gun them. My cockpit reflections aren't visible, the camo's are blurry, and how does a Max Gross weight Su-33 take off from a stationary carrier...?

I'm curious since I hear that V3's produce a slightly less vivid picture in the sim.

Does anyone know of screenshots where I can compare V3 to TNT2 (especially cockpit instruments)?

Thanks in advance.

Upon good sources, here's the story with DirectX versus Glide 3D API support for Flanker2:

1. F2 was designed and optimized for DirectX
2. Glide based graphic accelerator boards do work with the sim, but not optimally.
3. The box says they recommend DX 3D cards and they recommend AGP.

This means that PCI and Voodoo2/3 cards do work but are not the recommended hardware as you probably can tell from peoples experiences.

I have seen people move the DX textures to the PCI textures directory as a workaround,
but thats not my way of doing things.

That being said, I have been told by SSI that the first patch will improve Voodoo compatibility using the _most_ recent 3DFX drivers.

In my articles, I use a P2 400 with a Blaster Riva TNT1 and with medium settings it runs great with only slow downs when Im very close to the hard deck and theres lots of objects.

Plus the addons I mention in the article will be linked or downloadable at Combatsim soon, assuming Len can find the HDD space for them.

I strongly recommend that you all keep the perspective that for a 50 dollar sim, we got a heck of a lot for our money the first go around. So stay cool and lets keep supplying SSI with constructive and polite feedback. Perhaps someone from SSI can post an email or website issues for simulation bugs and enhancement requests.
I would also like to see a depository for aircraft cammo skins and missions.

They never did have a clue about 3dfx and its obvious at release they still hadnt learned.

How do I know this...? hehe...Well lets say Ive known it for a long time. It almost looks like someone got lazy and instead of resizing the textures each by hand (not a big job since only about 10 files need to be adjusted) they attempted to do them all at the same time. Thats how some textures got reduced from 17k to 5k..making them unusable. Thats also how the cockpit reflectin texture got screwed.

When I finish my review...which will show the brilliant along with the not so brilliant, which is what a review is supposed to be, you will see the difference between correctly reduced files and botched files.

The truth will set you free....

What still puzzles me is why I can't use the V3's dx capabilities under AGP... Or can I?

I figure I ought to be able to configure F2 to use "Primary display device" under d3d and thus avoid glide altogether. Is this not possible? Or perhaps the issue is that V3's direct x capabilities are below standard in Flanker2.0?

Let the record state that I am totally uninterested in flaming either 3dfx nor nvidia. I just want the best overall board for my system (P2 350, 128 Mb) *and to some extent F2*.

Anyway.. I appreciate any accurate feedback I get.

/P

Anyone have any knowledge about that card in relation to F2?

Is this a problem, or some kind of an attempt to correctly portray a russian fighter? Sometimes systems fail before I even throttle up. This would be ok every now and then, but not every mission!

There also needs to be a way to acknowledge Natasha, let her know you realize the "Radar is Innoperative". She repeats the warning every 2 seconds, the only way to shut her up is to shut all sounds off with a CNTL-S. Not good for the rest of the mission.

I have the chance of trying a lot of hardware (a friend owns a PC shop) and so far, including the Creative Ge 256, the Matrox G 400 Max is still tops.

Why? well, first:

1. Better colors

2. Faster, yes, faster.

My second choice would be the GE 256 (if you can get it)

Thirdly, the Diamond TNT II Ultra, great card.

Still, the Matrox is still the best (the G 400 Max now ), head and shoulders above the rest.

Try the Matrox, only with a powerful CPU though. Magazines tell you that a 400 MHZ will do, well, not true. This card requires a good deal of "muscle" behind it to make it shine, I'd recommend a PIII 500 and over to complement this fantastic card.

On the lower end, a GE Force or a TNT II Ultra should help out, as a note, I haven't noticed much difference between the two!

Lastly, the Matrox (G 400 Max) is still king, it does however warrant a high end overall system, it's your choice but if you want the best, well, the Matrox G 400 Max is trully the best. I keep mentioning "G 400 MAX" because of the fact that the regular "G400" ( without the magic word, MAX), single head card, is nothing worthy of your purchase, it's basicaly a run-of-the-mill TNT II type card.

Get the MAX (only the Max now), you won't regret it!

My couple of cents.

Good luck.

Salut!

Can anyone help me out please?

------------------
"Whats wrong with you?"
"Your school wishes to honour you and you turn up with a dead body and a hooker".

Ive consulted with a gentleman who builds high end gaming machines as his livelihood. And he says that when youre in the mid range system such as me:
P2 400 Intel CPU, 128MB RAM, TNT1 or V2
That you probably will see game pauses from both the hard drive seeks and video card fillrate limitations. And of coarse this is a function of what your game graphics options are set to. I set mine at medium for gameplay, and high for detailed picture taking purposes only.

So heres the poop on when to upgrade RAM vs when to upgrade you video card. The next time you fly Flanker2, when the game pauses, look quickly at your HDD lights. If they are blinking away, then you know its hard drive seek/reads and your RAM is insufficent to keep most of the game resident in memeory. If on the other hand, the pauses are due to your flying in a high object density area like a city or mountainous region and the HDD lights are not dancing; then its a video card fill rate issue.

Flanker2 runs fine with 128MB of RAM, but 256 MB would most like eliminate any HDD pauses. If you have less than 128MB of RAM you should probably upgrade your memory. This assumes you have a P2 300 or better, below this you need a faster CPU even before RAM.

Now if the issue isnt RAM or CPU, then the next area is likely to be your video card's fill rate. I am told that a TNT2 Ultra runs F2 much faster (30 FPS vs 15-20 FPS) on
my system over a TNT1 or V2. This is because of two things. One being a faster graphics processor, the other the AGP at 66MHZ bus speeds versus 33MHZ of PCI. Even the V3 AGP is not getting the textures directly from main memory, but instead from Cache at the CPU's expense. In short, get a newer generation video card if you have fill rate related pauses. Pick AGP over PCI, and SSI states D3D over Glide based accelerator hardware. However a Voodoo compatibility patch is in development and testing. Hopefully this will also address the AGP vs PCI texture resolution issues that PapaDoc has aforementioned.

Now the last 2 things I want to say about optimization for F2 (or any sim) is swap space allocation and HDD defragging. Swap space is best set up as static and roughly 2 times your amount of RAM. I use 300MB static swap, meaning dont let Windows manage the virtual memory allocation. The second issues is defragging your hard drive. It works hand in hand with your Swap Space. Make sure you disable the swap space before you defrag, else that reserved area will not be optimized. Then run defrag, then re-enable your swap space. Then reboot to enable it. Last piece of advice is to load your sim AFTER you do this hard drive optimization so that the game is compact and contiguous. And if you keep defragging, you will splash the game around the hard drive. So you can actually hurt yourself by regular defrags without reinstalling the sim.

Im sure if you heed all these, you will minimize your pauses. Sims like F2 and F4 are cutting edge, and they make us use our hardware and drivers to the max. It will always be this way in this hobby. Now Im sure there are other tricks, but some are going too far for the average joe, and others I just didnt know myself.

Hope this alleviates some of your pauses.

AV8R

Am I on drugs, or do the 3d cockpit screenshots in Part II of your F2.0 review show arrowed lift lines that point to the nose of the aircraft? Have these only been added to the screenshots, or has someone modified your copy of the sim. I don't seem to see these on my version and I want them!! They would be so helpful to maintain SA. And yes, i have the canopy reflections enabled.

Youre not on drugs, and youre eyes are not decieving you. My cockpit has lift lines because some very good graphic artists have altered the default reflections art.

I plan to make reference to the known addons that Ive dug up in the last portion of my part 3 F2 review. The problem will be in getting the HDD space at CSIM available or in getting permission from the various authors in allowing masses to hit thier little websites. But I will do what I can.

AV8R

Our new site goes active sometime this week.

Carl