I was wondering if any of you air combat flight sim guys know of any game - or more likely- mod for a game that allows the layer to fly an F-111 or an A-6? Most games only allow for A-10's or multi-roles.
I'm dying to fly a nighttime low lever interdiction mission instead of CAPs or simple ground support missions
Heck, I'd take a B1-B too
Strike Fighters 2 series definitely has an A-6 and most probably an F-111 somewhere. Additionally, I believe IL-2: 1946 with the B.A.T mod probably also has an A-6 and F-111. Fidelity and quality will vary among mods, and neither title is study sim level if that is what you are looking for.
I agree with JH. Those are both very good sims. SF2 is probably much more accessible and a hell of a lot easier to mod than IL-2.
I would start by poking around the SF2 mods at combatace.com. The catalog of add-on planes is very impressive.
IL-2 is cheap over at GoG but modding it is a hobby unto itself. SF2 is not outrageously expensive (www.thirdwire.com) but it is a lot easier to mod. I would start with SF2: North Atlantic since it provides very good carrier operations and is a good base for most mods. Look at the Desert Storm mod at combatace.com. It expands the flyable aircraft list big time. I think there is at least one F-111 in that mod.
Echoing the above. Strike Fighters 2 Vietnam has both an A-6 and F-111 flyable out of the box.
Quote from: SirAndrewD on May 12, 2017, 01:36:20 PM
Echoing the above. Strike Fighters 2 Vietnam has both an A-6 and F-111 flyable out of the box.
There is no flyable F-111 in any of the Strike Fighters titles out of the box. It would require a mod. The Vietnam Air & Ground War Expansion for SF2, which is one of the greatest mods available for the sim, has the F-111A, I believe.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on May 12, 2017, 02:50:50 PM
Quote from: SirAndrewD on May 12, 2017, 01:36:20 PM
Echoing the above. Strike Fighters 2 Vietnam has both an A-6 and F-111 flyable out of the box.
There is no flyable F-111 in any of the Strike Fighters titles out of the box. It would require a mod. The Vietnam Air & Ground War Expansion for SF2, which is one of the greatest mods available for the sim, has the F-111A, I believe.
So it is. It's been so long since I booted it up in vanilla, and the vanilla had so many aircraft, I guess I remembered wrong. Still, I think it's probably the game that most fits the bill.
OK guys thank you. I've played strike fighters to but it's a little too "light "for me; but maybe I'll give it a shot anyway
Here is a F-111 for X-Plane. I like X-plane a lot but have not used any combat functionality in there.
http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/11687-f111-aardvark/
A-6 for X-plane. Looks like an older mod.
Both seem to be prepared for carrier operations in the game.
http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/1445-a6-intruder-v840/
There are some F-111 for FSX too.
http://www.virtavia.com/gallery_F-111.html
https://www.justflight.com/product/f111-aardvark-download
https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/14017/fsx-shrs-general-dynamics-f-111-aardvark-aircraft-package/ (freeware)
I recorded this quite a few years ago in SF2:Vietnam.
https://vimeo.com/24961941
I've been playing a lot of SF2 the last month or so. It's just the right amount of complexity for me. Playing the Rolling Thunder campaign as a Marine pilot in SF2 Vietnam and I just shot down my first two MIG's.
Great series of games!
Though I am tempted to download the free install of DCS from Steam to try it out.
SF does not pretend to be anything it's not. It was designed to simulate air combat without a lot of point and click overhead and it does that very nicely. And there are some seriously good mods out there that blow the original sim out of the water IMHO.
DCS is accurate and pretty (and runs like crap on my rig :P) but it does not really provide the variety and number of historic air combat arenas available with SF.
I am liking what I see with IL-2 BAT but even the latest version is a bit of a modding nightmare.
I can't speak to X-Plane but I have heard good things about it.
If you do find something along the lines of what you're looking for please share. I'm always looking for a good sim.
I might have to reistall SF2.
Quote from: mikeck on May 13, 2017, 12:07:04 AM
I might have to reistall SF2.
I would recommend investigating the various difficulty settings, in the SF2 manual, for serious simmers.
Nearly all the 'difficulty' settings should be set to the maximum option for a decent sim experience. The rest of the lower settings can be quite Arcade-y. The AI is also a pushover unless you bump it up to some extent.
Perhaps the only one you may want to drop down a level is the one encompassing air/ground target labels and the textual speed/range indicator.
There are a huge amount of flyable plane mods for the SF2 series. Just make sure you check which SF2 module(s) you may need for each, as it can vary quite a bit.
Quote from: WallysWorld on May 12, 2017, 09:07:06 PM
Though I am tempted to download the free install of DCS from Steam to try it out.
DCS has some great flight modelling for most of it's aircraft.
The free Su-25T is a lot of ground-pounding fun. Lots of weapons to learn, but that's part of the enjoyment (with explosions as a reward!). Not gonna be dogfighting in it, of course, but the air superiority fighters start at $10 and there are regularly 40% off sales if you ever want to expand.
You'll definitely need to figure out which key commands to bind to your joystick buttons, and write down the other oft-used keyboard ones. That goes for all decent flight sims, though.
DCS has a Random Mission Generator, which is quite handy. But you can also check the ED forums for user-created mission mods that run an ongoing environment complete with unit regeneration & such; for long multi-sortie games.
After getting a passable knowledge of a DCS aircraft type, I tend to jump into multi-player, and buzz around there. Many host long-term mod missions, as mentioned above, and keeps it more lively IMO. Whether moving mud or participating in ongoing aerial warfare over a wide area, or a little of both. :coolsmiley:
I haven't played the series in awhile, but I liked the Yankee Air Pirate 3 games. They use the game Wings Over Vietnam by Thirdwire as their base.
http://yankeeairpirate.net/yankee-air-pirate-3/
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fyankeeairpirate.net%2Fyap%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F07%2F72162_452771878130566_808188752_n.jpg&hash=3843f2fea83b80a5fa7a818d911dac8e30e1728f)
Rising Sun series is sweet :D
http://yankeeairpirate.net/rising-sun/
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fyankeeairpirate.net%2Fyap%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F07%2Fimg02575.jpg&hash=3b7d0e1db7ecb62f3f5fc9553b523ce9fc32e254)
YAP was cool in the beginning, but there are free mods that are just as good, if not better. YAP charged way too much for their mission sets, in my opinion. You can only polish a turd so much and in the end of the day, do you really want to spend a couple hundred bucks on what at the end of the day is still just window dressing on a decades old game?
Well I liked their Rising Sun combat missions. It's cool to fly a real mission like "B-29 Curtis Lemay Showa Steel Works Yawata" or Kenneth Taylor in his P-40 on December 7, 1941. :)
What about "WINGS OVER FLANDERS FIELDS"? It's the old Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3 base program?
Quote from: Richie61 on May 13, 2017, 02:45:41 PM
Well I liked their Rising Sun combat missions. It's cool to fly a real mission like "B-29 Curtis Lemay Showa Steel Works Yawata" or Kenneth Taylor in his P-40 on December 7, 1941. :)
What about "WINGS OVER FLANDERS FIELDS"? It's the old Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3 base program?
In all fairness, I've never played the YAP WWII missions, so I can't really comment. They look to be of the same general quality of the Vietnam packs, though.
I was wowed by YAP when it was released for SF1...However, when SF2 came out, I started to be underwhelmed with YAP2. It was really expensive and there were free mods that covered the entire war in Vietnam while adding just as many high quality, maps, objects, aircraft, effects, etc. The only thing YAP supposedly had going for it was that the missions were based on real events and were created with the consulting by real pilots who flew the missions. This didn't really carry over too well into the game though, because the game itself is limited and immersion can only be taken so far. I never even bothered with YAP3, since they were still charging the same outrageous prices and the underlying SF engine had long been eclipsed.
...and for the record, much of what is used in YAP is other people's work that is actually available as freeware. I'm not suggesting that YAP took this work without asking, or permission. But I just can't justify paying a premium for stuff that is mostly available for free anyway.
I think what YAP offers that the mods don't are the historical missions.