Chuck "PFunk" Bellows reviews the latest from Third Wire: "Wings Over Israel".

http://www.simhq.com/_air11/air_345a.html

Thanks for a good review, PFunk. I just have to ask, did you fly the mission to take out the Osirak nuke plant?

There are single missions in WOI? I haven't seen those

A good review, but it doesn't mention one of the biggest new features, namely static aircraft on the airfields (although it is shown in a screenshot, so I suppose that counts :))

As the review points out, the campaigns are fairly historically accurate, at least the orders of battle are quite accurate and also the ground war resembles history. I experienced a "wow!" moment on my first mission in the WOI 6 Day War campaign: an all-out strike on Egyptian airfields using the (historical!) ingress route via the sea. I was so excited about seeing those aircraft on the apron that I forgot all about my SEAD duties and strafed them instead (and got shot down on my second pass by the murderous flak barrage). Excellent!

Nice job PFunk. Never have had the time to get into any of the SF series of sims..but they look like they have pretty good gameplay.

PFunk, thanks for the great review. Good job.

WOI and FE's first expansion introduced a new weapons format that requires a new (just made available) weapons editor. As a result, the weapons pack from Bunyap and all previously released weapons with planes and instructions in the readme are incompatible with WOI until they get updated.
So, if you're putting a plane in WOI, make sure it uses weapons already in the game OR alter the loadout file for that plane to make it use the weapons that ARE in WOI or you'll wind up with no armament.

DO NOT load Bunyap's weapons pack, or the Mirage Factory's smaller (designed for the weapons needed by their planes released since Bunyap's summer 06 release) one, into WOI.


The Jedi Master

Actually, there is a quick way to get the weaponspack into WOI.

Use a separate install of WOI just in case you don't like the results.

1. Install the weaponspack.
2. Download the new weapons editor from ThirdWire.
3. Go into your WOI/Objects/Weapons directory and delete the weaponsdata.DAT file.
4. Open up the weapons editor (after setting it to run in Win98 compability mode) and open the weapondata.ini file.
5. Hit the 'Save' button.
6. Done. You now have all the weaponspack weapons.

It actually took me longer to type this than to do it.

There are a few tweaks you may want to do for max results.

Anyway, I thought it was a good review and pretty balanced. Shadows are definitely a frame rate killer.

FastCargo

Thanks Chuck, another excellent job.

So, just how was the dogfighting?

It's still making me smile.

pfunk

Pfunk

I am very disappointed in your review of WOI. It was way too general and this sim stands out on many levels over the previous version yet you only touched on them. You gave it "matter of fact" overview and failed to dive into the sim to see what was under the hood. Very ho hum. The only part you nailed was the MP, its the same ole, same ole.



You could of avoided that problem with a little research, instead you negated 3rd party modders work in a few sentences. What a shame.



And you did it here. Like mods or not, fine however, you once again negated the hard work of others. So as a new person, you have gave the impression that mods are not worth the trouble. That they are too complicated. So I guess you won't be using the Desert Storm Mod when SP5 comes out then? It might actually require you to do a few things.

Not the finest review ever written by SimHQ.

Actually, he told me what I needed to know.

I want my simulations to work out of the box.

It's really a huge slam on a development team when they rely on others to do the work for them for free.*

So we have a new category of division within the Simulations ranks - modded and unmodded.

[edit]

* If one is going to pay 30 USD for it.

I find it disturbing that many games and sims are open source as a crutch rather than as a means for building a community.

No argument there, however TK has stated that moddabilty was part of the sim. Its made to be moddable. Its not a crutch, it was designed that way on purpose. We aren't doing any of the work for him. Never have. We've added to it. Like TK envisioned, like the MSFS has envisioned. And with 1378126 downloads of 3582 files just for his series itself at CA. The numbers don't lie.

I burned out combat flight sims last spring when it became more work than fun to play F4:AF. But I just DL'd WOI and now I'm back. Yeah, this is a very nice piece of work. Good gameplay and decent graphics, and just demanding enough to be a challenge, without giving you a brain tumor and major inferiority complex in the process. It compares very favorably with WOV. As PFunk says, much better AI.

Enjoyable, useful, accurate review PFunk.

What Franx said.



USAFMTL, you have some valid points, but I see yours and Chuck's to be just 2 different opinions. I'm more of a 'prefer not to mod' person myself, but I really didn't feel that Pfunk's article negated any of the hard work of the modders or in any way gave the impression that mods weren't 'worth the trouble.' I'm sure he'll chime in later...

Oh, and I've modded Rfactor and ARMA quite a bit, and other sims, I just prefer not too. To each his own.

Just my 0.02.

I am not saying you have to mod at all. But damn, saying you would rather kick your own ass than use mods is a turn off. It will scare people away, either review it out of the "box" and not mention mods or add mods and you better know what the hell you are talking about when you do.

Im a little confused. Is this a mod to a existing Thirdwire sim or is it a stand alone product?

Very well written PFunk, 2 thumbs up!

Respectfully

krise madsen

It's a stand-alone product. You can get it here: https://store.thirdwire.com/store.htm
So far you can only purchase it through download, I don't know if there will be a cd-version later.

I'm sorry but I have to agree with USAFMTL.

this review is a bit disappointing

The Thirdwire sims should IMHO be considered as a continue development of one engine, thus this review should be more focused on the progress made to the engine.

As for mod vs. no mod subject:

TK's series IS designed with modding in mind, and this part of the review should be extended to show casual readers/possible buyer, what this series is made of, and what are the possibiliteies of WOI. Not doing so causes casual simmer to think: "arrr, some lite sim, not worthy money".

And that would be untrue and unfair to both TK and those who do mods.

I do not say this review is bad, but maybe should be written by someone better oriented in Thirwire sims universum

I really don't have much to comment on the review, as I took the cue:


So I stopped reading (and peace is ensured once again).