Matchstick

IIRC VBS 2 is the Military Simulation based on (some of) the same engine as Armed Assault and I think needs a similar spec PC. The original VBS (which was a similarly based on Operation Flashpoint) was quite popular with the hardcore gaming crowd but cost an awful lot less than VBS2.

The red carpet is the teleport into the US forces spawn room.

Hopefully if I take my laptop I can find some wifi somewhere which will allow me to download. Not sure my wife will be too happy if I spend all my time playing CM:SF rather than looking at the fjords, though

Even worse, I'm starting 2 weeks holiday in Scandinavia on 23rd including visiting Finland...

Whoops, as expected I screwed it up slightly. I got the wavlengths for red and green the wrong way round. Red is 650nm and green is 510 DOH ! I've tried the maths again with the correct starting points and (assuming I'm right) it just flips the direction of the velocity round but doesn't change the magnitude so the kinetic energy should be about right (thought with more accurate numbers it may be closer to 150 kilotons of TNT than 140) but it does mean I was completely off with the wavelength (briefly) seen by our unfortunate observer. I think it should be 400nm which is UV rather than 850nm which is near-IR. [ June 19, 2007, 01:17 AM: Message edited by: Matchstick ]

OK, you want the moon on a stick, YOU SHALL HAVE THE MOON ON A STICK First of all the relativitic equation: My algebra is pretty rusty by I make (in the above equation) v = 7.1*10^7m/s so about 10% faster than the non-relativistic number. So now we know how fast it's going we can do the frequency shift in the other direction Using Lob = sqrt [(c - v)/(c + v)] * Leb again but solving for Lob with v=-7.1*10^7 (negative because it's moving I away) Lob = approx 830nm which would put it in the near-IR I think. Just out of curiosity I wondered what this would do to our hypothetical target: Assuming 60g for a round (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14.5_x_114_mm - no allowance for relativistic mass effect, so sue me) that would give it (using 1/2mass*v^2) 1.4*10^14J of kinetic energy which is the equivalent of 140 Kilotons of TNT. I dont think they would be around to give us their first-hand observeration. BTW I have had wine with tea tonight so it any of this maths turn out to be completely wrong (and I am fully expecting it to) it's not my fault

Shouldn't you be using relativistic formulas for this? </font>

Cos I'm sad I just found out how to calculate this. As a rough approximation of the velocity needed for a specific red shift can be calculated as v = ((Lob-Lem)/Lem)*c where v is the velocity Lob is the wavelength observed Leb is the wavelength emitted and c is the speed of light Plugging in Lob=510nm (a typical value for red) Leb=650nm (a typical value for green) and c=3*10^8m/s That comes out at about -6.5*10^7m/s which means it would be moving at a little over 20% of the speed of light away from you. Just a bit more than the muzzle velocity of even a 12.7mm round.

The Last Starfighter wasn't it ? Gotta love that early CGI

A minor pedant point here, because of it's bullpup design the barrel length of a standard issue SA80 is 518mm which is longer than the barrel length of full size M16A4 (508mm). So if the M16A4 qualifies as a "full size battle rifle" I'm not exactly sure why the SA80 doesn't.

Looking at the video again I suspect in the first instance the Syrians may actually have had line of sight to the US soldier. Though it is difficult to be sure without seeing different angles As for the second one, I'm pretty sure it's the same group of soldiers that are shown at about 1:20 into the clip and with the walls opaque it looks like the prone soldier on the left is firing round the corner of the building rather than firing from inside it.

As Normal Dude says it's sloppy wording on my part. I suspect that going back and editing my post to say "If HE is such a useful tank killer..." would cause complete confusion at this point but it would be much clearer.

I'm so glad I bought my 2 parallel licenses on 2nd May Of course since I only have a Macbook with the Intel GMA 950 graphics chipset the chances of being able to run CM:SF on it whatever parallels can do are pretty slim.

If HE is such an effective tank killer why does no modern army use it against armoured vehicles ?

The arguments don't necessarily have to be technical. My guess is the problem starts with a lack of time/programming resources and the fact that (for whatever reason) there isn't a very big commercial games market for Linux.

From a press release on Bluesnews: That's an "interesting" use of the work postponed there Subtext: "Oops next time we'll actually check with the developers before announcing a release date." I think this bit might be news though:

OK, where's the pre-order page ?

Looks like Gamespot managed to have a play with a beta copy of the game. It's a positive preview but there isn't much really new so I suspect most people where will be interested in a) the pictures (which I think are new) and that Gamespot think it's due to be released in June as well (though they probably got that news from Paradox) http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/combatmissionshockforce/news.html?sid=6170779

Drop your leaves !!! You have 30 seconds to comply... Now, which box did I put that DVD of Robocop in...

Dook, VideoLAN is an excellent media player with support for many codecs already built in It played both the movies for me without problem so if you cant get WMP to work it might be worth looking at. As for the video they look great, did spot a bit of a bug with the magazine loading animation on the M4 one, but I suspect that'll be cleaned up soon enough

My pre-order for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was placed on 27th April 2004 so it will have been on pre-ordered for just under 3 years (assume it does finally ship next week). Of course there is an upside in that I should be one of the first in line to get the Limited Edition Tin and I will be paying £7 less that the current price [ March 16, 2007, 05:01 AM: Message edited by: Matchstick ]

While my Czech copy of ArmA arrived in the post at the weekend, there simply aren't enough screenshots of CM:SF, at the momement, to make any kind of judgment on what on how the two programs will compare. What has been made available for CM:SF has looked pretty impressive so far, but TBH graphics aren't my main reason for wanting to play CM:SF

I'm kind of lost how any kind of real time strategy game could be Played By EMail. I can see how a turn based or wego game would support it fine, but a RTS is a completely different beast.

"If you don't get the mortar on target this time, I'm not going to be happy"

Well it's now 1st of June everywhere in the world (apart from few bits where it's the 2nd) and the Dropzone elicense download site isn't open. What's the ETA folks ?