News 21/11/2024 – Something old, something new

Bluesky & DailyMotion Accounts

In primis, I have opened a Bluesky account. I do not use Twitter much besides to share news, and the same will happen with Bluesky. De facto, those are modern RSS from my point of view.

DailyMotion is a French-born YouTube alternative that, unfortunately, is restricted to 1080p. YouTube has changed a lot in the last 10, 15-whatever years. Similarly to Google, it is getting increasingly unfriendly to use, with more and more odd results. Heck, I set as “do not recommend” at least 20-30 channels on average. The last trend is AI-generated videos with ultra “buffed” girls. And no, I never searched anything even remotely related. Yet.

Weapons & Ordnance: Category & Playlist

Away from that, I plan a few simple QoL improvements. In primis, I reviewed the articles and videos related to Weapons and Ordnance and retagged or reclassified them. You can now jump straight to the related articles via the menu.

JF-17 Thunder & DCS plans

The Part II of the Active Radar Homing Missiles study is almost complete, then the plan is to jump into the JF-17’s cockpit and put together a simple timeline. Nothing too fancy, more an alternative to the old Simplified Timeline bit I wrote years back.
Then, I will either close the modern-day parenthesis and go back to the Cold War aboard Phantom-E and Tomcat or write more about the Thunder. Feedback appreciated on this.
The reason behind this excursus is quite simple: I spent the last 5 years solely working on F-14 and now F-4, and I am growing tired of DCS and old problems still dragging on. Plus, RL never allows me to catch my breath, and I needed a change.

Parenthesis

One day, I may talk about the costs and the mess parents have to deal with to help their kids (from tribunals to specialists and infinite assessments), all whilst dealing with other sorts of funny stuff (long Covid was a walk in the park compared to other things). This may help other struggling parents in similar situations, because the road is hard, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel – and hopefully it’s not an oncoming train ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But hey, as my grandmother often put it: you wanted the bike, now pedal.

Setup 2024/5

A few months ago, I made some drastic changes to my setup. I bought a Quest 3, a couple of bass shakers, and finally found a corner to leave my simpit mounted 24/7, and more. Unfortunately, I had time to use it only a few times. I also have a review of the WinWing Ursa Minor almost ready to go since June. I just need time to put it together – see previous point.

Here are a couple of images, everything’s still WIP.

Armored Brigade II

AB2 was released on 19/11/2024. It improves some of the mechanics of the original Armoured Brigade and introduces a simple yet very effective 3D engine. Finally understanding the terrain, working out lines of fire, masked areas, et cetera, has become immediate.

Since Sea Power’s Air-to-Air aspect appears to be very poor at best, I decided against buying it right now. I may record a couple of AB II scenarios at some point, instead.

Side note, C:MO also has some simplifications in the A/A compartment, but they are way less impactful than what Sea Power offers.
Check this article to better understand what I mean about Sea Power limits.