JB0

But as Valkyries are aerospace fighters, aerodynamics DOES matter. They are intended to operate in both space AND an atmosphere(and I'm of the opinion they were designed for atmosphere first, space second). There's no such thing as max speed in space. As long as you're thrusting, you're accelerating. Painfully slowly, if the thrust is very low or you've reached a significant fraction of c, but thrust = acceleration in space. Always. The fact that you understand that you won't slow down once you turn the thrusters off, but not WHY, is sad. And SINCE thrust = acceleration... The longer you burn your engines, the shorter your trip. It actually MAKES SENSE for the Macross' engines to be in constant burn outside of battle. They want to return home as fast as possible. Actually, the verniers will largely only alter orientation. The big engines in the back are the only ones capable of generating an appreciable alteration of velocity in a reasonable time frame. Braking thrusters are an exception, and are of limited use, since they're oriented along the primary thrust axis(and far smaller than the main engines). The plane HAS to be facing the exact direction it's traveling to use them. Or face the exact opposite direction and use the more powerful main engine to stop faster. They're not the best way to slow down, by any stretch of the imagination. They're only really useful during ceremonial performances and landing. Also, the wings serve a useful purpose in space. They get the thrusters on the wingtips farther from the center of mass. Which means it's easier to initiate the desired rotation from them. Simple lever mechanics. The fighter nose is a good place for similar reasons, though the effect isn't as pronounced.

No, it's not the actual act of swapping the bullets. It's the logic behind it, and the fight that follows, that make my head hurt. The BEST is Guld was trying to frame Isamu, and was counting on winning after the gun "jammed" on what I assume was a series of blanks between the paint ammo and real bullets, then grabbed the gun in desperation after he lost control and got the tar beat out of him. It still relies on Isamu acting like a dumbass and "provoking" Guld into beating up on the YF-19 on the specific flight. There's simply no good way to justify the entire sequence. Movie version is far better for the omission of that segment and a few other OVA tweaks that disrupt logic. The other REALLY jarring one is Isamu backing down when Guld starts accusing him of not caring about Myung because he didn't show up at the concert hall fire, when in the OVA he DID show up. It makes FAR more sense when he ignores the arson announcement for some happy time with Lucy. And it has the Ghost battle of raw awesomeness. My ultimate cut basically starts with the movie, then adds the intro with Isamu's zentradi battle and transfer(which aside from being slightly tamed awesome, helps establish Isamu's character). There's probably another scene or two worth putting back into the movie, but... it's been a while since I watched the OVA, and an even longer time since I watched the movie(my VHS is in rough shape, I can't justify spending the cash on the piss-poor R1 DVD transfer, and I haven't picked up a region-free player yet).

There's down, down-forward, forward+A WITH PURPLE HAIR AND BOOBS!

I don't know what bizarro world you live in, but the GBA game was a hideous disaster. Battlecry was at least fun.

That's actually a good point. I'd forgotten Yang was trying to pirate Sharon. It could be multiple things all at once. Guld started in on it, and Sharon lent a helping hand. Or something. That's still a sequence that makes my head hurt, and really shouldn't have been added as-is. But it was, and we're stuck with it.

Your comment WAS a farce. Macross has always played fast and loose with inertia. Most mech anime does. Though the brain is one of the best-protected organs in the body, and it's not implausible that it would survive longer than the eyes and the stomach. In short, your rebuttal is "Guld can't do what Guld did, because the BCS can't do what it did!"

Which is a long-running gripe I have with most mechs. I LOVE the destroids, in part because they acknowledge there is no rational reason for them to be humanoid.

But the whole point of Virtual On is it's a crude approximation of a common anime mech control scheme. I agree it's uniquely suited to vehicles. Robotron and clones are pretty much the only time you'll ever see twin-stick human controls, and they're fundamentally different than the "tank" controls of Virtual On. Not to say twin-stick can't work for human play, but not as implemented in VO. Having one stick control motion while the other controlled aim has worked well for shooters, as an example. You can do that with a single stick. Double-tap backwards. VO-style twin sticks aren't any better for flight than a single stick. The control scheme is still 2-axis motion + jump. It just makes you turn around before you run in a direction unless you use your boosters.

VF-1SOL! But would it be a Hikaru, Max, or Millia weapon pack?

I admit they don't explicitly state it, but it's heavily implied. Sharon isn't hooked up to the New Edwards base. She can't do it. Besides, she has no way to guarantee that Isamu and Guld will get in a fight the next day. Either Isamu or Guld HAS to be involved. Guld is quick to blame the YF-19 team, though this could just be because he hates Isamu. Isamu clearly didn't know his gun had live ammo in it. If he did, he would've either not used it, or when it died after the paint rounds he'd've kept firing until it went live again. Instead, he throws it away, barrier-punches the YF-21, and sits there kicking it over and over, while the live gun lies in easy reach of the damaged YF-21. Besides, would Yang really go along if Isamu said "Hey, I hate that bastard in the other plane. Help me blow it up."? Guld's version is implausable in the extreme. And Yang is as embarrassed, disgusted, and stunned as everyone else by the progression of events. More telling is the fact that Guld disabled the BCS, then grabbed a "jammed" gunpod. While it could've been an act of desperation, he seemed more coherent than that. Grabbing a dead gunpod only makes sense if he knows it's not really dead. And in this situation, filled with paint isn't very useful either. Killing BCS, as Millard notes, keeps anyone else from knowing what he was thinking during the critical moments. So Guld is the only logical choice, unless we add a secret agent of UN Spacey on-site mixing up gun ammo to ensure things go totally wrong.

Just as a note, I don't see the toned-down lightsabers as an issue. The lightsaber has NEVER been treated remotely accurately in video games. This IS the same Lucas that made all the books, comics, and video games canon. Or any of the jilion other Namco characters. Apparently they were looking at Mister Driller as a bonus character for SC2 at one point. WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN TWELVE KINDS OF AWESOME. WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN TWELVE KINDS OF AWESOME. As opposed to the episode where Barclay created a neural interface in the holodeck and wired the entire ship directly into his brain. Or the one where Wesley Crusher rebuilt a broken data, who proceeded to use flashlights to cure the crew of alien brainwashing. Seconded. NAKORURU! NAKORURU!

But a 360 screen does nothing for your actual field of vision. And you just assume it won't be selectable? Actually, it's NOT hardwired. That's one of many beliefs to be shattered in recent years. Someone deaf from birth can learn to hear if given the means. The permanently blind can see, if provided eyes. And if you wire a robot arm into an orangutan, it will develop a section of the brain for it's third arm that's indistinguishable from the two existing arm control nodes in a rather short period of time. Obviously, this hasn't been tested on humans, but it's highly likely that the same will happen. And the wolf sees better in full light too. Besides, you were arguing that we were at the upper limits of what we could process. They can process more information than we do, so I fail to be convinced that we're at our upper limits when a clearly inferior brain can process more. Largely because we aren't really equipped for precise sonic detection. I never said dump the raw radar return into the pilot's head. That WOULD be outside human capacity, if the dolphin is any indication(they appear to have a more powerful brain than homo sapiens, but the vast majority of that power is used for high-resolution sonar). I just said don't dump a squashed 2D representation out to a display screen to be further mangled by the retina, reduced massively by the optic nerve limitations, and subsequently remangled by the brain's attempt to extrapolate out what the eye discarded when technology provides a way to give the brain an unmangled 3D version. Okay, so you're saying IN THE REAL WORLD reading a book about dogfighting is just as good as actually going out and killing people that are trying to kill you? That's all I needed to know. Hikaru, while a highly-skilled professional pilot, was a LOUSY fighter pilot when he started. Max is NEVER seen as an untrained combat pilot, and is also acknowledged by Kawamori to be totally outside the bounds of normalcy. Basara is your only maybe-valid point. His background is never established, so we don't know. Primary points: 1: BCS DOES make or break it. 2: BCS DOES make flying a fighter jet easier by supplying more intuitive access to the myriad features of a VERY complex piece of equipment. Ancilliary points: 1. BDI provides more information to a pilot in a more convenient form, as well as a more convenient way of selecting what information you want access to. 2. BCS reduces the processing load on the pilot by creating a more intuitive way to access a greater degree of information. 3. BDI enhances a pilot's perception of the world to superhuman levels, enabling such feats as flying towards and through a cloud of high-maneuverability missiles without even a near-miss and outflying a computer drone capable of far exceeding human perception and physical tolerances. 4. You genuinely believe combat experience has no bearing on whether you're a good fighter pilot. Guld explicitly states in Macross Plus that he's the only person that can take down the Ghost. It's not because the YF-21 is that much faster and more maneuverable than the YF-19. It's not because he's that much mroe skilled than Isamu(quite the opposite). It's because the YF-21's pilot is operating on an entirely different level than any other human, half-human, or zentradi in the galaxy. And on that note, I drop it.

That's the same way I view it. That and.... the M&Ms were 1J.

That entire scene, while a neat fight, is an illogical nightmare that makes no good sense. Movie version for the win.

BY THE POWER OF SOUL EDGE! I HAVE THE POWER!

Actually, it's totally different. In your brain, a 2D projection of a radar sweep on a display isn't different than the photo in your wallet, or the paint on your console. If that radar display was actually a "6th sense," it would be handled far more effectively in the brain. Actually, we use a tremendous amount of brainpower filling in information that the eyeball discards due to bandwidth limitations of the optic nerve. So you have the relation backwards. Also: I'm not sure how the brain analysing the image and then discarding large chunks saves the brain any work over just analyzing it. And any real pilot already deals with far more things at once than a driver on a cellphone anyways. Getting the information to them in a more intuitive manner is a GOOD thing. Again, we've established that the eyeball discards large amounts of detail. In fact, it's not even a constant resolution across the eye. The center of your field of vision has a relatively high level of detail(though still far lower than most of the animal kingdom, despite having, as a species, one of the most powerful brains on the planet), and the rest of it sucks even by human optic standards. That's part of why it's harder to pick something out if you aren't looking straight at it. If the lowly wolf, can see, hear, and smell better than us, if a small owl can see , hear, and smell better than us, if a tiny bat can see, hear, and smell better than us AND process sonar on the fly in it's head(a task even a BCS'ed human wouldn't be left with, as the computer would do pre-processing anyways), what makes you so certain that we're riding at the upper limits of our own capacity? Do you really think that a civilian pilot, no matter how good, is going to have years of training in how to use a fighter jet in a combat scenario, followed by a military career leaving hundreds of enemies dead in his wake?

The kind of people paying 200 for Radiant Silvergun tend to fall outside the realm of composite movie game NES blowjob, though.

Ah. Shows what I get for taking second-hand comments at face value(I didn't read the article, someone else was telling me about it)

And science has shown that if given alternatives, the brain will rapidly learn them, and even dedicate sections of the brain to processing them. Even if you just hijacking other senses. The tongue has proven quite useful for that since it has a lot of nerve endings and just isn't that useful when you aren't eating. So yes, you DO "magically gain new senses." Yes, you still have to understand how it works. I didn't say you didn't. (Unless the system is set up to interpret simple "go thataway" or "spin thisaway" commands into functional flight controls, which... isn't entirely impossible.) I DID say it'd be a lot easier to learn, and I stand by that. And all that extra information IS useful. Remember, Guld was a civilian. And he went toe-to-toe against a trained military pilot with extensive combat experience.

Hori changes the device ID with every variant of the stick, so even though it's the EXACT SAME CONTROLLER as the DOA4 stick, the drivers don't recognize it. If it was the Windows XBCD drivers, you'd just have to add %XBCD_360.DeviceDesc% =Install, USB\VID_0F0D&PID_000D ; Hori Fighting Stick EX2 into XBCD.inf at the right place(it's painfully obvious where it goes). But I've got no clue on Mac.

You're welcome. Sadly, mine's only been used for the occasional MAME session. I don't think I ever connected it to my 360.

It helps, especially when said pilot-to-be has visual impairments. Visual metaphor VS literal operation. If it worked like that, I'd shoot the designer. And provides finer control of the vehicle, and more intuitive access to a wider variety of information, and...

Heihachi's lack of weapons was a major sticking point. He was totally out of place. I gather he also had pretty bad range issues, since he was the only barehanded fighter. I had the 'Cube version, so... As I understand it, that's only half-true. While each system will only get one in the box, both will be able to buy the other via online store. Microtransactions are lame.

One more reason the YF-21 > anything with a conventional cockpit!

AWACS seems pretty dangerous too. At least, if you're the poor soul Misa decides to ride with....