I just discovered this free simulator on the Net. Two years late, since Asid first highlighted it on DOW forums in 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze_xq0sxnAQ
205Mb Documentation here (http://www.mediafire.com/download/y5s92qmc18jdkms/SAMSim_docs_150803.rar).
2014 Review in dailykos.com by Major Kong here (http://dogsofwarvu.com/forum/index.php/topic,257.msg24036/topicseen.html#new). Lots of screen images. I'd like to meet Major Kong one day. He's got a unique style of humour. My style of humour.
Interesting. Here's a two-minute summary from the review before you decide to descend into a rabbit hole of this hardcore simulation:
PC-based SAM simulation on the internet. It was developed by a veteran of the Hungarian military who operated many of these systems in the 1980s and 1990s. This is a hard-core procedural simulator, not an arcade game. You have to flip the right switches in the right order or nothing happens. Oh, and all the switches are labeled in cyrillic. Good luck.
You get a couple different versions of the SA-2 "Guideline", the SA-3 "Goa", SA-4 "Ganef", SA-5 "Gammon" and the dreaded ZSU-23 anti-aircraft system
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0e/6b/10/0e6b10145b5d84cff9e0c2b4287b36cc.jpg)
SA-2 "Guideline"
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You also get several historical scenarios. You can try to shoot down Gary Powers in his U-2 or defend Hanoi against the Yankee Air Pirates in their B-52s. Think you can take down an F-117 with an SA-3? It's been done and the game will teach you how to do it
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Trying to acquire a target is a lot like tuning an old Philco TV set. You have to move your antennas to lock on to the target in azimuth, elevation and range. You have to switch back and forth between various screens because in real life it took several people to operate one of these
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After all this work the actual missile launch is rather anticlimactic. There are no graphics of your missiles streaking skyward to blast the attacking Yankee hordes. You hear the rocket motor ignite and you see exactly what the SAM operators would see - not much. All you can do is watch the blip of your missile on the scope as it (hopefully) intersects with the target. If the target starts to rapidly slow down and lose altitude you probably hit it
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In real life these guys must have had nerves of steel. The second you turn that radar on you've announced your presence to the world. You might as well have a big neon sign blinking "Here I am! Come shoot me!"
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I think I like this game because the equipment is so wonderfully old school. It's an interesting look into how "the other half" operated. It's very high on realism but I would rate playability as moderate. Can't complain about the price though.
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I certainly can appreciate the time and effort the game designer went through to recreate these systems for us. If you're tired of the same old flight simulators give the Sam Simulator a try. Good luck.
(http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bmpd/38024980/3659097/3659097_original.jpg)
My own take on this simulator?
The 1950s to 1980s analog dials are pretty impressive looking. Almost hypnotic. I could stare at them forever. If I were a real SAM operator, I wouldn't last very long if the enemy Capitalist Pigs were to launch a Wild Weasel operation against my station. Did you ever give up learning cyrillic when playing SU-Flanker? Now's a good time to learn how to read cyrillic.
One thing I am impressed with SAM Simulatir's detailed and well-illustrated English documentation. The documentation download file is more than 200Mb because EACH SAM comes with its own documentation - and get this - it comes in multiple languages!
(http://www.moodurian.com/tornado/images/SAM-simulator-documentation.jpg)
Sample of step-by-step tutorial from the "SA-5B_English.pdf" file. Click this. Click that. Interesting and very educational.
Read through one of the tutorials and you would wish that you had paid attention to your maths and physics teacher back in school or in college. Words like "azimuth", "radar", "doppler", "speed", "elevation" and "measured" keep peppering the pages. I was curious to see what a WORDLE WORD CLOUD (http://www.wordle.net/) of one of the PDF files would look like. Here, I've done it for you. Take a look below. The word "target" appears the MOST in the documentaion. The more frequent a word occurs, the larger it is. This is the 100-most-frequent words cloud from the "SA-5B_English.pdf" file.
(http://www.moodurian.com/tornado/images/SAM-simulator.jpg)
Word Cloud done by me based on text from the "SA-5B_English.pdf" file.
Now you can decide if you will jump down the rabbit hole. Cheers Comrade!
From
Frankie Kam