Tech refresh 2026: Eagles everywhere

The first of the tech refresh articles of 2026. These articles provide an opportunity to provides updates to existing articles, based on lessons learned from other sims, new versions of software released or new information to optimise the game, helping us to run classic sims on modern hardware as well as possible.

These articles will be appearing as and when needed throughout 2026.

This article will be taking a look at a couple of F-15 Eagle sims, F-15 Strike Eagle III from Microprose and Jane's Combat Simulations: F-15 from Electronic Arts.

F-15 Strike Eagle III

The DOSBox config for F-15 Strike Eagle III assumed the default Sound Blaster 16 would be the optimum sound card for this DOS sim, however this seems not to be the case. The DOSBox Staging wiki notes the Sound Blaster Pro with dual Yamaha OPL2 chips for Stereo FM sound is supported by F-15 Strike Eagle III.

To use a Sound Blaster Pro the DOSBox config in the article should be changed to:

[sblaster]
sbtype              = sbpro1

The remaining config can remain unchanged.

The hardware options should be changed by the setup.exe utility, with the Digitized Speech Device set to SoundBlaster Pro (Early), as shown in the below screenshot.

Change the sound card to Sound Blaster Pro

As the settings have changed, the joystick calibration is performed before a mission starts as described in In-game configuration.

Jane's Combat Simulations: F-15

The Jane's F-15 article assumed the use of Glide as the prefered graphics API, however the F-15 v1.17F D3D/JCN Update patch allows the use of Direct3D as well.

The DDrawCompat wrapper can continue to be used, however the config is not optimised for Direct3D use and graphics can be improved with the following DDrawCompat.ini config:

BltFilter = bilinear
ConfigHotKey = shift+ctrl+f11
DisplayFilter = bilinear(100)
FontAntialiasing = off
RenderColorDepth = 32
ResolutionScale = display(1)
ResolutionScaleFilter = bilinear
SpriteDetection = point
SpriteFilter = point
SpriteTexCoord = round(-50)
TextureFilter = af16x
VSync = on(1)

This DDrawCompat config is very similar to the one used by Jane's Combat Simulations: F/A-18 Simulator. The config hotkey is changed to allow use when in flight.

This config can also be used when using Glide, allowing the graphics API to be changed without having to change the DDrawCompat config.

To switch to Direct3D, in the Graphics options, ensure the Video Driver is set to Primary Display Driver, as shown in the screenshot below.

Switching to Direct3D with the Primary Display Driver

It should look like the screenshot below:

Direct3D at 12,000ft

Finally...

Thanks goes to the DOSBox Staging wiki contributors and maintainers for the F-15 Strike Eagle III hint.

Good hunting!