Observations.

[catch 81]

It is truly a revelation for WW1 nuts like myself to see the amazing mod output for FE. You guys deserve a medal for commitment and enthusiasm to duty and must go through a hell of a lot of coffee ! And what can only be described as a frenzy over OFF's phase2 release. A good weekend all round for WW1 enthusiasts. A trend I selfishly hope continues.

 

A few observations of FE from the weekends enjoyment .....

• Laton's Fokker D8 ..... like it, great model .... but is the high speed tail wag built in to the FM ? Diving at or over appox 140mph
  produces a violent tail wag that cannot be rectified until speed is reduced. Just wondering if this is based on possible instability stats at high speed of the D8 or was unintentional ?
  
• In the plane fest (v2.1) campaign DH2 wingmates stall and crash after takeoff. Maybe 40-50% of the time. Also some Walfisch CII's crash for no apparent reason when being attacked and AI FM does strange things like hovering in mid-air or executing impossible turns at low altitude (like in "Flyboys"). My understanding was patch2 would fix these issues and the walfisch (I think?) was released updated for patch2. The DH2 itself sometimes (and again not always but intermittently) goes into a strange sideslip stall that is virtually impossible to get out of and without warning. Many times I could go around in a tight bank until the cows come home .... at other times, doing exactly the same high speed vertical bank would result in this strange stall effect. Anyone else noticed anything like this ? FM setting was at normal which is the recommended setting for these planes.
  
• Setting gun "aimangles" all to zero does not always align the virtual cockpit gunsight with the line of fire (or reticle in "no cockpit" view). It worked for the Bristol M1C but not for the Pup ?
  
• The "mountainous" terrain add-on (sorry can't remember the exact name ... Versogen or something) is great but it has strange rectangular "things" in the sky and huge wall embattlements surrounding towns / villages. I know it's a WIP and I expect these will be removed at some point.
  

Well there's a few observations I can remember anyway lol ! All in all great fun .... a thoroughly enjoyable campaign .... I've survived 2 months (but only by cheating and hitting the refly button when I die lol) and I'm now up to April 29 1916 (he says chuffed with himself) lmao !

[+peter01 2]

Hi Catch, with first two points what mode are you flying in? The aircraft behave differently in different modes, as does the AI which to me seems partly Normal Mode plus something (maybe AI parameters). Actually you can change AI behavior significantly by changing the data ini.

 

With aim angles, the coords are (left/right, up/down, forward/back) I think, so if (0.00, 0.00, 0.00) doesn't work well move left right etc its trial and error, but you can usually get something you can live with (tho depends on how model is designed as well).

 

cheers

[catch 81]

Hi Pete .... with the D8 I was flying in hard mode .... the others were in normal mode. Thanks for the aim angle coords. Messing with files generally does my head in but I'll have a fiddle. I must have the Pup's sites aligned correctly before I have it assigned to me in the plane fest campaign. Otherwise the Hun may win and we can't have that old boy !

[+peter01 2]

Hi catch, forgot to add that the coords work like left = negative/right = positive and so on

 

And just checked my data.ini for the pup, and I modded aim to

 

AimAngles=0.25,-1.5,0.0

 

Also, with D8 I think its pretty hard to get any plane working well in both hard and normal FM, as Laton did with this (IMO Laton did an excellent job with FM) ......even TKs have issues, eg, AlbDVa and to me Se5a. So I'd look at it as a feature

 

I am very surprised about DH2 working like that in Normal, tho of course believe you. I only fly hard, and it is interesting - I like it though. Usually planes are quite well behaved in normal, so no idea - maybe because FM was pre-patch, and never upgraded.

 

With DH2 AI, I changed parameters in the [FlightControl] at top of ini. If they do fast tight circles lower the corner speed, if the go lower all the time increase climb speed, if stall, increase stall speed. You can get them to change their behavior quite considerably, but......it can cause issues with takeoff/landing etc...its trial and error but worth it, for me at least.

 

I am OFF now, few minutes to finish dl.

Edited March 5, 2007 by peter01

[catch 81]

Thanks again Pete. I'll adjust the Pup's aim angles as per your suggestion. But guess what, I finally got upgraded from the DH2 to the Spad7 in the campaign. I'm not sure if the RFC flew the Spad ? and was expecting the Pup. As for the violent high speed yaw of the D7 I can live with it and maybe it's actually how it performed due to poor manufacture of the tail fin and rudder ? Don't know but I heard it was beset with problems due to shoddy workmanship and it was at the end of the war when Germany's manufacturing industry was in a bit of a mess with strikes and such.

 

As for OFF ! Well it's absolute pandemonium over there. I'm waiting for things to settle down a bit before I even attempt the download. Looking very much forward to it though .... but I can wait.