First Eagles ScreenshotsThread

[33LIMA 972]

A Bristol Fighter gets a nasty surprise, in the form of an Albatros D.V firing air-to-air rockets...

...actually of course, it's just an optical illusion from a plane going down in the distance :)

The Brisfit is one of the many essential planes for FE/FE2 that's available courtesy of the A Team Skunkworks.

[33LIMA 972]

The same scene, from the viewpoint of one of a formation of AEG G.Vs brave enough to venture out on a daylight raid:

 

[33LIMA 972]

"Hmmm...now, why can't MY boys maintain a nice tight formation like those Rolands?"

 

[+VonS 1,424]

Been busy "downgrading" the data ini for Geezer's Halb. D.V into a D.III variant (since the model is newer than the D.III available from A-Team). Also further tweaking of the FM for the Caproni, and more work on the Longhorns and Shorthorns - will roll these eventually into a ver. 9.7 of the FM updates. Also incorporated three more winds into the environsys files for the Flight folder - should work well for sudden wind change/gusts and to compensate for lack of true turbulence in the FE2 engine. Happy flying and happy holidays fellow FE/FE2 flyers!

Von S 

 

[33LIMA 972]

Some more pics from my current Jasta 4 campaign. This is the stock Cambrai one, modified to add some additional planes eg Jasta 10 flies Pfalz D.IIIs (my own staffel probably should have at least some too, this being late November 1917, not sure if there is a way to get mixed formations). Also the Hannoverana replaces some DFWs in Schlastas, and the Bristol Fighter is now serving with at least one RFC squadron opposing us.

There are of course Camels about, difficult targets but my flightmate (I will not use the later term wingman for WW1) managed to get this one. First flamer I have seen in a while, the impact was quite dramatic (likely I'm using an effects mod).

[33LIMA 972]

I have edited Missioncontrol.ini to increase the default mission heights, so now often get some at 10,000 feet, like this one escorting AEG G-types. The weather is about 8/10ths cloud as you can see.

With the November sun low on the horizon, FE2's lighting effects can be rather beautiful, and winter version of the stock terrain, though lacking railway lines, is still pleasing to my eye.

 

[33LIMA 972]

I like how you can be taking off for a dawn mission in low light...

 

[33LIMA 972]

...then, by the time you get to your patrol area (where the 'next encounter' facility saves many a longer transit flight), the sun is up...or the moon is out, depending on the time you started...

 

[33LIMA 972]

It's proving a tough war for Jasta 4. The opposition is not much more numerous that us, but determined and well-equipped, so I'm taking four, sometimes five other pilots with me, inevitably a mix of successful and less so. We have a good run for a while and get a couple of victories between us on a mission or two, then we have one where we get split up in a fight and more enemy scouts turn up. Sometimes I manage to shoot an enemy of a comrade's tail, other times I don't, or only see him go down after it's too late anyhow. We're lucky if we catch a couple of R.E.8s on a recce...

 

 

[33LIMA 972]

More often, we meet Bristols, often just in pairs; but just as in real life they are well able to look after themselves, faster, very agile, and with stout gunners who will lace you with their tracers if you give them half a chance. Most of the time, they disdainfully run rings around us. We sent this one down smoking eventually, but only because I was able to damage him with a deflection shot as he whizzed past across my nose, setting him up for stern attacks from a friend as he tried to make his side of the lines.

 

[33LIMA 972]

The next mission, on 30 November, was uneventful until we came across a couple of Camels in a fight with some Pfalz. I somehow got my aircraft identification mixed up and had a long-range rattle at one of the latter whom I thought was an Englishman shooting at one of my Albatrosses, not the Camel both were chasing. Happily I missed, the Camel went down minus the outer portion of his upper mainplane. The Pfalz then climbed up to the west towards the cloudbase, reforming as they went. I could see no signs of other enemy aircraft and  after calling my own flight to heel, I led us home. With nearly half my staffel killed or prisoners, my offensive spirit is clearly at a low ebb. This is where I find that FE's squadron management feature gives the player a much keener sense of what it was like to fly in the attritional air war of WW1 than any other such sim I have 'flown'.

 

[+VonS 1,424]

10 hours ago, 33LIMA said:

This is where I find that FE's squadron management feature gives the player a much keener sense of what it was like to fly in the attritional air war of WW1 than any other such sim I have 'flown'.

Attrition rates are wonderfully modeled in FE2 - noticed this when flying in 1918 for the Germans in the Ottoman theater...it became more and more difficult to survive, let alone to get hits. FE2 is full of surprises that I still discover on occasion. Obligatory screenie below from an early-war scenario.

Happy holidays all,

Von S

 

[Eugene2 327]

My personal skin on the excellent WIP Nieuport XVII by Geezer. I hope we can fly on final version in 2019. 

[jeanba 1,920]

[+gterl 1,214]

[+VonS 1,424]

Finally successful with tweaks to get FE2 running in BootCamp on the Mac with no stuttering...will post relevant directions later under the relevant Mac thread once I tinker some more with this...all settings at high/unlimited, and the d3d10_43 dll dropped into the FE2 main (not user) folder...with advanced shaders on in the options.ini file....currently I'm incorporating shader (fx) calls into the relevant effects, particle, and environsys files, also have to turn shadows on in all the relevant inis...lots of work.  FPS are between 200 and 300.

Von S

 

[+gterl 1,214]

Farman Shorthorn with better gunner (armed observer)

[+gterl 1,214]

wonderful SAML S.2

 

 

 

[+gterl 1,214]

[33LIMA 972]

Being a bit of a stick-in-the-mud - not an entirely inappropriate condition, for a player of WW1 air combat sims - all the recent modding activity for the Italian front hasn't yet lured me away from my Biggles-based but still dominant affection for the Western Front (all quiet or not).

My Jasta 4 Cambrai campaign came to a nasty end when I collided with a comrade attacking the same enemy; first time that has happened in a while. So for a change of pace, I started off an Armchair Aces campaign with KEK Douai in August 1915, flying the Fokker E.I. I'm staying alive and racking up a surprising number of kills, including several on a single sortie. This is all the more surprising because the E.I is a truly awful fighting aeroplane. Rate of climb is nearly non-existent, while turn rate and radius are nearly as bad, with a tendency to judder on the point of a stall at the drop of a hat and to fall into a wild spin if you don't ease back or push the nose down when duly warned. Recovery is do-able but only after a lot of height is lost, so tight turns at low level are right out.

Still, the varied and smaller-scale air fights are a lot of fun and modded FE2 brings all its inherent virtues to the party, including the ability to 'warp' and avoid transit flights, the rarity of uneventful, contact-free missions, the reliability of flak in indicating enemies, and the unequalled variety of aircraft types. Here are some scenes from recent missions.

Illustrating the continued superiority of FE's pilot animations over all comers, I look down soon after take-off, despairing at why the earth is taking so very long to drop away below me.

After finally managing to get above a few hundred meters and reach my patrol area, a more agile French-made and flown Morane 'Bullet' goes down, after I eventually managed to put enough rounds into him.

Bringing on your flight-mates is a strong point of FE/FE2, so I am happy to keep watch above, as a comrade knocks down a Vickers two-seater.

Not to be left out, on a later flight, I knock down a BE myself...

 

...and on another mission, I too clobber another hapless Vickers...

Sadly, no pics were taken of Nieuport 10s doing what they do best, namely, bursting into flames after a few hits. I think I will edit the campaign files for that period as I am seeing too many of these (the British didn't use them apart from the RNAS near the coast, not where I'm flying, and a handful briefly loaned to the RFC 'for special duties'). And we must by now have shot down an entirely disproportionate number of the forty-nine Morane Bullets produced. The Morane Type L 'Parasol' would probably be a decent substitute for one or both, and I have seen none of these so far.

Anyhow, for the sake of historical accuracy, I'm resisting any temptation to put more than two or three Fokkers into the air at once. Thankfully, the equally small enemy flights make this no particular risk, although we have lost one pilot due I think to a mid-air collision. Despite the pretty hopeless performance of our machines, we are usually well able to beat up one enemy flight before moving on to the next. So life with Kampfeinsitzerkommando Douai is pretty sweet...at the moment. And I'm reminded why I still reckon modded First Eagles/FE2 is at least as good, if not better, than any other WW1 air combat sim. 

[+VonS 1,424]

Time for some fresh screenies from our favourite, niche WWI flight sim - FE2. Been doing a bit of WOFFing and a lot of ROFing lately on the BootCamp side of the Mac Pro (in Win10), and I'm pleasantly surprised how well FE2 holds up when compared to those sims. It seems that we have FMs now that are close to those in ROF (from what I've been able to compare in ROF), but AI that is closer (more varied) to the one used in WOFF - best of both worlds I think. Thank you modders for your continued work on FE/FE2. Early morning offensive patrol in the pics below, using Stephen's new Galicia terrain (pics. below are on medium settings in WineSkin, by the way, on the Mac side of things).

Von S 

P.S. If you've put in enough "flight time" with the modded FMs in FE/FE2...you shouldn't have any special difficulty flying the FMs in ROF that have often been described as very difficult on full realism settings. 

 

[Sky High 166]

I have all three, but I couldn't make any hand at ROF, whatsoever (this is my fault, rather than that of what is an excellent sim, enjoyed by many). So, I removed it from my increasingly-crowded hard-drive. And, while I appreciate the great achievement that is WOFF, I almost always turn to FE2. I couldn't do a mod to save my life, so I can only repeat my gratitude for the work the talented people on here have so generously shared in order to bring this game to its current level of excellence, achieved in the face of such worthy competition. Thanks is also due to TK for providing us with a series of games in which all this has been possible.

Edited January 6, 2019 by Sky High

[+Stephen1918 1,474]

Gterl's Caporetto terrain has inspired me to dust off some planes I haven't flown for a while.

(my Aviatik-Berg D.I, my Hansa-Brandenburg C.I, my Phoenix D.II, Laton's Phoenix KD.I)

Edited February 1, 2019 by Stephen1918

[+Stephen1918 1,474]

I must have hit his fuel tank because moments after this shot, the Nieuport exploded. My Phönix got clipped by a wing and I went down too.

[+gterl 1,214]

Playing around with the water effects...flooded fields and a bit of train sim