Just a little something...

[Macklroy 2]

So I've been playing the new patch quite a bit and am really loving it. I had a balloon busting mission today and the BOOMING of the flak bursts around my small flight as we approached was truely scarey! I made one pass and climbed for the blue sky above. FPS for me are solid and the graphics are a great plus. Kudos to the OFF team for everything. If you could break the barriers brought up by the cord tied to the CFS3 engine there would be NO stopping you guys!!!!

 

Now to my point....

 

I am one of the unfortuneate who does not have TrackIR. But for me the padlock view suits my needs along with a small dose of panning view before the heavy combat stuff. One of my biggest issues was that the padlock feature didnt work effectively with 'next' and 'previous' target keys if the TAC was not up. Sometimes not cycling through all the targets. So I leave the TAC up, but a floating GPS radar map in front of me sorta ruined the immersion of my WWI flight experience. I've found a happy middle ground by moving the TAC all the way to the bottom of the screen. It seems to blend in with the cockpit dash while in battle and I dont even notice it anymore. I also set the view to only a 2m radius, and as you can see from the pic below, I have no "radar" view of the aircraft behind me (although the TAC allows me to cycle through those targets still).

 

 

 

 

Just thought some pilots who use padlock like i do but aren't friendly with the TAC screen would find this usefull. S!

 

Just a few pics for your viewing pleasure.

 

 

 

[Check Six 2]

Macklroy,

 

Perhaps what you're doing is cycling through targets. When I encounter an enemy flight, I pause the sim (yeah, OK, it's CHEATING. BAH!) and then hit "Next target" (TAB), then player/target view (not assigned - I went with "G" - actually profiled on my JS). This gives me a view of the target, with me at the centre of the screen away in the distance. This gives me some crucial information...the type of aircraft in that flight (scout, two-seater etc). I then hit "next target", and count. When you first hit "player/target" view, that's looking at the first enemy in that flight. Next target displays the second, and so on. This will tell you how many are in that flight.

 

Keep an eye on your TAC at the same time. If there are more than one enemy flights (and friendlies as well), it will also cycle through those. That one blip at your four o'clock may have three two-seaters and a flight of fighters directly over their head. That would show up on your TAC as a single blip, so you may have decided to investigate unless you check your target views. So, you figure out that there are three two seaters at your 4 o'clock, two friendly SE5a's at 12 o'clock, and three enemy scouts at 11 o'clock.

 

While cycling through all these targets, once you have reached the end, it will display the rear view of your aircraft, then another type of view of your aircraft (maybe "spot view" or "float view", then will re-cycle through your targets again.

 

So perhaps what is happening is that you are expecting a padlock view of an enemy, but it has finished displaying them, if you are getting "nothing". Keep cycling, and they will re-appear I suppose.

 

Macklroy, do you know you can re-size your TAC? might make it even less obtrusive.

 

You need to do a search for the file "viewui.xml". You need to search all hidden files and folders, as there are 4 or 5 versions of this file hanging around. The one you want is in

 

C:\Users\<your username>\AppData|Roaming|Microsoft\CFSWW1 over Flanders Fields or

C:/documents and settings/<user name>/Application data/microsoft/cfsww1 over flanders fields

 

(depends on what OS you're using). You can try them all (I found) with no detriment, but I'd suggest you save each file as you try modifying it, then go for a QC and just check it on the ground, see if it's been modified any. If not, replace the original file, then go to the next file on your search list and try that one. I know it sounds "dodgy" but it works. There are other "viewui.xml" files in the OBD directory, but ti's not those that you need to modify.

 

Ok...so here's the modification. Open up the file with an xml editor or in notebook. The line starts off with

 

<Tactical Display BGIMage = "tactical_display.dds" BGPos="0 0" BGSize="512 512" BGScale="0.15" BackColor="0x1f0000FF" Mode="0"/> <TacticalDisplayMetric BGImage="tactical_display.dds" BGPos="0 0" BGSize="512 512" BGScale="0.15" etc etc

 

 

Obviously you modify the two RED parameters above.

These two parameters have a default value of "1.20". You can experiment with the size if you like.

 

I also changed the colour of the targetted enemy from yellow to green to make it stand out more. You can do this by altering the same file closer to the top where it shows TargetColor. Change the color to 0xFF00FF00.

 

Color change courtesy of Olpaint01 and size change by various, including sandbagger. Thanks guys.