OFF-time

[von Baur 54]

I'd always taken the flying time in the debriefings as gospel...never questioned it. But three missions ago it struck me that I'd been flying longer than I was credited. I put it down to not getting the start time right (I log start times) and decided to pay better attention next time.

 

Well, next time came and I did pay attention. Start time was 8:15am and it was after 10:00 when I landed, but in the debrief I was only credited with 53 minutes of flying time. I knew I couldn't have made that significant a mistake, so on my latest mission I paid strict attention to the times and had a stopwatch running at the same time...started at wheels up, stopped at wheels on the ground. My takeoff time in the game was 16:45 and change, the landing time 18:11:xx and my stopwatch showed 1:26:03. The debrief screen congratulated me on 43 minutes of flying time...less than half of the 106 that I was actually in the air.

 

Is this something that anyone else has noticed/reported? If not, can the devs look into it and hopefully fix it? After all, if 17 hours of flying time is a mark to be proud of shouldn't the log track it accurately? So far my log shows 4.35 hours, but I'm guessing it could be as much as 8 or 9, maybe even 10 or so. And how many others may have gone significantly over 17 without knowing it because the game doesn't report it accurately?

[+Polovski 441]

Could be wrong sure, I think warp can mess things. Also if the mission is over the timer in CFS3 stops I believe. Maybe you failed something (protect wingmen) or maybe succeeded etc.

[Morris 2]

Von Baur & Polovski,

 

During ur DID campaign mission "warping" is disallowed and I do get the same reading as von Baur. The flying time does not correspond with actual time.

 

m

[Olham 164]

Von Baur, I did some test flying my new skins yesterday, and I broke off right at the start,

cause I saw something wasn't yet looking right. But I was credited: flying time 53 minutes.

For what? I hadn't even lifted off. The second time again; flying time: 83 minutes.

Without taking off at all. It seems to me, that each mission just has a pre-estimated flying

time, that you get credited with - no matter how long you really fly.

[+Polovski 441]

I think it came up before, and I don't think we can do anything about it in P3. Maybe in P4 we can calculate it differently.

You can pause for 17 hours if you want to cheat.

[von Baur 54]

No warping...part of the fun is finding what's out there, even if it's nothing. Plus I'm starting to note discrepancies between rabu's map and the actual OFF terrain so I can modify the maps. Can't do that in warp.

 

Haven't lost a wingman yet, to ea or aa...I'm proud of that. And we've done some damage. Upwards of 30 British planes have fallen to our guns, 10 mine, five just got confirmed (three rejected for lack of confirmation...pencil-pushing bastards!).

 

I thought it might be a hard-coded flight time, regardless how long you're actually in the air, but the last one was scheduled for 39 minutes and I got credit for 43, so that one's out of the water, too.

 

 

Pol, if you and your guys can fix it it'd be great. Meantime, I've no intention of cheating. I'd just like not to be cheated.

[carrick58 23]

I dont have a watch

[Hasse Wind 46]

Von Baur, I did some test flying my new skins yesterday, and I broke off right at the start,

cause I saw something wasn't yet looking right. But I was credited: flying time 53 minutes.

For what? I hadn't even lifted off. The second time again; flying time: 83 minutes.

Without taking off at all. It seems to me, that each mission just has a pre-estimated flying

time, that you get credited with - no matter how long you really fly.

 

How strange! I've never seen this behaviour. If I start a mission and then immediately end it on the field, I don't get credited for more than one or two minutes. Of course I haven't calculated every mission I've flown and compared the time the sim shows me to the real time I actually flew, but I believe I would have noticed if the actual minutes were THAT badly wrong.

[catch 81]

Me neither ! I've never noticed times out of whack as much as vB or Olham have reported There's obviously something seriously wrong with their installs

[77Scout 3]

Pausing the game is one culprit. It will mess up the time calculation, or at least it does on my machine.

 

If you want to know the correct time do a 'mission review'...it will always give you the correct time in the air.

 

You can go into the pilot files and correct the error fairly easily with some editing, as has been discussed previously on the forum.

[von Baur 54]

77scout made a good point, and I had been guilty of pausing the game including several times in the two that I timed. With that in mind I flew a mission without pausing. The results: take-off at about 6:55, landing at about 8:15, credited flying time 77 minutes. Allow for minor inconsistancies ( did I takeoff at 6:55 or did the mission start then and I didn't leave the ground for a minute or two and on landing was it really 8:15 or was that when I stopped rolling), and I can live with it.

 

Then on my next mission I started at 11:45 and set down at 13:25 without pausing and was credited with...55 minutes!!! That's a considerable discrepancy, in my book. But then I remembered that I had manually advanced through two waypoints. While two waypoints shouldn't make that much difference, it could be that throwing the game timer off at all cold throw it off significantly.

 

So on my next mission I made sure to hit every waypoint and not advance past any or pause the game. The only deviation was that I did take time out to engage a flight of Bristol Scouts and one of BE2's. With wheels up/wheels down times of 16:09 and 17:35 I should have gotten 86 minutes but was only credited 53.

 

Catch, I don't think it's the install (though I could be wrong) because the in-game clock shows the same time passing as my stopwatch or real-world clocks, yet the flight time doesn't always match up. I think I've found the line in the pilot log text file for flight time. I'm far enough along with this pilot that I'll keep accepting the awarded time until I earn a Blue Max or I die. But then I'm starting another FA62 1915 pilot (third in a row) and tracking and manually adjusting the log times and see what happens.

 

Meantime, if anyone else feels like tracking this I'd love to see some responses here. I'm terribly curious just how common this is.

[catch 81]

Blimey you have been ripped off there vB ! To be honest I haven't timed any missions to see if it adds up but they always seem reasonably correct. But I can't back that up with statistics.

 

Because it's not a big deal for me now.

 

But gosh, back in the day when PII (yes PII folks not PIII) was released I remember spending an entire weekend getting the 17 hr goal up in the DH2. I think I was the first to do it for PII. That was fun with a litle bit of obsessive compulsive insanity thrown in. The timing was good then (cause I obsessively compulsively checked it) but warp didn't count so you had to fly every mission the long way. Auto pilot was good for that but Unc always called me a dirty low down cheating son of a soandso for using it . Bloody hell yeah shocked me too !

 

The warp function now adds the time (by popular demand) but methinks that's what's screwed up the calculations.

Edited March 22, 2010 by catch