so quiet in here....

[+whiteknight06604 935]

sad to see the first eagles forums so quiet. 

[bazillius 1,259]

Hah! There is a theory that all forums will be quiet at the end. Entropy of "First Eagles 1&2" forum rises and here is the result of that. Imagine, how quiet it will be after The Heat Death of the Universe.  I don't want even think about it.

[Crawford 570]

1 hour ago, whiteknight06604 said:

sad to see the first eagles forums so quiet. 

It's summer ... 

[Wilches 1,173]

Hope it's true...

[Wilches 1,173]

I mean the summer!

[Eugene2 327]

It is the time to update the date of last message ?

Also we can look the screenshots of "new aircraft" from 3 years ago, 5 years ago...and there are only screenshots. Such a long summer...

[Wrench 9,887]

Quote

It's summer 

but it 's winter in Australia

[+VonS 1,424]

I'm sure the forums will liven up in the fall gents' - FE2 is a niche sim within an already niche community of WWI sim enthusiasts, so I'm not too worried. I'm sure that Stephen and gTerl are working on things behind the scenes as they find time, perhaps some updated terrains or aircraft eventually. 

I will roll out a ver. 10.0 update of the FM pack either this fall or early next year - have to look at the Snipe, also several two-seaters that I never touched, and I'm thinking of whether or not to look at the Bortdafarm Fokk. D.III late variant with the ailerons. There's also a Junkers J.1 that Geezer did which is pretty much complete but it could use a skin or two - that could be released eventually under the "new aircraft" thread, although the Junkers is probably not high priority in the sim since it is only a ground-attack aircraft.

Other things that need tweaking include the spinning/static prop on Geezer's latest Nieup. 28 model, available under the new aircraft thread, and it sure would be nice if we eventually get a Bleriot XI somewhere down the road - we've been waiting for that one a long time. 

I'm a little slow with the ver. 10.0 FM update pack since I'm juggling other tweaks currently...would like to comb over the early Nieups, 200hp Alb. D.Va, also the new Fokk. D.VI and the Spad 13 types for WOFFue. After that I want to finish up with a "Part II" of my early WW2 prop tweaks package for SF2, focusing on some two-engined bombers and a cargo aircraft or two, for immersion...then I'll circle back to the ver. 10.0 FM pack for FE2.

Have also been looking at ROF recently (a lovely sim) but there's no way to mod the FMs in that one - I like their FMs but the aircraft seem somewhat too fragile and are thrown around by the wind like those 3/4 sized replicas, also several of the top speeds are a bit too slow in that one. I did manage to grab a bunch of their planes, on sale - for 40 USD you can pretty much fill up your hangar in ROF, just look for when the planes are on sale for a dollar or two each. Doesn't hurt to own all three of the major WW1 sims.

WOFF is very respectable but needs SweetFX or ReShade to sharpen the graphics a bit more to max. (since it dates back to the CFS3 days). I've found no need to use SweetFX in FE2 or ROF. The FMs in WOFF I think are fine although loops/stalls work slightly differently on some of the types if they are underpowered, also with some of the stock FMs, than in FE2 and ROF.

All in all I think that FE2 is still one of the best WW1 flight sims around, good DX10-era graphics and the modded FMs give a good sense of full-sized WW1 aircraft and their peculiarities. I also like the stall/spin characteristics in FE2. ROF apparently does "real historical" spins but considering the lack of real data for some of the WW1 types - I like the FE2 approach more that standardizes most of the spin problems (to get out of a spin, go opposite rudder, nose down, hope for the best - also in FE2 sometimes you should do opposite aileron to the spin as well, yes counter-intuitive but many of those early ailerons are big so there's a strange logic to going opposite aileron, opposite rudder, and nose down too). One of the other things I've come to enjoy in FE2 are the rare side-slips that sometimes happen, on stall, right into the ground, on a few of the types - perhaps a real possibility on some WW1 types given the high drag numbers and other things.

Three areas I think could use further work in FE2: (a) higher-resolution ground/landscape textures - although they are okay as they are, especially from altitude where they look more like what you actually see out of the window of an aircraft than the other two WW1 sims; (b) lack of real turbulence effects in FE2 bothers me at times although it's not an immersion killer (I wonder if TK included code for turbulence but never "documented" such things...would be nice to figure that out); (c) we need some kind of illusion of solid trees in FE2 (something like a mesh of invisible but solid poles planted approximately where more trees are located would be adequate and would give an element of surprise since you wouldn't know which trees were solid - a very scary and realistic prospect when landing or flying low - this would be a good compromise since obviously the trees themselves can't be made solid....wish I knew more about texture planting/coding in the TW sims but hopefully somebody who knows more about this might try tinkering with the invisible poles/mesh solution to make heavily wooded areas randomly "dangerous").

Happy flying all,

Von S 

Edited June 27, 2019 by VonS
Added info.

[+Stephen1918 1,474]

I'm still playing First Eagles and still enjoying it. I've been coming here every day or two to see if anything is going on. (I agree with whiteknight that it's been pretty quiet.) I've had a few PM conversations, but nothing public.

I've been working on some stuff for the Spanish Civil War, but - frankly - it's hard to get motivated to do all the work to get it ready to upload... maybe because it's summer 

[jeanba 1,920]

I destroyed my install few months ago, and do not have time to repair.

At the moment, I am rather under WoFF !

[+Trotski 936]

I think most of us are still here, I sort of swap between FE and SF, particularly on the skinning side, I have a couple of re skinn projects in the works, as I mentioned to stephen pre Xmas, however I had a catastrophic Vid card  failure and it took me a couple of months to get a new one, as I say I alternate between the 2 sims , because they are both great, looking forward to your next gen FM's Von S, they are always greatly appreciated !! 

Yes a Bleriot would be VERY VERY VERY nice indeed, an opposite number to Stephens excellent Taube,  We could also do ( and I know I sound like a scratched record here ) new Longhorns and Shorthorns for the early war period, again I have Stephens "new" Farmans, and very delightful they are too !! but some early war stuff would be really nice HINT HINT ( too subtle for ya ? ) So Witeknight fear not we are still here and involved even if somewhat quiet at the moment 

[SayethWhaaaa 245]

On 6/28/2019 at 3:27 AM, Wrench said:

but it 's winter in Australia

In the South, it's a f**king cold winter.

EDIT: So I literally just posted that it it began to massively hail seconds later...

[+gterl 1,214]

Orders just came in from the senior generals and admiralty council: THE QUIET PHASE IS OVER

We need:

- Feedback on the new Caporetto terrain and campaign

- New aircrafts like the Bleriot IX, Junkers, etc. etc....where's Geezer

- More WW1 chit-chat

- Screenshots

- Skins

Headquarter expects that everyone does its Duty

 

[+whiteknight06604 935]

5 hours ago, gterl said:

Orders just came in from the senior generals and admiralty council: THE QUIET PHASE IS OVER

We need:

- Feedback on the new Caporetto terrain and campaign

- New aircrafts like the Bleriot IX, Junkers, etc. etc....where's Geezer

- More WW1 chit-chat

- Screenshots

- Skins

Headquarter expects that everyone does its Duty

 

[+Stephen1918 1,474]

I'm looking forward to some new screenshots. Soon!