CaptSopwith

Hi Everyone, Just wandering over from the WOFF boards. I'm getting into more modern jet sims - I've had Falcon since 98 and I've dabbled with DCS (but don't have the time or HD space to full commit right now). I played SF2 Israel back in 2009 and have long since lost my backup. I was wondering how, in 2024, I could get back into the series. What would you recommend - is ThirdWire still technically functioning? Are there any inclusive mods to download to bring the series up to date, so to speak. Would greatly appreciate any guidance you can provide. PS: The idea was sparked when visiting the Museum of Flight in Seattle and, when jumping into their full 360 motion sim rig, noticed they were running Strike Fighters. :)

Some recent scenes from the Alsace sector... March, 1917.

What happens when you select "ten wingmen" under the options drop down menu instead of "random..."

Cause it looks like we're heading to Belgium next, lads! Announcement from OBD Can't wait to give this one a go! Pfalzes, Hanriots, and Dolphins, oh my!

Fantastic post, Raine! I cannot imagine the level of terror that would run through me if I caught sight of Gothas, knowing that I would have to try something, anything, to deal with them from my tiny, fragile, scout.

This has been collecting dust for waaaaay too long. Here are some gorgeous photos I took this morning while on my first mission with 1 RNAS. Enjoy!

Not sure I've ever posted in the Wish List thread before but two items came to mind... they are a bit gamey but might be enjoyable / useful. These would also apply to WOTR as well. 1) It would be amazing to be able to save a mission mid-flight. Now that I'm older and RL is increasingly chaotic, I've had to abandon more missions than I can count due to needing to take care of something. A mid-sortie save would be incredibly helpful, or barring that, a way to abort a mission. 2) It would be great if we could listen to Matt's beautiful soundtrack mid-flight. I know it's not super realistic and I do enjoy making my flights as challenging as possible, but the atmosphere he adds is too good to pass up. Cheers guys!

Looks really promising, Shred. Added it to my wish list - thanks for sharing this one! PS: If you look at the reviews on Steam there are downvotes for "a strategy game that engages in one mindless charge after the next..." I suspect they may need a primer on how the Great War worked.

Just picked this up this afternoon. Can't wait to take it up for a spin. My congratulations to our fearless developers who keep creating these gems for us to enjoy. Cheers Pol!

Thank you for that Lou. I've lost count of the number of Stories of the Season I've read but I always look forward to them. Cheers

I've been doing something of a deep dive into the 1915 campaigns in WOFF. It's a completely different world from the one we come to know in the following years. Lots of long, empty flights in extremely fragile aircraft. The tedium of flying to the lines ends quickly when the enemy flak bursts begin. But I noticed on my French campaign tonight, that the observer in the Caudron G4 might have the worst job of any airman in the French Air Service. While I know he could normally sit, I hadn't noticed that the front gun requires him to be on his knees, which would be incredibly uncomfortable while being buffeted around in the air. Worse still, the propellers are horrifyingly close to his body! I'm trying not to think of what would happen if he slipped and fell towards either of the engines. Flying the Caudron is also a hair-raising experience. Thanks to the wonderful engine sounds that accompany the plane are intermittent sputters that sound like one of the two rotaries are going to cough themselves to death. Turbulence is also a jarring experience - mostly I try not to look over the side and notice that there really is nothing under me in the back of this flying bathtub. Truly not for the faint of heart!

So I've been splitting my flight time between WOFF and the new Microsoft Flight Simulator and my jaw hit the desk last night playing through my 1915 British campaign. As our patrol of Bristol's headed out I could see the cloud cover break and the small village below. MSFS uses a technique they call Photogrammetry, which creates some genuinely convincing images of the ground. It's surreal to fly over your own home as the sim models the weather just outside your door. But for a 20+ year old game engine to do the same thing - to essentially create 1915 Photogrammetry? I'm genuinely astonished! It's hard to complete missions because I keep pausing the sim to take more screenshots!

Hi Gents, Hope you are all doing well and staying cool! I just wanted to write a short note to say thank you to this community. I know the history of the EAW group is long and has it's friction points - but I genuinely want to say how grateful I am to each of you for keeping this sim running in your own ways. I got EAW in the summer of 1999, at just 17 years old, as a get well present from my parents after I almost died in a car accident. That game kept me company that year as I played through the Battle of Britain, imagining myself a young Spitfire pilot who was lucky to walk away from a bad landing. Years later I started modding the game, thanks again largely to the group here. I remember digging through Cord's EAW site, downloading STAB, and spending HOURS downloading skins on a dial up modem, so excited to see what new livery I could slap on a Fw190 or my favorite American plane, the P-38. And then... well time and technology marched on and EAW sat pretty much dormant through much of my Windows XP, Vista, and 7 days. Until around 2015 I saw that the game was still alive and running, now on Windows 10. I've been insanely busy in RL - moving, starting jobs, getting married - and it's been tough to find time to work with the old sim. But over the last week, thanks in large part again to your help, I've gotten the sim running solidly again. I have to say how impressed I am with the GoG patch that Mr. Jelly put together. I badly misjudged how much of improvement it would make, and after finally giving it a chance, I have to say that flying 1.29 in DirectX at fps I never dreamed of in 1999, let alone at these kinds of resolutions, is something to behold. I took your file structure and made my own home-brew Max188 inspired Classic EAW set to run with all of the benefits of 1.29 and man am I loving it. The sim seems more stable - though I do wonder if my mad ExtraSquads=5 didn't have something to do with the last CTD I suffered lol! So while I know this board is pretty quiet, especially so in the summer, I wanted to say thank you - you've kept a genuinely beloved part of my younger days alive and it's a real gift to be able to revisit it now. Thank you guys!

Hi VBH, I wanted to let you know that it looks like the exploding plane issue was an error on my part. I copied over several careers from a different version of EAW in order to continue them and that started the problem. Creating a fresh career sorted it out! CTD's seem far less common now that I've dropped ExtraSquads down to 2, I had been running at 3 or higher. Hope this helps sort out some of the mystery (really, it was just me!). Cheers guys!

Hey VBH, Hope you are doing well! So the issues I'm running into involve CTD's when running the stock campaigns in the GoG version of EAW. The exploding planes issue was my fault - attempting to run the stock campaigns with just EAWPRO and I had loaded a previous campaign from a different version, so that was my bad. Otherwise, no exploding craft. Just random CTD's - especially in the German campaigns with a large formation of bombers to intercept. Not sure if that helps but I wanted to give you as many details as I could. Cheers!

Any chance that this could cause CTD's during a campaign VBH? Say when you're in the middle of intercepting bombers on a target run? I've been having random CTD's across the stock campaigns in EAW, but I'm playing with the GoG version of 1.2 or I'm playing with 1.28.

No worries Mark! Your site actually had the answer - I just didn't look! " Intended for online play and offline single missions only, campaign mode wasn't adapted. " Really appreciate your site, mate. I've been going to it nonstop this week as I play around with the different EAW options available.

I am absolutely including you Mark! Your site is incredibly helpful! I'm also interested in setting up a separate EAWPRO install. I've tried dropping in the necessary files ( -(EAWPRO Core Download!) - EAWPRO1.0_Basic.zip and -(EAWPRO Update) - BASIC-update-2.zip ) into my GOG 1.2 install but I'm having some odd issues with planes exploding on launch in the campaigns. Wondering if you could provide any advice on how to set up EAW Pro on the GOG version of EAW. Thanks so much! Hope you're doing well and staying cool!

Thanks Trooper! Hope you are on the mend!

I don't blame you there Rick! I'm sticking with the squadron assigned Bristol Fighter for as along as I can... the parasol is a handful!

Hi Gents! Hope you are all well and getting in some much needed flight time. Here's another collection of photos from my most recent 1915 campaign. I have a whole new level of appreciation for Cecil Lewis wrestling the horrible Morane Parasol!

A few more from my 1915 pilot training with Captain Triggers

I think this falls under the category of "be careful what you wish for!" I've lost count of the number of crew I've sent to an early grave. Accomplishing any mission objectives while being blasted at by AA fire, hounded by enemy machines, worrying about mechanical failures on our own plane... it really shows you just how much the two-seater crews had to manage. It's a constant stream of worries from take off to touch down!

Beautiful images, everyone! Inspired me to toss in a few from my last mission. Hope you like them!

Hi Guys, Just flew a few sorties for the first time on 1.28 and noticing some weird ground texture issues. As I fly closer to the issue, it will eventually pop in the correct ground texture in place of the white blurry texture block you can see in the first two images. It seems isolated to a particular part of the front, so I've attached some screenshots along with a grab of the map location I was in at the time. All stock WOFF, no mods, no other graphical changes. Tried moving the terrain from 4 to 5 and still saw the same artifacts. Thanks, as always, for your help with this one. Cheers