CaptSopwith

Hi Olham! I had a hunch you'd be the first to welcome me back. I'm glad things are well with you. The avatar is Roderick Stanley Dallas, a WWI pilot I've always admired - I still remember "flying wit him" in one of my more successful RBII careers many years ago. I'm amazed you remember my first avatar - what was it? Even I can't recall as I've changed it so many times! As for the resolutions - I think you're on the right track. There's not such thing as too many pledges - aim high my friend, and all will turn out well. I too am planning on getting into batter shape this year - I had surgery over the break to fix a long bothersome hernia, now I can actually get in shape for good once I'm healed up!

My stomach turned when I read this Hellshade. We've lost a real giant and even though I never met him, I felt like I knew him. I echo the sentiments expressed - we should all lead such exemplary lives.

Gents, Just thought I'd go ahead and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I'm heading home which means my computer, and my access to the internet, will be left behind until I return in early January. I promise I'll check back in once I return, and I'll be reading the boards right up till tomorrow morning when I take off for home! It should be a fun Christmas - spent with family, friends, my fiance, and then recuperating after a hernia operation lol! That should be loads of fun. It's been a blast to be back and I assure that this will only be a temporary pause. See you guys in three weeks! Merry Christmas! Or Frohe Weihnachten von der Westfront. Depending on which side of the mud you're on!

Okay guys, bear with me. I'm finishing PhD applications and writing my final papers over the next 12-24 hours and Lord knows I need a break! So I thought I'd write up some thoughts on something fun as a respite from the labors of an academic. During the 15-20 minute breaks I've taken in the last few days while working, I've been playing a lot of Call of Duty 4 on my PC. I've played all of the COD games and I'll likely wind up with Black Ops for Christmas - as I asked for it a few months back (I should have asked for TrackIR lol). And I've noticed a perceptible difference in how I feel after playing a CoD game versus flying a mission in OFF. Now, take the following with a grain of salt - your mileage may vary - these are just my own odd opinions. First, both are immensely fun - no doubt. But a game of CoD (which on the PC features up to 50 people all blasting away on a single map) is a frantic, run and shoot affair. There are always targets in front of you. You sit, clicking away on your mouse, sending rounds downrange while taking fire from all directions. Push too far up the map and your opponents start spawning behind you (we call it a spawn flip). Take cover for too long and you're labeled a "camper" (can you imagine what they'd think of Trench Warfare!? ). Do too well and you must be hacking. Etc. I end a game of CoD feeling hopped up - like a junkie getting a fix, wanting another kill, but never feeling really satisfied. Fire up a mission in OFF, on the other hand, and it's a completely different experience. By COD comparisons its a much slower game. You fly, you look around, you wait. On any given mission you might have one or two dogfights - but usually you'll see dots in the distance and never encounter much trouble (at least when you fly in 1915 as I am). And I feel so much better after a mission in OFF. Is it tense and exciting? Absolutely! But it is so much enjoyable than a quick, manic game of shooting up in CoD. I feel satisfied with the time (and I'm very aware of my time these days lol) I invested in my choice of game. OFF feels great to play, immensely satisfying to fly, and after I'm finished, I feel refreshed and inspired to get back to work. I played one more game of CoD today - and wound up being banned from a server. Why? Because I took cover for too long and hopped to get out of a window. Silly me! It was at that moment when I came to my senses, thought "What the hell am I doing here?" and went back to my OFF career. I flew another Fokker EIII mission, saw no trouble over the lines, and landed safely without ever firing a shot. And I felt great! I guess my rambling point is this. While the gaming community at large seems to view us as a group of fringe oddballs who worry about details that your average CoD player could care less about - I'd much rather be a "fringe oddball" of a "niche" community, than continuing to battle among the masses who think war games should be fought by running into the streets, shooting as many people as they can before they are mowed down, and then repeating. While CoD had its hooks in me for the last three years - I just don't get it anymore. It reeks of the mindless lather, rinse, repeat gaming that seems to be flooding the market these days. It's time to suit up again - put back on the goggles, dust off my old pilots and give OFF the attention it deserves. Thank God my old Sidewinder 2 joystick (which I've had since 2000) still works! Cheers!

Looking forward to reading the revised editions. Quick question: What is the pilot personality profile file do? Cheers!

While I'm shamelessly spamming away on the board - or at least it feels like that as I haven't posted regularly in so long! I'm starting a new pilot career in OFF - as Friedrich Rothmann, flying for Jasta 1 in September 1915. We're flying the Fokker Eindecker. To reflect the times, I've got enemy air activity set to low - so that the number of flights reflects the lower numbers of aircraft on the front in 1915. My question is this: Should I also dip the altitude settings down to "up to 3000ft" as well? If I do, will this alter the AI flights as well, or does this just reduce my flight of Fokkers to low hanging fruit on the food chain?

British_eh, Thanks for reminding me about the SIA Series! I had a hard drive failure back in October and I forgot to require those guides when I reinstalled. Keep up the great work on those - they are immensely enjoyable and informative reads!

You gents are reminding me why I love reading this forum. I'm really enjoying hearing your thoughts on this topic - as well as getting a glimpse as to what you play when you aren't patrolling the front. Overall, the impression I get is that OFF is more satisfying because there is a psychological and emotional investment in the game. And I have to agree. Back in my younger days - playing Red Baron II while I was still in high school and had no idea just how much damn free time I had back then! - I would use a separate program to keep a running journal of all of my pilots' experiences. Unfortunately, the program I used was CM11 which was tied right to RB, so the moment my pilot died, he vanished from CM11, right along with his journal! What I would give to have written all of that down in Word - I'd have a novel by now! Anyway, there was definitely an emotional tie to my virtual pilot. Ten plus years on and I can still recall certain missions like they happened yesterday. One involved me flying with Lanoe Hawker in No24 squadron in February 1916. We wound up in a horrible furball and once I ran out of ammunition - found myself faced with the need to retreat from behind enemy lines for the first time. I played RB's system for all it was worth - ground hopping and using the giant river basins that cut through the trenches to avoid ground fire. OFF would never let me get away with that but back in 1999, you could! And that's the interesting thing. I can remember certain moments in games like Call of Duty, or Fallout, that stick out. But ten years later, I still remember that mission. And here's an interesting point that I'm sure Olham will enjoy - I flew that mission in real time. And darn if I don't recall it as if I actually did it! Every mission I time compressed my way through is a blur, but the real time, real world, real danger missions that I managed to escape from are the ones I recall. I'll be curious to see what Black Ops is like - if I wind up getting it. My old college friends and I tend to bond together over games of Call of Duty. I've never been able to convince them to give flight simming a try. The few that have crashed instantaneously and refuse to even attempt to fight me - even though I assure them that only 1 pilot has ever survived the war in the ten plus years I've been fighting the Great War! They don't seem too convinced! But I bet any of the veterans on here could hand me my butt any day of the week.

Hi James, and welcome to the forum! Glad to see you got your copy of OFF and you're already acclimating to life as a pilot in World War I! I don't have much I can usefully add that the other chaps here haven't said already. Start with a fairly easy plane to fly - the SE5 is my personal favorite. The old Red Baron II manual used to say that the SE5 could make even a mediocre pilot look good - which is certainly the case for me! The other plus is that it's one of the few allied planes with twin guns, which will certainly be useful once you get to where you can put sights on an enemy. A good way of acclimating yourself to flight in OFF is to play several quick missions and quick scenarios - just make sure you check the box that says "pilot can't die" or else you'll lose your campaign pilot! It's a great way to get your feet wet without subjecting yourself to the complete rigors of the Front, with all of its perils. Once you start getting comfortable, jump into a campaign. My recommendation - as I've always played my sims this way and enjoyed the experience more for it is this - if you feel like it, try playing around with OFF with all of the realism settings turned up. I tend to find I learn quicker working with the rules the way they will ultimately be rather than learning an easier system and ramping up the difficulty later. And hey, it'll give you an idea of what it was really like back then. Too bad those early Camel pilots didn't have a setting to turn off gyro effects! Again, welcome to the front! We're always glad to have another new pilot in our midsts. Keep asking questions, and we'll keep giving answers (some more useful and or more sarcastic than others! ). And hey, we like the company! New guy buys the first round!

I completely agree with what everyone has said here. As usual, Hellshade, you completely hit the nail on the head. This passage particularly hit home: If you make a kill, you don't even get automatic credit for it in OFF like you do in WoP and CoD. You have to prove you got it to the powers that be. And kills are hard in OFF. Because they are hard, when you make one, you feel like you've accomplished something. In CoD, if you havent made 20 kills in 30 seconds you are considered a terrible player. The easier something is to have, the less emotionally valuable it is to you. The harder you have to work for something, the more it means to you when you finally get it. So CoD gets your blood pumping and you all hyped up about making kills before being killed...but it isn't emotionally satisfying no matter how many you get because most of them come so easily and so often. In OFF, your blood starts pumpng when you see the dots in the sky and you realize that your squadron and theirs are probably going to end up in a dogfight that could cost you your characters life. You don't get to reload the last mission if you die. You're dead and have to create a new pilot. Everything you've worked for with that pilot is on the line every moment that you are in the air. So with OFF kills being harder to get and with dying having a real penalty that makes you feel like you've got something to lose, OFF is always going to offer a deeper, more emotionally fulfilling experience. I think that is a brilliant summary to why sims like OFF keep us coming back for more, years after they're released. Heck, why else would RB have lived on so long? As Otto pointed out in another thread, it was hardly a perfect product when it was released and it needed years of patches to bring it up to our standards. But it had the same core elements that OFF holds today - the creation of your own pilot, the choice of flying missions in a way you think will work best, and the ultimate investment - death = death. There is no respawn point, only the black and white animation of your pilot being buried. It hits home in a deeply emotional way. And while the technology has moved forward since those days - OFF models airplanes with details that the modders during RB3D's glory days could only dream of - that core dynamic (pun intended lol) is what makes sims like these magical experiences.

I'm sure this clip has been shared before. I've watched this many times today, and just wanted to share with the rest of the gang.

Nice find! The site says RB and RBII are compatible with XP and Vista - I wonder if they've done anything to make the games run properly or if it's still on the user to get them running. I have my original RBII disk but the game runs far too fast on my Windows 7 machine and applications like Turbo can't help me - as I have a quad core processor. Still, nice to see the old gal kicking around!

Wow, another great find Olham! My bookmark collection always expands when I spend some time on the forums!

I was cleaning up my old bookmarks today and stumbled upon this little gem from a few years back: http://www.wingsofhonour.com/overflandersfields/articles/interview_off-team_20081121/html_woh_overflandersfields_interview_off-team_20081121.en.html It's an interview Wings of Honour did with the OFF team and includes comments from Winder, OvS, Pol, Shred, and Sandbagger. I re-read it again for the umpteenth time and it always gives me an appreciation and respect for all that this team accomplished and continues to accomplish. Considering that most of the team live on different continents from each other and have full time jobs / lives of their own - the work done by OBD is remarkable. So enjoy the write up again - as a little snack until P4 comes along.

I think you're right, my friend. That's the trade off. Right now they might not sell millions of copies, but there is also no publisher saying "we want DLC in six months, there should be more multi-player maps, we don't need 5,000 skins, just paint all of the Dr1's red and ship the damn thing!" They can do as they please, add as much detail as their imagination and the hardware allows, and create something we all love.

What do you think guys? Is it any good? I can't seem to find my old CaptSopwith signature with the airplane crashing into the ambulance, so I tried to spruce up the signature space with something appropriate.

Red Baron II / 3D was the reason I wound up here. The long version, in case anyone is interested (not sure why lol) is this: I played the Wings of Glory demo on a PC Gamer CD (it came with the magazine in those days, not sure if they still do that). I immediately fell in love with the game and played the 1 demo mission some 600 times. I even taped myself playing it and provided commentary in a squeaky 13 year old voice - that old VHS is kicking around somewhere! My parents bought the full version for my birthday some months later. The packaging on that game was amazing. Wings of Glory came with a big fat manual, a CD, and a giant (at least it seemed giant at the time) color poster of all of the aircraft on the Western Front in WWI. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Sadly, the game didn't work and the whole thing - poster and all - was returned to the store. I was crushed. WoG was a finicky little thing to run - and actually required more hard drive space than I had. I have the full game installed on my Windows 7 machine and even with the CD copied over, the thing takes up less disk space than the first 6 tracks of Sgt. Peppers! I can't believe we had so little space back then. Anyway, my WWI flying hobby sat dormant for a few years - from 1995 till the fall of 1998. That September we bought a new Dell computer and a month later, I came across one remaining copy of Red Baron II in the PC game section of Wal-Mart (those were the days lol). I begged and pleaded with my parents to buy it (I think it was $30 or something like that) and I've joked with them that it was the best 30 bucks they ever spent. We got internet access in January 1999 and I found the Delphi forum not long after that. Which is how I met OvS, Shred, Rabu, a guy named Rookie109 and Pat Wilson, among others. From there I started downloading patches - UOPs - and figuring out how Red Baron II's file system worked. In the summer of 2000 I worked some odd jobs and saved up enough money to buy a Voodoo 3000 card and the rest is history. Sometime around 2006, James sent me a message (probably on his old Hell's Angels board) saying hey, there's this new project I'm working on called OFF, you really should take a look. I had such an attachment to the 'old gal' as we used to call RB, that it was hard to see myself moving to a new sim. But as OFF improved and I got a new computer, I hopped on board. I can't really remember how long I've been flying OFF - I guess that's what happens when you grow up and years of your life feel more like months instead of the other way around. I remember flying P2 not long after it came out. Anyway, long story short. RB set me up with my obsession with WWI flight. It finished the work that WoG started. I'm a WWI and German historian now because I became obsessed with Red Baron II back then. Like I said, it was the best 30 bucks my parents ever spent. Cheers!

Glad you liked it Olham. Imagine what the team could accomplish if someone invested in OBD and paid them handsomely for their hours of toil at the computer!

Congratulations old man!

Wow! Damn fine work Olham! That picture sent a shiver down my spine.

I visited home for the first time in a while, and came back with the old Dell computer I first played RBII on all those years ago. I fired it up and hooked up my joystick. It was a great feeling. But as you said, it was nostalgic. There was no immersion, there was no suspension of belief. There was only the feeling of "wow, look at the old gal run. We've come a long way." And we really have. I imagine that for you, moving from RBII to OFF was like going from painting postage stamps to having a full canvas to work with. The attention to detail that you guys bring to the game is simply remarkable. I'm a so-called "expert" in the field - at least in the eyes of academia. I'm working on a thesis and I read about the period all the time - but you guys have an encyclopedic knowledge of the bits and pieces of the war that leaves me floored every time. I'm really looking forward to P4 and seeing what comes next. And hey, with any luck it will run on the hardware I've got - cause as a grad student, I certainly can't afford anything new! I'm glad to hear you're doing well mate. You and the rest of the old-timers are thought of frequently. We all go way back, and hopefully, way into the future as well!

Nice find Ratatat! I've bookmarked all three games and spent a good twenty minutes playing through the first Dogfighter game!

I'll also chime in (even if I'm a bit late to the party)! MSE works great on my machine as well. I was using avast until MSE came out. I installed it on my Windows 7 right and it's as if I'm not running any anti-virus software at all, as far as any noticeable hit on my performance is concerned. My PC starts quickly, loads my games and my sims smoothly, and I never have any hic-ups while playing. Quite a far cry from the old days of Norton - when I would have to disconnect from the internet, turn off my Zone Alarm Firewall, and then shutdown Norton Anti-virus just to get Red Baron II to run smoothly! My only complaint about MSE was that it played havoc with my HiTR install process. I would double click on the install exe and the entire machine would lock up. I resorted to booting into safe mode and installing my OFF goodies and then I was all set. That said, that's a pretty small gripe - so I'm quite happy with it.

Glad you guys liked it. TaillyHo: I think this film definitely raises a lot of historical questions. I wish I could get my hands on the original document and do some more research. I think Moritz's assessment is as plausible as anything I can come up with. Here's information on all three possible aircraft featured in the film: http://www.theaerodrome.com/aircraft/germany/aviatik_ci.php http://www.theaerodrome.com/aircraft/germany/dfw_cv.php http://www.theaerodrome.com/aircraft/germany/rumpler_ci.php

Nice find Carrick! Just did some research on the Geneseo Air Show. I might have to go visit. It would be a much shorter drive than going to see The Vintage Aviator in NZ!