CaptSopwith

Wow, glad you're alright Bullethead! That was a frightening read! Having been in two serious crashes in my time (one in which a van hit my two-seater Miata at an intersection) I know how unnerving those moments can be! Glad to hear you walked away from a very near miss. So did they ever figure out why this woman was driving the wrong way on the highway? Please tell me it wasn't something completely moronic like texting while driving...

Wow...

You're right Olham, but it is pretty easy to get a little fired up and angry when you're being shot at by half a dozen enemy planes all while trying to take off! So the second patrol of the day wasn't much better than the first! Reinhart and his trusted wingman, Max-Wilhelm Lammertz joined August Nitzsche on a patrol behind friendly lines when we attacked a flight of Sopwith Triplanes. I must admit, I'm surprised by how well the now aging Albatros DII fighters cope with the much more nimble Tripes. Unfortunately, while I was zipping around in the dogfight, I must have had a collision with someone as my right wing took some massive damage. Thankfully, with liberal use of the rudder, I was able to keep fighting for a few more minutes. Looking around for a friendly field to land at, I started to work my way out of the dogfight. One Tripe, however, noticed and wouldn't let me out of his grasp; firing away at me until my scout was well and truly shot up. Control wires damaged, nearly no elevator use, and a damaged engine left me to limp at ground level back to the nearest field I could find. Thankfully we were over our own lines, a definite advantage to flying as a German (as we usually patrol our lines and wait for the enemy to come to us). I sat down my scout, which was then written off in the debrief. I think this is the third plane now that Reinhart has lost to enemy fire! A little tip, if you're being attacked and you can get low enough fast enough, try tree hopping. Weaving in and out of the trees seemed to deter the chasing tripe from completely shooting me down. Then again, it might have been more luck than strategy. What was it MvR said? If I survive this war, I will have had more luck than brains? Reinhart lives to fight another day, though I'm beginning to question my choice of posting about his career - the war has become much more serious since my post last night! PS: Here's a screenshot of Reinhart's shot up Albatros DII. That was quite the interesting landing!

Well, that's what I get for posting about a relatively peaceful, smooth sailing career! After finishing my morning coffee, I decided to take old Wilhelm up for a morning patrol and what do I get? A scramble where we are attacked by an entire squadron of Spad 7 fighters that literally shot every single wingman down! I've never been so tense at the controls of a simulator in my life! After taking off and getting airborne as quickly as I could, I looked up and saw a swarm of tan Spads with British markings (Damn Krumpets!) diving on us at high speed. Worse yet, the bastards waited until we were just airborne, rather than risk strafing us on the field. As we're desperately trying to get some altitude, theses Spads come blasting through us, guns blazing, and immediately take down one wingman, sending his DII spinning into the trees at the end of our own runway! I did everything I could, downing three of them (and they had damn well better be confirmed, their flaming wreckage is literally on our runway!) After 11 minutes of the most harrowing flying I think I've ever done - spent circling, diving, climbing, kicking rudder left and right, evading, and constantly weaving to get yet another determined Spad off my tail all while taking pot shots at anything English that wandered into my Spandaus' sights - I was down to one gun and my plane had been shot up a few times. I was determined that I was not going to die within sight of my own damn barracks! I came in and landed sideways on our field, taxied up to the hangers, and bolted from my DII, running for cover, and for my life! Three of the Spads remained airborne after we gave them all we had, and our ground crews were busy firing away while the English menace continued to circle and strafe the field. I'd like to think old Wilhelm ran over to a machine gun emplacement and gave them some more wrath! That's one hell of a way to start your morning. I've attached Reinhart's claim sheet. You should enjoy his write up on the second page - Wilhelm's tone is just slightly more agitated this morning compared to his usual accounts of combat in the air!

You're killing me today Widow! I just watched the video at the top of the article and now I'm all choked up. Wow, the world could really use more men like Henry today.

They are all leaving us, 90 years after the guns of August fell silent on the Western Front... Soon all that will be left will be their pages in history, and the scars left on the land in Flanders. Truth be told, they are the reason why I'm in school to become a Professor of History. Salute! "Died in his sleep, age 113." I hope I'm that lucky one day...

I had that in my XP install years ago as well Widow, I wouldn't worry too much about it. I don't remember ever getting rid of the problem. IIRC, XP hits this glitch when there are more programs installed than the Add/Remove app is programmed to display. It doesn't really create any issues, and I remember solving it only when I reinstalled XP after formatting my drive. Bit drastic to solve a cosmetic problem, but there you go. Cheers!

Wels, I'm running an 8800GT card, which I know is slightly more powerful but... Have you looked at Homeboy's settings for improving your OFF performance? I was getting decent FPS, with some stutter and running at a lower resolution until I went through and followed his instructions (though he'll be the first to credit Rabu for coming up with the settings in the firs place ). Here's the link to the thread. Try Homeboy's suggestions. In the end, my slider settings remained the same, but my resolution went way up, and my FPS jumped from 15-25 to 30-65 with an increase in detail and graphical eye-candy. Just a thought, and a cheap alternative at that! PS: In terms of Homeboy's resolution, you'll likely want to adjust accordingly. Example, I'm not running at his resolution, rather I backed it off to my native desktop setting of 1680x1050. Hope this helps!

You know, I completely misread that in the campaign manager. Somehow I didn't see "no" in front of rank, so I've just been typing it in. I seem to have about a 50% acceptance rate. There was one mission where we pounced a flight of 4 N17's over our own lines and just utterly decimated them but received no credit. I can only assume that because the weather was so horrible and they were downed in the trenches that perhaps that contributed to it. I'll have to remember that in the future. Thanks mate!

I did some warping on Reinhart in the first few missions, and there are three missions which I aborted in under ten minutes (one was an aerodrome attack with bombers at 15,000 feet and us on the field, so I exited out) - so I think that's skewing the flight time. The rest of the missions have all been short hops near the lines, so I think that's keeping the hours a little low when compared to missions flown. Cheers!

I know this is a tad more modern than our canvas and wooden planes but... To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the JFK library put together a truly remarkable website about the mission. It's all flash based and streams the radio transmissions between Houston and Apollo 11 through all stages of the mission. On July 20th they streamed the mission in real time but now the entire mission is archived and you can access all of it whenever you want. There are few websites I'd actually recommend, and even fewer that have truly wowed me over the years. This is one of them. For anyone who loves history and the history of manned flight, you should check it out. I spent hours there. http://wechoosethemoon.org/

I just checked out the thread in your link and wow, talk about inspirational. Thanks for passing that along Mark.

I've been doing a bit of reading here on the forum lately and I've noticed several different approaches to the graphics set up in P3. So I thought I'd post my system specs and see what the graphics tweaking gurus might have to offer. Gateway FX 7024 Desktop PC Intel Core 2 Quad Core @ 2.40ghz 3GB RAM nVidia GeForce 8800GT Factory Overclocked Windows Vista SP2 I've been running OFF at 1440x900 with 2x anisotropic filtering and 4x anti-aliasing. My CFS3config is set to: Overall = 5 Terrain = 4 Scenery = 3 Effects = 4 and Clouds = 1. So, any suggestions or am I on the right track? It runs pretty smooth with some minor lag over large cities or during incredibly intense furballs, but otherwise I can't complain. But you know us PC users, we want to squeeze every last ounce of detail without sacrificing performance.

Title pretty much says it all. Is there a file somewhere in my OFF install for my customized control settings? I've been tweaking them and I finally have a setup I really like but I want to be able to back these up in case I ever have to reinstall. Thanks in advance!

Wow, that was well and truly buried. I managed to back it up but if I ever have to reinstall I'll need to ask where to put my backup file! Thanks guys!

Thanks Homeboy. But where would I find this in Vista? I tried looking for a docs and settings folder but to no avail...

Widow, I went ahead and took a screenshot of Homeboy's post and saved them as two jpegs for future reference. They are saved on my portable Hard drive along with all of my OFF patches. Might want to give that a go so you have a copy for the future - he changes so many settings that I'd never remember them all!

Another fantastic room! Man Shred, I think you're giving Rabu's den some competition. The historian in me is busy oogling over your book collection.

Welcome aboard Jimgad. Just wanted to say I thoroughly enjoyed your post. I have to say, with all of the gaming I've ever done (everything from the Atari 2600 to Call of Duty 4 on my Xbox 360 to Doom and Red Baron 3D on my first PC) nothing is as satisfying as flying in OFF. It is simply remarkable. Best $50 I ever spent!

I came up with mine about ten years ago when I first got online. I was on the old Delphi forums back then and needed a handle of some kind. About the only plane I knew at the time was Sopwith and I always liked the rank of Captain so I combined the two. CaptSopwith. I also went by the handle Prof or Udet (which I used when flying online in RB3D). Exciting, I know...

Then what in the hell are you doing here!?!? You should be out enjoying yourself, not worrying about us! Jeeze, if I was at the beach with my girlfriend, do you think I'd be hanging out here? (No offense guys! ) Hope all is well Otto, enjoy your vacation mate!

I couldn't have said it better than that Lou, you really summed up the real-world experiences that OFF attempts to recreate and how it succeeds in a very big way. Another good example that might give hope to the pilots struggling out there... I've flown every WWI flight sim since Wings of Glory came out in 1994. I was a die hard Red Baron II / 3D pilot who frequented all of the old Flight Sim Forums, downloaded all of the latest patches and mods, and I fancied myself a pretty damn good pilot after all of my years of flying over the Baron's version of The Western Front. OFF P2 came along and yeah, I was impressed. Pretty graphics, nice paint schemes, etc. But I could still manhandle the AI. Phase 3 showed up, however, and quickly grabbed me by the nose and kicked me in the pants, repeatedly! My current pilot, one Wilhelm Reinhart flying for Jasta 4 in March 1917 (yeah, it's about to get real busy soon!) has four kills to his name and nearly 5 flying hours under his belt. This feels like a massive success! I sat and stared at my logbook last night as it was the fullest I've seen one yet. And sure enough, as this sim does so well, the more I take Reinhart up, the more invested I become in his survival. For all of his success (I've downed three tripes and a Bristol Fighter) I've had three planes shot out from under me, leaving me to limp back with a busted engine (I hate the sound of a Mercedes engine with a giant hole shot through one of the cylinder walls!) or severely crippled control wires (I've had to land using mostly rudder to keep the plane from rolling into the ground) or God knows what else. In short, I've had some success, but each time I've engaged my pilot has come perilously close to death. On the gaming side of the sim, I got a little too cocky. I increased my graphics settings on a massive scale and my first dogfight was against some Tripes that didn't seem to know what they were doing. Uh oh, I thought, I've traded away all of the CPU for graphics and now I'm fighting some badly compromised AI pilots. That, however, was only wishful thinking. The next time we went up we came across a flight of five beautiful Bristol Fighters (I frequently use the F4 key just to take in the amazing paint schemes on these planes). The Brist Fits dived on a lower flight of Albatros fighters from our Jasta so I dived to attack. Now, speaking of past experiences colouring your thinking. In RB3D, you could take down two seaters all day without risking damage to yourself. I fly fairly smart - I try to get beneath my 2 seater prey but unfortunately these guys were on the deck. Sure enough, the AI flying these Bristols put the Tripe pilots to shame! They were weaving, climbing, nearly looping, and each time giving their gunner a kill shot on one of us. They downed three Albatros DII's and crippled my plane! I was lucky enough to bag one, but it was out of pure rage that they had wreaked so much havoc on superior numbers. One Bristol looped up and his gunner pelted me with fire, knocking some holes in my engine (cutting my throttle by 15%) and snapped a few control wires, leaving me to limp home yet again. So even with years of accrued flight time (remember, our pilots might be new, but they go into battle with all of our flight knowledge) on nearly every type of plane modeled in OFF I'm still getting my arse kicked from here to next Tuesday. That said, it's a hell of a good time! I'm just glad that when our pilots lawn dart from 10,000 feet we're able to switch off the computer and get up from our seats. We have it a lot better than they did!

Mark, That definitely sounds like Rabu to me. I've known him since the old Red Baron II days - that's the kind of guy he is. Regardless, thanks to you both - the performance increase has made this a whole new sim. I just watched a wingman of mine engage a Sopwith Tripe on the deck. The tripe kept weaving, trying to avoid being hit, and all I could see was my wingman and a stream of tracer rounds whizzing towards his target at 60fps. Fantastic stuff.

Holy Cow! Mark, I just went through and implemented your settings. I dialed a few things back accordingly as my rig isn't quite as powerful as your setup and the results have been nothing short of remarkable! I'm not flying at my native resolution of 1680x1050 with your settings applied and I'm frequently running in the 50-60 fps territory! I was never that smooth with my more conservative settings. Dogfighting doesn't seem to be compromised. I did run a campaign mission and came across some seemingly inept Sopwith Tripes which we downed pretty easily. But I fired up a QC with some SE5's and some Fokker D7's and was quickly thrashed as usual. I don't see any sacrifice on the part of the AI's performance and the graphics are both stunning and smooth as silk. I owe you one mate, this is quite a change!

I can give you some insight in anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing. As for the rest, I'll need the experts to come in. Anisotropic filtering increases detail at a distance by smoothing out textures - basically it reduces the shimmering effect you see at distance. In other words, when you're flying and looking towards the horizon, the terrain will appear smoother and should look significantly crisper. You should be able to see more detail at a further distance. Anti-aliasing smooths out what a lot of people call "jaggies" on screen. The easiest way to notice is to look at your upper wing. With no anti-aliasing, the wing will be drawn as a series of jagged lines to create the shape. Anti-aliasing is your graphics card's way of smoothing that out to give the appearance of one smooth line, rather than a series of jagged lines. Again, it creates a crisper, sharper picture that gives you more detail. The sacrifice made by both of these options is of course frame rate. So there's a compromise to be struck between graphic prettiness and smoothness of gameplay. Hope that helps!