CaptSopwith

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!

Beautiful screenshot! Welcome to the forums! PS: Be careful when you try flying through the Arc d'Triumph - I hear that doesn't end very well.

Creepy looking... as was the case with nearly every piece of WWI headgear I've ever seen...

Olham, Nice work on the maps mate. I really enjoyed looking at where everyone is. Gives me a greater sense of community. Cheers!

I agree. It seems like it was an aircraft with little to no faults that possessed beautiful handling characteristics. It was well armed, and a stable gun platform. You can't really ask for much more than that in a WWI craft. Imagine what the Germans could have done with it had the D7 been produced in large quantities and a year earlier.

Sometimes??? Not to brag, but I had a 110 kill ace in Red Baron 3D (running OVS's old Hell's Angels patch) and I have YET to get a single bloody OFF pilot to 17 hours. Right now, in P3, I'd settle for getting one pilot past his first five missions. You're right, the AI in P3 is awesome!

Funny how that works, isn't it Olham? I cut left handed, but yeah, I fly with my right. Ten years ago I was in a horrible car wreck and broke my left wrist. My comment after getting it cast was, "Well, at least I can still fly Red Baron II!"

Wow, really? I've never come across that, though I have seen some anal retentiveness in my time. There comes a point when people become so "hardcore" that perhaps it's time to put the joystick down, step outside, get some sunshine, and put things back in perspective.

Yes, of course! How could I forget Shred?!? Okay Olham, make it a North America map!

There are a lot of us here in the States, I have a hunch that one might be next. And don't leave out Winder! Isn't he in SA?

Microsoft has been running a preorder discount on Windows 7. I think the offer here in the States expired on the 11th. The deal was that if you ordered it now, you could buy an upgrade version of Windows 7 Home for $50. Not a bad deal, kinda wish I had gotten it. I've been following the reports on 7 pretty closely and from all accounts, it runs better than Vista and some Vista rigs actually showed a mild performance increase once they were running 7. Now whether that's a clean install with just 7 or an upgraded version of Vista, I don't know. I hope it's a bit more stable than Vista. I've never had a problem with my copy, save one event when the computer failed to boot properly and the end result was me reinstalling everything from scratch and nearly losing all of my data! Vista is like a late-model Mercedes. It's bullet proof, but when it breaks, it really breaks! /owned a 1988 190E

Rabu, I had to post a reply to this picture. That is an absolutely beautiful room for your computer set up. I think my only problem would be that I would never get anything done on the PC, I'd be too busy looking out the window or taking in the scenery inside. You've given me some ideas for the future... once I get the PhD, marry the girlfriend, and actually start earning a salary! I just had to say, well done sir, well done indeed!

Well I'll post some pictures of my hometown. I'm in the mountains of Georgia and attended college at North Georgia College in Dahlonega, GA. I'm relocating to another part of the country, which is why I'm comfortable sharing this on a forum lol. The town of Dahlonega is absolutely beautiful, as is the campus of my old college. I'm off to grad school further north for the next few years; I'll miss seeing it, to be sure...

Well spotted Drew! I was getting a chuckle out of your reply and then saw my name pop up. I am indeed a southpaw but I actually fly right handed. The Sidewinder 2 joystick is molded for a right hand and oddly enough, though I bat, pitch, write, cut, etc. left handed, I've always flown with my right. Go figure...

Here's my current set up, at least it is for the next few weeks until I relocate to grad school. It's nothing fancy, but it's easy to drop the blinds and fly OFF for a few hours without looking up. What more do you need than that?

Very well written letter sir. Hopefully that will get the ball rolling and get OFF some positive attention.

To go out with a bang. Hi gents. Well the summer has blown by me faster than ever before. Between spending time with the girlfriend and readying myself for grad school (oy the loans! Is there a student discount available for those future add on packs? ) I'm nearly out of time. In a few months I'll be buried up to my eyeballs in work, all while going to school in the middle of nowhere. So before the fun ends and I'm back dealing with papers and reading assignments, can the experienced OFF'ers here give this old RB3D hand some great campaign suggestions. Which squadrons, which planes, and which dates? I want to go out with a bang - lots of combat, lots of stress, and hopefully a good challenge. Thanks in advance. I'm sure I'll be posting here frequently once the fall comes and I need some MA History stress relief. Cheers!

So would it be safe to say at this point, that no one has survived the war and reached 17 hours at the same time?

Lot of that going on lately!

That is a fantastic skin Olham! Well done!

You're nearly there though! ...though I probably just jinxed your pilot. Might I recommend carrying a lucky rabbits foot next time up?

Welcome to the forum Badger! Yes, I was another one of those gaming junkies that played both RBII/3D and GPL. Sierra was really publishing some great software back then - in their pre-deer hunter days. GPL runs pretty well on my new Vista rig, but to be honest with you, I wound up roaming to some other newer racing sims. GT Legends by Simbin and GTR2 are the two I play most frequently when I'm not flying over the front, or downing bombers in IL2. GTR2 has a great mod called Power and Glory which models the sports and prototype cars of the late 1960's. Phase 3 (sound familiar? lol) of P&G2 will be modeling cars of the 1970s (including the Porsche 917 made famous by Steve McQueen's "Le Mans".) Speaking of Le Mans, if you dig long tracks (and by being a GPL player, I'd guess you are) there is an amazing Le Mans track modeled after the 1970s era. I've been racing a Porsche 906 in the 24 Hours in my spare time and I'm enjoying it immensely. We've had a bit of a drought, but I'd say we're in the thick of some great sim development these days. It feels like the late 1990s again! Cheers!