CaptSopwith

Wow, Gremlin. Absolutely! I had forgotten that Wings of Honor had that old article posted over there. Thanks for hanging on to it! It's not my best work, but I enjoyed writing that over Christmas break back in college. Yeah, I have no idea why Wikipedia took it down - I'm just very thankful that it's been preserved in a few places. Would have been a shame to just lose all of it. S!

I'm running OFF on a pretty mainstream gaming computer. It's a year old Gateway FX 7024 gaming PC with an overclocked GeForce 8800 GT. I run in 1200x800. So, doing some comparison, I would argue that you would want a very high end system. Newest nVidia card, a lot of ram, a high processor speed (though multi-core doesn't really help in OFF), etc. It's a high end sim in terms of the visuals it's cranking out - even though it is using CFS3 (though I would argue that it's been modded to the point that only the base skeleton of that graphics engine is left so comparion system specs on stock CFS3 is pretty useless). In short, you want a lot of horsepower. If you have one of Google's servers lying about with one of those suitcase nuke sized nVidia portable graphics processors, you're off to a good start! Hope that gives you a basic idea. Cheers mate!

Hey guys, I've got a quick question for you and I'm a tad embarassed I need to even ask. I'm using an old Microsoft Sidewinder 2 joystick in Vista for OFF. I cannot seem to remember how, or perhaps it has changed, but at any rate, how do I remap my button commands to apply some keys to OFF? Is there a setting somewhere in OFF or do I need to do it in Windows? Mind you, the Sidewinder 2 software is not installed - Vista simply recognized it when I plugged it in. Thoughts appreciated in advance. S!

Awesome! Thanks Rickity, I appreciate it!

Yep, this looks like the one Turner Classic Movies used to run back in the day. No Ernst Borgnine to be found!

I remember when Karel relased his first Fokker Dr1 model back in, what was it? 2001? Heading over to SWWISA and checking out his page and thinking "wow! I had no idea we could do that!" The difference between the paper cutout we had in the RBII and the living, moving model he made - complete with wires, a rotating engine, machine guns that were more than black rectangular lego blocks. My jaw hit the desk. The detail, at the time, was phenominal. And the best part - and this was the magic he brought to the community - he did it all without sacraficing FPS. You could fight a swarm of these high detail Fokkers and not drop a single frame. He really was a miracle worker. And a genuinely good guy. I enjoyed the few messages we exchanged before he passed. I imagine he'd be incredibly pleased with OFF. In my own way, I see the Fokkers and Sopwiths buzzing around OFF as the grandchildren of those first Fokker and Sopwith models released seven or eight years ago (wow, has it really been that long already??). S! Karel. I know you're loving the show!

Nice bit of info there Shred, thanks for passing that along. I love this forum, I learn something new everyday!

I just noticed this was still up over at James old HASP site. For anyone in the mood for some decent (I wouldn't call it great) reading about the devleopment of RB3D's mods over the years, I wrote a brief history of it and James was kind enough to host it. This was quite some time ago (2004 I think?) but I figured if we were on a reminiscence streak, it might be fun. http://www.hellsangels.firstflare.com/history.htm

Creaghorn, I noticed something on the stahlgewitter site you linked to. If you look under the video's section you'll find the full versino of the 1930 Release of All Quiet On The Western Front for download as a Divx file. Just thought I'd pass that along to the rest of us here.

Awesome find Creaghorn! Looks like a great source, and a great way to practice my German outside of Rosetta Stone.

Oh wow! Now that takes me back! HASP is still a damn pretty patch - shame RB3D runs like it's hopped up on speed on my new PC. Nothing I can try will ever slow it down and OFF calls just a little too loudly to me.

Alright gents. I have killed off every pilot in my original crop of fliers from when I first received BH&H. It's time to start again. My question to the forum is this. In terms of creating some varied and satisfying campaigns, where should I start? I typically fly British (56 Squadron). I'm open to suggestions from all sides - including those damn dirty Huns! (Hell, I'm learning German in my spare time anyway!) What are some great squads/time periods to get into some great action and really enjoy the meat on OFF's bones. Let me know what you think and I'll enroll my next class of brave flying men and send them off to the front. With any luck, I can Shepard these chaps through a bit more successfully.

Three Cheers for the RAF! Happy Birthday!

Nice one tttiger! I think I'm going with an RNAS career. I've flown the SE5 a lot lately and perhaps it's time to give old Tommy and his crates another go. I've been so leery of the Camel that I've ducked the challenge. Time to change that. I'm surprised I haven't heard any Hun suggestions yet. Is it the name, fellas?

That is a remarkable collection. The historian in me would love to see it, and the WWI aviation buff in me is drooling! Thank you for sharing!

Excellent work HomeBoy! I'm saving it for when I get a printer to actually print it off with! Thanks for passing this on to the rest of us OFF'ers!

Indeed! Fantastic screenshots. I'm getting the itch to go flying again!

I agree, I'm all for any enthusiast who wants to add a little WWI to their flight sims. The more the merrier. In response to what you said, Yes, dear God I got so sick of my pilots screaming at me for leaving formation in IL2. Excuse me if I'm evading fire as a pack of 109's start shooting us up from 6 o'clock! Depends on how much free time they have. You know forum people!

Shred, your historical work, as always, is first rate. And this comes from a soon-to-be professional historian! Greatly enjoying the thread mate, keep it up!

Welcome to the board mate! It's always a pleasure to see new pilots finding their way here and discovering the joys of this sim. It's also an added bonus when they are as courteous and polite as yourself. I hope you enjoy digging in to the sim, there is much to be found in OFF. A new experience waits for you each time you roll off the grass fields and into the skies over Flanders. Best of luck, fly safe, and fight hard! Salute!

I think I may make a 1st RNAS pilot. Been about 10 years since I tried that campaign - and that was back in RBII. I remember losing Roderick Dallas over a patrol. As stupid as it sounds, I've always felt attached to him somehow after watching his Tripe go down on a patrol. Strange what these sims do to us.

I do as well! It's nice to see that Karel is still being remembered after so long. RBII was my baby for years. It was the first sim I ever patched, the old Delphi Forums the first group I ever met online, and I remember flying against quite a few of them back in the day. I'm trying to remember my old RBII handle - I've been CaptSopwith on the forums since 2000 but online I think I flew as "Udet". I was 17-18 back then, so I was usually the youngest one on the severs lol. OFF, for me, feels like the spiritual successor to the RBII/3D years. While it is a vastly improved sim in every possible sense of the word, it still has that "feel" to me that I had back when I was sitting in the loft of my parents' house on a school night, flying one more mission before I had to get to bed. Those are some awesome memories.

Wow... quite a song, and quite a moving video to go with it. Let us never forget those who fell in Flanders Fields, and elsewhere.

I fly full DiD - realism at 130%. IMHO (taken with a grain of salt of course), I think either FM/DM should apply to the DiD rules for the following reason: While the enemy planes are more vulnerable (I would say realistically so) with the normal DM, so are you. So if you make a mistake, you can just as easily have a wing shot off as your enemy. If you were using the hardened DM for your plane but the easy setup for the enemy, I would say it's a different story. I think the pilot should report the DM used (in order to give an accurate reflection of their kill count) but I don't think the normal DM should count against DiD. I'm a graduate student of European History - and from all of the research I've done on WWI aviation and combat - the normal DM accurately refelcts what I've read in the accounts of aerial combat. Support wires and struts were frequently shot away, resulting in wing failures. Fires were frequent, and it typically did not take more than 100 rounds at close range to down an EA. Granted, there are accounts of planes that would simply not go down, but these are the exception, not the rule. Again, these are just the thoughts of one pilot, I'm hardly an expert. So please, take these insights with a lot of salt. S!

Winder, I just wanted to say thanks for all of the hard work. I personally love the DM as of the 1.26 patch. I have yet to fly 1.28. Like a certain OvS back in the day, you guys are releasing patches and fixes faster than I can play them! That said, I think the idea of having a choice between a hardcore DM and the new varient is a fantastic idea - I know I certainly appreciate it. Just wanted to say that I have never seen a group of developers offer so many options to their sim, nor release so many updates as quickly as you have for a product that essentially worked out of the box. Usually a team releases this many fixes because something is horribly wrong - not because they are perfecting and adding features! Thank you, you have all done a fantastic job, IMHO. As we used to say back in the RBII days: Salute!