CaptSopwith

Okay, it's after midnight, I haven't gotten any work done, and I'm still fighting the urge to go up for another mission... Further thoughts on this collection of mods for OFF. Wow! Is all I really have to say. Having swapped out the damage model from the HPW to Buddy's version, the improvements were noticeable from the outset. At least with my configuration - everyone's machine handles things a little differently - the difficulty and immersion of OFF has skyrocketed. I have created 10 new pilots - all with back stories, desires, and aspirations for their time at the front. Some seek to serve King and Country. Others are there because life in the cavalry grew tedious and dull in a war that no longer needed them. Still more joined because they sought glory - and found chaos and death instead. With OFFice, I suddenly remember my squad mates names. I feel I know them a bit better - having interacted with them. I only wish we could create some sort of visual representation of them - even if it was on the level of Wings of Glory, it would still be fantastic. As it stands - the simple interactions, the ability to move time in the campaign (IE: I get to fly real dawn patrols now, which are my absolute favorite). The improvement in the variety of weather - I know that the war was typically a mud and rain filled quagmire - but it's nice to fly in some clear weather for a change! The additions of the new sound files - I've used Creaghorn's sound mods for a while but these introduce some new ones I've not heard before. The engines really sound alive now! Even the light powered rotaries have a full, metallic, heavy sound to them - it's fantastic. It all comes together so beautifully. OFF was already the most immersive WWI flight sim I had ever played. This is just dumping icing on an already delicious cake. Did I mention that I like the new loading screen sounds as well? I like that there's a clear difference between the Allied and German side now - feels better. Oh, and during the German briefings - am I right in guessing that the briefing voice over work is taken from the German version of Red Baron II's German Intelligence Briefings? Sounds just like them - I really like it! So overall - would I recommend this set of addons to the community? I give it a resounding YES! This pack really breathes some new life into a sim that I feel like I'm still learning. They are small improvements - but the cumulative effect is massive. From the new sense of immersion in interacting with my squadmates through a simple, old-school, but effective text-based RPG element to the immersion of flying with new sounds and dealing with a whole new FM and DM to learn... it all comes together to make for an utterly gripping experience. I thought I was addicted before... but nothing like this! Fantastic work guys! I cannot commend you enough. I love it! PS: The mods are so good - esp with OFFice, that I have started my first round of 2-seater campaigns. First up was Fritz Morgens - who served as the observer of the Roland CII below. I got Fritz settled into the new barracks and he introduced himself to his new squadron members and had a meeting with the Adjutant. The first mission was a lone patrol - a chance to take Fritz up over the lines and let him get a look at the Front. The weather, as you can see, was terrible. I realized that I have never actually flown any of the 2-seaters in OFF since buying the sim in 2009! Well, it was a long overdue treat. We got up in the air and from that point on I let the AI do the flying while I panned the skies for trouble. I do wish that my TrackIR system would work from the observer's seat - is there a trick to make it work?At any rate - we went up and down the lines and finally up to the coast - all on our side of the front. As we turned for home, I got a strange feeling in my gut. Coming through a thick wall of cloud cover were three Nieuports and they had us caught low and slow, heading for home. The result was as terrifying as it was sickening to experience. The Nieuports - painted in French markings - smelled blood and came right for us. I've never seen fighters attack me while sitting in the back of a plane - and I don't want to see it again anytime soon! All three opened fire and, try as I might with my rear gun, I could do little to fend them off. The first burst from the three French planes was also exceedingly lucky - putting our engine on half of its cylinders right away. We were belching smoke as my pilot tired to get me steady for a clear shot. Then - I felt it - another barrage of bullets hit us and wounded the pilot. Our plane lurched, side slipped, and headed for the trees. The impact turned my stomach. Fritz is dead - on his first mission, and a training sortie at that. But, never fear, a new man, Kristof Maybach - a family man from Prussia, has just arrived as a replacement. Life in the squadron now goes on. Fritz's name is still on the board - listed as deceased. The rest of the squad barely remembers him - they had so little time to even learn his name. As Maybach learns his new surroundings - the fellow pilots that Fritz knew (ever so briefly) remain - the same personalities and traits, the same quirks, the same temperaments. These fellow pilots no longer vanish into the ether of history. Life goes on and the sense of institutional memory is now a part of OFF. What will become of these men, as well as my own, remains to be seen. This is really great stuff! If you haven't had a chance to try this out - it's a snap to install, and once you start messing with it, you quickly see how addictive this form of OFFing suddenly becomes. Oh - and if you really want the hardcore heroin version of this - fly DiD. I'm finally giving it a real go (now that I have TrackIR) and I have to say - it's terrifying. Without time compression and without warp and without a tactical aid screen - I really feel uneasy and vulnerable from the time I get to my cruising altitude until I cut the engine and land safely at home. There are simply no safegards and the feeling of emminant danger is tangible through the monitor. Hats off to Siggi for those rules. If you see this post Sig, thanks again! Whew! I'm typed out. As you can see - I'm in love with this sim all over again. What a great sim and what a fantastic community! Cheers all around!

Looks like I got lucky with my timing, Lothar. I checked the version number and I'm using 0.7.5. Must have downloaded it right after you posted it!

Not that this does you a damn bit of good now but... I too keep my game downloads backed up in multiple locations. Really need to invest in a new external HDD though so I can flat out image my gaming desktop computer. Makes life so much easier in the event of a crash. Perhaps there's a subconscious desire to donate to the cause - that it might hasten the release of WOFF and, with it, the beloved Sopwith Snipe! At any rate - my sympathies, Widow. It sucks to lose data... and it's happened to me far too many times.

Hi Guys! Just took a look over at the European Air War board at SimHQ and saw a post from Mike! Here's the link: http://simhq.com/for...tml#Post3588494 Here's what Mike had to say: Hi all, Just a quick note to let you all know - "i'll be back" - too k my first steps today, although a bit unsteady. I'm making progress and hope to be home in a week or so. My first job will be to update Tally-Ho. Very many thanks for your thoughts, prayers and messages of support. Cheers for now I'm glad to see Mike is on the mend! No doubt he still has a long process ahead of him. Mike may have started in the EAW community but he's very much a part of our OFF group. Keep him in your thoughts!

Ah, thanks for the heads up Luther. I've gone ahead and picked it up to add to my summer reading list. Should be a good one!

We've got a ways to go then... Tell Pol to get cranking on those YouTube videos!

I really need to go back and re-read some Doug Adams when I get a chance. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would probably put grad school into a proper perspective!

Hear Hear! I'll be keeping you in my thoughts as well Typhoon! Let us know when you're safely out of recovery - we'll keep the place warm for you until you return!

Hey British! Good to hear from you! The "official" OFF forum is now located over at SimHQ. The decision was made a few weeks ago when CA suddenly went down and, through a aristilian confluence of events, the major CA support staff was out of internet reach. OBD is obviously close to releasing W.O.F.F. and so, to keep the lines of communication open on the pending release of their new product, needed to relocate in a hurry. The new board is over here: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/forums/89/1/Over_Flanders_Fields.html SimHQ gave OBD and all of us some pretty nice digs - you'll quickly notice that it's the most customized forum over there. But most of us are still visiting both, so you'll likely see us both there and here. Hope this helps!

Pol released a short clip called "Dev Clip #1" over at SimHQ and it sparked an idea when I first read the title. I thought, for a moment, that it might be a clip of the developers themselves. Wouldn't it be great if we could find a way to create a podcast interview of the OBD team after W.O.F.F. is released later this year? I know I would watch and re-watch something like that. I'd love to hear from the great group of guys that have worked so hard over the last 7+ years making this gem of a flight sim that we all love. Hearing from Winder, Pol, OvS, and the rest of the team would be fantastic. How did the team come together? What made them decide to start coding with the CFS3 engine. What were the hurtles they discovered along the way? What did the reception of Phase 1 mean to them? How did the set the list of things to accomplish when it came time to work on Phase 2 and 3. What was it like to develop this last, most massive, update of them all? If we could get video - even better - but I think that kind of insight from the team once the dust settles would be a wonderful treat for the community - and a fitting sign of respect and admiration from us to hear just how they did it. And I think actually hearing from you guys would be a massive treat that a simple text interview just wouldn't do justice. Besides, we've been hearing Pol shout "Contact! Clear!" now for years! Great games have released "making of" packages before. Fallout 3 did it and even IL2 1946 had a long video of the team at work. I'm certainly not suggesting adding this on to your list for the release of W.O.F.F. (first of all, I have no place to, second - I'm not crazy!). But sometime after it's all done - one relaxing afternoon - perhaps one of us could host an interview with the team and ask you some questions about how you produced the greatest World War I flight simulator of all time. What do you think guys?

So last night, I conducted a small experiment... a little historical research, if you will. I went through my flight sim collection - at least the World War I category - and played through a mission in each, in order. I started with Wings of Glroy - my first taste of aerial combat in the Great War. Here's a video of what WoG looked like, way back in 1994. Next was Red Baron 3D in its stock form. Followed by the Beery Patch, 1918 Air War (a really fantastic UOP released by a guy named WingStrut that was tragically under-appreciated). And then came the Western Front Patch and Hell's Angels. Then I moved over to Over Flanders Fields and I had to sit back and marvel... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di8adFiN_Ps&feature=relmfu If you had told me, in 1994, when I was a 12 year old kid, that one day I would have a computer that would model not just what it was like to fly an airplane from World War I, but also simulate the war on the ground and the entirety of aerial operations for nearly every squadron that served on the Western Front from Flanders to Alsace-Lorraine and model it day after day after day, from 1915 through to the end of the war in November 1918... I probably would have passed out - and never seen daylight for the rest of my adolescence! And then, if you told the 1994 version of me that one day I could snap a device to my headset that would allow me to look around my aircraft - lean over the side of the cockpit and see troops on the march below me, watch as my enemy dove out of the sun - guns blazing - and use it to dogfight my way out of trouble... I'm not sure what my reaction would have been - but you might have needed to revive me! This is a long, round about way of saying... my God, how far have we come?? Seriously - take a moment and think about the difference. When I was a kid, I was aiming at blurry pixels of German planes in the sky. This morning, I fired up OFF and took a Fokker Eindecker out on patrol over the mountains of Alsace-Lorraine and watched as a flight of Bristol Fighters - which were rendered in such high definition that I could recognize them long before they attacked - bounced us and open fire. We have it pretty good, chaps. Pretty damn good.

I almost cannot help but wonder if this wasn't meant as a nod to a classic that so many of this generation played when they first started. It seems we have come full circle here!

I've heard of situations where individuals - suddenly handed power and placed in positions of authority - can become drunk with power... but this has to be a new record! I think someone besides the mods need to keep the keys to the OFF Liqueur Cabinet!

This, is why I love this community! Congrats guys - can't think of a better group to keep the peace!

I like it Von Paulus! This was how I imitated Tom Cruise during my childhood in the late 1980s!

Redpiano - just watched your video. I love the music! Very "Great Escape" somehow...

Well, I guess if we include Nintendo games... and we should. This is my first real flight sim.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZwD1yGsG7A

That is quite rudimentary, Von Paulus! The first flight sim I ever played was, like yours, a modern sim. Here was the firs true PC flight game I ever played: F117-A Stealth Fighter; a game that introduced me to the great name of MicroProse.

Slightly off topic from the great discussion going on here but... ...these flight simulation films are really well done. I discovered the "death of" series of ROF movies a while back but hesitated to post them. I have come across another talented film maker who is working with IL2 Cliffs of Dover and he's managed to make some pretty impressive stuff. Here is one of his films about the Battle of Britain. Just thought you guys would find this interesting. Cheers!

Ah, Wings for the Amiga. Now this is the game I missed. I didn't get a PC until about 1993 and by the time I did (I was 11, mind you, so my family did, really), it was all DOS/Windows PC's. That said, this game has held up well. I dig the sound effects and the visual of placing you behind the pilot. It's a nice nod to movies like Hell's Angels and I can see, from a coding standpoint, how much this simplifies things - no cockpit to render. I dug around on youtube, if you have 8 hours to kill... ... someone posted the long play of the game. So you can see some of the intro cinematics - handy for someone like me. And yes... there is a part 2. I'll leave you to find it.

Well said, Dej! I second your sentiments regarding the spirit of the OFF community. It's a good bunch and we all seem to play well together. And really, at the end of the day, it's the community that keeps a game going, isn't it? I'm convinced that, had Red Baron II/3D not had guys like OvS, Beery, Pat Wilson, Shred, Flybert, RebRens, Kess... gads, the list goes on and on... it would have been a mediocre flight sim with a great dynamic engine that would have collected a lot of dust after a while. But, my goodness me, would you look at it? Even over on the now ancient Delphi boards, where I found my first flight sim community, there is still the occasional post and we're what, about fourteen years out from Red Baron's release? I'd like to find a Call of Duty or a Battlefield game that has had that kind of longevity. OFF has the same thing going for it - largely because so many of the ingredients come from the lineage of Red Baron 3D. And the community that has formed around it, both in the OBD team and here on the boards, I have to believe, keeps the development of OFF going strong. If I was Pol or Winder and I was up coding late, I'd like to think the occasional "keep going! You're doing great work!" posts from the community has to give them a small shot in the arm. Like I said, a community makes the game. I've seen other boards for other games - both airborne and not - where the community soured, support for a game started to dry up, the waters were quickly poisoned, and it all kind of just, well, fell apart. But when a community gets it right - like the Red Baron 3D, European Air War, and Over Flanders Fields boys, it makes all the difference in the world. Why else would all of us, with our incredibly busy lives, take the time out to post. It matters. I'm happy to be with this group and I'm proud of OBD for making such a wonderful simulation for the rest of us mere mortals to enjoy.

Nice one Mike!

I could use a little help to better understand things here... Do we have to follow this procedure with every campaign mission we fly? Or is this just an initial setup phase? I like the idea of adding some Mods to OFF - I've used them in the past... but I didn't like the trade off of losing all of the skins that were in the game. If this is a one time thing, IE: Install the mods you want, work through the above steps, and then you're good to go - I'd be willing to give it another try.

Oh Dear... yes, I did mean Bristol Scouts - how embarrassing! I would imagine a tangle with Bristol Fighters in a Fokker Eindecker would have been a rather short and nasty affair!