CaptSopwith

Howdy Gents, Hope you are all doing well. I am finally getting a chance to sink my teeth into OTT and I'm enjoying immensely. As noted by Pol and Winder, the system requirements are quite a bit higher than before. I'm wondering what your target FPS is these days. I have a beefy gaming rig (specs below) and I'm finding that with the scenery and terrain detail dialed in at 3 and the visibility set to 100km, I'm consistently in the mid to low 30s. Traditionally with a new game, I set most of the settings on max (the joys of getting a new gaming rig when I turned 40 lol). After reading over the release notes for OTT, I realized that perhaps my fps philosophy has been incorrect - I keep aiming for a high FPS and with an older engine like CFS3 combined with the wizardry of OBD, I'm not sure I'm viewing these games settings with the right mindset. With all that rambling out of the way, I wanted to ask: What is a good average fps for your adventures in WOFF these days? Do you aim for a high fps or do you look for a smooth fps even if its lower. I'm really curious to hear about your experiences. I'd be delighted to hear from Pol or Winder as well - what targets do you aim for when you are doing your final tests before a release? Rick, I know that you are not only playing WOFF, but you're also recording - which is an insane load on a system! What fps do you look for? Thanks in advance for sharing them and any tweaks and settings that you've had some luck with. Cheers! Intel (11th Gen) i9-11900KF @3.50GHz RAM: 32GB nVidia GeForce RTX 3080 (10GBV RAM) WOFF installed on SSD Monitor: 2560x1440 at 144Hz

I think that's actually a very healthy approach Rick! I've driven myself batty chasing stutters and FPS issues over the years. Best to get on with it and accept that the sim will throw some curve balls your way - the joys of a truly dynamic sim!

Thank you kindly for your replies guys! I appreciate it! It's been extremely helpful to get a sense of where everyone is running. I think I'm landing between your two experiences. I have the scenery and the Anti-Aliasing settings turned up as I'd rather have a smoother image quality and more eye candy without the FPS dipping too low (below 40 is tolerable, below 30 starts to feel a bit chuggy). I was wondering because of my system specs, but it sounds like I'm very much clocking in where everyone else is. Diving into some other flight sims that I thought had higher FPS, I discovered that they in fact did not, or if they did, it was because the horizon render distance was set to 20KM, so that explained what I was seeing. Rick - I love catching up with your videos mate! Thanks so much for taking the time to share them! Hope you are doing well BB! Good to see you all again! Cheers!

Good evening Gents, Hope you are all enjoying some quality time with OTT! Wanted to toss in something slightly different. I went back and revisited Red Baron 3D this evening - I have several variations installed. Had to share some visuals to see how far we've come. Below is a selection of screenshots from the ancient Beery 2.0 Superpatch, Full Canvas Jacket, and of course, OVS' own Hell's Angels Superpatch. It's still a marvelous game - the old gal is a lovely thing to revisit, some 26 years later! Cheers all! Hope you enjoy the trip down memory lane!

Hi Baxter, Hope you're doing well! I don't know of any direct locations for the patch - I'm sure Pol could point you in the right direction. One solution I've used for some older games is to fire up the Wayback machine on Internet Archive and see if some downloads work there. PS: Did some digging and found this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20191223171737/https://overflandersfields.com/ Wondering if this is something @sandbagger might be interested in hosting on his site, if he has the space for it?

Good spotting, Gelete! I hadn't seen this! Really excited to jump into some of these more rare machines. Thanks for giving us the heads up! Cheers!

Another round of sights from the Front - this time from January of 1918. You could feel the cold mist during the flight with the Sopwith Dolphins. Managed to bag a balloon on that mission - which you can see tempting me on the horizon as we were on patrol. Such a gorgeous game. Often when we are ingress, I'll use the J camera and just admire what's going on in the world around me. Hope you enjoy!

Also picked up my copy of OTT and man, what a gorgeous looking sim! Everything about OFF now feels fully polished. The interface looks crisp and sharp. Text is nicely legible. The descriptions on all of the aircraft have been revised and are a pleasure to read. The level of detail on everything just feels fully realized now. It's almost a shame to use the goggle filter as it removes some of the opportunity to admire just how gorgeous it is. Amazing work, Pol and Winder. My appreciation as always. Cheers!

This is such a treat to listen to! Thanks so much for putting this together Rick - been wanting to hear from OBD for a long time! Enjoyed the interview with a fine cup of coffee. Cheers to you all!

Excellent sampler, Rick! Thank you for sharing! Cheers!

I love this idea, Rick! I remember loving Crimson Skies but I also don't remember being able to enjoy it for very long before we moved to Windows XP and the game just stopped functioning. Into the bin it went at some point... The closest we have to the real thing is a project over on the SAS boards, who work on all things IL-2 1946. Check it out! https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php?topic=62309.0 Cheers! PS: Loving the flight videos you upload! Great stuff!

Thanks for the recommendation, gents! I appreciate the advice. Looks like the full merged version is the way to go. Looking forward to it! Cheers!

Hi Everyone, Just wandering over from the WOFF boards. I'm getting into more modern jet sims - I've had Falcon since 98 and I've dabbled with DCS (but don't have the time or HD space to full commit right now). I played SF2 Israel back in 2009 and have long since lost my backup. I was wondering how, in 2024, I could get back into the series. What would you recommend - is ThirdWire still technically functioning? Are there any inclusive mods to download to bring the series up to date, so to speak. Would greatly appreciate any guidance you can provide. PS: The idea was sparked when visiting the Museum of Flight in Seattle and, when jumping into their full 360 motion sim rig, noticed they were running Strike Fighters. :)

Some recent scenes from the Alsace sector... March, 1917.

What happens when you select "ten wingmen" under the options drop down menu instead of "random..."

Cause it looks like we're heading to Belgium next, lads! Announcement from OBD Can't wait to give this one a go! Pfalzes, Hanriots, and Dolphins, oh my!

Fantastic post, Raine! I cannot imagine the level of terror that would run through me if I caught sight of Gothas, knowing that I would have to try something, anything, to deal with them from my tiny, fragile, scout.

This has been collecting dust for waaaaay too long. Here are some gorgeous photos I took this morning while on my first mission with 1 RNAS. Enjoy!

Not sure I've ever posted in the Wish List thread before but two items came to mind... they are a bit gamey but might be enjoyable / useful. These would also apply to WOTR as well. 1) It would be amazing to be able to save a mission mid-flight. Now that I'm older and RL is increasingly chaotic, I've had to abandon more missions than I can count due to needing to take care of something. A mid-sortie save would be incredibly helpful, or barring that, a way to abort a mission. 2) It would be great if we could listen to Matt's beautiful soundtrack mid-flight. I know it's not super realistic and I do enjoy making my flights as challenging as possible, but the atmosphere he adds is too good to pass up. Cheers guys!

Looks really promising, Shred. Added it to my wish list - thanks for sharing this one! PS: If you look at the reviews on Steam there are downvotes for "a strategy game that engages in one mindless charge after the next..." I suspect they may need a primer on how the Great War worked.

Just picked this up this afternoon. Can't wait to take it up for a spin. My congratulations to our fearless developers who keep creating these gems for us to enjoy. Cheers Pol!

Thank you for that Lou. I've lost count of the number of Stories of the Season I've read but I always look forward to them. Cheers

I've been doing something of a deep dive into the 1915 campaigns in WOFF. It's a completely different world from the one we come to know in the following years. Lots of long, empty flights in extremely fragile aircraft. The tedium of flying to the lines ends quickly when the enemy flak bursts begin. But I noticed on my French campaign tonight, that the observer in the Caudron G4 might have the worst job of any airman in the French Air Service. While I know he could normally sit, I hadn't noticed that the front gun requires him to be on his knees, which would be incredibly uncomfortable while being buffeted around in the air. Worse still, the propellers are horrifyingly close to his body! I'm trying not to think of what would happen if he slipped and fell towards either of the engines. Flying the Caudron is also a hair-raising experience. Thanks to the wonderful engine sounds that accompany the plane are intermittent sputters that sound like one of the two rotaries are going to cough themselves to death. Turbulence is also a jarring experience - mostly I try not to look over the side and notice that there really is nothing under me in the back of this flying bathtub. Truly not for the faint of heart!

So I've been splitting my flight time between WOFF and the new Microsoft Flight Simulator and my jaw hit the desk last night playing through my 1915 British campaign. As our patrol of Bristol's headed out I could see the cloud cover break and the small village below. MSFS uses a technique they call Photogrammetry, which creates some genuinely convincing images of the ground. It's surreal to fly over your own home as the sim models the weather just outside your door. But for a 20+ year old game engine to do the same thing - to essentially create 1915 Photogrammetry? I'm genuinely astonished! It's hard to complete missions because I keep pausing the sim to take more screenshots!

Hi Gents, Hope you are all doing well and staying cool! I just wanted to write a short note to say thank you to this community. I know the history of the EAW group is long and has it's friction points - but I genuinely want to say how grateful I am to each of you for keeping this sim running in your own ways. I got EAW in the summer of 1999, at just 17 years old, as a get well present from my parents after I almost died in a car accident. That game kept me company that year as I played through the Battle of Britain, imagining myself a young Spitfire pilot who was lucky to walk away from a bad landing. Years later I started modding the game, thanks again largely to the group here. I remember digging through Cord's EAW site, downloading STAB, and spending HOURS downloading skins on a dial up modem, so excited to see what new livery I could slap on a Fw190 or my favorite American plane, the P-38. And then... well time and technology marched on and EAW sat pretty much dormant through much of my Windows XP, Vista, and 7 days. Until around 2015 I saw that the game was still alive and running, now on Windows 10. I've been insanely busy in RL - moving, starting jobs, getting married - and it's been tough to find time to work with the old sim. But over the last week, thanks in large part again to your help, I've gotten the sim running solidly again. I have to say how impressed I am with the GoG patch that Mr. Jelly put together. I badly misjudged how much of improvement it would make, and after finally giving it a chance, I have to say that flying 1.29 in DirectX at fps I never dreamed of in 1999, let alone at these kinds of resolutions, is something to behold. I took your file structure and made my own home-brew Max188 inspired Classic EAW set to run with all of the benefits of 1.29 and man am I loving it. The sim seems more stable - though I do wonder if my mad ExtraSquads=5 didn't have something to do with the last CTD I suffered lol! So while I know this board is pretty quiet, especially so in the summer, I wanted to say thank you - you've kept a genuinely beloved part of my younger days alive and it's a real gift to be able to revisit it now. Thank you guys!