Heck

Here's what I use, although I too get little anomalies in the view, because the 7 and the 13 had different dimensions. I just look past the quirks for the fun of flying the Spad 7. Fortunately my mind doesn't focus on them, because if it did they would probably drive me nuts, so it's a benefit to me that my imagination works this way. ExternalClipDistMin=0.04 Position=0.02,-0.76,0.632 Offset=0.025,0.00,0.00 ViewAngles=0.0,0.0,0.0 MaxYaw=165 MinYaw=-165 MaxPitch=90 MinPitchFront=-70 MinPitchRear=-50.3 You use the gunsight? I just get real close and fire until I see parts fly off.

I'm a newbie, sort of, but own them all, and will continue to buy them as each new one comes out. And the reasons I'll keep doing that are three: 1. They're great sims that are fun to fly. 2. This is a great community, which teaches as well as provides. 3. It's such an active community that I often can't remember what disc I put something on, and that's one hell of a lot of free stuff. Happy birthday, SF.

Beautiful work, EmlD. Can't wait to fly her. Heck

These figures are from Profile Publications #109 by J.M. Bruce. He also mentions the wide variation in published figures, but gives these as probably the most accurate. Sorry I had to type them, but my scanner is kaput. Span upper: 28' 6.4" Span lower: 24' 3.25" Chord upper: 4' 1.2" Chord lower: 3' 9.25" Wing area (including ailerons): 194.5 sq ft Gap: minimum 3' 6" maximum 4' Stagger: 2' 1" dihedral: 4 degrees upper, nil lower length: 19' 1.875" aileron area: 11.2 sq ft each tailplane: 16.4 sq ft elevators: 12.8 sq ft fin: 2.9 sq ft rudder: 7.9 sq ft Hope this helps you. Your models are fantastic. I've enjoyed them all. Thanks for all your hard work. Really looking forward to this one, even if no one comes up with an alps terrain. This aircraft, and the Belgians, have been overlooked for too long. Heck

Absolutely superb skin. Looking forward to anything else you paint for the new FE. Thank you. Heck

Change the section to this: [Display001] DisplayType=DIRECTOR ObjectType=TARGET_ENEMY ConeSize=25 BoxSize=10 BoxType=SQUARE BoxColor=0.0,0.0,0.0,0.25 ConeModelName=redcone and it will turn the box a pale gray color which is much harder to see against the background, especially the ground. Forget who posted this originally...

I gave the Fokker DVII the same power as an Albatros DV, SLPowerDry=130497.5. For some reason the DVII's original power was about 119000.0, which was way to low. She flies much better now. About the same performance as an Albatros (same engine), but more handy. I also inserted a minus sign in front of the cnb value for the fuselage of both the DVII and DVIIf. It seemed to be the only aircraft where the value was positive. Was Cnb=0.0016, now Cnb=-0.0016 This cured the excessive yaw both the planes displayed on take off. If you extract the data ini's and make these changes, I think you'll find both fly much better. I think so anyway.

Last night I took off with three of my squadron mates in my beloved Spad 7 and got into a furball with some Albatros D-Va's. Planes wheeling and falling amongst the clouds. I saw a Spad cross below my nose with an Albatros right behind him. I immediately dove after the Albatros, but just as I did another Albatros practically collided with me by crossing my nose so close I could smell what he ate for lunch. He had a lot of speed, but I knew the Spad could catch him, so I left Henri to his own devices and dived after this one. As I was closing I saw the distinctive green/brown camouflage and realized this was a D-III. Opps. We had been jumped by another bunch while in the furball and I hadn't realized it. Big mistake. The D-III following the first one had me for lunch. Fried Frenchman. Quite a delicacy, if you're a Hun. This sim is truly addictive now. Sometimes I abandon the mission and fly just for fun, spinning down over some local French town, trying to pull out at the last minute over the church steeple to see how close I can get without packing it. I wish the bridges were just a little bit higher off the water. One of the things I loved the most about the old Red Baron 3d was that you could fly under them. My favorite was looping around a bridge.

I don't think there is any definitive value, Bandy. I'm really just adjusting things to suit my own personal experience from sources I've read and things I've seen. The only reason I posted this here was because I saw another member say that he thought the Fokker DVII was rather sluggish. I had to agree with him, because the behavior that I saw in the sim didn't match what I saw years ago at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome where they were flying an original rebuilt Fokker with an overcompressed Mercedes of 180hpr. So I changed it, and posted it here in case other members here found it useful. The Germans at this time were experimenting with different ways to wring more horsepower out of their well tested Mercedes 6 cylinder inline. One of the ways was to overcompress the engine by fitting oversized pistons. They managed to get between 10-20 more horsepower out of the straight six they were using, but there was a cost. The engines had a shorter life, and couldn't be run at full throttle at low altitude, because you'd overheat them and blow them up. I read once that American pilots testing a Roland DVIb nearly did that, because they didn't know you weren't supposed to run the engine at full throttle low down, and the German pilots who turned it over after the Armistice didn't tell them. The engines were in fact fitted with a compression release valve, because you couldn't swing the prop to start them unless you released the compression. The same lack of definition applied to airframes. According to James Norman Hall and Charles Woodruff, a French pilot flying in 1917 wanted to be assigned a Spad/Spad, Hisso/Hisso, meaning a Spad 7 or 13 airframe built by Spad, and a Hispano Suiza built by Hisso, because the subcontractor's versions of both engines and airframes were not well trusted by the pilots. Variation was widespread, because a subcontrator was handed a copy of drawings to work from, and were on their own after that. Some were good, some not so good. Airframe construction especially was more of an art form than an industrial process. If you can find someone who still makes complex wooden furniture by hand, watch them some time and you'll see what I mean. The guy who built your piano before the war was often the guy building your airframe during the war. I know this probably makes this more muddy, but that's my point. The world of WW1 aviation was a very muddy place indeed, and anyone who thinks they know exactly how a Fokker DVII flew is really only kidding themselves, because any German pilot of the time would know that his Fokker wouldn't behave or handle like Von Bratwurst's, two places down the flight line. If something in this sim doesn't suit you, experiment with it and change it, that's the true beauty of TK's sims, and makes it truly the best engine to simulate the muddy, muddy skies of WW1. I hope I haven't offended anyone with this spiel, it's just the ravings of a madman who's read way to much over the years to believe that he knows anything at all for certain. And you think you're confused....

Thanks for updating this, Tailspin. Love all those lines of tracers zipping around me when I'm flying near enemy aerodromes. So much for dropping the personal effects of their flyers....

Sorry to report that the SideslipDamper= function only responds to positive numbers. If you increase it from 0.0 you wind up with a plane that flies like its on railroad tracks, ie: as soon as you release the rudder it snaps back to straight and level. I tried setting it to -1.0, but it had no effect, it acted like it was set to 0.0. My time for experimentation is slim, so right now I'm mashing together data from the new data.ini's of planes with some of the addon on aircraft (Pfalz, Nieuport 17) to see if I can get them to fly in the new sim. Perfectly willing to fiddle with the stall data, but my knowledge of aerodynamics is small, so I'd just be doodling...

In the data.ini change the elevator deflection from MaxDeflection=15.0 to MaxDeflection=30.0 Haven't seen any other planes with different max/min deflections, only this one, but I just started to look. I think I'll spend some time this evening playing around with the SideslipDamper= AutoTrimLimit= parameters just for fun, setting them to different values to see what they do when I add adjusted values to different airplanes by adding them to planes that don't have them. If it tamed the behavior of the Clerget Camel, could different values change the behavior of some planes that were noted for flat spinning, like the Pfalz D-III?

I even removed my entire FE setup, and reinstalled an unmodded version. I patched it, running it both before and after the patch with no problems. Then, I installed the Expansion, and the problem showed up again. I haven't modded it at all, not even the weapons pack. Checked the registry when I deleted the previous version to make sure nothing was lurking there. This is a Vanilla install of all three: First Eagles, patch 021907 from the website, and the Expansion, so I know it isn't any modding that's causing it. TK mentioned using just 1918 as a date for these missions, but my install still ctd's. I have no problems running any other kind of mission, including bombing, and just had a glorious shemozzle against Jasta 11, flying for No3 in Camels, eight Albatri against eight Camels. Planes going everywhere! Finally got one, but collided with his wingtip and was forced to land behind German lines. We lost three (including me), and Von Richtofen's chaps lost two, so they got the best of us, but it was a crazy, fun fight. I love the new flight models. Heck

Is anyone else having a problem with the sim crashing when you try to fly an Army Cooperation mission? I reported this at Thirdwire. I've deleted, done a clean install, run the sim, patched it, run the sim, and then installed the Expansion, trying to cure the problem, but it occurs every time I click accept on an Army Cooperation mission with any aircraft chosen. The screen goes black and the error message mentions the Singlemission.dll. I even did another download to make sure I didn't have a corrupted expansion file. Any ideas?

Just downloaded and started to fly it. Loving it so far. It takes work, but you can successfully take off in any of the aircraft in hard mode. The Camel is twitchy longitudinally, but from everything I've ever read she was a beastie, so I like it. The DrI can initiate a turn with the rudder, and then add aileron, which I also like. It's not as quick at flat turns as the old RB3D developed version was, but I like it. I've spun the Camel and the Spad 13 and was able to recover both if I had enough altitude. From too low, I've spun in. The young aviator he went a stunting.... Personally, I think it's well worth the money. I think the makers of add on aircraft have their work cut out for them revamping their flight models to fit the new fm, but I think it's well worth the effort.

Glad to hear about the sharkmouth, Mike. Having it a decal instead of on the bitmap is a great idea. Your work will be great for people like myself, who have to use the default skins (or 512 bitmaps), so our computers can keep up with things. I've been doing a lot of Navy flying in WOV, but your work has dragged me back to runways, and from the screenshots you've posted, you'll be keeping me there for quite some time. I may even create myself a personal scheme decal. I know they were rare in Nam, but it's fun to create them, and try and keep in the vein of the time. And your skins would certainly justify the time out to do it. Looking forward to the release.

Beautiful work, Mike. I've been flying a lot more USAF since the release of your previous work. Thanks! Heck

My best guess from opening the LOD in notepad is gear_door_front_outer_1. What placement type did you use? Bottom, or Front? I know it's a silly question, but when the gear is closed, it's on the bottom of the aircraft's total mesh, and when its open, it's on the front. It'll of course move when the mesh moves, like the rudder, so my best guess would be front, knowing it will move when the gear closes. With a decal this small, finding exactly the right placement on the mesh will be tough, a lot of trial and error. You might create just a small full color decal first, like bright red, and try to place that, because it will be easier to see if a small part of the decal hits the mesh through trial and error. Once you've found the sweet spot, you could replace it with the number decal and go from there. Wait a minute. Wait a minute (Best Hal 9000 voice). What you might try to do is place the decal on the bottom of the fuselage mesh itself, just in front of the gear door, and then move it back to where the gear door would be when you have it placed. If it then disappears, you know you've found the spot, and you can replace the mesh name. If it reappears, then it's a bottom placement. If it disappears again, you know it's front, and you'll have to find the coordinates again, but at least you'll be starting from a close mark. I wish I could be of more help, but I don't have much experience with decals myself, just having started to experiment with them. I have found that front placement decals can be maddening from all the trial and error involved.

I tried taking off in the Tornado and found something odd. If I apply a small amount of rudder during take off, I don't get the crash. But if I apply a large amount, I get a game crash now, and an error message about the terrain.dll. Can anyone else confirm that this is what's happening? Also, I apologize for my lack of computer savy, but can anyone tell me where Winblows XP stores its error files, so I can post it, and maybe give Florian some concrete information to work from? Thanks, Heck

Are you using this tweak of the flightengine.ini? [GraphicsSettings] ZBufferDepth=24 MaxVertexCount=16384 MaxIndexCount=32768 MaxTextureCount=16384 MaxModelType=2048 MaxMeshPerScene=2048 MaxModelPerScene=4096 MaxLightPerScene=1024 AspectRatio=1.333333 MinPixelSize=1.0 This, combined with Kodiak's rudder data.ini fix given above, cured any problems I had with this model.

I do! I do! And the Dora... And the Ta... And the Fw... Heck

Thank you, Kodiak! Was having crashes all the time. Just did a series of complete rudder rolls on take off without a hitch. Really looking forward to Florian's new F-3 now! Great work. Thanks so much. This is what's great about this community. Heck

I'll certainly take them, Wrench. Perfect, or not. Love to have them until a 3d modder makes a proper bath tub. And I'd like to see that sneaky screenshot released also. Gustav 6 and the Dora are the two biggest missing links for Luftwaffe WW2.

Thank, Wrench. Just one more touch to make a great skin even better.

Already using these settings, found them mentioned somewhere else at CombatAce quite a while ago, but I still CTD with the use of rudder. Had to use them to get Capun's Camel to work in FE.