HomeBoy

It's gone! Sorry to everyone who responded that I had to turn away.

I got in a bit of an R/C reminiscence mood this morning (it's been almost eight years since I held a transmitter in my hands) and was looking through some pictures. Thought you might find this fun. Phil Kraft designed a radio control plane and published the plans for it in the May-June issue of Radio Control and Model Aircraft World in 1966. It was loosely based on the Eindecker EIII but took lots of liberties to make it fly well (ailerons, no wires, etc., etc.) The one in this picture is a Great Planes kit that is even more modified from Phil Kraft's original design but was a wonderful flyer. In fact, this was one of my absolute favorite planes to fly. Sadly the one you see here I eventually carried home in a bag (in fact, one of the guys at the field walked over to me after I buried it in the ground and said "Paper or plastic?") Hope you enjoy! PS, yes, I changed my avitar! Being an ole LAF'er from RB3D, this seemed appropriate.

Just so you guys don't think I'm just ignoring you... I received an email early this morning saying he wanted both these items. I am waiting to hear back from him as I promised to give him first dibs.

I used to fly RC aerobatic competition. I was not very good but I always seemed to score well on the Hammerhead. The modern term "Hammerhead" replaced the original term "Immelman" and the term "Immelman" is now used to describe the half-loop with a roll at the top. Talk about confusing! So, when you read WW1 literature that speaks of an "Immelman", it is really referring to what we now call a "Hammerhead" or some people call a "Stall Turn." I like UncleAl's description of how to do a Hammerhead. That's pretty dead on. I flew an Extra 300 in competition which does a very pretty Hammer and here's how it's done in competition: 1. Develop full speed in straight and level flight 2. Pull up into a perfectly vertical line. 3. When the plane gets to the desired altitude or begins to lose energy, chop the throttle while keeping the plane perfectly straight. 4. At the exact instant the plane stalls and begins to tail slide (falls backward just as UncleAl describes), you goose the throttle (full throttle then back to idle very quickly) and simultaneously go full rudder in the desired direction of turn (usually in the direction of engine torque; left in the case of the Extra 300) and providing just enough aileron control to keep the plane from rolling at all. If you've done this properly, the airplane will rotate around as if it has a pin through the canopy and is rotating around that pin (it's a beautiful thing to watch) and then heads straight back down on the exact line it went up on. Most planes (such as the Extra) will waggle their tail just a little bit as it heads back down. That is a true sign that a stall actually occurs. Judges watch for that waggle and usually won't give you full points if they don't see that. Now, a "Wingover" is very similar to a Hammerhead except that with a Wingover you don't stall at the top. The plane skids around and actually flies sideways very briefly before heading back down. Guys running smoke do that a lot because it produces a very pretty U-shaped trail which looks great at airshows. An attempted Hammerhead in which there is not stall at the top is technically a Wingover. In fact, when I lost points on my Hammer, I would sometimes see on my score card "WO" which means the judge didn't see a clean stall and therefore called my attempted Hammerhead a Wingover. The planes in OFF don't really have the power to do what I've just described but you can do it with some dive to build speed and take a lesser angle on the vertical line. I've tried it with a couple of the faster planes in OFF and the results are pretty good. In fact, I can do a better Hammer in OFF than I can in MSFS or Aces High.

What's funny is I put in quite a bit of effort to get RB3D working, got TIR all tuned up for it, etc., etc., etc.. Then I discovered OFF and have done nothing with it since. At first I was thrilled to resurrect that great game but OFF made me drop it like a cheap date.

Thanks for the kind words Steve. What I really mean to say here is that I'm sorry (disappointed is actually a better word) that we can't pinpoint the "secret" setting that makes the difference. I REALLY wish I knew what that is. There is obviously some, perhaps little, setting(s) that is making all the difference. If you have the energy for it, you might want to start with my settings or the default ones and start adjusting one thing at a time and work your way through. It would be painstaking and boring but man, if you discovered it, what a hero you would be! A happy hero too. I was actually considering doing that until I got distracted (by this really great WW1 air combat game) and just never pursued it.

This is a curious problem Steve. I was experiencing exactly what you speak of when rabu first helped me arrive at the settings I've posted. I was resigning that the 30's-40's and occasional 17's were going to be the best I was going to be able to get. That's when rabu came along and showed screenshots of his machine running near 60 consistently. At first, I was certain that he had some monster computer. It turned out that his was not quite as powerful as mine! There is obviously some "sweetspot" that you haven't hit upon and unfortunately (but not surprising) is not the same settings I use. I do think it is interesting how close my settings are to the default. That's a good starting point I think. I suggest you begin making single changes at a time taking notes on what you've changed and see how much difference that makes. Start all over (i.e., go back to defaults) often and try different approaches. Sorry, I know I'm not being much help here. Maybe you'll get lucky as I did and have someone step forward that has a machine similar to yours that is running well. Wish you the best! -mark

I didn't want to hijack the other thread where I brought this topic up (http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=44498) so I decided to start this new one. I have been puzzled by the fact that the B.E.2c in OFF has a fuselage mounted forward Lewis gun that obviously fires through the prop (i.e. is synchronized). I was unaware that there were any Lewis guns configured this way so I started Googling. I found this fascinating article: http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/vie...20-%201391.html The relevant excerpts follow. There was apparently experimental success with synchronizing the Lewis. The problem with the Lewis had to do with the mass of the round and the acceleration necessary to get the bullet going. This delay apparently made synchronizing the Lewis difficult . (I've always wondered about that!). Anyway, here is the excerpt: So, having a synchronized Lewis gun on the B.E.2c in OFF is not far fetched I suppose. Very interesting. Also, Condor and I were discussing how the synchronizing gear actually worked. Neither of us had studied this, we were just being smarty-pants. I don't know a lot of detail of the workings of machine guns except to know that guns like the Lewis, Maxim, Parabellum use the gas expelled from the round just fired to load the next round as well as actually fire that next round. Condor seemed to think that a synchronizing gear would effectively "release the trigger" (i.e. stop the gun from firing) when the propeller blade passed across the gun's path. I was arguing that perhaps a semi-automatic gun (my only personal example is my 1911 pistol which of course is semi-automatic and certainly existed at the time) would work better in this application such that the teeth of a gear would "pull the trigger" and there would simply be teeth missing in the appropriate places where the prop blade was. In other words, Condor was saying the synchronizing gear "stops the gun from firing when the prop is in the way" and I was saying the synchronizer "makes the gun fire when the prop is not in the way." Well, apparently we were both right! :yes: Here is the relevant excerpt: So, apparently, the idea I had was basically how the Vickers synchronizing gear worked and Condor's idea was how the Spandau worked. Pretty cool stuff!

Wonderful to hear this CJ! Congratulations!

Yup. Well, I said Springfield because it is a Springfield Armory. There are so many 1911 variations that it's getting difficult to just say 1911 anymore and people understand what you mean. I guess I could have said 1911 ACP made by Springfield Armory but hindsight you know. One thing I do know, finding ammo for this thing right now is not the easiest thing to do and when you do, it's close to 50 cents a round! Even reloading my own is near 40 cents. Outrageous. I just bought 200 rounds of that crappy Blazer non-reloadable stuff and paid $106 after taxes and shipping! Crazy. I'm shooting my .22 mostly these days cause I can't afford anything else. :yes:

Hmmm. I think I understand how that could work. The trigger push rod would just wack away at the trigger but only when the trigger was actually ready to be pulled would it actually fire. The spring loaded cam follower would prevent damage when the trigger was not ready. Using this very simple method would also allow the gun to fire as fast as it can possibly be fired too. I could also see where the gun might not fire but one time as the trigger is getting hammered with all those presses and never get a chance to "recover" from the first firing. Apparently that is not a problem. Thanks for clearing that up. I'm getting a real education here!

1911 GI spec (A1) 45 pistol. Sorry I didn't make that clearer. I'd love to get a M1903. I love those old bolt action rifles.

Checksix, Fiddling with graphics should not affect the installation of the game or make the CD unrecognizable. It is true that you need to patch your way up to 1.3c before you go to 1.3L. I don't recall if there is a direct upgrade path to 1.3c but the readme should clear that up for you. Good luck!

I see your point Bullethead. I was (incorrectly) considering all those guns you mention as "gas operated" from the standpoint that the recoil is being created from the gas blowing the breach backward. I understand "gas operated" really means that there is an actual gas tube involved, etc. Sorry for that confusion. BTW, it seems that the little booklet that came with my Springfield 1911 refers to the extraction and reloading mechanism as "gas operated." That's probably what corrupted my thinking.

I found this diagram at this web site: http://wapedia.mobi/en/Interrupter_gear The author claims it is the original design of the Spandau lMG 08. It looks a little too simplistic to me. Is that cam wheel geared? It would obviously have to be. Besides, this design is a synchronizer not an interrupter which was the Spandau design anyway, right? To further the confusion. The gun in the diagram could not (or should not) be a machine gun (fully automatic) but would need to be a semi-automatic in order to function properly in this configuration. Most machine guns have a semi-automatic mode so I suppose that isn't too much of a problem. This is probably more confusing then helpful. It is however, exactly the idea I had as I sat with my 1911 imagining how I might go about firing that gun through a propeller.

Great insight Bullethead. Can always depend on you for that! Wasn't the Vickers and Spandau also gas operated? I thought they were. According to the research I've done, the Vickers had a rate of fire of 450-600 rnds/min opposed to 400 for the Spandau. Obviously the synchronizer issue you (quite logically) present must have been dealt with in such a way as not to impede rate of fire too much unless that rate of fire is wrong or is the non-synchronized version, something like that. It is called a "synchronizer GEAR" which obviously means that the 40:8 ratio you refer to is handled with gearing. That is not a difficult ratio to gear so I can see how they might do that. It still seems like a difficult problem to solve because of the range of RPMs the gun would have to deal with. At idle, the engine maybe turns 200 RPM (just guessing) and at full throttle we might see 1800 RPM (again just guessing). Gearing would take care of some of that but that kind of range certainly would make this a pretty tricky thing. Thanks for the education here. This is really fascinating and I'd love to understand this stuff better. <S>! -mark

I've posted this before, worth repeating: This is the first sim I've ever played where I didn't turn the music off after a couple of days. I still have it on and still loving it!

Understood. Thanks Winder. So, there was indeed a Lewis gun that was synchronized to fire through the prop? I did not know that. I thought the Vickers was the only one. Interesting.

This seems like a good place to ask this question. The armament of the B.E.2c seems a bit odd to me. All the historical data I have read about this aircraft show the observer having a swivel mounted Lewis yet ingame is a fixed Lewis that fires through the prop. Can that be right? Was there a Lewis guy synchronized to fire through the prop like that? Certainly this is the only one of its kind in OFF. Thanks and thank you especially for all the extra effort put into these patches! -mark

Great advice there Pol! Thank you for that. My settings are sort of a "sweetspot" for machines like mine anyway but I don't understand some of the settings. I just followed Rabu's lead. It's always helpful to review them once in a while.

Two ideas here. Feel free to fire away. Idea #1 We all know the first page of the General Discussion forum is about half stickys. Sure, there could probably be some cleanup but I'd like to recommend that a new forum be created and move all the stickys there and name it something eye catching like "Getting started in OFF" or "OFF Help References", something like that. That way, we can keep the General Discussion about, well, discussion generally and not have to worry about the first page being taken over by stickys. The "Getting started in OFF" forum could be locked so that people can't post new topics there thus maintaining the spirit of the "sticky" concept without cluttering up our other forums. Only things we would otherwise want to be a sticky would be put there so the forum would not grow to an unmanageable size. Idea #2 Some of these stickys could use some cleanup too. For example, that Tips and Cheats is painful to read through due to all the cut-n-pasting from other threads, etc. Also, trying to track reasonable video settings from the many places it is discussed is very frustrating. I would recommend assigning each topic to a particular person (in most cases the author) and allow that person edit privileges on that topic so they could clean it up, keep it relevant, etc. or even delete it altogether if appropriate. I've seen forums where a topic is locked so that no one can reply to it at all. I don't care for that. I like seeing peoples' replies. I think its a better idea to allow the author to edit the first posting in the topic as that is going to be the one a new user is going to read anyway. Of course that can make the replies to the thread somewhat irrelevant but that's not much of a problem I don't believe. I don't mean this to be criticism as much as I'd just like to see these couple of housecleaning changes made so that particularly new players coming here don't have to plow through the evolution of everybody's thoughts on things. There are lots of great contributions made here and I'd just like to see them easier to locate. Again, feel free to ignore me or flame me. Thank you all! -mark

Sorry to make work for ya there OvS. I am certain it will be worth it however. We'll have to be extra nice to you for a while I guess.

Howdy SD, Yeah, that's a strange one. It is a special nVidia mode called CSAA (Coverage Sampling Anti-Ailising). nVidia claims it is faster than SSAA (Super Sampling) and better quality than MSAA (Multi Sampling). It took Rabu to help me figure out how to set it and it did seem to give a bit better quality with no appreciable hit in performance. If you get bored and want to read the thread we exchanged, you can look here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showt...5&hl=nvidia As for using my settings, keep in mind that this is for MY system with an nVidia card. Your mileage may vary. I have been surprised though that several people have tried my (Rabu's actually) settings and have gotten remarkable results. Hope you see great results!

Great to hear CS. But....... Don't give me credit for this. Your thanks goes to Rabu who worked with me to get these settings. He and I have almost identical machines and was reporting 50s+ fps and I was lucky to see 25 at best at the time. I was really discouraged and he went the extra mile to help me. Regardless of credit, I am really glad you've gotten tuned up! regards -mark

Sorry, I realize now I didn't answer Steve's question. Thanks for that CaptSopwith!