HomeBoy

Steve, Here are my settings. Rabu helped me get this optimized and was the first time I started getting 50+ fps. Yours and my machines are not so different that this might work for you as well. If nothing else, it gives you a decent starting place.

I have begun a rather ambitious project of evaluating and comparing each of the 39 aircraft in OFF and have created this web site to contain the study. I envision two phases of the project; (1) historical and (2) experiential (actual in-game observation). The first phase is basically done (except for correcting mistakes). The second and much more difficult phase will be the testing and comparing of the OFF aircraft with no respect to the actual historical data. I feel it is a much greater service to the community to report how these planes actually fly opposed to how they should fly. In my years playing Aces High, I benefited greatly from the work done by one of the members: Soda's AH Aircraft Evaluation Website from which I am modeling this project. My primary purpose is to make comparisons and observations that can help you understand how to best employ the aircraft. The plan is to measure the actual aircraft "in-game" rather than introduce "historical data." Obviously this will be a subjective evaluation but I hope those of you who get excited about this sort of thing will provide helpful input too. I will be analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each aircraft as well as the role each one is best suited for. My desire is to make the evaluations relevant to actual game experience. For example, if, in your Nieuport 11, you encounter a group of Alb D.IIs, you will immediately know what advantages you might have, what their weaknesses might be so you can make a wise decision on how to approach that situation. Evaluating the aircraft in any game I undertake has been something I always do but this is my most organized attempt at that. Reading the thread started by BulletHead on the Spad13 was inspiring and there is obviously a wealth of knowledge here at the forum so I'm hoping many of you will join my effort. I figure if I'm going to this much trouble, I may as well make it a public project so that everyone can benefit and participate as they desire. Let's see how it goes. If it becomes clear that the work is inadequate, exposure will bring it to a merciful end or someone more qualified and motivated than I can step up. I would appreciate reports of any mistakes (I'm sure there are plenty) of the historical data I have out there now. If you would, wait until you've looked through all of it and send me email (send it here: mhf99 - AT - yahoo.com) with your summary rather then hit me with a bunch of single items. That will help make my life a little easier. Thank you very much for any help you might be willing to provide! I hope this effort will help you enjoy this great game better. I've got my stopwatch and graph paper all ready. Can't wait to get started!

I have decided to hold off on editing the individual aircraft pages until after I have completed all the tests. I have started a "Best and Worst" section of the main page (if you scroll down the Main Page you will find it. I have included links to the actual data that I compiled from flying each of the planes. I've only completed the "Speed at Altitude" table so far but the others are soon coming. I am pleased to find that the data is pretty well lining up with common sense. For example, the fastest planes in the game are the Spuds 7 & 13 and the SE5. I don't see anything outrageous with respect to data. Please let me know if find anything odd. Speaking of weird. When I was organizing the armament data, I found it extremely odd that the RAF B.E.2c has a Lewis machine gun that fires through the prop! The Lewis was not synchronized, the Vickers was used for that. There is clearly no deflector plates on that prop (it's a four bladed prop too!) so I just find that puzzling. Is that a bug? From all the reading I've done on the BE2, the forward seated observer had a Lewis on a swivel mount for self defense rather than a forward mounted gun like in the game. Strange.

Hi Vasco, It's a basic ratio problem. You take you monitor's natural resolution (e.g. 1920x1200 which is what mine is) and you express it as a fraction: 1920/1200 Where 1920 is the horizontal component and 1200 is the vertical. So, if you want a vertical FOV of 20 degrees and you want the associated horizontal FOV then you have this equivalence ratio: 1920/1200 = x/20 Solving for x we get: 1920/1200 * 20 = 1.6 * 20 = 32 So, the FOV for that particular monitor would be 32 degrees horizontal x 20 degrees vertical. Of course, you can start with either horizontal or vertical value you want and just do the basic algebra to solve for the other component. Hope that makes sense! <S>! -mark

Sorry if I'm reading you wrong here but it sounds like you are confused about the difference between a "button" and an "axis." Hope I'm not "talking down" to you here. I certainly don't mean to. Elevator trim controls (as well as mixture, throttle, etc.) in OFF come in two flavors: keyboard commands and axes. The reason for that is not every one has enough equipment to support all the controls of the game. Those who do not have enough axes (i.e., analog knobs or sliding trim-pots as you describe) will have to implement these features using keyboard presses (or replicate as a button on their joystick somewhere). If you are one of those lucky few that have a controller with more axes than the standard pitch, roll, twist (on some), and throttle then you will not use the keyboard commands and will opt for setting up your available axis (sliding trim-pot in your case) to control elevator trim. You will want to go to the AXIS section of the controller setup utility and assign "elevator trim axis" to your sliding pot as I described in a previous post. It sounds like from your description that you are trying to do this by messing with the "elevator trim buttons." Am I right? Just FYI here. To make sure you don't accidentally hit, say, Keypad 7 (elevator trim down) once you have an analog control handling that function, I recommend going in and un-assigning those commands once you assign a function to an axis. In my case, I have un-assigned these keyboard commands because I have axes controlling all these functions: Ailerons Left Ailerons Right (my joystick movement left and right accomplishes this function) Elevator Up Elevator Down (my joystick forward and back) Rudder Left Rudder Right (rudder pedals) Ailerons & Rudder Center (absolutely no need for this!) Elevator Trim Down Elevator Trim Up (I have a knob at the "pinky" position of my throttle for this) Mixture Increase Mixture Decrease (I have a knob on the side of my throttle I use for analog mixture) Throttle 10%, 20% ... Full Throttle Decrease Throttle Increase (Get rid of all throttle related buttons as I use a throttle control) That is, everything that has a key assignment associated with it that I have an axis controller gets deleted. That way, I don't have to worry about accidentally hitting some key that might try to override something I control with an analog control. Again, if I'm telling you stuff you already know I apologize. Maybe some of what I've said will be useful however. regards -mark

Sorry bout that Olham. That was kinda mean huh? I tell you. I could eat a full meal and come home to a plate like that and still everything on the plate (including the cucumbers!). What's that advertising line? "There's always room for Jello!" Well, I say, there's always room for sushi! It's my favorite food without a doubt. That's saying something based on the "meat and potatoes" area I grew up in!

Now you're talking! Me too! My wife is Asian and she turned me on to sushi years ago. YUM!!

Hi Steve, If you go to CFS3-QC and go to the Controller Configuration screen and find the "elevator trim" axis assignment screen. Once you have the proper axis selected you click the "new assignment" (or something like that) button and it will wait for you to move the axis you want to assign. You may have to move your controller a few times to make that axis appear in the window. That's all you have to do to assign a controller axis. If you bring up the controller configuration screen while sitting out on the airfield, you'll be able to test it immediately. Some of the planes have a visible mixture control so you will be able to see it move and thus verify that it's working properly and moves in the proper direction. One of the help guides I've been planning to do is a guide on setting up your controllers. This aspect of OFF is one of the ugliest parts of the game as it is MS Flight Simulator showing its ugly head. I love MSFS but controller configuration is not one of it's strong suits. So, give that a try and let us know how it goes. Take it out on the treadmill and give it a spin!

Here are the commands I think are most important. I've listed them in order of importance. Most sticks (e.g. Logitech Wingman) have at least eight buttons so the first eight are the ones I think are the critical ones. Fire all guns (Space Bar) TrackIR Center (F12) Virtual Cockpit (unassigned, must set this to something) Go to gunner/bomber position (F7) Toggle Aircraft Labels (CTRL SHF l) Mission Map (m) Info (z) Auto Pilot (CTRL SHF a) Zoom In ( ] ) Zoom Out ( [ ) Toggle TAC (Shift t) TAC mode select (t) TAC range cycle (CTRL SHF t) Weapon Select (Backspace) Float View (SHF F6) Pause (p) Quit (CTRL q) If you still have available buttons, these are also important to me: Start Engine (e) Accelerate Time (CTRL SHF e) -Much better than using warp IMHO Decelerate Time (CTRL SHF r) Next Waypoint (SHF w) Previous Waypoint (CTRL w) Finally, if you have two extra axes on your controllers, these axis assignments are very handy: Mixture Elevator Trim Since moving all my Wingmen "hand signals" to voice commands (Game Commander 2), I don't take up any more button space for that. If you are cramped for button space you could consider that. Another thing I highly recommend is go to the Game Controllers utility (from CFS3-QC) and carefully look through all the axis assignments and delete any unwanted axis the idiot MS game interface might assign in it's attempt to be helpful (NOT!!). For example, you may find that your CH Pro Pedals toe brake axes (X & Y) are assigned to your pitch and roll axes (I've seen that)! This will certainly make flying the plane rather difficult with two controllers trying to control your elevator and ailerons. Also, you may want to un-assign all key commands you know you'll never use (e.g. Toggle Cockpit, all the PadLock commands) so you don't accidentally hit them while flying. These are the ones I've settled on. For a while there, I was shuffling things around almost every time I flew. Hope that helps -mark

Update! I finally finished the speed and altitude tests. I haven't updated any of the individual aircraft pages yet but I have summarized my findings on the Main Page. Check it out if you like. Let me know if you find any mistakes. Over the next week, I will update each of the airplane pages with speed, altitude, cockpit views and firepower data (which is all I have done so far). Next comes flight characteristics tests (stalls, climb, dive, etc.) I'm hoping that will go a little faster now that I have more of a system worked out for testing. I sure do wish QC would save my last settings! It is driving me crazy to have to enter all that EVERYTIME I start a flight. Oh well, when it's over hopefully I won't have to be doing that all the time anymore.

There could be indeed! That's Aces High. Good eye there Olham! <S>!

My homemade rig!

Great pictures Gous! We were at that very place just two months ago (Here are our pictures). My family all agree that we enjoyed Greece the best. We wanted to get out to the islands and just didn't have the time. Sure enjoyed the trip to the coast and that little park there along the coast was beautiful! Thanks for sharing!

HomeBoy's HomeStead. Yeah, I know, needs a little work but it's very nice on the inside. The area has sorta gone to pot over the last few years but it's home.

As I'm sure you know, there are six "hand signals" that you can communicate to your wingmen while flying: Reply Affirmative Reply Negative Wingmen Attack Wingmen Rejoin Wingmen Help Wingmen Split Just for fun, I decided to implement these as actual spoken commands. Now, while flying, I can simply call out verbally "Help" and my hapless wingmen will wander over and try to help undo the mess I've gotten myself into on the deck against a dozen Dr.Is. Well, it wasn't much work actually since I've been using this software called Game Commander 2 for a very long time and has since gone out of business and thus (see the hyperlink) can be found for free. In Lockon (I know, I know, a jet game!), I've been using it to do very immersive things like "Tower, request permission to taxi" and the like. Since I already have a microphone (which is primarily used to house my TrackIR "antlers") building a GC2 profile for OFF was a piece of cake and finally gives me a use for the microphone in OFF. I know it's not realistic to talk to my wingmen in WWI using a "radio" but since I have this TAC "radar" on the screen already, well, why not. Just thought you might enjoy yet another peek into the HomeBoy Laboratory.

WTG Lou!

...gives me even more motivation to finish the aircraft evaluation web site. Anyone that takes a look at that cannot possibly claim arcade!

Guess what I received in email from amazon.com just this morning? An advertisement for ROF! Rather irritating I must say. Of course I understand the financial aspect of this but something is just wrong with this picture. A game which they themselves admit was prematurely released and features two, TWO airplanes and we are plodding along with our 39! Sheesh! Ok, sorry about that, I'm feeling better now. Heartbeat's back to normal, blood pressure's dropped. I'm ok. I'm ok.

Hi Test Pilot, Well, if you have to ask then you should be thankful (unless you don't use TIR). Snap lap (I call it "lap snap", whatever) occurs when you're flying along and you turn your head completely away from the computer (checking the hockey scores on the TV, etc.) such that TIR loses view of the reflectors and then you turn your head back to the screen and rather than TIR regrouping and begin tracking properly again (which it does correctly most of the time), it snaps to the down view (i.e., looking at your lap). To overcome the problem you but have to hit your "TIR Center" button and all is well. This problem has been around for a very long time and appears to have completely gone away with TIR5 (at least I haven't seen it nor heard of it). ...Thus the "Lap Snap"

Indeed they did. I got lucky when I bought mine as I didn't know to look for 3.1. If you have 3.1 you won't have to install CFS3 at all! If you haven't bought CFS3 yet, I highly recommend you make an extra effort to get 3.1. <S>! -mark

I have sorta come at this half-cocked huh! Thank you Steve for helping get my train back on the rails. I have to say it's the least you can do after causing all that "treadmill" trouble! Sorry Barn. Didn't mean to string you along here. Actually, as Steve points out, my profile may not be exactly what you are looking for and that's why I didn't just offer it up. If however, you want to try it, you can download it here. In addition to the changes I made to the Pitch and Yaw, I also added some vertical to the "Y" axis which makes it easier to stretch your neck up and look over the top wing better. I changed the "Z" axis by shortening the backward motion because with the default setting, I found I was moving my head "through" the headrest on such equipped planes and that was a bit irritating. You may not like that restricted movement. I don't think I touched the "X" axis at all. The profiles are kept in "C:\Natural Point\TrackIR5\profiles". You should make a backup in ANOTHER folder of your existing "default.xml" before you place mine in there. Be sure both profiles are NOT in the folder when you start up TIR5 else it will be confusing as you will see two default profiles. I would move the original to say the desktop before copying mine there. As for my TrackIR4 Guide, it will help you with the basics of TIR but the graphs and interface have changed a lot. It's worth looking at though as it will certainly help you understand how the device and software work. I have plans to write a TrackIR5 guide but between such things as my aircraft testing project, senselessly arguing over whether or not an airplane can take off from a treadmill and the fact that TIR5 has not come out of beta yet, I'll probably wait a few months. Good luck and sorry for not approaching this thread better. -mark

Hi Barn, Yes I know! These graphs are a bit daunting till you get used to them. From the default profile, you really only need to modify the Pitch and the Roll. One important thing to remember which will make changing the points on the graph much easier is to middle-mouse click (that is usually the wheel) in the graph first. That will scale the graph so you can see all the points very well. You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the graph but I have found that to be pretty confusing so you will probably want to do a lot of middle-mouse clicks to get back to something sane looking. Here are my graphs for Pitch and Roll: Ignore the red line. That's just my current head position. It's not part of the graph. Hope that helps get you up and going. I really wish NP would provide a more flight-sim type default profile using wider pitch and roll but it's not that hard to alter it. -mark

Hi Vince! No, I didn't mean to make that sound quite the way it did. None of you guys have EVER been anything but professional. I was probably getting a bit too dramatic with that and certainly didn't mean to imply you don't do a good job at support. My sincere apologies! -mark

No, "lap snap" has been around since at least 026 or so. At least I've had problems with it that long. Some people have never seen it, some (like you), only see it with 030, others (like me) saw it with all the 4.1 versions. It's a strange one. I remember trying to get Seth interested in fixing it and he could never get it to happen so I guess he blew me off as one of them kooks. Oh well. Those guys try real hard so I never complained about it. Glad it's gone with the 5 hardware and software. I tell you, the 5 hardware is so much better than 4 that I had planned a whole evening to get it set up when I got it and ended up pretty much done in about 15 minutes. It is incredibly smooth and responsive. All the little tricks I had to do with 4 just disappeared. TIR5 is a huge improvement over 4. BTW, the reason I say there is really no advantage to going to 5 software is that the 5 hardware has significantly better resolution and the 5 software is written specifically to manage that device. The backward compatibility they built in was just so they could eventually retire version 4. If I were you (and everyone else listening), I would stay with version 4 as long as you can and as long as you have 4 hardware (obviously).