Mr. Lucky

I believe they call it the 'suspension of dis-belief'. It might be what we are calling ;immersion' here. But you're right, the colors and shading making it look more real. What I've seen of RoF, and I've said it from the beginning, the graphics are excellent, but don't quite look real. It doesn't make me 'feel' like I'm there. It looks like CGI to me whereas OFF looks like film.

What...no blackpowder?

I played the first one and highly recommend it. GUN is also very good. But, both have some very difficult and near impossible missions you have to conclude to advance the story. I was stuck on one near the end of the original Call of Jaurez and never finished it because that's when I started getting into OFF....

Very interesting. It was most interesting to see how they crated them for transport.

He lists a Camel right at the beginning and the location.

The one that doesn't move!

I was reading one of CJ's Spad posts over there and I couldn't help but laugh when one of them welcomed him to WWI! That's like the new kid in 1918 welcoming Lufbery to the air war! This is what I mean about those people having their heads in the sand. We here, know of OFF, certainly, and RoF and First Eagles! How can you be a WWI aviation fan and looking for WWI sims and not know of these? Maybe I just don't understand.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but I have tried the damage mod in campaign mode and posted my observations in that thread.

I've flown a few missions in campaign with the damage mod and I must say I like it better than the easy or hard dm's. For my craft, I see no difference. In all three the first molecule of lead always still seems to hit something critical. Either I can barely turn, one wing drops or the engine runs rough and loses power. At best this puts me out of the fight and at worst, makes ma a mark on someone else's kill board. For the AI, I like the feel much better. I don't need explosion, or fires or mid-air breakups on every kill. My last two kills had finally fallen from a hail of lead and entered into a spin down to the ground, which I had seen in the preview videos, but only once, I think, in the stock game. This was much better than following them in a lazy descent, continuing to pour rounds into them in case they weren't actually shot down, until they finally settled into the ground. If I find more to observe, good or bad, I will post it here. So far so good.

I'm glad you guys took the plunge and posted the results here for the rest of us before we plunk down our money and the link to SimHQ was helpful. But I have mixed emotions. I really wanted to try ROF but the problems with the online servers have pretty much nixed it for me. If a demo comes out, then I'll try it. I feel sorry for the neoqb guys because I'm sure their hearts were in the right place like OBD and they're scrambling right now to get things corrected and smoothed out. Yet, at the same time, I can't help but feel a little vindication because of all the people who not only blindly sang the praises of ROF but refused to even try or acknowledge the quality or even existence of OFF who are now stuck and griping about their problems with ROF. They are even still myopic enough to say that it's still great with the workarounds and difficulties. For my part, it's still OFF for my time and attention. And one last thing. Maybe I don't understand, because I didn't get to see the posted video, but how are these postings about ROF different than WF2's posting which she was, politely I might add, asked to not do or to do elsewhere? Is it because these aren't favorable? Just asking, because, to me it seems uncharacteristically hypocritical of the people here. I'm glad they're here because it's information I want to know, but I want the good as well as the bad.

Would that be Millie and Vanillie? Sorry, couldn't resist!

Though technically still French, the Lafayette Escadrille flew N17's and, I think, 24's. American volunteers most of which were absorbed into the AEF.

FreeFalcon 5 mod for Falcon. It's really good and now you can fly many different aircraft. I switch between that and OFF from one spectrum to the other. Also, Napoleonic Wars II modded Roman War . Would like to try the battlefield mods you mentioned but don't have battlefield yet. Does the 1918 mod have single player capability?

One of the things I particularly liked about Red Baron was the enclosed map and ability to navigate by it. That was about the time I started my second round of flying lessons and soloed. UK, I really likes strike commander. The stories and the management aspect were very interesting. I would like to see something like that in WWI also with today's technology. The main complaint I had with Strike Commander is that the missiles slways seemed to miss and every battle devolved into cannon dogfights. I also really liked the jeep you drive into town.

I got 14, but the Zeppelin answers are wrong based on the questions.

General perceptions: VII and XIII: visibility sucks. The top wing blocks so much sky it's hard to spot and track targets. The view out the wings of that well braced bay structure gives one confidence and a feeling of flying in a tough bird. Unfortunately, the AI still manage sever all my control cables, empty my fuel tank, perforate my cylinders and puncture my tires with the first bullet and that's on the hard DM. It does have nice speed though.

Report so far: 1st combat: Alb DIII v. N17 lewis Due to the maneuverability of the N17 and the performance of my machine, the results were inconclusive. I only got a few snap shots and he did the usual AI trick of maneuvering into the ground. I might have damaged him to cause this but I saw no visual confirmation. 2nd combat: Sop Pup v. Alb DIII Saw debris come off the EA but no visual damage and he eventually just flew into the ground. 3rd combat: SE5A v Alb DIII Decided to try something with more firepower. Still saw some debris but the EA maneuvered very well and I couldn't get a sustained burst into him. He maneuvered into the ground. 4th combat: SE5A v Alb DIII This time set the EA skill to rookie. The previous combats were random. This allowed me to get a good burst into him. Results were better. Still saw debris come from the plane. On one burst into the fuselage saw a ball of flame come from him, but no fire. After that, he maneuvered wildly as he descended (might have been out of control) then about 800 feet up, he actually spiraled in. This gave the best results so far. Conclusion to this point. It seems pretty good to me. I play with aids off and even though I didn't see 'damage' or breakage, it was still good to see results of my hits. I am still using the hard damage model btw. I may switch to intermediate and try that in campaign as well as the threshold adjustments in QC. I'll keep you posted.

I'll report back to this point. I can't get the files to work for me. I made a backup of the original xdp. renamed the .txt. to xdp deleted the bdp file. All this is in the Nieuport17_lewis_qc1 fiolder. When I tried to do quick combat against it, when it came time to load the CFS3 engine, I got an error that the Nieuport17_lewis_qc1 file was damaged and the airplane will not be available or something to that effect. I went back and moved my xdp backup out of the folder in case 2 xdp's in the same folder was causing a conflict. I also went back and made sure all the folder heirarchy had read only unchecked. I got the same error. Both times, a new bdp file was not created. Thanks. Would like to test this if I can. Update: I reviewed the thread again and you must remove some of the underscores in the new files and replace them with spaces in order to match the names of the old ones. Now, on to testing.

To anybody using laptops or notebooks to play OFF: What kind of results are you getting? Frame rates, settings, etc and what laptop/notebook are you using? Do you use an external monitor or the integrated monitor? Thanks

Also, I'd recommend any of the Osprey series. Lots of pictures, you can read them just in sections. Not a lot of text but a lot of details. They make good light reading and good reference books as well. Just a bit pricey imho.

Historical aviation. They got all kinds. Here's the link. May have to cut and paste http://www.historicaviation.com/index.po

I know it's supposed to be as historically accurate as possible, but I thought it'd be fun to put the characters from The Blue Max in their squadron. It'd be interesting to fly with von Kluegermann or Hpt. Heidemann or even Fabian. "I'll fly with Staackel" Just a fun thought.

I only fly in campaign, so I'd be interested in testing them there when or if you get more aircraft changed.

I've got the perfect field next to my house. Landed my Taylorcraft there one time. What I'd like to really find is the German canvas tent hangars or a pattern to have one or two made.

Well, if the team is checking this thread...... a pet peave of mine for a while. Can you reposition the Main Menu hot spot in the UI to NOT line up with the leave hot spot on the 1st screen. Many times, I accidentally click the main menu button and if there's a lag, it carries the mouse click over to the main menu screen and selects 'leave' when I didn't want to. This is especially irksome when I use Alacrity or Autostart and everything has to be started up then shutdown again. BTW....I've noticed this before....I've been away from OFF for about a month, and coming back, it is just awesome the look and feel. So if you think you're getting used to how gorgeous the scenery and the environment is, just take a break and come back. Absolutely awesome.