Siggi

I have it, it's pretty good.

Happy birthday WM, hope the gals at the 'establishment' give you a good time.

From what I've read at various places it's going to be arcade/sim-light. In most cases there will be no take-offs/landings (lots of mission air-starts). Might be worth getting just for an occasional quick fix of air combat malarkey.

I thought I'd remove the Lewis from the top wing and fit a Vickers on the cowl, but when I got up next morning I found the blasted mechanics had swapped it back.

I'm thinking of carrying over all hours per pilot, maybe also missions flown. Main reason being it would make the kills/hours ratio look a bit more realistic (purely an aesthetic thing), but it would also mark a DiD player's vet-ranking (so to speak). Service on 2-seaters would be to a max of 50 hours (irrespective of how many times you've had a 2-seater persona). Eg, once you've accumulated 50 hours total on 2-seaters no more 2-seater duty required. Thoughts gentlemen?

This pic was something to do with taking the mickey out of the Absolut vodka advert. I forget the details. Anyway, it qualifies as silly.

Ok, forget the hours thing, and no more PMs on that, thangyuverimush. Knocking the 2-seater requirement on the head seems popular though (but only for those who have done it at least once and successfully transfered to fighters). To clarify: All new DiD recruits will be required to start on bombers, and remain on bombers until they have transfered. Thereafter they can stay on fighters through successive careers, or carry on with bombers or choose one or the other (bombers or fighters). However, if they choose another bomber career they cannot transfer to fighters with that persona. Or, to put it another way, once a player has had one successful transition from bombers to fighters he can thereafter choose bombers or fighters for any subsequent persona but must stick with that choice until that persona's termination (POW, KIA etc). So, all you chaps who are currently on fighters, you are no longer obliged to start a new persona on bombers. You can though, if you wish, choose bombers for your next persona, but if you do you will have to stick on bombers for the duration of that persona's life. Anyone currently on bombers can transfer in the normal way, even if it's their second or more times on bombers. Velvet, I'm not up for mixing the time-frame, sorry. The fixed real-time aspect of this current DiD is probably it's best component (at least in my opinion), for a host of reasons. If one thinks of all the plane types as chocolates, isn't it better to eat them slowly over time rather than stuff the lot in one go and feel a bit green around the gills afterwards? Kind of thing.

I don't know if this has already been noted, but in case it hasn't... While messing around with the NVidia CP settings for the CFS3 exe I tried enabling the Triple Buffering that is supposed to complement Vertical Sync. With it enabled it produced the dreaded blue triangles, experienced when fast-panning with TiR. After disabling Triple Buffering, no more triangles.

Absolutely a "can be". Those who want to continue flying 2-seaters, even after they've amassed a total of 50+ hours, will be free to do so.

I gave BoBII Wings of Victory another go two days ago, with the latest update for it. It was off again the next day. Too much crashy graphicy corruption stuff going on, and the planes still look like a toy thrown onto a carpet when they crash-land.

...but when it does, it pours. Or snows, or something. Beautiful weather yesterday, went to fly today and discovered the weather has closed in again until the 10th. But that's not really a problem. The problem is my pilot's career is all buggered up somehow. So, a few days ago I added 2gb RAM and a USB stick for ready-boost. I figure the game didn't like it because I got a lock-up at a mission start, then error messages when I tried again, one of which suggested a reset of CFS3 in the Workshop. I backed up my pilot log and dossier, hit the reset, then copied the files back into the game (and removed the USB stick). My pilot showed up in the Campaign ok. I then generated a new pilot for use in QC, later found he'd overwritten my campaign pilot, so copied the backed up files into the game again. Yesterday I flew two campaign sorties, got kills in both, but in both the claims form didn't come up, and missions and hours weren't credited to my log. Basically it looks like the OFF manager no longer recognizes or interfaces with my campaign pilot files. Anyone got any ideas if/how I can save my pilot, or is he screwed?

Pukka, sorted!

Thanks Olham, that's got the OFF manager seeing my pilot again. It's caused a couple of changes in his details: reduced the number of missions flown from 33 to 5 (fixed) and the hours are down (can't find an entry for hours flown in the dossier file). I'll have to wait until the 10th before I can stress-test anything more, but it's looking hopeful now.

That'd put a hex on the second coming, never mind a copy of an OS.

I've read that the AI is being worked on for the upcoming addon (or P4), and comments were invited on that and other stuff (can't remember which thread). Ok, a general observation on something I hope can be improved... I've been doing a hell of a lot of QC over the last couple of days. Something I'm finding is that a lot of a/c, at low level, are still doing this up and down yo-yoing. And it's not just at low level, the AI likes to do this climb and stall at all other altitudes too. This has settled into a common routine, where one chases an AI around until he finally climbs, hangs at the top and allows me to pour bucketloads into him, then he falls away. My general conclusion is that the AI places a huge emphasis on vertical maneouvers that the planes cannot really handle. The overall result is that there is a marked lack of the horizontal/linear dynamic in combat. From altitude one might expect the planes to try turning (they do) and then diving (they do), but in almost all cases the combat ends when they stupidly point their noses high into the sky and cop the packet as they stall and fall away. I have no idea how this could be handled, but I'll give it a shot...is there a way to instruct all AI that they must not point their noses higher than a certain degree under a certain airspeed for a specified length of time? Or just never to point their noses higher than a certain degree? If that means they end up in a sustained shallow climb when close to the ground, that would be an improvement. Sitting duck, yes, but more immersive than the absurd yo-yo. Maybe if the AI were made not to want to dive so close to the ground so quickly too...? What I'd like to see at low level is the AI trying to run for it at tree-top height...a horizontal chase. Turns yes, but the climb & stall, yuck. I'm guessing that CFS3's air-combat AI is very crude, or at least doesn't translate very well to slow WW1 planes? However, I've seen He-111s pulling the same crappy maneouvers (yo-yo), so I'm thinking it's just crappy CFS AI. I'm fully aware that you devs must have pulled hair already over this issue, AI code that allows only A, B and C, when it needs D, E and F too. How do you allow it vertical maneouvers at altitude that don't translate into climb & stall up there, and turn into yo-yo down low. Hmm...a proper bugger. And no doubt this isn't handled by a global file but has to be tweaked for each individual a/c. Anyway, to summarize...more horizontal, less vertical?

Aah, just one lottery-win away from nirvana.

What's wrong with a 30" one?

I've avoided fire from 6 o'clock, even when I've reacted after they've already started firing. On other occasions I've had the experience of getting hammered even well after initiating a tight turn. I would certainly not consider the AI is getting to cheat in that regard (not saying that's your viewpoint). I think a lot of it is down to the skill-level of the AI on your six. If he's a rookie he won't be hard to avoid, but if he's an ace he's going to keep his nose at you no matter what you do, up to a point. Just like we can against them (the AI).

When I'm on the tail of an ea I can yaw a hell of a lot with my rudder and keep the fire on target even when he's making a good turn. I see the AI doing the same, that even as I turn and they're coming at me their nose stays pointed in my direction. Then it'll suddenly point away and they pass outside of my turn. It doesn't always happen though, so I'm guessing it's down to rookie/ace AI status.

Ah, it's playable alright. QC isn't very representitive of the average campaign engagement anyway, so these issues don't come up very much where it actually matters. Plus the Tripe (Sopwith) is a real killer against which the AI don't have much of a chance anyway, rookie or ace. But you know us rabid simmers...

I think you'd find the combination of TV res plus close proximity to your eyes would = yuck. Even a high-definition TV is going to have a poor dot-pitch up close.

Added notes. Hmm. I've just tried out 1 vs 1 (Tripe vs Dr1), rookie then ace. Both the fights were top notch. The rookie ended up in a medium turn at altitude, until I pasted him, then he tried to escape in a shallow dive. He died in his cockpit. The ace used vertical maneouvers, without stalling, corkscrew dives, a whole range of good stuff, until he got to the deck, then did some weird stuff (flying like a UFO for a brief period, flying as if the top-plan of the a/c was it's nose), then back to normal. No issues to complain about on the whole. Now do a 6 vs 6 (AI on random), and the AI get to the deck and go into yo-yo mode. So I'm now thinking, is this yo-yo stuff, climb & stall etc, the AI going into some kind of 'idle' mode because the CPU can't handle too many planes at once?

Sounds like ViKs and his team of cheats in IL2.

He was so fired up about this sim, then he just vanished.