tttiger

Since apparently this has become a thread on Widowmaker's OT threads and my response, let me point out this: My objection was Widowmaker starting an OT thread to sharply criticize the British PM and OVS chiming in to sharply criticize President Obama. Most game/sim forums strictly prohibit discussing politics because it can get real nasty real fast. My second objection, now raised twice, is OVS, as a moderator, jumping into controversial topics with very heated opinions. Sorry, but that is not (IMO) appropriate or professional behavior for a moderator. A moderator simply shouldn't allow himself to join into debates, especially heated ones. And Rabu as another developer really shouldn't be standing on the sidelines cheering him on. But, hey, if you guys want to "recharge the batteries" and think that's "Good for the Soul" as OVS says, let's just start flaming and let it get totally nasty. Do you really want my opinions on Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and how they have destroyed civil rights in this country? How they have trashed the US Constitution (and the US economy)? Nah! I don't think so....And I don't think this is the place for that type of discussion. As you guys keep saying, this was a sim built by amateurs. And here's where it shows. ttt

I agree! When the moderators can't avoid giving their political views, they simply shouldn't be moderators. This thread should have been locked after post 1. Instead, the moderator tossed gasoline on the fire. What international airline do you repair planes for, OVS? Must be Air France.... Politics have no place in this forum. Widowmaker constantly puts up OT threads that have nothing to do with anything except he feels a need to be noticed. Must be very lonely. Kinda sad. But seeing the developers and moderators jump in and help him beat his silly drum is totally inappropriate. ttt

The Sopwith Strutter has dive brakes. You'll need that D key. Tony the Tiger

Here's an interesting discussion of the topic, at least for the effect of German AA on British aircraft (since the Germans rarely flew across the British lines, this makes sense): http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/referenc...914-1918-a.html Note the distinction between ground fire (ineffective above 3,000 feet by this author's definition) and AA fire. I think it's important to make that distinction. I like it the way it is. Tony

Hellshade, Forget your meds today? Eyes counter-rotating? Get a grip, boy! You're raising fanboyism to a whole new level! You're putting a whole lot of words in my mouth that I never said. Digitally enhanced photos? Who said that? Not me, brah! Slackers? Where in my post did you find that? Those terms are with the chirping crickets in your empty skull! Have I ever said it is less than a brilliant sim? Never! And I will buy P4 and any add-ons that are offered. "It's GRRRRRREAT!" (Tony the Tiger) But it does seem if they could get 3,400 historical skins right and accurate daily weather over a four-year war, getting two lousy medals correct isn't asking very much. And if they can get all the Brit, French and German bios correct, why not a few Americans? It's just a cut and paste job from The Aerodrome. Both seem a pretty easy fix to me. (Dej, fixing those medals might be an hour's work and I've been hearing about Paarma for a long time but seeing zero results). I can see why zoomzoom is confused: It's wildly incorrect the way it is. Oh, and I paid much more than $39.95. I bought it at the original price. And it was and is well worth it. Pol, I do appreciate that you say it has been addressed in P4 and am glad to hear it. But heaven help the fool who voices even the most minor criticism. Hellshade the Defender goes bouncing off the walls! Now, just calm down, HS. Get yourself a paper bag and take deep breaths. The fellows in the white coats are on their way. To quote Woody Allen: "Nothing wrong with him that can't be cured with a large dose of Thorazine and a polo mallet." ttt

The American medals are totally screwed up in OFF, reflecting the fact that it is, after all, a British and Commonwealth game. This also is evidenced by an almost complete lack of biographical profiles of American aces (even Rickenbacker is missing!) while all Brit, French and German aces are profiled. OFF (or BHAH, a truly unpronounceable acronym -- Bee-hah?) shows the Medal of Honor as the lowest award for 5 kills. Instead, it is, of course, comparable to the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry. In the game you get the VC only after you get 30 kills. I've never been able to get an American pilot in the game to 30 victories (even if they live I hit Nov. 11 first) to see what the "ultimate" American medal is in the hopelessly flawed OFF scheme of US decorations. The correct order of precedence for American WWI medals for valor is: Medal of Honor (highest for valor), Distinguished Service Cross or Navy Cross (second highest for valor -- not to be confused with the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat award), Silver Star (third) and Citation Star (fourth). http://books.google.com/books?id=B1cMtKQP3...4#PRA2-PA767,M1 It would seem to me that a sim that beats its chest so loudly about being historically correct could at least get the US medals and biographies straight. This has come up several times before to a chorus of yawns from the "developers." ttt

Who knew??? VERY cool! Thank you, LF! ttt

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Han...un/fgun-pr.html

CJ, with all due respect (I've never quite understood what that term means: How much respect is anyone due? ): If you watch the trailer, it's true that you can't see a feed chute or belt feeding the MGs but I'm not sure you would see them at the camera angles that were used anyway. What you can see, very clearly, are the empty cartridge cases flying out when the guns are fired. Watch the first few seconds of the trailer showing the German troops advancing. As a gun collector, I immediately spotted the WWI Germans are carrying WWII-vintage British Enfield No. 4 rifles with Korean War vintage blade (No. 9) bayonets. So what? It's not really important to telling the story. Those probably are Irish troops disguised as Germans (cheap extras) anyway and that's what the Irish troops carried post WWII: Surplus British Enfields. Okay, if you want to be totally anal and pick "Blue Max" nits all day, try these: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060177/goofs It's just a movie, folks. ttt

Hey, as long as you don't point to the sheriff's badge you're wearing while you're offering your opinions, I have no problems with you airing your views at all (well, that whole thread about celebrities and charities should have been locked -- it has no place here on a WWI flight sim forum. Using OT in the title does not make it OK, IMHO). But I do question whether the referee should ever offer views agreeing with one side over the other. There's an ethical conflict (or at least the perception of one). So far, you've managed to play both roles rather well. Interesting and passionate thread. We need more like them. Tony

Huh??? The maid in "Shot in the Dark" was Elke Sommer, a humorless German. One of Olham's people Ursula is Swiss and thus much funnier. Sellers was married to Britt Ekland, who was Swedish. I know, those Europeans all look alike to me, too. von Baur, go to the blackboard and write "Google" 1,000 times. Everything you posted was incorrect. This stuff is soooo easy to check.... CJ, it's a frigging movie poster, not an engineering drawing. And since it doesn't show Rubyfan's friend's father on a motorcycle, we can all stipulate it's inaccurate. Lighten up! ttt

In this movie, the Germans (and ultimately every nationality) are the butt of the joke (you knew from the very start of the balloon scene that the uniquely, iconic pointed German helmet was going to puncture the balloon; it was only a question of when...). They aren't inherently funny. Actually, my very favorite scene in "Magnificent Men" is when Froebe (who is not a pilot) must fly the German plane because his pilot was poisoned and "a German officer can do anything." He climbs into the plane, and, standing up, opens the manual, reading aloud: "Number 1. Sit Down." So, he sits down. "By the book" probably is why Germany has so many great engineers and so few comedians. Froebe is best known in the U.S. for the line, "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." Not exactly the punch line to a joke. I admit, Billy Wilder was an exception and he both wrote and directed his many wonderful films. But Fritz Lang was more typical of a great German film maker. ttt

What isn't mentioned here -- and the reason for The Aerodrome post which was not written by WF2 -- is that Jack D. Hunter, who wrote the novel "The Blue Max" died April 13. "The Blue Max" was his first novel and, although he wrote many more, is the one he is remembered for. As is usually the case, the novel is much deeper than the movie (how much can you say in a two-hour film?). I highly recommend it. Nice to know Ursula is still with us and still (relatively) hot. Forget the "towel scene" in TBM, though. Her bikini scene in Dr. No is an icon of sexy entrances in a movie. Sri, Olham, but "humor" (Yank spelling) and "German" are contradictory terms. I'm a film buff and I can't even think of a German comedy. :umnik2: Tony

Well done that man! ttt

Jeeze, the bait's a month old! But it still walks like a troll and quacks like a troll, so it must be a troll! Red, you should post this on that other game's forum, not here (since, as you say, it doesn't affect us). Really lame troll at that. ttt

Forget the web browser (where did you get that from?) Open TrackIR on your desktop by clicking on the TrackIR shortcut icon. Click the Profiles tab. You'll see a whole list of profiles including any that you downloaded and added. Select a profile Click Edit When you're done, click OK. That's it. My personal preference was the profile by Carvel (mission4today link) with quite a few modifications I made to to smooth it so it's not so nervous. I found Homeboy's profile to be much too aggressive and jumpy for me. But, as I said, in a dogfight, I tend to move around a lot in the cockpit so I need a slower profile I also de-selected Roll as an axis. Works better without it. But that's just for me. Your mileage will vary. I'm still using TIR3 with Vector and it works just fine. I passed on TIR4 because there wasn't much improvement, according to all the reviews I read. TIR5 sounds tempting, tho. Tony

UKW just discovered what long-time TIR users have known forever (Welcome to the 21st Century, UKW ): You've gotta tweak TIR until it works comfortably for you in each sim/game you play. A lot of that is trial and error, not simply copying someone else's profile (although that's a very good starting point). My profile probably won't work best for you, nor yours for me (I tend to use way too much body English, others may be better at holding still). The profile that works "perfectly" for you in one sim won't be perfect in another. That's why TIR allows you to set different profiles for different games. This is a very good tweaking tutorial I've found useful in the past: http://mission4today.com/guides/tir_setup.htm Hope it's of some use to others. And here's Homeboy's tutorial, also quite good: http://snomhf.exofire.net/trackIR.html Each contains a sample profile and they are quite different. I suggest dowloading, installing and trying both to compare and contrast and customize (season to taste). QC is very handy for testing. Happy Holiday to all my fellow Yanks, BTW. A three-day weekend for tweaking TIR! ttt

LOL, OvS. "No disrespect intended..." and then you pee all over the guy. This after peeing all over entertainers who don't give all their money to charities in another thread... They must have been pretty hard up for moderators....being a mod isn't (or shouldn't be) a license to opinionate wildly on every subject that pops up on the boards. No disrespect intended, of course. That said.... If you lived most of your life in Arizona as I have (I worked at the state Senate press room for more than 20 years and walked by the "St. Luke" statue in front of the capitol several times a day and go out to Luke AFB regularly to use the commissary), you can't help but be aware of the story. I can't imagine there was enough left unsaid that makes this book worth the price. I haven't read it so can't take issue with what it says but it strikes me as more hype than substance. BUT if you go and look at the list of the top 15 US aces in WWI at The Aerodrome, Rickenbacker and Luke and Lufbery (and only at the very end of his career) were the only ones who flew for the US Air Service. All the rest flew for the RFC/RNAS and RAF (or in the case of Springs a USAS unit that was actually part of the RAF). That alone makes Luke worthy of some attention. He's in a very select group of USAS aces. Luke was certainly a tarnished hero but his flaws were what makes him interesting. Like much of the RFC with its many public school alumni, the USAS was largely comprised of Ivy League types. Luke (perhaps like Bruno Stachel) was shunned and certainly had a chip on his shoulder. And he was a tough guy, an ex boxer (boxing is hardly a team sport). Team player? No. But neither were Ball or Bishop (Bishop may have been an outright liar but he's still considered Canada's greatest ace). The ranks of WWI aces were filled with many loners and individualists. ttt

LOL, Olham always flies like that. He calls it a "normal takeoff" and "straight and level" cruising Amazing video! Thanks for sharing! Tony

Excellent question and one I've wondered about. In some sims, the more kills an AI pilot has, the higher his skill level and that level increases every time he adds to his score. Is that true in OFF? And, as BH asks, do the manning levels of the enemy AI squads increase and decrease as we kill their members? Finally, even though it's not a truly dynamic campaign I'm not asking that it be made one. I agree that sticking to the historical script is more effective in this instance. So, just because I pointed out it was not dynamic (e.g. Falcon 4.0 campaigns) doesn't mean I think it should be changed. Tony

If you're a Kipling fan and haven't yet seen the film "My Boy Jack," go out and rent or buy it immediately. I saw it just a few nights ago. Even if you're not a Kipling fan (and I'm not into all that jingoistic blather justifying sending our best young people to fight totally pointless wars while the pampered children of the privileged stay home), it's well worth seeing. It's brilliantly done, the true story of Kipling and his son, who joined the British Army to please his father (Rudyard managed to pull a few strings because his son was hopelessly near-sighted without his glasses and repeatedly failed his physical exams for both the Navy and Army) and went missing in his first battle (Loos) in WWI. Kipling and his family were devastated as were hundreds of thousands of other families whose names we don't know. And, yes, Daniel Radcliffe can play a character other than Harry Potter. He's excellent, as is the entire cast. ttt

Excellent analysis, JohnGresham and dead on. The Blue Max is as much (or more) about class warfare as it is about WWI warfare. These themes are explored much more deeply in the book, which I highly recommend to those who have not read it. There is only so much story that can be crammed into a movie (even a rather long one as this is). It's a wonderfully complex and insightful story. I respectfully really have to disagree with Duce Lewis on a couple of points: In all this time, he says not word 1 to his squadmates Peasant or Kaiser Wihelm's son, he was acting like a jerk In Vietnam, at the height of racial tensions, black & white soldiers had no trouble sharing a foxhole In a way it may have done its part in the healing of racial unrest On the first, it was made clear to Stachel on the day he arrived he would never fit in. His father, as I recall, managed (owned?) a very small hotel. The families of his squadron mates all owned hunting lodges. They were the ones who froze Stachel out, so who was being the jerk? As far as racial relations during Vietnam, I was a Military Police officer for much of that war and I don't think a day or night went by when we didn't have to respond to a conflict between black and white soldiers, often quite bloody. It was just as true "in country" as it was at posts in CONUS. Soldiers may have shared foxholes in a firefight but otherwise race (rather than class) warfare was constant and ugly. I was very, very proud of my black MPs who handled those situations with remarkable professionalism on a daily basis. Like the class warfare of WWI, it's incredibly hard to describe to those who weren't there just how brutal it was. Very little of it ever made it to the public eye. Maybe that's why I've been working on a novel about racism during Vietnam for many years but never can quite nail it down. Anyway, go buy the book "The Blue Max." Stachel is a much more complex character and more corrupt than in the movie. But so are all the other players. Tony

Well, Al, some of us know it's all a fantasy and others think it's reality. You mean a "parallel universe" isn't possible? There's a signpost in the road up ahead. Next stop.... ttt

I understand completely, shred, and there isn't any middle ground. But, "What if?" What if you killed Goering? What if you dropped a bomb on the Little Corporal as he was scurrying between trenches carrying dispatches? Talk about altering the course of history It's great the way it is but whether or not you accomplish your mission is irrelevant. The orders you are given mean nothing at all. So you can play a whole campaign by flying very high over your assigned ground targets (and get a "Mission Accomplished" just like Dubya) and avoiding AAA and running away every time you see another plane and get your 17 hours and so what? Maybe if you don't destroy that rail yard as ordered, you will have to wait a looong time for a medal? Or maybe they even put you in prison for willfully disobeying an order. Or.... Tradeoffs.... ttt