tttiger

UK Widowmaker (and Godzilla), What you don't get is the folks on the ROF forums are a whole different crowd from OFF players. The ones awaiting ROF are primarily on-line players. I know lots of them from my on-line years in the past. They have no interest in single player as in OFF. They wouldn't buy OFF if it was the only game in town. That's not their fault. It's OFF's fault for tying itself to the truly awful CFS3, which has a very minimal and very unreliable online ability. Happily for me, I like both. Sorry Godzilla. Nice try but no cigar. I'm starting to get it from OvS's posts that the devs really don't want to sell lots of copies and this is just a hobby for them. That being the case, I wouldn't anguish too much about their weak sales because they sure aren't losing any sleep over it. It's a great product, Those of us here all enjoy it. But they just aren't interested (really) in selling it. They want to keep it a "cottage industry." Terrific modders but babes in the woods in the business world. T

OvS, I understand where you're coming from and just because I disagree doesn't mean what you're doing is the wrong solution for you. I just know I couldn't do it that way (but we're different people). My point above is: I'm a good reporter and a good writer. All those decades I was writing for a newspaper, I never learned how to run a printing press or deliver papers. Other departments of the paper took care of that. These days, I work out of my office at home if and when I choose to. What I do now is as much hobby as it is work. Now when I finish a book or a magazine piece, I still have to rely on a publisher and a distributor and retailers to get it into the hands of readers. That's the next step in the process and I need some pros to complete the process for me. If nobody reads it, what was the point of all that effort? T

OvS, that smug, self-satisfied look on your avatar picture maybe says it all. "Honestly, this is the BEST approach...." Well, with that "BEST" approach it never will sell in any appreciable quantities and I think that's a bloody shame because it is a truly great sim. A truly great sim that not many folks know or will know about. If you can't bundle in CFS3 that's a major hurdle. But I would believe as long as you pay Microsoft for the copies, they should have no complaint. Has anyone even asked? You won't loose "90 percent of our hard-earned profits" by using a distributor. You'll be making sales you wouldn't otherwise make. Lots of them. Sure, you only may get a 10 percent royalty but that's 10 percent of many, many sales versus 100 percent of whatever few sales you will get with this current approach. The distributor pays the cost of making and packaging the discs and distributing them (hence "distributor") to regular customers (like electronics stores) who will retail them. They all have expenses and they all have to make some profit. It isn't as though the distributor and retailer are there to cheat you. They are in business to get your product to a market where it will sell. You simply can't do what publishers and distributors and retailers can do on a much higher volume. Look (I've said this in another thread): I'm a retired newspaper reporter (and Army Reserve officer; the taxpayers thank me for my 30 years of military service the end of every month with a very handsome pension check and they pay for my medical care). In my retirement, I write books. They're non-fiction and tied to fairly recent events, so they have to sell fast if they're going to sell at all because in a few months they will be "old news." One was published last September by a subsidiary of Amazon.com. The books that sell directly on Amazon's web site (the one we all use) earn me a 35 percent royalty on the cover price. That's pretty nice! But the Amazon web site retail sales are only about 20 percent of my total book sales. The other 80 percent comes from sales to book stores who retail the book to their customers by putting them on their shelves in hundreds and hundreds of stores. Amazon is the distributor and charges the stores a wholesale rate of about two thirds the cover price of the book. The books sold to book stores earn me only a 10 percent royalty on the cover price. Sure, I look at 10 percent versus 35 percent and gnash my teeth. But the fact is, 80 percent of my sales are through a distributor and retail outlets and I wouldn't have sold any of those books directly through Amazon's retail web site. I needed a distributor to make those sales to retail outlets (in my case, the publisher and the distributor are the same company). So, 10 percent of thousands and thousands of sales is better than 35 percent of a few hundred of sales. And I'm happy with that. Maybe the difference is that I spent 40 years as a professional journalist and writing is my career, not a hobby. But if I produce something good, at this stage in my career, my priority is getting my work into the hands of as many readers as possible. I would think you guys would feel the same way. You have an excellent product but posters and T shirts can't be your your total marketing effort or no one will know it exists. Go find yourselves a good distributor so I can walk into the computer store and spot OFF sitting on a shelf where I can pick it up and lug it to the cash register. It certainly deserves to be there where people can see it and buy it. It's a great product. Tony

VERY nice video! Next time try Guynemer instead. His Noop 17 had a Vickers with iron sights rather than the Lewis with Aldis sight. Your vids are GRRRRRRRReat! Tony the Tiger

Shred, I found six (Channel, Ypres, Arras, Somme, Cambrai and Red Baron) books of the series for sale at Amazon and ordered them all. Thanks you for the tip! They look like they will be an excellent resource! Many thanks! Tony

RFC (later RAF) 20 and 22 both are Bristol F2b squads and both are rated elite in the sim from late 1917 onward. They were based in many, many places (too many to list here). Go to enlist in them in the sim and you can see what dates they were at what airfields. Are you good enough to take on the Biff? We'll give you a really spiffy funeral if you do. Tony

Brilliant work! Thanks to all of you for making and sharing them! A friend and I are going to do a tour of the Western Front in September. I doubt there is much (or anything) left of these aerodromes but it will be very useful to at least know where they used to be. Tony

Obviously, none of you ever fly as a Yank. You get the Medal of Honor with your first five kills. Go figure... If you're "fixing" the medals, start there. Unc, it's 30 kills for a VC, not 25, at least in the sim/game. Tony

LOL. too true! And I don't have to say: "Guys! You're hijacking the thread. It's called P3 Current status and the future of OFF." I just can't figure out what any of the past couple dozen posts (including mine) have to do with the subject. And, no, don't try to respond... Too funny.... Thanks, griph! It's GRRRRRRREAT!!! :moil: Tony the Tiger

Now another county heard from. Over Oleg's Fields and First Eagles and RB3D are tossed into the stew! And Uncle Al, who never met a thread he didn't like, goes into a song and dance about jaggles. Sheesh. I'm gonna go fly one of my cartoon airplanes....

Man, where are the moderators with their padlocks? Lemme see if I got this straight.... First, some guy named Hoghead says he won't buy OFF because it only flies well with TIR and he won't (can't?) buy TIR. And then I respond saying that's not much of an argument because all flight sims are better with TIR. Then Widowmaker says IL2 doesn't have 6DOF TIR and then PD says yes it does and then it turns into a debate over IL2 -- which has nothing to do with this thread. Maybe they added 6DOF for IL2 1946. I never bought that version. But I bought all the earlier ones and 6DOF certainly wasn't in any of the other versions and TIR still made them better than using a hat switch. And now rabu is singing the praises of CFS3, which was a total POS, because it had 5 DOF. And he says he hasn't heard complaints about white jaggles. Well, I get 'em sometimes but it's no big deal. But who cares????? The thread is about the future of OFF. Not IL2. NOT CFS3. Not TIR. It really does get childish around here. Lock this sucker! Tony

Sorry, Scott, I find that impossible to believe. Fact is, to the get the most out of every flight sim, you need TrackIR. If that is hampering OFF sales, it hampers the sales of every sim. EVERY serious flight simmer I know has TrackIR. It's as essential as a joystick. I don't have any financial interest in TrackIR but I've owned every version since they first came out. I can't imagine flying without one. If you amortize the cost of TIR over the tens of thousands of hours you're likely to use it over many years, it's VERY cheap entertainment. If your birthday isn't real soon (like today), sell some blood, rob a bank, whatever it takes... Pol, that's one of the tradeoffs in dealing with publishers. In my retirement, I've been writing (and selling) books. And, generally I get only a 10 percent royalty (on some deals 35 percent), the publisher and book dealers get the rest. But 10 percent of lots and lots of sales is better than 100 percent of only a very few sales (it sounds like that's all you've got right now). You guys have gone about as far as you can on the do-it-yourself approach. We all love this sim and want to see it continue. But you can't do it alone and a second-hand reviews on Amazon aren't going to get it done. Off NEEDS to be for sale on Amazon (and lots of other retail outlets). You guys are extraordinary modders but I think you need a good business manager as well (not me, I'd have you in bankruptcy in a week ). Those publishers and wholesalers and retailers actually provide an essential service. That's why they can charge so much. It's worth it.... Tony

LOL, his first post and he's picking the tiniest nit in the whole sim! Actually, the wheels on the Bristol Scout were counter-rotating like the props on the P-38. It was done to reduce torque, so OFF got it right. Welcome to the boards, Trevor! Tony

Best recruiting pep talk since Henry V's "St. Crispin's Day" speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hnshaA-ecg&NR=1 And Belushi's one-word classic on flying: "Lost" Enjoy!

Winder, (Long message follows, go get some tea): First of all, you guys have created a fantastic sim/game. I will happily buy any add-ons you offer. My criticism in some other threads (realism percentages, etc.) are really in the nature of nit-picking. The product itself stands with any commercial sim (and I've flown many over the past 15 years or so). It's a product you guys deserve to be very proud of. But (there it is!).... There's a reason there aren't (and haven't been) many WWI sims out there. It's a very small, niche market. Flight sims, overall, are in decline. So don't take the lack of sales as an indicator. Especially since you lack a major publisher to help promote it. And you don't appear to have the "working capital" a MUST in any business of any size to buy advertising or do any real marketing. Publishers have avoided WWI because there just aren't that many customers out there. Problem is, because you offer only off line play, you are shooting for a niche within an already small niche. There also seems to be an interesting "split" in the WWI flight sim community between OFF and ROF. Some of us support both and will fly both but for many it's an either- or- choice. The difference, as I see it, is off line single player versus on line multiplayer. OFF seems to be most attractive to former CFS3 and RB3D pilots (the community you developers came from). On the ROF forums, I see many names I know from the old Dawn of Aces and IL2. Dawn of Aces was a totally on line MMP WWI sim with great flight models and crappy scenery with some VERY good pilots who used to kill me quite regularly. I see the names of several old DoA pals in the ROF forums. Knowing them the way I do, they would not even consider a sim without a strong online component. The same also is true of former IL2 pilots. IL2 had a single player campaign but it was crap (although their marketing studies showed more poeple flew IL2 off line than on line). IL2 had a large on line community and you can fly in Coops (my favorite) either single mission or campaign or dogfight arenas. I don't know what it's like today but a few years ago on HyperLobby on weekends at any given moment there were 1,000 IL2 players on HyperLobby with more waiting to get in (1,000 was their limit). That's a whole source of potential customers who look at OFF, say, "Oh, OFF means off line only," and pass it by. I can tell you from long experience (I gave up on IL2 about two years ago after playing it since its beginning) that the IL2 community looks on CFS3 with complete disdain. Everything about CFS3 was and is considered inferior (and rightfully so, in my opinion as well). I had to swallow hard to get past that prejudice myself. I couldn't believe I was ordering CFS3 to play OFF. But I love WWI aviation and yours was the only game in town. So, with that long windy prologue, here are my suggestions: 1. Include a copy of CFS3 with every copy of OFF you sell (and I wouldn't raise the current price to do that). It's very clumsy for a new customer to have to go to one source for OFF and a totally different source for CFS3. In fact, it's VERY poor marketing. Sell them both as a package deal. And if folks like me have to overcome an anti-CFS3 pejudice to buy OFF, many simply won't buy CFS3. So, give it to them. Free (or wrap the cost into your price). 2. If you don't build an on-line component to OFF, you're going to lose all those on-line WWI aviation fans to ROF. OFF has a really good campaign. In fact, that's its greatest strength. The on-line part of OFF is very lame (that's Microsoft, not you guys). But those who want to dog fight on line (Quake in a Camel) or who want to fly Coops on line are already waiting in line at ROF and simply won't play OFF because it is really only a single-player game. So, you need servers (either your own or members who will host on line play) and probably a connection with HyperLobby and OFF has to be tweaked to be more reliable on line. Just my thoughts (free and worth what you paid for them: Nothing). You have a brilliant product but it is tied to a dead horse (CFS3) and it really lacks an on line component that would attract a whole different crowd of customers. You need to get past those two things to increase sales. S! Tony

Brilliant! What fun! ttt

This appears to have appeared only in the latest patch. And, yes, it happens to me on every balloon busting mission. The balloon explodes before I (or any of my wingmen) ever fire a shot. There's usually another balloon somewhere close by, so I go and shoot that one down and I get the kill score. Obviously a programming glitch somewhere. ttt

The problem with Dead is Dead is: Dead isn't really Dead. So, it's kind of a farce and beating on your hairy chest and saying you fly DiD and that makes you more of a man than those who don't is nonsense. What happens when you die in DiD? You go back and create a new pilot. If the OFF code was such that when you are killed in DiD you are shut out of the sim/game FOREVER, then Dead really would be Dead. My pilots never die. Neither do the AI. I've killed Herman Goering at least a half dozen times. He keeps coming back. Pity. I could have prevented WWII. I retire my pilots when they get their VC (or when their real life counterpart stopped flying; easy to tell by the rosters in the briefing). I do keep score (kills:deaths ratio) but when my pilot crashes I don't have to waste time creating a new one. I play this sim for the dogfights and the ground attacks (yes, Siggi, some of us fly every ground attack mission and even if I get shot up I almost always can limp back across the lines. Not flying ground attack missions is truly lame). I appreciate the fact the ground fire is going to be toned down but it really isn't all that bothersome if you make only ONE pass, drop your bombs or shoot your rockets (HUGE explosions!) and get out of Dodge as fast as you can in a tight climbing turn. The AI gunners have trouble tracking that maneuver. In air-to-air combat I am a believer in Boelcke's Dicta and only attack when I have the advantage. But I'm out there hunting and I hunt until I have the advantage and can attack. But, hey, if you think it's more "realistic" running home to your aerodrome every time there is danger, you can do that, too. I really think this DiD stuff is a phoney issue. And the DiD score board sticky is a joke. Since we never compete head-to-head, what's the point? The use of the other aids (and I use 'em just like Bullethead describes above; great minds indeed think alike) may be worth debating but DiD is a non issue to me. Oh, and WM, thanks for you post above. I still don't think you (or anyone) can quantify reality (example: I lose no points for having my clouds turned off but it keeps my FPS in the playable range). No, I don't get hung up on the numbers. But that's because they seem quite arbitrary. I just ignore 'em. One of the truly great aspects (and there are many) of OFF is that it offers so many possible combinations. Whichever you choose, then that's "real" to you. And that's "really" all that matters. Tony

Luiz: Setting the frame cap really cleared up the stuttering problem I had. To see how to do it, take a look here (I think it's the fourth item down): http://www.com-central.net/index.php?name=...topic&t=118 I set mine to 30 as recommended and haven't had a stutter since. Lots of other great tips in there as well. Just a suggestion: Try only one tweak at a time. If you do several and your FPS improves, you won't know which tweak helped. Patience is a virtue in tweaking. I hope this solves it for you! I know you message was to Pol and I'm certainly not Pol (you can tell us apart: He's the genius; everything I know about computers is "monkey-see-monkey-do") . Tony

I don't fly DiD so I can't respond to your poll. But it does underscore the silliness of the "17-hour" goal that was created by the developers and somehow has become part of the OFF Culture. If 17 hours was the AVERAGE, and the average is close to the median, then about half the DiD pilots should EXCEED 17 hours. But from what I'm reading on this forum, hardly anyone flying DiD comes close to reaching 17 hours. So how can 17 hours be "average"? Case in point: I always fly the career a real historical pilot so I can compare my sim kills with how well the real ace did (it's my personal little invention, no one needs to feel compelled to do likewise -- or you can if you want to). My Sop Tripe pilot in my current campaign is Capt. Oliver Colin "Boots" LeBoutiller, an American who flew Tripes and Camels with 9 RNAS (later 209 RAF). With 10 kills at the end of the war, "Boots" ranked as a "good" fighter pilot but not a "great" one in the ranks of Bishop or McCudden or Mannock or Collishaw. Here's the kicker: By the end of the war, "Boots" had logged 600 hours of combat flying (he ended his flying career decades later with 19,000 hours total logged flight time). What does that tell you about the 17-hour "average"? It tells me it goes in the same category as the bogus "Realism" percentages: Rubbish. I just ignore it, turn on the labels and fly to make it challenging (I do get shot down too often) but also fun. I retire my pilots at 30 kills when they receive their VC (or I halt the career on the date the real pilot stopped flying). Then I rate my performance on the number of kills versus the number of times I was shot down. And I keep a scorecard. It's a list of ratios (30:5 or whatever of "kills" versus "deaths" during that pilot's virtual career). Not whether I got 17 hours. (I didn't invent my scoring system, by the way. It's the scoring system used in my F16 sim Falcon 4.0, which I have flown for many, many years: Kills:Deaths). Good topic! Tony

feet

I certainly agree on the two seaters. The gunners are way too good, IMO. I will only attack a Hun two-seater with two forward-firing MGs (Camel or SE5a) and over Allied territory so I can head for a friendly airfield if (when) I'm shot up. I usually can bring one or even two down with a two-MG fighter. With a one-MG fighter, I just don't have enough firepower to get them before they get me. I won't even attempt an attack. That does kind of fly (no pun intended) in the face of the whole historical reason for fighters, doesn't it? Of course, it's probably also why MY two-seater fighters (Strutter and Biff) are so very deadly So, let's not get too hasty on changing this one Tony

Well, as my Jewish grandmother used to say about her chicken soup (Jewish penicillin): "It couldn't hurt." Tony

I voted for OK. The ground fire is a tad more effective in this version but I thought it was not effective (realistic?) enough before. There are so many aspects of the sim/game that can be adjusted (seasoned to taste) that I can't imagine anyone finding it too easy or too hard. I do agree with Siggi (scary, huh?) that the percentage realism ratings kinda suck. The very subjective "realism" values and penalties are highly arbitrary and I have no idea how they were arrived at. What's realistic for some may not be seen as realistic for others. To me, for example, the use of labels is MORE realistic because I can't identify planes without labels unless they are unrealistically close; others -- with better monitors and younger eyes than mine -- would legitimately disagree. And, again to me, the ability of the AI enemy to see and track me means the labels tend to level the playing field considerably. Basically, the realism ratings penalize people who have opinions on what is "real" differing from the developers. I don't believe any of us here really flew in WWI, so the ratings are not based on anything having to do with a quantifiable reality. I would scrap those ratings. Other than that, it's fine the way it is. In fact, it's excellent the way it is! Tony

I really don't mean to sound facetious (or sarcastic ) but what you're describing is (exactly) a campaign mission. They are very random (within the confines of the units historically based in that area). Why so many players appear to fly only QC missions is a mystery to me. The real strength of OFF is the campaign. I just use QC as a practice arena. But I guess that's the good part of having so many choices... Still, what you're suggesting is something we already have. Tony