Vasco

Guys, First, the problem I'm about to describe was not introduced in the latest patch, it was just the addition of the new improved archie that brought it to my attention - I'm not seeing any! I've also noticed other effects have disappeared, notably the smoke trails from Le Prieur rockets and that nice little backfire from the exhaust of the Albatross engine. I'm running the latest Nvidia drivers and I can't remember whether the problem manifested itself before or after installation as I spend a lot of time tweaking the graphics settings to find a good balance between quality and speed. Have you guys any idea what particular setting, in game or out, that would affect the games ability to render these effects? Regards, Vasco

Mein Herren! Please find below the daily report covering Jasta 4 operations for the 10th February 1917: Mission 1 - Patrol of own front lines in the Flanders Sector - T/O 09:59 Piloten Sitting Duck - A Flt Commander Griphos Axgrinder Willy Coppit aka SRC von Baur von Dudley A Flight (named above) executed a patrol of friendly lines on a 20 mile front east of the town of Arras. During the flight, one section of enemy reconnaisannce aircraft were detected heading west towards Arras at approximately 1200 metres altitude. Both aircraft were engaged and identified as BE2cs of the RFC. Griphos was seen to down one of the aircraft (confirmed by Axgrinder) but the second aircraft escaped over the lines. The flight commander decided not to pursue into enemy territory. The whole flight landed without incident. Mission 2 - Strike on Ercheu Airbase - T/O 14:52 Piloten von Dudley - A Flt Commander Axgrinder Willy Coppit aka SRC von Baur Sitting Duck A Flight were tasked with the airfield strike with B Flight executing a fighter sweep ahead of the attack force. The Jasta crossed the lines just south of Arras then performed a dogleg towards the target. Shortly before the turn, several aircraft were spotted ahead of A Flight, which were identified as B Flight and approximately 7 FE2Bs of the RFC. The flight commander ordered A Flight to assist B Flight and a general attack ensued. During the fight the following flight members all accounted for one of the F2Bs each (visual confirmation obtained from various flight memebrs): Axgrinder, Sitting Duck and von Baur. A flight then reformed and proceded to the target. Several attack runs were performed by the flight in pairs, all concentrating fire on the westerly of the aircraft hangars. During the attack Axgrinder and von Dudley both took groundfire hits with von Dudley recieving the worst of it with a ruptured fuel tank and damaged engine. With the majority of the fights ammunition exhausted, the flight commander signalled the flight to RTB while he nursed his own damaged aircraft back towards the lines with two other members of the flight as escort. The flight arrived back at Mont Saint Martin individually with von Dudley managing to land successfully. Unfortunatley the same could not be said for Sitting Duck who stalled just before touchdown and crashed his plane at the edge of the airfield. According to Axgrinder, Sitting Duck was seen to emerge from the wreckage and proceed across the aircraft to the Jasta mess, giving the rest of the flight the middle finger whilst doing so. The Jasta commander decided disciplinary action was not called for as the Jasta had only just taken delivery of the new Albatross fighter and very few of the pilots had more than 4 hours each on the type. His performance in future missions will be scrutinised and if found wanting, this pilot will be allocated one of the remaining Halberstadt fighters remaining in the Jasta. Submitted respectfully on 10th February 1917, Vasco Commanding Officer Jasta 4

Gentlemen, Dutch of the RB3 Black Haze Squadron has kindly allowed us to us his squadron's TeamSpeak server for MP missions on Sundays. It's already setup with the Allied and Central Powers channels so it'll be a doddle to use. Set the server under 'Connect', check the 'Anonymous' and 'Auto Reconnect' options and enter the following address and password: TS Address: 70.87.174.165:8784 Password: pfalz Please do not use this server for any other purpose except when flying on the Sunday sessions, formerly known as 'Winston's Early Bird's' Regards, Vasco

It's definately not Movie UI as mines not disabled and I don't get that. Does anybody know what enables it? All I get is a gray overlay on my mirror. Vasco

Guys, The new superpatch is out. If you're taking part in Sunday's MP game DO NOT INSTALL THIS PATCH until after this Sunday's game. I'll grab a few of the TS loiterers during next week and we'll make sure it doesn't adversely affect MP but going forward, this is going to have to be the version we use during the Sunday MP sessions. More to follow. Vasco

I adjust the Nvidia settings for cfs3.exe and cfs3MP.exe, mind you I'm not even sure that the game uses the MP executable. Vasco

Guys, We'll stick with aircraft with in-line engines or mid-war rotaries. We won't tackle the twitchy models until everyone feels they can fly them competently in the realistic flight model. I am leaning towards flying with Albatross DIIs in the first campaign as they outclass all but the Sopwith Triplanes in early 1917. This will give us a reasonable expectation of success and logevity for our pilots. Vasco

Gentlemen, Following Winston's decision to take time out from OFF, Stumpjumper and I have the following proposals to make with regard to the future of the Sunday sessions: 1. Timings We will continue to fly at the times adopted for 'Winston's Early Birds' as these suit the majority; 2PM EST 2. Installation, Damage Model, Teamspeak, etc. For the past two weeks the Sunday session has been severely disrupted due to various participants having problems with their MP installations and TS settings. In future, games will no longer be delayed for this purpose. Winston, Stumpjumper, Sitting Duck and I spend a lot of time on TS during the week to ensure that someone is available to assist new and existing members to install and test their OFF settings prior to Sunday's games. Please take advantage of this service as we are no longer willing to disrupt the Sunday session because of these problems. The needs of the many must take precedence. We are currently using Fortiesboy's Damage Model V1.2. As most regular flyers have now got this successfully installed we will stick with this setup until the advent of the new ODB patch which will render it redundant. It is proposed that we review the situation when the new patch arrives, possibly adopting the default damage model which will simplify MP for all - no more installing additional patches to join MP. 3. New Format The Sunday MP session will take the form of a full-blown online campaign, effectively taking the single player experience enjoyed by all and elevating it to squadron or jasta level. Each participant will become a member of the squadron chosen for the campaign and fly a day's worth of missions (3 to 4) together during a single session. The performance of individual pilots will be manually recorded (mission successes, number of kills, etc) and will form a permanent record taken from one mission to the next. Should your pilot die in combat, then his achievements will be reset and the member starts again with a new pilot. In this way we can keep records of our most successful pilots for the purpose of any awards or the allocation of better aircraft for our 'ace' pilots e.g. achieve 10 online kills and the Jasta will allocate an Albatross DIII rather than a DII as your personal mount. Stumpjumper is also offering to provide the most successful pilots with 'personalised' aircraft skins. These privileges would be lost with the death of the pilot. The success of each individual mission will be judged by the organiser, hence ground attack/balloon busting scenarios will only be judged successful if the damage inflicted is enough to render the target severely damaged or destroyed. Air-to-air and air-to-ground kills will be recorded at the end of each mission by the members checking their stats and passing the information to the organiser. If the pilot is killed during the sortie, only those achieved before death will count. Any pilot respawning into another aircraft after pilot death will not have any victories achieved after respawn counted towards the score of his next pilot. We will fly as a particular squadron or jasta for a month of Sundays after which, we will choose a different nationality/period for the next month. Once the campaign missions for a particular day have been completed, 'fun' missions will be flow just to allow those who wish to let off steam. This can be as a dogfight or whatever the members so desire. 4. Realism and Settings 1. It is proposed that we play with high reality settings (hard flight model, normal guns) as we have been doing to date. The exception to this will be where the aircraft we are flying historically had 'auto mixture' in which case auto mixture will be enabled on the server settings. Details of the settings will be notified to the members prior to the start of the first mission via a post in the MP forum and verbally before the start of the session. 2. The missions will be designed so that the only AI ace pilots in the game are named, historically correct and in game in limited numbers to reduce the frequency of members getting 'sniped' from 800' away. Comments welcome. Vasco

Winston, I'm sorry to see you go, even for a short while. Enjoy your time in ETO. Guys, I'm going to have a chat with Stumpy and Duck in order to get things established for future Sunday sessions. Next Sunday is still on - details to follow. Regards, Vasco

Gentlemen, Dutch of the RB3 Black Haze Squadron has kindly allowed us to us his squadron's TeamSpeak server for MP missions this Sunday. It's already setup with the Allied and Central Powers channels so it'll be a doddle to use. Set the server under 'Connect', check the 'Anonymous' and 'Auto Reconnect' options and enter the following address and password: TS Address: 70.87.174.165:8784 Password: pfalz Please do not use this server for any other purpose except when flying in 'Winston's Early Bird's' Regards, Vasco

Yes, Still on - Sopwith's and DrI's (though most of those I've spoken to on TS seem to express a preference for DrI's so I may need to pursuade a few of you to sample the delights of the Camel! ) No volunteers yet but I've got my fingers crossed that Sitting Duck has sorted out his reinstallation of OFF today. Vasco

...... like the Morane Saulnier Parasol or the De Haviland 5? I'd love to know if the missing aircraft in the campaign are under development. Vasco

I've been using TrackIR since version one (now on version 5). When I raise my head in the Nieuport 17 Lewis to get the crosshairs centred (as it is not naturally sligned with the pilot's normal forward view as per the SE5A) and fire, the rounds drop low. In order to hit the target I have to either aim above well above it or raise my head even further to look obliquely down along the sight; furthermore this is not down to deflection or firing while manouvering. Isn't there a message somewhere in the game that warns that the Aldis sight on the Nieuport 17 is not aligned with the normal pilot view? Vasco

.... Or preferably make the Aldis on the British Nieuport 17 usable (more like the view on the SE5A and aligned with the gun in the normal pilot view). It seems a shame to lose one of the variants in game when all it needs is adjustment to not be so obtrusive. Vasco

SRC, You don't need to do anything. To change channels you just double click on the new one we create on Outlaw's TS server. It takes seconds to do. Vasco

I BELIEVE! I BELIEVE! HALLELUJAH! :Yahoo: :Yahoo: Honestly Guys, if you can just tweak the code so we can play full-blown campaigns in MP (and increase the max number of players from 16) you will be shipping the DVDs out by the container load! Vasco (Praying for a persistent WWI game world running on a dedicated server - and of flying Parasols and DH5s)

Yes. Vasco

Gentlemen, Winston has asked me to run the session this Sunday. What I intend to do (as there have been a number of positive responses to the suggestion) is to generate campaign missions where we can split into two teams and combine co-op play with dogfighting against human opponents. I will also 'dumb down' the competency of the AI pilots on both sides by reducing the number of aces airborne. Points: 1. I will develop the campaign missions to cover late 1917/early 1918 where the main rides of the two opposing squadrons will be Sopwith Camels and Fokker DR1's as these seem a good match, so get practicing ofline as these can be pigs to fly! 2. I also propose that Fortiesboy's DM V1.2 is made the standard for this and future sessions until such time as we have more information on what the new developers' DM offers. If anybody wishes to test their installation grab either myself, Winston or Sitting Duck on TS before the event (it should be sufficient to install V1.2 over V1.1 and delete the .bdp files as standard). 3. Both teams will setup on seperate TS channels for comms during the missions. At the end of each mission we will all revert to the main channel for debrief and the setting up on the next mission. 3. I am looking for a VOLUNTEER living on the US East Coast to host the session to minimise any lag from both sides of the pond. Failing obtaining a volunteer I will host them from my PC. 4. In order to keep Winston's scoring model for the August awards going I am going to need somebody on the opposite side to the one I fly on to assess their squad and give me feedback on individual performance at the end of the session. I will pass this on to Winston. 5. Any questions? Vasco

I vote for 1.2. Vasco

That needs to be discussed. With everything else that has been flagged as a potential problem I don't think this is a decision I can make unilaterally. Vasco

Jim, It sounds like you arrived at a target waypoint - these don't automatically switch to the next one. To move to the next waypoint you have to switch manually. Vasco

Ax, The only changes in the 1.2 version of the damage mod are the addition of early war planes that Fortiesboy left out of the original. There shouldn't be any other differences. Vasco

Hi Simon, I usually have TS up and running while I'm at the computer. Just jump on and grab me when you feel the urge to shoot something down in flames again. Vasco

Winston, We could break up into 2 teams of 4 with seperate TS channels and fly campaign missions as Allied and German squadrons. It's a doddle to do in the mission builder. If that's what people would like to do, then that's no problem. It would be great if we could get a full 16 onto a server at once - now THAT would be something! Vasco

There are no issues hosting/joining a multiplayer game in OFF. Regards, Vasco :piltofly: