Foxendown

What made me suspicious of the sound was the fact that the fraps reading was so high even when I had a slide show. There was a similar problem with an earlier version of IL2-you had to set acceleration to basic to stop the stuttering (that was with a SoundBlaster Live card). Most of the sims I've got work fine with full acceleration-in fact if you don't use it in IL2 now you get a nasty crackle. But in FE and MS FS2004 it seems to cause problems unless it's turned down or off.

Found the answer to my own problem-it was the sound. I had not tried one option-turning acceleration off completely. In control panel I set sound acceleration to "emulation only" and the sim is running smoothly even in the heavy flak barrages. It doesn't seem to degrade sound quality either. I have always assumed acceleration helped by taking the load off elsewhere but evidently not in this case.

Fair question. I've got FE+EP+Nov'08 patch

Having searched, I know I'm not the first person to have posted about this, but I am trying to understand why the flak effects cause my system to stutter. I've looked at obvious causes. The odd thing though is that this does not appear to an FPS issue. The stutter is really bad when the counter is showing a steady 75, which is around where my system normally is in FE. I've tried loads of different combinations in the settings both for my video card and the sim but it doesn't make any difference. I've tried playing with levels of sound acceleration in case that's the problem, but no go. Without flak, the sim runs as smooth as silk on my system. My specs are Core 2 Duo E8400, Radeon 4670 1024 Mb, 2 Gb RAM, Soundmax on board sound (possibly a weak link I know but it generally performs well with my other sims). If anyone has any thoughts about this I'd be grateful. I was going to look at the *ini files for the flak effects next in the hope that it might be possible to adjust some settings. While on the subject of flak, it seems completely harmless and it would be better if it killed now and again (not too often since at higher altitudes in WWI I believe I'm right in saying flak was pretty ineffective because of failure to understand deflection shooting). However as it often seems to be bursting around you (at ranges that should shred your aircraft) rather than behind you, that situation is not being modelled

I've got FE with the EP but with no patches. I've installed peter01's flight models and campaigns dated July 2008 which were intended for use with the unpatched EP and of course all the third party aircraft relating to those. The only other additions I've made are the Vosges terrain and 6686Guitarclassic55's beautiful menu screens. I've done a bit of testing now and found that you can avoid most of the crashes by cutting back your throttle to no more than 65% before engaging autopilot, having climbed to a decent altitude (say 4,500 feet plus) over the first few waypoints, which usually prevents the lowermost layer of the AI formation from committing suicide. Using Alt N warping also helps preserve your lemming colleagues' life, but for me at least that puts you eyeball to eyeball with the enemy too soon which I don't like. The AI are unstable in roll and pitch, but especially pitch. They improve (but not a lot) if you go to the normal flight model, but I don't like doing that because it makes the dogfights too easy. The instability seems to come in cycles: they will fly straight for a while, then swoop for a while then back to flying straight. It's almost as if they are trying to maintain a minimum speed. While extra altitude does help, sometimes an AI pilot will drop out of the formation. I watched one go from 6500 ft to 1500 ft in a vertical dive, then do a whole series of dives before crashing into the ground. I am happy to volunteer for any play testing or other work needed if there is any chance of this being fixed but sadly I don't know how to do it myself. I had forgotten that peter01 and I had exchanged PMs about these problems some time ago and he very helpfully advised me to use AP and 100% throttle with caution and this does help. I'm delighted by the first few missions of his 1917 campaign because there are lots of 2-seaters flying about, which seems very realistic. I'd be interested to know if other people have these issues. I've experienced them with different FE installs on different computers and they tend to spoil my enjoyment of what could otherwise be IMHO a near perfect WW1 sim. It's not just that it looks terrible (if you like external views of the action), but it unbalances the campaign, unless you don't fly to and from your airfield.

I'm just getting back into First Eagles and I thought I had the perfect setup this time. FE+EP, plus all the add-on planes with peter01's flight models and campaigns. Sadly I just can't keep the AI alive heading to and from the airfield (they fight and fly well in combat). Quite a long time ago I posted about the erratic flying of the AI (wild swoops) but now I'm flying a campaign seriously (with take offs and landings in every mission) I've noticed the serious attrition of my numbers. For example, first two missions-five killed from crashes, none from enemy action Accelerated time may be the issue, the AI can't even seem to fly x2 without crashing (though I've also seen a suicidal nose-dive into the runway in normal time ). Is there any way of fixing this without having to fly to and from the airfield in real time?

Now downloaded-excellent work-thanks again Firecage.

That looks great-thanks! :yes: Now I'm going to have to finish that mission.

Thanks! Here's the pic in case you do want to give it a go. Blue Nose SE5 (William Bishop)

I've been browsing through the skin downloads looking for a blue-nosed SE5, as flown by William Bishop in the summer of 1917. I found a Dolphin but no SE5. Anyway I was wondering whether any skinners had it in mind to do this one. I was hoping to use it in a mission I'm making. I have an illustration of the aircraft (no. A8936, 60 Squadron). I would have a go myself but my first efforts at skinning didn't go too well!

Here in the UK I am currently paying £5.27 per imperial gallon for diesel, which works out at US$8.63 per US gallon unless my maths has let me down. I've just bought a car that does 47 miles to the (imperial) gallon (combined mpg) which will help. The scary thing is that it feels like energy prices are running away like a vehicle with no brakes. We've had a 60% rise in electricity prices in less than 2 years. There are rumours here that there will be further fuel price increases of 25% by the autumn. As I'm also dependent on heating oil for my central heating that's got to hurt!

In IL2 the procedure is beautifully simple-just add your skin file (*.bmp file) to the correct aircraft folder, so for example, assuming your install is in the default location like mine and you want to add a skin for the FW190 A8 you need to put it in the following folder C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\IL-2 Sturmovik 1946\PaintSchemes\Skins\FW-190A-8. You can add files to the 'Pilots' and 'Noseart' folders on this path in the same way. That's all there is to it: they will then appear in the drop down lists for the FMB etc

Falcon AT by Spectrum Holobyte. Ran in EGA off a single floppy on my PC XT (hard drive was 10 Mb [yes Mb], 640K of RAM). After that I got a 486sx with a huge 30 Mb hard drive and a whole Mb of RAM and moved on to Red Baron I, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and DI's great Tornado (I so wish someone had remade that-it was one of the best).

I haven't got the other two Osprey volumes yet on the MiG 19 and MiG 17 (counting the pennies at the moment, just had to buy a car), but I found this http://hsfeatures.com/features04/mig17sj_1.htm Nine stars so I'm guessing it's Nguyen Van Coc's aircraft

I've sent you some more info about that MiG in a PM.