Foxendown

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

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

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?

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'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!

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)

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.

:yes: Nice work. I'm just looking at the colour plates in Osprey Combat Aircraft 29 "MiG-21 Units of the Vietnam War" and I can see only one MiG-21 no. 5121 (silver finish) with what looks like killmarks on the nose (possibly red stars, eight on the port side). The legend says MiG-21MF Fishbed-J 5121 of Pham Tuan (?Phan Thanh Ngan, 8 victories) 921st Sao Do 27th December 1972. A good subject possibly?

There's a graphic and well written account of a duel between two Israeli Mirages and a Syrian MiG-17 in 1970 which suggests that the Syrian Air Force had at least some good pilots although you will see that doubt is cast on whether the pilot was Syrian. http://www.mirage4fs.com/iaf_m3cj.html

I recently bought a copy of WOV and I'm having a great time with it, but I've just flown a single mission escorting B-52s and they don't keep formation, in fact their flying is wild. Watching from the cockpit as these huge aircraft stand on one wing (just to stay in formation, no enemies around) is an immersion killer. Sorry if this is a newb question, but is there a fix for this? Tried searching but didn't turn anything up. I've seen the same behaviour in FE and asked a similar question before but didn't get anywhere with it. I've noticed swooping behaviour in other aircraft too (but generally not as bad as in FE), but somehow it's less tolerable in large bombers and transports. I'd be grateful for any help

Brilliant! I will certainly try this out. The *ini file edit seemed to work up to a point, in that seen from afar (i.e. from an F4 cockpit) the formations look OK, but of course if you watch them for a while in external views you realise that is only an impression (and I hadn't even got to the point of thinking about how they deliver their ordnance). I've not used the cloning feature of KMD before so I will experiment with that too, in FE as well as WOV. Problem is having enough time: KMD is a great editor but designing your own missions is so time-consuming ( I used to spend ages building missions in IL2 and ended up with no time to fly any :-) ), so at the moment I tend to just load up my current campaign in WOV and fly missions.

Hey rhugouvi, please check your PMs....looking forward to running Charlie's Aces, but need some help with Bloc 3.

Flew three missions in WOV last night-two were very good but the third went wrong. The first was flown in an F-105 in the stock Rolling Thunder campaign and numbers two and three in a MiG-17 in the Charlie's Aces mod (excellent mod BTW). 1. Flew low and fast through heavy AAA, missed the target but one of my flight hit it, returned to base and landed after dodging some MiGs-very convincing. 2. A Navy F-4 blew me out of the sky with a missile about 10 minutes after take-off-still counts as a good mission in my book though because the opposing AI was aggressive and I felt challenged and convinced by the scenario. 3. Oh no-the AI seems to have become suicidal-I saw an A-6 that was so intent on strafing ground targets that it ignored a MiG firing from dead astern, 4 A-4s downed one after the other because again they ignored me and my wingman and just carried on on the same course at the same speed even when their wingmen were falling out of the sky and an F-105 that tried to engage my MiG in a turning fight. I'm not good enough at flightsims to deserve 5 kills in one mission! :-) AI was set at the highest level-I use all hard settings except for "normal" fuel where A2A refuelling would otherwise be needed. In some single missions I've seen really aggressive well flown AI planes, but they were fighters, so is the difference due to different AI routines applying to bomber and fighter flights? I think there was a problem with passive AI in FE in earlier versions and it was fixed by the EP. The AI in WOI is also very good I hear so I was wondering whether there are any fixes for WOV?

I've started a campaign in the F-105 in WOV but I don't seem to have enough fuel to get to the target and back, allowing for a few high speed dashes through enemy defences. Also, for the first mission I can't select drop tanks from the loadout screen. I can get drop tanks for the second mission but they show up as empty on the fuel gauges so I still run out of fuel about 60% through the round trip from Thailand to North Vietnam and back! I'm not sure what I'm missing here. I wondered whether F-105s had to refuel on their way home and, as that feature isn't included in thsi sim, you simply can't make it back. Any advice will be much appreciated. Also the way campaigns work in this sim seems very hard core-you can't save a campaign in progress or skip to the next mission if you miss the target-and if you die the campaign ends and it's back back to square one unless you refly, or is there some workround for this?

An interesting one too....there seem to be no limits to the modding you can do to these sims. I think I'll try to live with it though-anyway my attempts at refuelling in LOMAC and F4 usually result in a collision rather than hooking up :-) I was wrong about failing to hit the target ending the campaign (it's early on in my WOV campaign and I keep dying AND missing the target), but I didn't know losing your HQ had that effect too.

Thanks for that-good advice. I thought 2, 070 was an absolute max (presumably high altitude subsonic flight) and not realistic for combat. The round trip to North vietnam from Thailand was about 1, 250 miles and having done some quick reading about "Rolling Thunder" I learned that the F-105s refueled on the way in and the way out and were often so short of fuel on the way out that the tanker pilots risked all to refuel them in enemy airspace. So it seems to me that WOV models it right-no A2A refuelling available so you run out of fuel on the way back (assuming that you are flying the mission in a realistic way, passing through defended zones at high speed and using your speed advantage over VPAF interceptors either to show them a "clean pair of heels" or defeat them in combat). So perhaps the best way to simulate the availibility of tankers is by stepping down the difficulty setting for fuel usage from "hard" to "normal" or "easy", so I'll give that a try. For full immersion I feel that you need some way of being able to fly fast and use a lot of AB but still get home, which seems to be the way it happened back in '66.

It's a good thought, but I think you get "mission failed" if you don't hit the allocated target (and you then have to refly at once or the whole campaign fails.....). A better alternative may be to divert to another airbase nearer to the target. Trouble is all the missions in this campaign seem to involve quite long flights (which is realistic I think) but according to one of the few books I have about the Vietnam air war, the F-105 had a range of 2, 070 miles, so it should be able to get there and back, even allowing for some evasive use of AB. I like to fly the whole mission including take off and landing (though I use accelerated time and AP for the uneventful stretches)-if you hit the target and then quit of course you succeed in the mission, even though by then you've definitely not got enough fuel to get home! Maybe this is a modding issue and I need to find out how to change the F-105's fuel load to something more realistic, though if it's wrong I'm surprised it hasn't been picked up before given the age of WOV, so perhaps it is something I'm missing. Does anyone know if I should be switching tanks or something like that?