Norman Prince

Hello all. Love flying flight simulations. WOFF is a great simulation. ROF is also but its campaign is weak. Flight characteristic are good. Flying in WW1 was hard as you all have reported. I would like to add that in 1914 most of the planes flew like the wright brothers except for BE2A. It was underpowered and and was much improved in the BE2c. The farmen and gunbus was much like the WB,s planes. They flew poorly with little power. You had to dive in short burst to maintain proper flight!! First Flight is a great simulation to show how difficult flight was in the beginning with underpowered engines.This skill was used by pilots early on and the flight models on realistic are perfectly develop. It takes some skill as these planes were deadly to fly as the Wright found out!!! The BE2c was very stable to fly and a marvel of its time (pre war). The Nieuport 11 was the first great rotor plane was easy to handlle and (as with BE2c) did not use wing wrapping (slow at controling) which made the early planes hard to control. ACH2 was a great pusher plane which control well.The problem with pushers was that te engine in the rear made a very good target for WW1 planes with low firepower.

I have used CSF and CSF2 mission editors. When flying missions in CSF I had problems with planes not showing up at the proper time. Flying with planes full of fuel an ammuntion can cause them to fly low and crash. With CSF2 I did not have problems with this but dogfighting proved difficult because if the planes tried to use WW2 combat flight tactics they would stall and crash. Constant turning can cause them to lose altitude. Changing AI tactics can prevent this but this requires some knowledge in programing. Keeping on the lowest skill mode for enemy planes was suggested. Your planes seem to fly better then you. This makes for some unrealistic combat. Not gaining altitude by the enemy is caused by to much of a payload or by trying to climb to fast and this causes the planes to stall. The AI is geared to WW2. CSF does work on some canned missions on simviation. You can then change the planes. The addon Combat Ace might have solutions but this is hard to find as it was only obtainable in Europe and people who used this found CSF worked well. Also there was a web sight geared for CSF WW1 planes and missions but the last time I went there it was closed. CSF3 and Over Flanders Field or Flying Eagles is the way to go.

All I can say is wow. It certainly is not the terror of the sky but brings the history of air warfare in WW1. To the French and Russians this was equvilant to the British BE2c and the Huns Rumplers.

Well I appreciate your comments. The one thing not modeled in WW1 flight sims because of the difficulty was enviromental factors. Visiablity, cold, oil spray from some engines, and strategy to combat these difficulties and use them to your advantage. This was a primary factor in flying in WW1 and also the ability of many of the aces to tweak their engines for better performance. CSF3 did try to address these issues by giving pilots certain attributes such a G tolerance or better endurance. A veteran should have the ability to increase certain attributes but they should also decrease with fatigue and stress. A jet flight sim of interest would be Falcon 4 mod Free Falcon. This was a sim worked on hard by some dedicated people with aeronautical backgrounds that allowed for an accurerate flight models. The problem with this sim is the flight models were so accurerate that it was as hard to master as flying these Jets for real. This was a work in progress and there was bugs that were continually being upgraded. Its difficulty made it not always popular with sim people looking for an easier flight sim. But it scored high enough that a comercial game was produced. The free Falcon was more extensive then the comercial product and the company has tried to take it off the internet. So if you want to try a realistic Jet flight sim, you need to get an old Falcon 4 disk and download the mod (be prepared the game once uncondensed is about 9 Gigs). Keep up the geat work. Norman Prince (Flight pioneer and combat pilot).

Hello Modders, What FE needs is a Voisen (correct spelling). This was an early war pusher used by the French and Russians. It performed recon and bombing missions and as a pusher had a gun mounted on a tripod that shot down the first Hun plane. A good model exist on Simviation for CSF1. I have incoperated it into CSF2 and FS9. It was underpowered and poor on manuvering. But in the early years it was a stable enough platform to allow an observor to fire a machine gun with enough accuerate shotting to hit a slow moving target. With the arrival of the Fokker monoplanes this pusher became an easy target. Also, is there anyone making terrain for Italian, eastern and middle east. These were once done on the old Red Baron 3D game by Munro and I am currently playing in the middle east (Siani and Palestine Fronts) flying for AFC as Ross Smith. The terrain is the RB with desert coloration and no Tanks but Infantry substituted ( what should have been Cavalry) and I fly FS9 as an orientation for what the map should be. I was flying Aero 504 and BE2c in the Suez region and with te arrival of Eindekkers I have countered with flying Bristol Scouts ( a very good plane that was easy to fly, good dogfighter as Hawker demonstrated earlier on the Western Front but was replaced by the ACH2 and Nuieport 11 and many were sent to the middle east) for AFC1 (Australian Flying Corp). The action took place between El Arish (allied captured airfield) and BerShebia (not spelled correctly) (Turks Airfield). The Turks lost the air war (despite having only German pilots, and controling the air). The British remained intense on gaining control despite losses and when Hanley Page bombers arrived did some strategic bombing that was successful as was not seen in any other front in WW1. Keep up the great work, I wish I had more of a background in Modding. But you are all great and this is a great sim. Norman Prince.

Hello , I am a flight sim who loves WW1 because the planes, especially early on, were a challenge to fly. Raoul Lufbury and Norman Prince started in Vosins and Chauldrons in order which allowed them to develop the flying skills to become the top pilots in the Esc124, shown in Flyboys. Behind the scenes, Lufbury was such a good mechanic that he kept his plane working better then the rest. I like the title " Down in Flames" and play all the Sims from RB3d to OFF. I also have all the Sims working on my computer systems including Blue Max, Knights of the Sky and all the ace series. On plane selection, one of the most extensive was FSWW1 mod for Scream Demons. They have an early Austrian Taube. Being able to navigate the landscape and weather patterns was a critical part of that period. The Red Baron early on almost lost his life in a thunder storm and Norman Prince lost his life hitting an unseen wire. These are hard to model and to some are not enough shooting. But they will never have a sense of what was important to those fighters of that period. Each game produced has strong and weak points. Of interest, my addons of CSF2 WW1 affects showed the affects of antiaircraft which caused wind disturbance as well as shrapnel. The one game I lost from running was Wings of Glory which was more like a diary with interaction with pilots in the squadron. This was unique for flight sims and some diehards still wish to play this but seems the designer made this game so there is a problem running it. I also have trouble with Flying Circus by Empire crashing back to windows. That game was suppose to have very accurate flight models and landscape taken from actual photos of the front. Sorry I get carried away and wish you the best on your creation. Will talk later. Daryld