MikeDixonUK

Having slept on it I think I'm going to go with the GTX 560 Ti 2GB, as it gives me DirectX 11 and 2GB of VRam - which are the two main components I'm after, and is also the cheapest. Also, having opened up my PC to find out what PSU I have (Enermax 485w) I've seen that my current graphics card is about 9.5 inches long, and has 1 inch clearance behind it, the GTX 560 is only 9 inches long (but quite tall) so will fit, but the ATI 6970 is 10.75 inches and the GTX 580 is 10.5 inches - which are both pushing it if they can even manage to fit into the case! This is probably going to be my last upgrade on this PC before I look to getting a newer one, but hopefully it should last me a bit longer with DirectX 11 once I get Windows 7, and the extra VRam. Also my Brother will be getting my ATI 4890 for his PC, so that should keep him happy for a while.

You lot are clever when it comes to tech stuff I must say, so perhaps you can help me! Birthday again soon, been pondering some graphics card upgrades (need more graphics card memory aparantly, as I'm running at high resolution (1920 x 1200) - also Cliffs of Dover needs a good 2gb odd it seems, narrowed it down to three but they all have their issues. The Safe Option Gainward GeForce GTX 560Ti 2048 MB GDDR5Dual This is the safe option as it's not exactly top tier, apparently uses 20w less power (the basic 1gb version at least) than my current card (ASUS ATI HD 4890 1024mb) and is the cheapest, however the stats don't seem to be massively better than my current card (a basic ATI HD 4890 vs a basic 1gb 560Ti anyway) but I don't really know how much better the Gainward 2GB one is and is it worth £250 compared to what I've got? Although seemingly the 560 was only released a few months ago, where as the ATI 4890 is about two years old, so it seems a bit odd if the 560 is only a little better, unless I've go the stats wrong. (The main advantages over my current card seem to be that it has 2gb ram compared to 1gb and is DirectX 11 compatible, where as my current is DirectX 10 I think.) The Hard Option Asus HD 6970 2GB GDDR5 This one is a lot better than my current card and is only about £30 more than the first option, however it uses 60w more than my current card, so I might have to buy a new PSU (not sure what my current one is, I'll have to open it up and look - 500w I think) and also my Motherboard (ASUS P5N-e SLI) has issues running ATI 6XXX series cards and requires a BIOS update (or else it takes about 40 seconds for it to start up) which I'm not to keen about as I hear they can stuff up the Motherboard. The Silly Expensive Option Palit GTX 580 3GB GDDR5 This one is similar to the second one I think, and has about the same power consumption - but has 3gb memory and I won't have to update my BIOS. Of course the question is, with this PC: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.33Ghz ASUS P5N-e SLI 4GB DDR2 Ram Windows XP SP3 (Thinking about getting Windows 7.) Would the other components in the PC be holding back the better two cards so much that there's not much point in me getting them, compared to the first card?

There might be an option in the windows control panel called 'Turn Windows Features on or off' Inside there there's a Windows Media Player option that needs to be turned on if it's off. At least that was the answer in this issue: Previous Issue Thread

Ah yes, ground target fixation! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETl_rr0SMFI Very dangerous!

Looking good! Any chance of Sheep? Might get a few WW2OL Players if you have Sheep, they have a thing for them for some reason...

Thanks for the tips, Parky. Just replaced the stock cooler, and on the first run it's running at 37c at idle and has only gone up to 47c under load - which is lower than what it used to be at idle most of the time! So presumably we can call that a successful operation. I decided to replace the thermal pad on the heatsink with a blob of Arctic Silver 5 (and used the ArctiClean thermal remover and surface purifier.) Although I always work on the 1 week rule when it comes to messing with PCs it must be said - where I only know if it's worked properly if it hasn't exploded after a week, as my stuff has been known to work on the day of an upgrade, then go tits up the following morning!

That's probably it yeah, although I'm on XP so it's a different directory - probably best to copy anything that looks remotely like it's to do with the Pilot files just to be on the safe side.

There's a newly released Beta patch for CoD by the way (released today) on the 1c CoD forum, it seems a bit hit or miss as to if it will improve your performance, but for me it gives probably 5 - 10 FPS more, and also fixes a bug with the water so that now I can have trees turned on.

I think there are also some Pilot files in the 'My Documents' folder. I seem to remember a few months ago when I was having issues with my campaign getting stuck on one mission, I used to make a copy of the Pilot files in the main game folder as well as the Pilot files in 'My Documents' in case I needed to revert them back if the campaign got stuck again. Only problem with that is my campaign stopped having issues a while ago, so I stopped copying the files for backup - so now I can't remember exactly where they are - but I'm pretty sure there are some in 'My Documents' or 'Documents and Settings' or whatever the documents folder is called in your operating system.

In a worst case scenario couldn't you just make a new Pilot career on your new PC, but then edit the Pilot file so that the date, medals, kills and wingmen are the same as the old career? I think it's just a case of editing the Pilot text files. Might also be possible to copy the claims file as well, but if not you could always say that those pesky British two-seaters bombed the records office again!

On the subject of CPU cooling, I was having some trouble running Shogun 2, as it kept restarting my PC after a few minutes, which I found was because of overheating. First of all I found that (acording to Speedfan) it was running at 60c idle! With presumably 100c + when running at full power - then I cleaned out the dust from the inside, which resulted in it idling at around 48 - 55c, but still 95 - 100c at full power! So I've decided to order one of these Arctic Cooling Freezer 7s to replace the stock Intel fan: Not sure if it's the most powerfull or fastest or smallest or what not - but it costs £15, arrives the next day and it's probably better than my CPU exploding! Never know, might even be able to overclock my CPU after I install it! (E8600s are supposed to be good for overclocking aparantly - only running at stock at the moment, but then that's probably for the best at 100c!)

I think my first experience with gaming might have been with the Commodore 64, I imagine it was my brothers - although we might have bought it late during the 90s for a laugh, can't quite remember... i remember a James Bond game, where the first level was you in a parachute gliding towards a yacht or some such, and that it took an extreme amount of time to load! The first console that was mine though was a Sega Mega Drive - and the first game was Desert Strike - now THAT was a game! And that theme tune! Den-dee, den-deee, den-deeee, den-deeeee - dililililililililiiiuuuuuuuuu! And of course Jungle Strike, then Urban Strike, then I think they started going down hill.

Variety is the spice of life. Healthy competition is good for the consumer. Other such one liners.

Loved the bit in part three where he shouts at that group of people at the top of the steps. The ol' parade ground lungs coming out a bit!

So far I'd say the advantages are: More realistic engine management including clickable cockpits and realistic engine start up. More immersive features (we're all for immersion in OFF after all ) like adjustable gunsights and lights, adjustable dials such as compasses (which drift) - editable gun belts (ie you could have 'Incendiary - Tracer - Incendiary - Armour Piercing' or what not) and Cockpits icing up in cloud. Better damage model (probably the best you can get from what I've seen) where you can pretty much damage everything that would be in the Aircraft, even stuff I don't know what it is. Also you can design your own little 3D Pilot, which is fun - I went for the Irvin Jacket with RAF Cap, RAF Trousers and Flying Boots look, incase you were wondering. IL2 46 is ahead in areas as there are hundreds of Aircraft available and pretty much all theatres of the war (plus Spain and Korea infact!), it's stable and 'normal' as far as the optimization goes - and has it's own dynamic campaign engine (although aparantly they'll add one in Cliffs of Dover, but that's probably after a lot of optimization patches.) But I'd say if you were to put IL2 46 with a Battle of Britain set up next to ClOD with a Battle of Britain set up then ClOD is superior, but you do take a risk at the moment when you buy it, as it may or may not actually work! But then again even if it doesn't work you still have a copy for when it does I suppose... Last note on Cliffs of Dover vs IL2, for me IL2 always felt a bit 'dry' - hard to explain, but it all seemed a bit clean, as if you were flying an aircraft performance graph - where as (to me) Cliffs of Dover feels more immersive. I'm just a bit worried that this game which has a lot of potential (more than any sim I've played) will end up getting beaten into nothingness by people saying it's crap, and it just fading into nothingness. It seems people either really love it, or really hate it - but to each their own I suppose.

Here are some videos of it on my PC: This one is inspired by a scene in the book 'First Light' by Geoffrey Wellum: (Seems I can only post two videos in a post, but here are links to the other two): The second one shows off the damage model pretty well - at one point some FlaK takes out the electronics and knocks out the Gunsight Illumination and Undercarriage Indicator Lamp (I think the FlaK burst just behind the Cockpit might have hit the Voltage Regulator behind the seat and maybe the CO2.) Quite a few obvious bugs, like the textures changing some times, strange physics and I have to turn trees off because of a texture bug, but the game works perfectly well with most settings on medium and some on high - so looking forward to what it's going to be like when it's been patched and optimized!

WW2 Online: Battleground Europe, IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover and Theatre of War 3: Korea have been my three main ones at the moment. Other than that it's been a bit of Total War: Shogun 2 and Mass Effect 2 of late.

Excellent as always - although I'm more of a Flanders chap myself (although I must admit that being from Cumbria I do find myself pining for the hills. ) No doubt the modeling for the rest of western Europe will look equally as excellent as this though of course!

It's a pretty daft sounding name if you ask me (presuming it is a proper game and not an April Fools thing like you thought it might be.) 'World of Planes' gives me a picture in my mind of one of those theme parks or arcades that you sometimes see commercials for on TV... World of Planes! Just off Junction 5 of the M42 - ample free parking! But if it is real then best of luck to them, it sounds good.

I've got it - it works surprisingly well on my PC as a lot of really high end ones seem to come undone (unless the people that keep complaining about the graphics are people who put everything on maximum and then whine when it doesn't run at 60 FPS ) I've got an Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33GHz, ATI 4890, 4GB DDR2 (which is lower-mid range aparantly - not sure when that happened!) and am getting 30 - 40 FPS over the English channel and 20+ FPS over England - with medium graphics settings and a few on low (and one or two on high), which is essentially playable FPS and respectable graphics, shall we say. There are a lot of bugs and it has been released a few months early if you ask me, but I'm enjoying it and I think it's definitely a case of a very rough diamond - it has a lot of nice little features that the geeky simmer appreciates - for example if you fly through a cloud your canopy gets covered in condensation - if the sun shines on your gunsight it goes invisible, but you can turn the power up to make it more visible - you can see your exhaust flames at night, set the altitude of the altimeter and the direction of the compass (aparently the compass shifts over time like they would in real life, so you have to compensate - but I haven't played it long enough to find out) - the patches over the gun ports in the Spitfires and Hurricanes start covered up, but get 'holed' when you fire - and many other geeky little things that there are too many to list! Also the engine management is pretty snazzy - first time I tried it I burnt my intake and punctured my hose - not entirely sure what that means, but oil got thrown everywhere and I had to ditch in the sea. So if you can get past the unfinished state of the game, there is good stuff in there - just you might not be able to find it depending on how lucky you are with your PC set up.

This happened to me a while back as well, but it seemed to sort itself out after a while (I think I had to fly about 10 or so missions and change the active pilot a few times before it sorted itself out.) It hasn't happened again - but since then, when I return to the Aerodrome I always land from the west to the east - come to a complete stop and wiggle all of my control surfaces, but I'm superstitious like that.

In Flanders Fields, Over Flanders Fields, Above Flanders Fields... Now all we need is Below Flanders Fields, Under Flanders Fields, Next to Flanders Fields, One across from Flanders Fields, A bit near Flanders Fields and Flanders Fields: An expert's guide to Farming.

I pray constantly that Over Flanders Fields should never suffer the great misfortune as to find itself with a Publisher.

The way I do it is to fix my eyes on one particular area of sky, then see if anything moves in it - then if not shift my eyes to another area of sky, as opposed to constantly moving my eyes to try to pick out individual dots, as I find you're more likely to spot the movement of an object against a static background, as opposed to actually spotting the object itself (a sort of peripheral vision effect.) If that makes sense.