Sky High

Good to hear from you.

There's still a pulse. There seemed to be an opportunity during the pandemical social restrictions, but it hasn't been taken.

A machine can still only learn within the limits of how it has been pre-programmed to do so. It has also to be pre-programmed with the information that decides what is an unsuccessful outcome and what is a successful one. All the intelligence still belongs to the programmer, the difference in 'Reinforced Machine Learning' being a more complex programme.

The ability of the AI is a function of the reactions programmed into it by the intelligence of human beings. If a particular reaction or maneouvre has not been so programmed, it can never happen. However, it is not implausible that sufficient intelligence on the part of the programmers might develop an 'AI' capable of defeating a human. However, all the intelligence involved belongs to the human programmers-there is nothing artificial about it and the term 'artificial intelligence' is a complete misnomer.

One further thing. I noticed planes with rotary engines had no exhaust fumes at all. So, I copied (after appropriate backing up) my InlineExhaustEmitter file and renamed it as RotaryExhaustEmitter. I then opened it and renamed the internal file name from InlineExhaustEmitter to RotaryExhaustEmitter. I then replaced the original RotaryExhaustEmitter file with this new one. This gave my rotary planes an exhaust trail similar to the inline ones. I considered this exhaust trail to be excessive for the rotaries, so I cut and pasted the text of the data properties from the original RotaryExhaustEmitter file into the newly created one until I got a trail that was more to my satisfaction, in my case, a shorter trail. It requires a bit of trial and error and be sure to have back-ups of all these files.

Using VonS' method, I discovered my problem. It was caused by a file called 'InlineExhaustEffect' in my Effects Folder. When I removed it, I got my exhaust smoke back. Additionally, my trial-and-error has brought home to me that TK's stock effects are quite good in themselves. Thanks to everyone on the thread. It has been a great learning experience. Mick.

I tried that, but it didn't work. I must try VonS' suggestion.

I've tried everyone's very helpful recommendations, but still no change for me.

Silberfeil, this unfortunately doesn't seem to work in my FE2.

Padlock works perfectly in my European Air War and BoBII installs!

I notice the planes in my install all have ExhaustEmitterName=InlineExhaustEmitter in the Engines section of their Data.inis, but I noticed I had no file of this name in any of my effects mods. Therefore, I found one in my Stary Effects install in my Korea Mod, placed it in my FE2 Effects folder, but still no exhaust smoke.

I can report the same as Eugene. No exhaust effects. I've tried stock, Laton, Ojcar and Stary effects and combinations of both, but no success.

Actually, it was 7-Zip that failed to open it and Winzip (trial version free) succeeded. However, I took Wrench's advice and updated my 7--Zip and that seems to have solved the problem. Thanks to everyone that rowed in so promptly with solutions. [By the way, it was well worth the trouble-Tornos planes and cockpits are top class].

I have just downloaded all three of Torno's very promising-looking FW-190's, but all present with the message 'Cannot open file' when I attempt to open them, something I have never previously encountered in files downloaded from CombatAce. Is it possible to correct them or could somebody kindly re-upload the files? Thanks in advance.

Update: I redownloaded and found the same problem. I then downloaded the WinZip trial utility and it worked.

Thanks for the prompt reply. I will try again. I read mercier's review of two of the files which said 'corrupt file or unknown format', so I assumed that this might be the case.

Battle of Britain II seems to have multiple problems on Win 10. European Air War has been reported as not running as well on 10 as on 7. The lesson seems to be the understandable one that an older OS is better for older games.

'Armchair Aces' is a great title for these campaigns, speaking as a sim flyer who is afraid of even modest heights!

That use of my quote is a complete misrepresentation of what I said. If you read the entire sentence, it is clear that my use of the word 'inevitable' referred to the blame-game with respect to the phenomenon, not the phenomenon itself.

[Erik, I thought twice about that post and actually deleted it before you quoted it. Then I followed with what's below. I apologise to all concerned and acknowledge that feelings naturally run high when personally involved]. If global warming is really happening, it's inevitable everyone will blame everyone else for the consequences, but what it would actually be is the equivalent of a gigantic chemical reaction which conceivably has been slowly developing since the onset of the industrial revolution. It is very difficult to stop such a reaction right in the middle of it. Things are probably going to have to just play out. As there is such a diversity of opinion on these events, it doesn't appear that anyone is capable of discovering what, if anything, might be done. More than likely, the law of unseen consequences implies that whatever is done will have negative consequences in unexpected and alternative directions. In the very unlikely case that somebody discovers a workable soultion to reverse global warming, it will present the hazard of being over-implemented and taking us to an equally catastrophic global cooling scenario, because there are no precedents whatsoever to guide us. The human race is discovering that we are not gods and have far less control over our environment than we thought. Those recent past few centuries of technological progress that have brought us to our present point might not have come without a price. The past century and a half of population increase might simply have been an unsustainable historical bubble, which is about to burst very spectacularly. The consequences are so horrific, there's no point in thinking about them.

I have read reports that the environmental lobby in Australia have brought about so many regulations to protect trees and vegetation that the deployment of firebreaks is effectively impossible. One fireman interviewed said that in 2002 he cleared the trees around his house and was fined $50,000 dollars plus the same in costs. He said that there was a large fire in 2009 and his was the only house in his town not burned down. Cause and effect. But one cannot talk to these people.

The game is at least as good-looking as Rise of Flight at this moment and that's not taking into account any of many other facets in which it excels. Visuals, sounds, AI, FM's, DM's, variety, compatibility with controllers and TrackIR, in all these it is top-notch. For all this, we mere players owe thanks to TK and all you modders.

Blade, the fate of your great-grandmother is a reminder to present generations that we are fortunate in ways we take too much for granted. Life was so much more fragile in those days, yet the older generations seemed to have so much more courage. Would present generations have the bravery to risk their all against such impossible odds? Given the tendency to irrational panic over imaginary threats that we witness all over the media and internet, I suspect most of our present snowflakes would melt in the face of such real dangers.