Sky High

I have all three, but I couldn't make any hand at ROF, whatsoever (this is my fault, rather than that of what is an excellent sim, enjoyed by many). So, I removed it from my increasingly-crowded hard-drive. And, while I appreciate the great achievement that is WOFF, I almost always turn to FE2. I couldn't do a mod to save my life, so I can only repeat my gratitude for the work the talented people on here have so generously shared in order to bring this game to its current level of excellence, achieved in the face of such worthy competition. Thanks is also due to TK for providing us with a series of games in which all this has been possible.

However, one cannot get true widescreen with Glide, only a 'stretched' version. It goes without saying that proper widescreen greatly improves the playability and appearance of a flight sim. Unfortunately, if you're on Win 8 or 10, I don't think DGVoodoo can be used to get the horizon fog on D3D. If you have a Radion graphics card, the fog is obtainable in d3d, as far as I know.

The 1.60 version is available over at SimHQ and is a very straightforward install. It contains multiple theatres and terrains. If you have an nvidia card and you're on Win 7, it helps. With Win 7, you can get widescreen on D3D, with horizon fog, using DGVoodoo 2. Also, by using 4x Multisampling and 4x Sparse Grid Supersampling via nVidia Inspector, one eliminates terrain shimmering. The terrain in my screenshots is not included in 1.60. It is Saggin B's 512x512 HR ETO terrain, available at Sandbagger's 'Tally Ho' site, which I added. Likewise, the sky is one by Keibin, available at Tally Ho, also. Additionally, I added in what I think are more historical gunsights (have a little JSGME-ready mod for that, if you're interested). Postscript: Stratos, do I correctly remember you from being one of the old EAW people from some years ago?

Mouse-emulation TrackIR with a track-clip (I use the sturdy DelanClip) works well. I'm no expert, but the FM's feel fairly right. It's easy to know you're in a Typhoon, for example, rather than a Spit and there seems a nice balance between opposing plane capabilities. The AI, in my opinion, is still better than most. And the sheer number of planes in the air is only matched by BoBII. Easy to spot them too. It's also a bonus that an impatient player can put himself in the thick of frenetic action within seconds.

You're certainly no idiot user, but a very enthusiastic one who has contributed to reigniting my own interest in this great game. In response to your call, I have posted a few screenshots of how EAW can look nowadays in another thread I've created ('European Air War in 2019').

In response to RIBoB's clarion call for some commentary here, in order to broaden the appeal of this olden, but golden, game, I include some screenshots of how Version 1.60 looks for me now in D3D 1920x1080 widescreen, with an nVidia 660ti on Windows 7 and run through DGVoodoo 2, with ReShade 4 added (not sure if the latter has any actual effect rather than in my imagination):

Bombs away, then!

Great review, Lima. Your personal history, and more particularly that of your parents, lends poignancy. This wonderful game isn't dead yet, with some good modding continuing to be done on it. On the other hand, there aren't so many modifications available that one is tempted to spend more time modding it than flying it. [I note that you mentioned European Air War and also that you're considering a partitioned Win 7. Well, I've got fed up admiring the looks of certain simulators and have also decided to go retro and am currently enjoying the gameplay of European Air War. I have discovered that Win 7 is the most suitable for EAW if you've got an NVidia GPU. I currently have Mr Jelly's great 1.60 version running well under D3D in widescreen with 512x512 terrain, everything maxed out graphically and in terms of plane numbers and I have enabled DGVoodoo 2 to provide horizon fog (can't be done, apparently, in Win 8 or 10) and Reshade 4 effects (hard to tell if the latter makes any difference). I have also almost completely eliminated terrain shimmering with nVidia Inspector and built a (hopefully) historic set of gunsights for most of the German, British, US, Russian, Japanese and Italian fighters featured and I have set up my TrackIR in such a way that padlock can over-ride it. Bearing all that in mind, you might get time to have another look at it with your new partition. One great thing about both these games, and it also applies to FE/FE2, is the ability to get into the thick of it almost immediately].

Aye, a true Time Machine.

Not as much can be said about Stephen's customers, as we don't pay him very well. Not this one anyway!

Awesome.

I'm currently downloading Jel's big 1.29 installation, so will post how I get on. Update: Jel's 1.29 eawexe works. It is an old map one. He had two other exe's in the download. The new map one provides the same ctd. The Colonel's exe was also a new map version. That seems to be my problem. Perhaps a complete 1.29 install is required, rather than the basic. Is there any advantage to going from 1.28EV21 to 1.29May16 as the foundation for my custom install?

Excellent work. Thank you and Season's Greetings.

Sorry, Mark, I thought I had implicitly answered the question. However, it is a fault of mine that I often fail to realise I might be the only one who knows what I'm talking about. I tried all your recommendations. I installed the small movies cdf and started directly from the exe-indeed I had already tried this before to no avail. Today, I redownloaded the file in case my old one was corrupt, but with the same results. Finally, I took your advice to delete the eawini and this is what led me to the cause of my problem. When I ran it post-deletion, the game worked. When I exited and examined the ini, the resolution had reduced to 1024x768. When I changed it back to 1920x1080, the same ctd resulted. When I used my usual ini from my 1.28E setup in 1.29 and changed the resolution in that one from 1920x1080 down to 1024x768, the 1.29 game also worked. Hence, I concluded that the 1.29 exe has a problem with widescreen resolutions. To me, using 1.28E and 1.60, there is no motivation whatsoever to persist with 1.29, unless I'm missing something very major. Of course, if somebody can adjust the 1.29 exe for widescreen, this would resolve the problem.

It seems that 1.29 will not work, for me, in widescreen resolution. I can get it to work in 1024x768, but it crashes in the 1920x1080 resolution that I have working in all my other EAW installs. Ah well.

Unfortunately, 1.29 drops but does not play, for me. It loads and I can pick a plane and create a mission, but as soon as i attempt to 'fly' I get an immediate 'European Air War has stopped working' message, with reference to a '6204' exception.

I have it, but cannot get it to work.

You'll find the mods I mentioned in the last two or three pages of the Subscribers' Modifications thread.

Interesting to note your observation with regard to the sparse-grid supersampling and its elimination of distant shimmering. I got exactly the same result in my installation of European Air War. However, 2x was inadequate. Now, I must replicate it in my BoB II install. Thanks for the tip. Now that you're going all-out with the graphics, have a go with Rogeroger's recent application of 'Martin's textures', originally a mod in Il-2 1946 and there's an accompanying Reshade file, as well. He and Boreas have several recent graphic modifications which considerably improve the visuals.

I have Windows 7, so I'm also not in the best position to advise. All I can say is that I got this game's venerable predecessor, MiG Alley, to work on my pc using a utility called DxWND, which runs games in a window. Additionally, I would recommend the recent terrain and lighting mods from Boreas and Rogerroger, available on A2A, which greatly improve the visuals. Another possible hint: recently greatly improved frame-rates in some of the big missions by changing the setting in nVidia panel to 'maximum pre-rendered frames' = 1.

I cannot get 1.29 to work, at all. But 1.28E works backwards nicely for me and I can mix and match quite widely, while still keeping the improved dm's and fm's, not to mention that much-improved AI. I think that EAW1.28's AI is better balanced than IL-2's. Still, it's great to have both.

RIBob, could you explain how you came upon that EAWNewFront site at Tallyho? I just can't find it. Thank you.

I actually never had that patch. However, I installed EAW 1.2, added the 'Great Shot' add-on in its entirety over it; removed the file 'main2pic;' and added a complete 1.28e install, which I had downloaded from SimHQ, directly upon the 1.2/Great Shot install. It worked fine. It seems others have directed you to the Great Shot files. It's a nice compilation of older, but quality, mods with nice skins and sounds. I'd recommend looking at the extras, also.

As far as I can remember, the snap-views worked fine. I didn't retain the game on my hard-drive for very long as I have my own custom-built 1.28E version, not to mention my 1.60 and FXEXE installs. I have come to use trackir with eaw, but the snaps are very useful when one is padlocked to a target, as my padlock view is set to pause trackir.