RAF_Louvert

. Lewie, I agree there were one or two liberties taken in that video, such as how they were tossing those kites around at the higher climbs. But it did a better job than most modern productions in terms of having the planes perform at speeds and adroitness relatively appropriate to 1918. Far too often they have them screaming about the skies at jet velocities and reversing directions as if on cocaine. .

. TaillyHo, I'm nothing if not stylish. Olham, I believe we have an extra RFC lieutenant's tunic and trousers around here somewhere that should do the trick. And you Sir, are THE veteran in the OFF forums. Is there in fact anyone with a higher post count than you? So let's see; Si, Stary, Creaghorn, Widowmaker, Wayfarer, Duke, Olham, and TaillyHo. That should just about fill the first tender. .

. Carrick, thanks for the heads-up on the closing of this fine history photo site. I have visited it often over the last few years. Too bad it will be going offline. .

. Duke, I'd recommend today's house special, the bottomless yard of ale. .

. Aw shucks...I'm speechless. .

. Une idée magnifique! Si, let's see how big a crew we can gather for the outing and we can steal...err...requisition a brace of lorries form the motor sergeant. .

. Welcome to the OFF forums Thomas. New lads buy the drinks! Cheers! Lou .

. It's been said here before by Uncleal and Hellshade and others, but I thought it should be repeated again for the benefit of the newcomers. OFF likes speed, actually it demands it. Far more than memory, speed is the determining factor on how well your system will push this fantastic sim. I tested this yet again last night while doing some tweaking on my 9800GTX+ vid card, and it is amazing how much you can affect the graphics quality and smoothness of OFF by playing around with the numbers. Let me start by outlining, (again), my system specs: CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0ghz Wolfdale 6mb 1333fsb 45nm with Arctic Cooler, (OC'd to 3.90) Memory: 8gb DDR2 PC2-6400 800mhz, (OC'd to 890 with volts set at 2.1) Mobo: ASUS P5QL Pro Hard Drive: 2 Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA Opti Drive: LG 22X DVD+/RW Dual Layer SATA Rewrite Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512mb PS: Diablo 900 Watt Windows XP Pro 64-bit OS LG 22" flat screen LCD monitor Three large case fans I currently have my card speeds bumped to the following: core clock 820, shader clock 2040, memory clock 1275, (with the fan at 60%). I can fly in a large dogfight on a sunny day over a busy part of the front, with sliders at 5-4-4-5-5, and it is smooth as silk. But, if I decrease memory clock to say 1225, I will start to see those telltale lines in the trees down at ground level, minor cloud and tree popping at the edges of the screen, and TrackIR starts to get just a bit ragged on very rapid scanning. It is amazing how much even that little drop in speed will affect the performance and quality of OFF. So again, just to stress the point, SPEED IS IMPORTANT TO OFF. We now return you to our regularly scheduled topics. Cheers! Lou .

. It is a hoot indeed to push OFF to the limit with our 'Old Codger' systems, in particular since I'm an old codger myself. And I do the same as you Al, navigating by 'paper' map and the terrain, as well as ducking into a nearby cloud when it suits my advantage in a scrape. Gotta love it! .

. That is a very good bit of video which does a fairly accurate job of showing what it must have been like for our RL Great War counterparts, IMHO. .

. Oh man, how I would love to get behind the stick of that kite once it's completed and take her for a turn or two. Kudos to them for taking on such a fine project. It reminds me, I was just up in north-eastern Minnesota yesterday visiting my brother. He is retired and lives on 160 acres of beautiful countryside several miles from the nearest town, and we were discussing mowing a strip into one of the particularly long meadows he owns. It would be an idyllic spot for a grass airstrip: a wonderfully flat meadow about 700 yards long and 500 yards wide, running east and west; bordered by a thick pine and birch forest on three sides with the narrow dirt lane to his home along the north edge; prevailing winds from the west-northwest which make them perfect for the field orientation: and 20-plus miles from the nearest commercial flight path. He and I have both flown ultralights in the past, and he is now considering a build of a 3/4 size SE5a replica. I can already see it parked on that grassy field, near an unpainted, board-sided, tin-roofed hanger, tucked up next the eastern tree line, on a blue-skied summer morning. .

. A man who knows of what he speaks. Thank you for posting that very useful bit of information Al. .

. Fantastic Pol, simply fantastic. .

. Or to quote Ulysses Everett McGill, in 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' : "Well ain't this place a geographical oddity! Two weeks from everywhere!" .

. Absolutely correct Lewie. Some pilots at the time considered the E.IV to be worse than it predeccesor, dut to it's clumsy feel. .

. For those with nVidia cards you can also load up RivaTuner, which is an outstanding, (and free), vid card tweaker program that has been around for a long time, is well-proven, and constantly updated. Download link here: RivaTuner And you can Google your card info and add something like "overclocking limits" and you should find numerous tech forums discussing your very card and how best to maximize it. .

. Duke, glad that cleared it up for you Sir. Good luck chasing down that little bit of hinkyness. Actually I did Olham, in my system specs. CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0ghz Wolfdale 6mb 1333fsb 45nm with Arctic Cooler, (OC'd to 3.90) I have also noticed that card speed seems to have more of an impact than CPU speed. .

. You are more than welcome Olham. And yes, those infamous white jaggies are another speed-related issue. To answer your question Duke: When OFF is over-taxing my set-up, (and IIRC others have noted this in the past as well with their set-ups), I will see pencil-thin white lines running veritcally through the individual trees, when down at or near ground level. What appears to be happening is that one or more of the tree model segments is not filling in, (because the system cannot keep up with the demands of the sim). The only way to make this graphics glitch go away is to either lower the appropriate sliders or push up the system speeds. Hope this answers your question Duke. .

. BH, while I agree with you on your analysis of the stalemate along the Western Front, and with your outline of steps 1 and 2, I must take exception to your conclusion about the third step. Throughout the war both sides' abilities to use their respective air forces to reconnoiter, direct artillery fire, and communicate effectively in real time grew by leaps and bounds to the point where, by the end of the conflict, neither side was able to exploit opportunities created by successfully accomplishing steps 1 and 2 for any length of time BECAUSE of their success with step 3. The ‘eye in the sky’ was giving both sides vital information concerning battle at a faster rate and with far greater accuracy than they had ever had in the past. With the exception of bad weather days when aerial viewing of the ground was limited or non-existent, army leaders on both sides of the mud had a handle on what the situation was at any given time that was unimaginable in past conflicts. .

. Welcome to the the OFF virtual front, Mafiozo. As other veterans of this haunt have already given you a plethora of sage advice I won't add further, other than to say I'll have a nice pinta' red ale and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, thank you very much. Cheers! Lou .

. It Conquered The World! Looks like a killer cuke to me. .

. Did it fall sideways out of the sky on him too...hee hee...no Bullethead. He mucked up the landing, (much like we do in OFF trying to put the Einie back on terra firma), when he set down next to his second victim. I wonder if the brass said anything about him crashing his kite on rough ground with a landing he did not have to make, but rather chose to. I suppose not, as he was the first to shoot down a pair of planes in a single sortie, (a feat which actually earned him two medals). .

. Rugbyfan, yes, the E.I was still in operation at the time, (as evidenced by Böhme's use of it ), but it was being phased out. A short few months later on 24 January, 1916 Böhme was killed flying his E.II. I do not believe a twin MG set-up was ever tried on the E.I's or the E.II's, due to their lack of power, (as mentioned by Lewie). A number of E.III's were fitted with twin guns, (Immelmann's being one of them), however the E.IV was the first operational aeroplane to be built with two from the factory, IIRC. As to the 700-round belt, it's my understanding that it was a field modification done by simply stitching on an additional 150-round length of canvas belting to the stock 550-round item. BTW, here is a photo of Böhme's crashed E 14/15 after he had shot down the pair of Farmans near the Black Forest on 25 September, 1915, (the young boy in the photo is NOT Böhme) : (photo courtesy of 'Early German Aces of World War I', by Greg VanWyngarden and Harry Dempsey) .

. Two of the volumes to be included in the next WWI Books download I'm putting together are Great War song books. Here is a sample from one, and the title should be very familiar to anyone who's read "No Parachute". When death is a way of life year after year, it helps if one can find a way to laugh at it. .

. It occurred to me this morning when I was looking through the screenshots in Olham's post about the nicest airfields in OFF, that the nicest one by far is also the largest easter egg in the sim as well. The hidden Zeppelin base deep in the Swiss Alps: Very cool, and very tricky of our clever group of devs to hide this gem away in a quiet, picturesque valley far from the Western Front. .