RAF_Louvert

. I think I know those guys. M4GW! Make it a reality in 2011. .

. Ah man, that's a shame. RIP Gary. .

. hee hee...VP, I have to admit that particular snow drift was actually in a little town about an hour-and-a-half west of my house, but I've had some in my own yard that were well over 10 feet high. The tallest one I've had this season so far was only seven feet. .

. VP, once you're done visiting Conrad you can scoot on over here to Minnesota and help me dig my car out of the snow drift it's buried under. I know it's in there somewhere. .

. Many thanks for the kind words Gaw and Herr Prop-Wasche, and you are more than welcome. I hope you Gents will be able to make good use of these. Hasse Wind, happy to help with your B/R pilot award ponderings. Let me know how you decide to go about awarding their medals and how it works out for you, and perhaps I can put togther a formal set of tables for our brave two-seater flyers as well. Also, a good idea about making these tables available to the folks downloading the new medals. I have added a link to this thread on the download page so that people can pop over here and grab these guidelines if they wish. Cheers! Lou .

. CaptSopwith, I was thinking how lucky you were with the incident you described until I read through Wayfarer's report on his current pilot. That's not just the luck of the Irish, it's the luck of the whole damned Republic! I've had similar fortunate twists myself with several of my OFF pilots, flying in both DID and RSS. I just chalk it up to the kindness of the gods and buy a round for everyone. Cheers! Lou . .

. Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. .

. OMG! OMG! OMG! I actually understood most of that. Priceless, WM. .

. Yes indeed Shredward, you have each of their bios included, as well as the plane skin for Malik's Camel. No custom paint though for poor old Roy, and I imagine it's because he wasn't around long enough with 40 Squadron to even have time to personalize his kite. Brave lads both, to be sure. .

. Duke, IIRC the pilot photo is assigned by number to the corresponding number of the pilot. But that is not the same as the "pilotXdossier" number as CFS3 does not take into account deleted pilots. So, as far as I know, you have to look at the picture in the pilot photos folder and find the one that is being displayed on your pilot's page and swap that photo out for the one you want. I just rename the old one with a .ORIG suffix and then drop in the one I want, named to replace the original photo. Cheers! Lou .

. Duke, my pleasure to help out. Glad these are what you had in mind. Hasse Wind, as one who has flown many times over the years as a two-seater pilot in the WWI flight sims, I have pondered the best way to simulate the earning of awards by these unsung heros. Theirs was the critical job, and it was their presence in the skies that brought about the need for the fighter/scout pilots in the first place. Yet it was the dashing flyers of the speedy single-seaters who claimed the lion's share of the glory. A steadfast and successful B/R pilot would likely end up with no more than one or two awards for gallantry, despite having flown hundreds of recons, arty spots, and bombing runs. And the gunner/obs might well have more medals than the pilot flying him about. What I've settled on over the course of time for the B/R awards is to use successfully completed missions for the two-seaters in much the same way the sim uses confirmed kills for the fighters, (as you yourself suggested in your post). I don't have a formal structure put together for this as I've been going more by feel with the whole affair, but I might suggest you try using the above tables by simply taking the kill numbers for the latest period of the War and doubling the amounts, and let those new figures represent completed missions. So for instance, flying RSS as a British two-seater pilot, you would need to complete between 20 to 34 missions to be awarded your first gallantry medal. If you do happen to find yourself in a fight with enemy planes and send one or two down, well that's just icing on the cake and may garner you another citation. But your primary job as a B/R pilot is always to complete the mission. Also, by using the same figures for all periods of the conflict you will be simulating how it was considerably easier to do your job as a B/R pilot early in the War than it was as the skies became more and more populated with hostile craft. .

. Many thanks Hasse Wind and Elephant, I hope these tables will prove useful to you Gents. To serve as examples with a bit more historic accuracy, here are a few pilot's page honors created using the new medals and guidelines, and displayed in their proper order of precedence. Awards of a German officer, (who was born in the Kingdom of Saxony), and began his military career on the Eastern Front serving with Turkish forces and where he was awarded the Turkish War Medal, before transfering to the Fliegertruppen and serving in the Flanders Region: Awards of a French officer serving with Belgian and British forces on the Western Front, who began his flying career in the enlisted ranks where he was awarded the Medaille Militaire, (French Military Medal), and the British Military Medal: Awards of a British RFC officer serving with French and Belgian forces on the Western Front, who began his flying career in the enlisted ranks where he was twice awarded the Military Medal: Awards of a British RNAS officer serving with French and Belgian forces in the Flanders region: Awards of an American officer serving with British, French, and Belgian forces on the Western Front: Keep in mind these would all be considered highly decorated aces by any Great War standard, even though several were not presented their respective nation's highest honors. Cheers! Lou .

. Greetings All, Duke asked yesterday if it might be possible to have some historically based guidelines on what criteria to use when awarding one's self the new OFF P3 medals. I volunteered to take this on as I have had a fair amount of experience in the past creating such criteria. Here are the tables you can use if you wish to get closer to our RL counterparts in terms of just how many awards they might have been presented, and how often. Remember, most WWI pilots did not end up with more than two or three medals awarded to them for gallantry or actions "over and above" what was expected. Even most aces did not have many, with the exceptions being the handful of greats at the top. It should also be remembered that the British and US flyers recieved less on average than their French and German counterparts. So, with all that in mind, here are the tables outlining how you might wish to present awards to your pilots, with adjustments made for the higher number of kills achieved by most virtual pilots here, as well as for the different times of the War, and the different settings folks use when flying. Post any questions you might have on these, (and I am sure there will be some), and I will do my best to answer them. Cheers! Lou .

. Confine! I'll confine myself no finer than I am: these clothes are good enough to drink in; and so be these boots too: and they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps. .

. Was that you BH, trying to get our attention as we passed the compound down the road from the bierstube? Sorry if we failed to recognize you Sir, but our collective vision was fairly blurred by that time. We'll be sure to come back for you, as well as for more Belgian brew. What size uniform do you wear, and how fluent are you in German? More importantly, how well do you know your Shakespear? .

. My pleasure, Duke. And thanks for the kudos on the new medals, I hope they will serve to enhance this superb sim just a wee bit more. .

. Duke, I can actually handle that for you Sir, as I served as the CoC for the RAF 209 virtual squadron for four years during which time I did quite a bit of research into the history of the medals awarded to airmen in WWI and the criteria used to present them. Give me a day or so to put together something nice and concise for you. Cheers! Lou .

. Actually Olham, all you need do is install Creaghorn's improved effects and then install the two DDS files Elephant has created, (after making back-ups of the original files first of course). That's it Sir. Easy Peasy .

. Yuppers. .

. True enough Sir. Still, you English can get none-the-less creative with such parody of old Shakey Bill...when the spirits move you. I happen to know this firsthand from living and drinking with you lot for three years. .

. And I am the one with the smirky look, in the light-colored tunic, standing in the middle of the back row and listing significantly to port. At this point I had to steady myself by holding firm to the epaulette on the coat of the Turkish officer in front of me, which as you can see was causing him no small amount of annoyance. Fortunately, the fellow standing next to me was tilting equally to his starboard so we were doing a fair job of propping each other up and I was eventually able to relax my grip on said Turk's apparel accessory. I was quite relieved when the photo session ended so that I could again resume a more prone position. good times...good times

. Aaah yes, Shakespearean to say the least. Dej, when you launched into your soliloquy, it brought a tear to my eye, it did, (despite your mustache continually slipping). "To be Turkish, or not to be Turkish, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageously bad brew; Or to ‘guise one's self against a guard's eye, And by that very doing: To drink, to imbibe The better ale; and by such act that we may end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to by such consumtion? Devoutly to be wish'd. To drink, to imbibe To imbibe, and chance the hangover; Aye, there's the rub, For in that hangover of death, what visions may come, When we have shuffled off this sober coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long sobriety.” It truly was a Kodak moment, though I was a bit concerned your speech may have found us out as you gave it in English. But by then we had all shuffled off our sober coils to the point were no one seemed to care. .

. Creaghorn, you are a lucky soul indeed to have had such a rare opportunity. I envy you that. My basic understanding of the samurai way comes primarily from such films as “The Seven Samurai”, “Samurai Rebellion”, “47 Ronin”, “Throne of Blood”, “Ran”, “The Last Samurai”, and of course “Kill Bill”, volumes 1 and 2. I imagine this gives me a slightly inaccurate understanding. Although, I have read fair portions of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”, so perhaps that strikes some sort of balance. .

. And Wodin, that is precisely why I entitled this thread "The Delicate Art of Making Ourselves Understood". Unless we are standing face-to-face it is oft times very hard to know for sure what the other fellow is actually trying to convey, and in particular when it concerns a touchy subject. And the example you offer is touchy for some folks due to less-than-polite comments made in the past by some RoF enthusiasts towards OFF, and vice-versa. It is unfortunate that such is the case, but c'est la vie. .

. Elephant, I installed your tracer mod last night and ran it, along with Creaghorn's excellent improved effects, and found it to give quite nice results. The toned-down brightness of the tracers fit well with the smoke trails in Creaghorn's kit, with the end result still being quite visible yet overall more "muted". While I've never sat behind a pair of Vickers or Spandaus or a Lewis as they were being fired, I believe the modified effects of this combination may be giving a more realistic representation of what I might have actually seen in such a situation. Well done Sir! .