Hoghead

The only german planes that seem to be on a par with their allied counterparts are the DVII and the DR1. I don't know if this is historical or not but the Camels, Se5s and the Nieuports all seem to be much better then their contemporary germans planes. The new patch did help the Alb DIII a bit though. I was doing some testing in QC of the new patch and I wanted to get away from the airfield so the ground gunners wouldn't interfere. DVII vs Se5a. At the merge I put the nose of the DVII down into a shallow dive and used padlock to watch the Se5a. After we initally passed each other he made a 180 degree turn where he never got more than about 500 feet (or yards, It still looks like the numbers in the labels are yards) behind me and then started catching up!! I watched a video that someone posted here about him getting his butt handed to him by some Bristol fighters. Isnt it great that the Bristol fighter can fly circles around the Dr1, that's probably why the British suspended all other fighter production to concentrate on the Bristol because it was such a terror of the skys, Oh wait, they didn't and it wasn't, hummm. Additionally I still think that the AI is not hampered by the same laws of physics as the player is. I have a nice video clip of a Se5 just kinda hovering nose high doing a little piroette <sp> as I try to spiral climb above him. On the other hand though, the Spad XIII is still a brick, seems it didn't get any help in the patch, in fact in my testing the Spad VII was a more viable plane against the DVII then the XIII is. Also the DH-2 seems to be out classed by the early Albatros and the Halberstadt except when the AI is flying it. Again all these observations are subjective, I've never flown any of these planes in real life, nor do I have hard flight test data, but when I'm flying a Spad XIII straight and level and I pull all the way back on the stick as fast as I can and the nose just very slowly rises, what I know about aerodynamics just tells me this is wrong. So far I think 1.26 is a steep in the right direction but I think more of the planes need looking at as far as FMs go. I'm sure OBD will get around to it in time. Scott

Well just so Winder doesn't start slacking off and just for fun I thought I'd start this thread. So here is mine. The clocks in those cockpits that have them have the hour hand slightly off. For instance when the time is 09:15 the hour hand will be even with or just below the 9 as opposed to being 1/4 of the way between 9 and 10. What's yours? Scott

Flew a mission today and during a huge dogfight, I had given one of the E/A a good solid burst in the cockpit/engine area. I pulled off and as I was coming back around for another pass, he exploded in mid air. I had seen other planes explode but there was always archie around so I assumed they had caught one, but on this occasion there was no archie firing. I was really cool to see. Scott

Matt, First of all let me say that was a fantastic score for BHaH. How did you do that? I mean did you get musicians together and record it or is it created on computer and if so how is that done? Anyway again that is a fantastic piece. Scott

Does the scream mean death? Just about every time I give the cockpit area of an E/A a good hosing down I get the scream but yet the plane keeps maneuvering. Scott

Gous, 1.) I see that a lot myself. You see them shot down, crash, explode etc. but yet when you RTB there they are. I don't think it's actually a bad thing sorta simulating the variable odds that the pilot manage to set her down, or was lucky and walked away from the crash etc. 2.) Yeah I'm not sure if this is something the devs did on purpose or something is wrong with the code and somehow the "mission" is getting dropped by the AI and they just don't know what to do and so they default to the old stooge around until dead thing. 3.) Again this is kinda annoying as it even happens when the enemy AI's plane has the advantage on you in maneuverability. They will often give up their advantage and dive away putting the advantage back in your court. I'm sure programing AI must be a Herculean task and for the most part I think OBD has done a wonderful job, on a par with the other current flights sims on the market. To be honest though I have had several good fights at altitude where the AI chooses to knife fight in a phone booth vice dive and open datum. I find the diving away most often happens when I'm in good position on the AI's tail and we're in a mostly flat turn and I give him a burst. His response is to roll inverted or nearly so and pull the nose down (basically a split ess) and open out. The part that really makes me nuts is the fact that I can't follow because all the AI can roll so much faster than you. However if you think about it, your pulling around hard, you look back and the enemy is high on your six turning with you and is starting to turn inside and pull lead, what would you do? You really just have two options, hard roll to the outside and hope to force the over shoot then reverse and start a sicissors or roll hard to the inside and pull straight down and open out. Given the AI's superiour roll ability I'd like to see more of the first option and less of the second but still all in all it's not to bad. Scott

ZZ I made a test pilot strictly for the purpose of working out how to fly the Spad. Against all the axis aircraft I could pretty much manage to keep the upper hand with the exception of the Dr1 and the DVII. I could keep away from the Dr1 with speed but could only manage head on and front quarter shots. With the DVII I could never manage more than about 30-40% wins. The problem stems from the fact that all the OFF aircraft are seriously lacking in roll rate, at least for the player, that and elevator authority is pretty porked on alot of the planes. I'm convinced that a lot of the control issues stem from "compressibility"/control response vs speed is way over modeled. Winder is currently looking into roll rate as part of 1.26 and hopefully checking out the sluggish control response as speed increases issue so perhaps ver. 1.26 this will fix the problem. Until then the Spads, both the VII and the XIII, are non players. Scott

On a QC flight after I had dispatched the bad guy I attacked the airfield (it's your so they won't shoot back) You can kill a parked plane but it take one h**l of a lot of ammo. The hanger tents will go down as well as the vehicles. Vehicles seem kinda hit and miss. I've killed em with just a couple of rounds and others I've really shot up and they still to blow. Scott

Gwar, I'm not that familiar with the offices in the Sopwith kites but I've seen others that purposely had gauges mounted askew. I think the idea was to keep all the gauge needles when in there normal operating ranges to be basically pointing up, that way the pilot just had to make a quick glance and any needle that wasn't near to straight up and down stood out as needing attention.

Is that on the flying wires or the landing wires? Speaking of rigging wires, I just remembered another one. On the Nieuport 23 I think it is, it has flat rigging wires. I'm pretty sure the French never used flat wires like the Se5 but all the rigging wires on Nieuports and Spads were wire cable. Scott

Thumper Although with the normal res skins you will see damage you won't see much. If you'd received enough damage so that it's obvious when you look at your plane then you've been worked over pretty well. If you've only caught a couple of rounds you will see only a couple of smudges if anything at all. However if you drag a wing tip through a tree or another plane, you will clearly see this, although you'll have your hands full flying the plane let alone looking around. Scott

Cazna, Warp and time compress didn't count toward total flight time in P2, it does however in P3. Several people (myself included) asked that time in time compress and warp count toward total air time and OBD was gracious enough to comply in P3. Scott

That's a good one Cameljockey. I hadn't noticed that but your right they are. Scott

And if could unwedge myself from the cockpit of this Bebe (you think the one in the Strutter is small) I'd accept your challenge. As it is why don't we both just sit here and drink heavily.

Trust me Lou it's not the Strutter.

Ok well looks like this is the new digs. Thanks MK2 and all the staff at Combat Ace for having us. Siggi!! Put the dogs outside! (there's a good...how do you guys say it lad? chap...is it?) and OVS leave those muddy boots on the porch. (Huns...ya just can't take em anywhere) Can I get someone to clear off that desk over there Winder is going to need a place to work. Pol could you get some nice screen shots put up, make the place look more OFFish. The rest of you people to your planes. Scott

Anyone know if this is where OFF is going to settle? Nice looking place, don't know if I would have gone with the blue and I would have done the floors in hardwood, that carpet is going to get messed up pretty fast. Oh and we're going to need that cheers beer mug smiley Thanks to the folks at Combat Ace for inviting us. Scott