Herr Prop-Wasche

OFF: Wind, Blood, and Oil or some combination therof.

Over Flanders Fields: Flying Cliches of the Sky or OFF: FCS

How about 100 mph? This happened about 5 miles from my house. The kid was 17 and was being chased by police shortly after being released on bail for some kind of argument with his girlfriend. He was apparently angry about being arrested and started driving recklessly. He only spent two days in the hospital.

Wow, thanks for the info, gents! Neat little aircraft for early 1914. Love the stubby spinner.

Rah, rah, Ras! Kick 'em in the A** Seriously, welcome home! Returning member buys the drinks!

Kidney or Liver?

OFF: Medals and Gravestones OFF: Medals and Memorials OFF: One Wing in the Air, Six Feet in the Ground

Sorry, Pol, did not mean in any way to criticize. I understand that it is not humanely possible to keep track of every piece of data that is in OFF. Then we have to consider the hundreds (probably thousands) of hours of testing that has to be done to make sure everything is working the way it was designed. IOW, a certain number of things are going to slip under the radar, even for a bunch of perfectionists that the OFF bunch surely is already. I have also experienced the occasional bugs introduced by Airwrench. As a matter of fact, my Alb DIII will no longer work in QC because I checked the box for contact lights and clicked the update contact points button because I wanted to see the contact lights on the QC model. Somewhere Airwrench inserted an invisible byte or bit and now the "craft is no longer certified for OFF." So, no lights, no aircraft! It's okay, though, because I can copy over a backup copy of my .cfg file and get the plane back--I think!

OFF: Air Power OFF: Max Power OFF: Blue Max Power OFF & ON (I get to fly this game, if it weren't for the darned wife, kids, cat, dog, job, mother-in-law, boss, bill-collectors, etc.)!

I took a look at several aircraft using Airwrench and noticed that all of the planes do have contact points for the outer tip of the upper wings. Perhaps, as BH said, since CFS3 was designed for WW2 monoplanes, it won't recognize contact points on the top wing of a bi or tri plane. OTOH, I also noticed that the plane in BH's pictures is a German Albatros. Upon further investigation with Airwrench, I noticed that the upper wing contact points for the Alb D III (all models) and the Alb DVa are messed up. The problem appears to be that the contact points for the upper wing is shorter than the contact points for the lower wing on these models (14.00 ft. vs. 14.350 ft. respectively). On the DII, DV, DV later, and DVa 200, the contact point for the upper wing is 14.865 ft. I wonder if the crashes from wing roll-overs is mostly confined to the above Alb DIII's and DVa? Perhaps increasing the distance of the upper wing contact points on those aircraft might help solve the problem? On a similar note, I noticed that the Camel appears to have contact points for three wings. I also noticed that most planes appear to have room for at least one more contact point. Perhaps putting one on top of the fuselage in front of the pilot or at the center of the top wing might decrease deaths from head injuries. Capiche?

Maybe if I reduced the sound level of the grinding engine a little bit? It sounds like a bunch of loose rocks in the engine cylinders as it is now. The first time I heard that loud sound I thought my engine was about to tear itself into little pieces!

Some kinds of files, like .exe, .doc, and .xml files cannot be uploaded as is to the forum. Try putting them in a zip file and uploading that. The other possibility is that your uploading quota has been reached. Try deleting some old attachments and try again.

Thank you for the feedback. I will hold off for a little while longer while I wait to see if anyone else has an opinion on this issue. BTW, a revised Ultimate DM would not require a complete revision--just a change to a couple of lines of code. It's the testing and then copying those changes to 477 models that takes most of the time. Olham-- I wish I could do something about the grinding engine noises, but that seems to be hardcoded. I could remove the sound file, but many players might not like that, even if the sound does not necessarily indicate the engine is kaput. OTOH, there are other indications the engine is failing--lower RPM's, lower speed and poor climb, perhaps lower oil pressure (have to check on that), and of course, engine on fire is a sure sign you are "in the soup."

I just got back from the bi-annual WWI fly-in at the US Air Force Museum, and boy was it fun! The weather was forecast to be cloudy with a chance of rain, but Mother nature was kind and held off the rain. We even had breaks of blue sky at times and very little wind, so good flying weather. Most of the flyable aircraft are 7/8 scale reproductions, but there was a full-scale N28 that flew, along with static displays of a full-scale Sopwith Baby and a rare single-wing Morane Saulnier AI. There were also a Fokker E II, several varieties of Nieuports, and so forth. I also made some time to go in the museum itself and got lots of pictures--not sure how good they are, but I got 'em. I'll try to post some of them tomorrow. Cheers.

Do we have a consensus that fuel leaks are a little too common using the Ultimate DM, or do most people feel they are about right? The necessary changes are easy to make, they just take a little time to copy them to all 477 aircraft models. Also, how do those of you who use my DM feel about the engine fires? Underdone, overdone, or just right? Does the fire going out bother you? I can add a longer lasting fire, but it may be at the cost of causing the "flamers" to come back. I'm leaning toward making these changes, but thought I'd get some feedback first.

Ah, that's okay Dave. I live about 10 minutes from the museum! I'll let you know what I'm wearing next time, however!

...and low flying two seaters used as bait for enemy scouts who attack, only to find out, "It's a trap!" Sorry, I guess I'm getting a little excited!

It all depends on what she handcuffs you to--the bed or the kitchen sink!

Yeah, an OFF convention sounds nice. I will look forward to meeting you, Jwrich and your friend Dallas, as well as you, Duke. Maybe we should print out a t-shirt? And, if we can agree on a decent hotel with a bar for the out of towners, we might even get Bullethead to attend!

Now, on to the engine. As Olham noted, the engine makes a noisy clunky or gravelly sound when it is hit. This appears to be a hard-coded CFS3 sound effect, because it seems to happen whenever the engine receives ANY damage and regardless of the comparative durability of the engine. Fortunately, it does not seem to cause an immediate loss of power. I can't rule out the possibility that the engine will give out eventually from these minor hits, but it seems to take a long time. Engine power and performance seems to be mainly a function of percentage of hit points consumed. For example, an engine with 100 hit points that has received 25 "hits" will only operate at 75% power. This is the main reason why I substantially raised the engine hit points, in order to deal with this problem. I may be able to do something about the fire issue, but the problem again is this is likely to create "flying, flaming coffins" that continue to fly, seemingly without ill effect, all the while spewing out great big balls of orange and yellow flame. Another good point, Dan.

Duke, I'm a little perplexed about your troubles with the Alb DIII fuel leak. Fuel leaks are handled exactly the same way in the DIII as they are for the Fokker DVII, Pfalz DIII, and all other in-line engine types. The only difference I can think of is that the "hit box" for the Alb fuel tank might be drawn larger than the hit box for those other planes (the Alb series had a rather large fuel capacity). The size of the hit box on the Alb DIII is exactly the same in my DM as it is in the stock version because I have not altered any of the hit boxes on any of the planes (I don't know how to do that). Also, Olham does not report having the same problem. My guess is that you may have just had a run of bad luck against a very tough opponent in the Sop Camels. Were they aces perhaps or from an elite squadron? Aces seem to have an uncanny ability to concentrate their fire on a very precise area of an opponent's plane. If you fly QC, try setting your opponent's skill to novice or veteran instead of ace and see if you get the same results.

Or getting two-seaters to scrub their mission if they sight enemy scouts within interception range?

I'm reading your posts and observations with interest and will comment later today as time permits. I will say now that I am aware of the little fire that goes out. I deliberately chose a small fire over a large fire because the effect on the airplane is the same--about 50% of the time the aircraft will go out of control and crash, and 50% of the time it will keep on flying in a straight line, slowly losing altitude. It made more sense to me for a plane to keep flying with a small fire rather than to keep flying under a blazing inferno, which you sometimes see under the stock OBD game. Unfortunately, the CFS3 game engine does not seem to recognize that fuel tank fires and explosions can totally disable or destroy the pilot or aircraft, and I cannot seem to trigger fuel tank fires and explosions that damage other parts of the aircraft, such as the wings, which would send the aircraft plunging into the ground. In essence, we are left with a choice between some fires and occasionally odd behavior, or no fires at all. (I think the main reason for this is that most fuel tanks in WWI planes are in the fuselage, while most fuel tanks in WWII planes are in the wings, so a fire followed by an explosion and loss of a wing makes sense in a WWII plane but not in a WWI plane). Welcome to the forum, epower, and thank you for your willingness to help test the DM.

Sounds good, Duke. I look forward to hearing the results of your research.