Herr Prop-Wasche

There is one difference between the mission types in CFS3 and in OFF. OFF has all the same mission types as CFS3 except for one: search and destroy missions. I don't know if this is the cause of the problem or not. There also some minor differences in the Loadouts section. In CFS3, there is always a "clean" loadout that does not list any ordnance, but with OFF, the "clean" loadout contains what might be called the "default" ordnance for the particular aircraft. Since my squaddies seemed to attack the target in my test, I didn't pursue this further, but the answer might be contained in these small differences.

HEY! I'm not weird, I'm just a little different--and Barmy! I remeasured my screen, and its closer to 20 inches by 11.25 inches, which does work out to 16:9. And what method is that? I've downloaded flux, but won't it make the colors in OFF seem, well "off"?

Ha ha, don't let the infamous Black Baron get him in the sight of his Spandaus! What kind of a flight model does Santa's sleigh have? Merry Christmas, House Hobbit!

All I can say is that running at 1680 X 1050 for my regular applications (not for OFF) gives me less eye strain and headaches than does the native resolution. I generally don't like to increase the size of fonts because: 1) it messes up some games, 2) it messes up the display of certain webpages I visit. Now, my Nvidia control panel does allow me to create custom resolutions. What do you suggest for a 21.5 inch (20 inches viewable horizontally, 11 inches viewable vertically) monitor? I guess that works out to approximately a 16.364 X 9 aspect ratio? Weird that Dell does it like that.

Great! Thanks a bunch. I'll be back in touch when I need some help with the idioms and inevitable Google oddness with the translations.

Sorry about the resolutions being wrong. I wasn't at my home computer and didn't get the numbers right. In fact, I do have a Dell Ultravision U2312HM 16:9 aspect ratio monitor. The native resolution is 1920 X 1080 but I had to back it down to 1680 X 1050 (confirmed this is the actual resolution on my 16:9 monitor). The next lowest resolution is 1600 X 1024. However, I run OFF at the 1920 X 1080 resolution.

This topic is interesting not only in regard to OFF, but also for viewing anything on a computer monitor. A few months ago, I upgraded from an old CRT monitor to a new LCD 22" Dell widescreen monitor. Although it is a 16:9 instead of a 16:10 monitor, its native resolution is 1980 X 1050. 1920 X 1080. At that resolution, text was too small for my old eyes to read on the computer unless I utilized the zoom feature. However, even with zoom enabled, I was experiencing a noticeable amount of eye-strain. Even worse, I was experiencing bouts and waves of dizziness and nausea that lasted for hours after using the computer for any lengthy period of time. It was only after I had reduced the resolution to 1650 X 1080 1680 X 1050. that these problems went away, so screen size and resolution DO seem to interact in some way to influence what feels right to your eyes and brain. Something to think about, anyway. --Edited to correct resolution numbers.--

I completely understand about being busy with two small children, a wife/girlfriend, a job, etc. If I can find the time, would you mind if I took a crack at translating your mod into English via Google or some such program, and then cleaning it up and releasing it as an English language version of your mod (after letting you review it first, of course)? As always, full credit for the original work on the mod will be given to you. I probably don't have time to finish this before WOFF is released, but you never know. Let me know if you don't mind me working on this.

Shucks, Jim, I wish I had known you were having a visit! What did you think of our regional accents? North of the Ohio river, we mostly talk a fairly bland midwestern with some exceptions (occasionally you will hear someone say, "Give me those dirty clothes and I'll warsh them for you"), but just south of the river you start to really hear that southern twang! The twang tends to get stronger the farther south you go. In the upper midwest, you start to hear a fair bit of Canadian mixed in, eh! I'm familiar with the former DHL airport in Wilmington and knew a couple of people who lost their jobs when the company closed up shop. At the time, I bet more than 75% of the population in Wilmington either worked for DHL or had a relative that worked for them, so it was a real shock to the community. Glad you enjoyed the Air Force Museum. I've been there probably well more than a dozen times. If you go on a Friday (by appointment), they will even take you on a behind the scenes tour where they show you several aircraft currently not on display or that are in the process of being restored. A couple of years ago the museum restored the Memphis Belle, the famous B-17 that had been slowly rusting away at an outside display in Memphis. It's now safely on display in a hangar at the museum. In September of 2014 the museum will be hosting a fly-in in honor of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI. Last time I went there were many static displays and several flyable planes, along with books, memorabilia, and even a few re-enactors in full gear and get up! One guy even fired off a few blank rounds from a machine gun--a Vickers, I think. My avatar is a picture I took during that visit.

So far, I'm getting a lot less distortion with 20:16 than I did with 28:16. I still need to experiment around a little more.

HumanDrone-- I haven't played with the new version of OFFbase yet, but you can spend as much or as little time as you wish "interacting" with the NPC's in OFFbase. The encounters themselves take only the click of a button to resolve. The interactions with NPC's is actually only a small part of the OFFbase experience, and the way that OFFbase handles mods and such tricky things as transfers are really the icing on the cake! It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you find you don't care for it, you can uninstall it easily. I don't believe that uninstalling OFFbase has any effect on your existing pilots or careers.

53 years, 2 months, 18 days, 8 hours and counting....

I know this is probably asking too much, but is there any chance of an English translation (for a non-German speaking American with Swiss-German ancestors) of your news service? Maybe I could collaborate with you in some way? We could start with a rough translation tool like Google and work from there, I suppose. We could start with your translation of the German text and then I could work on the grammar and idioms. I think many other non-German speakers might be interested in being able to read the news reports coming from "the other side" during the war. It might also help those of us who like to fly German campaigns to feel a little more connected with the political and strategic events going on on "our" side of the lines.

Thanks for the info, Lothar. I thought I noticed, using your settings, of a bit of a "fisheye" effect, particularly when pitching up or down. I have a 16:9 monitor at 1920 X 1080 and had been using a 28:16 FOV setting in workshop. I'll try the 20:16 and let you know what I think.

One more "small" favor: would you be willing to look at the stall.wav sound, which is supposed to give warning of an impending stall? At present, it is extremely hard to hear over the ambient wind noise, so doesn't really give any warning before you are actually stalled/spinning! Is there any way to add some "buffeting" or "rough air" type sound to this wav? In the alternative, working with the sound.xml file, possibly reducing the ambient air sound.wav temporarily as the aircraft gets slower and slower as it approaches a stall (ignoring the problem of accelerated stalls, unfortunately)? I understand if this is not something you want to tackle right now--believe me, as a DM/FM modder, I know how it feels to finally finish a project that you spent hours upon hours working on, only for some blighter to ask for some additional "feature." Still, would be really nice to have...

Please do. It is meant for any campaign, but does emphasize American and English news.

Jeez, I wasn't even aware that you had released version 3.0 a few months ago. I've been missing out on some great new sounds! Andy, do you mind telling us what has been updated in version 3.1?

Very impressive work. Lothar. I'm off to download the update to OFFbase now. I am also getting the name pack. BTW, I also have a news mod, but it is only in English. You are welcome to include it in your bundle if you wish.

Incredible cacophony of noise, Andy! Love the Vickers--doesn't sound like a pea-shooter anymore! Where did you find that battle around the 5 minute mark of the video? They were throwing everything at you but the kitchen sink! Great work!

For whatever reasons, warp seems to be associated with various hiccups in OFF or CFS3, don't know why. Off the top of my head, it messes up your mission flight time, magically recalls all of your squad back to formation even if they are in the middle of a scrap, may mess up pilot claims, and now this--maybe. The reason I was surrounded by enemy fighters was probably because my test campaign was in August of 1918 and my Workshop settings have enemy activity set to "high." I guess I need to tone that down a bit!

Robert, Thanks for looking at the xdp file. The available types appear to be "fighter-bomber," "tactical-bomber," and "level-bomber." After seeing your post, I did some testing of my own, and my squadmates seemed to bomb the target. However, in order to save some time, I chose "air start," which puts you right over the target. I also mashed the "A" key up to maybe a dozen times to make sure they "saw" my signal. However, when I tried a mission that started on the ground and pressed the warp key to save time, my squadmates did not bomb the target. On the other hand, we were also being attacked by about a dozen Fokker DVII's, so that may have had something to do with their reluctance to bomb the target. In any event, are you using warp in your missions? Maybe that is causing the problem?

You're welcome, corsaire31. I am making progress on increasing the elevator responsiveness values back to mostly OFF values. So far, I've noticed that increasing the values do seem to help the aircraft to turn faster, but it also increases the risk of departing the flight envelope--which is actually a good thing, in most cases!

Interesting FlyByPC. You're right the aircraft designation can't be changed in-game, but I wonder if someone wrote a mod to change the aircraft designation of an aircraft from a scout or fighter/bomber to a bomber for purposes of that particular mission, if that might work? What I'm thinking about is a duplicate xdp file with the scout designation changed to bomber or fighter/bomber for aircraft types that occasionally flew such missions (I'd have to check what types are allowed presently) and using JSGME to load the "bomber" xdp for your squadmates when you get an attack railyard message in the briefing. The player would have to exit the mission before flying it and click "replay mission," but it might work.

Thank you, Duke. Most people, with the exception of the devs, likely have no idea how much time I have spent working on the FMs for these aircraft. My hat is off to Pol and the gang for the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of development, testing, tweaking, testing some more, followed by more tweaking and testing, and so on that they had already done before I had even begun to think about dabbling in the black arts of what is the CFS3 FM. Furthermore, because of the nature of the FM, this constant tweaking and testing has to be done for every single aircraft in the game! It's no wonder I have begun to feel a little burned-out about the whole thing! And yet, I am still not satisfied with the current status of the FM mod! My next iteration of the mod will be to restore the "elevator responsiveness" values to the settings that each plane had in the stock OFF version. A few versions of my mod ago, I reduced this value by about one-third in all of the planes because I felt that each aircraft's pitch responsiveness was too good--most of the OFF aircraft respond immediately and very strongly as soon as you pull back on the stick to initiate a climb or a zoom. Unfortunately, what I did not notice at the time was that changing this variable also effects the "tightness" of each aircraft's turn. In the game, we experience this as the ability to complete a sharp turn of X degrees in Y amount of seconds by pulling back hard on the stick. Lowering this value also has the overall effect of making each aircraft feel more sluggish and docile. For some planes, it also greatly reduces the chance of a spin. So, back to the old OFF values I go! Then, in my next iteration of the FM (ha ha), I will probably undertake even further adjustments of this variable in order to even better reflect the different turning abilities of such planes as the Pup versus the Pfalz, for example. In other words, most aircraft will have their elevator effectiveness values go up over the stock OFF values a little, while a few will see their values go down a bit from the stock value (but not as low as they currently are in FM 3.1). Finally, I am observing some interesting effects by making some very small adjustments to the CoG and CoL values of several planes. In my personal opinion at least, and in general, I think that many of the stock OFF planes are just a little too nose heavy. Again, this makes many of the OFF planes just a little too docile and easy for the human pilot to fly. I have found that making some of these planes more tail heavy result in aircraft that feel a little more lively--but also potentially more dangerous to fly because of an increased tendency to spin in steep climbs and turns. Of course, I haven't had a chance to observe how these changes might effect the AI, so it may not be possible to change these values too much without crippling the AI's ability to fly. However, additional changes to the CoG and CoL values are a long ways off and may never have a chance to see the light of day before WOFF is released, so it all may be moot anyway! Again, thanks for the words of support. In fact, once I get past some current work and family obligations, I may even have a renewed sense of energy to devote to the FM again! (I admit it, I am a sucker for a nice compliment)!

Okay, thanks.