griphos

So, Olham, when the enemy go down in Hardcore, do they go down in a variety of ways still, as in the 1.28 patch? Are there mid-air collapes and explosions and spirals in?

This is a good question. I think I may try it. My thinking is that the Hardcore DM takes us back to 1.26 (1.25?? I can't keep track of these fast and furious patches!!), but that might not be right. I hope not. I like the new ways that the planes get shot down. I don't mind having to spend a lot of bullets doing it, but I don't want to return to the way they used to just level out and slowly descend to the ground and crash. I just flew against three Alb.DII in QC (DiD with settings as hard as you can get them) and I loved how each plane reacted differently to being shot down, one exploding, one doing the stall and fall, and one slowly circling with lots of damage until it crashed. At any rate, not having tried Hardcore yet, I can say from lots of experience with the Normal 1.28 DM at hardest settings that it takes a lot less firepower to bring these down than it used to. And the enemy don't open up on you at 1000 ft either. I tried some experiments in QC where I just let them get on my tail and shoot at me and they would wait until they were within 400 ft. Goodonthem! As a side note, when I was just trying to fly away from them so they could come and shoot at me, when I got low to the deck, they wouldn't always follow me and shoot at me. If I got about 1000 ft away down low, I seemed to have opened up an escape route and they let me go. I had to circle back close and run away again for them to shoot at me and one of them crashed himself in the process. Rookie!!!

That second video is incredibly good. Thanks much for that!

Over50. Well, I would probably wear the glasses with TrackIR anyway if it wasn't for the progressive lenses which means that most of the screen is blurred for me unless I turn my head to look at each thing I want to see through the right part of the lens that makes it clear. But if I do that, then TrackIR turns my view so that I'm not actually looking at that part of the screen anymore. Sort of defeats the purpose! I also notice that when I'm wearing the glasses, TrackIR "sees" them as a reflective surface. They show up as little red dots below the large green dots of the actual reflective surfaces of the visor clip in the camera view. I *think* this makes the TrackIR confused sometimes, and this shows up as a more jerky movement. But I'm not sure. I usually don't have them on, so I'm not sure it makes much of a difference, actually. People have said that background light and glasses are an issue though, so perhaps do a little searching before investing. Like I said, I think it would be fine if you have glasses that don't have to be "aimed" to be clear.

Hey all, Okay, so I'm a noob at this multiplayer business, and I hope those who know more will correct any errors in this thread. But I thought it might help to post about settings for MP in Vista. Might want to do a sticky at some point when we've got it all hammered out. Anyway, it took me quite a bit of troubleshooting, but here's how I finally had to set things up to run MP in Vista. First, it doesn't work for me from the OFF Manager. I get to the place where the manager launches CFS3.exe and it gives me an error message. I know some people can run MP from the OFF Manager, but I think they are running XP, and besides, when you get dumped out of a game while in Manager, it takes more steps to get back in. So, I think it is best, and I have to run MP from a shortcut on my desktop which points to my CFS3MP.exe (NOT my CFS3.exe) file in my CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields folder. Once this shortcut is created, right click and select Properties and then the Compatibility tab. Check the box for "Run this program in compatibility mode:" and make sure that "Windows XP (Service Pack 2)" is in the dialog box. I also checked the box for "Run this program as an administrator." If you try to launch MP directly from the CFS3.exe or by a shortcut to that, it will seem to work fine from your end, I think, but you won't be able to connect. You will probably get a "Can't connect to the internet" error message. You may also get a mismatch planes error message, even if you don't in fact have mismatched planes. In Vista, if you also want to use TrackIR in MP mode, you have to make sure that you launch TrackIR with "Run this program as an administrator" also selected in Properties/Compatibility. (Or at least I do.) Just to be safe, you may want to make sure that CFS3.exe and Off manager.exe (both in CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields) are also set to Run as administrator. You should also make sure that you have allowed CFS3MP.exe, CFS3.exe, and Off Manager.exe as exceptions to your firewall. It wouldn't hurt anything to make TrackIR.exe and Teamspeak.exe as exceptions allowed through the firewall as well. You can set these by clicking on Control Panel and then Security or Security Center (depending on which Control Panel view you are using). There should be an "Allow a program through Windows Firewall" link, and when the box opens, make sure you're on the Exceptions tab and you can select the program from the list or add it by clicking the "Add program" button and searching for the executable. Finally, you should make sure you are running the same patch as everyone else. Also, you will need to have the same DM model installed. One other issue. Sometimes, when you start up MP through the desktop shortcut, you will see the little "Hanger" drop-down tab and a medal for "Missions" but not a medal for "Multiplayer." I don't know why. When this happens, you will need to close out and open the OFF Manager and try to start up the Multiplayer session through it. Once you get to the MP screen, or as far as the Manager will let you, you can close out of the manager and reopen through the desktop shortcut and both the medals will be there. I have a .doc file with pictures of how to navigate the menus once you're in MP. I stole this from someone on the SOH site and just tweaked it a bit. The pics are from Phase 2, but everything is basically the same. It's too big to attach, so if you'd like a copy, PM me.

Yep, you're in XP compatibility mode. That's not your problem, obviously. I'd say it might be your firewall, but you checked that. I had that error message once, and now I can't remember what caused it or how I fixed it. Old age! Sorry.

Are you running Vista? I do, and I got that same error. I think it was when I either tried to start multiplayer from the OFF Manager, or from the CFS3.exe file directly (or with a shortcut). I found that the only way it works for me in Vista 32 is to start from a shortcut on my desktop that points to the CFS3MP.exe (NOT the CFS3.exe, but the CFS3MP.exe) file that is in my OFF game folder. I have to set the properties for that shortcut to run in XP compatibility mode and run as administrator. Then, to make TrackIR work, I have to set the properties for TrackIR, CFS3.exe, and OFF Manager.exe all to run as administrator as well. I may post a message on the MP board with the details of making MP work with Vista.

My wife has started calling herself a war widow! I'm going to be in trouble soon!

Dej, my hat is off to you mate! I just flew a mission and thought about turning labels on when I saw a dogfight in the distance. I wanted to know who was who before entering the furball. I just headed for the three on top (turned out to be two DIIs on a N17, poor chap). Now I feel like a wimp! I don't know how you do it without TrackIR! It's the hardest sim experience I've ever had WITH IT!! But what a BLAST!

Uncle Al, was it "Gimpyguy" before...or "Grumpyguy"?? <----smiley indicating question asked in genuine good-feeling and warm regard.

You should order it. You won't regret it! Online play is a little trickier with it, but there's a growing community of online players and some of them really know what they're doing, so that arena is looking good too. I've been playing online a couple of weeks now and loving it. Missions with real, live wingmen is a blast! Here's the address of one online group: http://www.freewebs.com/dovesandhawks/

No, she's not. I'm curious, Sig. What range do you set your TAC on? I'm using it (duly noted as DiD/T), as on my smaller monitor (but then what monitor isn't smaller compared to yours!) and my aging eyesight, I find it extremely difficult to spot even my own wingmen without labels unless they are pretty close behind me. Comparing this with my experiences flying it seems to me that it is harder to spot planes in OFF than in life. I pretty much dislike the immersion killer of leaving labels on, so I use TAC. I still have to peer at the screen in what my wife says is a pretty strange looking position to spot what my TAC tells me is there. I fly without my glasses as TrackiIR doesn't like them and they're progressive bifocals anyway, so there's only one little spot on them that's good for seeing the monitor clearly. (Grumble....rumble...curse aging!!!) But I've been setting TAC at 2 miles when I take off and I leave it there. If planes don't come within two miles of me, I'm not going to see them, that's for sure. So, TAC at 2 seems to me to be a compromise needed by the difficulty of spotting those little pixels against those other pixels. But I'm toying with the idea of dropping it to 1 mile and leaving it there. If you were jumped only 30 seconds or so after being warned by TAC....er, "spotting a glimpse in the distance"...that enemy were nearby, I'm guess you have yours set on a smaller radius. What do you (and others that use TAC) do?

WESTWORLD!! Now that one dates us! That was the original "sim" I guess.

The original looks pretty darned good on the Nupe to me. Thanks for the visual, Stump.

The Target View will show you from the target's point of view, but you have to have a target selected first. I forget which key does that, but when you do, it will show yellow in the TAC, which is what Gous was telling you, I think.

Here's my first 100. This was an object lesson for me in the advantage of jumping a flight from above and surprising them. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The first two didn't know what hit them, I don't think. The other three were so confused, and outnumbered at that point, that they didn't stand a chance. But, I may have to go with 110 Realism and up my front guns to Hard. For what it's worth, this was this pilot's 5th mission but his first kills. PS. Although I haven't downloaded and installed 1.28a yet, because I sort of like the pending score and don't really want the claims to be any easier, I tried to write this as a young, new pilot back from his first mission where he shot down a plane. So it includes some unnecessary (and even wrong and trivial) detail. I like Pol's suggestion to use these as a way to increase the immersion of the game. But that's why it pleased me to score so well on a claim report I intentionally wrote in the style of an excited and still scrambled young pilot.

It's sort of like Groundhog Day for them!

I don't know if this is possible, but have you heard of TrackIR?

I enlisted Sgt. Schultz as the only German pilot in my roster (I loved Hogan's Heroes when younger). But as for the Brits, I like and fly the Pup mostly so far, so I use the names of the early Pup aces, such as Stan Goble (who, sadly, died on me) and Ed Grange (who just got captured and will be a POW for the remainder of the war). Lots of Pup aces, so I'm in no danger of running out soon.

I like it. Looks a bit more German than British, but the latin is right on target, since venatus means game pretty much in the sense of "the chase" or "the hunt." It's got my vote.

Hey Catfish, Actually, some of what you ask has been addressed in other threads. Not all of it, but a good bit of it. For instance, the prop turning is hard-coded, they say, and so that's just the way it is. They can model the engine failure, but not the prop stopping (or, for instance, not have pilots sitting in parked planes). As for some that hasn't, such as enemy plane landing behavior, I've seen some of the things you're asking about myself, such as enemy planes landing and just stopping. Okay, so I'm clearly a little obsessed with this sim lately and read the forum entirely too much. :blush2: Anyway, overall, my impression of your list is that it's the sort of list that displays just how good the AI is so far. I think only with extremely good AI, so good it really pulls us in and convinces us we are fighting almost real enemy, do we get to the place where we ask for those last few details that would make things basically exactly like real life. That's how I read your list, anyway, as a request for those final realistic details. My sense is that this is ultimately impossible, since we're dealing with code and pixels. What I can't get over is that given that we're dealing with code and pixels, I quickly get to the place in every mission where I'm sweating and cursing those guys flying those beautiful and sometimes wildly painted crates, and thinking of them and their planes as at least as real as me and my own. Are there little things that sometimes remind me they are code and pixels? Yes. But damned few. And to balance those out on the positive side, when my plane goes down in flames, I'm happy to learn that I don't actually get burnt or die. Anyway, I'm thoroughly delighted with P3 as she stands, and will be standing by, billfold at the ready, for anything else that comes down the pike. Best sim money I've EVER spent.

I think F2 brings up a reference chart with key functions. You can also get to it by hitting "esc" and clicking on controls. All the controls are listed there, and broken down by function (like "View Commands"), and you can also access the manuals there as well, one of which lists lots of key functions (you can print that part out by going to the Manuals folder of the install and clicking on it).

Back to the topic of small but beautiful things....Duck pointed out to me in a MP game this last week where we were flying at night that the stars are correct. You can see various constellations. That's impressive! Not just random white dots!

I can't join that early, I don't think, but I'll pop in when I can and hopefully you guys will still be flying.

Flak magnet. That's a good one. I may change my callsign to that!