77Scout

I think the bulk of OFF's core users want the sim to remain as close to real life as possible (although I realize that you have to also appeal to the masses if you want to sell more copies), and my personnal preference is to continue to base all decisions on duplicating historical and factual conditions, as you have done to great effect in the past. That said, things that make OFF more fun or easier for people to enjoy are great and should be added whenever possible. I think one of the great things about OFF has been the options to select easy-medium-realistic settings in the workshop settings, allowing for everyone to be happy, and if you continue to stick with that approach you can't go wrong.

Yes, the TAC is oriented to your aircraft so 12 oclock on the TAC is always where your nose is pointing. No, the TAC gives no info on height.

Very nice work Sandbagger!!

Your framerates are similar to mine, and about normal for a decent computer (e.g. E8400 processor, 8800GT vid). With fast head movements, some white jaggies are normal, unfortunately . I have been able to reduce them with some graphics settings tweaks, but not eliminate them. If someone has eliminated them completely, maybe they can advertise the secret (maybe using one of the very latest/fasted vid-cards?) It makes sense that ROF will have smoother graphics. It is ten years newer and is (I believe) optimised for dual core processors, etc. This is one of the few areas I would give ROF the nod over OFF. In most other aspects of simulating the real WW1 experience, OFF is still far ahead in my opinion. Nice that you are set up to try both.

The [ and ] keys are useful for adjusting the Field of View (zoom) on the fly. If you have a big monitor you can zoom all the way out and see more of the cockpit and more of the sky. Still, to see the guages you normally will have to look down into the cockpit like a real pilot did. You can't see everything (sky and guages) all the time.

Ogmund, yes bombing by using the TAC is obviously totally unrealistic. The decision to do so just depends on whether you are trying to simulate the real experience or just wanting to play an arcade style game. Same goes for landing or not landing. Don't even get me started on use of labels, TAC, warping etc (grin). Anyway, if you bomb without cheats, be prepared to miss a lot...it is pretty hard (for me anyway). I have to either drop from real low altitude, or do a dive-bomb style drop. I don't think either of these is probably accurate to how it was done in real life either, but is less guilty than using the TAC. I am interested to hear more about how others bomb realistically and manage to hit their target.

Fantastic improvements as always guys. Thanks!!!!

The SWFF2 stick is also plug and play. No need to use the installation software, just plug it in and it works (on my system anyway). Assign keys from within the CSF3 engine. Basically installing OFF is super simple. Put in the disk and follow the instructions. It asks for the CSF3 disks at the appropriate time and everything.

Hi Olham: I also have re-centre on my joystick (button 8) but my zoom doesn't get affected. Strange! Hopefully Winders proposed improvements will fix you up. Miscellaneous info...The default zoom can currently be adjusted in the view.xml file for those who wish to meddle with it, but having it accessible in the workshop settings will be great (yay Winder :).

A semi large number of the flights that the Manager will propose for a given mission are somewhat unrealistic (for the reasons Duce mentions, plus others). The current solution is to, of course, to flip through alternate flights until a 'good one' comes up. I don't think I would want the number of alternate flights or targets just arbitrarily reduced as this will limit the flights we can choose from. One simple option I would like to have is a way to limit flights to areas in just your section of the front (i.e. avoid cycling through flights that go way off to another part of France); basically an ability to limit the radius of flights from the home airfield in the workshop settings. Making the Manager 'smarter' in how it picks and presents flight paths would be wonderful, but would require a bunch more logic coding by Winder, and would be pretty advanced stuff. I expect it would be very difficult to give the Manager the artificial intelligence atributes of a human squadron leader planning a well thought out flight plan. Not impossible, but a big undertaking, considering the current system works not too bad.

Hi Creaghorn: The zoom should not be affected by TrackIR re-centering, and your setup seems to be fine (works same as mine anyway). If Olhams is losing his zoom setting every time he re-centers trackIR then I think he has aa annoying glich there...not how it should work as far as I know.

Fantastic news. Great job!!

As confirmation for Pols suggestions, I fly without visual aids and no warping (as Pol mentioned) and I have many flights with no combat, even with air activity set to max. As to flight path, your odds of finding enemy aircraft should be just as high if you fly off on your own route over the trenchlines, because the OFF Manager sets up other flights to just be going about their own business, independent of what your assigned flight path is.

Seems odd....Running CSF3 first was a fix for a bug (the hang-on-exit bug if I recall) but this hasn't been necessary for ages as the bug was fixed long long ago. Running CSF3 shouldn't be necessary and I haven't heard anyone else having to do it. What problem do you get if you don't run CSF3 first?

Nothing in the OFF campaign is 'scripted' in any way to have 'activity' placed along your flight path. All enemy and friendly flights in the game are going about their various missions all over the place as they would in real life. As Winder says, he has made the world to be 'alive' all around you. This is one of the main advertised attributes of the game, and what makes it a real gem.

Yes. The attrition of squadmates is random...has no connection to what actually happens in your mission.

I am so glad to see that the OFF team is still enjoying themselves enough to continue making the best WW1 av-sim even better. I would have burned out years ago, but then, unlike the OFF team I am merely mortal.

I notice that the 'UnlimitedPilots' data file has settings for vision (<value name="Vision" value="59" /> ) for various pilot types but I have no idea if or how they influence the AI's vision. Maybe someone smarter than me could figure it out.

Sounds great. We players will always ask for more and more improvements and there is no end to it, so you have to cut things off on Phase 3 at some point. At this point I certainly think we have gotten much more than our moneys worth in the Phase 3 product, the great support, and the patches/tweaks. I would certainly buy a Phase 4 with added planes and other improvements.

Strange request from a guy who has complained more than most in the past about things he hasn't liked about the game...its too hard, I am not having fun, the AI shoot too good etc. I don't recall many people asking for more 'options to suit their particular penchant' than you have. Nothing wrong with that as I am all for having some easier options for those who want them. But now that your pet peeves are addressed no one else should have an opinion? Are you really saying that your version of what is fun is the only one that counts and all others should stop posting their desires and opinions? Hopefully not.

You guys have probably noticed this already, but the City locations shown on the in-game maps (shown by the red dots on the bitmaps of Europe) are often not where the city is actually located when flying in the game. I don't know which is actually correct. Yep, there is lots of info in the data files if you can figure it all out. In addition to aerodrome locations, just about everything else too...towns, frontlines etc. Aren't the aerodrome locations in OFF pretty much constant through the war? Since aerodromes switch from British to German etc as the frontline ebbs and flows, why not just use a generic symbol for them (instead of roundels for British, etc etc). This will save the need to make multiple versions of the map for everytime the frontlines move.

Unc...you must be out-of-date on patches. There is no independant ground fire setting anymore. Yep Rick, AA is now integrated into the AI Gunfire Range setting as shown by doing a mouse 'hover over'.

re #4: The 'fly straight and level autopilot' exists and is toggled by cntrl+shift+A.

You will always be the flight leader if it is a ground attack mission. Otherwise you should be a follower with 'lead by rank' selected in the workshop. If that's not happening then something seems screwy. I have not seen any such problems on my setup.

Never heard of anything like that...maybe you are thinking of mission building? Don't get freaked out...nothing to worry about. Really, no special instructions needed to fly campaigns. It has always seemed very intuitive to me. You get missions assigned and you just fly them. Don't be afraid, just dive right in and learn as you go.