77Scout

I have an 8800 card and am running driver 182.06 with good results.

As a pilot, I would want my eyes level with the top wing ... that position maximizes your field of view as the top wing appears only as a thin profile an blocks less of the sky. I often try to do this is in OFF by adjusting my centrepoint in TrackIR.

Creaghorn, I find the the amount of missions and the flight time you managed with one pilot just staggering. I have never even made it to the 17 hour mark. I am incredibly impressed!

Very nice Dej. However hard it was to get the lighting right, you certainly got it so. Looks great.

ARMA2

Yes, in campaign the Fee's never do anything but fly straight and level. If you look in the aircraft files all Fe2's are set to catagory "tactical bomber", so I don't think you'll ever see any fighter-type behaviour. As a result, flying in an Eindecker you can shoot down as many Fee's as your ammo supply will manage ... just stay behind them and fire away. In real life, the Fee's helped end the Fokker scourge, and an lone Eindecker would fear a flight of Fee's. One of these days I may edit the aircraft files to make the Fee a "fighter-bomber" and see how that plays out in-game.

Very interesting Olham. Nice work. That really relays a lot of information in a nice neat package. Amazing to see how the action increased dramatically as the war progressed.

Part of the reason we get too many kills in a short time is that real pilots had a lot more boring 'no contact' flights than we do. I recall Rickenbacker's memoir mentioning flying patrols for 2 weeks and never seeing an enemy plane. I have no desire to fly that many un-eventfull flights, but I would like it if the OFF campaign engine would simulate them on a random basis, move me ahead in time, and stick a report into my campaign log ... something like "You flew two uneventful sorties on June 4, 1917. You flew three uneventful sorties on June 5. It is now June 6, 1917." That way I can fly the interesting parts of the pilot's life (where he meets enemy planes), avoid the boring parts of the pilot's life (where he flies uneventful flights or does latrine duty), but still get a realistic progression of kills over time.

I have seen in the various game files where CSF3 has parameters for pilot eyesight, plus airplane files seem to have arcs of vision for pilots and gunners so maybe the blind-spots that a real pilot would have can be simulated for the AI. That would be great. if anyone knows, I would be interested to know if CFS3 does actually model the AI as having eyes that look only in one direction at a time, and if their view is blocked by aircraft and clouds. Or do the AI simply have omni-directional Superman vision?

Thanks for posting that Morris. I went ahead and downloaded it for my iPod. What a deal at $2.99 (not to mention free this week!).

If you do a file search you will probably find that there are several viewui files in existence. I believe only one of them actually effects the game ... changing the others has no effect (going by memory here) I have XP Home (32 bit) and on my system the file that needs to be changed is found in ... C:\Documents and Settings\Richard\Application Data\Microsoft\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields

It is a well know thing. Just turn off 'in cloud effect' (accessed either in the workshop or in the config file). Cloud effect pastes an image mask of fog exactly as you said, but the sizing doesn't fit the screen if you have altered the zoom or aspect ratio.

Like Lewie said ... Scroll-Lock is the toggle between panning and snap views.

Before TrackIR, I used the hat-switch in panning mode ... it lets you swivel you head around and look in any direction. If you go that route, you will want a way to snap your view back to straight-ahead, usually by mapping a joystick button to that function.

Yes, very nice!

Here is a little blurb on it ... seems it flew as bad as it looked! http://www.aviastar.org/air/england/black_scout.php

The work the OBD guys do always boggles my mind, both in quantity and quality ... especially considering they do all this in their spare time. It would be impossible for us to say thank-you too many times.

In my opinion the choice is obvious, given OFFs stated goal is 'as real as it gets'. If this is to be any kind of a serious simulation, the pilots body MUST be in the plane. I expect to see EXACTLY what a real pilot would see, otherwise how can this be called a simulation. Playing as a set of 'floating eyballs' in an empty cockpit hardly passes for realism or immersion in my book.

Two words ... "tinfoil hat"

I completely agree on the great desireability of some 'survival sense'. Without it, combat outcomes are too deadly as you said. Without it, it will also be hard to have stats and survival of your AI sqaudmates eventually reflecting the outcome of missions (rather than randomly generated as they are now) because they will all die within a few flights. As stated above, survival-sense would be the 'holy grail' of flight sims. The OFF team has worked miracles, but I worry this this may simply be too much to wish for. Just my guess, but I expect the AI 'code' is almost certainly contained within the CSF3.exec and only the input parameters can be fiddled with by the OFF team. Unless the code is already in there and can somehow be activated, it would seem unlikely to me that 'survival sense' can be added in. I hope I am wrong (I usually am, heh heh).

Stunning work as always. I don't know where you guys find the time to make all this happen, but I am glad you do!

Yep, if you have 'in cloud fog' turned on in the workshops, and have the field of view zoomed out, the pasted-on graphic of 'fog' doesn't fit the screen properly and looks rather bad. I just turned off the 'in cloud fog' ... your view still goes all foggy in a cloud and in fact I find it an even better simulation of flying through a cloud than having that 'cloud fog' effect turned on.

Hellshade, well said ... brilliant in fact. It always amazes me that the act of getting married suddenly makes many people start treating their spouse with less coutesy and respect than they would show to a complete stranger.

You're right ... very complicated. Also inaccessible. Most of this stuff is buried in the code of CFS3 and/or Winder's OFF Manager, which the average person does not have access as far as I know.

I have nothing more to add to UncleAl's excellent comments. I totally agree. (grin)