77Scout

Damn nice work. That first shot with the river dropped my jaw onto the keyboard.

Hi Pol, thanks for the additional explaination. I had interpreted your earlier comment about not fixing the rockets unless they could be made totally correct as applying to upcoming Phase 4, but see now that you were actually talking about Phase 3 so all makes sense. Thanks again.

The mission frequency setting only adjusts the number of missions you fly per day...lowest is about one a day and highest is two to three missions a day if I recall correctly. To skip days, one easy way is to simply hit the 'advance time' button (assuming you have manual time advance set in the workshop).

Not intending to sound rude, but if things can be made significantly better, why not do it? We maybe can't get to 'perfect', but that is no reason in my mind not to move in the direction of 'much better' . I think the bulk of the people playing the game are looking for a simulation that is as close to real as possible and I hope realism wins out when the developers are faced with these decisions. Nevertheless, I agree that there are probably some other players who want the 'hollywood' version and so its a dilema. The solution of giving people choices via workshop settings has worked great for other aspects of the game, so maybe that is the way to go with rockets too?

Flying with no compass is hard, and doing that in full DiD while using paper-maps is probably the pinnacle of being 'hard core'. Nevertheless, it actually can be done, and when you survive and even get good at it it is damn rewarding. On sunny days, you can use the sun and time of day to determine what direction is what, without too much difficulty. On sunless days you really have to keep a very close eye on landmarks and your map at all times, and you can thus stay aware of where you are and the direction you are heading. This will keep you very busy throughout the flight, but is a very enjoyable challenge. After any scrap you will be all turned around and lost, which I find to actually be great fun. You have to figure out where you are by comparing landmarks to the map. Being lost is a thrill and danger that real pilots experienced all the time, but that the typical OFF pilot (using in-game map and other aids) is totally missing out on. Now for real fun, do this all in an OFF-generated snowstorm (grin).

Polovski has done a great job with the FM's, but it is a tricky business so no doubt there is always room for fine tuning and improvements. Given that FM work it is such a slow and laborious process, and given the developers are few in number and have many other tasks on their plates, I hope they will perhaps assist you with info on how to edit .air files and have them remain useable in the campaign. Any efforts to improve the game are commendable. Would it ever happen that quality work by outsiders (Herr Prop-wash's DM, Creaghorns effects and sound tweaks, etc) might eventually be 'donated' where deemed appropriate and incorporated directly into Phase 4 should all parties agree to do so? I'd like to see that, but then I am fond of things being all in one neat package...getting too old to manage too many add-ons and tweaks, hah hah.

Well done Olham. It adds a whole additional level to the simulation, doesn't it. I have been using your recently posted maps (the Rabu maps with your airfield icons added) and they work great too. Thanks for all that work you did.

In previous incarnations (i.e. Phase 1 and 2) OFF would install itself into the Microsoft Games folder. But with BHaH (Phase 3) the standard install location is now the OBDSoftware folder exactly as you described, so all is well.

Hmmm...if the weight was jettisonable, then maybe fuel could be 'dumped' incrementally somehow as the AI fly along, simulating the burning of fuel. I doubt this would be practical...just thinking out load. The wind not affecting the AI is a real bummer. I wonder what are the odds are of that getting fixed? Seems like a tough nut to crack, particularly if it is hard-coded into CSF3.

I wouldn't think so. Just move the download files from the old computer to the new (by burning to a DVD, or using a thumb-drive, or whatever) and run the HitR install on the new computer.

My Gigabyte EP45-DS3L board from 2008 came with an @BIOS utility that makes updating the BIOS a fairly painless one-click procedure. I don't know if that will apply to you Olham, but perhaps check your disks and manuals that came with your board and see what they have in the way of BIOS update utilites or other info.

Thanks British_eh. Very well explained. I hadn't understood that the Scout missions become FPM during a 'push'...got it now.

Thanks British-eh. A few (possibly stupid) questions... I understand about skipping 'exception' missions, but 'scouting' and 'full participation' missions have me a bit confused and I could use a bit more explaination. The weather settings (clouds, lightning, sea state etc) have me lost...I don't know were in the game settings to find any of this. I didn't see any explaination of the 'user choice' settings given for for bullet loadout, so don't really understand if I should use 100% or the lower 'user-choice' value.

Thanks very much Olham. I have downloaded the maps and will give them a 'test flight' this weekend :)

Olham, if you can manage that then you will be my OFF 'main man"! Hmmm.... Considering the maps will be used by OFF pilots, wouldn't it be easiest to just get frontline locations from OFF itself rather than trying to use historical maps? You'd want your new map to match the in-game locations so when we are navigating the frontlines things are located where the maps shows them. Same logic applies to the aerodrome locations I would propose. I can think of two possibilities. The first is to look at the 12 in-game maps and copy the somehow frontlines as Winder has drawn them. The second is to look in the data files and use the frontline coordinates (but how?). I'm not smart enough to come up with more than that.

Wow, very nice Olham, and thanks for working on this. Since some airfields change hands as the front moves, how will you choose an airfield color in those cases? Having the frontlines on the map would be the ultimate, but I suspect that would be a huge amount of work so not suggesting anyone attempt it, just dreaming out loud.

Thanks Creaghorn, that is some really good information. Great to know that it is modeled realistically (as I had hoped it was).

Just curious...does anyone know how AA is actually modeled in CSF3. Does CSF3 actually model the travelling AA-shell (an AA gun aims, shoots, then the shell flies with an actual trajectory and travel-time from gun to explosion). Or is it simply an instantaneous 'spawn' of a flak burst randomly generated around a target plane. If flak is modelled realistically then weaving will help to keep you away from the flak. If flak is just modeled as "instantaneous randomized spawns" then weaving would have no effect, as the 'mosquito cloud' of flak will instantly follow you no matter what maneuvers you try. Any thoughts?

With either setting you will never be injured by bullets, as discussed above. The difference between the settings is how it handles the odds of you dying versus being injured in a crash. As determined by CSF3, death is usually the outcome in all but the very lightest of crashes. Since it is a bit overdone, Winder put the 'death on die roll' option in. When this option is used, should CSF3 determine that you are dead then the OFF Manager will randomly over-ride that outcome and say you are merely injured, based on a 'dice roll' calculation. Neither setting is perfect. 'Dead is dead' will often kill you even in a minor crash, while 'death on dice roll' will often allow you to survive even in horrible certain-death crashes. The best solution I have found is actually to use 'pilot never dies' and then decide for yourself when you should be dead (i.e. after each crash) and manually kill off your pilot when appropriate.

Hi Olham: For my part, I mostly navigate using just aerodromes and the front lines. They are both visible from a long way off so with little more than that it is relatively easy to know where you as you fly along. One must keep an eye on the compass of course so you have an idea where you are going and what landmarks to be looking for as they pop into view ahead. I haven't had great success with historic maps, as they usually don't show the front line or aerodromes. Instead, I usually just print a screenshot of the OFF-map (from the mission briefing) and use that because it has the frontlines and the aerodromes shown (my most-used landmarks). Roads and rivers don't really show up well on the OFF-map as we all know (one drawback) but if I live long enough, I soon learn the roads and rivers in the area by memory, and they eventually become useful landmarks. Cities are easy landmarks to spot too, but are sometimes not where the OFF-map shows them as I mentioned above, so you have to adjust for that. I will be interested to hear if you give paper maps a try, and what you think of it, good or bad.

If you see lighning in the screen, pull the plug on your monitor...an electrical fire is brewing. Just kidding. Anyway, cool as it would be, I myself have never seen lightning in OFF over hundreds of missions. Probably just some graphics weirdness, as you said.

The in-game map does have some inaccuracies. In some places it is very obvious...you are flying over the front line but on the map the front line shows some distance away. You can also see the same regarding some cities...the map shows you are over a city but from the cockpit you see the city is actually some distance away. It is just something to be aware of and deal with. In real life pilots didn't have a magic "you-are-here" map and had to figure out were they were for themselves, so if you want to be truely realistic try flying with paper maps. It adds a whole new layer to the realism and depth of the game. I agree that it seems the player cannot be injured by bullets (or perhaps the loss of 'health points' happens but just has no noticeable effect in the game). I would be sweet to see this tweeked in Phase 4. Ideally it would be like Red Baron 3D, were you got injured, the screen would go reddish and fade in and out to indicate injury, and you only had so much time to land or you would bleed to death or pass out. However, I have my doubts if CSF3 has the machinery to do any of this. A mechanism to record a trip to hospital based on seriousness of bullet injury (like we have for crashes) would be a great addition to the OFF Manager, if do-able.

I noticed that too...a definate fisheye effect. Hmmm, given that, it seems to me this might work nicely with some kind of curved semi-wrap-around screen...use the fisheye effect to advantage perhaps?

I Google this and watched the episode on You-Tube. Great stuff. Twilight Zone was one of the best shows ever. Thanks for posting :)

In real life you see your body, so in my opinion it is an absolute necessity for realism . Looking down and seeing an empty cockpit makes no sense to me.