77Scout

I am very happy for you and your wife Creaghorn. Loved the video. You will obviously make a great father.

Wow, that is some amazing stuff. Too bad it is indicated to be primarily for movie special effects, and apparently not likely to be used in games. Some day maybe!

These are my sentiments as well. The screenshots with no labels look to me like you are really there in the war...they could almost be a photograph from a real WW1 flight. That's the experience I want. The screenshots with labels and TAC look more like an X-box game, and I cringe. To me, its like having a very cool motorcycle, but then putting training wheels on it. It can be fun to ride, but you are kind of riding with the kiddie crowd. OK, OK, I should just shut up... as long as people are having fun thats great and I just need to bite my tongue (but its soooo haaard! :) That said, the ghosted labels certainly are a vast improvement over the stock neon ones. It might be nice if in Phase 4 they increase the visibility of distant planes a bit, maybe with a dot for far away planes similar to the visuals in RB3D. At this point I don't think it is on OBD's radar, and probably won't be unless someone conclusively proves that the current visual distances aren't in fact realistic (I am not a pilot so have no idea). A notification of an ace kill and the chance to claim him (like we have with ballons now) might be a nice touch, so we can know we downed an ace without having to resort to labels?

It has happened to me a fair bit. My recollection is that at least a few people talked about it here in the past, perhaps in one of the DID campaign threads (because we were trying to keep accurate records of time flown in DID). Anyway, I thought the lost-time thing was a well know and fairly common problem. Shows you what I know :) Nevertheless, not pausing the game during flight seems to have cured most of this issue for me. Whenever I have had the problem in the past, I run the "mission replay" function and consult the mission time when I landed to get the correct flight time. The mission replay always seems to properly record the time, unlike the Manager which must calculate the time a different way and often gives a reduced time compared to what you actually flew. With the correct time in hand I then edit the pilot log files to fix it as mentioned above.

Got it. Thanks Creaghorn!! I notice that you mention smoke-trial and tracer both came into use around early 1917, so how best to decide which to use? Was this a pilot preference, or one was used by Germans and the other by Entente, etc. Any insight greatly appreciated!

Thanks Creaghorn!

Pausing the game during a mission is one thing that seems to trigger the time loss problem for me, but I have not checked this out scientifically, but just noticed it seems to usually be the case.

Oh yes, totally understood. Sorry if that all came across as negative. I was just listing problems I am seeing, while knowing full well they are not easy things to fix. Obviously a WW2 game engine like CSF3 was never intended to handle bombers that have no rear defense, so the AI flys the two-seaters like a B-17, level an slow, assuming they have a rear gun to defend them. The only solution I can envision is the switch to a fighter-bomber setting so they make some attempt at a fight, but that's just me thinking out load. The AI Albatros's not attacking 2-seaters is a reality on my system. The original poster was the first person I ever heard mention it before so I wanted to chime in. Nobody else has mentioned it so seems to be a non issue for most people, or maybe most people don't fly in Albatros squadrons. Or maybe it is the AI setting...I am using 'aggressive' and Creaghorn perhaps uses 'less aggresive' or 'historical' AI so we see different behavior? Who knows.

I have seen the same non-aggressive wingman behaviour in my Krauts vs Crumpets DID campaign. The Albatros wingmen generally will not attack two seaters. The wingmen have no problem going after enemy fighters. Very strange. The BE2c DM might be a bit biased to flamers. Every BE2c (I mean EVERY one) I have shot down during the campaign has burst into flames on about the tenth hit. It would be nice to have at least some BE2's with a rear gun ... weren't they often outfitted with a gunner in the front seat? I have a hard time with the concept that BE2c's and FE2's just flew along slowly in level formation and would let a single enemy fighter shoot them down four at a time, as happens in the sim. Wouldn't they at least speed up beyond a slow cuising speed and try to get away. I can't imagine they wouldn't al least try to maneuver to throw off the attackers aim. THE FE2's should try to turn and defend themselves with their front gun. They were often used as a fighter in their day, weren't they?...helping to end the Fokker Scourge? As it is now an Eindecker could knock down FE2's all day because they don't fight back...not what really happened? I am tempted to try switching both planes to a fighter-bomber setting in the sqd.xdp files to see what that might do. Anyone tried that?

Actually you can use the hat to look around in a panning mode...hit scroll-lock to toggle. With practice you can get very good at looking around in this mode. I did well with it for many years but then sprang for Trackir, which is really the only way to go.

I think it is fine as is. As a pilot, the decision to fly or not fly is not mine to make...if the higher-ups say we must fly then fly we will. The OFF Manager fills this role and tells us when we can and can't fly. On the days the Manager sends me up in rain and/or snow it is never so bad that I can't make my way and complete the mission (it is just light rain or snow, never zero visibility or even close) so seems reasonable. Just my 2 cents :)

In Canada, I bought mine here: http://www.extremegamingdevices.com/jsp/products/trackir5/page.jsp Having the unit sitting up above your head on the top of a big monitor is no problem. Mine is like that and works fine.

Pausing the game is one culprit. It will mess up the time calculation, or at least it does on my machine. If you want to know the correct time do a 'mission review'...it will always give you the correct time in the air. You can go into the pilot files and correct the error fairly easily with some editing, as has been discussed previously on the forum.

Actually the mission breifing does tell you the place you are heading. Look at the right hand side of screen about 1/4 the way down...look for the "Our destination is ..." info, and about 1/4 from the bottom look for the "Action at..." info.

Great job on Patch 1.47. The sim in its current incarnation has reached a really high level of realism and immersion for me. Phase 2 was great but where we are now is fantastic. Nothing else compares. The AI is extremely challenging, I love the immersion that flying through clouds now gives, the turbulence effect is excellent, and I love the new wind sounds.

Yah, as the guys said above, that can't be right. You just put the BHAH DVD in the drive and run the installer (instructions on back of the DVD case). Simple as that. At no point should it tell you need Phases 1 or 2. You don't even have to install CSF3 beforehand...the installer will ask you to insert the CSF3 disks at the appropriate time. Perhaps the installer is asking for the CSF3 CDs 1 and 2, and you are confusing this with OFF Phase 1 and 2?

I wish them well, but to me OFF is already the modern reincarnation of RB3D, so why do we need another. Seems to me they have a long haul ahead of them even to catch up to where OFF is now, and won't they still be stuck with an engine that is ancient by modern standards? I loved RB3D but after OFF I can't imagine anyone could tweek it enough for me to ever back.

Phase 1 and 2 installed to the 'Microsoft Games' folder, while Phase 3 (BHAH) now installs to c:/OBDSoftware on a fresh install. If you install Phase 3 over an old existing Phase 2 install I think it ends up in the "Microsoft Games' folder so can get a bit confusing.

14 business days is closer to three weeks, but you should normally get it faster than that. I recall my copy taking just under two weeks to get to me here in Canada, but of course now you are into the Xmas rush so that won't help.

Sweeet...I have only had a couple of flights with HitR installed, but one huge improvement is no blue-jaggies no matter how fast I turn my head (TrackIR), were before they were quite noticeable. Don't know if others have the same experience, but for me it seems to have made a total fix of this graphic annoyance. I am very impressed and to me this alone is worth the price of getting HitR (cause I am no longer thinking about an expensice vid-card upgrade!) Also, I love the air turbulence, and the railyards that can now be found by following the tracks. Good stuff!

Black flak smoke...guess he's a German cat.

Sorry, not sure I understand. Does this means carrying a pilots bomber hours over into their fighter career (which I totally agree with), or does it mean carrying over a dead pilot's hours to the new replacement pilot (which I would absolutely disagree with since it would would make the DiD Standard pretty much meaningless)?

Since Phase 3, the game normally installs to c:\OBDsoftware on a clean install. See if maybe you find it there.

This is only for those who have some confidence in messing with game files, and is strictly an 'at your own risk' thing. Backup files before messing around, and all those standard warnings. Anyway, several people have been mentioning not getting full credit for flight time in the DiD campaign. It is rather annoying, so I thought I would mention that the time errors can be fixed manually by editting the pilot files (found in CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\camapigns\CampaignData\Pilots). Seems to work fine for me anyway. First you need to know exactly how many minutes you failed to get credit for. I do this by using 'Review Mission' and comparing the time at landing (e.g. 51 minutes) to what the OFF Manger gave me credit for (e.g. 29 minutes) and doing basic subtraction (e.g. 51-29=22 minutes missing). There might be a faster way to get this number (suggestions?) but this is at least accurate (as opposed to relying on your wrist watch). Step 1 is to edit the 'Pilot?Log' file (where '?' is the pilot number plus one) and change the time of the latest flight to the correct number. Save and exit , of course. This will make sure the right-hand page of the pilot log shows correct time for that flight. Step 2 is to edit the 'Pilot?dossier' file. Line 12 is your total career flight time in minutes. Add the missing minutes to the current number (so in my example add 22 minutes to the number in line 12). Save and exit. This will make your total hours on the left-hand page of pilot log now show your correct total time. Hope this is useful. Use with caution!

Actually, the reality freaks use paper maps...the in-game map is too easy . Or so I have heard (grin).