Flyby PC

I know during the Falklands war that the BBC loved to use the term "Yomping" to describe the battle march across country. This was Royal Marine slang, and not popular with the regular army, Paratroopers especially, who didn't use some namby pamby Royal Navy word like "Yomping" to describe what they called Tabbing, as in TAB, Tactical Advance to Battle. You ask a Para if he's been out yomping, and he'll probably teach you some new swear words you won't have heard before. With regards WW1, I think the word joystick came from the war. No explanation required. One I've heard which is wrong is biting the bullet. I've seen that described as biting the bullet to take your mind off pain, but I understand it actually comes from the days of muzzle loading muskets when soldiers bit the end of the powder charge to load their rifles. When you saw troops bite the bullet, they were loading shot and there was going to be a fight. In India, some believe the 1857 mutiny was caused when rumours were spread that the powder cartridges provided by the British were sealed with pig fat, and it was a great insult to Hindus and Muslims to put such an 'unclean' thing in their mouths. Flash in the pan is another musketry expression, when the trigger only ignited the powder on the pan, but failed to ignite the powder in the breech. There was a flash in the pan, but no bullet was fired. Another generic expression which is actually very specific, is the thin red line. I've seen it referring to redcoats, the Big Red One infantry, and Mel Gibson's film, but the term was coined on 25th October 1854 during the Crimean war. During the Battle of Balaclava, to cut a long story short, the Port of Balaclava was vital to the British for their supplies and support, but badly organised and very poorly defended. All that stood between the Port and some 2,500 Russian cavalry was the 93rd Sutherland Highland Regiment. If the Highlanders had formed squares as prudent defence against cavalry, the Russians would have got through to seize Balaclava and cut off the British supplies. So the 93rd met the full on charge of the Russian Cavalry while still in line formation, and stood firm until the Russian Cavalry was routed. Disaster was averted. The action was also witnessed by a Times newspaper correspondent who described the actions of the 93rd as a"thin red streak tipped with a line of steel", and that was when the thin red line expression was actually born.

Wow. What strikes me right away is the similarity to the modern RAF logo. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/Royal_Airforce_Badge.png

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/worlds-first-steam-driven-airplane/2/#mmGal This contemporary article quotes 400 miles on 10 gallons of water. Not only that, they have eyes on high altitude flights where gasoline engines are starved of oxygen. Innovative aviators. What's not to like?

Came across this by accident. A steam powered aircraft. I can think of whole range of problems, but I had no idea the power to weight ratio of steam ever came anywhere near to powering aircraft.

Lancasters Mudwasp48, I'm sure there's a Firepower patch that gives you a modified Lanc to drop the massive Upkeep Bombs, and there's a Liberator too. And a B29, although I can't remember if that was in the patch. Edit: These Firepower aircraft don't work with ETO effects. You'd need to modify the individual aircraft XDP files to fly ETO with Firepower Aircraft. I've seen everything work in CFS3, until I packed it in anyway, but some things require the patience of a saint to get all the planets lined up correctly so that the mod works. Your fully functional effects XML became more sacred to you than your Bank account pin number, and then some new thing would come out and tell you to add a couple more lines.... What could possibly go wrong? Back up the effects file you say. Well yes, that works for a time, until you have 20+ backups, and 19 backups you're memory is a bit foggy about. You could delete them, but that will anger the God's in CFS3. They will demand retribution for your heresy, and make your installation crash again and again and again for no apparent reason. And worse, some effects that did work now don't.

Jim, when you run CFS3, then exit, it records the aircraft you were flying. Next time you boot up, it's the aircraft you last flew on the runway. CFS3 writes this in your uisel file, which is external to your CFS3 directory. If you have multiple versions of CFS3, but don't use the multiCFS3 utility, each version of CFS3 writes on top of each other's uisel file. When CFS3 cannot find something it needs to boot up, it doesn't substitute a default, it crashes and kicks you out. Because it's written outside your CFS3 directory, you can erase and reinstall CFS3 but it doesn't touch the problem since the settings still remain. OFF won't conflict, because OFF writes its uisel settings elsewhere. I'm not 100% sure that's your problem, but everything you've said does fit the pattern.

Blowing away some cobwebs, but you need to delete a file, uisel. something... It's a hidden file in your attrib folder, but where that is depends on your operating system. It's the file that records your settings when you exit, and if it records an error, it will load it up next restart. When you delete the file, your CFS3 goes back to default, and the uisel file gets re-written. I'm VERY rusty about this. Part of me recalls this might be a patch issue too. Later versions of CFS3 were patched, but older versions had to be patched. There was an update on the actual CFS website. CFS3.1a I think it was... Bad news is Microsoft shut down its site. Another issue might be having several CFS3 installs all using the same attib folder. You might need the multiCFS3 tool from..... Mudpond??? Now you're beginning to appreciate what a life saver the big Sim Outhouse was. You could ask a question and be directed to the exact problem and solution.

I don't expect having a broken thigh was very pleasant, but whether he was in a hospital or not, drawing money from his bank does seem uncommonly civilised. I reckon however there were a few million men who might have volunteered for some brutality and hardship as prisoners if offered as a choice between that and the fate they did recieve. That's not to imply criticism, in fact I would bet Mr Riddell would have observed the same thing.

WoW Olham! That look's like one of the earliest flight simulators I've ever seen. It even has multiplayer and teamspeak built in! That's just way ahead of its time.

Early BMW. Bits Made to Work. The machine guns were years ahead of their time but were later to become an innovative solution to the price of fuel in the UK.

Does indeed. Beneath the Sgt MacKenzie sound track, there is a piper effect in the actual mission which was a special addon by Stumpjumper for the Boys of 60. Brought a lump to the throat.

Out of the box, CFS3 is a bleak and unfinished Beta release product. With HEAVY modding, it can be pretty good, pretty excellent in fact, as OFF is living proof. It has 2 Achiles heels. First, is the game engine. It cannot cope with superchargers or jet engines, at least not accurately enough to keep the purists happy. There is a ceiling to which you cannot develop your accurate flight models beyond. It doesn't sound a big issue, but the 1% in the AVH 1% group was to have the simulated performance within 1% of the real aircraft. A lot of these modders are perfectionists, and if you cannot get it correct, life has no meaning. Second, an this is the biggy, because its easy to alter a flight model, Microsoft quite properly layered in a fearsome anti cheat protocol to stop multiplayers doctoring their aircraft and cheating. This protocol is probably the most effective protocol in the whole CFS3 program, and even the discrepancy of a single blank character in an aircraft's flight file gets it kicked out as an incompatible missmatch. So therein lies the dilemma. If you want to fly multiplayer, you either fly the crappy and limited CFS3 vanilla stable of aircraft, or you spend hours, days, weeks, making sure everybody you fly with has the same modified system, with perfect alignment right down to the same DNA and everybody drinking diet Pepsi [ ;) ]. The protocol would try the patience of a saint, and online squads like the Boys of 60, MOG, RCAF guys, all despite some reluctance migrated over to the IL2 fraternity where you booted up and just flew. Then, IL2 etc, after some delay I think it's fair to say, suddenly cracked their own modding fraternity, and improved their own theatre as CFS3 had been doing for ages, but unhindered by a much smarter anti cheat protocol. With CFS3, you build your own little world. You figure out how to tinker and tweak things to keep the bits you like, and ditch the bits you don't. You end up with gigantic mothership mega gig installation of CFS3 where everything works, and 5 or 6 satellite installs where you tried out some things, but then forgot what you changed but don't delete just in case there was a working version of an effect or something. Flares that actually worked, or effects you needed for a particular version, as in Firepower version, and non-Firepower version. -( Prime example Firepower and Memphis Belle both called their B17 the same thing which conflicted if installed side by side). Then, within that global scenario, you got 'steps' if you like. Say for example, when OFF came out, or MAW, PTO, ETO, you had a 'threshold' development. You suddenly had a standard vanilla version of much improved modded aircraft, so for a time flying multiplayer was practicable with good aircraft that were compatible to fly together, more or less, until changes and developments led to more missmatches etc. So every threshold released resulted in a blip of multiplayer activity, which would slowly lose the same war of attrition with the CFS3 missmatch protocol. The journey with CFS3 is never over, but it is very demanding to get to something worthwhile.

Simviation is still kicking... http://simviation.com/1/browse-CFS3-5-0 Italian Wings is still there too... http://www.italianwings.it/ Can't remember where I got my Ruski stuff... Big pack of Lavochkins. It'll come to me. I believe the JU-52 was a MAW introduction... Complete with paras. And lots of Italian planes too. I say again, I'm well behind the times now with CFS3. - I got out just as ETO was coming in... My big beef with ETO was collapsing the whole Sim Outhouse when they launched ETO. There were pages and pages of hints and tips going back years that was lost forever, and not just CFS3 either. It had taken me years to get to know my way around and where to find all the obscure stuff you needed to make missions run. CFS3 was always really buggy, especially online with multiplayer, and a lot of people needed help to enjoy their sim. A big part of the fun was helping newbies up and flying multiplayer. ETO carpet bombed the lot, and in turn became the benchmark CFS3, but I bugged out. Some improvements were good, but a load more good stuff had been lost. A V1 that sounded good, Serrate radar for night fighters... Everything might still be out there, but the old Sim Outhouse was the treasure map to find it, and cross reference the comments from people who get things to work... That's my baggage. I don't wish ETO any ill will, but I was mightily fond of that big database, and mightily p___d off when their download wrecked it. I know it wasn't deliberate, but I still bite my tongue. Everybody else had CD's or torrents for their releases, but ETO would insist they knew best. It also got really nippy with effects. In its effects file, you added lines into XML files for new effects to work, but I never figured the ETO way of doing things. You couldn't fly ETO aircraft in normal CFS3 because it was always all or nothing effects, and a lot of ETO effects in my opinion were inferior to MAW, but your effects xmls were a nightmare to reverse engineer. You'd have a favourite effects file where everything worked, and interbreeding with ETO effects and suddenly things you hadn't altered didn't work any more. It was time to have a monster sulk or move on. I had a quick sulk, but then up and away. Apologies by the way for these posts. I do type in the appropriate paragraphs and punctuation, but it posts as unbroken script... Wait a minute, I edited that and all my paragraphs magically appeared. Hmmmm...

For me the pinnacle of CFS3 was MAW. - Mediterranean Air War. I don't mean just the sim, but the CFS3 community seemed to be at its strongest, happiest, and most productive too. There were some undoubted improvements with ETO, VISO's vehicles stand out, and the air bases, but overall it seemed to be lacking 'something'. In MAW, the ambiance was such that you felt you were flying in the Med, and the effects were superb. I'd recommend you explore, I have some CFS3 baggage colouring my recollections. For me the best bits in European CFS3 were 'indy' mods - one offs that were integrated with others. Reg's hangar, or Groundcrew as it was once upon a time had some great stuff, especially because most of it worked and there were missions that supported the new work. I haven't been there in 4 maybe 5 years now. I also remember Pat Pattle and his Orne River Bridge mission to put horsa gliders down on D-Day. That was a mod I really liked. To put them all in perspective however, for general appreciation, OFF trumped them all. And that was OFF 1. I remember trying to get the OFF scenery and weather to work in my CFS3, but never that successfully. What OFF can't give you, is barreling in on a shipping convoy at 400mph with 109's on your tail and a big Molins cannon pumping out the bad news from your Mosquito. Or the firework display from all the cannons in your Beaufighter, which always seem to have so much ammunition. It might be rubbish I'm speaking, but I got a feeling why you might prefer a Hurricane over a Spit, or vice versa like real pilots did. You also got the big bombers too. I had the Memphis Belle payware add-on, which was ahead of the pack when it came out, but trumped by the very excellent Firepower add on which gave you the excellent Lancaster. Groundcrew had a superb series of Me110's, complete with Schrage Musik. That was an education. I've heard there is now an iconic Sunderland, the flying porcupine as the Luftwaffe called it, and after many many promises, I think somebody built a decent cockpit around a mosquito. It was a constant gripe of mine the Mosquito wasn't fast enough. Veteran pilots used to quip about 400mph speeds as something mundane, and being able to outrun anything. They did concede a FW190 had about 5mph on you at 50ft altitude, but you were ok if you went in to a dive. I believe CFS3 could not do justice to aircraft with superchargers. To simulate the accurate performance of superchargers at the correct altitudes, I understand the flight models would be hopelessly over powered at lower altitudes, so concession had to be made. That's a CFS3 constraint that doesn't matter in OFF. Blimey, it's all coming back now... Who could forget the AVH 1% mods... A family of Corsairs... Lavotchkins eventually.. Happy days. I am intimidated by how much I was once intimately familiar but which I have now forgotten. So yes. Do it. But CFS3 can damage your free spare time.

Felt surprisingly melancholy reading that. Suppose the pilot has survived badly injured, lying there on a hillside far from home and speculating he would have to wait 100 years for people to come and take him home.