Flyby PC

So it was sheds plural, not just one shed?

I'm sure you've seen this, but it's still funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv5RyQiQUyo

One last point about air speed is knowing it. MVR might have known his airspeed, but nobody on the ground did. That matters less if the target is flying straight towards you, but with a side on deflection shot the speed of the aircraft and speed of your single bullet are both critical. Could you tell the difference between an aircraft flying at 60mph and 100mph or any speed in between? Bear in mind, these fellas had little concept of 60mph anyway. With a machine gun, you're not worrying about a single bullet, because there's a stream of bullets spaced at 0.15 second intervals, marked every fifth round with a tracer round which you can see from your position all the way to the target. I don't know the muzzle velocity of the Vickers, but guess at around 700m/s. That means at 600m, you only have to predict where the plane will be in the next few seconds to have a fair chance of catching the target, and at any one time you have ten bullets already in the air, (and until you correct, all of them missing, but at least they tell you by how much to adjust). That sounds easy, but don't forget a minute adjustment at the firing position, even a fraction of a degree, might become an adjustment of 30 ft by the time the bullet has travelled 600m. You can correct your stream of bullets by their proximity to the target, but it's difficult. Roughly speaking, the maths you're doing to correct your fall of shot relates to the last 20 or 30 feet of tracer arcing towards the target, not some miraculous judgement you work out before your bullet leaves the rifle. In range with a clear line of sight, I'd say it's possible, perhaps probable at short range that you could hit a moving target, difficult, but probable. To hit it with a rifle remains virtually impossible until a much, much closer range, preferably landed and on the ground. I think the reports are spot on in recognising the possibility of a 'freak' shot from a rifle, but it's so unlikely they pay it lip service and focus instead on machine gun positions which were much more likely to be hitting the target, and which also had their tracer visible for other observers to witness. Take me up on the challenge to get into the waste gun of the B17 and see if you can 'snipe' a bandit with a single shot. It's not possible. It's a waste of a round. You want to believe it was a lucky shot from a rifle, then best of luck to you. I can't persuade you otherwise, but I would bet all my worldly goods that it wasn't.

Just for my own amusement, I've been trying to get the superb MAW flares to work in my OFF. I've had some success, but it's been so long since I tinkered with CFS3 'gubbins' that I can't really remember all the 't's to cross and 'i's to dot so everything works correctly. Here are a couple of screenshots. My question is, does this missing 'something' look like a line I've missed from the effects file? I can't post this change fellas, it's a MAW effect for which I claim absolutely no credit whatsoever, and I don't have authority or permission to share it. I loved the effect in MAW, and it's purely for my own fun to get it working in OFF. Anybody got an idea? The flare 'thing' is there, represented with the white box, so that means its the effect missing, and/or probably a line missing from the effectxml doesn't it? I am sooo rusty at doing this.

Pmail me your address and I'll pop a copy in the post. Boys of 60 are still flying together, but the missmatches and multiplayer gremlins in CFS3 led them to abandon CFS3 fly IL2 based sims instead. I'm not sure what they fly these days. I wasn't up to speed with Il2, but that wasn't the reason I bailed on them, I'd hit a real busy period at work and bought myself a puppy, so my free time was turned on its head. I can forward you Bob's (PD or Pilot's Den) email address if you want to get in touch, or alternatively, track down Dimus or Stumpjumper who I see popping in here from time to time.

Did you get yourself sorted with a MAW to install Olpaint01? Got one handy if you still need it.

Now why did they call him two sheds? I thought he only had one.

Just to repeat myself JFM, 200m rifle shot with a moving target at 100mph or 60mph makes little difference. The bullet trajectory entered through the side so there's no question it was a deflection shot, and it would be such a lucky shot for a rifleman to take I honestly and sincerely doubt they'd bother wasting the ammunition. I readily expect most squaddies would have sat back to watch the spectacle, and In terms of probability of firing the fatal shot, I would say it was negligible. Second point about MVR breaking his own rules as I understand them is not that he followed his target across enemy lines, but that he uncharacteristically followed his target down to low level, and forfeited the advantages he recognised - greater altitude gave over his target, while denying himself the option to dive out of trouble himself, and of course, bringing himself in range of small arms fire from the ground. (Small arms being machineguns, not rifles in my opinion). This is where the issue of target fixation arises and what he was thinking when he forfeited all his advantage as hunter to follow a fleeing target to the deck where his DR1 had to compete with the flat out head to head speed of a Camel, and had to climb it's way out of trouble.This was recognised by many as a lapse in the Baron's normally impecable judgement, and prompted the speculation about his state of mind at the time.

Thinking about the 800m - might be right enough. 100mph is around 44m per second, so an aircraft would take 18 to 20 seconds to travel 800m directly towards to you. Firing 400 rounds a minute, there's only time to get 130 or so rounds in the air before he's overhead, of which only 24 are going to be tracer rounds. If you DONT start firing at 800m, your target is going to be long gone before you get your tracer lined up.

I agree to a point, but shooting at that model was great fun, and a novelty, but nevertheless, it felt like something you could get pretty good at with enough practice and ammo. Nevertheless, if that program is correct, 800 yards is still a long way away, and two, three, even four times the distance before a rifleman would even try his luck on an iron sight. Even 200m on a moving target traveling around 100mph is still a highly optimistic shot to make with a rifle. You've no spread of shot like a shotgun has shooting clays. When you miss, there's no perspective or ground strike to clue you in how far to correct your aim, and even if there was, your target has moved 20 or 30 yards in a few seconds anyway. Here I am blethering away like I'm some kind of expert at this. I'm definitely not that, but if you want to get a pretty good measure how difficult it is, crank up your CFS3 and f8 yourself into the waist gun of a B17 and see how many hits you get from a 1000 rounds. The tail gunner is tough too, but the relative speeds between you and following fighter make hits slightly easier. You don't get those 'easy' shots with the waist guns, every shot is a deflection shot. I wouldn't say that's exactly what it's like, but I find that it's difficult for the same reasons as shooting at the real thing was difficult.

Yes, but I don't mean the actual location. I mean a place in the OFF map which resembles the actual location to attempt recreating a visual interpretation of what Popkin saw looking down his gun barrel. Edit - I just watched that Olham. It's a bit long for my download, but it was worth watching, and they did exactly what I was planning, although I wanted it with the OFF perspective. I almost stopped watching when she started talking about aiming a shot with a machinegun at 600 yards. 'Aim' with a machine gun is not the same as aim with a rifle. With a gun, you wouldn't concern yourself with minor corrections and accuracy because a machinegun is not designed to shoot like that and won't put two rounds in the same place anyway. You do aim as best you might, but just start firing, and use the line of tracer as a 'hose' you correct and try to bring into contact with the target. Takes a lot of rounds and it's incredibly difficult.When we fired on the model, you only used the gun sight to open up, then lifted your eye above the sight because it and the smoke etc of fired and ejecting rounds obscured your view of the tracer.Machineguns clatter and jump around to much to aim in the conventional sense.The object is to pepper the general area of the target and hope you get a lucky kill or two.

No takers for a recon mission to find a suitable map location? I don't mind having a crack at the mission but I'm in the middle of things and pressed for time to look myself. I don't suppose it's critical to be the actual place, more a close similartity to the topography and landscape, but we all might learn something if the data put in is the best possible. How about a competition to build the fatal mission and see if we can devise any new theories? I'm quite serious. The enquiries into what happened had no such abilitiy to do this, and we're perhaps in a unique position to give it a go. - IF mission builder is up to such high definition missions. 3 aircraft, 1 firing point on the ground and a 'known' flight path.

If I was a gambling man, or better yet a bookie, I wouldn't give odds on a 'lucky' shot if the target was to fly in aerial combat with machine gun armed ardersaries, over territory studded with hostile anti-aircraft artillery, machine guns and general small arms fire, during the biggest war there had ever been while flying a bright red distinctive aircraft synonimous with having killed a disproportionate number of enemy pilots. At every stage, luck is having less and less to do with it. Perhaps the element of 'luck' is that it didn't happen sooner. Lady Luck is a fickle mistress as they say. I hate to talk about the death of a very brave man in such cold and heartless terms, because that's not the way I feel about it.

A quick google reveals on 17th January 1943 there were 23 people killed in London by anti aircraft shells meant for the Luftwaffe falling back to earth. Not really surprising since there were tens if not hundereds of thousands fired, and what goes up must come down. The SLR we used had a big 762 calibre round the same calibre as an AK47 and had an effective range of over a mile, but the round could still kill a man at three. Not considered effective range because you couldn't aim the shot, but ND's (negligent discharges) were taken VERY seriously, and when firing off the empty mechanism as part of your unload/safety drill, you kept the barrel down range and still aimed the shot just in case. All those guys firing into the air? Not really all that clever.... And a waste of ammo, and you have to clean your weapon for nothing. I'd love to have seen someone do that in front of our NCO's. They'd have eaten him alive most probably. We were once threatened we'd be "Marched up and down until our hairy little legs wore out and then put on a charge for 'arseing' around on the parade ground". Edit, Hmmm. I wonder. Looking at that map of the incident, I wonder if mission builder could cope with the timings and altitudes to recreate the angles of the dogfight and have yourself in a watching viewpoint roughly where Popkin was firing.... You'd need to write the quo-ordinates and altitude manually I suspect, but it might be worth having a go....Virtual pint for anybody who can flag up a correspondingly accurate location in the OFF map and scenery. To me that flightpath looks very much like an instant 'ouch' I've got to land, now! The reports say the wound would only have given 30 seconds or so of life.

I'm with NS13Jarhead, I'm sure I've seen a program that did it's phorensic best to determine who fired the shot. I seem to recall near certainty the shot came from the ground, not another aircraft, and that if it wasn't Sgt Popkin, it was someone else in that immediate area. Popkin nearly shot himself in the foot claiming he killed the Red Baron as he flew straight towards him, when the single 303 round enterted in the armpit from the rear and exited through the breast, but Popkin actually had two bursts at separate moments, and the trajectories did fit from Popkin's weapon for the second pass. The trajectory is what ruled out another aircraft, added to the timing. The Baron could only have lived a very short time with the injury he sustained to his heart and lungs, but immediately after Browns attack, he had sought to re-aquire his original target. It seems implicit in his doing that, that he hadn't yet been hit. Not withstanding the program, I am absolutely no ballistics expert, but having tried to down a 1/5 size model aircraft with a Gimpy on a firing range, it was incredibly hard just to hit the target when flying straight towards you with a 1000 round belt and a good mount for the gun. It is possible the round might have been a single 303 shot from a rifle, but such a shot would be the proverbial one in a million, and guided by chance or destiny, but not marksmanship - in my opinion. Popkins air gunnery? - Get's my vote. He'd certainly have put a lot more lead nearer the target than a rifleman.

True story, I knew genuine brothers called Alec Ness and Peter Ness. Their father obviously had a wicked sense of humour without dwelling too much on the 'humour'.

That looks stunning Lou. Are those your own desert skins? I feel a new project coming on..... I'm sure you'll know this Lou, but for those who want to know a little more about the WW1 aircraft in the desert, this is a good start.... http://www.awm.gov.a...p?levelID=67894 I've got mixed opinions about the general ambiance of ETO, but in fairness I've not been keeping up with it. No disrespect to the ETO developers, but flying OFF, you KNOW you're flying OFF, and same goes for MAW, (and not just because it's desert). In close detail, Viso's new vehicles and armour were outstanding and the accurate airfields were impressive too, but on the rare occassions I do fly sim WW2, I still use one of my 3 multi-gig behemouth original installs. One day, (been saying it a while), I'd like to get my WW2 favourites transposed into the OFF landscape. I've said it before, but I think the OFF devs could easily market that too.... if they wanted to of course.

You mean MAW looks good Tom? MAW totally rocks, and is very much worthwhile to download. Back in the days..... OFF2 and MAW

I know their other Scottish cousins, Ben Doune and Phil McKracken. I mean I don't actually KNOW them, but I've heard of them in passing. Cough cough....

Here you go Olpaint01. MAW Lives!!! - There's a link to MAW here, but I've never been down the path so I don't know if it works. - http://combatace.com...ranean-air-war/ Edit - Oh bother. Last post said the thread is corrupt. Up to the attic and all the cobwebs it is.... Wish the attic had a flare effect so I could see where I was going in the dark....

Ok, so thinking out loud, I didn't overwrite any existing OFF files, so hopefully this might just be an effects XML error, and I've inadvertantly attached an effect to the wrong event, and it's just a case of finding it.... See the trouble that follows when you override your inner OCD?

Hold the phone Lou - something isn't right. I don't see any OFF problems, but my orange glows seem to be independent from the flares. Most work fine, but I also see flares with no glow and glows with no flares. The overall ambience is there, but there is still something not right. Hmmm. Hope I've not turned a flak burst effect into a flare.... Olpaint01, I don't know if you can still get MAW these days, there was a specific website but that's long gone. It was freeware to distribute, so let me have a dig and see if I still have the correct files or a DVD somewhere. Might take me a while because it'll be on an old PC, but I'll see what I can find...

Well, one time I thought a mission might be a one way ticket, so Toryboy Cameron got the short straw. He's posted as missing, but he's not well liked anyway. Bumchum Clegg and Gormless Osborne were glad to see the back of him.Never paid his Mess bill.

Have fun Lou. If it helps, just sing the Rattlin' Bog song as you go. Ro, Ro, the rattling bog,... now on this limb there was a twig, a rare twig, a rattling twig, a twig on a banch, and a branch on a limb, and a limb on a tree, and a tree in a bog, and a bog down in the valley-o. It's just like MAW. Now in this MAW, there is a flare, a rare flare, a ratling flare. A flare on a flare_round, a flare_round on a gun, a gun on a flare_cannon, a flare_cannon on a flaregun facility, and a flaregun faciltiy in no-mans land down in the trenches-o. There now. I'm sure that's made everything MUCH clearer.

Gulp. I knew somebody was going to ask me that. OK. Standard format, backup everything you're going to change BEFORE you change it. This is CFS3, and it will bite you if you blink. In MAW Facilites, you need to copy dr_flaregun to your OFF Facilities. In MAW Vehicles, you need to copy dr_flare_cannon folder across to your OFF vehicles. In MAW Weapons copy across folder dr_flare_round to OFF Weapons. In MAW Guns, copy across dr_flare_gun. Effects/FXTextures is the tricky one. dr_flarelight is obvious, but I think theres one of the fireballs or fire related files need copied too. I copied all the files with fire in the title, and when I pasted them into the OFF FXtextures, when asked to overwrite, I said no. You don't need to change any existing OFF files for this to work. (I think this is where I went wrong first time around and this is the folder where my white boxes crept in). That just leaves the lines to write into your main effects.xml file. This is another occassions to upset those OCD afflicted people here I've probably copied lots of stuff I don't need, from your MAW effects file, copy all text from <flare_hover_smoke... all the way down to <house chimney smoke. Copy that text into the end of your OFF effects folder, just before the <\effects> at the end, making sure your < and > stanzas are correctly resolved. The text in the MAW effects is quite near the start, and I use notepad to hunt for 'flare or 'hover'. That should be you, but don't blame me if it doesn't work. If you dabble beneath the surface of CFS3, you know it's a place to move cautiously, backup and write down what you do, so you can undo it. Nearly forgetting - This should leave your flaregun installed, but you still need to place it in a mission with mission builder. When you're building a mission, in facilities, you will find a flaregun facility, and place this where you want it to fire flares. Whenever I put it in, I make the flaregun enemy, so it shoots flares at me. I don't know if that's necessary, but I've always done it. Remember to make the mission night time, and hopefully that's you up and running. One or two flareguns is all you need. All those flares in my screenshots are from 3 flareguns. ' Edit - And please remember, this is a MAW effect, and all credit for it goes to MAW. If anybody objects to copying the effect across, I'll scrub my explanation and ask for the thread to be deleted. This is just fun for me, and telling you how I did it. Last thing I'd ever want to do is upset a MAW guru.