Flyby PC

Still thinking out loud, - we already do have alternative TACs. You remember in CFS3 you can pick a fighter or bomber pilot and assign him skills? Well I'm sure those choices had a bearing on your TAC; that is the distance when white tags went red etc. It could be varied according to your pilot's abilities. Wow. I'm so out of touch with CFS3 these days.

They reckon the glow from a cigarette tip is enough to give away your position from 5 miles away at night. It really depends how you define 'spotting'. Bare in mind the white TAC tabs indicate an aircraft too far away to identify, so in theory you're not getting too much advantage, save that you are 100% sure to see them. Then again, I have every confidence that in real life many aircraft would be seen, but not be spotted immediately, - a glint of sunshine or fleck of movement will have prompted the gunner or pilot to scan a particular sector of the sky with greater attention just because he thought he saw something. Technically, has he actually seen the aircraft or not? The big disadvantage with the TAC is that it doesn't have an "I think I saw something" zone - the half way house between seeing something and not seeing it. The TAC only has confirmed sightings. So yes, that's perhaps an advantage to you. But, set against that advantage, you have the disadvantage that other gunners or aircrew will not alert you to aircraft they have spotted. In flight you might have fifty pairs of eyes scanning for bandits, but throughout the whole sim squadron yours are the only eyes that matter. In those circumstances he tac restores the balance a bit. So I don't know. I can understand people wanting to jiggle about with the TAC, but I quite like it the way it is. If I could change anything about the TAC, I'd engineer a line of sight factor, like it has for clouds. That way I could not see other aircraft through the fabric of my plane or behind me - unless I turn. That would up the realism factor immensely, especially if ai aircraft played by the same rules. That way you could bounce aircraft and have them react to the attack instantaneously, and also snipe at a squadron picking off stragglers without the whole squadron reacting. Have darkness another limiting factor on your vision, and you've got a whole new experience flying, - especially as a predatory night fighter. That still wouldn't be perfect, because it you had a tail gunner, he could see behind you, so why disable that facility? TAC isn't going to suit everybody all of the time, but overall, the developer has my compliments, because for what it was intended to do, (and we should judge it without TrackIR to be fair), I think it's a pretty good effort. It's been designed by committee thats all. Thinking out loud though, - I wonder if would be possible to have workshop option to select the TAC you want to use. That way you could engineer alternative TACs more appropriate to the type of aircraft you were flying aircraft, - a fighters TAC with restricted forward vision, a bomber with gunners giving 360 cover etc. Like I say, just thinking out load. I'd disable the real cheat the TAC offers too. If you toggle onto a white tag and assign wingmen to attack it, they will do so if it's an enemy, but they'll refuse if it's a friendly target. That way you know then whether your white tag is actually blue or red, long before it changes. There are other factors too. Haze, smog, where the sun is, is the target backlit or are you. It's all going to vary the distance you can see things. There are also false sightings, such as birds which might be mistaken for aircraft. It's a very complex thing to model, but unfortunately its perhaps the most central issue to a combat sim. I can fully respect the greater challenge of flying without aids, but I'm less convinced you're acually making your flight more real. Of course you wouldn't have these utilities in the aircraft, but your real life quality of vision, perspective, speed, weather and windspeed, sense of gravity, and spatial awareness would all be massively better. The aids only compensate you for abilities you would have in real life but which cannot be accurately simulated. You could even (perhaps) make the argument that better realism would compell you to use the aids so you do not disadvantage your pilot unfairly.

No expert, but when I had PSU problems, you could do the theory and add up the power use of your components, - but some components do have peaks above their stated wattage, some power demands change as components get warm, and also, some PSU's decay with age and don't always crank out the Watts the label says they do. - What that means is it can all work fine on paper but still not work in reality. I'm going back a few years now, but my power shortage was confirmed because I could avoid my problems by unplugging my DR-roms and floppy drive, and my machine started to run fine, - which confirmed there was too much demand on my PSU. I upgraded my power unit, and problem fixed. I'd try to diagnose the problem more before you spend money on a new psu, but then again, they are pretty cheap components to buy a few more Watts are not going to hurt anyway.

Well, you know what they say, once mass murdering terrorists move into your street, bang goes the neighbourhood. Well done US SEALs. I'd have preferred to see him taken alive, but in these austere times, a bullet in the head and burial at sea in a plastic bag sounds like excellent value for money.

I like cats too, for all of the above reasons, but I won't keep one because I like to feed wild birds and the two just don't mix. I'd have a hard time liking my cat if it kept nailing all my little friends at the bird table, - but the blame would be mine for bringing the two together. So no cat.

Didn't watch any of it. I'm not much of a royalist myself, although I wouldn't wish them any harm, but I'm forced to admit I find it hard not to like Prince Harry. I know, he dressed up as a nazi at a fancy dress party, and called his army oppo his little Paki mate, - a bit crass maybe, but I wasn't upset by it. Made me chuckle if I'm honest, because he didn't mean any harm. There's something about him. He came across very well during his military service. Apparently when the MOD reckoned he was too much of a target to put on the front line, all the squaddies who were on the front line started running around with "I'm Harry" T-shirts just like the Spartacus Film. He's got that illusive likeability factor, and while he might not make the best king as judged by traditional standards or etiquette decreed by the Palace, I'd bet he'd be the most popular king out the lot of them, - and by a country mile. Lets hope maturity and palace grooming doesn't spoil him. To quote a line from the fim Dune, - "....I must admit. Against all better judgement, I like this Duke". As for the rest? I don't know. One or two of the 'Real' blue bloods I've met are pretty sound people, completely mad and living in a different world, but still pretty sound. You can be working on their chimneys and the lady herself will come up onto the roof to bring you a cup of tea. The tea is some wierd concoction of 'proper' tea you've never even heard of, and it's going cold quick because the kitchen is a quarter mile away down some boney old staircase, and the tea itself is in some fine, antique 16thC bone china cup and saucer as thick as a sheet paper. It won't be the top drawer china I'm quite positive, but it's still undoubtedly some priceless piece of antiquity, but none of that matters to them, - because it's just a cup of tea. Then you've got the 'would be' toffs, the ones who think they're special. They might be loaded, but often aren't, but they just haven't got the same class or pedigree. The thought of boiling the kettle would never even occur to them, and they wouldn't bring you a cup of tea if you begged for one. In fact they'd resent paying for the electricity for you to make your own cup of tea. More often than not they'd have you pee in a bottle too. So I don't know. Maybe they're all the same these toffs, maybe not. Probably so in a herd of them, but one or two have shown courtesy to me which wasn't asked for or expected, so these days I take them as I find them. I could be cynical and say they're nicer to me the more stonework they need done.

I'm Lord James Shandy Pilmuir. (We once did this at college, but wasn't for your Royal Wedding invite, but what you'd be called if you starred in a porn film. (No titles). Back then it was middle name, first pet, and mothers maiden name). Ah, happy days & the evils of drink....

I hope nobody thinks I was being inappropriate about showing the clip of the man dying, but I readily apologise if anybody is upset. All I intended to show was how quickly a fatal tragedy can arise in a matter of seconds if you don't pay due respect to these kinds of animals. I have a tremendous affinity with animals, but equally, I know they just don't think the same way we do. When you interact with any animal, especially a wild one, it will interpret your body language and expressions using it's vocabulary, never yours. It's a dangerous state of mind to believe you've somehow 'connected' with an animal and that you understand what one another is thinking. There was a farmer killed not far from here a few years ago, gored to death by his prize bull. He'd been in beside his bull to check on it and give it a pat on the back every day of it's life and never had any problem until he just popped in to the see the bull after he'd been to a wedding. Whether it was the different clothes he was wearing or perhaps the smell of aftershave or drink on his breath, for some reason the bull didn't know him and percieved his over-familiar proximity as a threat and attacked him. Another tragedy occurred with a mates dog when I was at college. He had the softest happy-go-lucky labrador called Barney which was as harmless as it was gormless, loads of fun and no threat to anybody. - Not until my mate had a son, and that one day the kid developed an interest in Barney's food bowl when the dog was eating - and he got himself attacked. The kid was fine, but it was serious enough that Barney had to be destroyed, and all because nobody read the warning signs in the canine pecking order. Don't get me wrong, you certainly can have a strong bond with an animal, I do with both my dogs, but I never forget there are deeper thought processes going on behind those 'big brown eyes' that have evolved from the wolf, refined through countless generations of evolution. There is a latent wolf in every dog, and it doesn't take much to bring it out. I'd go canny meeting up my dogs if they had been running wild for more than a year, - but these guys were saying hello to a fully grown lion!!! If I'd been them, the first few moments of any reunion would have been from the safety of a vehicle. That way I don't risk getting eaten, and my guide doesn't have to shoot my long lost furry friend if it all turns nasty. I understand and respect what you mean about voyeurism, but I don't think it is goulish to look at such things. Then again, I think I'm more relaxed about the concept of death than most people. Don't get me wrong, I don't dress in black, chant prayers to darkness or have a collection of favorite dead things kept in a drawer. I'm quite normal and hopefully well balanced. My father died when I was 11, and when that kind of thing happens, it hardens you and you start dealing with stuff from an earlier age. I was also raised as a son of the soil, and I think when you grow up with a farming background you see things in the raw, and I think you develop a more immediate understanding of life and death and how easy it comes and goes. It's not unhealthy or morbid, it's just all around you and you grow accustomed to things which other people often find more upsetting.

No way would I have done that. Not EVER! It's odd, but there's another video I've seen where lions actually attack and kill a man, while his family have to watch from their car. It's not pretty, and the video usually gets pulled pretty quick off Youtube. The thing is, it's not the graphic nature of the footage which is most shocking, but rather the 'gentle' way these predators overcome their prey. It's not a violent bloodbath, but absolute power overcoming all resistance. As I watched Christian the 'cuddly' lion, and even the second lioness close to these people, it struck me just how easily, and casually, this could all have gone terribly, terribly wrong. I cannot imagine the thought processes going through the second lion's mind trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She wasn't tame, and her every instinct must have been to kill. In the video below, the poor man you watch being killed didn't have time to run away because the lions were on him before he realised the danger he was in. It's difficult even to call it an attack. It's simply a predator dispatching his prey by stealth and sheer dominance. That's what they do, and that's how they live, and these guys are extraordinarily lucky that their reunuion with Christian was not a distraction to let other lions close in for the kill.. Be warned now, this is graphic and will shock you. Don't watch if you don't have the stomach for it. Edit - My point isn't to make you watch something horrible, but watch how little warning there is before things go badly wrong, and once they do go wrong, there is nothing anyone can do. You have to respect these animals, because it's them who end up getting shot if we don't. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP_JQz5WCFU

Sounds interesting Lewie. I also like Fraps etc because I'm comfortable using it, but as ever with software, we shouldn't be surprised there's always something newer and better just around the corner. Then again, the image capture is all I want it to do, and Fraps is just fine for that. All the editing and formatting I do with other utilities anyway, and Virtualdub is both free and hard to beat - once you get the hang of it. It's not the most user friendly piece of software to pick up, but worth the effort. - (especially because CFS3 gives you so few options to compose your dramatic screenshots).

Well, I found that for best results I would keep my raw footage in the big AVI format until the film was nearly done. Yes it makes your work a very large file to handle and its hard work for your hardware, but the big advantage is that your images stay crisp and clear until the final edit. It's only once you're nearly done that I would reduce the format to an mpeg or wmv or something which is compressed and suitable to handle. Reducing format will often lose detail, and once it's reduced there's no going back, so keep it large as long as you dare. I just didn't have the Gbs of storage needed to keep stuff, and once the movie was complete the raw footage had to be dumped. Hated to dump footage you'd flown hours to collect, but you just couldn't store it, or even catalogue what you could store. When I used to make a lot of movies, I used to make terrible spelling mistakes in the text, but I couldn't correct them because I didn't have the storage space to keep the raw footage to do it again. If I made an error, (did I say if?) when I made an error, I often couldn't fix it. Despite it's faults and unreliability, I found windows movie maker was adequate for splicing stuff together and saving it in a format I wanted. I liked Movie maker in XP, but they've changed it Win 7 and I don't like it anymore. That's Fraps, Virtualdub and Movie maker, - all free software. (Though I do have full version Fraps now).

Don't know anything better than Fraps. I take it you know there is a free version of Fraps? It's fully functional, and just like the full version but restricted to 1 minute of footage, and you have the fraps watermark too. Both issues are a pain after a while, but you can still do a lot with the Freeware Fraps. You have to modify the footage anyway because it's so huge in AVI format, but something like Virtualdub lets you crop your image, and you can lose the watermark. The minute of footage is more tricky. I forget the number of times I filmed a torpedo on it's way to sink a ship then watch it back to see the film stop seconds from impact. Nevertheless, you can get used to it, and record what you want in bite size clips. Thing about it is, that once your clip is over a minute long, it is already a massive file size. You can fill up your hard drive in no time. Thats not a fraps defect, it's just that it records in real time, and there isn't time to compress the footage. If you run with fraps, you soon get hooked, and the more you use it, the cheaper the cost of registration looks. If you're serious about doing videos, Fraps is a rare bit of software which is value for money. No frills, but it does the business. The only other grief with Fraps is that it only records what's on the screen. You can't leave it on record and review your action from multiple viewpoints like you can with IL2 stuff. For some that makes it rubbish, for others that makes it a challenge. Personally I like it. It makes you get creative, and not let the sim do all the work. Fraps is like a real life video camera, you shoot what you can see and it's a one hit opportunity.

The government is taking 1p off petrol. We've all to start calling it etrol.

I've heard the insurgents make a lot of their own munitions. You should really take some time and look into the after sales service before you start buying your ordinance at a bazaar. Know what else came into my mind? It's the old trench war story that you never take the third light of a cigarette. The first glow of the match/ciggi draws the snipers eye, the second lets him range his shot and take aim, and the poor unfortunate fellow who gets the third 'glow' is the one who gets taken out. I admit, it does look like a weapons malfunction, but the devil in me sees two squaddies a short way off behind a pile of rubble with the right technology. -"See where those mortar rounds are coming from? Yup, gimme a second while I just find the range....WHUMP!

I heard they plan to recover and conserve it in it's current condition at Hendon. - No restoration is planned. So said the BBC, but they've only just found it, and it seems pretty quick to be deciding that kind of thing. Need to get it out the water for a start. Looks pretty much still together in the sonar image. Christmas come early for some lucky conservator.....

I think it's been said, but I agree that the war was already lost for the Germans before the US got involved, but who the winner was was all to play for. More controversially, I frequently wonder whether Hitler was too early for WW2. If he'd postponed his war for another 18 months or two years, then Raeder might have had the number of U-boats he actually wanted to completely dominate the Atlantic, and Hitlers wonder weapons, the V1s and V2s, his jet fighters and bombers, would all have been at his disposal, and with enough fuel to function effectively. With more patience too, Hitler might also have 'finished off' the UK before attacking the Soviets. This would have freed German troops from the West, Scandanavia and North Africa, to turn on the Soviets. The argument goes that allied productivity and rearmament would have out performed the German economy then, but I'm not so sure. If war had been declared perhaps yes, with peacetime production switched to munitions, but if peace remained possible, then I'm not so sure that would have happened. With ten times the number of U-boats, the UK economy would have been under seige, the US had no appetite for a war in Europe anyway, and much fewer lend lease trucks, tanks and aircraft would have made across the Atlantic to bolster the Soviets losses in their darkest hours. Don't forget also, prior to invading Poland, appeasement rendered Hilters expansionism 'legal'. Opinon suggests that his failing economy forced Hitlers hand in 1939, and that waiting longer would have bankrupted Germany. Perhaps it would, but then, Germany did finance 5 more years of war. Wouldn't it have survived 2 years at peace? Thankfully it never happened that way, but it is still quite an uncomfortable notion to think about. In the early days, turning the tide to from crushing allied defeats to slim allied victories were often close run affairs. Ironically, I think the Japanese were doomed to defeat as soon as they started their war in the Pacific, but I am less certain that Germany's eventual defeat was as inevitable as we all now assume with the benefit of hindsight. Could Hitler have won the war? Dread to think, but he possibly had the chance to... possibly......

You'd never guess he'd been in the army. Not much!!!! Typical sergeant major. I remember once being threatened that we'd all be marched around the parade ground until our hairy little legs wore out, then put on a charge for arseing about on the parade ground!

I agree with all that's been said about TrackIR. It's an expensive gizmo for what it appears to be, right up until you start using it. It doesn't just give you another view to look at things, but puts you in the cockpit. You no longer sit at your desk looking at the world through a window. You can physically look seamlessly around the cockpit you're sitting in. You don't need your HUD display, you can lean forward and read the actual guages in the cockpit. You can actually use the iron sights, even the adlis sights on your machine guns just like you would in reality. On the deck, in a tail dragger, you can even look over the side and down the fuselage to see where you are taxiiing, pretty much the way you would in the real thing. - And all of that before you've even taken off.... It is expensive yes, but the best possible salesman are your own eyeballs, - just have go using it and you'll see exactly what all the fuss is about. There are a few aircraft it doesn't suit, but mainly CFS3 aircraft. Before I got my TrackIR, I was a crack shot with my TseTse's Molins cannon, but after trackIR, I couldn't hit a battleship. My enemies were safe. This was a disaster in my favorite aircraft!!! The sight was very 'flat', and you'd no perspective to 'centre' the target before you started to shoot. You can hose your tracer and adjust onto the target, but it wastes a lot of ammo, and when your Molins has only got 29 rounds - it just spoiled my fun. Less fun in a Mossie perhaps, but that was the exception. The TrackIR was here to stay. And in all of your OFF Aircraft, the TrackIR works absolutely beautifully. (The Mossie is a problem is with the Mossie cockpit, - not a defect with TrackIR). Even with the TseTse, you get used to it. Either by dead reckoning, or if your fingers are nimble enough a quick f9 to turn off trackir and f12 to centre your view and - it's back to the good old days sniping for submarines. It doesn't work in a gun turret either, but that doesn't matter for BhaH. If you're into flight sims, a TrackIR is virtually a necessity in my humble opinion....

Yes, I fully expect you will need to pay for P4, but P3 is still worth the money. There might be quite a wait for P4. Why is it worth it? Well, it's an excellent piece of software for one thing, but also, if you're new to combat flight sims, you're probably going to die, a lot, and may get frustrated. Sooner you start, sooner you learn, sooner you learn, more you survive, and the more you'll enjoy P4 when it does come out. With regards to downloadable distribution, speak to the developers. It's their call 100%, but bear in mind OFF is a 'cottage industry' if you like. I don't mean amateurish in any way, far from it, but just it isn't a multi national corporation you're dealing with. These guys are flesh and blood and have feelings. If they want to distribute their product in any way they like, then I for one respect their choice and right to do so. And last of all, if you get a DVD sent, Olham knows where you live and will put you on his map. (Just kidding, - he won't unless you want him too ).

Don't be squeamish about using the TAC display Javito. It isn't radar or omniponent sight beyond sight, but a device to compensate for your pixellated screen, which cannot be as good as real eyesight. The blips are not meant to be radar contacts giving you an unfair advantage, but something you could see in real life. At a distance, you may see an aircraft approaching, but it is too far away to tell what it is, or who's side it is on. The TAC shows you a white blip - an aircraft, but you don't know what it is. As you get nearer, and close enough to see the ensigns, the white blip will turn red or blue. It's not a cheat, but it is close enough to know who's side it is on. As it gets closer still, your labels will tell you what type of aircraft it is, and once close enough to read the serial No, your labels will tell you who's flying it. It's not meant to be radar, but a compensation for detail which pixels can't replicate. You will also notice that blips disappear in cloud, because you cannot see them. An as for spotting ground targets miles away, well you may not see them, but knowledge of their location could have been on a briefing map prior to your flight. You know they are there because you have them marked on your flightroute map. Having said all that, while quite clever and a reasonable effort, it does have inadequacies which do give you an advantage. You see everything every time, and don't 'miss aircraft which you don't spot. The TAC has a 100% spotting success which a real pilot wouldn't. Second, it works 360 degrees, even under your aircraft, letting you see what you couldn't possibly see. So, you'd have to concede it is an aid, but it's still not radar. You can if you like manipulate it. For example, you can obscure your rear vision by placing the TAC at the bottom of your screen with the lower half out of view. All you see then is what is infront of you. You constantly have to check your 6 for bandits on your tail. Night time dogfights are where TAC really comes unstuck. There was a CFS3 add-on which simulated night radar, and very successfully I think. It made your TAC display green, and all contact blips were black. You got a radar blip right enough, but you had to close in to identify it visually before you could attack it. It wasn't perfect, because the enemy could see in the dark and getting close was almost impossible, but in terms of atmoshere, it made missions incredibly tense. So, it's not perfect, but if your screen image is making it hard to fly and identify targets any other way, I'd use the TAC with a clear conscience. That's what it was meant for. Labels on and target cones are optional. They are true 'aids' and I would always try not to use them. Yet even then, if you don't have trackir, you are at a massive disadvantage without the target cone because you cannot 'follow' your target.

I know it's all relative, but you don't feel the G-forces throwing you about like those guys must have, and while as I say it's all relative, we often dismiss the speed of 90 to 100 mph as being a low speed, but even sticking your head out a car window at 100mph would stretch your concentration. I think those pilots are showing their mastery of their craft. When you see those aircraft spinning, the shadows tell you it really is an aircraft spinning! No CGI. As for the realism of the actions, or all round awareness or lack of it, that's a movie thing and happens all the time I think. Nearly every war film you see will feature mass groups of soldiers all hudled together to be in the camera shot, but if that actually happened on the battlefield, then one grenade, mine, trip wire or even one single machine gun would take out the whole squad. For a while it used to annoy me, but then again, they are actors, not soldiers, and I even wonder whether images of troops actually fighting or even just moving tactically, however mundane it appears, it is technically 'restricted' information. You never know who is watching it. I suspect a movie might be in trouble if it was too accurate or literal in it's content. It isn't just the military movies either, all those CSI programs we see with phorensic evidence has led to more and more people being alert enough to screw up the crime scene and make it harder to learn what happened. I won't name names, but there was a murder a while back, and the man who actually did it knew that if he was witnessed 'finding' the body of his girlfriend, then running up and holding it grief strikken, at a stroke, he invalidated any phorensic transfer of evidence which might otherwise have tied him to the murder scene. The evidence was all void and unuseable, but the witnesses were astute enough to find it fishy that he should near enough make a bee-line straight to the body - he couldn't risk somebody else finding it and preventing him transferring trace evidence. I'm sure that isn't the case with Hell's Angels, but movies are movies, and you're expected to use your imagination.

All new to me. Must confess I'd never heard of the film. I totally agree with Olham, the speed with which that flight forms up is incredible. Those guys weren't afraid to stick their aircraft into a vertical dive either. I think it's the complete control that impresses me. Made for the movies, but it still must be a valuable document to confirm how these pilots actually flew in combat. Good post Javito1986.

Sunday, 27th March, Melbourne, Australia. F1! Lovely.

Ha Ha Ha. Some folks are way ahead of you. This has been around as long as Jensen Button. Stop Press "F1 - BUTTON INJURED!" (One of the drivers is called Button).

Are we allowed a second category? Best live music? Runrig - Loch Lomond. Best live band ever. Never seen a video do it justice yet. Everybody, old and young, dancing on tables, stamping the feet, hanging from light rigs while belting out the tune, - the works. Ah, happy days...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm1BZnm-SIE