Bullethead

That's what the photos show. They'd stand up in the cockpit to fire that way, and crouch down to fire upwards. That's why the Scraff ring had those angled brackets to raise and lower the guns relative to the ring. You'd jack them up to fire upwards, so it was easier to crouch down behind them, and lower them to fire downwards, so you didn't have to stand up so high. This was an advantage over the German mounts, which don't seem to have had any height adjustment like this. OTOH, as I understand things, the Scarff ring only allowed the guns to pivot in elevation; to traverse, you had to turn the whole ring. The German mounts, however, seem to have allowed the gun to pivot in both directions, plus the later ones had the rotating ring as well. So perhaps the German mounts were easier to follow crossing targets with? This all brings up the subject of the fields of fire of human-controlled guns. These definitely ain't the same in all OFF planes (besides being now rather more limited than what the AI can do). For instance, the Fee's guns can be pointed up to about 80^, the highest elevation I've yet seen in any plane. I think they all should have that. Most human guns are stuck with 45^ elevation. Also, while the DFW's gun can point forward a little, the RE8's can't quite reach straight out from the side.

The grayed texture has the suffix "_s", which stands for "specular". It's used by some planes to change the relative amount of shininess between different parts, such as bare metal cowlings compared to drab OD wings. As such, only a few planes in OFF use it. The "_s" suffix tells the game to apply the specular skin in addition to the regular "_t" texture skin. While the "_s" file might be useful to make a template from, I don't think we can exploit this feature ourselves. I think only those planes set up originally with the "_s" file will use it, and it will be used on our skins for those planes whether we want it or not. I think your best bet really is to start from scratch if you're going for true realism. While the OFF skins are very good, most of them don't have the ribs line up on the upper and lower wing surfaces, nor have ribs at the inboard corners of the ailerons like all planes really had. Also, panel lines don't always meet up around the fuselage from bottom to side to top. So I find it best to ignore all ribs and most panel lines and position them all myself. All I ever use from an original skin are some detail parts like the wood grain of the prop. When positioning the structural stuff like this, I have a blank white background, then the original skin as the next layer up. Then I make a bunch of layers for different parts of the plane and trace the appropriate original ribs and panel lines on them in some bright color (usually blue). These blue lines are just templates for later use. Then I make a new blank white later between these templates and the original skin, and cut holes in it so things like the prop show through. I save this and see what it looks like in the game. The result is an all-white airplane with my easily-seen template lines all over it. Then I spend the rest of the week tweaking my template lines to where I think they should be. The result is a multi-layered template for drawing the real ribs and panel lines for my actual skin. The way I do ribs (see attached pic), I actually fill in the spaces between my template lines (on a separate layer) with any solid color, leaving the spaces under the template blank. Then I use one of several types of 3D shadow effects on the solid areas to turn them into the ripples in the canvas. These shadows are all slightly darker than before, so the blank areas under the template lines (which are where the ribs really are) are brightest, because they're the highest points. Once you've got the rib shadows made like this, they're useful on all subsequent skins so I consider them part of the template. Depending on the color of the paint, you can move the rib shadows above or below the paint layer, and vary the opacity of both paint and shadows, to get the desired effect.

I agree with SRC: before taking a plane up in the campaign, go into QC and firing off a few bursts before starting the engine, to see where the tracer goes in relation to some part of the plane visible from your seat. The take off and try strafing stuff about the airfield. But when all else fails, get in CLOSE.

The changes to tail gun field of fire seem only to apply to AI gunners. I just checked the guns myself and the field of fire is still the same as when I used them pre-HitR. I was fighting DFWs yesterday. When I'm at the guns, their field of fire is as follows: Elevation: From perhaps -2^ to +45^. Traverse: If 0^ is straight ahead, then from about 80^ to 280^ (about in line with the rear interplane strut). However, with AI gunners, the DFW's rear guns can shoot to within at least 45^ of the nose, perhaps even further around forward. I don't know--I made my initial pass from their 10 o'clock level and thereafter was behind them. Also, the guns can depress WELL below the horizontal, to perhaps -60^. This is the key part, because now you can't hide under their tails so easily. Also, the range of AI gunners has increased. I noticed this the other day while flying my Fee. They used to open fire at 200 yards, but now start about 260 yards. This is without changing any AI shooting Workshop options from pre-HitR. I consider all these changes as welcome improvements. It always bugged me before that tail gunners didn't have anywhere near the field of fire of their real counterparts, which made it way too easy to bag 2-seaters from below. From photos I've seen, even the early field expedient gun mounts (such as in the attached pic, of an originally unarmed Alb B.I(Ph) ) were capable of shooting well downward, and most factory mounts could shoot well forward between the wings. The Scarff ring and the later German and Austrian mounts had 360^ traverse so could shoot straight ahead upwards, and I'm sure they all were capable of much more than 45^ elevation. Now we just need the same fields of fire for human gunners

I assure you that I'm acting on purely humanitarian grounds, doing my little bit to help in the recovery of Europe from this terrible war. After all, what will be the point of rebuilding the towns and cities afterwards if there's nobody to live in them? But my task is colossal, I'm afraid. I doubt my best efforts will make much of a dent in the butcher's bill in just today's newspaper, let alone all the others, but we must do what we can. And time marches on, so it's best to get started on the project at once. Perhaps you'd be interested in joining my noble cause?

This is always the case even today, but especially so in in WW1. I've read many times where some planes were built by numerous companies, and some companies made consistently better planes of the same type than others. The planes from 1 factory were usually faster, or stronger, or lighter, or whatever, or some combination, whereas other factories made planes that were slower, heavier, weaker, etc. This even though they were all working from the same drawings. Therefore, the A Flight aces always got the planes from the good factory and the noobs in B Flight always got the planes from the bad factories. On top of this, no 2 pieces of wood of the same dimensions ever weigh the same, or are equally strong. Thus, even amongst planes from the same "good" factory, individual planes were better than others. This is why pilots with enough seniority had personal planes. They'd find one that flew better, due to its unique combination of pieces of wood, and would claim it as their own. RHIP. So to me, if a plane flies within +/- 10 percent of what my books say it could do, I'm happy. After all, who knows which factory it came from?

Congrats on your narrow escape. I really hate it when my motor's acting up like that, because (although I've never seen it happen yet), I'm sure it'll catch fire if I run it too long. Anyway, the thing about being put on the very next op after this is exactly why I use manual time advance. Everybody else in your squadron takes leave periodically, even when all leave should be cancelled due to heavy losses and high-intensity operations. But for some reason, you never get any leave. Thus, the only chance you get to relax is when you make a forced landing. I look forward to such mishaps, because there's always a farmer's daughter and a haystack in the vicinity. I advance time a couple of days to the point where her father comes at me with a pitchfork, and then hoof it to civilization, find a phone, and call for a ride back to base .

OvS- EEK! I was watching the weather channel and thanking my lucky stars I no longer drive 18-wheelers. I saw enough of your yankee weather and lake effect snow to last me my life. Von Paulus: Magnitude 6?!?!?!?!? Ouch, that's enough to break stuff and kill people, at least if they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hope you and yours came through OK.

Thanks. I'll shut up now

How about this idea? If it's impossible to have an either/or option on the personal skin or the player-selected fuel load, why not have the campaign system automatically fill your tank a variable amount based on the length of the assigned mission? Just enough to get there, spend the required time at the objective (if any), get home, and say a 10-15 minute reserve. IOW, what I always used to put in there myself. All the pieces for this seem to be in place already. The campaign system used to estimate how far you could fly for a given amount of fuel, so it seems to me you could automate this process. Instead of going with max, the game would set your fuel to equal the round trip mission distance plus 15-30 miles, depending on how long you're supposed to patrol the objective. That's what I always did myself before HitR. So, the end result would be that the player still can't adjust his fuel load and would still have a personal skin. However, he'd have a light plane that flies well (at least the same as they did before HitR), and nobody'd be able to take too little fuel to do the job, which Shred apparently thought I was implying in an earlier post.

I make games for a living myself, so I'm painfully aware of the "Law of Unintended Consequences". You spend a lot of time and effort not only addressing customer requests and suggestions, but adding a lot of new stuff over and above. And then you find out something in there busted something important, and it's almost as much work to fix as all the new stuff you just made. That seems to be the case here, so I'm not expecting a quick fix. But I would like to hold out hope for a fix at some point down the road. However, when I see devs saying they think it's realistic to force full tanks on you no matter how short your mission, I'm led to conclude that they don't plan on addressing this issue at all. Thus, I feel obliged to change their minds by offering evidence that WW1 planes did indeed fly with less-than-full tanks in situations where they didn't need all of it, and to show that this was most of the time in real life, and ALL of the time in the campaign system.

It's been a long time since I read that book; I need to find it again. But IIRC, these guys were getting way more endurance and height out of their Quirks than the factory specs due to using an unconventional flight profile. As I understand it, instead of the conventional up-across-down profile, all under power, they instead went up-up-glide. The Quirk only had fuel for like 2 hours or so and a normal ceiling (given the conventional profile) of about 10000 feet. However, it took the Quirk 1 hour or so to reach 10000 feet, by which time it was rather lighter and could be gotten up higher. So if they kept on climbing, they could reach about 16000 feet in about 2 hours, at which point they'd be about 15-20 miles behind the lines and out of gas. Then they'd just glide back home however far on their side of the lines, which took another hour or 2. Thus, they ended up doing 3-4 hour missions out of fuel for only 1/2 to 2/3 that time. They could get away with this because in those early days, they usually didn't meet any aerial opposition. But be all this as it may, the thing that seems to be getting lost in the shuffle here is that fuel load was selected by mission requirements. The above, and the other examples of long flights cited in this thread, obviously had to take full tanks because their mission called for it. But IMHO these are rather extreme examples. If you could do the job with less fuel, or if the nature of the job demanded light weight, then they certainly took less fuel. It's always been the case, from WW1 right up until today, that you take just enough fuel to get there and back, plus a small reserve. Any more is not only a performance-killer and waste of a limited resource, but also limits how much other mission-related stuff you can take, like bombs, ammo, wireless sets, photographic plates, etc. The whole point of doing the mission is to get the most mission-related stuff to the objective so you can do the most good there. It thus makes absolutely zero sense militarily to carry fewer bombs to the target because instead you're carrying twice or thrice as much fuel as you need to make the trip. And consider the German fighters in Bloody April. IIRC, those guys were doing about 5-6 interception sorties per day. Given the time needed to service the planes between hops, none of these sorties could have lasted much more than 1 hour or they wouldn't have been able to fit so many into the available daylight. Also, being fairly close to the lines and intercepting from the ground, rapid climbing and high speed were of the essence. It's inconceivable to me, given the high flight performance needed for the job and the short duration of the flights, that the Germans flew with anything approaching full tanks in this situation. But back to the game...... I think it fairly safe to say assume that OBD made the planes with the correct size and placement of fuel tanks, and that their fuel consumption is about as close to accurate as the game engine allows. I also think it's pretty certain that gasoline has the correct density. The problem, IMHO, lies with full tanks being incompatible with the campaign system. Normally, I use "Optional Flight" when I get missions such as produced my screenshot above, because I consider them unrealistic. Almost all WW1 squadrons (fighter and 2-seater) were tied in direct support to specific ground units (armies, corps, and artillery regiments), so flew all their missions in that ground unit's sector doing jobs for that ground unit. Hence, flying so far along the lines, across several army boundaries, didn't happen much if at all. I just did this mission to illustrate how much excess fuel 100% gives you even on about as long a mission as the campaign will ever give you. But IMHO this sort of mission shouldn't arise as frequently as it does in the campaign. So, the realistic OFF missions are those that are mostly perpendicular to the front nearest your base. Few of these go very far behind the lines. Plus, regardless of overall mission length or how close the objective is to home, we're never asked to patrol there for more than 15-20 minutes. IOW, our realistic mission requirements don't call for very much fuel at all. Now, it we were given campaign missions to patrol for a couple of hours, or to fly very far across the lines, there'd be a need for more fuel. But as shown in my "test" flight above, even these probably wouldn't call for full tanks, given the endurance most planes have. And given that in WW1 fuel loads were mission-dependent, not being able to select just the fuel needed to do the job would still be quite annoying. And let's not forget the "fun" aspect in our quest for realism and immersion. Games are entertainment so are supposed to be fun. If they're not fun, then folks don't play or buy them. And right now, OFF is not nearly as much fun as it was prior to HitR, at least not for me. I consider it a lot of fun to stunt around and engage in wild dogfights in a light plane. This is no longer possible, not even in QC, so that takes away a large part of my enjoyment of the game right there. I also do not consider it fun, no matter how realistic it is, to have to spend an hour or 2 circling around far to the rear while slowly, painfully, clawing my way up to operational altitude and burning off some, but never enough, of my unnecessary and fun-killing fuel. Plus, there's the time factor in real life. Before HitR, I would take just enough fuel to do the job, just like in real life. Then I could warp through the boring parts because my plane was light enough to reach operational height in the number of waypoints the mission gave me for circling the airfield. This is NOT the case any more, because climb rates are so reduced by all the excess fuel. Thus, to get anywhere near a survivable altitude before reaching the lines, you have to do a BUNCH of extra circling in real time. Just because the DH4s of the Independent Force had to spend 1.5 hours circling over their base to be able to cross the lines at 14000 feet (before heading 70-100 miles into Hunland) doens't mean I want to experience this myself when playing OFF. As things stand at present, I'm not enjoying HitR much at all. The planes are too heavy to be fun to fly, it takes way too much of my available time to get up to decent altitude (and even this time isn't enough to make the planes light enough to be fun). Then, when I finally get there, the AI either doesn't want to fight or does so too ineptly to be challenging (but that's a separate subject). Even the DiD campaign is now more of a job than an adventure, because but for the obligation I made to it, I doubt I'd be flying OFF at all right now.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but you might want to check your math on that. That is not my experience at all. The Fee has a ceiling of 11000 feet, according to all the references I can find. OBD apparently thinks the same, because that's what the game says it will do. And I remember way back when OFF 1st came out, the Fee couldn't get that high even with empty tanks, and you all fixed that in one of the early patches. Well, now we're back to that situation again. The Fee will not come close to its real life ceiling with anything over about 40% fuel. And all other planes I've flown since getting HitR are equally afflicted. Climb rate is diddly divided by squat, ceiling is much reduced, and you always feel like you're on the verge of a stall so are afraid to maneuver. And when you do try something more aggressive than a 45^ bank, you either do stall or lose so much altitude you might as well have stalled. The only thing that saves the player at all is that the AI is so non-aggressive, even with the patched "historical" setting, that it doens't take advantage of the player's discomfiture. The attached pic is what happened on my last mission with 20 Squadron. Note that is was about as long a mission as the OFF campaign ever gives you, AND that I added a lot of distance to this with long detours both going and coming. Despite this, I still landed with over 50% fuel remaining, after over 1.5 hours in the air. and having full throttle all the way. As I said earlier, you can do any OFF campaign mission with 45-50% tops, except in those early-war featherweight planes. I did the detour on ingress because I could not get above 4000 feet at the lines, despite doing all the circling waypoints to start with. When I got to the lines, my ROC with 88% fuel aboard was less than 100fpm. IMHO, this is absurd. And note that even though this was an airfield attack, I didn't load any bombs because of previous experience with the Fee and 100% fuel. So I followed the lines south, gradually inching upwards. By the time I got down near Arras, I could tell I'd have to pump bilges soon so turned to the target even though I was still only a bit over 1/2 of my plane's real life ceiling. Forgive me if I have trouble seeing that anything like this would have happened in real life.

They still sound pretty damn loud from in front of them

Damn. And here I was blaming the blurriness and all on being drunk, yet the above pic is crystal clear to me. Guess I'll have to try this myself

I'm afraid you misunderstood my point. Everybody in the flight would take X amount of fuel, being what was needed for the trip there and back, the time spent at the objectice, and a reserve of about 15 minutes. Any more was known to be both inhibiting to aircraft performance and therefore likely to result in the plane's loss, plus would do nothing towards the war effort except help cremate the pilot carrying it and thereby slightly reduce the disease potential of the mud in which the PBIs had to live. I urge you to read Independent Force, about the IAF. It expressly states several times, and implicitly states it dozens of times (on the assumption that you've read the introductory chapters) that IAF planes carried no more fuel than what was needed to get there and back, so they could maximize both bombload on the way in and speed and agility on the way out. So, I envision your conversation above going rather differently, as follows: Brigadier Whosittithattherighthandofgod: "I'm so sorry, Lt. Fodder, but I'm afraid I can only let you take 35% fuel on this patrol. The Sopwith Pup can easily get there and back with room to spare on that amount, so there's no need hazarding any more than that to the Hun bullets, eh? Haven't you heard how many tankers the U-boats have sunk this month? As a result, what petrol we do have available is mostly earmarked for the army's trucks, bringing up supplies for the next big "push", which will surely break through this time. We in the RFC must get by on the spillage, as it were. Besides, the more petrol you take, the more likely you are to be shot down. Do you have ANY IDEA how much money His Majesty's Government has spent on training, equipping, and transporting you already? Now you want to take reckless risks with that investment, not to mention the cost of the aircraft that shares your fate? I should transfer you to the infantry for such disregard for His Majesty's coin!"

I've never had any trouble seeing them. If you can't, perhaps your eyes aren't really good enough to be a pilot? Hmmm? Slipped the medical examiner a little gratuity, eh? Don't worry; that'll be our little secret.... (nudge nudge, wink wink) as long as I find a little gratuity every week myself, hmm? Shall we say a case of schnapps every Saturday? Hmmm? Excellent. It's a business doing pleasure with you . Seriously, IIRC, in the override settings you posted a while back, you had your chats disabled. But if you do that, then you can't tell which weapon you have selected. So perhaps when you think you've got the flares selected, you really don't?

Forget player vs. AI performance for the moment. My big disappoint with the current fuel situation is the loss of the feeling that I'm flying something made of sticks and canvas. What I like most about WW1 sims is the feeling they give me of having as much freedom of motion as a bird. Float like a buzzard, dive like a hawk, and turn like a swift. Of course, this depends on the particular plane, but even the Fee gives you some of that if not overloaded. That's what makes just barnstorming in free flight so much fun for me. But now it feels like I've got concrete shoes on. Instead of flying being freedom, it's now work to get any altitude, and all the joyful aerobatics have to be deferred until the plane is light enough to do them, hours after takeoff. I don't have that much patience, so my barnstorming is at an end right now

Siggi- I appreciate your asking our opinion, so here's my VERY LIMITED opinion at this point. I am just now starting an "apples to apples" comparison as best I can, HitR 1.46. That means flying Fees with 20 Squadron in Bloody April, because I've done that MANY times. I might have flown other planes more since, but never so many times in the same squadron. Thus, I think I have a good impression of what the old AI did. I am doing this test with the "realistic" AI. I have only so far done 1 sortie. In this one, my flight of 5 Fees was bounced while still having 95% fuel by 3 higher Alb D.IIIs. We shot down 2 of them for no damage to any of our planes. See my lasted in the "Reports from the Front" thread for details. This is, of course, as yet an entirley indadequate sample size, but already the contrast between the new "realistic" AI and the old one is extreme. In the old days, I'd have been lucky to have been the sole survivor of my flight. That guy I posted in the "Best Dead Pilots" thread had a harder life than most, but only because he kept surviving horrible crashes. Most of my tries at this with the old AI only lasted 5 sorties or so, and were always shot up to some extent if they got in a fight. Anyway, at this point I'm not particularly impressed with the "realistic" AI. But it's early days. We'll see what MvR and his boys have in store for me. I'm sure I'll meet him eventually if I live long enough--I nearly always have before. And if this 1 hop is anything to go on, I shouldn't have much problem (besides how gust affect fully fueled Fees) living that long.

Forgive me, but I entirely disagree. I think fuel was selected based on the mission. If you were going to be out for a long time and needed it, then sure. But if your mission wasn't very long, then I just don't see it happening. First off, everybody knew even back then that weight hurt performance, and performance was key. There are enough documented cases of pilots modifying their planes to reduce weight and drag (such as Albert Ball lowering his seat) to make that clear. Second, none of the Europeans involved, and not even the US at that time, had as much gasoline as they wanted. By 1918, the Germans were running extremely low on it. Excess fuel above mission requirements is wasted if it ends up just helping burn a shot-down plane. And third, it's known that WW1 bombers, just like bombers ever since, have adjusted their fuel and bomb load depending on the range to the target. The closer the target, the more bombs and the less fuel, same as today. I'd be willing to bet that some WW1 planes, just as some later planes, were incapable of flying (at least off the typical runway) with full loads of both fuel and bombs. Why? Because they were never intended to carry all of both. Now, in the campaign, we're never supposed to be on patrol for more than about 18 minutes, even at objectives within 10 miles of home drome. And even for targets further way, most times (at least in 1917 and later) you don't even reach the objective before getting into a fight and either being damaged or using all your ammo. Except for the early, light-weight planes, most planes have WAY more fuel capacity than they need for most missions. For instance, flying the DFW in the DiD campaign, I've bombed targets on the Channel coast about as far from home as possible. Yet before HitR, there was no need to load more than about 40-45% fuel because that not only covered the trip, but included a 20-30 mile reserve. There's also the issue of how weight affects players compared to the AI. From what I've seen, the AI is not affected to the same extent by the weight of fuel as the player is. Right now, when you meet the enemy, you've still got about 95% aboard most times, and you fly like a complete pig while they're zipping around unimpeded. So I submit that forcing players to fly with 100% only makes sense if there are drastic changes to the campaign. First off, missions would have to require much more air time than they do now. Second, the amount of air activity would have to be MUCH less than at present, so you're not always bumping into the enemy 10-15 minutes after taking off, before you've had a chance to burn off much fuel. And third, the AI planes would also have to be burdened with the weight of their 100% fuel loads, because if I meet them so soon, they can't have flown very far themselves. At this point, I could care less about having my own, personal skin. I'd gladly trade that for the ability to vary my fuel load again.

Hmm, after installing this and firing it up, it appears we're still stuck with 100% fuel. There's no longer any spinners to play with fuel and ammo, just a box that says what your estimated range is. But while you can select the text in this box, you can't change it at all, and it stays the same even when you do Optional Flight.

Bravo!

When I ran OFF the 1st time after installing HitR, it said the N17 wasn't available in any squadron that should have had it. However, when I quit the game and restarted it, all was fine.

They work just like bombs. First you use "select weapon" to make them active, then "fire selected weapon" to drop them. You just can't see them without an external view.

Now that this poll has been up a while, what I find most interesting is that there are still zero votes for going back to the pre-HitR AI. Even the new AI's detractors apparently think there's enough improvement in it to keep at least some of the features. So, on the whole, I can't escape the conclusion that most agree that the HitR AI is a net improvement on what went before in many areas. True, there are areas where it's worse, and these can be fairly important. However, I think we should all appreciate the work OBD put into addressing our previous gripes, and look forward to the tweaks in the upcoming patch.