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I guess they are just more dramatic looking in the darker, over cast or morning, evening shots, but there does seem to be a difference in the contrasts, or something.. maybe it's the brighter lighting and the way shadows are handled, they just look better to me in darker lighting conditions. Wasn't meant as a criticism, just wondering what might be causing the difference.

I noticed they already have add ons and for only a few bucks, like Rise of Flight, but unlike ROF they are giving you a lot to start with.. a Curtiss P-40E 'Kittihawk' In an interview with the developer they mentioned a SDK being possibly available in the near future. WWI possibilities? It's interesting how smooth this sim is and my system isn't that terribly fast; even with all the action going on and the quite spetacular graphics and damage model that covers just about everything. I wonder if that is just a result of the smaller map area. Wings of War, the WWI flight "game" also was able to do this. Maybe some day there will be a way to load these map areas during a campaign while a dynamic data base that keeps track of what is going on in the other, off map areas and then loads the graphics as you approach or enter the area? Don't like dl purchases though, will wait for a disk and lower price and mean while there is lots in OFF to enjoy.

I've noticed too, that in stormy weather or dark early mornings or evenings the graphics look much better then on sunny days... wonder if that's something that can be improved upon?

No, that would be a serious copyright violation, to make money on mods that others have done. There is no way they would do that; they are apparenly giving you a XP and Vista compatible version of RB, which is also compatible with the newer graphics cards that it didn't support before. That should make it a lot easier to get running on newer rigs and operating systems, something that used to be extremely frustrating if you could even get it to work relyably. RedBaron 3d was the last version that allowed some serious mods to be added and is the only one that would seem to really be worth having. Red Baron I, I am assuming, is the old dos version and would only be fun to see how pac man flew a WWI sim.. seriously, it would really look dated. RedBaron II was the limited color, early Win98 game and was vastly improved by RB3d at the expense of all sorts of problems at first. But the mod crowd slowley learned how to mod it and over the years it was changed into quite a sim for its time. Anyway, as I said, the Hells Angels mod is the easiest and least troublesome of the mods for RB3d. There are others that you also might like to play around with, like the excellent Promised Land mod which Kessler used to sell, but I don't even know if its available anymore and I don't know how it would react with this new RB3d as it modified a lot of game settings that go way beyond graphics updates that Hell's Angels did. Would certainly be worth playing with if you never went though the Red BAron years, mainly to see where OFF is coming from. Many of us who worked on OFF are the original motley crew modders of Red Baron and we then tried to take the best of RB and put it in OFF, with huge improvements.. I hope you will agree.

Yes, you almost have to have a mod to really enjoy RB as it was junk straight out of the box. OVS put together Hell's Angels years ago using my OTE terrain mod and mods by himself and others and it's probably the best and easiest to install and use, and.. it's free. I just looked and I can't believe it, he still has the website up.. go here: http://www.hellsangels.firstflare.com/main.htm

If they really are compatible with XP and Vista, bravo.. only thing is, they are about 5 years too late. Fun to see those old pixilated screen shoots in 256 colors, but I just can't imagine going back to that level of sim when we have OFF available now that has almost everything Red Baron had to offer, but improved about 500% in almost all areas. Almost feels like going back to a dos game from a PC game years ago, or back to a Commadore game.

Thanks Dej! I should have mentioned that OilPaint01 was working on some very comprehensive spread sheets, “Aircraft, Aerodrome and Aces” several months ago. The first one covers all the British Fighter Squadrons from the Pilots Dossiers section of OFF and he had started on the French and Germans back in June. He copied the major values of information from the Pilots Dossiers section of OFF and arranged these items in date-order by squadrons showing the Aerodromes and Aces .Don't know how this panned out or how it could be used in OFF, but I think it would be really useful as other info could be easily added once in XL format. And if you are plan to post things for DL be sure to check with Winding Man or Polovsky first to see if what you are working on is something they are working on or possibly even something that might be incorporated into OFF in the future. Shredward can also be helpful for historic questions.

I got an email from a member inquiring about the maps.. The The original, large, paper maps which are the basis of the sets I first did were lent to me by Hugh Baldwin, "Bletchley," back in mid 2006. It was a project to bring some maps into the Over Flanders Fields W.W.I. flight simulation as well as supply maps for others interested in this period of W.W.I. history. The original maps were badly creased, ripped and worn and being very large I had to scan them in pieces, then paste it all together accurately in Photoshop and then restore it and enhance it. The completed maps were available for down load on Polovsky's Over Flanders Fields website for several years and on the Aerodrome Forum. I had always planned on doing a series of smaller cut up versions for printing on standard letter size paper so that a OFF player could more easily use them in game, have room for notes, etc. I have finally did that after the several requests after the release of OFF phase 3, "Between Heaven & Hell" last January 2009. I cut them up and added coordonates and borders so that the feeling is one of more authentic maps of the period. You can dl them here: Western Front 1915-16 Somme 1916 Dej and Olham got interested in mapping the dromes in March 2009 and started trying to locate them accurately. Chrispdm1 then got involved and started locating the coordinates using Google to accurately locate them and overlay them on my maps. I worked with him on the graphics end of it creating icons for the airfields and altering my earlier maps. He has done a tremendous amount of work on this starting with the British fields, then moving on to the French fields and Ted Harrity added his historical input to locating them over time during the war. Dirk also got involved helping Chrispdm1 and OilPainto1 also got involved. You can download Chrispdm1's annotations to my maps here: Flanders with dromes Somme with dromese and Chrispdm1's other maps he added dromes to: Verdun and Aisne/Marne As you can all see, a lot of work has gone into this by several people. I hope you all enjoy them. Once you start using a real paper map with a WWI flight sim, especially OFF ( ), you will be hooked! Thanks everyone for all your input and help on this project.

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Unless you build your own computer (I did this time and have XP Pro at home), you are pretty much going to get Vista, or now Windows 7. The computers at work, that I mentioned earlier, all have Vista 64 with a free update to 7, but I'm also going to wait awhile till I know that 7 isn't having any problems. On my home built with XP I'm happy and won't change probably, untill I find some reason to need drastically more memory, or unless I find some other reason to upgrade to 7.

Hehe.. ya, if there really were that many nag screens I wouldn't put up with it at all. I just get one on the Vista 64 at work, I hit the yes button and I'm done with it.

Found this interesting discussion over at Tom's hardware and this post in particular about UAC on Vista which I too thought was just a hassle, at first. aviadra 09-18-2008 at 02:03:13 PM Show message - 0 + At first UAC can surprise you, and there for annoy you. Y would I need to confirm the action I just asked for. And I’m no exception to this line of thought. However, I almost immediately remembered how Linux’s sudo command works and realized… aha!… Microsoft is trying to give the windows user the functionality advocated for YEARS by Linux fans. Not only that, but its actually doing it better then linux does for the most part. That is because in linux u usually only get an access denied and u need to re-issue the command using the sudo command, in windows with UAC u get prompted. A lot more information about y UAC is a good thing and actually helps to keep windows secure, even for administrators, can be found in Marks Russinovich's presentation about it in MSs TechNet site: http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spot [...] FE86205DB5 For the people who don’t know who mark is, Mark is the creator of the famous ERD commander and the sysinternals utility suite. Aviad Raviv (MCSE)

This has got to be a joke.. right?.. r i g h t? .. why not just join the Army.

I've got XP Pro SP3 at home and have had very few problems with it. At work I was the buyer for our computers for our now showroom and found some great deals on some Dell's A couple of laptops and a desktop that I use for graphics work (they all include free upgrades to Windows 7). The desktop has Vista 64bit and I began to find out how incompatible it is with non current programs. I couldn't use my two year old image browser on it, had to update that. I also had planned on running my Photoshop CS2 at work and at home (that's legal as long as you don't use them at the same time). I found out that CS2 is not Vista 64 compatible, so I ended up buying CS3 and installing it on both computers, then sold the CS2 version on Ebay. You have to deactivate it first before selling it or the next owner will not be able to run it. Anyway, I found that many older programs are apparently not compatible with Vista 64, but I've heard Windows 7 64 will be much better.. I'm going to wait to see too.

I wish I was good at everything .. most of the historical details I have to give credit to Shredward.. our "Historical Genius."

Yep

Very, Very nice, great work!

Nice work, guys, looks great!!!

What has the old Red Baron Hell's Angels Website come down too? Shame on you, Otto!

Hehe.. well, it's actually got some pretty neat Hell's Angels memorabilia here.

Good story and nice to see some Entente and "babes" flying about.

Right on.. a standard painters trick, in almost every studio, is to have a mirror handy, because you get blinded to things some times. But after working for awhile, if you look at a reflection of your work you suddenly can see where problems are. Also, putting something away for awhile, then looking at it a few days later, you have a fresh look at it and can see where you need improvement, or where mistakes are.

It's a nice drawing, but your perspective for shortening is off.. the right side is too long, not receding with distance so it makes it look like the wings on the right are longer then the ones on the left and the plane looks unbalanced, not symmetrical.

I did about 99.9% of all the Nieuport 11's, 16's and 17's in OFF, and I think they all have my name on them, so it's pretty obvious. I also drew most of the French Escadrille emblems from scratch, based on very sketchy historical photos in many cases, or I redrew others interpretations of what they thought they might look like with my own approach to what I thought they might look like. Thanks everyone for your cooperation with all of us who have done skinning here, a lot of work goes into these. A huge part is mapping out how each contact point joins the skin areas and the only way to do it is laborious checking in flight till everything matches up to the 3d models. Then research and mapping to try to get everything just right, but it's also tremendously rewarding when it's done. And those who created the 3d models also need a lot of recognition for what they have done over the years and how much they have improved.

This weekend I created a pilot in a bomber division.. have never done it before. Anyway, got assigned to Esc Sop 5 out of Corcieux in Alsace flying Sopwith 1-1/2 Strutters during the 3rd Ypres battle period.. pretty exciting stuff. I have no idea how to handle this plane.. I was totally confused about how I should respond to other fighter planes.. should I try to position myself like a fighter and turn attack, or keep things steady and rely on the guy behind me and not jink the plane around, or should I try to hit F8 to take things into my own hands.. but then, who's flying the plane? I didn't spend too much time with it, only had a bit of time Sunday night to play around, and managed to get almost two hours in and return to base and land in one piece, though I over shot the runway and managed to stop between two hangers.. luckily. Please, don't everyone laugh at me. Anyway, any suggestions and directions on how to use the keys to control things would be greatly appreciated. Or is there some good posts on this that I might have missed? Thanks, guys.