Blackdogkt

I agree with the general sentiment about RoF, but we need to be fair as well. Even though i'm one of the most hated persons on SimHQ's RoF board, that doesn't mean i can't be fair about the game. It's got some great promise and not much else going for it at this point, but i generally call them as i see them and i don't mind getting flak for it. Couple of things i picked up skimming through this thread that are inacurrate: First of all, when people want to fly in multiplayer you don't need to have bought the same planes. The external models are included in free updates, it's the cockpits and the ability to fly them that you pay for. So, if 10 people only have the basic Spad and D.VII plane package, one has the Se5a add on and another has the Albatross add on, they can still fly in the same server. That's probably the only good thing to come out of the whole "always online" deal, since it allows you to choose which aircraft you want to buy. However, it could be done on user demand and not be automatic/forced, plus the fact that the pricing might be steep (no indication of add on pricing yet), could backfire. Say an IL2 addon was what, 10-20 aircraft? Well, if RoF can deliver half of them at the same price i would call it fair enough, due to the increased workload in making newer models for faster PCs. For example, Oleg Maddox said that making a flyable for his upcoming battle of britain sim takes twice as much as making one for IL2, so something's got to give. I think being able to get 5-10 add on planes for a next-gen sim with $30 or so would be cool, even if i have to download each one separately for RoF Another thing is about the servers. The authentication/account/multiplayer-browsing servers are not only in Russia. There are servers in the US and in Europe as well, even though there's still no hint of a European publisher. The trouble with the registrations was because a lot of people tried to do it at once and a lot of automatic emails were generated for them. So, a couple of internet providers thought it was a spam attack and blocked it. Not their fault directly, but it still goes to show that the online requirement simply injects a healthy dose of unreliability in a more or less ok product. It's not bad but it's not great either and if they have a couple more incidents it could very much kill the game before it takes off. Last but not least, merits and flaws of the AI depend on who you ask. It's said that the AI varies, with some being rookies and some being very good. I also see that most people who are used to flying WWII sims think the AI is very well done. Why? Simply because RoF has only late war fighters at this stage and these are also of the energy fighter variant. That means that if the AI is good, it won't try to turn. It will use climbs, dives and extensions while relying on the unstable nature of your crate to avoid getting hit. If you combine this with the short performance envelop of these birds compared to a WWII setting, it simply boils down to what people here described...the enemy flying more or less straight, away from you and repositioning for another attack while you can't hit him because he has managed to put enough distance between you, plus your nose bobbing up and down makes an accurate shot impossible at that range. The fact that they don't turn as much doesn't mean they are bad, it means they are clever because that's what Spads do, hit and run. On the other hand, i saw a youtube video of a balloon attack and the player gets bounced by Noops (i think), these didn't only turn but stuck on his six for minutes on end. I guess we'll just have to keep going with a wait and see approach. I'm not happy for all the trouble they faced, but i really like how the "hush-hush" forum squad that tried to bury every possible problem under the carpet has disappeared under the closest rock. Who knows, maybe if Neoqb has a couple of similar incidents they'll be forced to opt for a different copy protection method.

Since Spartans have been mentioned, we can call this the "Thermopylae effect" On a serious note, i've been to the site of that battle, it's on the main highway connecting northern Greece to Athens. After all those years of soil depositing and increasing land mass the area is not that small nowadays, it's certainly enough to maneuver around 300 men who are standing in close formation. However, judging from a monument in my home town that was built right next to the sea 500-600 years ago and now stands dozens of meters from it, maybe that effect is so pronounced that indeed it was a very narrow pass back then and millenia of soil deposits formed the rest of the plateau. There's also quite hilly terrain opposite the sea bank as well. First time i passed through that spot on a bus it didn't really register with me what a statue of a superhumanly tall hoplite was doing right next to the highway, but then i immediately remembered my history lessons from elementary school. The Persian wars was my favorite subject :yes:

I like that one too. I think this was in the original Red Baron, not sure about Red Baron II/3D though.

I skimmed through this topic so excuse me if it's already been mentioned. A nice feature that i miss from older flight sims is the ability to apply for a transfer. That could work on a percentage based roll of the dice, the higher your rank and kill score the better your chances of a transfer being approved. Of course, it could include all sorts of different modifiers. For example, it would be unlikely for a transfer to be approved if there was a major assault planned in the next few days and the need for aircrews were high. In such a case, being an accomplished ace would make you a major asset and that would work against your chances of getting transferred out of a hot sector.

Interesting topic. As for the arms race making it futile to wage wars in the future, the only way this would happen if everyone had similar weaponry. That's why the cold war superpowers didn't have a nuclear exchange, sadly mutually assured destruction is the only reliable deterrence. I think that as long as one side has a technology advantage in arms wars will continue to happen, no matter the advanced state of weapons. Just look at casualty figures during the early part of war in Iraq leading up to the occupation of the country. Coalition might have lost a few thousand, the Iraqis lost hundreds of thousand in the first few days. The advanced state of weaponry didn't prevent the war from happening, simply because one side had such a huge advantage. The main counterbalancing act to a technological advantage is irregular warfare and a disregard for own casualties. This is tied to a lot of other factors though, mainly social. A western society is unwilling to accept large numbers of friendly casualties in comparison to a less developed country, simply because of economic affluence and the higher standard of living that goes along with it. In general, this approach of "winning after losing" has proven to work through the ages by making it costly for the opponent, not so much in terms of relative bodycounts, tactical wins or economy but in terms of what one's social background is willing to consider as an acceptable loss. That's why it's not good to get your opponent in a corner where he's got nothing to live for and nothing to lose, a man with no family, no prospects of a peaceful life or economical well being, not even access to amenities considered essential to us like running water or electricity is so backed up that will probably disregard any notion of self-preservation. He's lost anyway, so he might as well risk dying if that means he has even a slim chance of getting rid of a foreign occupation force. That disregard for personal safety (within reasonable boundaries, not a la charge of the light brigade worthless massacre of manpower) makes each soldier that much more effective. The whole approach is something like this..."we can't stop you from occupying our territories, but we'll make sure you bleed dry while trying to keep them". The Russians did it against Napoleon, the Soviets against Wermacht, the Vietkong and North Vietnam against the US (where the US won probably 100% of the battles in a tactical aspect but still lost the war), the Afghans against the Soviets, and now it's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan against the coalition forces. All in all, a very interesting and often overlooked aspect of warfare.

Is Anthony Hopkins making an appearance?

I know what you mean, i used to play EvE online a few years ago and stayed with it for 2-3 years. Let me tell you, that's one of the most complex and punishing MMO games ever, so i can certainly relate to the whole virtual rivalry theme. In EvE online when you kill a rival spaceship (it's a sci-fi setting) you can loot the wrecks. The other guy's gear (called modules in EvE, that could be from armor repairers to guns/missile launchers to electronic warfare jammers) is either destoyed in the explosion, or it survives in the wreck to be looted and he is left drifting in his escape pod. If you want to and you're fast enough, you can even kill the escape pod, which means the guy is dead and he has to use his ingame money to buy a new clone, clones are more expensive the more skill points you have to simulate the need for "smarter" clones as you advance in knowledge and so on, plus if your pod is killed you loose any cybernetic implants (these enhance your character stats). You can see how hard core competitive such a game can be, at some point it was a very popular practice to ransom rival pods The difference though between all that and RoF is that such games tend to be marketed as MMO environments right from the start. A user knows the risks before decinding whether he wants to play or not, plus it's usually subscription based software with an all-inclusive flat rate, save for the odd expansion here and there. In EvE online even expansions are covered by the subscription price, with 15 Euros per month you have access to every patch, new ship and expansion they release so the playing field is kept more or less level. With RoF it's somewhat different, a product we had been following for a few years suddenly got a connectivity requirement out of the blue and getting new toys for your arsenal is something that's done on a "per airframe" basis. The only good thing about this is that you can skip buying aircraft you're not interested in, while a multi-plane add on pack like the ones IL2 had will charge you a set price for the whole package. The bad thing is that maybe 2-3 stand alone RoF aircraft might equal the price of such an add on with double the flyable airframes Then it's also the matter of specialisation. MMO games are specialised platforms and they tend to introduce new content incrementally to keep their subscribers playing and paying. A WWI flight sim can't do that in the same manner that a fantasy based game can, there's only a finite number of realistic and acceptable stuff you can release as add ons, wether they are aircraft or a M1911 Colt .45 to take pot shots at the enemy when your machine guns run out of ammo. The problem with RoF's business model is mostly just that, it lacks specialised focus. It combines the gameplay aspects of a non-persistent world based on session gameplay (a session can be a mission, either single player or online in a dogfight server) while trying to imitate the pricing policy of strictly MMO games and not quite doing that either. Those games however have stuff that RoF lacks, mainly a persistent online game world where stuff happens around the clock and usually a flat rate charge for the service rendered with unlimited access to any new content. RoF tries to institute incremental payments but it lacks the all-inclusive access to new content or an MMO-type world that would make such payments widely acceptable to a bigger consumer base. And to be honest, it shouldn't really need to, it's a flight sim and not a subscription based MMO game. In layman's terms, they would be better off following Oleg's model of a mix of free and paid add on planes bundled in reasonably priced expansions. Heck, even with all the supposedly multiplayer oriented nature of RoF, most people who managed to get copies of the Russian version say that there's not really enough MP servers to fly in. To be fair though i think this is because of a bug in the dedicated server software, that means the servers people see only stay up as long as someone is hosting and that someone needs a pretty beefy PC as he's also flying the mission at the same time. I guess that when dedicated servers become available it will be much better for MP pilots. Well, it's less than a week to the North American release date so we'll see if, how and what has been changed in the meantime.

Why, thank you very much On a serious note, i am the guy who constantly plays devil's advocate and i have a pretty good reason for it. Some people think it's because i like to annoy everyone, but i'm more interested in considering and presenting as many different viewpoints as possible. I kid you not, i really wanted RoF to succeed and that's why i'm so critical about it over on the SimHQ forums. I've stated many times that IL2 wasn't much when it started and we had a similar situation back then. I would fly a couple of sorties in the canned campaign included with the original IL2, admire all the graphics, accurate flight models and damage effects. Then i'd get annoyed by the repetitive nature of the missions, the silly wingmen and the fact that i was flying in an empty map save for the area i was going to be flying over, exit IL2 and go fly some European Air War. In fact, i flew that even after pacific fighters was released, the wingmen were that good and it had one of the best radio command system i've ever encountered. A lot of what IL2 lacked has never been fixed, the AI for example is still just as stupid as it was in day one, but the gradual increase in content made it worthwhile. While i prefer a dynamic campaign, a lot of the user made campaigns in IL2 are very well done and enjoyable, there's a truckload of flyables nowadays and i fly both online and offline in a semi-regular fashion. To be fair, RoF is not as bland as some people here pointed out, it's not a rushed cash-grab job (been in development for years), it's not MP only, it's not a Russian internet scam (there are verification servers in European soil too, i think in Holland), it's not only eye-candy and it certainly doesn't lack good AI, infact people say the AI is so complex that you need a pretty good PC to run a 30 plane furball with an acceptable framerate and they vary in skill levels, some are total rookies and some will really make you work for that kill throwing their crate about the sky and evading with a series of well planned maneuvers, it's got a very advanced physics engine that ties in with graphics that actually show you what the physics model calculates, infact it's not bad at all. It's just not deep or complete enough, has somewhat steep PC requirements and an idiotic copy protection scheme coupled with forced updates. There, that's a pretty concise summary of everything positive or negative about it. What i'm trying to say is that giving credit where it's due, RoF could very well be the new IL2 in a WWI setting if they would just be willing to open their eyes for a little bit. The critical point in the equation is wether their limited initial scope will net them enough of a funding to actually go ahead and improve it. If it had shipped with 4 flyables and 10 AI aircraft, plus the ability to fly for any of the four main combatant nations then it would certainly be a passable product with a good chance of suceeding. IL2 did something similar and it's still here after all these years, but it also had more things to keep you busy before the "wow,did you see that?" factor wears off. That's the issue right there, how long can you fight in the same two aircraft against the same 6 aircraft in a series of pre-generated missions it calls a campaign and will that be long enough for them to actually add more content before you decide to shelve it? And supposing they do have the time to do it, how affordable will it be for you to keep up with it? I can't judge accurately without some data for the international release, but that's fast approaching around the corner and we'll see what happens. Initially i was very critical of what i personally perceive as flaws in RoF because i was afraid the company would go under too fast. To be honest, as time passes i tend to be less and less worried. Apart from a few level headed people who bought it and speak openly about its shortcomings (incidentally, they are the ones who get the less flak for pointing out flaws, but they still get it ) there's loads of obsessed fanboys that will buy it, beta test it and fund it for me through its babysteps, so i can pick it up six months later in a possible bargain pack offer with 10 flyables instead of two and no bugs. I say let them

My father used to run a scale and R/C models shop back in the day. Among our customers (if you think we're nuts you should see scale modellers,they can debate the historical accuracy of a certain camo scheme quoting RLM numbers all day long) there were two brothers studying abroad in Yugoslavia (between the wars). They also had a roommate who was driven to the edge of insanity by their habits. What they would do was start a campaign in Silent Hunter 2 (that was back around 1992-1995 mind you) and play it real time. As luck would have it, their classes were timed so that at any time one of them would be at home, including outtings for cofee after school, socialising, etc. So, the guy who was at home would be watching tv or studying and have the PC run SH2 with the volume cranked up and the sub making way to the next waypoint. When the alarm was sounded he would go to the other room the PC was at and play through the encounter. The thing is, this continued during the night too. You can imagine this didn't go down too well with the roommate, talk about getting awakened at 4am by an alarm bell ringing!

Ok, how about garters then?

Greetings everyone. Well, where do i start? I wanted to try phase2 before deciding on buying phase3, but i had lost my original CFS3 discs and only had backup images of the CDs (i make a habit of backing up my games to keep the original discs in good condition). So, naturally i had to fiddle with nocd exe files and the likes to get OFF phase2 to work. After i managed to bypass the copy protection i encountered another problem...mission files would not load. I searched the FAQ and found out that it's got something to do with regional settings (i run a Greek winXP version) and that i would have to reinstall everything after having first selected US or UK regional settings. By the way, i have a suspicion that this is all about the decimal point. We use a comma sign while US/UK use a period sign as the decimal point, so i thought that this might be causing some problems during the installation, what with the mission scripting and all that fancy programming stuff. First question is, in case i'm right in my assumptions will i be able to keep my regional settings and only alter the decimal point symbol in the future? It's doable via control panel options, but will OFF work if i just change the decimal point symbol or do i have to select complete US regional settings? Anyway, i changed to US regional settings and set off reinstalling. So where's the problem? Well, according to the FAQ on Polovski's homepage i was supposed to wipe everything clean. So i didn't only delete OFF folders, namely (drive)\program files\microsoft games\cfsww1 and (drive)\program files\microsoft games\scenery, but i also uninstalled CFS completely. Then the FAQ said to remove the OFF manager's registry entry which i did, plus the hidden folder in c:\my documents\(username)\application data\microsoft games. I did that too. When i tried to reinstall CFS3 it went without a hitch but in the end it told me that i had specified an incorrent folder. I didn't even know what that folder was supposed to be, as the error message wasn't giving me enough information about what the folder was, or what it wanted to do with it. So i clicked on retry (or was it cancel? tried both but it doesn't ask you for a new folder path, it just seems to skip the problem if you click any button 4-5 times). Nevertheless, the game ran just fine, i fired up a QC as per the FAQ's suggestions and then exited the mission, CFS3 and set off reinstalling OFF phase2. Well, when the install was complete i received a message that it could not continue and it removed itself from the drive. Fast forward a couple of days, i have reordered a copy of CFS3 and i received it today in the mail. Luckily for me it's the 2008 Ubisoft version on a single DVD, which eliminates the need to have the disc in the drive. I try my luck installing and i get the same message upon completing the CFS3 install. CFS3 runs fine again, but i bet if i try to install OFF phase2 i'll receive the same error message and it will not complete. I'm thinking maybe i could manually create the hidden folders in c:\my documents\(username)\application data\microsoft games before installing OFF phase2, their names are CFS3 and CFSWW1, right? The reason i'm tempted to try this is because ever since my initial install/uninstall/reinstall sequence with CFS3, the installer seems to remember the custom path i gave it. When you first run it and click on custom installation, it defaults to drive c. However, on my PC every single reinstall attempt after the first one (both with the backup CD images and the new DVD version) remembers that my preferred path was on another drive (F:\program files\microsof games\etc etc). So i'm thinking that maybe some information about my previous installations has remained hidden in either the registry or the application data folders and it defaults to that path, but it can't find the folders i removed and gets confused. Any ideas? P.S. Maybe i'm wasting too much energy on this, because in 1-2 days i'll have a brand new clean PC to install CFS3 and OFF phase 2 on, but it wouldn't hurt if i could sample some of the goodies earlier. I just want a quick fix of WW1 combat before my phase3 DVD arrives

I would advise against getting our collective panties in a twist gentlemen The way i see it, everyone is entitled to an opinion. If a bunch of people from this forum go to post on subsim to "show them the wrong of their ways" the only thing we'll end up with is a divide in an already small part of the gaming community. We're not the Taliban of the gaming community, we can't even afford to be. Starting a "which is the better sim" feud among the already small simulator niche will only result in broken bridges that will hurt us along the way. Let me explain. I haven't yet managed to see OFF in all it's glory, but the new PC is on its way and CFS3 arrived in the mail today, so my order is imminent. However, just fumbling around the menus in a phase 2 install, watching videos on youtube and reading testimonials from other users, it is clearly evident how much work and research has gone into this sim. That's OFF's main strength, the historical accuracy and the effort to create an immersive single player experience. I see OFF as a "sandbox game" with it's own little world you can move into. Of course there will be disadvantages too. Most of these stem from a very simple reason, OFF is not a standalone product but a conversion of an aging graphics and physics engine. And while the graphics textures can be replaced as time goes by, the flight models are based on a physics engine that will remain the same unless the CFS3 source code is made public domain. That's not bashing OBD software, that's simply the truth. When i see people releasing patches left right and centre at the first sign of trouble i have no doubt about their intentions and the quality of their work. I have serious doubts about the original groundwork laid down by microsoft though. And this is what is going to limit the further evolution of OFF down the road. You can tweak flight models all you like, but you will never be able to surpass in accuracy someone else who's tweaking on a newer engine that runs a few hundred more aerodynamic variables for each aileron. That's the way it goes. So, why should we keep the bridges open? Well, RoF is shaping up to be something like IL2. Groundbreaking in a lot of respects, initially limited in others, but with an engine that will probably be quite expandable. What this means is that RoF might start with 4 flyables but down the road it may have 50 or 100 and might become the standard as IL2 was in it's subgenre. And i guess a lot of the new ones will be made by 3rd party developers, who will have the benefit of selling their work via the neoqb online shop and making fast and easy sales. Anyone see a business opportunity here? I'll buy OFF because i want an immersive single player experience a la Red Baron, with accurately researched historical background. And by doing so, i might give the OBD team enough incentive to examine and maybe pursue other avenues of expansion as time goes on. I think OFF will still be a prime choice for 12 months or so, then the CFS3 engine will be really limiting in what you can do with it when compared with newer software. So, the prime choice would be to move to another engine and start releasing content for that one. Imagine the physics and graphics of RoF combined with the immersion and historical accuracy of OFF. I would hate to see this potential go to waste (it's our collective hobby after all) because we're starting feuds. When IL2 was still young, i would still fire up European Air War from time to time. It featured air combat on a massive scale and that didn't grind my PC to a halt. Sure, IL2 was better in every other respect, but the feeling of being there that EAW gave you remained unsurpassed. OFF is like EAW in that respect, it's older engine makes it possible to stretch it to the limits with today's PCs. However, as newer sims evolve they too will reach the scope of OFF, and the OFF engine's limits are still there. Let's not be snobbish and realise that it's better for us all if the accumulated knowledge from the OFF project gradually passes on to another, more advanced simulator engine and improve that one too.

Nice thread this one. Makes me all the more impatient. I'm waiting for my new PC to arrive before the end of the week (brand spanking new Intel i7, Ati 4870 with 1Gig of video ram and 3GB of tripple channel DDR3 ram should serve me quite well for the next couple of years), and CFS3 should be delivered in the next couple of days, then it's time to place an order for OFF. Regarding the way to fly realistically, you are still doing it even if you are reckless because this is a WWI sim. Remember there were people like Albert Ball in WWI As for Richthofen, he was more like his successor, Erich Hartman. Pilots like those don't necessarily have to be that hot with a stick and they don't always need the best aircraft to have results. They scored high simply because they behaved like hunters, they knew how to stalk their prey and they were good marksmen, so they required only a brief attack to bring down a victim. I think Richthofen said it himself when comparing his and his brother's styles. "I am a hunter. My brother, Lothar, is a butcher." It's a testament to the influence of random factors (known also as luck) that the careful one didn't survive the war and the reckless one did. However, we could say that Richthofen probably made a fundamental mistake on his last flight. All accounts of the fight point to a simple conclusion, he got target fixated. I doubt he was unfamiliar with the terrain he was operating over, so why else would he be flying so close to enemy positions? It's not like WWI was a fluid battlefield on the ground anyway, lines were pretty much fixed. So, i'd venture a guess and say he was so eager to get that one more kill, that even with another Camel on his tail he didn't try to disengage. Instead, he pressed on and ended flying close to those enemy machine gunners at low altitude, with an aircraft that's slower than the opposition. No matter how much better your crate climbs, if the enemy has a comparable aircraft and hits you with a ton of energy you can't really avoid being at a disadvantage. A faster plane all around will disengage at will, a plane that turns and climbs better (like the Dr.1) needs first to take evasive action and then climb once the enemy's firing solution has been spoiled. However, if the enemy is using boom and zoom tactics it will be quite a few firing passes before you achieve energy parity. In the end, people are still undecided over who really shot him down (Roy Brown or the machine gunners), but the fact is that he put himself in a condition where he had not one, but numerous serious disadvantages to content with (over enemy lines, low and slow with 2 enemies close to him)

TrackIR is a device that detects the motion of Infra-red light emitting sources. It sits on top of your monitor and can either project IR light towards your head which is then reflected back by certain devices (reflectors placed on the brim of a baseball hat, small adhesive dots glued to your glasses,headband, etc) or you can fork over some extra cash and get an associated clip device that attaches to your headphones and has 3 IR emitting LEDs on it for the device to track (ie you don't need the device to broadcast IR light and you don't need reflection, Track Clip pro as it is called is right beside your head and projects IR light itself directly towards the tracking device). What this means is that this device knows which way your head is pointed. By the way, IR radiation is completely harmless, it's energy is less than harmful radiation, heck even visible light has more energy than IR light. So by using the provided software and the ability to track your head's motion you create profiles for each game you play and it moves the camera wherever your head points. So, how do you check six without losing sight of your monitor? Well, each profile has adjustable sensitivity curves. In the center of motion (you can set where center is, just sit comfortably on your chair looking straight ahead and press F12) you want it to move relatively slow. Otherwise even tiny head motions will make the picture jitter around and spoil your aim, which means you'll strain your neck trying to remain immobile. The farther away you move from center, the higher the sensitivity you set, so that when turning your head a moderate direction and can still look at the screen, the ingame camera is in a "check six" position. The beauty of it is that the software is stable, simple and completely intuitive. You even get a display popup that shows the movement of your real head and how that translates to the movement of your virtual head, so you can set everything up in a way that makes you comfortable. TrackIR can be bought from various online vendors, or directly from the company that produces it at www.naturalpoint.com. It takes some getting used to as you will need to roll your eyes opposite to where you're turning your head in order to keep your monitor in your field of view. Some people have also said that it induces motion sickness to them. However after 1-2 evenings of using it, it becomes second nature and you'll never want to go back to hat switches. In the rare event that you are not satisfied with it, it won't be hard to unload it on eBay or a similar website for a small discount. I got one last summer and it's been the best sim-related peripheral i have ever bought. I'd go as far as to say that if you are not running modern sims with complex aircraft systems (like Lock on and Black Shark) but fly era with "simpler" aircraft, it's better to have TrackIR than a fancy HOTAS stick set. There's not 15 different radar modes in WWI fighter to use up a bunch of buttons on your stick, but that makes it all the more important to keep sight of your enemies at all times. Most incredible thing about it is that my flying improved considerably because of TrackIR. I have found out that if you can easily maintain visual contact you don't yank the stick around so much. Previously, due to the blind spots between snap views, i would try to turn around sharply to reacquire the enemy as fast as possible. With TrackIR, i do this by moving my head around and simply looking at him, so i only maneuver my plane when i have to (to evade attacks or to attack myself), so i don't bleed as much speed and i keep my speed up for when i'll need it.

Well, that was certainly fast. Thanks a lot