Hellshade

That pilot looks like she has natural leadership skills to me. Can you name many men who wouldn't follow her into combat?!? Hellshade

I will say that none of the other flight sims that I play model the pilots body and I never miss them. The cockpits are all empty. I think the only reason some people miss them in OFF is because some planes have them and some do not. So the switch between planes that do and those that don't is jarring. Rather than see the Devs spend time modeling pilots bodies, I would prefer they simply remove them all and with that consistency, I believe the full immersion will return. As Olham said, he must have imagined them in his Albatros. You never miss what you never see. I don't see any hands or feet in any of the pre-release P4 screenies, so I am hoping this is the route the Devs have taken. I think their precious time would be better spent on the many other improvements I am sure they are making. Bombers, better AI, scenery, re-textures, etc. just my 2 cents. Hellshade

We all have a long list of things we would love to see changed or added into P4. Heavy bombers (which have been confirmed!), more early war A/C (also confirmed) and things like that. But what is the #1 feature that you would like to see added or changed in P4? Speaking for myself only, if I could guarantee any one thing on the list it would be to have the warp / unwarp ability reduced to just needing a 2 mile radius of skies clear of enemy A/C instead of 4 in order to be used. I realize using warp isn't DiD standard and all of that, but it can get pretty frustrating when enemy A/C are high above and nearly 4 miles away so there is virtually no chance of ever catching them, and yet they stay within your 4 mile radar limit and you can't warp to your next flight point. I'm not sure if it's even possible to change that feature, however since those miraculous Devs have done the impossible before, such as making it so we can fly through clouds (cheers!) I figure I'll put that on the top of my list. How about everyone else? What is the #1 feature you would all like to personally see added or changed in P4? Hellshade

Phase 4 is still a long ways off. They Devs haven't even released a single video yet and the videos for Phase 3 started coming out many months before it's release. Furthermore, HitR is a Phase 3 add-on. It is highly unlikely to work with Phase 4 although I am certainly not the final authority on that. Come to think of it, I'm no authority on it at all...but it would seem unlikely since the Devs says Phase 4 will be an entirely new remake of OFF and will NOT simply be an upgrade. If you are looking for an immersive, huge dynamic single player WWI campaign with a very large variety of planes to fly in, including scouts and two seaters, OFF Phase 3 is an absolute must buy. Hellshade

As far as I can tell, these are the top 5 games / sims I am most looking forward to in 2011, followed by the appropriate titles as to how they will likely affect my life. 1. Over Flanders Fields : - (tenatively titled "Hellshade Gets a Divorce") 2. Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim (Hellshades Loses his Job) 3. Rift: Planes of Telara (Hellshade the Insomniac) 4. Wings of Prey sequel (Hellshade the Youtube Freak) 5. Diablo III (Hellshade of the Arthritic Index Finger) Yes, IL-2: Cliffs of Dover looks really good but for whatever reason I seem to be more drawn towards Wings of Prey. Time will tell on those two. The Witcher 2 also looks like it might be pretty awesome, but I'm thinking Elder Scrolls V is going to get the vast majority of my fantasy RPG time. The new engine for ES V appears to be a phenominal upgrade allowing for a great deal more possibilities than ES IV was capable of. What's on top on your guys radar list of games / sims to play that are coming out this year? Hellshade

This isn't "official", but I have it on good authority that Olham isn't really on "vacation". The Devs have kidnapped him, jacked him into the OFF matrix and now all of the Huns will be flying using his live brainwave impulses! They will be dangerous opponents indeed. Don't feel bad for Olham, it's what he really wanted anyways. When Widowmaker disappears next, we'll know they've started work on the Allied side of things. These guys are goooood. Hellshade

While I should be amazed, anymore it's just par for the course in how you guys do things. To the best of your ability at all times. Thanks for that. Sorry that your user base (myself included) sometimes must sound a bit spoiled. We've just come to expect only the best because that's all you guys seem to deliver. You are a victim of your own successes. Hellshade

Another fair point to be made is that if you head over to any other combat flight sim of any era...I don't think I've ever seen a forum topic about trying to attain realistic kill / survivability ratios at all. Sure there's talk of improving the AI, but scarely a word about getting historically accurate kill ratios or pilot lifespans. So while I am always deeply grateful to anyone who comes up with ideas to improve upon this, the reality is we are treading ground seldom, if ever, walked on before in a commercial flight sim. For lack of a better term, it's the "quest for the Holy Grail". Plus, I might add that WWI flight sims have a challenge with the AI that is arguably uniquely difficult to address. The planes are woefully underpowered, which means that once the fight gets down low to the ground, the AI really can't climb to escape with any hope of success. In Wings of Prey (WWII flight sim), you can be hugging the trees one minute and seconds later zoom high into the sky...and so can the AI. So it adds a lot of flexibility on the programmers part on how to keep the AI challenging. Being down low isn't really a limitation for the AIs fighting skills. In any WWI flight sim, once you are down to tree top level, the AI basically has few choices. 1. Porpoise endlessly (OFF was originally this way but fixed it) 2. Change to turn fighting tactics which isn't bad at all for turn fighters - but become less aggressive because they are aware of the ground and actively avoid killing themselves. Energy fighters are more limited here. (OFF currently uses this) 3. Keep flying with the same aggressive behavior in order to maintain a tough fighting challenge for the player but the results are a number of AI planes simply slamming into the ground / buildings / trees (which is how another WWI flight sim which shall not be name handles it). I've witnessed this happening enough times to say subjectively that this is how the AI for one of the other WWI sims appears to handle it. I had two crash into the ground within 5 seconds of each other once. None of them are marvously good choices but once a 110hp engined plane is down to 200 feet and not at the bottom of a steep dive, it simply doesn't have the energy to zoom back up high again and continue the fight on it's own best terms. I guess one possibility would be that when the AI decides to escape it's programmed NOT to fly straight and level directly back to base. It should zig zag, jink, bob and weave every way possible to keep the player and other AI planes from getting an easy shot off on it's 6. But any such major changes to the AI will have to wait until P4. Modders can change gun damage, plane damage models and stuff like that, but I think it'll require the Devs to tinker more with the AI. Having said all of that, I'm always glad when people think of ways to improve OFF. It's a magnificent peice of work but that doesn't stop our rabid user base from thinking of ways to keep making it better. Oh and one last thought. Even if the Devs of any flight sim could program their AI planes to fly 100% realistically, they still can't stop people like myself from flying unrealistically aggressive..because I don't fear death so I'm willing to make strafing passes mere inches from the EA which boosts my gun accuracy far higher than would likely ever be possible in real life. I can regularly get accuracy between 50% - 61% by crawling into the cockpit of the guy I'm shooting at, but the reality is that that is suicidal behavior on my part as I only have to misjudge speed and distance once to end my career. Not to mention as you said, we as players aren't fighting in freezing temps, dealing with G forces on our bodies, rain in our faces, etc. There will always be room for improvements but there are also some limitations far beyond the Devs control. With any $20 to $50 software title, we as consumers must expect there will be limitations and compromises made in the name of technology and Developer budget schedules, not to mention stuff simply beyond their control. Hellshade

The challenge (among other things is that if the AI decides to turn and flee, as it sometimes does, it makes for an easy target for the player. All that does is raise the players kill tally higher while still resulting in a fight to the death. Given the work that's been put on display for the upcoming P4, I would be highly suprised if the AI didn't get some kind of overhaul as well. I could be wrong, but judging by the screenshots they seem pretty serious about making things as accurate as possible. That may well carry over to the AI side of things as well.

Well, looking through some of my archives, I think one of the best flight sim videos I ever personally made was the first link below. It's absolutely some of the most "hair on your ass, balls to the walls" shooting and flying I've ever done. I'm not sure which energy drink I was on when I flew it but it was working hard for me. This mission pretty much has it all. Tree top level flying at 300Mph, missing cliffs by mere feet, multiple split second kill shots, ridiculously near misses from mid-air collisions. I'd say that second for second, it's the probably the most intense quick combat style mission I've ever flown but It's from Wings of Prey though, not OFF. So it's a Spitefire vs six Bf 109s over the cliffs of Dover. I don't consider WWII sims to compete with OFF so I'll post the link and hopefully nobody gets too upset. 6 v 1 Duel over Dover (4:48) 1080HD Here's an OFF campaign video of a scramble mission. Damn huns were serious about attacking our airfield that day! Campaign Video part 1 of 2 (10:27) 1080HD

They combined the video thread with the screenshots thread awhile back so they are all mixed in. Here is the link to my youtube site where I have over 120 OFF videos posted, plus a few others from Rift, Oblivion and other WWI and WWII flight sims. As for which ones are the "Best" I couldn't say. I try to make them all exciting but that's really up to the viewer to decide. If you want a much narrower choice,go to www.overflandersfields.com and check out the official and user made videos there sir. http://www.youtube.c...68?feature=mhum Might I suggest the Over Flanders Fields Experience for an overview of what OFF has to offer. Over Flanders Fields Experience (5:07) 1080HD Hellshade

Wow, those cockpits are insanely detailed. I'll be right at home in the new tripehounds. Magnificent work as always gentleman. Hellshade

I have to agree with Javito on this one. EVE is said to be utterly ruthless and cut throat in every way. Not only in PvP combat, but with people stealing from their own corporations, etc. It's a true - no rules - environment. Hellshade

Well Blizzard just released that they will likely not be releasing any games in 2011, since they didn't include any in their earnings forcast for this year. Might as well take Diablo III and the next Starcraft box off your Christmas list if it was there. http://pc.ign.com/articles/114/1148703p1.html

I think he just couldn't take the wait for P4 any longer. Just kidding, of course. Hellshade

WoW. Seriously detailed and impressive sir.

IGN has some details on a new IL-2 game using a brand new 3D engine and set in the Battle of Brittain theater. It's due out March 22, 2011 and appropriately named :Cliffs of Dover. http://pc.ign.com/ar.../1144851p1.html Here is a link to a video and some screenshots. Looks interesting. Pre-order now and get a free copy of Silent Hunter III. http://shop.ubi.com/...uctID.224108000 Hellshade

I might add that now that I have less than a weeks practice under my belt, I am also accomplishing the same results in a different WWI flight sim when flying certain planes (DR1s and Pfalz IIIa). In fact I have posted a video of shooting down 8 EA, assisting in a 9th and a 10th decided to apparently commit suicide by ramming his crate into trees rather than swing around and fight. I think being able to accomplish the same feat in different sims says that OFF isn't necessarily getting anything wrong. It just can't prevent a player from flying virtually nose to tail on an enemy craft to make sure the maximum number of rounds strike home. The real aces also often remarked about the need to get very close to get so many kills, but I couldn't say they flew as aggressively as I do and live very long. I get a lot of "white knuckle" kills, but I have no doubts that Creaghorns pilots live far, far longer than mine. He flies the sim realistically (as I am sure others do). I fly and shoot more like Maverick in Top Gun. Looks great on video but not very realistic for anyone wishing to live. For that reason I don't think it would be a fair critique of OFF to use my flying and shooting style as an example of a possible flaw in OFFs presentation of the war. Hellshade

That's true, but if you watch the videos you'll see I also do most of my shooting from very short range. Literally 5 to 15 yards away. Not much scatter at all at that range. Aim for the pilot or the engine and they really don't stand much of a chance. So shooting down that many planes is less of a statement about gun accuracy and more a testimate to my flying in a way that, in real life, I doubt few pilots every would because they had the real fear of running into the enemy plane and dying. Granted I'm pretty good at missing EA by a few feet or inches, but any one of the crashes I have had would have ended my career PDQ in real life. Hellshade

I want the Devs to take all the time they need to polish their latest little gem up to their hearts delight. Don't rush a thing! All I need are 4 things: A Delorean a Flux capacitor a few cans of plutonium enough clear road to get up to 88mph I'll be back with all the pictures and video you want right after that.

I'm not sure about everyone else, but I tend to go through gaming "phases". I have a few games I love and I jump between them throwing my heart and soul into one particular game at a time, usually for a few weeks or so at a time. Then one of my other favorite games will suddenly appeal to me for whatever reason and I jump to focusing on that one for the next several weeks. Some games (or sims) I love right away, like OFF. I became addicted to it back in Phase II and once Phase 3 came out my fate was sealed. For historical accuracy, sheer scope of the Dynamic Campaign, number of different types of planes and many other reasons, in my opinion, it just can't be beat. The first time I fired it up, I was hooked! Other games, like Oblivion, literally take me years to learn to enjoy. When I first got Oblivion, I hated it and promptly uninstalled it. I couldn't see what all the excitement was about. Every now and then I'd re-install it, patch it up to date and give it another go. Didn't like it and off the hard drive it went, until one day I tried it and suddenly it was a lot of fun. Bethesda made enough changes to the game that now, finally, it was really enjoyable...especially with a boatload of player made mods! It certainly wasn't perfect, but it was entertaining and that's pretty much all I ask out of a game. Come to think of it, the same thing happened with Wings of Prey. I hated it when it came out but now, with the changes they made, it's a lot of fun for what it can do. To that end, I recently re-installed another flight sim that I purchased awhile ago. Patched it up and spent a few hours configuring everything the way I wanted it. Long story short, like anything else, it still isn't perfect but I'm having a lot of fun with it. I've spent most of this weekend challenging myself with it's different features and generally enjoying what it offers. I finally don't feel like the money I originally spent on it was wasted anymore, which is a good thing. As everyone probably knows, when I really enjoy a game or flight sim, I like to post videos. I've done several over this weekend as I tried out various features or scenerios. Which brings me to the two main purposes of my post. 1st - For those of you who have subscribed to my www.youtube.com/hellshade68 page, you might have been a little suprised to see non-OFF WWI videos posted there. Trust me, I am still 100% addicted to OFF and everything it has to offer. I'm just having fun with something else too. I love blondes. Now I appreciate brunetts too. I still can't wait for Phase 4 to come out and you can be sure I will be posting mad videos showing off all the awesome new features OBD has cooked up for us! I'm sure there will be new Phase 3 videos made too in addition to the 100+ I've already made. 2nd - I'm consolidating all new video posts into one new thread over at SimHQ. It doesn't matter what the video is about, I'm just dumping it into the new thread because it's getting to be a major pain in my arse to keep track of all the different locations for OFF, WoP, Oblivion and whatever. There are two reasons for this. 1st is because the video/screenshot thread here is specifically for OFF. I'm not going to dilute it with non-OFF videos. 2nd, the SimHQ OFF thread was where 80% of my views came from. Since that's where most of my views came from, I might as well make the new consolidated video thread there. I posted a link to the new thread in each of the OFF and WoP video threads I had and noted that any new posts would go there. It's kind of a bummer because CombatAce/OFF forum is definately where all of my friends are, but hopefully you can see my 2 reasons why it makes sense to do it that way. Anyways, that's whats going on. I'll still be trolling CombatAce every day because this is home to me, I'm just posting my stuff elsewhere. SimHQ forum is nice, but spending a short amount of time there made me appreciate the people here an awful lot. I hope you stop by and let me know what you think of some of my new work. Sincerely, Hellshade

What we play is our right and I am the first to champion the name of a game or sim, such as OFF or Rift that I love. Just no point in bashing others simply because they enjoy something else. I think this forum, especially considering how passionate we all are about OFF, does a fine job of keeping the civility. I will download the demo for CoH and give it a try. It certainly looks fun and the price won't get much better than it is right now. Glad you enjoy the videos. Have you seen any of the new ones? There are many similiarities to the flight characteristics of the planes, but just enough differences that I have had to learn to fly and shoot all over again! I find the DR1 and the Pfalz DIIIa to be most enjoyable crates to take into battle. I need more practice on all of them though. Hellshade

That always looked awesome to me, and yet I have never been able to bring myself to buy it. They were trying a free CoH on-line but I think they pulled the plug on it. Hellshade

I am definately sensitive to the "militancy" aspect of certain communities. In regards to that, I'll paraphrase a statement I made over there about why some forums seem to be more aggressive than others. I have a theory that any game / sim that has player vs player as an aspect to it is more likely to attract aggressive people to it and that aggression rarely stops with the game. It almost always carries over to the forums. In other words, I'll take two games from a completely different type of gaming - Fantasy type games. Oblivion is a single player only fantasy type RPG game. There is no on-line, player vs player aspect aspect to the game and so there is no competitive nature to the game at all other than players beating the single player content. World of Warcraft on the other hand is an on-line fantasy MMORPG game that has a large player vs player (PvP) aspect to it. If you go onto any forum dealing with Oblivion, there is virtually no heated debate about anything. Hop onto the WoW forum and people are constantly arguing about which class is overpowered, how feature "x" of WoW is broken, the latest patch is unfair, etc. Pick any game with a PvP component to it, head to the forums and do some reading. The lack of tolerance for a different view generally shoots through the roof the moment you mention a competing product, too. Go to a World of Warcraft forum and make a post about Everquest II, Rift: Planes of Telara or Age of Conan (all 3 are MMORPG games that attempt to compete with WoW) and watch the fangs come out! You'd think you walked into church X and started preaching about religion Y. Everyone goes ballistic. Heated debate just seems to be inherent because, naturally, more aggressive personality types are attracted to games that pit players against one another. The other sim obviously has a PvP aspect to it and I think the same phenomenom has simply replicated itself here. Naturally, the more passionate people are about a game, the more intense the need for aggressive personalities to defend what they believe to be right, as well. Obviously this is all just a pet theory of mine and I haven't been to every single PvP and non-PvP game forum and read every single thread. However, if Windows Spider Solitaire had a forum dedicated to it, I doubt very seriously you'd see much friction or militancy there except for the occassional troll who's sole purpose is to cause problems wherever they go. At any rate, in the interests of peace I will likely refrain from making constructive criticisms over there. They would be unlikely to have any beneficial outcome considering that you and I are both known to be regular participants of the OFF CombatAce forum. Therefore anyone of a more, shall we say "competitive", nature might leap to the conclusion that our purpose there was to sell OFF and undercut their preferred sim. That last thing I'm sure either of us want is to stoke any kind of a sim or forum war. I know I have absolutely no interest in that what-so-ever, however the concept of enjoying more than 1 game of a similar nature simply doesn't sit well with some people. I will say that after a brief time in the forums there I find the tone and content of discussion here at CA to be far more to my personal tastes. Hellshade

Well Creaghorns revelation that his outstanding Sound Tweak II mod has been downloaded over 500 times got me to wondering. The main purpose I started making OFF:BH&H videos was to try and expose as many people as possible to the incredible OFF experience. I felt that people might read "CFS3 Overhaul" and decide the quality couldn't be that good without giving it a fair chance. And since there's no way for a Demo to be available, I figured that in cockpit movies would be the best way to show people the great variety and experience that OFF has to offer. Since April 3, 2009 when I started my Hellshade68 channel, there have been 35,858 (and counting) upload views of the videos! Considering that the only places I ever posted them were here in CombatAce, in SimHQ and at the TrackIR site, that's probably not too shabby. Out of the total of 145 videos currently posted, the top 2 most viewed videos have been: #1 Air Combat Video #17 (3:57) 1080HD with 5,253 views #2 TrackIR Over Flanders Fields #2 (2:09) 1080HD with 2,348 views Thanks to everyone who enjoyed watching them and most importantly, thanks to the Devs for crafting such a wonderful Masterpeice for us all to enjoy! Hopefully some of those views have turned some watchers into fellow WWI pilots. Hellshade