Hellshade

And today when I called CompUSA I am told that the video cards will be in on the week of the 29th. I just checked Newegg and they are out of stock of every version (including the overclocked versions) of the GTX 580 except for a Gigabyte reference board version. So basically, nobody has them in stock. Now I'm starting to wonder if the 500 cards that CompUSA says they have on order will be enough to cover the backorders up to and including mine. Apparently these things are extremely popular despite the price. Hellshade

My current GTX 280 actually does quite well in most circumstances when flying OFF. I very often fly at a solid 60 FPS using a 5,4,4,5,5 settings at 1680 x 1050 with 16xQ AA and 16x Anistropic filtering on. It might dip into the high 40s if I have a bunch of aircraft fighting over an airfield or an exceptionally large and dense forest. The challenge comes when I tell FRAPS to start recording. I'll take a frame rate loss of between 5 and 25 FPS depending on the scenery. Once that happens, if I move my head quickly to the left or right using TrackIR I get the white triangles back because now my frame rates are in the high 20s to mid 30s in areas with a lot of scenery. The reviews on the GTX 580 showed it playing some high end games with frame rates as high as 168 FPS at 1920 x 1200. Since I'm maxed at 60 FPS with vertical sync on, I am hoping the card will be able to absorb the frame rate hit and still stay at a solid 60 FPS, which for me at least, always keeps the white triangles away from the edges of the screen while using TrackIR. If I lower my scenery and terrain to 1 or 2 (which obviously is less taxing on the GTX 280, because it's not as detailed), the frame rate stays higher and there's no white triangles even when recording. Since the reviews say that the GTX 480 was about twice as fast as my GTX280, and the stock GTX 580 is anywhere from 15% to 30% faster than the GTX480....AND the card I ordered is factory overclocked to be roughly 10% faster than that...I figure that should be enough raw horsepower to play with all settings on 5 and record FRAPS videos while staying at 60 FPS. So basically, if all of those "ifs" pan out as I hope, we should indeed be treated to some beautiful OFF pictures. The downside still though is that youtube will always downgrade the quality of my videos a certain amount. I can literally record in Blue Ray quality of 24,000 bits per second, but youtube will knock it down to around 4,000 bits per second streaming quality. No free sites offer anything faster than that. Hellshade

It looks fantastic! Congratulations. I'm sure you'll enjoy the heck out of a 24" monitor after looking at that laptop screen for so long. Hellshade

I called and they said that they had a huge shipment of around 500 of my cards on order, however it takes 24 to 48 hours for their inventory to update so he couldn't tell me if they actually got my card back in stock. Since I paid for Next Day Air shipping, I'll probably have the card in my hand 3 hours before they send me an e-mail notice that it shipped. That's assuming it actually came back into stock today. Then again it might not ship until tomorrow. Unfortunately there's just no way to be sure. Hellshade

I played through the demo of Arcania: Gothic IV last night and though it started off a little slow, it turned out to be a blast. The combat was very addicting! I think I'll be getting that today at lunch. Here's the link to the demo on fileplanet. http://www.fileplanet.com/216373/210000/fileinfo/Arcania:-Gothic-IV-Demo Hellshade

There's maps? What do I need maps for? If I see enemy airplanes, I'm exactly where I need to be. Hellshade

I imagine you are probably already aware of this, but just in case you aren't...Lord of the Rings Online is now Free 2 Play. No more $14.95 / month subscription required. The original game and all of its expansions have always scored high reviews, so it might be worth taking a look at if you haven't already. http://www.lotro.com/ Hellshade

Ratatat was suggesting that we as players could put whatever pictures we wanted in the folder and the Manager would randomly put up new pictures from the ones in there. That way everyone could have pics of their favorite planes if they wished. Hellshade

I was being chased by a 109 over Berlin in WoP and I decided, "what the hell?" and pulled a Bruno in my P-51D passing under two bridges while I had the throttle firewalled. That stuff is scary in just a fight sim. I can't imagine how intense it must have been for the pilots that actually did it in The Blue Max. Bridge Diving (1:07) 1080HD Hellshade

They were veterans flying 109 G6 series. I was closing in for a shot on a damaged and smoking aircraft when a sudden burst of cannon fire instantly flamed me. I didn't see anyone behind me but I think they came in at an angle and got off a great shot. It was about 45 seconds after I pulled up from the bridge that the second one must have shown up. I don't fly with any radar and it's easy at those speeds for someone way off in the distance to be upon you before you know it. Ah well. War is hell. Hellshade

Welcome aboard Dokken. You find no finer WWI flight sim or forum than right here sir. While you're waiting impatiently for your DVDs to arrive, now is the time to go through all of the Survival in the Air tactics guides. They are extremely well written and very useful. If you don't mind my saying so, it's a bit dangerous up there and everyone could always use a little extra advice on how certain planes handle. Glad you're here sir. You've made a very wise decision! Hellshade

I would agree. Most other sims are simply opening up a pre-set mission where are the set peices are put in the appropriate place and there you have it. It makes for a fun ride as long as you stay on the rails. OFF is opening up and entire war with God knows how many squadrons taking off and patrolling, each with their own agenda and a ground war going on below complete with gas attacks and bombardments. If I deviate from the mission I'm given in OFF, I get to see whole other areas of the war. If I deviate from a mission in other sims, I get told to return to the mission area immediately or I'll fail. Kind of an immersion breaker to say the least. So considering what OFF has to load up and take into account, I'm actually suprised it loads as fast as it does. Would faster load times be great? Absolutely. I think the solution there though would be either an SSD drive (very pricey) or a new 10K RPM Raptor drive (not quite as fast but a lot more storage for the price). Hellshade

Thats a really great idea Ratatat. Hellshade

Scratch the double the hit points of aircraft idea. I was reliably informed that that is how it was in Phase I and the general feedback was that you could get planes smoking, etc but it felt too hard to shoot them down and so OBD has already come full circle with that idea. It was suggested, if anything, try reducing the amount of damage the bullets do. I have no idea how to do that, but it sounds interesting. Anyone know where to go to mod bullet damage? Hellshade

Thanks for the tip VP! The fact that it can be modded is a definately plus. That's what makes Oblivion one of my favorite games. I decided to work out some of my frustration with some Wings of Prey set to full "realistic" mode. Two BF 109s on veteran mode (Ace) vs me in my lone P-51D Mustang. Torque effects and other things make the P-51D drop into a spin quite easily if you aren't careful. You can see once in there I literally recovered at tree top level. Couple that with the blackouts from g-forces and some rather determined opponents and it makes for a damn tought fight. If only they didn't have such a small number of maps to fly in (vs OFF where you get all of France and part of England!) and the Campaign was Dynamic like OFF. Ah well, few developers have the talents that OBD does. Wings of Prey 2 v 1 (3:16) 1080HD Wings of Prey 2 v 1 multiple views replay (3:22) 1080HD Hellshade

I just got "Two Worlds II", yes I know it's a stupid name, and while it isn't up to Oblivions level of polish, I see some real potential in it. The devs put in a few very good ideas that make gameplay fun. It's a swords a sorcery type game and the combat and magic system are quite unique. You can even custom create and name your own spells out of various spell abilities. So instead of the usual "level 3 Fireball", you can actually create a spell that shoots out a ball of fire, then jumps to hit nearby opponents and continues to burn them all for a certain length of time and call it "Hellshades Party Favors". Melee combat is fast and furious with enphasis placed on speed and timing of your strikes as well as defensive moves. The camera is a little to wobbly. And for God's sake they need to allow it to handle at least 4x AA to get rid of jaggies, but if they patch it up a bit I think they will have a AAA title on their hands. Huge open world and no limit to character customization (other than you are always a human...no elves, etc). Considering how crumby the original Two Worlds was, they must have really listened to player feedback. Hellshade

I agree with all of that and who knows what the Devs will be capable of doing for P4. They are a crafty, resourceful and dedicated bunch, aren't they? I at this point I guess I'm more talking about a sort of Community Created "P3.5" patch to bring still more added realism to the flight sim, not unlike Creaghorns awesome Sound Tweak II and Tracer effect mods or Herr Prop-Wasches excellent Damage Model 2.2 efforts. Simply because AI is so nortoriously difficult to program, I wonder if upping the amount of damage the planes can take in P3 will have the net result of reducing player kills without having to peek under the hood of the AI which is really the realm of the Devs. Sure, planes will still turn and head for home when damaged, but it will require more bullets to get them to that point and more still to bring them down. Unless you are flying with unlimited ammo, and I have to presume the folks who wish they could bring the amount of player kills down to more historically accurate levels are not, then the logical result would have to be fewer kills. It's also quite possible that it would have another added benefit too, though I certainly couldn't say for sure. It might then take 2 or more good hits before players start to lose control surface functionality in their own planes, making it possible to actively stay in the fight a bit longer even though your plane has been hit. It would add a little extra thrills to the fights that you had some close call hits to your plane but they didn't effect anything major. Not at all sure that is how it would work though, but here's hoping. Also, and I still can't get an answer on this from anyone. If the AI doesn't have unlimited ammo, upping the amount of damage the planes take might result in fewer fights where one side or the other is completely wiped out. I imagine there were many times in the real war that planes broke off and headed for home not because they were damaged, but because their guns were empty. Perhaps if the AI has limited ammo the engagement might end with planes still flying on both sides more often. That would be rather cool, I think. HPW said he'll look into it when he gets the chance. (Thank you sir!) I don't think he would really need to do all of the planes to start with. Just do some Albatros DIIs and the Sopwith Triplane to start with in QC mode only. Then we could run some test dogfights and just see how it plays out. Hellshade

Who am I to argue? Anything that makes it harder to shoot down planes will reduce player kills 2 ways. First, when it takes more ammo to shoot down planes, you obviously will shoot fewer down. Second, the longer the battle takes the more fuel you use up, which means you're less likely to be able to engage in multiple dogfights. Increasing the failure level of the wings sounds like a great idea too. I swear every time I shoot down a Spad XIII, the wings come off 100% of the time. At any rate, small steps are fine by me. You are doing all the work (and deserve all the credit for it) so whatever you choose to devote your time to I will appreciate sir. It's just that theory seems to make sense to me, so I'm glad to have the opportunity to test it. Thanks for looking into it! Deal! Hellshade

The reviews did say the voice acting was not good at all, however I haven't seen one yet that gave it below a 90%, which generally is a good sign. The Witcher got great reviews too though, but I've never been able to bring myself to play it past the opening sequence. It's always a crap shoot, but I'm going to hope for the best since TWII will come out long before any Elder Scrolls V title will and I need a good swords and sorcery RPG fix now and then. Will Zuxxedirekt ship to the USA? Hellshade

I need to finish Dragon Age (which was heavily story driven and a lot of fun) and I am very much looking forward to Two Worlds II. The original Two Worlds was a mess, but all of the previews for Two Worlds II look like they listened intently to the criticisms and really put together a winner. Oddly enough, I saw they released a patch for Two Worlds II, but the game doesn't even ship until January, I believe. As for MMOs, Guild Wars 2 is looking very polished and so is Rift: Planes of Telara. I will have to give each of those a try when they are released. Hellshade

It's the American Express card of flight sims everywhere. "Don't leave the airfield without it!" I had my doubts about spending all that money on it at first too. But I couldn't find a single review that didn't absolutely gush over how fantastic and invaluable it was, plus all of the seasoned virtual pilots around here kept insisting it was a "must buy". They were right. There's no way I'd fly without it now. Hellshade

My Oblivion characters tend to be rogue / archer types. And hot women.

Sadly Bird, most of what was in the South Park episode wasn't a parody. It was spot on, which is what made it so damn funny. I'm not a big Real Time Strategy Starcraft fan. I have been playing Left 4 Dead 2 and some Black Ops lately. Great visuals but they don't hook me like being able to develop a character or a pilot does. A possible sliver of good news though. Rumors have surfaced of an Elder Scrolls V in development, which would be a directly sequel to Oblivion. That's my favorite RPG game ever. I bet that will run sweet on my new card when it finally gets here. It uses a real world physics engine (Havok) which somehow makes slamming an arrow right through somebodys forehead and watching them slump over and die infinitely more satisfying than most hack n slash RPGs. Especially with the bloodspray mods available. Let's just say you always know for sure who wins a fight in Oblivion. http://pc.ign.com/articles/113/1136343p1.html Hellshade

As long as it looked smooth to you, the FPS really doesn't matter a bit. Different machines will handle configuration changes differently so don't be alarmed that you saw no boost. It worked for me so I just passed along the tip. RAF_Louvert didn't notice a difference either. More bummer news for me today though. I called CompUSA and they said they won't have my newcard back in stock any earlier than November 29th. I guess as long as it doesn't arrive DoA I can live with that. Hellshade

I don't think I want to try completing the war on "pilot never dies" mode. I'd only get to fly 12 missions a year, one a month between hospital stays. Hellshade