Hellshade

I would be very interested in trying this out whenever you have a working beta, sir. Hellshade

My thoughts exactly. If it were possible, switching to a 2 mile radius before auto-disengaging warp would be fabulous. Sometimes they can be right on top of you, but because of the altitude advantage they have, you aren't going to get to attack them anyways. Hellshade

I'm not sure about accelerating the game while enemy aircraft are within the 4 mile range. I personally wish it could be reduced to at least a 2 mile range before warping is turned off, but that is up to the Devs. Certain things are hard coded into cfs3, however they have suprised us before with changes to things like the wind factor in the clouds. Phase 4 will not be an expansion to Phase 3. It will require a fresh install due to all of the major changes the Devs are putting into it. Just like any new version of a game (Call of Duty: Black Ops, for example) there will be a purchase price, though it has not been announced as of yet. They are still early in the Aplha build, so it's a long ways off and you can plan to have a considerable amount of time continuing to enjoy Phase 3 and the expansion before Phase 4 is released. Hellshade

Stunning work OBD! The cows are a wonderful touch, the scenery is better than ever (and it is already damn good in Phase 3) and the over all attention to detail on the ground for a WWI flight sim is unprecedented! Hellshade

How much memory is on your system board? Perhaps a little extra RAM might help things too. Otherwise, what kind of video card slot does your 939 MB use? Is it AGP? Let me know what a realistic budget is and I will do a little research for you sir. In the meantime here are a few free things to try. In the 3d video settings for your Nvida card, try changing the texture filtering quality to High Performance. Turn off AntiAliasing (you will get some jaggies) bump your CFS3 resolution down a bit too. Maybe 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768. Also, depending on how much system RAM you have, make sure that your taskbar tray has as few applications as possible running before you launch OFF. Hellshade

A good point Creaghorn. A very nice touch indeed. In that same screen shot the ambulance that is exploded, there is debris or pockmarks scattered around it. I'm not positive, but I think that's new as well. Also, someone mentioned the clouds look improved and I must agree. The whole atmosphere seems to be softer and more natural looking. Is it me, or in screenshot #5 looking out the right side of an Alb (I believe) does it look like the airfield has been redone as well? Hellshade

It looks amazing. I'm with Dej. I made it my desktop background the moment I saw it. In fact everything looks like it has new textures to me. The cockpits, planes, scenery and terrain are all incredibly detailed. Bravo! Hellshade

I'm running 7 64 bit also and downloaded and installed the 260.89 release drivers tonight. I'm not having any issues at all sir. Not sure what's up. What kind of card are you running? Hellshade

They are a time killer, especially if I add voice over, though I must say they get more views than I thought they would. The OFF Videos SimHQ thread is rapidly closing in on 11,000 views. Not many comments, but those that are posted are always complimentary so that's always nice. We all contribute what we can to the community. Screenshots, mods, stories, videos, survival guides, technical help, maps, etc. We have a very vibrant little community. I'm glad I found OFF. Hellshade

I envy the skill of all of you skinners. You paint such beautiful planes! How long does it take to create such magnificent kites? Thanks for all of the skins you've uploaded for the rest of us to enjoy and for sharing screenshots of your handicraft in action. Most enjoyable. Keep up the great work. Hellshade

Being married to the wrong person? Hellshade

Feel free to post links of any of my videos you might like as well. I'm sure the other video posters probably wouldn't mind you linking their videos either but naturally I can't speak for them. I think I'm closing in on or slightly above 100 OFF videos I've created now, with the majority of them in 1080HD format for quality. A few have voice overs as well, which tends to be more enjoyable. If you think any of them would help, post away sir. http://combatace.com/topic/56055-videos/ Hellshade

Thanks Dej. I'm very glad that you enjoy the flicks. I try to do fully voiced videos when I can, but my computer is in the bedroom and I usually have to work on them at night when my wife is either studying for college or sleeping. That makes doing the voice over part harder to get to, plus it certainly adds a lot of time into the editing process itself. I have a few fully voiced campaign videos though and some quick clips too. I agree that it adds to the experience significantly, especially over trying to read text while watching the air combat. Now if we can just get Steven Spielberg to finance me to do this full time, I'll make a hell of a movie for ya. Hellshade

Thanks Olham. I do my best to make the action exciting to watch. I like to try and make people feel as if they are right in the cockpit experiencing the thrill of air combat for themselves. As far as how often I collide, it's suprisingly rare unless I haven't flown for a few days and jump into a plane that I'm not exceptionally familiar with. Most collisions I do have tend to be tears at the edge of the bottom wing that hurt my ability to manuever rather than send me earthward in a spinning fireball. Though it is true that sometimes I get in a rut when first returning to flying and crash several times in a row before I am "warmed up" again. I have no choice but to fly that way though anyways. I am such a poor shot that the only way for me to hit the enemy planes is to make sure they fill my screen before I pull the trigger. I can't make a defelection shot to save my arse. Hellshade

New BETA drivers are out for NVIDIA cards. 260.89 as of today. I'm downloading and trying the 64 bit Windows 7 version now. I'll let you know how they work. Here's the link to Windows 7/Vista 64 bit http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-260.89-beta-driver.html Hellshade

That's a "No" to reflections being fixed sir. Sorry. Hellshade

So far I find them to be stable and of excellent quality. Possibly a performance increase too but hard to tell for me at this point. Maybe 3 - 5 fps increase but with so many variables it's difficult to say. None the less, I would recommend them. Hellshade

I had so much fun that I had to do a "Refly Last Mission", even though it was so incredibly dangerous. The weather is on AI Generated so this time it's overcast with no rain. I saw at least two custom painted german planes during the fight so apparently there were at least two aces up there. This time I broke the video up into 2 parts so that I could convert them to true 1080 HD format. 720 just looks too grainy for me and I find it distracting. Anyways, despite being broken up into two parts, this one is also once again filmed in a single shot from take off to landing. Also, I changed tactics and instead of pursuing a plane until I got the kill, I did more switching to targets of opportunity unless a quick kill was possible. Refly Mission (4:36) part 1 of 2 - 1080 HD Refly Mission (6:04) part 2 of 2 - 1080 HD Enjoy, Hellshade

Jasta 3 launched a huge surprise attack against my home airfield. (I guess we pissed them off about something!) While me and the rest of the boys from RNAS 8 tried to scramble to get airborne, a flight of Nieuport 17s from ESC 79 tangled with the Huns to keep them occupied. There were so many planes in the sky when I first looked up after take off that I damn neared crashed my plane just watching them all tear it up in a huge furball. It is an impressive dogfight with the first few moments of it spent just trying to latch onto a target without letting a Hun pilot latch onto my six. The video is from take off to landing, one single take with no editing (except for added text, of course). Once again, since the length of the video reached 10 minutes, my editor refused to convert it all to 1080 HD, so rather than splice it up into two 5 minute parts, I converted it to 720 HD so you could watch the dogfight totally uninterrupted. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did flying it. Damn I love this sim. Hellshades Campaign Video #23 (10:00) 720 HD Enjoy, Hellshade

Indeed those are beautiful shots Olham. I love your custom paint job too. You certainly do have talent sir. I don't usually post screenies but here's one of my 7 April 1917 Campaign. It's a Scramble Mission from the RNAS 8 home base. When I popped on radar to see how many income craft there were, I couldn't believe my eyes! As best as I could count, there are a minimum of 38 aircraft in the skies, including the 10 or so from my flight. It seems Jasta 3 had it out for us and sent a whole damn squadron to destroy our base. Fortunately for us, a flight of Nieuport 17s from ESC 79 were flying overhead and intercepted them, giving me and my boys a little time to get off the ground. I replayed the mission and made a video (of course) which I am uploading to youtube now. It probably won't be posted until morning. It's a single camera shot (no cut scenes) from take-off to landing of the mission. Nearly 10 minutes in length! I call this picture "A Busy Morning". This is what I saw when I looked up right after take off.

Campaign Video #22 (3:07) 1080 HD - sortie highlights Hellshade

While I would personally enjoy some more early war fighters, especially something to fly against the EIII, I'd have to agree with Olham that it would be best to put in a heavy bomber on each side first. It would be an awesome thrill to be tasked with stopping an incoming formation of heavy bombers or try to protect them on their way to a target. Imagine the flak, the enemy fighters, the bombers themselves. The sky would be filled with every kind of danger. I doubt many of us would survive such missions though. Still, the thrill of trying! Hellshade

After fighting through some Huns, there's a nice clip of taking down an Observation Balloon with rockets towards the end of this video. It's just like Uncleal says too. Bore down straight hard and fast, unleash everything you can and then get the hell out of there. If you catch it fats enough, you'll see an AA burst just in front and to the right of my plane too. Pure damn luck it didn't take me out. Campaign Video #21 (9:47) 720 HD Hellshade

If I want to avoid AA, I usually go straight to the bar. I just have to explain where I was at the next meeting. Hellshade

I downloaded and installed the new Nvidia BETA 260.63 drivers for Windows 7 64 bit and have been running them most of the day. It seems to me to give a slight performance boost but also the texture quality and rendering appears to be crisper and cleaner as well. They have a new installer too that saves your current nvidia settings and applies them to the new drivers. So just install them right over the top of your old ones if you feel like giving them a try. Unfortunately they still have not fixed the rear view mirror issue. Still, to me at least they seem rock steady and improve on both performance and quality. Thought I'd pass the info along. Here's the link to the Windows 7 - 64 bit version. http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-260.63-beta-driver.html Hellshade