Hellshade

Wow. An announcement that DX11 is being worked on for WOTR and AnKor has released a mod for WOFF UE that kills blue triangles and speeds up FPS and nothing. I guess maybe because it is summer, fewer people are flying or checking the forum.

Not a complaint, because WOFF UE is already far more comprehensive than I ever could have hoped for, but I do miss the days when the devs were putting out patches and teasing the next new Add-on, Expansion or iteration of WOFF. I know they are hard at work on Wings Over the Reich, which has to be just a ridiculously large project from such a small development team, and that eventually its possible some of the advances for WoTR could make their way back into WOFFUE. I am certainly looking forward to that day! That said, the forums (both here and SimHQ) invariably become quieter after active development stops and many long time posters drift away into other pursuits and sims. I wish there was some way to put WOFF UE back front and center for active development. Coming to the forums used to have the same excitement as Christimas did as a kid. You never knew what new present would be revealed and you couldn't wait to find out. Now, it's mostly just quiet as even the modders have understandably slowed down some. /sigh. I miss the good old days. Some how, even though its unlikely, I hope there comes a way that WOFFs best days are still ahead of it. It's more than just the patches and the features. It was the people on the forum and the shared sense of wonder.

And they are back....sorta. Ok, the people certainly aren't flooding back to the forum, but the devs are going to make an official patch release version of a mod AnKor developed to kill the blue triangles and simultaneously speed up FPS. I've been using the mod a couple days now, as has Stache and a few others. The general opinion is that it is outstanding. The sim feels more rock solid flying now than ever before. Oh...and AnKor let slip he is working on DX11 for WOTR. One can only hope that he will succeed and they can port it back into WOFF UE at some point. It looks like WOFFs best days are indeed still ahead of it. How cool is that?

Lowered Air Density settings to Light (from medium). The result for me has been liquid smooth 90 to 118 FPS air combat over the front with all other WOFF UE settings Maxed, while running in 4k. Plenty of targets still in the air at Light settings in the late war. Oct 1918 F2b encounter over the front. Man, I love this sim all over again. There is a slight screen jump at around 2:45. That was from me moving my head out of the view of TrackIR, causing the view to reset to default.

From a post on simHQ. Immediate benefits and something wonderful to look forward to. The reason those blue triangles appear is that CFS3 engine incorrectly assumes that those terrain tiles should be out of view and doesn't render them. It doesn't depend on GPU or your config, it is purely a bug in their algorithm which runs on CPU. I don't have a direct solution for this, but I have something that may reduce the issue and improve the performance at the same time. I've already mentioned this tweak on sim-outhouse some time ago but it had little effect on the "stock" CFS3, however I believe it may work better WOFF because WOFF terrain is more detailed. You can try it if you feel adventurous Here is a zip file with compositetexturebudgets.xml - the file goes into WOFF\OBDWW1 Over Flanders Fields\terrains folder, but don't forget to make a backup of the original file there. https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvmtwF9vPtwVgYoiGbgXo8KXiEzxUQ Additionally you should edit shaders30\Terrain.fx file and change 256 to 1024 in this line near the beginning of the file: const static float fTextureSize = 256; This is needed for terrain bump mapping to work properly with modified budgets. I would have made a JSGME package but I don't remember how. PS: And yes, I'm working on DX11 version of shaders

Late October 1918 JG III dogfight over the front. Max WOFF UE settings (all 5s and HIGH settings) except Air Density is Light). 90 - 118 FPS during combat. AnKor has said that a modified version of his mod will be released as an official WOFF UE patch when the devs get time. Great news for everyone but especially anyone who enjoys late war campaigns.

It has been noted by a few of us who have used it that this new little bit of magic from AnKor is amazing enough that it ought to be a new official patch for WOFF UE. It's a noticeable improvement on several fronts.

I was flying last night until 2am and never saw a blue triangle. Maybe 2 super tiny, gone faster than you could be sure it was there - blue triangles at most. Frame rates appear to have improved again with this as AnKor says it takes more work off the CPU. A few vids to see the effects for yourself.

It was announced on the official IL2 Sturmovik forums by Jason that they are taking the first steps towards (hopefully) recreating RoF within the much newer BOX engine. It will be called "Flying Circus Volume 1" I, for one, am very excited to hear this even though the first stage is essentially going to be basically 10 planes on a map with no career or campaign mode attached. What are your thoughts? Full text pasted below: Flying Circus – Volume I Flying Circus will finally give our loyal and patient Rise of Flight customers a new way forward into the future! Our eventual goal is to essentially re-build ROF inside of the Sturmovik universe and give WWI all the latest technology like VR, 64bit, DX11 and improved visuals. We will start by focusing on re-furbishing ten of our existing WWI airplanes and providing a partial map of France to fly and fight over. Subsequent Flying Circus products will further expand content and we’ll work to integrate Flying Circus into our Campaign and Career systems over time. Volume I is merely the first important step and it will be a lot of fun! If Flying Circus proves popular we can eventually fire up the Great War assembly line and break out the canvas and timber once again to make some new crates! Guynmere, Fonck, Coppens, McCudden, Bishop, Rickenbacker and von Richtofen shall fly again 100 years later! FlyingCircus_Artwork_SPAD_EN.jpg Planned to be Included in Flying Circus – Volume I Flyable Aircraft and Content (Tentative List): - SPAD 13 C.1 - Sopwith Dolphin - Sopwith Camel - RAF S.E.5a - Bristol Fighter - Albatros D.Va - Fokker Dr.1 - Fokker DVII - Pfalz D.IIIa - Halberstadt CL.II - France map (100 x 100km Approx.) - Several airfields, cities, towns and villages. Summer textures are planned - No Man’s Land - Entente and Central Powers Ground Units and Scenery. Pre-Orders for Flying Circus will be available sometime first half of 2018

Jeanba, Their new Digital Warefare engine certainly looks visually amazing. It's too bad OBD couldn't move WOFF UE into that engine. It'll never happen, of course, for both financial and personality reasons...(and probably even technical reasons) but the quality of those visuals matched with the deep SP campaign and historical reverence of WOFF UE and then adding in Multiplayer on top of it...would probably be the perfect trifecta for getting people back into WWI Flight sims. /sigh.

Has anyone heard anymore about updates on Flying Circus? A release date, expected release time frame, changes to aircraft lineup?

Geezer, Your generosity towards the WOFF community has been exceptional. While this forum isn't very active anymore, I know the folks over at SimHQ are very appreciative of allowing your work to be converted. Thanks again for all that you do.

This forum - while occasionally visited by some very fine people - is not commented upon frequently by the p[layers and I suspect rarely visited anymore by the devs, who are usually at the offical simhq WOFFUE forum. I have often thought that the "ghostown" effect of this forum makes it look like WOFF is dead / abandon-ware.

Let's try something with some stronger wings so I stop killing myself with my own ham handedness on the stick. SE5A?

Jumped by Bosch while escorting a recon flight. We stayed behind to keep Jerry occupied while they continued their mission. Having handled the Albs, I try to catch up with my Recon flight. Instead, I come across a pair of Strutters being swarmed by Albs. It looked like a shark feeding frenzy, so I flew in hoping to give the Strutters some desperately needed relief.

So I am flying escort for the two seaters and I notice that all the N17 scouts are below them, not above. Kinda strange, so I climb like hell to at least be a single plane for top cover. Sure enough while over occupied France, a flight of Albs drops down on me from even higher altitude. The good news is that I distracted them from the two seaters I was protecting. The bad news was they all swarmed me! I'm not sure how many of them there were. Maybe five? Finally, at least one of my wingmen joined to help and an incredible dogfight ensued while my recon flight made good their escape.

Thanks elephant. The wing structure failed due to over stressing it. Both the Sopwith Pup and Triplane's wins are more fragile (it seems to me) under WOFF UE than they were in previous editions. Perhaps I will have better luck with N17s. Squadron Leader turned quickly towards a pair of Hun DFWs, but two of our own collided in the sudden direction change, sending one of them to a fiery death before we even got close. On patrol, we get jumped from above by some Alb DIIs. My V struts are creaking just a bit too often for my comfort. If the Huns don't kill me, probably the V struts will. /sigh

Trying my hand at an N17 Campaign. I am terribly unskilled in them so I imagine the Huns will make quick sport of me soon enough.

So during my Christmas "break" from work, I decided to hop back into my old favorite plane, the Sopwith "Tripehound", and start a campaign. First mission out and it was truly an incredible experience. Only WOFF UE brings the war so much to life for me. Some missions are long and dull. Nothing happens. This wasn't one of those missions. On a side note, kudos to everyone who had a hand in creating the scenery in WOFF UE, including modders like Robbert Wiggins and his amazing Cloud Mod. "Tripehound" Mission Part I And literally 30 seconds after that video ended and I thought I was just going to return to base, this happened. "Tripehound" Mission Part II

Olham, No doubt it's a minimalist approach. The things I find exciting about it though are that in the 64 bit, DX11 engine, they will be able to put a lot more assets in the air than before, for the potential to create a good dynamic single player campaign. Of course, a ton more planes, vastly improved AI and a lot of historical research also needs to be done before that is a real possibility, but at least its a first step. The other thing I find exciting is I hope there will be a "halo" effect for WOFF UE. If 777 is advertising Flying Circus as one of it's BoX "options", then people who fly it and don't like it might start doing some Google searches for a better SP WWI Campaign sim. I believe that happened plenty of times with RoF so it may well happen again.

Level 12 MU? You are tossing out the big heat spells now! Kudos for keeping them alive for so long. Will the next campaign pick up at level 12 with the same characters or will you be starting over?

So my other major addiction (besides Skyrim SE) is Dungeons & Dragons 5e table top gaming. I finally completed painting my somewhat expansive collection of miniatures and have started Dungeon Mastering (DMing) my own games. Everyone seems to really enjoy the immersive 3D gaming experience. Does anyone else play D&D? What edition? How often do you game?

For years..strike that...for decades, all I ever gamed with was either minis on wet erase battle maps or pure "Theater of the Mind" and you know what? I always had a great time. Honestly, I think what really makes or breaks a game is the quality of the people that you are playing with. If they are fun and creative, the game will be great. Everything else is just window dressing. It adds to the fun but isn't necessary for it. I started with D&D Basic and AD&D too. I gotta say though, 5e is in my opinion by far the best rule set to date. If you ever have the chance, find a local game store and see if there is an open seat at a D&D Encounters game (single session professional produced module). I bet you will have a great time!

Soppy, I don't really know what the specs required to run CLoD are. I'm running a 6700K, 16GB RAM, GTX1080, dual 1Tb SSD drives and a G-Sync monitor - so most things run pretty well. CLoD certainly runs like a champ with those specs. I'm not sure how big of a performance hit a more budget friendly card would do. Sorry. :(