Hellshade

Noob questions: What's the command key when flying a two seater to switch to the rear gunner position and then back again to piloting? Do I need to set the plane on autopilot before I jump into the gunners seat or does it automatically fly where it is supposed to when I make the switch? As always, any assistance is appreciated. Hellshade

Thank you all gentleman. I'll try to put the knowledge to good use. Hellshade

Those were actually sightings of Phase 4. Clearly the government had no choice but to classify the information or else the general public would go mad for details. Hellshade

All of that bloodshed, just to set the stage for something even worse. God Bless the souls of the men who didn't start the war but had to suffer and die in it. Hellshade

Installed new Nvidia drivers Ambient Occlusion : Quality Aniso Filter : 16x AA Gamma Correction : On AA Mode : Overrride any application setting AA Setting : 16xQ AA Transparency : Multisampling CUDA - GPUS : All Extension Limit : On Max Pre-renders frames : 7 Anisotropic Sample : On Negative LOD Bias : Allow Texture Filtering - Quality : Quality Trilinear optimization : On Tripple Buffering : On Vertical Sync : Force On Resolution : 1680 x 1050 Sliders : Aircraft 5, Terrain 4, Scenery 4, Effects 5, Clouds 5 Overrides : Don't checkmark any of the Disable vertex / index buffers Z-Bias : All set to 1 or 0 except Z-Bias Clouds set to 8 to help reduce Cloud popping issues. It's still not perfect but it seems to have improved things quite a bit, even while recording which drops my frame rates down to the mid 30s and 40s sometimes (but usually stays in the mid 50s) and that always raises the amount of white triangles I see in OFF. It looks better when not recording and my frame rates stay in the mid to upper 50s. I can eliminate them 99% by switching Terrain slider to 3, but I feel there is too much loss of quality details to be worth the trade off. The terrain and scenery in OFF is not bland at all, so I don't wish to portray it as such in the videos. I think a little tearing now and then is worth it for that. Hope that helps Hellshade

Excellent video. Thank you very much for sharing that. Hellshade

Thanks for all of the compliments guys. It's very much appreciated. I appreciate your patience too HPW. Looking at all of the changes you have made, I can see the only way to do this properly is with a lot of different clips from various dogfights. I'm not going to recycle anything I've already posted, so I've been working on putting together what I will need. I will say after having done a number of dogfights with your DM mod installed, it's a lot of fun and addresses some issues very well. I'd seriouly consider it for Campaign use if you're able to make that happen. Hellshade

New Nvidia drivers are out and seem to be some minor improvements. Cloud popping in and out seems almost (not totally) eliminated in OFF. Also, it seems to be able to handle more planes in the sky without stuttering and even cranked up the textures a little bit for me. These are the Win 7 64 bit ones. http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-258.96-whql-driver.html Might be worth a try. No issues here yet. Hellshade

Just a real quick one again here. Have you ever seen a recovery from a "red out" stall at below tree top level? I hope I never seen one again. Beer Time (0:32) FS 1080 HD Enjoy, Hellshade HPW, I hope to get time to work on your DM Mod video Sunday. It's been busy lately. Sorry.

It doesn't much matter to me. By the time an enemy airplane is lined up directly behind me to show up in the mirror, he's already firing. But for those blessed souls braving the heavens of OFF without a TrackIR...God be with you if this little blind spot doesn't get fixed. Hellshade

With the new drivers I am able to push the Terrain quality higher and show a little bit better how beautiful Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven & Hell terrain and scenery is. Of course youtube degrades the quality a bit but I think you can still see a clear difference. Hellshades Air Combat Video #22 (2:24) 1080 HD Enjoy, Hellshade

Glad to see that both of you gentlemen made the jump into Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven & Hell and the Hat in the Ring expansion. I am sure that you will find it is money very, very well spent. I've been flying it since it came out and I still have suprising new things happen to me. It's a real war out there and there are many ways to die. My last campaign video I was shooting, I was too close to the Albatros I was firing at when suddenly an Allied flak burst hit him directly and my lower right wing got blown off too. Down we both went. The word everyone seems to use is "immersive" and it really is. Glad to have you both aboard and I wish you all the best in your new live(s) as WWI aviators. Enjoy, Hellshade

I'm not sure what kind of performance other folks are getting out of these drivers, but I heartily recommend them. I'm getting smoother performance at higher settings. I installed them directly over the last Nvidia drivers I had, without even uninstalling the old ones. They work great. Hellshade

Accurate fire is when you hit the enemy. Friendly fire is when you hit someone on your side. So what do you call it when the same shot takes out both?!? I call it proof positive that... War is Hell (0:43) Full Screen 1080 HD Enjoy, Hellshade

Excellent work and description sir! I'll get to work on it this weekend. Thanks for all that you do. Hellshade

For a moment there I thought you were on the ground next to UK_Widowmaker when he found out the replacement planes weren't Snipes again. Hellshade

It appears not sir. Sorry. But the good news is that I'm still adjusting the various settings that improve visual quality upwards bit by bit and yet I'm still getting considerably smoother performance than I was before with large numbers of planes in the sky. It used to be when I did a 6 v 6 Quick Combat and the two sides met there would be a brief one or two second stutter while the video card got it's little world together. No such thing now, even on higher settings. Anyone else who has loaded these new drivers up and tried them having similiar experiences? Hellshade

Thanks HPW! No need to make a complete list of changes. Just a list of 5 or so most noticable changes. I'll give it a try as soon as possible. May not be tonight though. Hellshade

After thinking about it, it's probably best to do 2 separate videos. 1 showing changes in the Damage Model and the second showing changes in the Flight Model. If you can get them both working in the Campaign mode as well as QC (it's a tricky challenge, I know) that would obviously be ideal and I'm sure you're working on it. I'd like to keep the videos to around 5 minutes each. 9 - 10 minute videos are over a gigabyte and an awful lot to download for some folks. If you could send me some text regarding Flight Model changes to each aircraft, that would be a big help in producing the video. For instance, as you noted to Olham, "Albatros and Nieuports now are less likely to lose their lower wings in tight turns." Dive speeds have been reduced across the board or only for specific aircraft, etc. Roll rates have been increased for the following aircraft, etc. The biggest changes should be noted so that I can highlight the differences in the video between your work and "vanilla" OFF:BH&H. Thank you for all of your efforts. While the Dev team works away on P4, people such as yourself and Creaghorn are creating optional mods that continue to add value and variety to the BH&H experience. My only question is how difficult is it to install and uninstall the FM & DMs? Can somebody create a series of executable batch files that auto backup the original FM & DM data. Another to install your FM & DM data and perhaps a 3rd to restore the originals? The two big concerns about any mods are always #1. Will I like the results? The video will give them a preview of what they can expect and take care of that. and #2. Is it easy to install and uninstall so I don't mess up my game? If you don't already have something in place, a few batch files with pretty icons to click on might help take care of that and see your work get put to more use. Hellshade

I will be interested in this once you have a product that you feel is ready for general release. If you wish, I can make an accompanying video as I did with Creaghorns Ammo Mod, so that people can see what kind of differences they can expect in the Campaign and Quick Combats with your work. I think more people will be willing to install it if they can see ahead of time what kind of results they will be getting. Especially if they can see better FMs like a faster climbing DR 1 that makes the combat more intense and realistic. Combined with Creaghorns Ammo and Sound Tweak II mods, I think Between Heaven & Hell is moving ever closer to the most authentic recreation of WWI air combat as possible with the help of the community. I am very excited about the possibilities sir. Hellshade

Yes, I naturally eliminated any and all distance shooting because not only is it impossible to correct your aim, but without the debris and smoke puffs to tell you if you are hitting him or not, you don't even know if you should correct your aim. So any distance shots at all are complete waste. Also, I only shoot if I can get at least a 3 second burst into the EA while he remains relatively stationary in front of my guns, as I said in my Tactics video. When I fire, it's close enough to be a pretty much guaranteed hit and long enough that most of the bullets are going to hit something vital like the pilot or the engine. Hellshade

Similar thing happened to me. I didnt double my accuracy rating, but it went up to over 60% on average. Two to three bursts close up, max, and they go down. I'm hitting vital areas more often. Hellshade

I'd like an animation of a pilot banging his head against his desk repeatedly (complete with thumping sounds) whenever your claims are denied. Then maybe fade the screen to black and the sound and of a long, drawn out, agonizing wail of frustration trailing off into a whimper. I think it would add greatly to the authenticity. Plus, if I turn my speakers up loud enough, I won't be able to hear myself making the same noises. Hellshade

That's why you'd bring them. It's part of the self loathing that develops from consistently unmet expectations. The bad taste just helps fuel the anger. I bet they'd even be stale too. Devs, please help save this man from a day of "sniping" and bad tasting, stale Doritios. Give him a Snipe for P4, please. Hellshade

Suddenly, I can see Widowmaker atop a high tower overlooking a crowd with a scoped high power rifle, a bag of doritos, a 2 liter of gatorade and copy of Phase 4 floating in a bucket of his own tears. Not sure why that vision just came to mind... Hellshade