Hellshade

Corrupted files have caused me to re-install BH&H and I haven't put all the mods back in yet. Hellshade

The video is fully narrated. Are you sure you watched the right one, sir? Hellshade

and I thought I was spoiled with a single 28" widescreen monitor. It looks beautiful! I don't dare ask what a setup like that costs but I'm sure it's worth it. Hellshade

Rest in Peace with your Brothers in Arms - Pvt. Thomas Costello http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/12/us.soldier.finally.buried/index.html?hpt=T2 Hellshade

Two Alaska type weeks maybe...where each day and night is about 6 months long. Hellshade

Obviously posts about videos go in the Video Sticky thread, which has been enjoying a great deal of use. However on this one occassion, I wanted to toss out a special invite to check out a brand new video that I just posted in the Video sticky section. It has taken a considerable amount of time, effort and a little bit of money to be able to finally produce the quality of video that does OFF: BH&H some justice. What makes it different from any previous work that I have done are two things that, I feel, greatly add to the immersion as well as help do a far better job of showing off what Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven & Hell has to offer as a WWI combat flight simulator. First - It was filmed Full Screen - 1680 x 1050 and then edited and exported in 1080 HD mode. This means you can watch it full screen and it looks as clear as possible, much like when we play. It's by far the clearest video I have been able to produce and it was made to be watched Full Screen. Second - It's fully voiced acted. No more trying to read the text while watching the action and feeling like you are missing stuff which took away from the immersion of the experience. The downside is it is rather large. Well over 650MBs, so please be sure to pause it. Select 1080 HD mode, expand it to full screen and then wait for the red bar to fill up completely before pressing Play again. That will give you the smoothest playback experience. Here is the link to the Video thread sticky. I hope you enjoy it. Look for Hellshades Campaign Video #20, please. http://combatace.com/topic/56055-videos/page__st__160 Enjoy, Hellshade

Here it is guys. Campaign Video #20 with 2 big enhancements. First, I captured it in FRAPS in FULL SCREEN mode at 1680 x 1050, instead of in the usual half screen mode, and then of course edited it in full 1080 HD. That means you should watch it in full screen and there should be hardly any blurriness at all. I must say, I think video quality looks pretty damn good finally. Always room for improvement of course, but this starts to do Over Flanders Fields some justice. Second, it's fully voiced acted by yours truly instead of text all through it. I don't expect to win any voice acting awards or get a call from Disney to work on the next Shrek, but hopefully it's not too bad. No more distracting text to read while you try to watch the action. The downside is I recorded the voice in CD quality so it added quite a bit to the size of the video. Over 650MBs! So make sure you pause it and let it download completely before pressing play again. I'll try lower quality audio in the future to see if I can get the size down a bit without hurting the quality too much. Anyways, without further delay, here it is: Hellshades Campaign Video #20 (6:050) FULL SCREEN - 1080 HD PS Youtube seems to be experiencing some server errors today. Sometimes it lets me access videos and sometimes not. Enjoy, Hellshade

Absolutely! I've killed myself at least 80 times.... Hellshade

I'm not worried. I haven't burned through 1/10th of the content in Between Heaven & Hell, let alone all of the Hat in the Ring expansion and I try to play for an hour or more every day. When it's done, it's done and I'm willing to bet it'll be better than we were all hoping for. Besides, we're all getting a small P4 preview with the Superpatch anyway. Right? Thanks for all your hard work. Hellshade

Thanks Lou, As I suspected, while nothing is going to be a perfect simulation, simply denying ourselves all the little extra "convienences" (warp, TAC, zoom, etc) goes a long way towards bringing the kill tally down. Yes, the AI is "Bloodthirsty", but as often as not, so are the player pilots they are facing. If it's kill or be killed, one could argue the AI is making the rational choice to fight to the death. Hellshade

The challenge, I believe, is that those two desires work against one another. If you make the AI able to run a morale check and "run away" (which is definately more realistic), then you end up having a bunch of easy kills because they can't really defend themselves well as they fly straight away. Your kill scores go up fast. I'm thinking out loud off the cuff here, but perhaps the best way to keep kills from going up too quickly would be to have a "Dead is Dead" button in the P4 Workshop. When you select it, it automatically changes a number of settings in the workshop for maximum simulated realism. Turns off Unlimited Ammo and Fuel. Sets Claims to Normal. Gun strength to Normal. Gun accuracy to Less Accurate. It should also disable TAC, Heads up Displays, Z commands, warp and even zoom in and out views. (I know they could use binoculars but obviously they weren't using them while in combat in order to get a better look at their foes). In any case, whatever the Devs and perhaps the "DiD" crew deems to be the most realistic that can be simulated (of course nothing is going to be perfect) is what everything changes to once you select that button. Changing any of the DiD auto-select options will automatically unselect the DiD option in the workshop. Now you can't see enemy planes on radar and you can't zoom in and out far in the cockpit view to be able to detect enemy planes. That is going to drop scores considerably. No warping that auto-unwarps whenever EA are within 4 miles of you to alert you to an enemy presence. You have limited fuel and ammo, no aids of any kind and if you crash, you are pretty much guaranteed death of the pilot. My guess is that the scores would remain pretty low under those kind of circumstances for most pilots. Put the AI on Less Aggressive and I bet your scores will be low and grow only over considerable time indeed. The AI of two seaters in particular probably needs to be addressed in P4 so that they are not such easy kills, as well. Anyone in the DiD crowd care to weigh in on what kind of kill tally you normally get to before a pilot dies? Hellshade

I bounce around these days between various plans and squadrons so I can get different videos of various types of planes over a range of locations. It's forcing me to try and learn to fly planes that I never spent much attention to though. I'm trying to learn the Sopwith Camel (and failing miserably), but I am learning to see the strengths of the Spad VII and XIII, despite the very limited field of view. Energy attack fighting is totally different from the turn fighting tactics I'm used too but clearly has it's advantages. I also just started a Jasta 1 pilot flying a Albatros DII. Not as fast or as agile as an Entente N-16 it seems, but still makes for truly exciting fighting! I can see why you enjoy the Albatros line, Olham. They have a good field of view and of course, those lovely pair of MGs to enhance the killing power. I expect to spend some time in each of them. As to your questions, I seem to prefer the British most, then Germans, US and finally French. I have no favorite home airfield or squadron. In fact I don't even remember where most of them have been I have to change them so often. For me it's whatever gets me into the action quickest so I can film a story. After a few test flights of a D II though, I expect I'll be making a few videos of some more early war campaign action. I am impressed with her flight characteristics. Hellshade

I can't speak for OBD Software, but as an end user I can say that I would feel very comfortable buying Between Heaven & Hell and the Hat in the Ring expansion at this time. They have not even released a single screenshot of Phase 4 yet. That's a pretty good sign that it remains very much in development and won't be released for a significant period of time, IMHO. Besides, at about $40 for both P3 and the expansion, you just can't go wrong. There's too much to do and experience for a bargain price there and the quality and content of both packages is head and shoulders above the Phase 2 freeware. It is, of course, your dime but I think we all will be waiting for quite some time before P4 is ready. The Devs do tend to shoot for perfection and that takes time. In the meantime, check out the Screenshots and Videos sticky threads to see just how much better P3 looks and plays than P2. It really is a world of difference. Even if P4 came out by Christmas, I'd still say less than $10 per month for all the hours of enjoyment you would get would be well worth it. Hellshade

My OFF: BH&H installation got corrupted somehow (probably from over-use!) so I just uninstalled and re-installed everything, including HitR, the Superpatch and all mini patches up to 1.47. The challenge I am having is that I started a campaign in 1917 and I set Player flight altitude to 10,000 feet, but whenever I use Warp to Next waypoint, I always zoom up to 20,000 feet which is waaaay above all enemy flights. I tried setting it as low as 3,000 feet but it seems to ignore the setting and always bring me to 20k feet as soon as I warp. Besides the obvious - don't warp - which I really need to do or it takes too long to get to the combat sequences to film, how do I correct this? I don't remember it having this issue before. Anyone have any ideas? Any help is appreciated, as always. Hellshade

Now that my new video editor supports it, I'm working on it. I agree completely it would be a vast improvement over reading. This was a full weekend with the wife and kids, but I'll be making some new ones as soon as time permits sir. Hellshade

I consider Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven & Hell to be one of the finest, serious WWI flight sim recreations ever made and I have the deepest respect for all of the work that OBD Software has poured into creating what I feel is a true Masterpiece. That said, sometimes stuff happens when you are flying that is just plain damn funny. Do I Really Want to Know? (0:23) - 1080 HD When I saw this happen, I had to ask myself..."Do I really want to know what the seating arrangements were on that plane?" I'd be interested to know your explanations for what just happened there. Enjoy, Hellshade

I've tried all three settings in the workshop and it doesn't seem to make a difference. I even exited the program and re-loaded it up in case it was session based like the AI aggressiveness. No joy. Oddly enough, I started a new campaign with a different pilot in a different squadron and the problem doesn't exist for him. Only with the RNAS 10 pilot. Strange indeed. Hellshade

Z is where I am getting the altitude reading from. Hellshade

Hellshades Air Combat Video #17 (3:57) - 1080 HD Let me know if you think the new font is still overbearing on the video. I tried to create something more subdued but that still is easy to read against the ever changing video backdrop. Enjoy, Hellshade

Wow. Over 3,100 views to the Videos sticky thread in just over a month! Somebody must be watching. Hopefully if you are viewing some of these user made videos and you have questions about Over Flanders Fields because it looks interesting to you, you'll feel free to post your questions because we have a wonderful, friendly community here. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to create videos and shared them here as well. I know it's not an easy thing to do but clearly many people are enjoying watching them. It's awesome to be able to literally watch how other people approach air to air combat so we can learn tips and tactics from one another about different planes and situations. I know it's helping me to be a better pilot. Thanks to everyone who is helping to make this sticky a useful addition to the Combat Ace : Over Flanders Fields forums. Hellshade

The night fighting looks extremely cool. I'm going to have to figure out a way to try a few of those as well and still be able to see my foes. Nice video bud. Hellshade

"We all live in a yel-low D H 2, a yel-low D H 2, a yel-low D H 2." yah-haa! I'm certain that's what the new digital remastered version says. Hellshade

I love the Bee Gees, Lou, so I'm going to try it out. Good advice! Hellshade

It was actually a Quick Combat at Dusk. I'll try to do some night missions fairly soon. I've done a few test Night Missions and am trying to work out the details for the best picture possible without using lables or TAC. I like the new text style but I think the font size was too big. It is indeed distracting. We'll have to see how well it scales smaller or if I need to switch to something completely different. As with everything, it's a work in progress. I appreciate the feedback too. It confirmed my suspicions. As for the direct AA hit, I have seen a few of those and even have videos showing one other, but never, ever THAT close to my plane. He was no more than 100 feet in front of me when he got hit. Given that I was flying around 90MPH right behind him, I literally was a fraction of a second away from being toasted by the Allies. I'll bet somebody on the AA crew got a demotion for that one. The funny thing was I switched targets to him after flipping over to get back on my initial targets tail. If I hadn't switched targets, I would have missed that beautifully framed shot. Pure Damn Luck I was at the right place at the right time. Hellshade

Use your throttle to control your time on target. Don't be afraid to cut throttle completely if need be in order to slow your closing rate. I do it all the time. The more time you give yourself to line up your target, the less anxious you will be about doing it quickly before you lose the opportunity. Being over-anxious about missing an opportunity to bring down an EA is what causes most people to over-correct (aside from just plain twitchy flight models for planes like the DR 1). So cut throttle if possible and take your time. Also, try to avoid situations where you are attempting to "Make a kill before being killed'. If you see you are almost lined up on a target but you know there is an enemy aircraft closing in on your 6, follow the rules and turn to face your attacker and put them on the defensive. Never be afraid to let your primary target escape in order to preserve your life. You'll likely be too anxious to aim properly anyways and not do the damage you would in other circumstances because it's an "all or nothing" type of situation, which tends to be stressful. Basically, it's too hard to aim if you are checking your 6 every 2 seconds. Choose angles of attack on your target that give you the most time to line them up as well. Obviously a head on attack has the fastest closing rate and so gives you the least amount of time to aim correctly...not to mention the stress of in-coming rounds. Coming in on their 6 buys you the most time. Catching them as they pull up in a climb clearly gives you a nice full "T" target with more chance of hitting something. Diving on them with the throttle cut provides a nice big "T" target as well. When fighting multiple agile opponents, damage as many of them as possible so they lose the ability to manuever away from your future attacks as easily. Better to fight 6 damaged planes than 4 or 5 whole ones. If they are slow to manuever, then you don't have to worry about hard corrections to get them back into your sights. Keep repeating to yourself: "As long as I live, I can always make another pass at them so I don't have to destroy them completely on this one. A damaged plane now is a dead plane in the next 2 minutes." Hope that helps. Hellshade Oh and one more thing. If you wait until the plane fills 100% of your view before you press the trigger, you'll hit it 100% of the time. It's the pulling away before you ram him part that gets tricky there. But that's when your twitchy, over-anxious, over-correcting stick movements will more likely work in your favor. right?