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

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 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

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

Well it looks like I'll have more time to devote to Over Flanders Fields. Worlds of Warcraft (an on-line MMORPG) that I have been playing since it came out in November of 2004 totally sucks after their latest 4.03 patch. They "nerfed" (significantly reduced) the abilities of every class and most especially my beloved Paladin. Everyone was expecting a damage nerf to the classes before the new expansion came out (on December 7th), but they changed the gameplay mechanics of Pallys so much that now that I no longer find them fun or interesting to play. The best part about a Paladin has been the ability to solo dungeons your own level that were designed to require 4 to 5 players working together to beat. That's definately all gone now. After logging in tonight, downloading the patch and playing my Pally for about 20 minutes, I'm literally depressed. All the time and effort gearing up has gone to waste. After reading the patch notes on all of the classes, none of my other "toons" look appealing either. I have several level 80 characters ("toons") all of whom are geared up with some of the better gear in the game which takes a lot of time and energy to acquire. (For any WoW fans, every one of them had at least a 5k gearscore except one who was working his way up there and had a 4.5k gearscore.) 80 Death Knight, 80 Hunter, 80 Warlock and 2 level 80 Paladins, not to mention a slew of other characters at various levels. They sucked the fun right out of the game and I already pre-paid for the expansion, damn it! There have been times I quite playing for a bit because I needed a break, but this is the first time I've ever just plain quit because the gameplay is literally no longer fun. I was really looking forward to the expansion but now I can't even think of a reason to install it once it arrives. So here's a salute to the characters I championed through every kind of trial and tribulation over the last several years. Thanks for all of the great memories. May you all rest in peace. Hellshade

Not too shabby at all sir. Try bumping the Z-Bias Resolution (under the Z-Bias Menu) from the CFS3 config in the Workshop down from 15 to 13 and see if that bumps your frame rates up even more. Ever since I did that, I'm running no less than 45 FPS over airfields, etc but usually a steady 60 FPS at the same resolution you are at. 1920 x 1200, 16xQ, 16 AA, sliders at 4,4,4,5,5. My current card is nowhere near as good as yours (GTX 280) however I do have faster cpu and ram. Quad Core @ 3.8Ghz & 1500+ Mhz RAM. I know OFF loves a fast cpu so that could probably be the reason there. Hellshade

There is a pics of a pair of Gothas in a P4 screenshot. Looks beautiful. I can't imagine they would put in the German bomber without an Allied one to match. Check out the P4 preview screenshots. I for one am very glad that Over Flanders Fields doesn't use the "pay per plane" system. 1st, going from the inital 4 planes that the other WWI flight sim had to the 39 that OFF shipped with (not to mention the ones added in Hat in the Ring) would be terribly expensive. I want to fly in the Great War, not finance it. Second, when ODB adds planes in an expansion pack, you get more than just the plane. They add all of the historically accurate squadrons those planes were used in (so that you can create a pilot and fly them in the dynamic campaign), include the paint scheme used by each squadron and also add in any custom paint jobs that any specific aces may have had for that type of craft. The other flight sim always has some beautiful looking planes. I'll give them that. It just never gets fleshed out enough for my personal tastes. At any rate, not to worry, there will be big bombers in P4 sir. Hellshade

The N28s come with a sunroof now??! Nice! Hellshade

I think the amount of extra hit points the planes get in the replacement DM should probably be directly tied to one of the various Gun Strength multipliers in the Workshop setting. In other words, if the Strongest gun setting is 2x normal damage (for example), then the planes should be given double the amount of hit points in the unofficial Damage Model. That way anyone who already has trouble bringing down planes can automatically wash away the difference with one Workshop setting change while players looking for more realistic Kill tallys and dogfight outcomes will just keep guns set at Normal strength. Is that a reasonable suggestion? I would love to see more planes heading back to base smoking and riddled with bullets, guns empty and fewer kills to their name. So I guess these are my questions: 1. How many other people would be interested in a DM where the planes have more "hit points" so they are harder to be shot down, resulting in a lower kill tally? 2. Does anyone know for sure if the AI has Unlimited Ammo or they too are limited to 500 / 1000 rounds per plane? 3. How hard would it be to double (or whatever the Gun Strength multiplier is) the number of hit points in the 2.2 DM that HPW made to try this out (assuming enough people are intrested)? Another feature of this that would help work to limit the Player kill tally would be that if they are flying on limited fuel and the dogfights take longer because the planes absorb more damage, they will have less fuel perhaps to keep flying around and engage in other fights. Hellshade