Hellshade

I personally don't use the top hat. I've got a Logitech Extreme3d pro and it has 4 buttons on the top of the stick in addition to the top hat. I just assigned the zoom /unzoom function in game to the two closest and it works great. Not an expensive stick either but works great! Hellshade

I got assigned a ground attack mission on a hun airfield. I lost my flight somewhere and decided to proceed to take out as many hun planes on the ground as I could until I was either killed by AA & ground fire or I ran out of ammo. I got a few planes and the germans got the grass on their field mowed by my propeller. Hellshades Campaign Video #7 (7:37) HD Enjoy Hellshade

Hellshades Campaign Video #6 (7:37) HD I'm starting to see why so many of the great Aces never survived the war. It's completely unforgiving up there and your fortunes can change in an instant. Enjoy Hellshade

Glad you like it. It seems to be a much more natural way for me to use the zoom in and out feature while flying in the heat of combat. Hellshade

I have the top two buttons on my joystick programmed to be zoom in and out so that I can easily zoom using my thumb. I never use the gunsite view. I prefer to line them up manually. The ammo is on normal on all of my videos except the last one (I changed it to strongest for a video I am working on but haven't posted and forgot to change it back for this mission) and one other video I posted long ago but I can't remember which one. My cheats are Unlimited fuel and Ammo though, because nothing would be worse than filming a video and getting into the middle of a great furball and suddenly I'd be out of ammo or gas. That's great for actual immersion in missions but makes for bad videos, IMHO. Since I try not to "spray the sky" with ammo anyway, I don't think it makes too much of a difference. I usually try to be right on top of the guys before I open fire so that every shot counts. Even without guns on normal, it still wreaks havoc on the enemy planes at that close of a range. I got some great kills on the video I just filmed and am in the process of editing. 3 Great dogfights in one mission. Hellshade

I did this one first thing this morning. No cuts at all. Single shot Campaign video starting from first contact. Starts a little slow but then the action gets pretty good. There's one pass I made against a DVII that I don't know how we didn't crash into one another. We literally must have missed one another by less than a foot at over 120 mph. It was a rush! Hellshades Campaign Video #5 (6:46) HD Hope you enjoy it Hellshade

Thanks guys. To answer your question rabu, I use the zoom feature instead of leaning forward, but I noticed that sometimes doing it that way causes white triangles to appear all around the edge of screen when unzooming. Still a million little details I'd like to make better in the videos but working on it. Glad you all enjoy them. Hellshade

Hellshades Campaign Video #4 (9:15) HD I didn't notice until after I had uploaded it - and I'm too lazy to re-edit it- that one of the text overlays somehow got moved to the wrong time in the video. So in the video, towards the end, you see a text that say "I see my airfield stretched out before me" or some such thing but I'm actually just finishing the last kill. The next scene or two after that is when it should have popped up. Oh well. Sorry for poor editing on that one. It's like 485MB so it took forever to upload to Youtube and then process it as an HD video so I'm just going to leave it. Also I noticed my TrackIR jaggies came back a bit in this one. When my framerate drops to the 30s to mid 40s they always show up again and that tends to happen alot more when I'm recording a living campaign as opposed to a quick combat mission. Probably due to all of the extra ground activity going on that also needs to be processed but that's just a guess. Anyways, enjoy Hellshade

Mike, Morris and CamelJockey...those are all beautiful screenshots! Everything looks fantastic. Well done guys. Hellshade

and I appreciate that. But still I think giving credit helps show others that we have a vibrant, creative community that continually adds to the game. It also shows that if for some reason you don't like any of the 4,000+ paint schemes, you can always make your own if you have the talent like you and Lou certainly seem to have. Besides, there I don't think there is anything wrong with highlighting some of the good work people in the OFF community are doing. Keep it up sir. I appreciate it. Because when I get my a$$ shot off because I can't fly worth a damn, at least I can look good going down in flames. ha! Hellshade

I'm not a very good shot, so the best way for me to win is to try and be a better pilot. Get in so close I can't miss. Make every round count. I'm glad you enjoy the videos. I'm still trying to improve them as much as possible. Not only for current players to enjoy but also so that other people can see why OFF: BH&H and HitR has such a passionate following. It's an incredible air war simulator and I'm just trying to capture as much of the excitement as I can for people to see. It's really not possible to do it all justice though. There are too many possibilities. Hellshade

Thanks Olham. I was trying to get a print screen of a pilots stat page after a quick combat to save. I had my best shooting ever at 61% accuracy!! I have the video of the mission but the screenshot of the stat page didn't work. /sigh Must be controlled by the damn CO. No confirmation! ha. Hellshade

Yep. Campaign mission. New Allied flights were almost constantly steaming into the fight over the course of the nearly 7 minute battle. For clarification: Hellshades Air Combat Video = Quick Combat footage Hellshades Campaign Video = Actual Campaign footage And yes, it's brutal on the German side late in the war. The good news is that your hit % will go up because no matter where you shoot, there's a damn Allied plane! So I decided to try a British RFC-29 campaign. Credit to UK_Widowmaker for his great SE5a paint job! (I should have asked permission first, bud. I hope you don't mind) Credit to Creaghorn for his "Homebrew" engine and spandau sound effects. Thanks guys! Hellshades Campaign Video #3 (7:08) HD Enjoy Hellshade

That's not an F-15. It's a new skin for my Sopwith Triplane. If I can't shoot them all down maybe I can at least scare the bajeebers outta them. Hellshade

Hellshades Campaign Video #2 (7:30) HD Enjoy the action. The Allies seem to have near limitless airpower near the end of the war! A little commentary mistake on my part too. Near the end I talk about 5 more Allied planes joining the fight. It's actually 6 that you can see in the distance. Not that it matters. I was nearly out of ammo by then anyway. Also, I forgot to give credit at the end for Creaghorns Homebrew for some of the sounds. My apologies to Creaghorn. I properly credited him in the notes on my Youtube site. Hellshade

Nice flying Mike! Sorry for the folks that can't see it because of the music. It's actually a good soundtrack for the video. Gratz on making it back home alive too Mike. Hellshade

Hellshades Air Combat Video #12 (5:56) HD Hellshade

I believe if I use Print Screen it saves a screenshot, but the question is "where does it save it to?" It's a noob question I know. Hellshade

Indeed I was. You could see I was struggling to make it to the other side of the front lines but the Allied scout behind me was too persistant and my plane too badly damaged. I don't fly DiD when shooting videos though. Too hard to find targets, aim, avoid the bad guys, try not to run into anyone AND keep the camera work as smooth as possible so folks don't get motion sickness watching it later. Hence my escape from the POW camp 2 days later! Hellshade

I don't do much long range shooting at all and rarely try for those tricky deflection shots. I'm just not that good at them and I know it all too well. I'll only fire long range if I need to make the guy bank, climb or dive so I can get a better target and close in more. And even then I fire very few rounds. The fewest possible to get the effect I need. So by the time I really open fire with the intent to kill, as most of my videos show, I'm almost close enough to spit on the guy. In fact my problem isn't so much hitting the guy with my rounds, it's more about NOT hitting the guy with my plane. For that reason my % is usually between 39% and 52%. Most often in the mid 40's. It's not skill though. It's just being ballsy enough to decide I'm not going to open fire until my chances of missing are really, really slim. I'm depending on my plane being nimble enough to peel off the target at the last possible second in order to survive. I should point out also that that is what I get flying my favorite plane, the Sopwith Tripe. Put me in a Fokker DVII and it drops a little. Put in a damn Nieuport XX where I can't see anything out the front window and my % drops so slow I miss the inside of a barn 80% of the time. The view is just too narrow for me. The plane type makes a BIG difference for me. Hellshade

Careful what you wish for. Olham would probably record a curse like "No bloody snipe for you, Tommy!" Just to be rude. He's mean like that, you know. Hellshade

I think that and other voice effects would add a lot of immersion to the game and would probably not be THAT difficult to add, but that it's also something that should be selectable as On or Off in the workshop. Also, you know how sometimes when the plane gets too badly damaged it just exits the mission? I think there should be a terrifying "death scream" as if one knows the end is about to come. That way it preps you a little bit that the end is near before everything goes to black. Hellshade

How about instead of graphical feedback in the cockpit, they added audio feedback instead to add to the immersion even more. If your plane gets hit, your pilot will say "Son of a..." (or some such variation of suprise/anger). If you get hit, of course, you scream. High stress turns will make your pilot grunt against the strain, etc. Optional "Pilot Sounds" able to be selected / deselected in Workshop, naturally. You'd probably want 4 different voice sets. One for each country. Can't be having the Huns yelling "Bloody Hell!" in an english accent when their planes get hit now, can we? Hellshade

Maybe we could compromise and get a single finger salute? I'm sure it happened, historically speaking. Hellshade

Thanks Widowmaker. The honor is mine to fly her. She is stunningly painted. First Campaign video is up sir. They scratched the paint up a bit (maybe a little bit more than that) but not before I retired a few Allied crews. I made the screenie my wallpaper. She looks at home hunting in dark, stormy skies! Hellshade