Olham

Well, perhaps you haven't seen Howard Hughes' "Hell's Angels" yet? Here are some of the fighting scenes - sorry for the music; didn't find the original sound one.

Never seen Waldo Pepper - is that Udet he is flying against?

Jim, I had watched it in Cinema, when I still knew nothing about WW1 flying, or about Manfred von Richthofen. At that time, I found the movie quite "okay". During the year after that, I learnt a lot, and read Kilduff's book; later I got yours; and only then I realised, how they had taken lots of colourful snippets to make a WW1 fighter pilot movie of - with hardly any relationship to MvR's life. You'd burst if you watched it - so, for your own sake: don't!

Well, guess how I feel with my "serious" campaign pilot - he reached September 1917! That would be more than a year to go! ...

For WW1 I'd like to see Udet's story, or as Creaghorn wants: Julius Buckler's - should both be good. For WW2 I would love to see the "Battle of Britain", as it really was, with tons of CGI created aircraft, so that we get an impression of how big it really was. (The only scene I liked from "Troy" was, when they showed the whole Greek fleet - an amazing sight!)

Yeah, what can one say positively - well, the technical side was partly brilliant. Not all of the FM of the craft, but some of it; and the looks. If only they had consulted the guys with all the historical knowledge. I was just searching for a good picture, and I like the Albatros D.V in this pic - but Manfred von Richthofen didn't fly the early version with the "hunchback". Facit: good demonstration of what would have been possible...if it had been done right.

Hihihi - that reminds of someone, Flyby. Who is he? I think I've seen him only this morning? Oh, I know - in the bathroom mirror...

Great stuff, Shredward. And never mind he didn't talk about the things they did. The paras often go through the toughest sh*t, and what they have to do there, is nothing they would like to tell a civilian, who's never been in the same sh*t I guess. And not to their own family.

From what I saw, the "overall graphics" slider is a quick one to set everything to the same value like "5". The others are for individual settings. Forget the overall one. I found, that the most resource-hungry one is "scenery detail"; you may find with your system, that you can run OFF fine with these values: Aircraft: 5 Terrain Detail: 3 Scenery Detail: 2 Effects Quality: 4 or 5 Clouds: 5 This will provide you with good graphics. The Anti-Aliasing and additional stuff should be selected in the Control Center of the Graphic Card. Anti-Aliasing makes jagged edges and pixelated wires look smooth - it should at least be on 8x. But there you need advice from the NVidea fraction - I use ATI. Make sure, that your Anti-Virus and Firewall are set to "Game Mode". That will stop them making updates or similar actions, while you are in a full-screen mode (which is gaming).

Hihihi - we OFF Pilots may appear a bit strange to others every now and then. And like all other so called mad men, we mutter: "What do they know..." Such freezes happened to me a lot, before I upgraded. I don't know what did the trick - I went from dual core to quad core CPU - from 2,83 GHz to 3,3 GHz; I got more memory, and I use Windows 7 instead of Vista now. Didn't change the graphics card - it's still the ATI HD4870.

Pol, before the others come to tie me on to a barbeque grill for keeping you off from getting on with P4, I say: I know you will do the best possible work; and a triple "cheers!", and now - where were you?

The Spanish Civil War (from: Wikipedia) Republican government bought in France 14 Dewoitine D.371, 10 Dewoitine D.373 and 49 Potez 540, among other military aircraft, for the value of 12 million francs. Unfortunately all these planes were largely obsolete at the time, so that in the first four months after the start of the hostilities, the only aircraft of the Republican government that could be considered modern were three Douglas DC-2s that had been purchased recently.[7] [7] = Gerald Howson, Arms for Spain: Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War, John Murray Publishers Ltd, 1998, ISBN 9780719555565

The aircraft in your photo has only 6 windows on the side, Flyby. If you measure the distance from the left edge of one window to the next right window's left edge, you will see, that there cannot be another window hidden by the door.

You may have got me wrong there, Herr Prop-Wasche. I was not complaining about your DM, but about the fact, that the engine is always getting hit. In fact your DM often makes the damage less serious, and I have noticed, that I could sometimes fly all the way home without the engine cutting out. Pol said it above - you get that sound even, when there is a minor hit. I don't know if that could be changed in P4 without too much trouble - it would sure be nicer.

I just found this info on a Spanish DC-1: When Barcelona fell in March 1939, government officials fled in the DC-1 to Toulouse, France. When the war was over, Nationalist Spanish forces flew it back to Madrid, where it was handed over to the Sociedad Anonima de Transportes Aeros, later named Iberia Airlines. The camouflage paint was removed, and the DC-1 was christened Negron after a famous Nationalist pilot who had been killed in action. It flew on regular schedules connecting cities in Spain. Read more here: http://www.airforce-...1285gooney.aspx 4th - 12th March 1939 The failure of Dr Negrin's Communist Government to sue for peace resulted in a civil-war- within-a-civil-war on the streets of Madrid. The National Defence Council, led by Colonel Casado, triumphed in the struggle for control of the Republic and tried to negotiate peace terms with General Franco. In the meantime Dr Negrin, his Cabinet, and Russian advisers flew out of Madrid to safety.

What I found remarkable, is that there are no national insignia visible, and that there are so many civilians. The camo pattern looks like a Japanese one to me.

Here is a graphic by Mark Miller; I have painted in the spinner (yellow) and the metal hood (light blue). I know, that the metal hood was not thick, but when the rounds are coming from the front, the impact angle is very flat, which should deviate the rounds, at least a good bit. So would the revolving spinner. This is not meant to be an "argh, the two-seaters always hurt me!" complain. I have downed even Bristol Fighters successfully. It is only just, that engine damage appears too often - almost every time, and even from further away.

The front view is covered a lot by the spinner and the frontal fuselage rib behind the spinner. You see very little of the engine. Exactly, Creaghorn - the hit would in many cases not be damaging much, as the round went through spinner or frontal rib or propellor before - and may therefor not have had enough energy left to do damage on such a heavy and robust machine. Only the cylinders and valves look out at the top and could be hit directly. But the chance of that to happen should be far, far smaller than it is right now.

Without having any knowledge, I just wonder, if that letters "EC" could be more than just any ID number. Here is a website of veterans on the EC-47, which seemed to be a specially equipped aircraft. http://www.ec47.com/dir.htm

I am running OFF on an Intel i5 (2500k) with 3.3 GHz, and it is running fine.

Guys, what I mean is only this: when my Albatros (any variant) is getting hit by only 2-3 rounds in an attack on two-seaters, the engine is damaged. And I simply do not believe, that the engine could be damaged so often and so easily. Many of the rounds would have to go through the spinner or through the frontal fuselage rib. Some may have been deviated by the prop, or hit the prop. Then, WW I rounds were not as effective as WW2 ammo. And: the Mercedes D.III was quite a solid built engine. I did not read so much about engine damage, even during two-seater attacks. Considering all this, engine damage should not occur almost each and every time I attack a two-seater. I know the various ways of attacks, and I mostly attack from below their six. So often they do not hit me at all. But as soon as the Albatros DOES get hit during your attack by only 2 - 3 rounds, you can bet 1.000 Pounds on that the engine will be damaged. Hope I could make clear, what I mean. .

If you need to save some time, you could press "X" for warping after takeoff, and keep one finger on "Ctrl"; and then you exit warp with "X" (Ctrl + X), when the circling climb is done. You will come out of warp at a useful altitude, and now you can still climb higher on your way to the first waypoint.

You forget all the stuff they have left for us, if we only look, Jarhead. Manfred von Richthofen, Mannock, Udet and many other WW I flyers have written books; as well as Erich Hartmann, Adolf Galland and several other WW II aces have done. From the WW II pilots, many interviews were caught on film. The problem is not a lack of historically correct material - the problem are authors, producers and directors, who give a damn about all the available facts, and prefer to glue together their own crumpled model of it. The youngest example may be the American-German movie "Der Rote Baron", which had almost nothing to do with the real life of Manfred von Richthofen. With the money invested, it could have been made a very good film - the flying scenes alone show that. If they had only got the available men with the historical and technical knowledge involved.

I think it would be enough, if you could drastically reduce the engine hit-points, HPW. And I mean, by 75%. So, if there are only 4 hit points now, it should have only one. No joke - the engine is getting damaged almost every time I attack a two-seater. And since I know that the RL flyers went pretty close, and had engines damaged rather rarely, this is totally distorted.

Just found these two photos at the website: www.buddecke.de They show aircraft of Fliegerabteilung 29, Rohatyn, Galicia; June 1917; during railway transport; and loaded on a truck.