Olham

As long as I don't lose one early through a collision, they do last quite some time (only to get killed by a collision later - Mmuahahahaaaa!!!!). If he was a real veteran with more than 60 flight hours, then I had developed some kind of relationship to him, and I feel a loss, when he suddenly falls. There are two kinds of deaths; the expected, and the sudden death. If I get into a furball with an enemy team, which is very good at it already, and then more enemy flights arrive and join in, and all this beyond the lines - then I begin to expect the possible outcome of death or at least captivity. Collision is a sudden death - one moment I am trying to get behind that Nupe; next second - crash! - some other feller ran into my kite - or I into his. Same with total Flak hits (although they are rather rare for German fighter pilots). I don't have a ceremony for that moment then; no ceremonial music, no drinks. I only feel really shocked and quite disappointed, almost empty. What I sometimes do is to screen-copy the Pilot Log with a page of his best claims. After a while another pilot to whom I feel similarly related,will replace him, and then some day, his log will get deleted. Gone in history. No ceremony. No drinks. Yeah, I guess it looks quite sad compared to your ceremony, Bullet.

Thanks for the tip, Eric, but for me it's okay, when other forum parts have different designs. An F-16 is a pretty different matter than a Sopwith Camel; and for those modern jets, the blue-grey design fits quite well, whilst for our WW1 environement, the "Over Flanders fields" decorations are matching a lot better IMHO.

Don't worry, guys - physical/material bodies cannot travel with light speed. Even a much "slower" speed like half light speed would not be possible. If a space ship travelling with that speed would hit a sand grain or other small particle, the collision impact would generate a power similar to the Hiroshima bomb. Settling on other planets, only because you've ruined your own one, is just a crazy idea (and the vast majority of mankind would not get on board for such a journey). I wished, that all of us could circle around our planet in ISS for some hours - then we might realise: we ARE travelling with a most beautiful spaceship alread. It can generate air for breathing, supplies us with water and regenerating food, and with a flourishing and constantly changing flora and fauna to keep us entertained. In a space capsule, we wouldn't smoke nor throw our garbage around. We must still be too small to realise, that we ARE in a space ship. I hope we will grow up some time soon.

Yeah, Cary Grant is close - didn't he play Frankenstein's butler in "Gone with the Wind"?

Thanks, Dej. I wonder what it is about - didn't he write about the whole of his wartime in "No Parachute"?

If I was still drinking, and I'd be looking like that on some too early mornings, I wouldn't be surprised too much. Shocked, maybe. But not surprised. .

Well, in my case: I have too much phantasy rather, which emulates all that might be missing. (Great for OFF - very bad before a date with my dentist!) I know there is a seat cushion type of thing, that imitates the rise or climb feeling, and maybe even engine vibration - someone posted it only recently. Then there is Force Feedback on the right sticks for that; at least in OFF. The question is: how much capacity will such additional physical simulations require from our rigs? OFF actually puts so much already into a mission, that I wonder, if more would be possible without us buying much more advanced systems?

Yeah, it can be a burden sometimes...

Tony, I'm glad to hear you are recovering, Sir! Surgery today is a lot different to what it was 30 years ago. But still, the surgery on a vital organ like the lungs or the heart are not really cakewalks. Not even for 25 year old people - at that age I had a lung surgery and know how I felt after that. But I'm still here, and recovered from all that - even if it took some time. And so will you, Tony - step by step, week for week. Don't give in to the lethargy - I know I had it too - move your body around, use your muscles a bit every day, and soon you will feel stronger and stronger. All the best for a good recovery, Tony - speedy or not.

A forum which is so luxurious, beautiful and easy to handle as this one, must need maintenance every now and then. I guess hat can sometimes be a very complex business, to arrange things differently, for the sake of better order or for security reasons. During such maintenance works, the "OFF wallpapers" were put out of action. The forum moderators have already written a note, that everything should be back as usual, after a couple of more days. So grab the "Hitchhiker's Guide through the Galaxy" and follow the major rule, which is printed in bold red letters on the front page, and which is so becalming: DON'T PANIK! (And don't forget your towel!)

Sure - and on an ice cold February day, when we're up to 15.000 feet in our open cockpits, or when I'm hit, bleeding, and the engine catches fire - then I am quite happy that I don't have to feel it, and gladly accept the "limitations".

I hope and guess, that WOFF will also feel even more like really flying these crates. We can see the cockpits do look like real ones now - let's wait and see, how the flying will feel. I may not see, what is NOT there in the further distance (in RoF) - but I know it. And I am more the German Jasta leader type flyer (in a sim that is - who knows how I would deal with that in RL!), so I often fly my own course with my flight - and really meet other French or British aircraft on their own missions (in OFF). I understand it's perfectly okay for you, when you don't miss it - for me it is the essential difference between a WW1 game and a WW1 simulation.

Well, Italy is a damn fine choice for reconvalescing (?) surely, tranq! In you website Isaw several villa type old houses in the countryside of Toscany - I guess you will reside in one of them - like god in Italy. Oh, I envy you! Me, I am back to school days since Monday, for half a year. Trying to learn web design. So come on, send some nice photographs, my friend - my envy is of friendly nature.

Just found this documentary video about James McCudden and Edward "Mick" Mannock. Enjoy!

Hey, you Blighters and Yankees - push off and wipe some dust off of your WW1 libraries, you silly racoons!!!

Yes, me too, Beanie, me too - this is one of the longest waitings for something I REALLY wanted. But it's not too hard - I KNOW it will be so rewarding!

Well, I do fly RoF, but only online MP sessions. Offline, the "Campaign" has not enough immersive power for my taste - the whole historical detail and the amount of squadrons which are present in OFF are missing. And the fact, that I know there is nothing flying anywhere else - only just the aircraft which will get spawned for me to entertain me on my path - all that makes it rather a "non-event" for me. Good looking isn't enough to compensate for all that. Just my 2 pence.

...then comes a German flyer - and then you must build a room on to your farm house. Well, this seems to lead to something inevitably: a "Great War Flying Museum" - a nice and not too hard job for your old age, Lou!

Yes, I guess I will. First day at school was - well, tiring. They gave me a rig with some stuff on, and a training book for HTML. Then I had to work my own way into HTML scripts - I got to page 24. Now I don't know, if that was good - or bad. I was the only scholar for Web Design there right now.

Yes, I guess you should. Can one save a website itself (I am very stone age at that stuff)?

I hope it isn't too much suffering, Lou. But I guess you're intelligent enough to REALLY understand what the products like potatoe chips etc. really are - and just leave them in the supermarket. I have more and more come to a point, where I didn't want that junk food to ruin my health. Every now and then I have a crave to do it again, and then I let my body (or is it the anti-Christ in me?) decide and buy such crapp. Usually the experience is not at all satisfying, and the crave will be gone for a long time.

Cody, you can have more than one pilot in OFF. Not all pilots of WW1 entered the war right at it's beginning. Some came in 1917, some even in 1918. At these times, the early ones may have long been fallen. Just create some of those later pilots - it's not unhistorical. You could have one in each nation; or 3 - 5 for the various phases of the war, from autumn 1916 to the end in autumn 1918. In WOFF we will definitely see the Morane Parasol, which should make the early encounters between the Germans and the French much more interesting. In the time of Max Immelmann, the major air activity seemed to have been in the area cornered by Bapaume (and Arras) - Lens - Douai - Cambrai (more or less). In other areas, it may have been very quiet.

What a short, uninformative note for the end of such a wonderfully made website??? What a sad end for something, that had already become an "institution" for the many interested in WW1 aviation... I really hope it will be continued by someone who cares.

Davy, I guess we all post interesting links every now and then, which others may not watch then (due to various differing reasons). Whatever it was - now I have seen it, and it was great.

I only recently read the book about the famous Fokker E.III pilot Max Immelmann, and he went up mostly alone. Sometimes he "found Boelcke" on his patrols, but I found no such thing like flying in a formation. My advice for all new OFF flyers: drop the idea of flying the war chronologically from the beginning (and if the pilot dies, starting again) - enlist pilots in early and later 1917, and in early and later 1918, just for testing and checking out, how much there will come in OFF - you could be missing the most of OFF, if you try to get there by surviving all those months - most likely you won't. At least I could never achieve that yet. As for the flight path, you can click "Optional flight" repeatedly in the briefing window, to get a path of your likes. I did not find a difference between the briefing course and the path in the inflight map. That may result from using the mod.