Hauksbee

Cool poster. Has a good 'period feel' to it; until I read the date, I thought it was WWI vintage.

Air pressure guage? Vickers? That's a new one for me. What's the connection?

Shocking! Utterly shocking that a pilot who displayed such iniative and daring should have to roust out at 0500 for a second job! Still...looking forward to the pics. Am attaching a poster for the mess. Keeps the lads focused on what they're fighting for. .

Ah! Those fateful words! Still and all, if it's real enough for you to do that righteous paint scheme, it can't be that far from deployment.

...and, on landing, it's best to stay inside the plane. (LOL) When I started OFF, I always flew from the six o'clock chase position, because when I flew CFS1 (Europe) I felt I was just chasing black specs from insde a richly detailed cockpit, but had little sense of a dogfight swirling around me. The canopy obscured the view. If there was a six o'clock chase position in CFS1, I never found it. But in OFF, it worked. Then I gave cockpit view another try, et voila!, 360 deg. view! (TrackIR enabled) So, welcome to the Flanders Death Wish Factory. I pass on to you the only piece of advice that guarentees survival: New guy buys the drinks. If you reach the magic number of 17 flying hours without getting your butt shredded, we buy for you. The game does not end. You don't get rotated stateside. There's just another damned mission. Fail, and we toast your memory.

Set it to full screen and launch FRAPS.

Brilliant! That's exactly how I envisioned the exploding Flammng Onions; at the top of their arc, the unused portion of the phosphorus blows out in tiny fragments. In the 'two-yellow-globes' version, they seemed too big and too few. This makes a cloud of burning fragments that would justly worry a pilot.

The first aircraft that I could control with any degree of confidence in OFF was the SE-5; a very forgiving, stall-resistant plane. Also reccomend the Fokker D.VII. On the whole, choose something late in the war. Engines were more powerful, and designers finally realized that the thin airfoils they had been spec-ing (in imitation of bird flight) were not the way to go. Better engines, better lift, better control. Of course, if you fly late in the war, your airplane will not be so liable to kill you, but there's a lot more enemy planes in the air to take up the slack.

After posting the W-29 pics., I was browsing old folders looking for one thing and found quite another...the PKZ heliopter. The following is the text that acompanied the pics. "The Austro-Hungarian PKZ (Petroczy-Karman-Zurovec) was designed by Stephen Petroczy as a replacement for gas filled observation ballons. It was to be a tethered helicopter, raised and lowered by cables from the ground. An observer was to be positioned in the cupola basket above the engines and propellers. Powered by three 120 hp Le Rhone engines, the PKZ made about 30 successful flights. The project never became operational because the military rejected the idea due to the high danger to the observer. Nevertheless, the PKZ-2 was the first real helicopter and the only helicopter that flew in World War One."

ZoomZoom: I am unclear on 37mm shell/flare. Are these two different things, or, just a big 37mm tracer round? At first you refer to it as an anti-aircraft gun; later you say it was not designed for that at all. If not, then what? Was it ever used against ground targets?

@#!*& Microsoft!! But that is one wonderful model. Couldn't you code it so it thinks it's an airplane in a permanent climb? I can understand why the Austrians were hesitant to put a man up in one of these with the props under him. But why not simply put the observers bucket underneath? Parachutes existed, albeit not seat-pack style. Parachuting from hot-air balloons was a county fair thrill attraction from the late 1800's.

I just know this is going to be good...

Damn! Where do I go to buy a ticket? ps: How'cum Bullethead gets all the hot ladies?

I would suspect that even if somebody handed you an original piece of fabric, you'd find it sun-faded, or otherwise degraded with age. Do you know if standard colors of paint were issued, or did each factory mix their own?

1. As soon as possible, get TrackIR 5.0 so you can look around. 2. Get a comfortable chair. You'll be spending a lot of time in it. 3. Send e-mails to all family members saying you'll be away for a while. 4. Buy a new bookshelf to house all the things you'll want to know. 5. Cease playing any WWII sims, (and jets!). The skills that make you hot in a Spitfire will kill you dead in 1916. 6. Set up a place within arm's reach for bottled water and crackers. ....the list goes on. and on. And if it seems OFF is slow in arriving, remember that it's more than a collection of airplanes; it's the entire four years of WWI. (really!) And that tends to slow the mailman down a bit.

A quick footnote, Olham...this is not one of my models, ( 'wish it was!) though I do have a W-29 in the works. I am (nearly) certain this is the same model you posted. I have two folders with W-29 pics. downloaded from different modeling sites. (Note the different background color in one of them.) I think this model is well known in the scale-model community.

In another thread, Olham mentioned that there had been some inquiries about Hansa-Brandenbergs. Here's two pics. of a W-12 model I built in Animation Master. Regretably, it is not possible to import into OFF, nor would it stand up to close scrutiny by our pilots. For example, there is no cockpit detailing and many nuts and bolts are misplaced. Building these planes underscores how much research and work the Devs invested in OFF. I've got a W-29 in the works, but is only about half finshed. As an added filip, I'm tossing in the Hawker-von Richtofen fight, and a D.VIII. .

Here's few more from the same site. I discovered a folder to which I had downloaded these to build the W-12. .

Early in the film, just as Lawrence reaches Faisals camp, he finds it under air attack. What kind of planes were used? They had that boney, rickety Aviatik/Rumpler look. I realize that it would be highly improbable to find a airworthy Aviatik, but whatever those planes were, at least they weren't Tiger Moths tarted up with Iron Crosses.

OFF does have a way of coming up on your blind side. I still think back to the time when I hosed down an enemy fighter at nearly point-blank range, and, as I tore past him, engine roaring, guns clattering, fuselage straining and creaking...and I thought: 'Did I just hear that pilot screaming?'

Outstanding model. I remember seeing it about a year ago. That's one of the pics. that got me enthused about Hansa-Brandenburgs to begin with.

Not really. The W-12s were well regarded, and a two-seater to boot. Approach with caution. I'll add these to the screen shots per Olhams suggestion. Paarma: You're right. I built these models (D.V & DH-2) before my copy of OFF arrived. Since then, I've revisited a lot of WWI air history so I don't embarrasss myself as much these days. My major gaffe was in thinking that the W-29 (low-wing monoplane) and the W-12 were basically variations on the same plane. Except that the W-12 was a biplane. 'Glad that one never saw the light of day. As a footnote: I was still working on the DH-2 while waiting for OFF. I was feeling pretty good about my model and was champing at the bit waiting for OFF because I really wanted to get my hands on a DH-2 and T-Bone with the Red Baron. When it finally came to pass, on the very first day, I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the game; the DH-2 just kept falling out of the sky. Finally, of course, I twigged to the fact that that was the way it was. OK, so the DH-2 is no fun...I'll just switch over to something else...like an Eindecker, and I'll get a little Max Immelman action going. Except the s.o.b. kept falling out of the sky! Got an Albatros D.V; tried to turn and burn like a Nieuport. Got my butt handed to me. By the end of the week I had concluded that this sim wasn't going to be very much fun at all and maybe I should go back to MS Century of Flight and fly cargo planes. Until I found the SE-5, and that changed everything.

Well, if you voted for 'Tiger Moth', I owe you a beer in the mess. I looked up a Tiger Moth pic. and matched it to MikeDixonUK's screen caps., and sure enough, there it was. Check the landing gear. Good disguise. I think they modified the rudder somewhat. Earlier in the day, as I was looking at some Hansa-Brandenburgs, I found a pic. of one that was actually an Albatros built under license by H-B. It looked so good, I thought I'd finally cracked the code on the movie plane. After all these years. Thanks much, guys. Now I know. .

As always, Olham, a beauty. It's a pity the Imperial Air Service couldn't have put you in charge of all camo schemes.

Peter Jackson and The Blue Max? Outstanding. Let's hope he plays it bythe book. Tom Cruise? I hope he gets a good part in Tin-Tin.