Maxiku

Just a few ideas.... Do you get the same issues with CFS3 (patched to version 3.1 or 3.1a) as well as with OFF. (ie: If you uninstall OFF and CFS3, then do a clean install of CFS3 without installing OFF - Do you get the same issues? If so - it might be useful to search some other CF3 forums to see if anyone else has encountered this issue and found a fix) Have you tried disabling your anti-virus software for a few minutes to test whether there is any clash. (I had issues running CFS3 under the 2008 version of Kaspersky Anti-virus but later versions were fine for me) I'm not familiar with the AMD multi-cores but are you able to force CFS3 & OFF to all run under a single core? Have you tried unplugging any USB peripherals (apart from your keyboard, mouse and joystick)? Have you tried running at an ultra low screen resolution (640 x480) just to see if it makes any difference to frame rates?

I'd agree with that. The OFF devs seem to be the most comittted in the Industry. So far, they're results have been fantastic!!

I've been running OFF and (more recently) Hat In The Ring on Win7 64 bit for months. Never had a crash - I'm really happy with OFF on Win 7.

Hi Jim - That "joystick only rolls to the left" problem is pretty weird. What kind of joystick do you have?

(going all dewy eyed) - I still remember Knights Of the Sky on my Amiga 500. Fantastic game (for the time), absolutely brilliant music and I played it continously for about 5 years. I loved the "you have been challenged by the Red Baron" type missions and the sheer desperation I felt when trying to coax back my shot up machine to our side of the lines. In the end it was the release of Flying Corp Gold (along with the ability to use analogue joysticks) that swung me across to the PC. Much better graphics but I don't think the gameplay was anywhere near as good. Just for the hell of it - I played Knights Of The Sky again a few weeks ago on the WINuae Amiga emulator...It hasn't aged well but that music still sounds as good as it ever did. I also had a bash at Flying Corp Gold again last week....and that seems to have aged even more than Knights Of The Sky. I wonder how I'll feel about OFF3 in ten years time..(by which time I hope to be playing OFF10 in my fully 3D immersive cockpit)

Win7-64 bit - Works brilliantly for me and it's ability to deal with huge amounts of RAM means that I can use my 4870x2 Graphics card (2 gig of graphics memory) plus still use my full 4gig system ram for my other apps. I have all OFF/HITR graphics settings maxed out and it's still damn smooth even on my middle of the range CPU (Q6600@2.4Ghz). Gotta say - Microsoft finally got it right here. Win7 ain't perfect (After 5 months of use I have started to spot some weaknesses) but a hell of a lot better than the Win Vista I used before. I was never happy with Vista (and kept a separate XP machine as my secondary game rig) but Win7 has really impressed me and I haven't looked back to XP. To be honest though - if I stuck my graphics card into an XP machine..I'm sure the performance would be equally good...the only downside being that I couldn't use all my ram for other apps. I also have to admit that Win7 is the first time I tried a 64bit OS. Slightly off topic but - On a pure OS point of view I rate Win7 tops, XP second and Vista last. Happy flying, Max

Hi Capt - Great to hear that you resolved it. Also very useful to know that MSE has an issue with HiTR. You're probably the first to experience it but I doubt you'll be the last - so at least the community are aware. Happy flying, Maxik.

Hi CaptSopwith. Can you tell us about your rig (CPU, OS, Ram, Spare drive space, Anti Virus program etc)? From your description it either sounds like you got a corrupt download (though I know WinRAR says it's clean) or possibly a full/damaged hard drive. Schnitzel Von Krumms comment about trying to extract to a USB drive seems good to me. I'd definitely echo his advice. I'd also recommend you try another download (perhaps direct to a USB drive or to another folder so that you can compare whether your two downloads are identical) Failing that : The other thing I'd recommend is trying to disable your virus guard when trying to unzip the file. Lots of us have scanned the file and it's clean but it could be your anti-virus software kicking it and mistakenly thinking the program is a virus. (For example: I use Kapersky anti-virus 8.0 and that software refuses to let me install/run Overlord 2 despite other Anti-Virus software saying that Overlord 2 is clean) Keep with it - The expansion is definitely worth the time/money.

Hi CaptSopwith. I have Win7 (64 bit) on my desktop and Win7 (32 bit) on my laptop. The desktop is my gaming machine and HiTR installed perfectly...though I ran it as an administrator just to avoid any issues. Same applied when I (just to see if I could replicate your issue) installed it on my laptop...Worked just fine (though the integrated graphics cards can't run it as more than a pretty slideshow). I'd say Win7 is not the issue. Good luck in getting it resolved. Maxik.

I'm running Win7 64bit (Ultimate edition) on my desktop and Win7 32bit (Ultimate) on my laptop. OFF runs absolutely fine on both of them, and Force Feedback (as least using my Microsoft Force Feedback 2 joystick) works absolutely fine in all games I have tested it with. I agree with the comments on Vista. Many things on Vista were better than on XP but it had so many annoying issues that I went back to XP until the Win7 beta was released. Since then I've stuck with Win7 and never missed XP. I've also found it easier to get some old (Win 98/ME etc) games to run on Win7 than Vista. I've seen a few comments about people waiting for the "Win 7 Service Pack" - but Microsoft have already stated that Win7 will run live updates so that there will not be any need for service packs. They might change their mind (it wouldn't be the first time for Microsoft) but for now they are stating that Service Packs are a thing of the past.

Hiya Red-Dog, Thanks for letting us know that the BBC have finally released Wings. I've been waiting years for them to do it and had given up hope! At last - Something decent to watch on the TV over Christmas !!!

I have a similar rig to the above (Q6600 quad-core running at 2.4Ghz, 4 Gig generic ram, Win7 64bit) but invested in a ATI 4870x2 card. That card makes a massive difference to the performance and I can run OFF nicely at 1920x1200 resolution (32 bit/No Anti Aliasing) with all sliders set to 5! It's very rare that I see any slowdown. The only slowdowns I remember seeing where on the massive 20 vs 20 dogfights and to clear that I just knocked my resolution down to 1920x1080. Obviously the power of the graphics card is very useful but I have a feeling that it's the 2Gb of Graphics memory that is equally important. As for the graphics issue mentioned at the start of the thread (Large Black squares on the landscape) - I think that's a graphics driver issue with the ATI cards. I used to get it very badly in OFF3 but updating my graphics driver cleared it for 90% of my missions. I do still get the issue from time to time, but I get exactly the same problem in Rise Of Flight. Tally-Ho Maxiku

Hi Pappy. I was lucky enough to have an aerobatic flight (Barrel rolls, Loops etc) in a bright yellow 1935 Tiger Moth about 4 years ago. The company was called "Tigerfly" and flew out of Booker airfield in High Wycombe. The pilot was also the Chief Pilot of the Booker flying school were I was taking my Private Pilots License lessons - so should be easy to track him down if you're looking for another flight. Saying that - The best flight I ever took was an Aerobatic stunt flight in a Pitts Special (Bi-plane) in Australia a few years ago. It wasn't open cockpit but I was lucky that the Pilot was an ex-Australian champ who decided to use the flight as a practise routine for his next display...Hammerheads, Hi-G Stall turns, inverted dives...It was mind-blowing and bloody hard on the body too...But wow - That was a unique experience. ...Now if that could be truly experienced on a WW1 flight sim (Maybe OFF phase 5?) , then Real-Life would be over for me.....I'd be permanently hooked into the Virtual world of OFF!

Hi Pappy, Like a lot of users, I swear by my Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick. The Force Feedback really tells you when you're about to enter a stall, so you can fly to the limits a lot easier - plus it doesn't feel loose at all. The bad news is they stopped making them a few years ago and they still fetch high prices on Ebay. Good luck in your search!

Excellent Olham! Is this you on YouTube ???? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC9gQO9XyWc

I was flying my old bus (SE5a) from Calais and thought I'd pop across the channel to see old Blighty again. As I came in to land at one of those south coast airfields the ground based machine gun wallahs riddled my kite with bullets and I slammed my crate into the mud. Unbelievable - Seems to me that this game even models LMF!!! Well done guys! It's either a bug or a feature but I enjoyed it! Tally-ho! PS: For those haven't heard of "LMF" before....LMF (ie : Low Morale Fibre) was the old WW1 term for a coward. If an enlisted soldier/airman refused to fight the enemy - his superior officers would stamp his record with LMF and he'd face trial.

We're not worthy - but my humble thanks! We have a great community here, and a great bunch of devs!

Yep - Dad's army got me all right ...though I'm hoping that they shot me because they thought I was deserting the French front, rather than just shot me because they aim to shoot anything that moves. I can understand someone not been sure of an aircraft's nationality when it's flying at an angle to you 400 yards aways and doing 120 miles an hour...Not so sure I can understand it when the same aircraft is 4 yards in front of you and doing 20 miles an hour.....I think they were just jealous of my good looks! My advice to all : avoid landing an any aerodrome where the Dad's army vets are wearing spectacles that are bigger than your Aldis sight.!

Thanks Olham, their poor eyesight might explain why they didn't start to shoot until my wheels had touched down, though wouldn't bode well for their ability to stop an actual flying hun ;)

Hi themightysrc, thanks for the correction..LMF does indeed stand for ""Lack Of Moral Fibre" .....In my defense I was somewhat shell-shocked from being executed by my own side...How could they do it to me (the scourge of the Fokker scourge, no less!), the absolute bounders!. Hiya Polovski - You're quite right...I was (for the first time ever) flying in CFS3 QC instead of OFF QC. It's also the first time I'd ever thought about crossing the channel...and I had an absolute blast. A fantastic game and one that still (even before the Superpatch) takes my breath away when I see the attention to detail....now if you could only model a mess room;) Have a nice evening all..I'm still exploring the Superpatch.

I think Peter01 has summed ROF up nicely. It's a good game engine but with no real content...and I personally feel the menus feel like they have been coded by amateurs. However....it is strangely addictive and has lots of very nice features. I live in the UK so ordered the game from the US last week. It arrived in good shape. Lots of people have had issues but I had no problems (after realising that my license key MUST be entered in capital letters) with the online registration process. Unlike many on this CombatAce (and also the SimHQ) forum - I have no aversion to the "must be connected to the internet even to play the offline mode" copy protection systems used by this game. My machine is a Q6600 based rig (not overclocked and I am using budget memory) with 4GB ram. It's running Win7 RC (64bit) and has a Radeon HD4870x2 graphics card. That graphics card really helps transform my mundane rig into something fairly hot and games such as Over Flanders Field run at maximum quality on 1920x1080 on my monitor. I needed to make some tweaks to get it installed on Win7 (happy to detail those for anyone but not on an OFF forum) but it does run fine once it's installed. --So - how does it feel? First impressions of ROF were not very good. The menus offer you the chance to fly several planes (and gives you a default of the Fokker DV5a)...but only after you select the plane, and the mission - do you then find out that the Fokker DV5a is not available. The same applies to several other planes. That is a big annoyance. I understand (and knew in advance) that the game only offers you two flyable models - but why offer these other planes on the menu? I'd be happier if they were removed or (if they are planning to add them as future content) grayed out so that you don't waste any time. Loading times are also very slow. You can wait 45+ seconds to get into the action. Once in there the flight model feels very good. The clouds are beautiful. Wind is a real concern (finally a game that models wind) and makes aiming extremely difficult when you're anything further than spitting distance. I actually found it harder to shoot down anything in this game than I did using OFF's hardcore damage model. Although the game only offers 2 flyable models - you do get a chance in the single player mode to shoot down 2 seater bombers and I found that a lot of fun. However (and I'm using that word a lot with ROF) whether you choose to fly a head to head in your allied plane or your axis plane...your opponent is always in an allied plane. Slight bug there I think.... Graphics are very good but apart from the fantastic cockpit graphics - I don't think they were a huge leap better than Over Flanders Fields, but the airplanes do deform on damage - so better than Over Flanders Fields in that respect. Landing is quite a challenge and you're likely to have a couple of minor prangs on your first attempts. However - it is the taking off bit that I found the hardest. You need to nudge the nose DOWN for a few seconds (so that your tail skid isn't slowing you down) before you can pull up. You may need to re-map your joystick to get the controls to work properly. I'm using a Microsoft Force Feedback 2 joystick but found that the ROF defaults reversed my throttle. Easily corrected by ticking one "invert axis" box but an annoyance. To summarise it very briefly (after just one day of ownership) ROF has better graphics and a better flight model than OFF. However it gives you just TWO (yep - one allied and one axis) planes and a tiny bit of content. Despite that - I don't think it's overpriced. A a lot of love has gone into it and I've seen add-ons for Microsofts FSX cost more than this entire game. Multi-player works on Win7. OFF has hundreds more planes for you to fly, more variety, a hugely impressive campaign mode, highly tweakable and new aircraft appearing (for free) all the time. OFF is clearly much better value for money will work on much lower specced machines. It also has a big long running fan base and lots of new skins/mods/missions appearing almost daily. OFF runs fine on Win7 but I can't get the Multiplayer to work. Which should you buy?? Both! They are both incredible and a dream for a WW1 nut like myself. If you have to make a choice though - I would go for OFF every time. Note - This is all just a matter of my own opinion. I'm sure everyone will have slightly different (and equally valid) views.

WOW! I just spotted Saitek's new "Pro Flight Instrument Panels" on "http://www.saitek.com/uk/prod/fip.htm#....fip_turnjpg.jpg" They look bloody cool!!! Has anyone seen any (pre-launch) reviews of this hardware? I've not found any myself but it hits the market next week. The bad news is they are fairly expensive and only support one flight sim (Microsoft FSX) so far, but it also includes an SDK so that developers can build in compatibility to their own products. Not sure how anyone else feels but to me it seems like a dream come true....At last the ability to build your own cockpit reasonably cheaply..or just leave an array of these under your monitor to add to the immersion. Probably more suitable for WW2 onwards but I'd love an altimeter just sitting in front of my monitor. Do any of you programming enthusiasts believe it would be possible to make these work in CFS3/OFF?

Ah - but I don't like to use the HUD, Z or on screen guages....I want my outboard altimeter and that's it! Dear Santa - please bring me a Altimeter that I can get to work in OFF. PS: There's no Force Feedback on that yoke but the guages aren't tied to it. I'll be sticking with my trusty MS FF2 joystick.

Wow - I gotta say that I'm really excited at the opportunity to fly the parasol. The Gotha is also on my Christmas wish list - but can understand this might be a stretch too far for the developers at the moment. Guys - Hats off to you! This game is a dream come true to me!