Hasse Wind

TaillyHo, that quote from McCudden is excellent. And it doesn't come from some random, mediocre pilot, but one of the leading aces of the war. Also Polovski is absolutely right about the environmental effects on the pilot, which are not very well simulated in any flight sim that I know. WW2 pilots at least had some protection from the wind and weather, thanks to the canopy, but things were not so in WW1.

Wow, you've had some pretty hardcore dreams, Lou and Creaghorn. Our brain is an extremely complex organ and we still don't everything about all the biochemical and neurological mechanisms that exist there. Some insignificant external stimulus that you pay no attention to while awake may cause some interesting events when the brain is resting, causing us to see weird dreams. But I'm no neuroscientist so I won't even try to delve any deeper into this fascinating subject.

That's awful. Computers are evil like that. But it's good that you're back in business already.

They are watching you and all of us. Do you have a web camera? Did you know that the secret police can use it to watch you when you are at your computer?

They are great books and contain so much historical information that it would be pointless trying to remember it all. A couple of years ago I bought them as paperback reprints, for a very reasonable price. Definitely more than worth their price.

This has been on my wishlist for a long time. The devs must know about it, as it has been mentioned every now and then in threads about two-seaters. Some formation flying improvements would be welcomed too, so that your favourite Fees would be more dangerous opponents to human pilots.

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by all kinds of flying machines, be they aircraft or satellites, so it was only natural that I became interested in WW1 aviation at some point. When exactly it happened, I can't remember anymore. I started reading about the world wars as a teenager and built my first aircraft models about the same time. There's just something about the pioneering spirit and the hectically creative atmosphere of the early years of aviation that has never ceased to amaze me. Things changed incredibly fast back then. Many of the WW1 airplanes are among the most elegant and beautiful ever made. Some are among the ugliest (Fee!), but I love them nevertheless. And I greatly admire the courage of the men who flew those planes and literally made history by doing things that were never done before their time.

Completely by accident. It was late 2008 and I was checking what kind of new mods there were available for RB3D, if any. I was just getting back to flying WW1 sims after a couple of years of IL2. Well, I noticed somebody mentioned something called Over Flanders Fields and posted a link. I followed it and was quickly hooked. I bought P3 soon after it was released. It was my first OFF experience, as I didn't know anything about P1 and P2. And what an experience it was, and continues to be!

I wonder which OFF Phase will be the latest in 2054?

I agree. OFF is incredibly immersive and I've spent an unbelievable amount of time flying my career pilots. I don't think I'll get bored with P3 anytime soon, and then there's P4 coming one day. So keep up the good work! And now get back to developing P4.

Maybe using one of those hand pumps manually for an hour or two after getting hit badly and then trying to make it back to base in one piece?

It must be your friendly Youtube-Polizei at work again. They've decided in their infinite wisdom that it's better if you don't have access to YouTube anymore, Olham. They want to protect you from the dangerous material such sites often contain. It's all in your best interest. Trust them. Obey. The Big Brother is watching. But seriously speaking, I haven't noticed anything wrong with any new updates. YouTube seems to work just fine.

I think it's far too pessimistic to state that PC gaming is dead. That has been said many times in the past, and yet PC games are selling quite well all the time. Digital distributors like Steam are making big money selling nothing but PC games. Physical stores are another matter. It's much easier to find console games from such stores than PC games. But digital distribution is here to stay, and that's a good thing. As long as there will be PC's, there will be people who use them for gaming, and also crazy but wonderful people who keep developing new games, indie or otherwise. I've played more excellent indie games over the past few years (including Bullethead & co's naval stuff) than ever before, and there seems to be no end in sight to that development. Most companies are also smart enough not to burden their customers with completely ridiculous DRM schemes. But of course there are notable exceptions, such as Ubisoft. But even they seem to have come to their senses with CoD's DRM, if I'm not mistaken. (Shame about the campaign mode though.) So fear not gentlemen, the world is not going to end anytime soon.

We haven't yet reached that point here in the north. No trouble at all choosing proper clothing, just put on everything you have and then some before going outside. Brisk indeed! Well, at least the sun's back, though it stays pretty low still. But it's getting higher every day.

I hope the YouTube-Polizei will let Olham watch this.

Llamas are en vogue? I haven't seen them here. I guess reindeer have better chances of survival in our climate. We've been having temperatures of -40°C this week. Combine that with a strong wind, and you have a nice winter weather.

Good thing you don't have cossacks in Madison. Otherwise they would have been already sent to take care off the revolting peasants. This is dangerously political, but people must fight for their rights even in the so-called democratic west. Nothing should be taken for granted. There are plenty of robber barons out there who would like nothing better than recreating a medieval caste society. Destruction of the middle class, which is currently going on all over the Western world, is the first step down that road.

Llamas in Minnesota? I suppose you also have polar bears and elephants?

Aren't there actual studies made that show the majority of players of strategy games and simulators (and maybe other game types too) usually play against the computer and not online or through PBEM against other people? I remember reading about such studies somewhere, but maybe my memory fails me. Anyway, for me it's imperative that a combat flight simulator or a strategy game has a decent campaign system that can be played alone against the computer. I'm not very interested in online play. Maybe I would be if I knew the people I'm going to play with relatively well, but usually that's not the case. If OFF didn't have its wonderful campaign system, I know I wouldn't have been willing to pay so much for it. Good campaign mode is what separates the great flight simulators from the average ones.

I voted yes also this time. It's not really the most important thing I expect from sims or other games, but it does bother me somewhat when we have games with such realistic graphics today, but then our character has no body and is merely a floating pair of hands carrying a gun, or in the case of flight sims, completely invisible, except when switched to external view, when he suddenly appears in the cockpit. I like the added immersion of having a body in the cockpit.

Have fun reading them, Lou. Ludendorff's book is not exactly rare or expensive compared to many other old books (like Neumann's history of German aviation in WW1), at least not in the original language. Don't know about English translations. Be prepared to read Ludendorff's memoirs with a very critical attitude. I personally prefer Hindenburg's memoirs. The old marshal was a better writer and not as obsessed with details as his former right hand man. I guess I'm somewhat more sympathetic towards Hindenburg in general, because he wasn't best friends with Hitler and the Nazis, unlike Ludendorff, who supported them.

Welcome back. While you were away, P4 was released. We're all flying and enjoying it... Just kidding.

The HP was certainly no high altitude bomber. If it had a full load of fuel and bombs, climbing even to 7000 feet must have taken ages (50 minutes? An hour?) compared to any fighter plane. The Gothas on the other hand had much better flying characteristics, and were able to climb faster and higher. But they also carried less bombs and didn't have as much defensive firepower. I hope there will be good bomber campaigns in OFF P4. It would be something to fly a long night mission against some target deep behind enemy lines. With my navigational skills, I'll probably never find any of the targets.

You may be on to something with your numbers, HPW. It would be interesting to see how such changes affect accuracy and kill numbers. I have to disagree with Bullethead about fierce dogfights being the only reason why people enjoy combat flight sims so much. For me, the attempt to simulate a historical conflict and give players a chance to participate in those dramatic events with their virtual pilots is even more important than any dogfight. The role-playing aspects of a good campaign system (such as the one we have in OFF) are what give me the most fun and satisfaction. I'm not at all bored even if there's no air combat involving my flight in every mission. That makes it even more dramatic when something actually does happen after many peaceful sorties, even if I don't manage shoot down anybody. My objective is to survive through the war while completing assigned missions (not one of my pilots has yet managed to live so long), and not to shoot down dozens of enemies and fall down in a burning plane after a few hours of deadly combat and several kills. That's what the Quick Combat mode is for, or the other flight sim that must not be named. So I'm all for a mod that makes it harder to get many kills quickly in career mode and reduces casualties in general. It's the best we can have unless the AI (and human pilots) can somehow be made to abandon their Terminator mentality. But that's just my way of playing OFF. It's no better than any other way, just my method of doing things. I guess I'm something of a masochist, as I also enjoy flying the Quirk and other two-seaters in rather dangerous environments, populated by various Terminator models.

The AI is always the hardest part of any game (or sim) to get right. What comes easily and naturally for us humans can be almost impossible to simulate when programming an AI. It took ages to develop smart AI's for relatively simple games such as chess, which have clearly defined rules and a limited number of things you can do every turn. But then we have really complex games, like strategy or flight simulators, that require so much more from the AI, making it difficult to program well. Calculating moves in chess is easier for any computer to do than trying to make the AI 'see' an air combat situation like a human being and react accordingly. Until we get a true AI that is conscious of itself and can think like a human we'll just have to live with the limitations in programming (maybe they are ready to activate Skynet soon - that would give a new meaning to the Terminator pilots in OFF). What we currently have in OFF is already better than in the majority of sims, and knowing how dedicated the devs are, I won't be surprised if P4 will have a greatly improved AI. I'm not expecting miracles, but it would be nice to see an AI that sometimes decides to avoid combat, even break off and fly away, and not go chasing after enemies deep behind enemy lines, ignoring Archie and getting killed by it.