Hasse Wind

I hope P4 (or P5, P6...) will attempt to simulate the different doctrines of WW1 air forces, so that German fighter units would tend to stay behind their own lines and not go chasing after opponents dozens of kilometres behind enemy lines, etc. etc. That would be exciting, but I imagine quite challenging to program. One must remember that after the major operations of 1914, German armies stayed on the defensive in the west. The only exception to this was the battle of Verdun of 1916, which ended in a total disaster for Germany. After Verdun, the Germans started seriously attacking (of course there were always local counterattacks against Entente offensives) only in the spring of 1918, when Russia was finished and they were able to move lots of troops to the west. This defensive German strategy naturally had an impact on the air war in the west. As the Entente armies launched attacks more often, their air forces were also more active over enemy lines, aggressively pursuing German air units and giving support to the ground troops. Something like the Bloody April in 1917 wouldn't have happened without the ground forces being engaged in a major battle and the air forces giving them all the support under very difficult circumstances. The fighters were there to hunt the most important enemy aircraft, ie. the bombers and recon/observation aircraft. This is what all the fighter units tried to do, preferably without interference from enemy fighters. It's easy to forget this in a combat flight sim, when people aren't actually following any doctrine but just attack anything that they encounter (or are attacked themselves by ruthless AI pilots).

It's indeed a masterpiece. I hope this score will be included in P4 too. There's no rule that says a sim can only have one great theme, is there? I remember RB3D also had some excellent music that added to the immersion. Going to the grave wearing goggles and a helmet? Well, that will certainly give the archaelogists of the future something to think about when they dig around the cemetery a thousand years after our time!

I've had no issues at all with OFF in Win 7 64 bit. In fact my TrackIR works better than it did on Win XP. No problems with any security updates, and I have a bunch of 32 bit programs installed, including M$ Office. Win 7 is well worth the money, I wouldn't go back to XP for any price (well, maybe if the price was high enough).

Great pics, I've never seen any of them before. They even had my favourite DFW's there! The others seem to be some old Albatros B's and such.

I don't have that kind of data for the SPAD's, but because they were of such a sturdy construction, they were probably capable of diving just as hard as the SE's and Brisfits without suffering any structural failures. On German side of the lines, the best divers were made by Pfalz. The Pfalz D.III was popular as a balloon attack fighter, because it could dive much better than any Albatros. This is modelled quite well in OFF.

We didn't. All those came with HitR.

Lou, take these pills. I've given them to Olham in the past, and they have always calmed him down.

What I really like about those fighters is their toughness. You can do all kinds of crazy maneuvers without having to worry about losing your wings. That really helps when you are in a desperate situation looking for escape. It gives me the creeps when I hear the wings of a Nupe or an Alb crackle under stress!

The basic factory paint on the Dr's was actually a very good choice for blending in the environment. You, know that colour which looks like ****. The British loved such colours and painted almost all their aircraft with that kind of ****.

Excellent work, as always. That red is the perfect camo colour if you plan to fly to Mars one day.

The same tactics work really well with the SE.5a too. It's quite similar to the SPAD - fast, tough and climbs and dives well.

You get used to it, but I agree that without TrackIR it must be hard. I think the visibility is better from the RoF SPAD, and aiming is also easier as the viewpoint is positioned better. Maybe something to be improved in P4? When you learn to live with the limited visibility (at least there's no engine in front of your face like in the DFW!) you can have successful careers flying the SPAD. It's fast (the S.XIII is actually the fastest plane), tough and climbs extremely well, and as long as you don't try to outturn Fokker Dreideckers, you should have no problems.

If he manages to stay alive until the second half of 1917, things should indeed get better every month. And in 1918 the Entente has many more planes in the air than Germany, so help should always be close by. I'm more worried about the two years he has ahead of him before the 'happy times'. Good luck with your latest Alb career!

True, but don't tell that to my RFC pilot, who still has almost four years to go...

I'm particularly interested in this book because I like flying two-seater careers in OFF a lot. I really hope there will be some great improvements for bomber and recon pilots in P4... like actually taking some photos and not just flying through the waypoints. Imagine trying to get through the enemy defences, taking photos of the target and then getting back home alive. If you come back empty-handed, the CO will just send you back again tomorrow. Now wouldn't that be great!

Water is indeed a powerful element. It's vital for humans and all life on Earth, but when it's flooding, the results look like somebody carpet-bombed the area. It's scary to see big cars getting thrown around like paper by the masses of water. It's fortunate that Australia is such an advanced nation, otherwise the cost in lives lost would surely be much worse.

Well, I'm sure my WW1 book collection is much more extensive than anything on this subject in the local libraries. But I watch my books like a dragon guards his treasure. (I don't actually sleep over the piles of books though!) People wouldn't like me observing their reading suspiciously all the time.

Well, I have a very bad case of it. And it gets worse every year after Christmas when the sale season begins. I really don't need any new books, because at this rate I'll die of old age before I've read through my ever-growing collection! Maybe I'll have more time when I retire... but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Just the kind of book I was looking for. Even when you add the delivery cost to Finland, it's still a real bargain at those prices. Thanks for the tip, Dej. Typical of me: I was going to get only this book, but then ended up ordering three others!

Windows Millennium, Windows Vista, Windows CEMENT... now I wouldn't mind seeing Windows That Actually Works Like Advertised some day.

Brilliant! And in fact easier to understand than the original Jabberwocky.

Sorry to hear that, Widowmaker. I guess I've been fortunate that I haven't yet had any problems with my Win 7 rig. Maybe my bad luck ran out when the hard drive of my XP machine died... at least for now. It seems we'll never get rid of those blue screens. Just how long have they been around? Since Win 95?

That's quite common, unfortunately. I've seen quite a few documentaries with sometimes quite obvious mistakes in them. And some of the stuff they show on History Channel is just awful.

Would be nice to be able to fly like Mungo all the time, but unfortunately two-seater missions are often so long that only zoom-zoom through time makes it possible to fly them. Fortunately zoom-zoom does not cause big problems for me.

For early war careers, I always set Archie to easy. It took some time to develop the weapons and methods for shooting down moving aircraft with AA shells, and without radar or proximity fuses the accuracy could never be as good as in more modern AA guns. However, balloon defense was somewhat different, as the gunners knew the altitude of the balloon accurately and therefore could better concentrate their fire on the attacking aircraft. That was one of the reasons that made the balloon attacks so dangerous. And if the balloon wasn't very high, it could also be defended by anti-aircraft machine guns, which were much more accurate weapons than heavier AA guns.