Hasse Wind

I'm sure that's an excellent present for you, Lou. Congratulations!

Thanks, Lou. Nice work. Now I understand better, with that red colour, why some people called the balloons sausages.

To be exact, Bloody April refers to the heavy casualties the British flying units suffered during that month in 1917, losing 245 aircraft to Germany's 66. The French air force didn't suffer that much, as their pilots were usually better trained and thus had better tactics than the British, and also during Bloody April they didn't fly as actively as the British (many French units were in the process of receiving new aircraft), who had their major offensive at Arras. The RFC was able to take the casualties and keep flying, but they had to rethink their tactics and training methods after Bloody April. Germany's defensive fighter strategy really payed off during that month, making it their most successful period in the air war.

Not much to add to Olham's post. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everybody. This is a great community and I wish only good things to all of you.

Yeah, it's probably not much more dangerous than buying from Amazon or some other big company. But what I like about those companies is that you can easily get a replacement order if you don't get the package or something. It happened once that I ordered a book from Amazon, but never received it. I e-mailed them about it and they sent me another one, which I got. No difficulties whatsoever.

What the Wrights did was great, but one mustn't forget that they weren't the only pioneers of flight. There were quite a few people all around the world who greatly contributed to the birth of flying machines and their theory and practice. You could say that the Wrights were standing on the shoulders of giants. The subject of early aviation history is extremely fascinating, with all the crazy balloon pilots, gliders and everything.

I'm sorry to hear that, Olham. You know that I lost my hard drive a few months ago, so I know how it feels. It's good that you didn't lose everything like I did. Well, I did have backups of the most important things, except OFF. I was mightily annoyed when I lost all of my pilots.

That's bad news. Makes me wonder if it's safe to use eBay at all. I've sometimes thought about getting something from there, but then I haven't dared after all.

Wood: The Halberstadt is really easy to fly, so it must something with your joystick settings. Regarding this, the reason for giving up was because the German military was finished. Sure, they were still holding some enemy territory, but the army was exhausted, the navy was mutinous and the population deeply unsatisfied and suffering badly from the blockade. Most military and political leaders had also lost all hope of victory. The difference between the end of WW1 and the final phases of WW2 was that Imperial Germany, unlike the Third Reich, wasn't a nation lead by power-hungry, bloodthirsty fanatics who could only accept one of two results, either a complete victory or failing that, total destruction of Germany. For Hitler and his followers, surrender was out of the question. For leaders of Imperial Germany, the best thing to do in 1918 was to give up. Could they have kept fighting until 1919? Probably, but that wouldn't have changed anything, except maybe lead to the occupation of Germany by the victors.

If I ever start selling fraudulent WW1 stuff at eBay, I'll be sure to avoid any offers from you, Lou.

I'm really sorry to hear that, themightysrc. I know how it feels; I've seen my share of unemployment over the years. But don't give up hope. You'll never know what may happen. It's always the normal, decent people who suffer from the idiocy and greed of bankers, politicians and other robber barons and bloodsuckers. If a banker makes a mistake, it's not a big deal, because he and his criminal buddies will be saved by taxpayer money, no matter how high the cost. When business is good, they do their best so that they never have to share any of the wealth. But it never works like that for the common people. Nobody gives a damn about their well-being, least of all the politicians.

We need those screenshots! The masses can only take so much before revolting.

Looking forward to the new FM's!

Congrats to you too!

OFF and CFS3 have almost nothing in common. CFS3 is crap, OFF is pure gold. The best WW1 flight sim there is. RoF is good too, but it has a long, long way to go before it reaches the same level of historical realism and accuracy that OFF provides. OFF is so incredibly immersive that no other modern WW1 sim comes close. Oh, and welcome.

It's good that Finnish is such a minor language that it's not worth the money to dub films and series into it. We get to see everything in the original language with subtitles. It would feel very strange to me to hear American or German characters speaking my own language in a movie. By the way, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick denied that HAL was IBM. But who knows...

We would need a HAL 9000 for that.

I've been using Win 7 64 bit and OFF for a couple of months, and haven't had a single problem with the sim. Even TrackIR works better on my new PC than it did on my old XP machine. Every game I had and played on my XP rig seems to work equally well on Win 7. I was a big fan of XP for years, but now I don't want to get back to it. Win 7 is simply better. I like it a lot.

Merry Christmas!

Get that TrackIR ASAP. It will change the way you play and enjoy flight sims. And you WILL live longer when your situational awareness improves. CFS3 has rather... limited view controls without TrackIR. No flight sim fan should be without TrackIR. It really is that important.

Sounds like an excellent business. Maybe I should start painting pieces of fabric green and sell them at eBay for ridiculous prices.

I greatly enjoy all your mods, HPW. I hope you keep making new ones in the future. Now how about some changes to the Albs? Currently the D.II is the best of them, even though the D.III and D.V should be lighter and more maneuverable. Also maybe something could be done to their wings so that they lose them more when diving too fast and not when making relatively simple maneuvers? Just some thoughts...

Delivery times seem to vary a lot. It took only one week in my case (Finland). But it's not very encouraging that the Avangate support doesn't know OFF is actually a physical product and not a download.

Those are great. Thanks, Olham. Have a virtual beer. It's no secret I'm hoping to be able to fly some real recon missions and all the other 2-seater stuff in P4. There's not much to do during recon in P3 now, just follow the waypoints. Hopefully we few bomber/recon fans will see our wishes fulfilled in P4. One of my dreams in addition to a proper Schlachtflieger career is to fly some really long high-altitude photography missions in a Rumpler C.IV or a similar plane, chased by enemy fighters and shot at by Archie, and yet succeed in taking the critical photos and get safely back to base. Now that would be something. There's so much more to WW1 aviation than dogfighting. It would be great to experience these other things in a similarly enjoyable way as dogfighting in OFF.

You should just obey your orders, vonOben. If the brilliant commanders order your Jasta to transfer over to the enemy, they must have good reasons to do so.