Hasse Wind

OMG, that's terrible! But hilarious at the same time.

Don't be so sure about that. The ref in the Chile vs Switzerland was pretty awful. Not German, though. Practically everybody and his dog got a yellow card.

If I had to choose the best British single-seater fighter of the war, the choice would always be the SE5. An excellent fighter plane. That powerful engine is really handy, because it makes it a lot easier to dominate situations and escape from tough places. The Albs lack that kind of speed. But if speed is the most important factor, then nothing beats the SPAD S.XIII.

It's incredible that Italy almost lost to New Zealand yesterday (draw, 1-1). So the trend of big football countries failing against smaller ones continues in this Cup. The New Zealand team played so well that it was very exciting to watch them fight. They certainly didn't give too much respect to the Italian stars.

Olham, fortunately things aren't yet so bad that we have completely lost the ozone layer. The depletion rate of ozone has decreased dramatically since the 1970s, when people realized that certain chemical compounds (CFC) are destroying the layer. If action hadn't been taken then to ban them altogether, or to reduce their use greatly, it has been estimated that by 2050 there wouldn't have been much ozone left. And that would be really bad, because then nothing would stop UV radiation of all wave-lengths from penetrating the atmosphere and harming living beings, including humans. The ozone layer will eventually fix itself when the last of nasty compounds are gone. But it's still a very good idea to keep using those sun creams, especially if one has skin like Widowmaker's raw chicken's leg!

Well, Germany shouldn't have much trouble beating Ghana, if Ghana plays as weakly against them as they did against Australia. Even though the Aussies had one less player after a red card, they dominated most of the game. Ghana was surprisingly passive this time. But of course they shouldn't be underestimated. All kind of weird sh*t has happened in this Cup... PS. What's American football? Some colonial sport?

Hah! But be careful so that he doesn't purge you, in case you play against him in the future. One thing that might explain the zombie performance of so many top players in the World Cup is exhaustion. They all have long and hard seasons behind them, so it might have bigger impact on them than the less great players, who maybe don't see so much action in all the important games and don't have to carry such huge expectations on their shoulders.

I don't think the fans are any less fanatic in all the other leagues and cups that all of those superstars play for most of the year. When you look at how experienced and really top-notch players England (among many other teams) has and then compare that to their actual performance on the field, the difference is incredible. The worst of all was France. It's hard to believe it wasn't that long ago when they played in the finals and even won, and now they are like a bunch of zombies wandering aimlessly around the field.

Ghana is good, there's no doubt about that. They have fit and aggressive players, who clearly want to show to the bigger countries what they can do. They have some excellent midfield guys, like Michael Essien, who are very good at creating dangerous situations and blocking attacks. So it's not going to be an easy game for Germany. Germans have to watch out for those yellow cards and again learn to make goals, a skill which they seemed to have forgotten in the Serbia game.

Don't be so sure - a big fish may pull you into the water, and then the result would be Fish 1 - Widowmaker 0.

Well, at least they didn't lose. One point is better than nothing. (Okay, I'm not convincing anybody with this!) But as much as it sucks for the fans of a team that fails (even if not losing), this does keep things interesting for the Cup as a whole. Where would all the fun be if everything went always according to the plan?

No cup winning performances from England either. At this rate, they'll lose to Algeria. Germany was much better against Serbia even with only 10 men. It's going to be an interesting World Cup, when so many of the supposedly best teams are losing their games.

Ha, well said Widowmaker! I love it when something surprising like that happens in football. Makes the games a lot more interesting. Now you made me hope that England and Germany will meet each other in the cup, and if England wins, you'll say something equally funny! But first your goalie needs to get his act together, he was awful against the Americans.

Claiming kills was historically often a very confusing business, so it only adds to immersion when sometimes things go badly wrong with our claims in OFF. And every ace usually had many unconfirmed kills in addition to the confirmed ones. Two of the best, MvR and Fonck, both claimed well over 100 kills, but of course didn't get them all confimed. Then there was the British system, where all you had to do was point your plane in the general direction of something that was flying and claim it as a kill and earn the VC. (Just kidding, of course.)

Seems like 4:0 is not going to be enough. A bad day for the Aussies.

Good points, gentlemen. Devs, please take a look at this for P4. HPW, your modifications to OFF are much appreciated.

It's interesting to read about how people remember and honor their war veterans in different countries. It's also disappointing to realize that in many countries more and more people have started to forget all about the old wars. WW1 in particular seems to be a complete mystery for many folks. WW2 is talked about more, and there are still many veterans alive, though their ranks are getting thinner every year. In my country, Finland, veterans of the Second World War are greatly respected by the majority of people. I don't think I've ever seen any memorials or graves treated as badly as those in Widowmaker's link, but of course there are vandals and complete idiots here too. It has been the standard operating procedure for our military to always, if at all possible, to bring the fallen soldiers back home to be buried in the cemetary of their home community. There are such burial grounds all over the country, which serves to remind people of all the sacrifices that had to be made during the war to maintain our independence. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when there was no need anymore for the politicians to keep a low profile about the war, our veterans have received a lot more attention in public. But the majority of decent people have always respected them highly, without any official proclamations from the politicians. Being a small nation, every family had at least somebody on the front, so it's not so easy to forget the past in such communities.

Yeah, there are such idiots everywhere. No amount of education will help every people. But fortunately they are in the minority.

That's exactly the kind of dynamic campaign a WW1 era flight sim should have. Some people seem to forget that airpower was nowhere near as decisive in WW1 as it was in WW2, or any of the later conflicts where it has had an even more important role to play. In WW1, the tactical and strategical results achieved by the use of the airpower were very limited compared to WW2. It would feel pretty crazy to me if my flight of small 2-seaters with their puny bombload would do something that completely changed the course of the war.

And you can always go through all the keyboard and controller commands in-game. Just press Esc and choose the right options from the menu that appears. Some of the default button combinations are pretty crazy and seem to presume that people have at least four arms they can use to play flight sims.

Yeah, I guess I should get back to flying fighters one of these days and see it for myself. But my advice about warping in general should be sound.

I've been using warp extensively outside our full DiD campaign, and I've seen it go wrong only once, when I didn't pay attention to the map and the warp decided to take my flight of four N.17 deep over the North Sea. That cost me my pilot and taught me to always look at the map when warping. If something goes wrong, you can immediately see it and press the button(s) (Ctrl + X by default) to stop warping. There's no risk when using warp with this method. At least for me, it would be impossible to fly every single mission in real time. Unfortunately I'm yet unable to devote my entire life to playing OFF.

RoF in a nutshell: Pretty planes, nice flight and damage models. All the rest of it is less than satisfying, to put it mildly and diplomatically. I haven't even bothered to buy most of the new planes because the campaign mode is so bad compared to OFF. (And that capture the flag mode...) I don't have all the latest technology in my PC, but OFF runs very nicely with good-looking graphics and smooth gameplay most of the time. I plan to upgrade my PC in any case before P4 is released, but I hope the same good quality coding and excellent configuration options for different systems will be included in P4 also.

It's been a long time since I last flew an escort mission as a fighter pilot, so I can't remember how the AI behaves in those situations. But I think warping should regroup your planes when you press the button. It can be used for controlling the combat to some extent if you want to avoid your wingmen getting completely distracted and fighting to the death, ie. fly away and press warp so they will automatically follow you. But it's also possible that the behaviour you see with 2-seaters not staying with your flight when warping is actually how the sim is supposed to work. Why it's different from being in a 2-seater plane yourself, I don't know.

Shouldn't using warp keep the planes together? At least this is how it works when I fly my 2-seater pilots and use warp, then my escorts automatically stay with my formation during the warp. When not warping, the escorts usually abandon me and go chasing after random enemies. But they return (if they aren't dead yet) when I press warp again. Historically speaking, trying to coordinate escorts, or any other planes, during WW1 was very difficult. It was lot easier in WW2 with radios and flight directors in command centres. The easiest method of getting escorts to fly with the planes they were supposed to escort was to start from the same airfield at the same time.