Test Pilot

If I were you I'd go for the GTX 260 over the 9800GT.... The 260 makes the upgrade over the 9800 more worth the bang for the buck. The memory bandwidth in the 260 alone is nearly twice as much as the 9800. It's certainly a bit more future proof than the 9800 and the 250. http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?ca...8&card2=575 http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?ca...8&card2=606

That's the history of technology... the next big thing (eg. SDD) will change everything! But it never happens.... Ha, well I can always hope for it nonetheless!

A solid state drive is really no different than a USB flash stick, just bigger (usually!) and internal just like a traditional hard drive. They are set to replace mechanical HDs in the near future since they dont have any moving parts (meaning more durable and shock resistant) and can run much faster. Presumably in games like flight sim where files for textures are constantly being pulled from the HD the faster access speed is appreciable. Plus they are silent. But still as can be seen very expensive though the price has dropped quite a bit. Probably worth waiting for a year or so yet to let more of their bugs and price settle down :) Reports of Solid State Drives' performance in a RAID setup are phenomenal!!!

Get yourself one of these and let us know how they help OFF http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.as...lid-State-Disks

As far as OS go, Im a big Vista 64 fan. It hasnt let me down yet and has proven to be far more stable than XP was for me. That being said, I have Win 7 beta running and actually like it a lot. Plus people seem to be reporting improved perfromance with programs in it than Vista. As far as early teething issues with Win 7, it's based on Vista with a desktop design and a few tweeks here and there. But it's still Vista deep down which also means that drivers working with Vista work with Win7. No real reason not to go with 64bit as I have never had a driver issue (and supposing you do, 64bit will supplant 32bit and so driver support only will get better). 64 bit also means more secure (though as more apps become 64bit that is less of a factor) and have a slight numbers crunching edge over 32bit. Plus the ram. If youre building a new computer, might as well build it for now and the future. So Win 7 64 is my vote. Could see if you can get a free upgrade from Vista when Win 7 comes out, or try the Win 7 beta in the meantime which is fully running until March next year. A side note about a system, dont count AMD's quad cores out. Their newest quad(the Phenom II 965 is supposed to be out in the next few days....) is clocked at 3.4ghz stock and is very overclockable (pushing 3.8 on air cooling) if youre so inclined. Might not be the numbers crunching machine that Intels are, but many benchmarks show the AMD Phenom IIs to be the equal of the i7 in some games. Plus the price may be less. Even if OFF doesnt use 4 cores, the rest of the computer does. I have a 2.2ghz quad and while the processor speed isnt that great and I cant get run scenery and terrain high, the fact that I have four cores means I never have to worry about what other programs are running that would affect performance. (Never had a high speed dual core though so maybe running other process simulatenously doesnt affect performance either...) But once youre over 3.0ghz, you probably cant go too wrong anyways in your selection! :)

Speaking of piracy, a site which shall not be mentioned is no more.... at least it wont be like it was running before...

Fantastic news! And a registration key shouldnt be too much of a hindrance at all (provided one is able to upgrade computers and still use the same code).

That's all I have to say other than it has made this sim even more fun now!

48 stars. Sans Hawaii and Alaska Here is a picture of the flag: http://www.usflag.org/history/the48starflag.html

Before you uninstall it, you may want to consider copying the CFS3 folder contents onto a dvd or other drive first. I tried installing OFF by copying the files from a DVD and it seems to work fine and found everything it needs. At least this can help save some clutter in your registry by not having to reinstall CFS to install OFF.

Looking very nice!

Look at the post with Ovs taking the Kaiser's new plane for a flight. It has the EV in it. If there are other shots of the addon planes, I'd love to know too! Hellshade, what are your opponents in the sky flying? Is it just Spad vs. DVII and some balloons or are there other AI only fighter or two seaters?

Oh yeah, well I got 22/20. Beat that!!!!

It's just so natural looking from there!

How long does this stutter or glitch last? If it's just for a millisecond, try setting your frames to a locked value of 30 or whatever works best for your system.

I like those ideas. Probably could do away with the 1st person walking around (not that I wouldnt like that anyways), but having a 2D bunkhouse/barracks as suggested where you view your medals, or pickup the paper to read, or write in your journal. Maybe a map or two you can look at, and some old timey record is playing in the background. Or even sort of just like the pilot dossier allows now, but if it's integrated into the actual campaign screens and specific to that particular pilot/campaign, that'd really add to the immersion. And the idea of allowing for a chat is interesting. How about just having an option to click for mess and it opens your web browser and takes you to this forum. Just exit out of there or just click back into OFF. Good idea too about getting your own name in the paper. And perhaps above all else, opening up the air war to a wider expanse. The Eastern front is certainly large, but far far simpler than the Western front. Even if it just included Germany for simplicity's sake. Perhaps spend part of the early days of the war assigned to the east as flying an observer, or just flying along as an observer, before being transfered to the west. Nothing too complicated, but would give the game a far wider scope to it with needing (well relatively anyways to the west....) not much effort into creating. And an Italian front as well of course :) Now that would really be special!

Something I found out tonight is that some of the error messages need revision. I had recently re-enabled the UAC in Vista and when I went to play tonight I kept getting error messages about OFF wanting to reinstall to solve the problem. I guess I assumed I had run OFF without a problem since re-enabling UAC and thought I had a newly corrupt file in OFF that left me needing to reinstall. As it turns out, the message saying it needed OFF reinstalled was simply because the system's UAC wasnt giving OFF the access it wanted to the files. Turn UAC off, and these doom and gloom messages go away. Maybe just reminding people to try running as admin and compatibility mode if running uac in those messages.

I know... But I need trackir first so I can at least get a good look at the person shooting me down!

Why are we engaging in political chatter anyways? Nothing wrong with making fun of a politician for a gaff like Brown's "Obama Beach", but why start criticizing someone's politics here? Or making jokes about shooting people or jokes about a tragic plane crash. Sure you can all say what you'd like, but then you have to accept other people saying what they want as well. Or better yet, to avoid offending people or pissing them off, we can all use our right to free speech to argue politics somewhere else. I'd rather avoid knowing someone's political leanings, personally. Let's put aside our political differences and join together while this war and the air battles continue to rage!

Yes, a less explosive crash would be very nice.

I certainly understand why P4 would be payware, but the idea of paying the same price for P4 as I did for P3 would probably keep me away.... Seems more like a Service Pack / update, albeit a substantial one. But that's also why we'd be paying for it. Just not 49, or even 39 please? :) In fact, a digital download of P4 which installs over P3 would work well for me. It'd just install and overwrite what it needs to out of the P3 directory.

Id also like to see the wind affect the AI as well. Itd make for much better and realistic formation flying.

Though some aspects of the model and flight model seem a bit off flying her. After all I dont think the real one was quite as unstable as this version

That white one may actually be my fav of the bunch. I for one prefer these drabber colors to the bright ones myself :) But, I guess you cant go wrong dressing up an Albatross!

That is a great skin for the Albatros!