Canvas Wings

No idea why it happens, but I've experienced the same thing several times. -Sometimes when shot down, (once when a burst caught my fuel tank; I saw the explsion, and the wings rip off, at about 8000 feet.) -sometimes in a crash. I usually fly a series of 8 pilots, of different nationalities, planes and time periods. I have notice that when this miraculous escape occurs, it tends to happen to the next pilot and possibly the third. Then it the game returns to it's normal deadly level for an indefinite period, all without stopping/restarting the sim. I fly at 110% DiD and nothing tweaked except automix. Sometimes with TAC & labels, sometimes not. I still haven't manage to isolate any common denominator in the incidents so far. Wierd -but since I'm a rookie at this game, my pilots die so often that I'm just glad to get a break. So I just thank the Gods of War and soldier on.

Me too, I guess... One of my pilots flies with 3-RFC out of Chocques in Flanders. I signed up Jan 1, 1915. I'm listed as a Bomber pilot, although I signed up as a fighter pilot; we're flying Bristol Scouts, and all our missions have been recon.. It's been about ten days now, and I have reached the 17 hour mark without having seen a single enemy plane. I was assuming that was because it's a quiet area, early 1915, and the air activity was set at "light". -But seeing your post, maybe that's not the case. I changed the setting to "medium" and didn't see any change on the next mission, so I'll bump it up heavy. Whatever - I have several other pilots running who have more activity than they can handle. In the meantime, while I haven't seen any enemy in ten days -someone* is killing off my squadron mates. A little over half the originals are gone already. And I've been promoted all the way up from Sargeant to Captain. I think the brass skipped "Lieutenant". So all in all, my boy is having a lovely war....

So far I've only flown in one Elite squadron too -with Richthofen's bunch just prior to his demise. Those guys would knock down the opposing flight faster than I could get to them, most of the time. And not only would they steal your kill -Lothar shot *me* once to get at my target. -and no, I didn't fly into his line of fire, I was holding pretty level tight on my opponent's tail when Lothar swooped in from above and behind and let us both have it. To be fair, I only took minor damage while he blew the other chap out of the air.

I also voted "OK" -because it can be scaled to suit your preferences. This is a terrific sim- the OFF team has done a phenomenal job, and continue that with excellent support like this. That said, I agree scaling back the AI sight/reaction range would be a good thing, but not a big deal. I also think reducing the accuracy of AA/machine guns would be a positive move. IMO, at "realistic" it is a little much. Ground fire is too accurate, as well. I almost never make a pass at a mission ground target, without getting shot to hell or downed, in one pass. And no, I'm not loitering around; I'm in-and-out, from altitude. And there is no way my damaged plane would survive a second pass; yet historically pilots took several passes to get the job done. So in that sense, I think it is unrealistic. Strangely, no one else mentioned the two-seaters. Am I the only one who thinks they are unbelievably accurate? (Or are they part of the same AA/MG setting)? Obviously, unless you come at them from below, they are going to bang away at you for all they're worth. Fair enough; however, these guys almost never, ever miss. Just like the pilots we are simming, -rookies who on average didn't survive the 17hour mark- the boys in the two-seaters were rookies too, and probably scared spitless at the sight of a fighter barrelling in on them with guns blazing. I imagine under those circumstances, many of them couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, if it was sliding sideways to them at 100 klicks or so, and spewing bullets. Historically, the two-seaters where relatively defenceless. (I know, they got better as the war rolled on) -but that's why they needed escorts. That's why they make up a sizeable portion, if not the majority, of the aces' victory tally. From what I read of the period, the two-seaters were approached with caution, of course- but they weren't nearly the threat to the attacker that he was to them; an enemy scout coming you way was far more dangerous. Yet here in OFF, to judge by many posts I've read, a lot of people have the same outlook as I do; we will gladly take on uneven odds even against pilots flying superior machines – but two seaters? -leave them alone; turn around a fly away. That seems backwards to me…. Those comments having been said, I still think this is an outstanding game with amazing support. And, like I said – it's "OK" because it can be optioned to your level of enjoyment. As far as I'm concerned OFF is well above any other combat flight sim… and it's got the sun at it's back too….

I always wear the 'phones, and the hell with the doorbell. I'm not home. I'm somewhere over Flanders Fields.

Apart from the generally superior planes, flashy paint job and the Red Baron mystique, I think there is also a tendency for a lot of us to back the underdog. You see the same thing in the US civil war fans... there is more game/enactment participation, general interest in and nostalgia for the Confedracy rather than Union. No real reason I can see - it just is.

That's generally the method I use for claims as well, but it does put a bit of a dent in 'total immersion' feel. Would have been nice if you could get to the mission review before making a claim.

And to the list of incredible sounds in the sim, I'll add one more. The rain. I have sat in the cockpit for several minutes just listening to the rain beating on the wings. Unbelieveably real. I felt like I should be getting wetting sitting there. Fabulous fx, guys!

I wouldn't start worrying quite yet, - I'm in the middle of BC and just recently receieved my copy. It took just short of 2 weeks to reach me, and theoretcially it should be around the same for you. If it doesn't show by the weekend then I'd worry. Hope it shows soon, but believe me, when it arrives, you'll forget all about the wait. You are going to love it.

And here I thought it was just because I don't know how to fly. Sometimes I manage to hold formation, more or less, by obssesively nursing the throttle... but with every waypoint change they invariably end up to hell and gone. I often have to let them drop back a couple of miles, then circle around to rejoin them. ® doesn't work unless you're flying lead, right? I've also noticed every plane in the squadron gains altitude faster than I do, too, especially at take off. I've decided that is because I don't know how to fly.

Must be Karma. Right after posting a message saying how great things were running under Alacrity, I suddenly get this. When you "Go to Field" an error message indicates the wrong CD is in. Tried popping it out and in again, no go. It's not Alacrity -it does the same thing with a standard launch. It's not the V 1.30b patch; I hadn't installed it yet (though I have now, in the wildly ridiculous hope the new patch might toggle something - it didn't) -is there anything I should try first before using the reset buttons or worse, a re-install ? I'd hate to lose my pilots -plus, I have sent a couple of weeks finding all the right/wrong tweaks, and like an idiot, I didn't write down the final configs.....

Yup. But that wasn't what cleared it. (It's up purring like a like a well-tuned prop fighter). After trying everything else I could think of, short of a total game re-install, I looked at the error message again- "Terminated prematurely" and out of sheer desperation, I went back into the game, and before it got to the "CD error", I deliberated crashed the system with <Cntr/Alt/Delete> -inessence, terminating it prematurely a second time. It came back up working fine. When logic doesn't work, use Voodoo. Go figure. Thanks for ridin' shotgun, gwar. I appreciate it.

Thanks, gwar... That would be No. No. And no. It was running fine, I exited clean, did a little online surfing, and a little later re-launched the game. Here's where it went sideways. I run "Alacrity' first (a program that shuts down unecessary programs, then launches your game, and re-starts those programs when the game closes.) This time for some reason, the game failed to start when Alacrity tried to launch it. Needed to re-start the computer. Ran Alacrity again, and everything worked as it should; OFF started properly, but then failed to recognized the CD when it was called for. I tried running CFS3 itself, and got the same error message. When I try to push it past the "Wrong CD" message, it comes up with another error warning- Patch DLL error Game terminated prematurely. PatchMemorySync::Done: TerminateProcess() failed(5)

Great tip re:Alacrity, HomeBoy, thanks. I've only been running OFF for a few weeks, stilll tweaking for max effect. Alacrity dropped my processes from 47 to 22 and gave me an FPS boost over 30% on average -and that's after I bumped two of the slider controls up a notch. An added bonus - it appears to have solved a problem that was plaguing me. Seemingly randomly my game would freeze up and go black. Task manager reported OFF Manager was not responding but CFS exe still was. I'd kill OFF Manager and popped me back into the game; but when I finished the mission, "End Flight" dropped me back to desktop, and the mission was not recorded. The thing was, the phenomenon seemed unpredicatble- sometimes in the middle of a data-instesive dogfight, sometimes coasting into land, once even on one of the menu screens. But it hasn't happened since. It seems one of the processess running on my system was sending a service call of some type that interfered with OFF Manager. I suspect it may have been AVG -possibly the registry scan. Whatever -it appears to have been resolved.

Yup. But it was an Albatross. Still crashed, tho', mircale or no...

Had a similar experience with an FE2 -snuck up low and behind and popped two quick burst into it. It wobbled, a little debris flew off, and though I did see it start to smoke, it must have flamed because both crew members jumped. The Fe lumbered on for another hundred metres or so, then it *did* burst into flame - at which point *another* pilot and observer bailed out. My guess is the Brits are getting low on aircraft and have to double up.