von Baur

Hauksbee: "A little duct tape and she'll be as good as new, sir." abyss: Perhaps that tree is a larger version of Charlie Brown's kite-eating tree.

I used to skydive and all I can say is "HOLY ****ING ***T!!!" Oh, yeah, and "Where do I sign up?"

General note: It would seem that some members of The Red Cross and The Red Crescent have too much time on their hands. Or maybe they're trying to misdirect us from how ineffective they are at policing this situation in the real world. OTOH (and I say this as one who does not play any war-based games except OFF), I think points added and/or advancements based on the amount of damage both material and human to both sides and civilians and penalties for anything that could be commonly considered a violation of international conventions up to and including termination of one's career might provide a level of realism for those who choose to take that step that we enjoy here in OFF. To Zmelli: Your post brought to mind the Playstation 3 commercial in which the characters from these different games are gathered at a tavern and talking about the various dark times in their respective games and how "he" rescued them all and they all start chanting "Michael" and raising their glasses to the picture of the dorky-looking kid with a controller in his hands. I love that one. To Flyby: I believe (at least I remember reading somewhere) that the lack of swastikas is not based on pc but on $$$. Apparently the emblem is expressly forbidden in some countries even in a historical context and having them on the vertical stabilizers would make the game unsellable in those countries. To Hasse, Hellshade, WM, and all those of like mind who haven't spoken up: The rules of warfare absolutely apply only to a war's losers. In total war both sides play fast-and-loose with the rules. But the winner gets to decide which of those liberties are operationally justified and which are unconscienable crimes against humanity. I'm basically guessing here, but I believe My Lai was the first real case of a country holding its own soldiers accountable for actions taken during a war, and that was more an attempt to appease the American public who had become highly anti-military. On a personal note, I try to fly OFF by the standards set by Hauptmann Heidemann in "The Blue Max". My first priority is bringing back my entire flight safely and if the enemy retreats I pursue them only to a point. In fact, and I'm not looking for cowardly opponents here but, I hope that P4 includes AI who have a sense of self-preservation. That is to say, if we damage them sufficiently they'll break contact or even attempt (and sometimes manage) an emergency landing. To be fair, I've seen it attempted a few times, but it's always resulted in a firey crash. It would be nice to have a few "forced down, captured" to go along with the "kills".

. . . . . WAKE UP!!!!! I can't believe it took this long for that to be put up.

That diagram may be a bit misleading, Olham...only the trailing edge was moved, thus 'warping' the wings. That's how aircraft originally managed longitudinal control. Legend has it that one of the Wright brothers hit on the idea while fiddling with the box for a bicycle inner-tube. Further legend is that Glenn Curtis developed ailerons because the Wrights, his rivals in aircraft manufacture, refused to allow him to use wing warping (for which they held patents) in an attempt to drive him from the industry. Instead, ailerons became the preferred method because they were more efficient and allowed for a rigid, and therefore stronger, wing. Eventually Curtis bought out the Wrights. One of the aircraft mods for Reb Baron 3D featured visible, although rather exagerrated, movement of the Eindekker and Morane Mono's wings. It would be nice if it could be incorporated into OFF, but alas I fear if it could be it already would have been.

Logitec G940 flight control system. It's not cheap or compact, but if money is no object niether is size (with some ingenuity). My solution to the size problem was: When not in use the pedals can be flipped forward opening up the floor. The platfoms for the stick and the throttle take less than a minute to attach or detach and are as sturdy as you could need. The build only took a few hours and cost literally a couple of dollars. There's a run-down of how I did it about halfway down here. I used a twisty-stick for years, listening to and not entirely believing people say how much more response and precision pedals give you. They were right! The first thing I did after I got mine was to do a full 360* flat turn in a Dr1...a snap. And a throttle lever does the same thing for engine control. I only hope that when P4 comes out it supports individual engine control in the multi-engine planes. The stick has force feedback and it works great...I almost never stall. And I'm usually already recovering from a near-stall when the warning comes on-screen. One disclaimer I should include about the picture. The cup-holder and cat are extra.

I turned the music off so I don't remember what it sounded like. But I'm once more amazed at the versatility of a piano. One talented musician can go from a single instrument to a full orchestra in the space of a song.

Saw this on Yahoo. These baby ducks walk...make that run...up a very steep incline just to slide back down, just like children at a playground. There's no reward of food, only the pure enjoyment of the slide. And interestingly enough, for the most part they seem to wait their turn, also, pushing in front of only those reluctant to take the plunge.

Wow! Forty years on and I finally realize that my sergeant at basic was really a Zen master. Who would have thought?

I'm running nearly stock, gaw. The only thing I've added, besides some for-online missions and a few skins, is the tracer mod.

I've rather pondered along similar lines, Lou. Many stores offer new DVD/Blu-Ray movies slightly reduced for the first few days and then bring the price up to msrp. Why not offer the same kind of thing for the core community? Pre-orders at 75-80% of what it will sell for when it's released. That could also serve as an early warning that it's nearing release and maybe reduce the "when" posts a little.

Canadair, I'm sure Widowmaker was just rrying to turn a phrase and didn't mean to disparage Turkey's cleanliness or damage its tourist industry. Widow, next time you feel compelled to use bugs in a comparative, feel free to cite my backyard as your point of reference. It's .

Visually, what every simmer wants to see. But there's more to a combat sim than graphics. Weapons ballistics and physics add tons of processing, I would guess, and damge and how it affects everything else even more. While I agree with your idea and would love to see that level of detail in OFF (or any WWI flight simulator), I wonder if there's anyone who has a computer that could process all that information and still deliver playable framerates.

And may warriors someday be something remembered only.

A big fat "ditto", Lou. I'm just thankful my son is in the Army now, and it was I who endured that period. I wore my cammie shirt (still fits, barely ) for the first time since I got out in 1982, except for a couple of Hallowe'ens, to work on Friday, decorated with his unit's badge pinned to the lapel. It's going to be standard every Veterans' Day for as long as he serves (Please pay no attention to the clutter behind the man behind the jump wings). Jonathan, refer to my post in the "Last Post" thread and remind those who question the value of or need for a military force that, "All that's required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing". A true hero isn't someone who stands up to those who threaten him and his family, the lowest form of life on the planet will do that. It's someone who who accepts the risk on behalf of people he doesn't know but need his help simply because he has the ability and believes it's the right thing to do. (Dangit!! Somebody hide this soapbox.)

Would that be Christmas 2011 or Christmas 2012? JUST KIDDING, DEVS!!!!

I like to think we are, Widowmaker. Not to go political here, but if someone had done in the 1930's what's being done today in Iraq and Afghanistan.....who's to say? Meantime, a big to all who serve and have served.

I like the trim the way she is. And the headlights are pretty mice, too.

I'm guessing she used a lot of back elevator to keep the nose level on her planes.

RE: 1. Drunk gorilla...bad idea. 5. Women with shotguns are ok. THAT woman with a shotgun...not so much. 10. Reminds me of a Dennis Miller rant. Roughly, "So Mark McGuire beat Bab Ruth's record. McGuire did it on steroids. Ruth did it on beer and hot dogs." 15. I WANT ONE (of each). 16. I want to see what that lion did when the car stopped. 22. FINALLY! A legitimate opponent for Anderson Silva. 23. That's no dog. It's the kid from #2 after 20 years of smoking a pipe. 24. I WANT ONE (of each). 25. I had that poster in the 70's. Can't remember the caption. Something like, "And you think you're having a bad day?" 26. (a two-fer) 'Officers get all the good accesories', and/or, 'That's not a real soldier, it's just an observer.' 27. I was going to say, "Isn't he married to the woman in #20?" but then I saw #29. Maybe he's a bigamist. 2. 8. 9. and 12. How in the world did the human race ever survive to this point when they used to allow their young to engage in such dangerous activities?

I always like this one. From 1965. Pretty unusual to make a comic about a German war hero at that time in the USA. Very unusual hero, too.

Former Special Forces (USAF Tactical Air Control Team and Combat Control Team), former skydiver and recreational downhill skier (former because each costs more $$ than I have to devote to either). If I ever hit the lottery I'll start both again even though I'm closer to 60 than 50, so you might call me an adrenaline junkie. I sometimes wonder if some of the people who hear my anecdotes believe them. Hell, sometimes I wonder if they're real myself or just a dream, because that person seems a polar opposite to the person at this keyboard today. Then, once in a while, something happens...whether it's coming upon the scene of an accident before the paramedics, a loved one gets injured or in some kind of trouble, or just a "crisis" at work...and the training and experience kick in and you realize you still got it. Anyway, I left the Air Force because my career field was deleted from those ranks and due to poor eyesight I was unable to cross-train and stay in them. Was that a bad thing? If I'd stayed in I wouldn't have been at JR's Cowboy Palace on February 10th, 1990 when I met my then-future wife, our son James (being a unique combination of her DNA and temperament and mine) would never have been born and all the good things he's done and will do in the future would never have happened. The bottom line is, we don't change, our circumstances do. As to the youth of today, I think their actions are the result of a combination of opportunity and the age-old feeling of having to out-do the previous generation to feel or prove yourself worthy of the inheritance you've received from them. My previous generation set the bar impossibly high in the 1940's, which may be why we tried so hard in such less glorious circumstances as Viet Nam. My successors, IMO and without wanting to start a political flameup, have accquitted our species rather well in answering the call and standing up to the Hitleresque characters around the world today. Maybe my generation's real calling was to maintain and train, I don't know. That's the good side of the out-do the previous generation. Unfortunately, for every good side there's a bad. And on the bad side you have Son of Sam wants to surpass Charles Manson wanted to surpass Bonnie and Clyde wanted to surpass..... I realize each of those peoples' crimes were different, but the point is that if you have a bent toward negative activities then the drive to outdo will follow that path, too. They want to be more infamous than those who went before. Alexander the Great wanted to conquer more territory than his father had,as did Xerxes, and so on and so forth. Opportunity? Technological advances provide a means of a person doing something he wouldn't have been able to a hundred years ago. Why is vandalism so much more prevalent these days? Try tagging with a paint brush. Carrying around a gallon can of paint and a brush or a roller at midnight alone will increase your window of vulnerability, let alone the increased time it would take to actually do the deed. Who ever heard of a drive-by on horseback? They happened, of course, but not everyone even owned horses, which means that most people would have to do a walk-by, again increasing the chances that you'll get caught. And with a single shot pistol you're vulnerable to counter-attack by overwhelming numbers, while today's firearms are both more easily concealed and allow you to provide your own suppressing fire for the escape. Last, there are more people in the world and by extension more people misbehaving. And they're the ones who usually make the news. As has been noted, for every one who makes the news for his evil deeds a thousand don't because they're doing what they're supposed to and treating others decently isn't considered newsworthy. Which brings us back to my first point, that each news outlet is trying to out-do the other. So we hear more about these things these days. Overall, I think we'll be ok. We just have to keep our spirits up. To echo Flyby's closing statements (and not to elicit a lot of sympathetic replies), Garth Brooks had a song called "The Dance", the refrain of which was: "And now, I'm glad I didn't kow the way it all would end, the way it all would go. Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance." My beautiful wife, Nancie, passed away this past Valentine's Day. We met when I asked her to dance with me at a bar 21 years ago. I would do anything to avoid the pain I've felt for the last eight months. Except missing all the dances that we shared. Dance, my friends. Dance.

Ahh, yes. who can forget that magical movie moment. Mel Gibson, his character's arms spread wide, defiantly screaming "Freeee-dommmmmmmm". And then....he smacks into the weather vane, spins around a few times, bounces off the power lines, careens into the feed trough, rebounds out of it and then has the trough flip over on him, breaking his arm....uh, wing. I always wondered if his opening line in "Chicken Run" was put in as a spoof of his last word in "Braveheart". Hope I didn't ruffle any feathers. Braveheart was an excellent movie. Who cares if it didn't follow reality? Do we expect that from Hollywierd anyway?

Just my 2cents' (not sure of the UK conversion, probably a shade less than tuppence). A year or so ago we bought a 37" 1080p TV for the bedroom and before we even got it loaded in the truck I reminded Frau von Baur that the computer room was just inside the door, whereas our bedroom was all the way at the other end of the house. She understood that this meant OFF was going to get a big-screen trial before the ferrets and the bedroom cat got to watch Animal Planet in HD. It was like a whole new game. I like to fly tight and I actually felt I was as close as I was to the other aircraft instead of being much closer than it looks. Also, in QC's I can see the opposing aircraft immediately rather than having to look for them. It must have to do with (at the risk of stating the obvious) the fact that when an object occupies a greater percentage of your view it's easier to see. IOW, while resolution is great for picking up details, size really does matter in the critical 'first-look' phase. I used the overscan feature of my video card to reduce the size by 15%, leaving me with a virtual 32" screen and I'm still able to pick up objects from a very long distance away. So my plan is to get a 32" 1080p LED (because along with being more energy-efficient and generating less heat they're lighter than LCD and therefore more safely wall-mounted) 120Hz TV. They can be found for as little as $400US, if you look or catch a sale. And the prices will likely start going down this holiday season when 3D starts taking the high-end consumer dough. Another good thing about the 32" is that its height is almost identical to the width of a 19" 4:3 monitor. You already have one of those and with another you can create a three-monitor setup (my plan) for very little extra.