von Baur

That same storm dropped snow in Texas. It's all relative. Early February '73, I believe it was, it snowed in San Antonio. Only stuck to the grass, and only an inch or so at that. But I and the 48 other members of my basic training flight who were from north of the mason-Dixon line and grew up with several inches to several feet of snow per year were absolutely amazed ( and laughing hysterically) at the radio reports of traffic vitually brought to a standstill by the weather. To us it would have barely been an inconvenience, but to people who had never seen or driven in it, it was a disaster.

My connection seems more stable lately, and I wouldn't mind trying to host a session now and then. I've followed Duck's tutorial and feel relatively confident except in one area: ports and port forwarding. I'm on a wireless connection and a wireless router and there's no way to connect directly with my modem, even temporarily. If any of you who host on a regular basis can help me, I'd appreciate it. Have been popping onto TS off and on yesterday and today without any luck (though I did see Stumper on but inactive a lot last evening) and will try again tonight and tomorrow.

Hey, Ducky! Did some poking around (which usually gets me slapped, btw) and found that my router does have an internal firewall that is on by default. Have turned it off and am on TS right now if you want to try connecting. (Nearly 1:00pm EST and will be going to the pilot's briefing room for a few minutes soon, but will stay active on TS.)

Not a problem. That's the new Belgian thick-bladed prop designed to bite more air and give higher speeds.

Downloaded, uninstalled, installed, failed to connect. No mismatch, just timed out. Is the server up? Will try again later this morning or sometime this afternoon and this evening.

A very understanding gentleman, this Hillchurch chap.

Mi dos centabos: I bought my computer in 1998. The case and the floppy drive are all that remain of that (except in closets and the pole barn). Everything else is at least third generation and purchased seperately or in compatible groups (vid cards, cpu's or cpu/mobo or cpu/mobo/hd, etc.) and installed by yours-truly, and I wouldn't consider myself all that computer-savvy. Putting it all together is not that difficult, as most connections are relatively idiot-proof and most gear comes with the necessary cables and instructions. The key to doing this sort of thing is read before you buy. Really read the specs, paying particular attention to interconnection and power requirements, otherwise you might wind up with a PCI-E video card and a motherboard lacking the appropriate slot. OR you could find your shiny new super-powered rig with a serioulsy underpowered power supply (hmm, three uses of the word 'power' in the space of seven words...not bad ). Good luck.

Same as Olham: three attempts, three "Cannot find server".

I've got your 10-30, your 11-7, and your effects patch sitting in my start menu.I'm guessing I should delete the 10-30, run the 11-7 uninstaller and leave the effects pack alone, right? Or should I jus get rid of the 10-30 and the 11-7 and run the effects pack uninstaller?

Thanx, Duck. This will make checking my handiwork while skinning faster and simpler. Wow!! First the multiple shortcut thing and now this. Any other little secrets you're keeping from us?

I use DXTBmp to view and convert the .dds files to a format that I can edit and back to .dds files. Not sure where I got it, but I'd guess a search would turn it up.

Regrouping after an engagement, especially a big one, can be very problematic. And the OFF map is, to quote one of my favorite lines from the first Pirates of the Carribean movie, "more of a guideline" than a reliable navigational reference. In fact my opinion of it can be seen in the third post here: My linkhttp://forum.combatace.com/topic/50170-working-on-an-alternate-map/. While your grid would be useful and quicker than the system we now use ("I'm just east of the top of the first L in Lille"), Red Dog, I don't think it would necessarily be more accurate and it would still require referring to the in-game map. I'm thinking of toying around with the map in the above post this weekend and seeing if it helps landmark-based navigation significantly. If so, it might be worth adopting for our online campaigns. If Red Dog's grid system is adopted, either on a temporary or permanent basis, I would make a suggestion or two to help reduce the size of each grid. First, use an alpha-numeric system to identify each grid. That is letters for north-south reference and numbers for east-west, or vice-versa. Each grid would then have a designation, such as C6, or F10. With that you could probably reduce each grid to four or five miles square, which would easily get you within visual range of a common ground landmark. Second is a secondary number to indicate where within a grid you are, based on the keypad, such as was used in Red Baron (and possibly other games I haven't played). For any who might not be familiar with this method, the first number indicates the grid and if the second number is a 1 it would mean the lower left, or southwest, corner of that grid: a 6 would mean center-east, a 5 is right smack in the middle, etc. So the dot indicating Douai would be 9-3, Albert would be 15-4, and so on. Using that system you could parse the map into 10-mile blocks and the secondary number would cut them into sections slightly more than three miles square.

The skill of the artist is obvious. The accuracy of the subject less so. The fuselage appears too short and the horizontal stabilizer/elevators could be larger. As to the wings, the magic number is seven. Each bottom wing had seven sections, each middle wing had seven sections past the cutouts and the top wing had 21: seven for each aileron and seven between them.

My thoughts, exactly.

Thanx, Duck. This not only allows me to replace four shortcuts with only two, but it reduces the time it takes me to get things started since now I have two only double clicks (one for TS/TSO and the other for CPU control/TIR/Sidewinder control panel) instead of four plus a trip through the start menu (I hadn't created a shortcut for TSO yet).

I agree with Mack, it looks great. A good map that matches up with, if not the real world at least the OFF world, is at the top of my list for immersion improvement (and it's a very short list, btw, you guys have done a terrific job). In Richtofen's Skies the map lined up perfectly with the ingame world (and yours looks very much like it, btw) and I never had any problem using roads, rail lines and rivers to pinpoint where I was even though there was no gps-style plane icon showing your location and heading. In fact, if OFF's map accurately represented the ingame landmarks I'd turn off the icon, if that can be done. My dream map would be a basic roadmap-type of arrangement whose roads, rails, rivers and towns reliably matched what we see when we 'fly' around. Then have optional overlays of military (front lines, airfields, maybe some AA batteries, etc. based on the date) and mission-critical (flight-paths, waypoints and objectives) importance that could be placed on top of the basic map to the player's taste. This is definitely a step in that direction. Fan-damn-tastic.

I should be able to make that. Stick my name on one of those bad boys.

Don't know if this has been mentioned before, but... I'd noticed, shall we say, irregularities in the representation of damage, particularly bullet holes showing on one side of a surface but not the other. But I was returning from a QC and wanted to check out how the damage looked on the Dr1 skin I'm working on and saw this: Notice that from above the damage shows on the right aileron (yellow box), while from below it shows up on the left. That the pictures haven't been reversed can be seen by the damage to the middle wing...left side (green box) is more than halfway out while that to the right side (red box) is much closer to the root.

Fair enough, Pol. I understand that you (meaning, of course, the dev team) are limited by the CFS3 engine in some cases, and in trying to extend it to encompass WWI aircraft. Delay the next step until 2012 for this? OMG, I'd have the entire OFF community on my doorstep (insert images of the villagers storming Dr. Frankenstein's castle with torches and pitchforks here). Besides which, if the Mayans were right, we'd never get to enjoy it. No, this is a cosmetic inconsistency. It's correction would be nice, but it's hardly worth holding up production for if it's not going to be quick and easy. Maybe an upgrade to Phase 4. Your word that it will be looked into is good enough for me. Thanx.

Would love it, but Friday won't work at all for me. Possibly mid-afternoon Saturday at the earliest.

JASC is Paintshop. Open a new image and set the background some off color like red or bright green. Then add text and type in what the ip's, names, whatever else (you'll want to use a collor that will stand out, not black). Use background eraser to remove all but the text and save the file. Then open the splash screen bmp, open a new raster layer, copy the image with the ip's on it and paste it as a transparent layer on the splash, move it to where you want it and click and save.

OK, Duck, I was just curious how deep you'd been able to take this. It's still an improvement over a list on a piece of paper the Mrs. can throw away while cleaning house. I have psp and would be happy to put together a transparent version so that all you'd see is the names and numbers, but each person's list would likely be different.

So the ip's would be visible whether there was a game running on it or not? Would it be a 'copy-and-paste' arrangement or do we still have to type in the ip numbers? Or (easiest) would it be a cickable list?

Kingkat, I'm glad to hear that Duck was able to get you squared away. Am looking forward to flying with you and vonGuber. Will you be joining us on Sundays? I hope so. The more, the merrier.

Lots of fun tonight. Welcome to our new pilots: and Here they are playing 'Follow the Leader Another torpedo mission in the Short was run (no, I didn't say, "I was running in my shorts"). I still couldn't see my gunner from the cockpit. Stumpjumper told me I'd be able to if I checked in F4 view. so I did: But at least I've got the hang of those torpedoes And after getting hit by flak and repawning in another Short The short missions require Stump's v1 minipatch, so if you haven't gotten it yet, by all means do so and join the fun.