von Baur

I heard this phrase, and I think I even stumbled upon it at one point, but I can't seem to find it now. I have CPU Control, so I can take everything off CPU 1 prior to starting up WOFF. The problem is tha my computer still assigns WOFF to all four processors. I'd like to be able to program Windos to assign it (and CFS3, for that matter) to run only on CPU1. Can anyone help me?

And sometimes there is genius in simplicity. I hope Mr. Roe never flew too low over trees or fences with those chains. Tough to explain that to your insurance agent.

Exactly. As I said, with a moving aircraft you've got a relative wind that you can use to control yourself. With a static jump platform you would have to be more precise with your push-off and body position, otherwise you'll be flailing about trying not to end up upside down and inside out. Of course your father's students were most likely on static lines and the parachute pulled out too quickly to get too out of control, plus the line itself will provide some small mount of stability. I've jumped helicopters and their lower airspeeds (60-80 knots rather than 90-100 for fixed wing) and rotor downwash gives some people trouble, although I never had a problem with it.

I would love it!!! When I was skydiving I always wanted to jump from a balloon. Jumping from a plane you're already moving nearly at terminal velocity, just horizontally and slowly transitioning to the vertical. The idea of dropping "into the void" from a basically motionless platform and having that first few seconds of absolutely no control...it seemed like the coolest thing I could do. Second place was running across the top of a Zeppelin to take the plunge. Those guys were among probably fewer than 100 people who ever lived to have experienced what they did. Pretty exclusive club.

Pretty easy to figure out where he passed it onto, though. "Take that, Fritz!!"

Proving again that it's a fine line between genius and idiocy.

No idea. But after the war it was ordered destroyed as part of the Versailles Treaty. Baron van Nuys instead dismantled it and shipped disguised parts to various locations around the world. One portion ended up in Los Angeles. Goering wanted it brought back to Germany in 1936 but Hitler decided against the idea, afraid that Fat Hermann would eat it. Decades later it would get its big break in "Iron Man 2". It's agent is trying to push through a remake of "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" in which it would get a (ahem) bigger role. So far, no luck.

Sign me up!!! signed: 60 and still crazy.

I think the best way to show an exact position would be a straight-on shot, a la the famous picture of Eddie Rickenbacker in his SPAD, or a shot or diagram from overhead. This third one still makes it look like the rear flexible gun's vertical post is touching, or practically, the fixed gun about midway down the barrel. The second photo clearly shows that the entire drum was forward of the post, which means the fixed gun had to be a foot or so to the right of it and much closer to the edge of the gunner's cockpit. Did anyone else think the third picture looked like the gunner was getting sick?

Yes, that second picture does show the gun's position better. With the muzzle extending to or past the gunner's position it would be nearly impossible to get in front of it and still stay in the aircraft. And comparing the two, it's clear that the gun was considerably more offset than it appeared in the first picture. Thanx.

Now that looks scary. At first glance it seems destined to turn the observer/gunner into a soprano, but then you can see the gun is offset to starboard. Still, I wonder how many front-seaters got knee-capped (or worse ) with that arrangement. I seem to remember seeing somewhere a picture of one mounted on the side of the nacelle. That would be a much safer option.

I stand corrected. A bit of research shows that they were used in operational trials not only on the Albatros DV, as in the video, but on the Fokker DrI as well. I wonder if the devs would consider adding this to WOFF.

Very nice video. But, seriously? A WWII-style gunsight on an Albatros? What's next from RoF...guided lePrieur rockets? Maybe they can be canvas-seeking? Or guided by termites to home in on the wooden frames. Wouldn't be too useful against later Fokkers, what with their steel tubing, but it should make any Alb-jockey shudder.

Same here. Only I was wondering how he was going to get a mirror to pop up on my monitor.

Relatively simple solution to that, Hauksbee: get a controller that will put all commands at you fingertips. Yeah, yeah, "Real WWI flying aces didn't have handy little buttons for this and that and the other thing." Real WWI flying aces: couldn't hit pause when they had to pee or grab a sandwich; didn't have their wife or kids need them to look for something when they were on a mission; didn't have UPS ring their doorbell during a hot furball or when stalking a flight of enemy aircraft; never had a cat land in their laps when they were lining up for a bombing run or recce pic. And they didn't have to wear silly headgear for anything other than keeping their ears warm. ;)

I'm waiting for Oculus.

I'm trying to set up a 16x9 main monitor flanked by two 4x3's on end. I've installed SofTH and can run the game successfully but my new resolution (3968x1080) isn't available in workshop. The SofTH readme has something about possibly needing to modify that in the configuration file. I used to be able to find it in WinXP but now I'm running W7 and can't locate it. Can someone please direct me?. And if anyone has experience with fsx, I'd love to fly that with three monitors, too. Video card is AMD6850 with a second available. But from what I can tell the Crossfire isn't helping so I'm just keeping that one for backup.

There's no "point could be made" about it, Crazyhorse. The numbers are there. The firebombings absolutely killed more. But they did no more to demoralize the Japanese people in general or convince higher authorities to surrender than did the bombing of London. Especially an unconditional surrender. What they did was to show America's resolve to reduce Japan to ashes, if necessary, rather than accept anything less than surrender on our terms. That's why they were sending feelers out to the USSR to try to negotiate a cease-fire. And nobody ever said the use of any weapon is humane. But sometimes the use of a weapon is necessary. Don't forget, The US was the last to start using them in WWII. And if it hadn't been for the USSR's continuing to push even after Japan had agreed to surrender, we would have been the last to use them. But those raids involved hundreds of bombers flying low...10,000 feet or less...within easy range of anti-aircraft guns and susceptible to whatever home-defense aircraft Japan may have had at that point. The Japanese military felt that they could weather that storm, and maybe they could have. When ONE B-29 flew over at 30,000 feet...untouchable by anything Japan had...and killed nearly half as many with one bomb as all the firebombing raids had done, well that was something else again. And then we dropped another on Nagasaki, showing that we also had the means to reduce Japan to ashes. Combined with the resolve the firebombings had shown, the Emporer himself broke with hundreds of years of tradition and cast his vote. He acted with honor, concerned more with the safety of his people than with his own fate (quite to the contrary of what Stalin did...but I'll get to that later). It's possible that the Soviet invasion of occupied Manchuria was considered when that vote was cast. But I can't imagine that making much difference in either the outcome or the timing. And while I have no facts to cite, I would point to the timing of events as support for my position. It would have been months before any Soviet troops had set foot on Japanese soil. But it didn't take months. It took days. I never said the US won WWII. I did say it took all the major Allied powers to defeat Germany and that if the Soviet Union had fallen Germany's defeat at least would have taken much, much longer and may not have occurred. Soviet sacrifices were as high as they were for two reasons: the Nazi's occupied their territory and therefore were able to initiate their extermination policies on the civilian population; and the primary Soviet military strategy was to throw more people at the enemy than the enemy could kill before being overwhelmed. A strategy which is only effective as long as you have huge numbers of people that you don't give a rat's fourth-point-of-contact it they're all killed to save your own fourth-point-of-contact (I told you I'd get back to this). And it doesn't matter whether it was the bullets, the bandages or the beans (ok, spam), if not for outside assistance the USSR likely would have ceased to exist by 1944. And I never disagreed that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria "set the stage" for the Korean War. I just asked if it would been a bad thing for the Korean War never to have happened. Personally, I don't think so. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the only good war is the one that doesn't have to be fought. The Soviets may have been the first "boots on the ground" in Berlin, but they weren't the first to fight the Germans there. By the time the first Soviet boots hit the suburbs it was already badly mauled by the British and US air raids that had been going on for years. I will give you one thing, though. The Soviet Union did win WWII. If you use the 19th Century definition of winning a war: imposing your rule through force of arms upon a lot of people who formerly owed you no allegiance.

To be fair, the council claimed to be responding to complaints by the citizenry, which is what they're supposed to do...represent the people in their charge. But responding only to those who complain can lead to "rule by the vocal minority". Maybe arranging a vote of some sort to determine what most people's feelings are would have been a better idea. Of course, it's easy to sit back and say that after the fact. In general, though, I kind of have to go along with what I assume is Widowmaker's point: WWII without the Nazis is....well, it wouldn't have been, actually.

There's only one thing wrong with that arguement, Gepard...the Atomic bombs made an invasion of mainland Japan unnecessary. Another million, two million, or five million soldiers would have made no difference. Japan knew the US would continue dropping them until not a citizen survived or until we ran out (which we had, although they didn't know that), at which point we would make more. Stalin knew this as well, and knew that if he wanted to steal as much formerly Japanese-held territory as he could he had to act fast. The truly interesting question in all of it, in my mind, is...if we had waited a week or two to drop the first bomb would Stalin have honored his three month timetable. I can argue that he wouldn't and anyone else can argue that he would. The only thing we can be sure of is that we'll never know for sure.

Thanx, Lou. This may be just what I needed to get into WOFF on a campaign basis. I was so disappointed in the town misplacement that I gave up. What I don't, and won't, understand is that the towns were perfectly placed in OFF for navigating by Rabu's maps. I did it all the time. The only thing needed was some river and forest tweaking.

Japan's hoping for Soviet mediation is a valid point. However, after Nagasaki their capitulation was in the bag. The US had made our demands clear and it was obvious we weren't budging (which we did regarding not forcing the Emporer to abdicate, but that was at Mac's behest and a shrewd tactical/political move) because Japan didn't realize we'd dropped the last nuke that was ready to go. Stalin, OTOH, knew through his spies and made his move to grab as much territory as he could. No Korean War? No Kim Il-Sung? No Kim Jong-Il? No Kim Jong-Un? Would there be any dissenting votes on that outside China and North Korea? And I've got a feeling that even China's looking at the latest "Glorious Leader" of the North Korean people and saying, "Dude. Take a Valium, OK?" I don't care what Stalin said. Or Kruschev. Or Brezhnev. Or any of them. I care a little about what Putin says and does because my son is in the Army and he could have to deploy there if it comes to that. Otherwise, Mad Vlad (although, if he continues to expand Russia into formerly forced Soviet satellite states I may start calling him "Vlad, the Inhaler") can talk all he wants, too. What really bugs me is the way western historians go along with this poppycock. The farther WWII fades, the more likely these lies will come to be viewed as the truth. Years from now children may think that Anzio was where the generals went for their Spring Break. And that the Afrika Korps was a forerunner to the Peace Corps (they did a lot of work in Africa), so why were we fighting them?

Cats are tough. My first wife and I had five in South Carolina. One day a German Shepard came into the yard. They formed a semi-circle around it and marched it back out. Every time the dog would try to go around they'd slide in front of it like they were all in comm with each other. It was beautiful. And I never saw that dog again.

Yes, Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan within three months of VE and he did so...barely. But my point throughout this has been the fact that the USSR accused, and history has pretty much backed up the claim, that the US and Britain did little to nothing against Germany until D-Day when in fact that is absolutely not the case. The very suggestion ignores North Africa, Sicily, Italy and the strategic bombing campaign. OTOH Stalin delayed as long as he could possibly do so in providing any assistance to us against Japan, finally entering that theater at a point where the assistance was virtually unnecessary. No, dammit, it was unnecessary...no "virtually" about it.

IMO, the US was the only country that had the combination of easily-accessible raw materials and established industrial strength to be victorius over the Axis Powers without significant help. The Soviet Union had the raw materials, but the emergency of WWII really got their industrial base going. Before 1942 it was little more than getting started. Great Britain had the industrial base but needed the raw materials shipped to them, leaving them vulnerable.Germany and Japan would fit into this category, as well. Had Germany defeated the USSR and been able to exploit its natural resources and the safety of its size they may have been able to force a stalemate in Europe/Africa/Western Asia, thus isolating the US until they could cross the ocean. And with the US fighting Japan (who would have received help from a victorius Germany), it's possible to likely that the Axis powers could have succeeded. Bottom line, if the joint effort wasn't abolutely necessary for an Allied victory it was at least critical in keeping the war from dragging on and on and on. I don't dispute that Russia's fighting against Germany helped, and maybe made possible, victory in Europe. You could think of it as a three-legged stool...take away any one leg and it's going to be very difficult to stand on it long enough to hang a picture. But to hear the Russians tell it the US and Britain did nothing from Sept 1940 until June 1944. Which is far from the truth. And the fact is that, despite requests from the US, the USSR ignored Japan until that war was all but over. Their assistance was like adding a fifth leg to a four-legged stool, after the picture has been hung and the stool is about to be put away.