Lothar of the Hill People

Hey fellow OFFers, version 1.0.6 of OFFice with OFFbase/OFFworld is now available at Combat Ace. Get the full download, or just the smaller update if you already have 1.0.2 or later installed. This release contains some important bug fixes and improvements. Full change-log below. And if you'd like to join OFFworld Phase I -- essentially multiplayer OFFbase, send me a PM. Having other real humans in your squadron is pretty cool. OFFice and OFFbase: Updates to squadron personal are now logged and squadron data archived daily, and this history of your campaign can be reviewed the Adjutant's Office. Reputation-based promotions are now automatic instead of having to apply for them from the Adjutant. More bug fixes! And a few GUI refinements, including seeing photos of squadmates when choosing someone to encounter, and buttons to cleanly and safely delete individual pilots or entire squadrons. Added the expanded encounter help advice to the Tips system so they can be browsed individually on the OFFramp Tips & Tricks page. Added a button there to submit tips. A few more edits to encounters themselves. Updated OFFset profiles for NVIDIA/AMD graphics cards for modern systems (assumes more than 256MB RAM). Run OFFset, click Import, and choose the profile for your card manufacturer. Rebalanced observation balloons and set more historically-reasonable damage for Le Prieur rockets. OFFworld: New interface for communicating with human squadmates in the Mess Hall, allowing you to check status and engage in enconters at will. Squadron history is shared between users, giving notification of the outcome of other players' missions.

Update to version 1.0.7 is now available, including this fix along with several others and some other improvements. Most notable addition is a collection of airfield maps and photos composed by Olham. If you're stationed at any of the following airfields, you'll view the new graphics from your OFFbase Hangar: Boistrancourt, Brayelles, Coolkerke, Koksijde, Lagnicourt, Toulis, and Vert-Galant: Apply this update to OFFice 1.0.2-1.0.6. A full download of 1.0.7 will be available once CA gets the kinks worked out of the system upgrade. And if you're interested in joining and supporting OFFworld, the multiplayer version in development, send me a PM.

There's a "Back Online" post from Erik at the very top of any of the subforums.

Haha ZZ, that's what I meant! Two reasons you might want to consider a second drive even if 1TB is enough, if you get a motherboard that supports RAID. You can mirror the drives, so if one fails your computer keeps working and you don't lose any data, giving you a chance to replace the failed drive. Or you can stripe data across the drives and make it act like a single 1TB drive that's twice as fast... though not as fast as an SSD it'd be much cheaper and offer far more space.

You don't need a second data hard drive "D:\" if the 1GB "C:\" drive is enough space for you. You can always easily add more USB slots with an adapter later.

Hey Olham, I'm happy to include any airfield graphics you have to show on the Hangar screen in OFFbase. 300x357 is the standard size.

Thanks for including the error message, don. Easy for me to fix when I have that REBOL console info. I'm out of town at the moment and don't have access to my build system, but can make a quick&dirty patch: Unzip this file into your OFFice\includes\ folder. It'll be found wherever you installed OFFice, typically C:\OBD Software\. Let me know if that helps! You might also try deleting the entire OFFice folder and reinstalling 1.0.6 then applying this patch.

Don't forget people can support Combat Ace by subscribing. CA certainly deserves it.

I'll be posting an update to OFFice/OFFbase later today, mostly bug fixes and interface improvements but it now also keeps track of your squadron's history which can be reviewed at your leisure, helping to tell the story of your persistent campaign. For OFFworld, this means getting updates about the missions of your human squadmates, and being able to review the progress of your shared squadron. For example: Lt. Hill is my pilot, Jennings belongs to Kaische, and Taylor's an AI pilot.

??? That's how it's supposed to work! Cache the stuff needed by services so they can run instantly without a hiccup when needed, rather than wait for them to repeatedly reload stuff. Only when some uncached program requests a bunch of memory does SuperFetch need to release stuff that's been cached. The less RAM that's "free" and the more that's being used to cache stuff, the better! Disabling SuperFetch will not increase performance but instead decrease it dramatically. Running stuff out of RAM is vastly faster than off HDD or even SDD, more than enough to make up for the actual processor cycles of the service itself. The more RAM you have, the more you'll notice the difference. In Vista SuperFetch would grind the disk a bit filling the cache for the first time right after boot, which indeed could slow launching apps in just the first few minutes after booting. But Win7 is much smarter about how it fills the cache after first boot, without this noticeable performance hit. Maybe if you're running 512MB like the crippled POS Vista machine with which Dell ripped off my ignorant mother, you'd benefit more from using a USB key as ReadyBoost storage than enabling SuperFetch. But for anyone on a modern multi-gig gaming machine, the ONLY reason to disable SuperFetch is if it's thrashing your SSD drives. Most of the so-called tech "advice" on the web regarding SuperFetch is outdated garbage or pure FUD.

Hey, Siggi's alive! Heard WM was ill, but AFAIK development of WOFF hasn't ceased or anything. Not much sign of progress in a while, though. But you can get new OFF gameplay today by joining OFFworld: a, interactive multiplayer persistent campaign in a shared online squadron. It'd be perfect for something like the old DiD campaign, with no need to try to gather reports from everyone since y'all show up in the same roster together. And it's built on top of OFFice, which includes many features we've been waiting for from WOFF like more detailed and accurate maps, improved flight and damage models, tracking of flightmates' outcomes in flight, etc. Since OBD's been refusing to take people's money for 4 years, figured there'd be a few people willing to chip in $12 for something that gives OFF a whole new lease on life... It's up and running right now, and it's fun! So if you really want to support active development of OFF, send me a PM. As for the forum, it was a mess when CA when down for a long while with no word from anyone. Just dark. I understand why OBD moved, needing something they could count on being up for their business. But yeah SimHQ kinda sucks in comparison. Really no choice for us OFF modders to use CA for downloads, as requests to update files at SimHQ can go unanswered for weeks if at all. No need to dump the lot and cut ties. SimHQ can be the "official" forum where the devs hang out and post official updates (remember those?), but the community forums will always be at CA.

That's kinda my point, gobs and gobs of RAM are less valuable on a pure SSD system, while fast working RAM is more valuable when long-term storage is slow but cacheable. It's a trade-off, with diminishing returns in either direction. And not everyone can afford to go in both directions. If solid state tech was as fast as RAM, or non-volatile RAM cost-effective, you wouldn't need two types of storage. Just read and write everything out of superfast perma-RAM! Too bad the EEPROM thing never worked out, I guess. But at the end of the day, RAM is much faster than SSDs. The more you can read and work out of RAM, the better. If fast SSDs can feed the even faster RAM to be cached, even better still. But that's a big if... I'm confused about your use of SuperFetch with the SSDs. From what I've heard you have to disable SuperFetch while any SSDs are installed in your system, as part of what it does to speed the caching is reorganize how data is written to drives, kinda like defragging. And this is not good for the lifespan of SSDs. Perhaps this has changed with Win8? Something you might want to look into more. Cause forcing SuperFetch to be disabled is the real problem with SSDs in high-RAM machines. But assuming you can SuperFetch the SSDs, once it's trained you should see performance improve if it's reading the data out of RAM rather than having to get it off the solid-state drives themselves. Leave your machine on (reboot only when necessary for Windows Update), and its predictive modeling and giant cache will soon make itself felt. All I know is 8GB wasn't enough for me--typically use nearly that much memory just with the stuff I have open, and used to have to start grinding the swap file to launch a game or something. But now with the added RAM not just to avoid virtual memory but to make use of SuperFetch, launching a game or large application that's cached is a snap. Only problem is crappy console ports that make you sit through five minutes of logos even though their no longer tied to slow console hardware. Looking forward to hearing about your experience. Good luck with the upgrades guys! It is a good chance to do relatively controlled before and after experiments. Not sure what you mean about memory leaks. The amount of Free memory is supposed to decrease slowly over time as more stuff is cached in RAM in the background. Notice the amount of Cached memory goes up accordingly, filling with all the pre-fetched data ready to be read instantly or freed for other uncached applications if necessary, while the amount of Available RAM stays about the same. This is a feature, not a memory leak! But this is what freaked everyone out and had supposedly tech-savy people disabling their SuperFetch. Totally "Free" memory is wasted, and using it to cache likely-needed data is a major OS innovation. 64-bit Win7 (and Win8 presumably) absolutely soars with gobs of RAM, because it's actually using it. And what's Alacrity?

Come on, Tamper, I never said there's no reason for anyone to use SSDs, in fact gave several examples of scenarios where they are optimal (particularly mobile and embedded systems). Nor did I say people won't see "any improvements". Nor did I claim SSDs and more RAM do "the same thing". Nor is SuperFetch "free" as you have to pay for Windows and the extra high-speed RAM. Sheesh! And of course you'll still have stutter if you're trying to stream a bunch of textures from a hard disk because they haven't yet been SuperFetched. Takes a few times running/playing a game before it adapts to your usage and preloads things. Upgrading to 16GB RAM eliminated my OFF stutter problems--once SuperFetch recognizes I'm running OFF a lot. But it's not instant. Then again, neither is having to manually install/move files to the SSD for the games you're currently playing. Also, I wouldn't assume most PC gamers with gobs of RAM are actually running SuperFetch. When Vista first came out, there was a lot of FUD about how it "steals all your RAM". People saw how all of a sudden their machines report nearly 0 free RAM (only 5MB free on my 16GB system right now). But that's a good thing--the RAM is being used to cache what you're most likely to run next so it loads instantly. Still this freaked a lot of people out and many Vista/Win7 users took bad advice and have disabled SuperFetch despite its performance improvements. And lots more were scared and stuck with archaic, slow, buggy, insecure, RAM-limited XP--pretty much the worst thing you could do to a modern, 64-bit, multi-core machine. Windows automatically disables all those services if Windows boots from a SSD (a lot to gloss over with "typically"). If you add in a SSD on which to install games, you'll have to disable these services manually. But the point stands, either way by disabling these service the SSD makes all your extra much-faster RAM inert and useless rather than serving as a useful cache to speed up your system, making your existing hard disks function more slowly. It's a tradeoff. And I still think most desktop PC gamers will get more of a performance boost for all games and applications for less money by adding RAM and running SuperFetch rather than adding a SSD and disabling SuperFetch. That's funny 'cause the Amiga had no problem (re)booting the entire OS from a recoverable (non-volatile) RAM disk, while supporting gobs more RAM and being much cheaper than the Macs and PCs of the day. Ah, the good old days... Not sure what you mean? That's the great thing about SuperFetch, it uses all your extra RAM as an automatic RAM disk for the programs and data you're most likely to load: All of the advantages of running stuff from a RAM disk, with nNone of the hassle of actually managing a separate RAM disk and copying files to hard disk to save them.

As I said, SSDs do have some nice features, but add more value in some situations than others. This is especially true in mobile and embedded machines where the heat and physical mechanisms of hard disks conflict with portability, rackability, and power needs, and in certain workstation applications that do a lot of random access of vast amounts of data. But especially given their relative expense, most gamers can find a better bang for the buck to improve performance elsewhere, particularly with more random access memory. It's simple, really. In terms of speed, RAM > SSD > HDD. RAM is "higher performance hardware" than SSDs. If you have plenty of RAM, Windows can cache all the textures you'll need for any and every OFF mission, or whatever other game you're playing regularly. And it will run much quicker than off any SSD, even a pair of SSDs in RAID 0. RAM is still more expensive than disk space per GB, but it doesn't have to store everything to improve perceived disk performance, just cache the programs or data that you're most likely to be using. The first time you run a game in a while you may have a little stutters while SuperFetch learns what it needs to prefetch, but if you play a game regularly it'll load more quickly and smoothly than any SSD system. Of course, you still need to write to disk (the Amiga had a non-volatile RAD disk in memory that survived system reboots--so you could boot the OS right from it on subsequent reboots! This was when the Amiga could address up to 8MB of RAM while PCs struggled to get over 640kb and Macs were a monochrome joke). So as I said, doing a lot of random access writes is one area where SSDs can shine, depending on the size of files and the structure of the flash memory modules. But games don't generally write very much. But here's the problem with SSDs, particularly in a mixed environment--a desktop gaming PC with other applications and storage on hard disk drives. You can only write to solid-state drives a certain number of times, which requires you to avoid all the modern software technology for optimizing data use in the traditional HDD -> RAM pipeline. 1. Disable disk defragging in the system scheduler. 2. Disable SuperFetch in system services. 3. Disable prefetch in the system registry. Certainly can't keep rearranging all the data on those limited-write SSDs! Thus in Windows you'll have to defrag your HDDs manually, which most people will forget to do (which is why it's an automatic background tool these days in the first place). That means your old-fashioned hard drives will most likely become fragmented and much slower reading and writing data. Or find other automatic degrag software to maintain the HDDs and ignore the SSDs. Disable SuperFetch and its prefetching and now all that extra RAM is suddenly unused RAM. This is another reason reading now uncached data and applications off HDDs becomes slower when your system is catering to the SSD. And of course, reading data off the SSD, even in raid, is still slower than out of a cache in RAM. But any extra RAM you have is now completely useless. In short: SSDs make loading uncached data and applications from the SSDs themselves faster, but can make everything else slower! For most desktop PC gamers, upgrading to 16GB or more RAM is both cheaper and gives a bigger all-around boost to performance. Once you cross the threshold from not enough RAM that you're having to use the slow hard disk as "virtual memory", to having enough RAM to use memory as a virtual disk--the difference in performance is dramatic. 8GB is generally not enough to get there. SSDs do more to improve performance on low-RAM machines (Windows ReadyBoost lets you use plug in flash drives as virtual memory, still faster than HDD), but their benefits diminish and costs stand out in high-RAM multiple-hard-drive desktop computers. Much better bang for the buck to replace that single 5400RPM drive in your laptop with a SSD than add one in to a heterogeneous desktop environment that can benefit from more RAM. That's my view of the issue, anyway.

Some good points, Tamper, but I'd suggest for many gamers additional RAM is a more cost-effective performance boost than a SSD. You'd be surprised at just how much can be preloaded into 16GB or more of memory, and modern Windows' SuperFetch uses all your spare RAM to smartly and efficiently do just that. When I go through phases of actually flying OFF, usually for testing, the difference is quite striking. Once Windows figures out I'm launching OFF/CFS3 a lot, startup times begin drop dramatically and choppiness from texture-loading in-game disappears. Anyone else with modern Windows (not XP) and gobs of RAM notice this? Since it happens all transparently in the background, you don't have to carefully manage what you install and run from the limited physical space of a SSD. The performance improvements from SuperFetch apply to whatever you run frequently or routinely, wherever it's installed. It's adaptiveness to your usage patters lets it do things like preload in the morning the work software you use in the day, then cache the games you play in the evening. If you already have a lot of RAM and consistent usage patterns, you likely won't see much performance gain from a SSD unless you're working with and writing gigs dynamic data--statistical modeling or editing movies or building textures or capturing data from simulations or something. In other words, not playing games--most of which are and designed around the memory limitations of 32-bit consoles and end up reading a fixed set of textures and sounds.

OFFice preloads more assets into memory, reducing the amount of loading (particularly for sounds) needed in-flight. May be a noticeable difference for those without fancy SSDs.

Not noticing a difference isn't a reason to not to go with Microsoft's recommendation. Your performance is probably just limited by a different factor. Go ahead and set them back to D3DPOOL_SystemMem. I can't remember if it's terrain or scenery, but one of them there's no reason to bump up to 5, 4 is really the max and the 5 is just for future higher-end settings (maybe used by WOFF?).

OFF's Order of Battle (OOB) mission planner doesn't use any ships, though I believe custom missions can and some do. May even be possible for OFFworld to eventually add ships to multiplayer missions.

Nah I'm happy with Win7, but a buddy with Win8 uses one of those 3rd party start menus happily. Win7 home premium should be fine for you, zoomzoom, as none of the motherboards in your price range support adding much more RAM. But yes, make sure you get 64-bit, either 7 or 8. The 650watt power supply probably's not worth the extra $12 unless you plan to add several additional hard drives / SSDs and/or multiple graphics cards in the future. Nice to have the overhead to expand, I suppose.

Yeah the i5's a nice jump over the entry-level i3s. You need good single-threaded CPU performance for OFF, so this will make a very noticeable difference. I can't stand Windows 8 but there are software programs to bring some features like the start menu back. If I hit the Windows key to type and do a search, nothing could be more obnoxious than a "start screen" popping up and obscuring everything on both my monitors, including the stuff I was looking at while I want to type. Nice, go for the GTX 650Ti upgrade, and also make sure you get a better power supply (650Ti requires at least 400 Watts). The 430 Watt Corsair CX430 V2 would be perfect for you.

Quick preview of the OFFworld Mess Hall, where you meet up and interact with fellow human pilots in the persistent, shared squadron. Join us--it's fun! To get started, send me a PM.

You'll definitely get better performance in OFF with the Intel i5 and MudWasp's GTX 550Ti (Option 5) than the AMD FX-6300 with a GTX 650 (Option 3). The single-threaded CPU performance will be the limiting factor rather than the graphics card. But Option 5 may be more of a headache having to arrange for and install the graphics card yourself.

Probably a good deal if you as you can get a cheaper machine without a graphics card (integrated graphics) and maybe a better processor: Option 5: Intel i5 (3.1Ghz), 8GB DDR3, Integrated graphics Add a GTX 550Ti and this the best performer for OFF, which will appreciate the added single-threaded CPU performance more than moving up GTX 650. OFF can't benefit from the 6 cores of the AMD FX-6300, so an Intel i5 will be a major difference. Getting the BIOS to switch from integrated to PCIE graphics can be a headache but works if you follow instructions. It's the power supply that worry me. One of those NewEgg reviews say it's enough for the GTX 650Ti so the 550Ti should survive... But all of these cheap machines, the power supply is one area that's too cheaped-out, designed to fail shortly after the year or whatever warranty and in the meantime providing unstable power streams that lessen the lifetime of other components such as these fancy graphics cards. Something you'd want to look at upgrading soon anyway.

Yeah rockets are tough to aim--MudWasp's advice is solid. But I'm glad the incendiary ammo is working as intended, OlPaint!

As a tip: load the ATI or NVIDIA preset in my OFFset settings manager (included in OFFice). These set in CFS3Config some texture, memory management, rendering, and other settings key to performance and stability on these lines of cards. Most of these settings recommendations can be found digging around the forums, the tips at overflandersfields.com, and from Microsoft support, but I've consolidated all that knowledge so it's just a few clicks away for OFFice users: Run OFFset. Click Import. Select "ATI Graphics" or "NVIDIA Graphics" from the list. Click Verify to see the settings that will be changed. Click Commit to confirm the changes. Here's an additional tip from Microsoft I haven't yet had a chance to test and integrate into these presets. If your system has more than 256MB of RAM (which I'm sure we all do these days): Run CFS3Config, either from OFF Workshops, OFFset, or the Start Menu shortcut. Click Custom Settings. On the Window menu, click Texture information. Change any Texture setting that is set to D3DPOOL_Default or D3DPOOL_Managed to D3DPOOL_SystemMem. Click OK, and then exit the CFS3Config tool. If anyone tries this and it makes a difference, please let me know and I'll incorporate it into the presets.