GeorgeBoles

Good Evening, Widowmaker. I am glad it is not just me. I am flying 1.46 at present, for what it is worth. I have just found two posts from October which provide some assistance, one from Olham and one from Bullethead in the same thread. I guess there is hope, but I might come back to it another time. Thank goodness for the Pilot Never Dies option, or else all I would have been doing is creating new pilots - about 40 of them. http://forum.combatace.com/topic/47700-flying-the-new-pfalz-d-iiia/page__view__findpost__p__343956 Regards, George.

Hi Johnrod, I am not a Guru on this, but your sub-caption says:"Ordered and received Between Heaven and Hell." If you order on-line you will have received the Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven and Hell DVD by mail (or at least that is what happened a few weeks ago.) This is the full game. You do not need version 1 & 2. In fact, I would guess that it is easier to NOT have v. 1 and 2 on your computer. If you order the "Hat in the Ring" Expansion pack on-line, it is a download. To use the Download, you MUST HAVE the Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven and Hell DVD. (I think it is pretty clear on the Website.) Again, you do not need Version 1 & 2. There is usually a mini-patch for BHaH and a mini-patch for Hat in the Ring. Download whichever one which the website tells you to (for Between Heaven and Hell or Hat in the Ring.) It is likely that one of the real Gurus will write to you, but I think you have might have made a mistake regarding the ordering or the messages. Everything went perfectly for me: Buy DVD (which you pay for): it comes in the mail - and install. Optional: Download Hat in the Ring (which you pay for) - and install. Donwload the current mini-patch (which is free) - and install. Play, but that is also free and lots of fun. I hope that helps. Regards, George. Oops: Near-Guru Siggi beat me to it!

Good Evening, All. Short question: Is it possible to install two instances of OFF: either in BHAH or HITR form. This is because I am a compulsory fiddler and would like to examine the differences between the newer and later patches, DM, etc. Also to investigate where things like Ammunition and Fuel load have gone ... although I could be looking in the wrong places for those! The setup appears to only allow one instance of the game. Or is it all just too difficult and should I best leave it alone? Regards, George.

Thanks for the information, Pol. And thanks to the other contributors for your thoughts. Regards, George.

Homeboy and other TrackIR (new) users, I have a couple of suggestions regarding setup which might help setting up: I think I have worked TrackIR out so it works for me. It only took about 12 hours of mucking around !! 1. I do not use the Track Clip Pro (the LED frame on a stalk on the headphones) any more. Instead I just use the Track Clip Vanilla on the cap. "Why?" might you ask (or perhaps you might not). The NON-Pro version allows more reliable and greater movement of my head. With the Pro version, I found that in extreme head positions, or if my headsets sit differently on my nonce, then the bottom two LED images interfere with one another and I get a "no tracking" error - everything just stops. The placement of the Clip (non-pro) with respect to the sensor is much more reliable than the wobbly fitting on wobbly headsets on my wobbly head. My Sennheiser headsets do not have a "normal" position on my skull, (and the Track Clip Pro wriggles on the headset band if knocked) so the whole of that setup is physically much less reliable than just using a cap. By having a reliable position on my nonce, I do not have to check the position of the LED's on the Track Clip Pro on the software each time I use it. In my room I get no infrared reflections off anything, even with sunlight being filtered through a light curtain directly behind my sensor. In fact, I get more a reflection artefact with the Track Clip Pro. 2. The "Limit" function on the Pitch axis works (as promised) at 180 degrees. However, looking straight up is 90 degrees, so to work around that I reduced the pitch axis sensitivity a LOT once my head reached 90 degrees. This means I get "lost" while looking up a lot less than before. I then did the same thing with the Pitch axis so that, yes I could over-rotate my head to about 110 degrees, but only very, very slowly, so that I did not get lost checking my six. 3. And just for fun, in an Albatross, if you sit high/sort of stand up in your cockpit, you can see over the top wing and get a better view of the enemy instead of looking dumbly at your top wing, so I have the Y axis set quite high. Suddenly, flying an aeroplane is a very active thing, nearly standing up as you are flying while trying to keep an eye on the enemy, and then plopping down into your seat to check between the wings. LOTS of fun. 4. And, just finally, I have a little bit of Roll still active (unlike Homeboy's guide) as it means you can look around the engine a bit more normally when taking off and landing. All of this has worked with my setup. And I am not getting sick any more. I think it is the trick in 2. which helped me. My current OFF profile is attached. Of course, it is still a work in progress. Regards, George. P.S. Has anybody else noticed that in OFF, with padlock ON, the X,Y, and Z axes still work! I quite enjoy that effect too. MoreOFAll5.xml

Good Morning Homeboy and Others, A couple of things I have noticed about the TrackIR 5 software: 1. As far as I can tell, the smoothing rate is not stored in the profile. (It is there in the TrackIR4 profile.) This means that the Smoothing rate has to be set each time the TrackIR 5 software is openned if you want to change the smoothing between profiles. Unsure, but likely. 2. I am unsure about the overall Speed slider either. Of course, this can be just multiplied within the profile as it is saved, but I do not think this happens. 3. Why, oh why, do TrackIR not have a "multiplier" for the graphs as well as, or instead of the curve up/down buttons. That way, if you want to tame down ONE axis, then you just multiply it by 0.8, say, rather than having to manually edit the profile in Notepad, or re-plot each point. 4. I have discovered you can add manually extra graph "points" in the profile file for the Track IR 5 version of the software. This increases the resolution of the graphs around the "dead zone". Otherwise the TrackIR 5 software appears quite sensible, and I especially like the "first person" view grids to get the profiles right. And if you have a TrackIR 4 profile you like, TrackIR5 translates it easily across. Regards, George.

Hi Chaps and Chapesses. I think I have worked TrackIR out so it works for me: only took about 12 hours of mucking around !! (Firecage, your Body Language will not be a problem.) 1. No Track Clip Pro (the LED frame on a stalk on the headphones). Instead I just use the Track Clip Vanilla on the cap. "Why?" might you ask (or perhaps you might not). a. I found that in extreme head positions, or if my headsets sit differently on my nonce, then the bottom two LED images interfere with one another and I get a "no tracking" error - everything just stops. b. In my room I get no infrared reflections off anything. In fact, I get more artefact with the Track Clip Pro. c. I have 50 years of experience in knowing how a cap fits and it goes in roughly the same place each time. This has produced very reliable tracking (better over a greater range of head movements than with the Track Clip Pro.) I will post with the other TrackIR thread my other thoughts on the profile. Regards, George.

Hello All, I am just getting used to the TrackIR at present and the fitting of the Track Clip Pro is a pain. As many users attest, the clip is fragile and often breaks (but covered I think under warranty) and it doesn't sit particularly well on my Sennheiser headphones: it always wriggles around. Also the Sennheisers sit at a different position across the top of my head each time I use them, so I cannot just jump into the cockpit and fly: I have to go to the TrackIR program and check that they green dots don't interfere with each other by wriggling the Clip around. I am thinking: a) Don't use the Clip, but I have paid for it and it is supposed to be good, b) Try getting a nice, big, solid manly hair band and trying fitting the clip to that. c) Try fitting it to a cap or something similar. I had also considered powering the LED's by battery, but that might be a pain in itself. Any other ideas? Regards, George.

Evening Folks, I am sitting here avoiding firing up OFF with the Track IR running (because I still get airsick - physically ) and was wondering about the wind sock which I saw last night with my TrackIR whilst preparing to land (and just avoiding nearly disgracing myself all over the cockpit/study floor ) 1. Is wind at the aerodrome modelled and does it affect landing behaviour? (I don't know yet, because I am usually emergency landing in a field full of holes.) 2. Does the wind sock show wind speed and direction? 3. Can I go to a mission and modify/see what the wind direction is supposed to be? 4. Or, if I want to practice cross-wind landings, should I download Microsoft Flight Simulator X (and then uninstall Hotbar, or whatever it is you have to get with the free download?) With thanks, George.

Thanks for the advice Chaps. I will play with the landings for a while and slowly build up my time on Track IR. And now I cannot find this Flight Sim X download thing any more. I could have sworn it was at SimHQ or here at Combatace in one of those flashing windows !! ?? I am not going to sweat over it. Regards, George.

Thanks for the advice, Chaps. The bucket is a good idea! 1. Can I edit a mission so I can check what the wind conditions are and make them stronger if I want to have fun? 2. Is the Hotbar/FlightSimX download thing more trouble than it is worth? Regards, George.

Hi Propwasche (and Pol if you are still watching this thread), I wrote to you about this a little while ago. Since Pol might be still watching this thread (Merry Christmas to your All, too, by the way!), in 1.32 versions (I am just downloading Hat In the Ring right now), it appeared to me that my shooting was too deadly. At ranges of about 150 feet, I was hitting the AI planes, and from about 100 feet shooting them down, with them often losing a huge wing section as their mode of demise. (The planes appear small enough on the screen that I am shooting at the overall plane, rather than any particular part of it for a lot of my shooting.) I was getting 2.5 - 3.5 planes shot down in a round of Quick Combat before my engine was damaged too badly to fight or I had lost control of my aeroplane and crashed dismally into mother earth. But I know that I am a hopeless shot and, until I saw Polovski's explanation above, I thought that the hit boxes must be quite large. (In comparison, I could only shoot down about one enemy aircraft with a whole plane full of ammunition when using Western Front Patch2 or upgrades in Red Baron.) Pol, are the hitboxes for the wings about the size of the various parts of the wing? If not, is there a way of toughening up individual structures which might eventually frustrate me. (But, at present I am going through the phase of enjoying watching the bits fly off the enemies' wings when up close or the flames coming from the engine. Makes me feel manly !) But please note: I haven't played the OFF a lot and could be just so totally wrong, and I haven't tried the HITR expansion pack yet, so either way my scribblings could be non-contributory twitter. Thanks to Pol and the other developers for a fun game anyhow, which I will be playing for quite a while to come. Regards, George. P.S. I am using the cfs.exe which came with the Ubisoft DVD version of CFS3, (version 3.1.0.30203).

Good explanation, Duck. I will print it out and study it with the game open. As for playing multiplayer, I am a bit reluctant to get right into it because when I have a little LAN one on one with my son, using the Target/Player view and watch our planes from closer to his perspective, it looks as though his bullets are 25 - 50 yards behind my plane and yet my plane is receiving hits all over the place. I find this frustrating. I was thinking about taking some screen shots and studying them, but he is not around now. Am I thinking about this incorrectly? Regards, George.

Oh, back again, Propwash: What happens now with Hat in the Ring and your Damage Model? Regards, Mark Walsh.

Hello Duck and Others, I have very little opportunity to play multiplayer on-line, however, sometimes my son and I would like to play come co-operative missions over our LAN. We could set up (although we didn't actually fly in) what appears to be the Melee setup and the Team Melee setup, but these do not use co-operative missions. I usually host on my desktop computer. I am unclear about lots of things, but regarding this game: What is the relationship between the "Scenario Selections" on the first screen which shows after clicking Multiplayer? On the Red Ribbon flyout, what is the difference/significance of the Campaign/Quick Combat/Mission Packs options - different sorts of games? If I create a mission or two, where do I place them in the OFF folders? Sometimes I get a message about not having an offline or online store location. What does that mean? How do I change things so I stop getting called "player" rather than something more refined, something perhaps with a capital letter? I do like the tutorial. (I presume all the stuff about Teamspeak at the beginning is optional.) I don't think you have covered these topics in the tutorial, or if you have I have misinterpreted or inadequately understood what you were trying to say. With thanks, George. (Using Superpatch1.32 & Mini1.32g)

Oh, here's another question: Elsewhere I saw that by changing the gun's accuracy in Campaign Manager, it helps solve the problem of kills being too easy. Does this decrease the guns' accuracy or decrease the hitbox size? To me the first option is not as satisfactory as the second one. Regards again, George.

Evening Gentlemen, (This little question is asked with the utmost of admiration for the work done on this game by a selection of people who are clearly dedicated and fanatical.) I have only just started playing OFF BHah this week after 6 months without a joystick, and before that the last real combat flight simming I did was the occasional squirt with Red BaronII/3d with all the WFP or Hells Angel superpatches. I have installed the 1.32 superpatch and the 1.32g minipatch, and what concerns me is that I can shoot down too many planes - great, except that my shooting should be appalling. I am hitting enemies and damaging them at hundreds of feet, which I can normally never do, and I have enemy planes with wings ripping off, and engines bursting into flames all the time - also very attractive and appealing to my manliness. But I am afraid that it just should not be. (Enemies set to Veteran, usually.) Will this damage model solve the problem when it feels to me as if I am missing the enemy's planes and being given a huge amount of credit for the bullets which are most probably missing (perhaps hitboxes too big)? When you say on the General Information thread that this DM is really 4 in 1, do you select which ones of the four to use, are is it all four go in? Should I consider using it with Superpatch 1.32 and minpatch 1.32g? How do I use it in Multiplayer/LAN? Completely off topic, what is/was SoH which "went down"? I was very disappointed when Delphi Forums Flight Sim forum closed and then was deleted. There was WEEKS of historical and hysterical reading to learn from and be entertained by in that forum. And another also, where is the "best" flight model discussion? Today I was flying against Nieuport 11 Bebes, and I saw them at the end of a Quick Mission flying little ups and downs, stalling at the tops of their ups, and recovering on their downs, in circles around townships. Very hard to shoot down, though :) I am really enjoying this game, have got a nice profile for my joystick, etc., but I don't want to be given unnecessarily easily kills, nor do I want to be unnecessarily easily shot down. Regards and Salute, George.

Evening Gentlemen, Regarding this "little circle" (which until now I have always called a gun sight): I wanted to change it, as one could, say for example, in Red Baron. (Essentially I would like a cross hair, because flying Albatrosses you don't get that nice central cross, and the "iron sight" view in F6 gives me a view "jump" which is hard to get used to. (Yes, you get the view jump changing to and from F3 (cockpit toggle) too, but at least you can quickly see the enemy.) I found the reticle_xx.dds files and the reticule.dds files in the OFF ...\aircraft\shared folder, and it appears that the little one (reticule.dds) is the one which is used in the single player game. I fiddled a bit with it using CorelPaint, dutifully copied it back in to its original folder and .... nothing had changed! Then, I tried it in Multiplayer, and my little cross was there!!!! Is there a way of altering the gunsight in the single player game? Regards and thanks, George. 0

Hi Folks, I totally enjoyed this film. It had a lovely european feel to it, and the action scenes, only some of which came from Battle of Britain, still looked wonderful. I think they might have been spruced up a bit in the last 40 years. Certainly worth watching. The spitfires looked wonderful. Wouldn't it be great though if the one or two flyable Messerschmitts in the world could get into a film like that. But even the Spanish (?Buchon) German planes are being lost now. If I recall correctly, either one of the Messerschmitts (Merlin engined) or the He-111 (Merlin engined) crashed in the last year or so. Black 9 is back at the factory, hopefully to be re-built. But the pilots of these old planes are also being killed as they crash too. Very sobering. Regards, George.

Hi Crepitus, Of course you could buy a used set of CH Pro Throttle or CH (normal) Throttle and a CH Combatstick or CH Fighter Stick dirt cheap (Gameport versions) from ebay, and convert them to USB. All you need is a laser printer (at your boss's work place), a soldering iron, download my pcb patterns and Circad 98, and a bit of patience. But the hard work is done by others and me! PCB's not up on my website yet, but to whet your apetite try: http://www.x-simulat...240.html#p20023 I am for the first time just now sitting in front of my version of CH Pro Throttle PLUS F-16 Fighterstick PLUS CH (normal - non-pro) Pedals. The whole lot maps out at 40 buttons (8 hats + 8 independent buttons) more or less, with 5 axes immediately available. The original version when it came from CH as a gameport kit was riddled with ghost buttons and odd button behaviour. This new setup is much more stable and actually the chip will cope with 8 axes and 64 buttons (some of which can be set up as real toggle switches and, even better, rotary switches for tuning your ... radio ... and other modern equipment for when the next big war comes along.) The CH mechanicals appear extremely well made, now that I have pulled apart some quite old gear, and as long as they continue to make the pots, or if I can get that little brass bush off the thread so I can use non-CH pots, then I will be right for the next 30 years!!! I actually have another two complete sets waiting for the treatment: one Combatstick & Pro Throttle Gameport, and one Flight Stick F-16 and CH (standard) Throttle Gameport version. But I would need to make two more sets of Rudder pedals. I gave my last home-made set to my son to get him addicted. Regards, George. P.S. The flash photos make it look very dirty and unattractive. I need some mood lighting rather than flash, and perhaps some mild detergent to clean the dust out of the tops of the bases. My babies look lovely to me.

HI Folks, I was wondering how OFF will cope with all of these dumb 16:9 screens? I went to the computer shop today and there were very few 16:10. I had an exasperating two years until I got rid of my Viewsonic monitor which ALWAYS stretched the picture in Red Baron out to the edges of the screen (no black bars at the lateral edges) - and that was with EVERY combination of scaling options on the nVidia card I had. Viewsonic just undid everything I sent to it. Got an LG now which has a hardware function which quickly allow 4:3, and never looked back. Anyway, back to the original question: will OFF eventually be able to produce 16:9 pictures or will we have to wait for the video card blokes to put in 16:9, 16:10 and 4:3 scaling options? Regards, George.

Hi Folks, My biggest problem is that I get air-sick when I use Track-IR. Takes about 10-12 minutes and then I get all the symptoms. I kid you not :( ! I have even thought about taking a scopolamine patch before I get in the cockpit. Sigh. I will have to try again soon, but it makes me feel ill just thinking about it. So your problems are not that bad in the scheme of things! Regards, George.

Dear Folks, I have just played my first game of MP via Lan against my son on his Vista laptop (nice new Toshiba Laptop something or other with Vista) and I have a newly built Intel E8500 3.16 Ghz with 4GB Ram and radeon 4870 1gb video card ... my first little luxuy computer. New install XP, with Office and HP printer programs, Norton antvirus and the as yet unused overclocking programs - the latter sitting in the system tray. Hooked up via LAN, did the trick renaming cfs3.exe for Vista and flew. But the lag was noticable ... even extreme with us hitting one another when our planes were CLEARLY pointing the wrong way. Had this with Red Baron too on my previous computer via LAN. Where do I start decreasing Lag? I thought it would have been near zero. Must be doing something very wrong. Any clues? In fact lag issues wrecked my experience with Red Baron MP LAN, and they are similar in magnitude on my new super computer. (I tried "safety mode" graphics whic might be a bit too extreme, because I couldn't get any sound or padlock, so I gave up that option.) Time to ask the gurus. Also: Any tools I can use to even see how much ping there is in the game? BTW is there a frame rate counter too? And my next question is how to do cooperative missions. Each time I tried, both of us crashed out of the game immediately on entering, but that is another question. I'm going to hit the sack now, though chaps ... 0:21 am ... :| Regards, George

Hello Chaps, Actually, I thought what would be nice would be a longer run of the engine starting up. That 1/2 second is too tantalising and abbreviated. The engine run up sound on Red Baron was a good length, but suffered from significant digital distortion. It was, I beleive a real Spad engine, so the distortion was a pity. Do you have any other engine sounds we could plug in there? I thought I was the only person in the world who thought it was Ringo! I was always expecting him to then tell a story about Thomas the Tank Engine. Sorry, Polovski! Regards, George

Good Afternoon Chaps. I like padlocking , and I would like to map padlock toggle to keys other than the default Button 8. I have just started using AutoHotkeys and have tried the following: Joy5::send {`} AND Joy5::send {asc 96} (the ascii code for grave/accent) AND Joy5::send {asc 0096}, each of which produces nice grave/accents in Notepad and Word, but which have no effect in OFF/BHaH. (The joystick button 8 does have the desired effect, but on my Saitek X-45 it sits in a horrible position. Also the keyboard button has the correct effect too.) I have assigned the above code to nearly every button on the joystick also with no effect, so it is not just a bad button on the stick. Is there something about the way the game accepts these commands which means I should try something different? (I have similar problems with F1 in Red Baron.) Maybe if one of the gurus could help me please. Regards, George. BTW: I just LOVE this game. Except for Red Baron's Massive Multiplayer, which I can host from my own home PC, it does everything else I like from Red Baron and probably much more, but I am still learning.