Baldric

OFF: Duel for the Skies OFF: Seventeen Days... (or 20 minutes if you fly like me) OFF: Blue skies and willing foe OFF: I Fought You In the Skies (appologies to Willi Heilmann)

My bad, I'll use the Reports from The Front thread next installment

Kampfbericht Jagdstaffel 6 Ugny l’Equipee Field, France Feldpost161 　 Pilots Log U/O Fritz Unterreithmeier Military Flight #000141ScoutOrders- Attack and destroy enemy observation balloon located at approximately N49*53’20 E2*43’40. 1 October 1916 Wetter: forecast for light cloud, no precipitation, wind light variable velocity/dir. Recommended operations altitude: 3000 feet Notations: 1035— Alb.D I pre-flight checks completed, signed off by ground crew, engine warmed. Waved away chocks and took off from field at appr.1050h. I led my flight towards our objective. Crossing the frontlines I spotted several enemy machines at about 2500 feet and signaled Muller and the others to follow. We dove onto the enemy from above and behind, out of the low clouds, at which time I had lined up a Nieuport 11 in my sights. I fired a short burst and watched the enemy aeroplane shudder with the impact and then followed with a longer burst, perhaps 40 rounds altogether. The enemy machine immediately began trailing black smoke and entered a flat spin, crashing into the fields from appr. 2000 feet. As my wingman and the rest of the flight engaged the enemy I managed to locate the enemy balloon and destroy it. Our Flight was now scattered and so I began searching for my pilots. Unluckily I was jumped by a Sopwith strutter of RNAS 1. Several enemy rounds hit my machine and in a running fight for survival I managed to drag him across the front towards the aerodrome at Asserville over which he took quite a bit of ground fire and I managed to finish him off just over the field. I then landed for repairs and refueling. Rest of flight uneventful. Arrived back at our field around 1340h Total Flight Time: 61 minutes. --FritzUnterreithmeier, U/O. [/quote]

And it is yours? Just sayin. The fact that Olham can come here and discuss this issue with his flightsim friends is a good thing. That many of us chose to take umbrage at the idiocy and 'do the right thing' rather than just stuff our collective heads in the sand of internet anonymity is, as far as I'm concerned, even better. Don't get involved if you don't want to-- no one is forcing you to read through the thread.

Thanks a ton, Olham. I hadn't meant that as a hint, but I certainly appreciate you and your excellent works! I finally found the correct spelling of Unterreithmeier this past summer (which was changed to Meyer here in Canada). Virtual sausages and a stein of fine ale for you

I flagged it for promoting hatred as well but got some silly auto-response from YouTube stating that to flag it for hatred there had to be a specific group towards which the hate was directed...I couldn't find the drop-down selection choice "humanity"

So much choice (I love it) ... Well after watching all my recent pilots add to the tally of enemy pilots I can start with a clean slate (and a reminder at how thrillingly tough Full DiD is!). I grabbed some basic reading material, and had a shufti through the contents of my venerable/ancient copy of the Avalon Hill board game 'Richtofen's War' and have decided on an early Fall 1916 start for my new pilot.

Nice find on the hi-res v. normal res. I'll try putting mine back to normal as I do like the look of that version. I have my scenery at 5 and have had no troubles running it...I still lose sight of the Nieuport 17's if they are down close to the deck when its snowy

Excellent outline, Olham The immersion is just so 'there' (for lack of a better term) flying DiD. I will join you in the skies. Jasta 6 is calling me again (I wish I still had a copy of that marvelous skin you made for Rolf's DII...the one with the Bavarian coat of arms and blue checkerboard tail). And I have 2ndLt. Boisvert of the Escadrille du chasse No.3 who managed to escape a flaming death by the very whiskers of his mustache last evening....choices!

Nice screens indeed. The last time I was more heavily involved in the KvC DiD I was using a 280 card and the graphics were very immersive then, and with the 460 I have now they are just that more immersive (along with the great campaign of course). Currently buzzing around Ypres in a Bebe c. Feb 1916 and last night was too busy gawking at the scenery through the cloud banks and then skimming the front lines (and avoiding the poison gas clouds!) when the Escadrille was jumped by the Bosche in their EIII's...just barely managed to nurse my kite home. Talk about white knuckle.

Since the game was originally meant to be played with Steam (I'm assuming it still is) may I ask if you have verified the game cache? In Steam library r-clic the games title, select properties, then select local files, clic verify cache. Steam automatically applies patches if you've allowed that. Hope that helps. :)

Hmmm, I have not flown as a Belgian pilot, nor as an Italian for that matter. Sounds like a fun challenge...I think I will start early Fall 1916 and see if how long a DiD version pilot will last. At the very least it will get me practiced up for P4 DiD campaigns.

I will agree with Siggi that is quite strange the RoF chaps are modelling obscure seaplanes rather than aeroplanes the players seemed to want (as per the polls in their Community forae)...but then they have changed their plans a few times-- or at least thats how I've interpreted 777 Studios (ex-neoCube) plans as originally they were only concentrating on the late war in 1917-1918, then luckily they added some great models for 1916/17. I have most of the models, but will vote with my pocket book as the seaplanes pose nothing interesting for me. As Olham says, too, OFF has so much still to offer the WWI flight sim player, and with P4 I imagine it will just get even better- like the proverbial fine bottle of schnapps I enjoy both sims, just like I enjoy IL2/BoB II/CLoD. Its all good.

Fun idea, Olham. Will try that next time I actually shoot something down....I am r u s t y

I'll add that my 460 is a solid card, and as I've just re-installed OFF BHaH (can't find my details for HiTR) and set up all the graphics as per one of the threads I've recently read in the faq/help area using the nVidia control panel...wow...the game looks and runs lovely! I always enjoyed the ambiance, almost gritty appeal of OFF, but now with a better card than my last ancient card, this sim is really is looking and performing great. I had originally picked up the 460 last year to run RoF better, so I figured OFF would look good...should have re-intsalled long ago. S!

I had a copy of B17, and have to admit never getting anywhere close to the record number of missions survived...always seemed to buy the farm. Kingmaker- awsome game, and still have a copy (with expansion cards). I think the last AH game I ever bought, before they got bought out, was 'Civilisation'.

I was one of those Advanced Squad Leader grognards, played a ton while at Uni until friends moved away. Still have my tattered copy of the rules binder, a swack of boards, all the counters (and micro scale miniatures that we used on the larger scale boards). Play some table-top with my son (WH40K mainly) currently as a diversion from PC gaming. Still have my copies of Richtofens War, Airforce (Dauntless supp), Wooden Ships and Iron Men.

Absolutely brilliant, Lou. Surprised no one went after his secret stash of 1912 Moselle. <burps> Oops excuse moi.

I'm in the same camp as Von Paulus. My examples would be two semi-recent Chinese art flics, 'Crouching Lion, Hidden Dragon' and 'Hero'--- I watch both in original language and find it a way more satisfying experience than the distraction of poor subtitles and worse dubbing. I don't understand 95% of what the dialogue is, but the acting and cinematic quality is so well done it doesn't take much imagination to get the idea of whats happening. Sometimes on the lessor flics I'll have a quick watch in English, then later watch in original language. Its not torturous if the flic is of good artistic quality.

Merry Yule! Bright blessings to all

LOL! That would also be our governments...in all their forms (Federal, Provincial...sorry Olham, we have 'provinces', not 'states', and for a real laugh haha our Municipal governments) run by Bob and Doug. To the OP, it took my copy almost the full 14 business days to arrive to Calgary from California... Welcome aboard btw

Ok, I'm in too. Looks like fun, and some good reports to read in this thread I'll try a Commonwealth pilot methinks.

I'm finding, so far, that the AI that seems to be occurring in HiTR is quite good, perhaps needing some refinement in the area of evasive action. I don't want to see psychotic/sniper AI permeate and ruin the campaigning, instead maybe more challenging flying from the AI if thats possible. Sortie to Kill ratios are waaaaay too high, even in our current DiD Campaign, which might be taken care of a bit now given the changes brought by HiTR (my current kill/sortie ratio has already dropped in my SPAD VII pilots campaign- with the wind buffetting its a bit harder to draw a nice bead on the enemy cockpit ). I'd like to give this HiTR AI a chance to see how it pans out in our collective DiD campaign. Maybe the devs can look at a balance slider, so those who demand psycho AI can have it, those who want to try the game on easy can have that, and those looking for a semblance of balance can have that too. Or anything in between the extremes. Just don't call psycho/Sniper AI realistic. I just hope the next patch doesn't revert it back to the old AI until its been tested over time- there may be some subtle nuances no one has noticed yet?

I've voted