12oclockhigh

These facts are easy enough to check out.

Violent crime rates have dropped in North America for the last twenty years. If this trend continues we'll have crime rates as a percentage of population like they had in the fifties. Yet video game usage and graphic violence has grown tremendously in the same period. There's just no correlation. As for today's youth I meet young people every day who impress me and leave me with hope for the future, not dispair.

I play violent video games because they are fun and no real harm comes from them. If I played for any other reason that would or should be cause for concern. Also for me it doesn't depend on the type of game as that would be implying there are some types of game violence more acceptable than others. I respectfully disagree with anyone who finds gaming violence acceptable because it is 'historical', someone who thinks the 'age' of the violence makes it more acceptable. The fact that a game is historical doesn't change the violence of the action, it only changes the date it occures. Bottom line is if I don't play a game for fun then on some level I'm playing it for real, and that's a little crazy. OFF is a fun FPS, a game where you fly your 'gun'. It's fun and that's why I play.

What I find interesting is to hear Americans rail against socialism when they spend some 600 billion dollars a year on the military, which is essentially state owned business.

I've been running with all sliders at 5 for the last month or so and haven't run into any problems. If something 'unexplainable' is happening or going to happen with these settings I'd rather know about it and deal with it then run with lower settings and 'live in fear'. Another thing is I quite enjoy having a smooth 35 or 40 FPS than a stuttering 60 plus FPS. So to me FPS isn't everything. Honestly, I don't really notice much difference between the terrain and scenery settings at 4 and then at 5 but I do like the cloud settings at 5. Clouds really add to the immersive effect in this game in my opinion.

Hello all. Back in late February I was having computer problems and with much help from forum members traced those problems to my motherboard. I RMA'd the defective board, bought a cheaper one and installed my AMD 955 in that to tide me over. Well, my (repaired/replaced) motherboard has arrived and seeing that my computer is running so well I'm reluctant to swap out the cheaper board. I've come up with a plan. Saturday I am going to my favourite computer store to buy a new CPU. I'm thinking of the AMD 966. Its virtually the same price as the 955 and I get a whopping .2 ghz increase. Then, and this is the shakey part of the plan, all I have to do is convince my partner that her AMD athlon 1.8 ghz. Windows XP system, which run flawlessly for her, needs upgrading.

We're attempting to raise our FPS as high as possible, not performing on stage at a bodybuilding contest. With that in mind, turn off those shadows again. Performing on stage at a bodybuilding contest sounds like more fun. Where's my baby oil?

So....no luck with the plan. I approached the subject from several different angles, one of which was telling her that her computer only has AGP ports. That went nowhere fast. 'It works just fine with whatever ports its got', was her response. So...this afternoon I swapped out the mobo and CPU on my gaming computer and maybe this week I'll use the 'leftover' bits to upgrade the downstairs computer. Its a 2.2 AMD Phenom with XP Home edition. I use that one for internet and Skype. By the way OFF runs just fine on the new mobo and 965 CPU. All sliders at five with shadows enabled I'm getting 35 FPS but more importantly it feels smooth. I'm going to overclock to 3600 and leave it at that. Something I was thinking of today and uncleal has mentioned is I've probably spent more time and money getting this game to run right than any other in the long history of my gaming career. It does have appeal...

She has long since known that me and rational thought are often seperated. Especially since I built my 3 point Freetrack system which consists of wires, LEDs and a battery pack hot glued onto an old baseball cap. (yes, there have been a few comments) I shouldn't joke though since this is a serious matter. How do I convince a rational person that a perfectly good computer is not working properly, especially when she has seen me tinker with perfectly good computers until they quit working....

I use Fusion as well but haven't noticed much difference one way or the other.What were the things you noticed?

Am I missing something or can we not adjust fuel load in HitR? I always did this in BhaH. Iif the mission was short, I'd lighten the tank. I don't know if it helped performance or not but it should. After upgrading I can't seem to find this feature in HitR.

Thanks for this. guys. I'll have a look tonight. By the way, does performance increase with lighter fuel loads?

I run Win7 64 bit and there is a bit of a learning curve but so far I find it to be excellent when gaming. I'm interested though in that you say CFS3 and OFF manager are still running. Do you show a ~ (tilde) file... fld055.tmp....in task manager when that happens? I've found that ending that file gets me back into OFF on the rare occasions when things seem stuck.

Is there any penalty for not returning to your home field after a mission ie. landing at the nearest friendly field rather than making the long flight home? Seems to me there should be at least a time penalty of a few days but I haven't noticed anything.

The neat thing about PC games is the access users have. Modders are able to take PC games and keep interest alive by reworking and improving things. OFF is a perfect example. As well Silent Hunter III was not a mainstream game but it caught on with a small group of dedicated modders. They literally reworked the game, almost doubling it in size. Maybe that's also why there is a move away from PC games. Publishers want a game to die and fade away gracefully so they can introduce another one at $60.00 but the modders keep people playing long after the games supposed shelf life is up. As for consoles there are hacks too but nothing close to the same level.

I have to agree. There are fewer and fewer stores in my neck of the woods that sell PC games. And at the ones that do the shelf space is gradually being taken over by console games. That's why downloading is becoming prevalent along with the DRM issue. Unfortunately I can see why there is a move to consoles. Every console is the same so all the games work out of the box. Publishers don't have to worry about the mishmash of operating systems, hardware and drivers for all the PCs in the world. We are witnessing the end of an era....

Yes, I heard that as well. Personally I won't buy it because of the DRM. I haven't checked out the latest news though. The periscope interface is such an integral part of the game that I'm surprised they wouldn't make sure it is top notch.

Got it, and am anxious to try this out.

I'll have to look at the directories once I get home, I guess. This is not twigging with me. Thanks tons.

so the difference is 'Sounds' versus 'sounds'?

I need a little guidance here. I don't have my copy of OFF to check the directories and I'm certainly missing something that will make me look a little silly but here goes. When I extract SoundTweak II I get a bunch of .wav. files, one readme.txt, and one .xml file. Is the .xml file the sound-effect file? If so and I drop this file into C:\Programme\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields I'll get a new directory branch C:\Programme\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\Sounds as 'Sounds' is the name of the .xml file. Next I am to gather up the .wav files and drop them into C:\Programme\CFSWW1 over Flanders Fields\Sounds? How can you drop .wav files into a .xml file?

So I can't do both at the same time? Semantics aside this is an interesting point. One of my all time favourite games is Silent Hunter III. I would play it for hours but someone watching would probably not think I am being entertained...yet I still play it for hours. If I'm not being entertained on some level would I sit there for hours on end? Do we play simulations for entertainment, for learning, or both? Now back to those semantics. Just what is the difference between a video game and a simulation? My personal opinion is that the definition depends on the age of the players.

Hey, I'm playing a video game. How much more slack can I get? So, after many posts my simple question seems to be answered. Thanks everyone. (And Uncleal, I hope you had a wonderful childhood.)

Who said anything about finding the missions boring? I asked a simple question about how the game might handle certain situations. I also don't think Home Office would consider me a slacker if I shot down three or four Fokkers and then decided to land at the nearest friendly base rather than warping my way to my home field. Or is there a penalty as well for using warp?

So the game does penalize you in some way?