Javito1986

No TAC, no labels or any of that jazz. How do you SEE them? I have a 1080p 22" widescreen monitor, and run OFF at 1680x1050. I'm still trying to optimize my FOV, right now I'm using 22 horizontal and 14 vertical. That's just for now though, I'm tinkering with it to help my spotting. I find that even when I'm padlocked onto moderately distance enemies the pixel is often not visible unless I zoom in two or three times. So I've taken to examining the skies as much as I can, zooming in certain areas then zooming back out, etc. I know seeing them is meant to be hard, I understand. But it's a lot easier to see planes in real life than it is on a monitor, so I worry about being unrealistically "bounced" or missing easy opportunities just because the pixels don't show up. Honestly, even my own friendly wingmen are hard to see. The pixels are almost... I don't know, they don't seem entirely solid. I'll try and snap a picture later to illustrate. Anyhoo, tips on seeing them before they see you and optimizing your monitor's clarity for seeing those pixies?

Nobody here's a daredevil looking to go out in a blaze of glory eh?

Blast it! Ah well, can we at least pretend I'm the first one to notice it, if only for my ego?

How do you chaps feel about this book? I'm thinking of ordering it after me next paycheck. Although I'm torn between this or High in the Empty Blue or No Parachute... I'll get them all eventually, but only one at a time. Thoughts? When I was a kid playing RB3D Frank Luke was one of my faves, so his story's got a special place for me

That's a strong endorsement. I'm really looking into acquiring it, I'm curious what "new" information he has about Frank Luke. Fascinating guy, like an American Albert Ball really. So reckless though, I can't fathom taking the risks he did. Bravery has nothing to do with it, Captain Rickenbacker had no shortage of courage and even he didn't seem to understand Frank Luke. That's ok though, some pilots are methodical hunters like Richthofen, McCudden, or Rickenbacker, and some leave their mark by being forces of nature, burnin bright for only a short time, like Albert Ball, Frank Luke, and especially Werner Voss.

Elephant, I think that's unfortunate. It strikes me that modding is what gives a sim like this its lifespan, as opposed to "in one year out the next". As you well know since I believe I remember you saying you used to do work on Rowan's BoB and RB3D? It seems a bit shortsighted to me, but whatever it is their engine after all. I just strongly prefer the way, for example, Bohemia Interactive maintains such close ties to its OFP/ARMA modding community. But now that the original IL-2 source is available, I wonder if there's a community getting built up around it? Time to hit google and have a looksee.

P.S. I like the scenes of flying real close down in that residential neighborhood. Looks marvelous. I'm thinking in 10 years we'll be able to model civilians looking up at you and waving / ducking for cover

I was reading on SimHQ that people were complaining about "50 plane missions" in the CoD campaign. They were saying that European Air War and Rowan's BoB in particular did a much better job a long time ago modeling the scale of these air battles. I don't know where I stand on that though. It'd be nice to see those massive Luftwaffe formations, and certainly it seems odd to play a Battle of Britain game without them (though maybe that's just me speaking as an old time Rowan's BoB/Wings of Victory fan). On the other hand the engine, graphics, flight model, and feel of CoD seems so damn good I don't know if I would even notice the smaller scale. I'm looking forward to trying it out and certainly hope they iron out whatever issues they're having with that filter. The modding possibilities also interest me. I dunno about P5, could they really take it that far? It strikes me that CFS3's engine was already at least somewhat conducive to modeling a WW1 dynamic campaign, but I just plain have no idea about this one's. Man but that would be damn pretty, I'd love to see a Fokker Dr.I in this engine. Maybe in 5 - 10 years we will be playing a new OFF phase on an engine like this. Ahhh daydreaming...

Oh man can I ever related to this. My #1 greatest hatred/fear is being assigned a balloon busting mission, but #2 is crossing the line. I hate going over there. Partly because I have a minor case of "flak-phobia". Everyone else seems to just ignore it, "Oh it's inaccurate they say". Balls I say, my current pilot has been knocked around by near misses (one of which killed his engine like 2 minutes later), I have lost pilots to archie in the past, have seen wingmen blown to bits by direct hits, and I harbor no illusions. Partly it's because I know Olham and his friends are out there in their Albatrosses waiting to pounce, and I always get such a sick feeling in my gut when I see those Huns dropping out of the sky at you like bats. And partly because one damn hit to the fuel tank and I won't be able to make it back to my aerodrome. This is why when I'm over there my first priority is maintaining altitude, so that I have a better chance of coasting home if my engine decides not to work anymore.

Here's my two cents gunz old boy: I had OFF shipped to me, I honestly don't remember how long it took. Wasn't instantaneous, I live in the States though and it didn't take longer than two weeks. Might have even been one. Two weeks seems to be the average, but this is a varied and geographically diverse community so nobody can really speak for anyone else about the shipping times. Once it got here (I do remember it arriving sooner than I expected it to) I already had the patches and HitR expansion downloaded and ready to go and had an amazing time. I'm an old school Red Baron 3D player, I grew up on Fokker Dr.I and SE5 duels while my school chums were playing spin the bottle at house parties. I picked up Flanders Fields about a year ago for two reasons: 1) I was disappointed with IL-2 and Rise of Flight. Excellent flight models but 'empty' as far as the experience goes. They weren't satisfying me like certain sims I played when I was younger. 2) I was looking to catch up on the latest modifications to Red Baron 3D when I learned that OFF is the spiritual successor to that sim. Hence it was a rather easy choice. Haven't once been disappointed, at all. In the last year I've had several short lived careers, but two long-running campaigns, one as an American commanding a fighter squadron during the Hundred Days, and another as a rookie RFC pilot who joins 56 squadron at its formation and flies brand new SE5as with such titans as Albert Ball and Rhys Davids. Death is swift, merciless, permanent, and seemingly inevitable. I really thought my American had a good shot at surviving the entire war, but he was finally killed some two weeks before the armistice. It really hits you when this happens because often you spend weeks (and months now in the case of my RFC pilot) with these fellows. If anything it's better than RB3D, far more advanced. RB3D didn't have the juice to model the entire damn war like OFF does. There's definitely a learning curve, which consists of dying over and over and over again. When I first started I had a hell of a time hitting anything, frequently came home thinking I'd landed strong hits on a plane and wondering why it hadn't gone down only to see in my (optional) statistics page that only one out of 500 bullets had actually hit something. I even made posts here complaining that I'd unloaded my entire magazine into an Albatros and he hadn't so much as blinked! Once I turned on the player statistics and saw I had a gun accuracy of 2% I realized what the problem was :-p A year later and I'm much better in general. I am for the pilot and engine area, gun accuracy averages 20% and I can and have executed some gorgeous diving attacks that have made a mess out of a DFW's engine in one solid burst, and I've learned to fly the SE5 and Sopwith Camel with some finesse. Reality is though I'll have to start all over again if I want to learn to fly the Fokker Dr.I or some such, but that's part of the fun for me.

OFF is a work of art though, it's different from your every day Halo. It's easy to be passionate about this subject, many people are. There are people passionate about World War 1 who write books about it, or make a movie, make fine aviation art, which is all valid and brilliant. Over Flanders Fields is the same, only it uses a new medium. Underneath the thousands of lines of code, the 3D models, the algorithms that define the course of the war there's an underlying message in OFF, there's a statement about the WW1 air war that is being made by the creators that goes wholly unsaid but I think everyone here can feel it.

Anyone know how I can configure the controls so I can do a 'pan view' with the mouse in addition to the snap views?

Why not read some of the 'Reports from the Front' posts? Olham, TallyHo, Carick, and myself all been updating our campaigns there recently. And look on this forum for RAF Louvert's Paul Blum ongoing campaign log. That'll give you a feel of what Flanders Fields is like.

Here's what I was reading this morning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_buster "Due to their importance balloons were usually given heavy defenses in the form of anti-aircraft artillery and standing fighter patrols stationed overhead. Other defenses included surrounding the main balloon with barrage balloons; stringing cables in the air in the vicinity of the balloons; putting machine guns in gondolas for observers to use; and flying balloons booby-trapped with explosives that could be remotely detonated from the ground. These measures made balloons valuable but very dangerous targets to approach." But yes, I've never actually seen or heard of their use anywhere else but in this article. So I don't know?

I know it's OT but I'm curious what your beef with Shogun 2 is? I didn't buy it, though I played the demo and wasn't overly impressed as it struck me as being Napoleon with katanas.

Really? Well then Wikipedia is wrong! Blast

Here's an idea that came to me while reading about the balloon busters. How feasible/historically accurate are barrage balloons? Were they used often enough to be worth modeling and would they be difficult to implement?

Wait, was there any Entente archie that wasn't white? That thought blows my mind . Imagine pink archie fire. It would be so cute while it's killing you!

I just (barely) survived my 45th mission of the RFC campaign. It's been running since November '10, and in-game from March to June '17. When I first started this squadron was based in England! And while that may seem like quite a bit of time to survive, before you think I'm extraordinarily skilled please keep in mind A) I only have 10 kills. Most missions don't result in contact with enemy aircraft, the most dangerous and hated assignment by far is balloon busting. I've only had to do that twice so far this campaign because God is great. 2) I tend to be pretty cautious, and only attack when it favors me. Although I suppose I was just now almost killed engaging an equal number of enemy fighters at equal altitude, but it was balloon defense and that was what the job called for. If I'm artillery spotting or flying escort or bombing a railyard I do not go out of my way to engage enemy fighters, and will in fact actively avoid them. Point is over those 45 missions (which have comprised about March - June 1917) there has formed a core group of AI pilots in my squadron who have survived and prospered. My flight leader in June is the same one who led my flight when we flew from England to France in March. I've had the exact same wingman this entire time. The Major I designated as Squadron Commander when I first started this campaign in November is still here. In addition, out of a core group of replacements that joined the unit around the end of May, two are still alive and well and consistently fly in my flight. So you definitely roleplay after a while because it's hard not to. You see these names over and over, and you fly with them all the time. I've personally seen my wingman shoot a German off my tail on several occasions, I think you naturally assign a personality to him in your head. If he goes on leave I think to myself "Oh great, lazy blighter just went on leave three weeks ago. Now who's going to help me out when i start pressing H?" There's a fellow in my squadron, Tock Alfred, who's been there since the beginning. And each time I start a mission Tock is the second SE5 after mine to take off and gain altitude. There was a period of time when he went missing for a day or two before coming back (I like to think his engine stopped a bullet over the lines and it took him a while to make his way back) and I missed him quite a bit. Similarly a few days ago I was stunned when I saw my squadron's top ace get blown to smithereens by a flak burst while on a balloon bust. This was another fellow who'd been there since the start, who's name I was accustomed to seeing and who was always racking up kills. There one moment, gone the next. The OFF Manager didn't register his death, but I can't tolerate such things and manually edited his pilot file to KIA him. I felt bad doing it as I could have just ignored it and let him be, but it wasn't me you see, it was the flak and I saw him blow up with my own two eyes, and had labels on to confirm the identity. Things like this crank up the immersion factor tenfold. At this point I'm not so much just flying one RFC campaign, I'm actively taking part of the history of 56 Squadron in 1917. Here's hoping I don't die any time soon

Agree about FSX. A lot of flight sims have issues on launch, in fact I'd argue flight sims as a genre are prone to having buggy vanilla releases. It's the complexity you see, doesn't match up well with publisher harassment. I'll keep my eye on Cliffs of Dover, I'm sure it'll be fixed up and turn out great.

It's not too bad really, but early on it cost me a kill in the RFC campaign that went unrecorded after CFS3 autoexited upon landing. Like I said, now I end the flight while my kite's still rolling along the grass.

Morning chaps! Let me talk about the Track-IR free spotting system I've worked out: 1) I downloaded Olham's ViewUI file. I love the dimmed labels, they're utterly unobtrusive and yet get the job done at the same time. I also love the way the TAC is set up at the bottom left, and its size is perfect. 2) At the beginning of each mission, usually right after take-off, I padlock A Flight so I always have them in view at the flip of a button. During flight I turn labels off and only have TAC set to 'Vehicles' or 'Buildings, just for the waypoint marker and reference. Hence I need to look around a lot for baddies. If I don't have them padlocked I usually have my trusty AI wingman Edgar Epps padlocked. 3) I've boosted the resolution to 1920x1080, which improves clarity dramatically (my monitor is native 1920x1080 too). FOV is slightly zoomed in at 26/15, and I keep a 'tight' focus point of view in the cockpit, mimicking where my pilot would actually be sitting (I don't move the camera 'back' to see more of the cockpit) 4) This allows MUCH more clarity of distant 'pixels', but the trade-off is slightly less overall view angle since the screen is zoomed in some. To counter this I... 5) Have the toggle for cockpit view set as a hotkey on my joystick. Yes, I 'turn the cockpit off' to help me scan the sky, then turn it back on. With the hotkey the switch is very seamless, and it supplements my slightly 'zoomed' in point of view by allowing me to see more of the screen I otherwise sacrifice by having such a tight FOV. 6) When I use TAC I set it at 1NM (Ctrl>Shift>T a few times to set it right). I mainly use this to find friendly planes (usually so i can padlock A Flight's location) as by the time enemy aircraft stray within 1NM you're being fired upon. 7) In general I leave labels off, but I turn them on during ground attack missions and when dogfights get low to the ground. The reduced color keeps them from being in your face, but they still serve their purpose as a reference for things you ordinarily would see and be peripherally aware of. 8) Still will likely tinker a bit with the FOV but this system is serving me well. I'm able to spot planes much better, though it's not perfect and I still get bounced if I'm not on the ball enough. In fact I almost lost Joyce a few hours ago when I mistook aircraft approaching headon for A Flight and caught a bullet in the engine. And in another mission I dove away in a panic from a group of planes that suddenly dropped out of a cloud only to discover they were friendly two-seaters. 9) This setup is very tense for me. I really don't get bored just flying around because I'm always too busy scanning the sky. I really check everything out, carefully and I take my time with each piece, as if there was a beautiful woman floating around my craft in 360 degree angles. Also I just see and notice everything better. When I'm low enough to the ground I can clearly distinguish trucks or marching soldiers, earlier I was able to avoid flying over a German army camp by seeing the tents coming up (before I wouldn't have noticed, things just weren't clear enough). 10) And that's where I'm at chaps! Doing fine with the RFC campaign using this method, knock on wood. It's been going a while now (I believe I'm well past the 30hr mark) but I'm a very careful pilot, don't attack arbitrarily, am not afraid to run away when I'm so much as threatened by enemy planes at a higher altitude, and I'm utilizing this spotting system I outlined. But if you do this you need to pay attention in the air, from the moment I take off to the moment I land I'm working the padlocks and trying to see as much of the sky as I possibly can through as many angles without TrackIR's help.

Thank you for sharing this lovely anecdote! I think you're very fortunate to live and work in such a cozy environment. Almost like your own Hobbiton if you follow me. You make me want to go do some bicycling of my own... need to get a bicycle first though ;-). If I may ask, what part of the country do you live in that the weather is so nice? It's still a bit cold up here near the Great Lakes.

I wouldn't give up hope Hellshade. Sims like this often have troubled beginnings and then blossom as they are patched and modded, and CoD has a gorgeous engine made by one of the best in the business as you well know. I remember when Rowan's Battle of Britain was released in '00. Oh man, it was a bug ridden mess and was TRASHED critically and sold like nothing. Rowan had to close over it. But it was patched up, BDG got to work on it, by the time I played it in '01 it was the best damn sim I'd played up until then and it and its sequels are to this day the best sims you can get about the Battle of Britain. Hell, now that I think about it even Red Baron 3D had to get through the mess that was the Red Baron 2 initial release before it became the amazing spiritual predecessor to Flanders Fields. Yes it's a shame CoD is having issues, but I'm confident they'll be worked out and it'll be an amazing sim

Just as a little 'epilogue' to this amusing tale, since getting OFF fixed a few days ago I have been playing the hell out of it. Maybe a bit too much, as was pointed out to me by the wife who was kind enough to remind me: "I fixed it, I can break it" Women