Lewie

I'm going to make some generalizations here.. Generally, XP should have enough of the right type, and most types of motherboard drivers and such to make it through getting the OS installed enough to run the system. This is if the hardware doesn't have any of it's own problems. I'm taking a stretch here, but, could it be the onboard network card is toasted? Is XP identifying the problem as the network card? Would installing a network card into an expansion slot fix this? Is there a BIOS update or patch that might have a fix for this? BTW BIOS update s are the route of last resort and best left to an expert, BIOS updates are a scary thing, sometimes you can make it much worse than the original problem Sorry for the litany of questions but it might help to narrow it down some.

Do you still have your motherboard's drivers and features CD? You might try finding out whether your m'board has had some updates or has a more recent set of drivers that might address this issue. Actually Lou a CD shouldn't be affected by magnetic sources, A floppy disc on the other hand, yes. Widowmaker, are you installing from a complete C:/ format or is this a repatch?

The recent NVidia settings software does allow for individual customized game settings, but a lot of it relies upon the games own requirements for certain settings like anisotropic and antialiasing. Of which tend to override the NVidia customized settings.

OK what I'm noticing is that the improvements aren't that great and that I already had a pretty low shadow budget allocated to the aircraft shadows. I mean my shadows are pretty rasterized as it is. What I notice that makes a slightly bigger difference is the airfield tree and building shadows seem to make for a lot of FPS loss. I also think that the Alpha transparency mapping on the trees is a bit overly complex. I've gone into the .dds' using DXTBMP, for the tree scenery, and reduced the alpha masking complexity and have seen about a 3~5 FPS increase when there is a lot of trees and shrubbery in the background. It still doesn't get much increase when you have 7 or more aircraft in the immediate area. I'd also like to see what other effects the texture adjustments bring as my 'default' settings were not anywhere near Lou's The radio button selections for texture pool and rendering aren't explained well enough for my satisfaction

Cool, something new I wasn't aware of in the CFS3 configuration program. Thank you much Lou

Yeah it was a little confusing to me It initially read something like Eliminate Strutters by setting Max Frps, and I was going, 'who is Max Frps?' That's a strange German surname..

Anyone remember the recent movie 'My Boy Jack' starring Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame? The rifle that Daniel used in the training segment, was that a WWI era Lee Enfield? I seem to recall from the movie it having a stubby bolt action lever, and I thought the short travel of the bolt lever is what made the Lee Enfield such a rapid fire carbine?

I forget who made it, Either Bullethead or Stumpjumper, but there is a Breguet 14 for OFF in the 3rd party aircraft downloads in Downloads here in Cambat Ace. It needs a lot of work, there's also a Gotha GIV and a Hanriot HD1. I'd like to see the Dorand AR1 and AR2 in the game. They were made in significant numbers and had been engined with the new 190 HP V8 Renault which gave them a fair speed advantage to the Caudron GIV' and Farman F40's they replaced.

Well I've had this model for a while, it's not getting any younger..

To be fair to the modelers, the required learning curve to build new content using the only 3D program that can export to .m3d, is part of the problem. It's not like Bullethead and those before and after him didn't give this a good attempt. Try to say that about his Morane Saulnier AI work. I'm not saying that gmax is bad, but it's complexity and lack of laymen's level of instruction, and an easily registered to forum website that has people that use Gmax regularly, I could cite other reasons... This could be as easy as one of you folks asking ArgonV about FS-WWI's DH4. It would be a model to start from and the original builder put in some stellar effort to the 3D work in that model. It's every bit as good as the OFF P3 models.

Parky wouldn't be implying that Pol moonlights as the STIG in the show Top Gear, would he?

I've got a couple screenshots of the NVidia control Panel available from either the Desktop right click settings or from 'Programs' in Start First image is the opening window for the global settings, which has a slider for 'performance' or 'quality' of all the 3D applications and games on my computer. Since my monitor is a relic and runs a relatively small 4:3 aspect ratio window, I have set the slider to quality to optimize my games. You can open another window that manages individual game custom settings, to take advantage of the various level of detail. I have 3 different CFS3 installations and have set each one according to performance and quality of the appearance. You can access these settings by selecting the drop down box under the tab, ' Program Settings> 1. Select a program to customize:'

This is true also of .bmp to .jpg's to a lesser degree. Always save your first importation as a file that can be edited in an image editer, either a .bmp or .tga. In PSP you have the option of "sharpen" for images that may have softened their detail. It's not without some risk of image corruption, but if used early and infrequently it will help images that have 'softened' due to 're-importation'.

What would be even creepier would be for him to find shelter in an Allied trench, where he is able to call his squadron while staying with the Tommies manning it. And he later finds out are are all dead from a recent gas attack.

Well except for the fact that the Germans do offensive patrols quite a ways over the allied lines.

My first ever pilot loss was in my second FE2b campaign flight when one of my wingmen collided with me while we were returning from the front after a very harrowing Jasta 2 encounter where we were jumped and followed for a half hour. Our flight could have lost a couple of aircraft in that sortie, but instead we did it to our selves. I now set my formation spacing to more open in Workshops, the AI in some of the planes just doesn't try to avoid each other when in tighter groups.

The only time I notice any frame rate slowdown is when I'm in "spot view" on the OFF airfield waiting to take off with 7 or more aircraft. Panning around from the outside does reveal that the high-res trees with shadows seem to be the biggest FPS killers. I've played with clouds slider quite a bit and I see little effect on my FPS. Interestingly enough, my CFS3 install that I still run OFF planes in, the frame rates never dip below the max, ever. Even my CFS3-BoB install has little problem with lots of background objects and plenty of aircraft. There's a CFS3-BoB invasion Mission on my computer with over 75 HE111's attacking London that I run occasionally, that also has little effect on FPS's.. These are "Ground Crew" modded aircraft in the invasion scenario and they are pretty detailed.

I fly mostly British as it is, my two longest lived pilots are both in two seater campaigns, one's a 1916 BE2c Jockey, the other flies RE8's in the later days of spring 1917. I thought I'd like a Camel career, but they get themselves into drastic odds at times and I've lost 3 Camel pilots. There comes a time when no matter how maneuverable and well armed your kite is, the 12 odd Germans gathered around, gunning for you will eventually get you. If my two seater careers have taught me anything, it's patience and how to be a sneaky vultch.

Yeah that works OK if all the numbers match in the row.

As they say in Ol' Blighty, the 'TinWorm' has had it ways with her undersides. Nice find and cheap relatively. A late friend had a Bug eyed Sprite on jack stands and in a couple dozen boxes. He'd already done most of the paint work and restoration, but could'nt find enough time to finish. I had a '67 Volvo 122s years back that I had gone through the drive line and suspension, it was a nice old car.

I found it's not necessary, the TIRViews.dll is though. Plus having the camera being recognized by Freetrack.

I would ponder whether that card will make much difference, isn't OFF more CPU intensive? I've been looking at an upgrade to a slightly faster GPU but without the twin GPU's which in a few of these offerings have slower internal frequencies. This EVGA GTX 460 card gets good ratings without breaking the bank. I'd think that a better CPU processor would be a better OFF upgrade, unless you want to run other games faster as well.

This is only partly true, as the Gnome Mono 160 and the Bentley made Clergets had cylinders with threaded bases and a lockring that could be twisted in and out to adjust the compression slightly. It was the rather intricate and inefficient air intakes of the rotary's crankcase, which all of them used, that reduced the normal atmospheric pressure ahead of the intake valve, or cylinder fluting, in the Gnome. The main problem was with the early rotaries, that used complex and inertially heavy in-piston intake valves operated entirely by atmospheric pressure. If you add the slight amount of centrifugal 'supercharging" done in the fuel-air intake ducting it still comes out a wash. Also, the BR2 Bentley in the Sop Snipe was making over 200 HP in an engine not much bigger and heavier than the 130 Clerget the first Camels used. There were some 11 cylinder prototype Clergets that were slated for the late war that were approaching 300 HP. but they had weight and gyro precession issues, much like the twin row 14 cylinder Gnomes. The Seimens-Halske Sh.III contra rotary, if the Germans had developed a suitable lubricant and had access to 1930 metallurgy would have been a huge success, as it relied upon internal gearing and running the engine at twice the RPM (internally,) that normal rotaries ran at. Seimens-Halske Sh.III contra rotary

Ah I stand corrected. I guess I was seeing the 09:00 Arras front Pfalz balloon shoot as being far too regular in occurrence.

Do you have or have access to a hot glue gun, and be able to find some cheap, white LED keychain fobs? A simple two axis experimenters set up would be to just to hot glue a single LED key fob to a cheap billed cap, right on the very front of the bill. I'd do it so you can change out the little batteries. I'd also use a darkened room for my first experiments. You'll have to play with FreeTrack's various camera contrast, light point size and other camera signal modifiers to get this to work. A bright room initially doesn't help if you want to do this without the camera IR filter conversion. But it can be done. FreeTrack is very adaptable to lighting conditions.