33LIMA

No, and no. AFAIK (never tried it) you can install any plane made for CFS3 into OFF, but it will only show up in Quick Combat not in campaigns. So theoretically you could have a seaplane flying in OFF, if you can find one; I vaguely remember a Short seaplane in OFF Phase 2 but maybe I'm imagining that. Likewise you could install other made-for-CFS3 objects like weapons, ships and planes (albeit they'll be WW2 ones, so not much point), but would probably have to build missions for them to show up. The Dolphin you were thinking off is probably the A Team Skunkworks one for First Eagles; RoF has one of course and so may SDOE-WW1. I'm pretty sure there is no Dolphin for CFS3 or OFF, and it's not amongst the planes announced for OFF2.

This is NOT an effort to rekindle the locked debate over OFF sounds. It is to open a quite different discussion as to whether and how some kind of warning of impending stall, by some means less unrealistic than an on-screeen text warning, would be a useful addition to OFF (P3, as a mod) and/or OFF2 (as a new feature or a mod). The prospective benefit would be to give a fairly clear indication of when you are flying on the verge of a stall and about to 'depart the envelope'. CFS3 has a stallsound (same as present in OFF I believe) which is a low, gentle wind sound. It may be audible if you're flying a sailplane but it's not in any powered plane I've ever flown in CFS3 or OFF, even if the engine is idling. If you have 'Sim warnings' enabled you get a yellow text 'near stall' warning and a red 'danger - stall' wanring when it hits (by which latter point you will probably have encountered other signs anyway). However, many of us like to fly with these things turned off. I realise a sign of a real stall is the wind noise going quiet, not getting louder. All I ever recall from doing a stall in Cessnas is the controls going mushy and the nose then dropping - if there was a sound besides the stall horn I don't recall. However, if you reat tesd pilot flight reports, they will usually include mention of the plane's stall characteristics and they will often mention the onset of buffeting as an indication of an impending stall - eg an online Wright Field report on the FW190D reported 'Adequate warning of stalls is given by shaking of the airplane and controls'. A force-feedback joystick might be best here - I dunno if they can simulate 'mushy' controls well if at all, but they could and probably do simulate buffeting/shaking. However, it appears to me also desirable to consider built-in alternatives. It's often instructive to consider how others tackle similar issues. In Warbirds and its WW1 'Flyboys' spin-off, you get a modern-style stall-horn sound, effective but very unrealistic. In First Eagles you get an audible sound best just described as a buffet, plus a slight but visible judder of the airframe. I find this an extremely effective indication of when I'm 'on the edge' and a warning that a stall or spin will happen if I keep pulling back. In IL2 there's no sound or other pre-stall warning I can hear or remember, but definitely I recall seeing some posts complaining that there had being some form of audible stall warning in IL2 and that it disappeared or was neutered. It's such a long time since I've flown EAW that I can't recall what it did. In OFF, I replaced the in-game stall.wav sound with a modified variant of the wheel rattle/rumble sound (eg usroll1.wav) as this to me seemed to give a CREDIBLE (whether strictly realistic or not) representation of what it might sound like, if your plane was shuddering somewhat, on the edge of a stall. However, even if I cut the throttle and reduced the engine sound slider in Workshops, this sound remained inaudible. And I'd want it to be heard above an engine at full power, eg in a dogfight. Amplyfying the sound just destroyed it, before it became really audible. I may try recording my own sound at a suitable volume instead. Something like an equivalent of the creaking sound you get when stressing the airframe, which CAN be heard above the engine sound. Anyhows, I think OFF (P3 and P4) would benefit from such a new stall.wav sound. I would hope one will be included with OFF2 and intend to have a more serious go at creating one for P3 in the (hopefully short) meantime. What do others think?

'Fluttering fabric' might very well accompany flatulence (depending on severity, of course). So I can see the connection.

Well in desperation I uninstalled/reinstalled - and still got the error re stdole.tlb near the end and then the 429 ActiveX error when launching, without obvious ill-effect. Patched up to HiTR 1.47 and with 46 Sqdn Nov 1917 the Huns are back, first mission anyway! Trust it's not a fluke. I'm now going to fly for a bit between installing mods and try to find out which one, if any, is causing this.

Interesting discussion. FFB joysticks seem not particularly common/cheap these days, whether because the cheaper ones proved mechanically short-lived I dunno. Best bet if you can get one, mush and shudder by the sound (sic) of it, just the ticket. Having your bum wired up may also be quite effective and could have many other leisure applications besides a seat-of-the-pants stall warning but for some reason I find it strangely unattractive Even if it's artistic licence rather than strictly realistic I'm inclined to think that some sort of sound - designed to be audible above the engine sound with volume well turned up and at full throttle, otherwise it's really little/no use in combat - which CONVEYS the 'shaking of the airplane and controls' described above for the Dora 9, would be good. Having checked out various sound samples available online (you'd be amazed at the number of people who record their wardrobes rattling etc), I still find the rumbling/rattling sound of the wheels on the ground - OFF has several variants of this, which may or may not be stock CFS3 ones - somehow conveys it best of them all, subjective tho that obviously is. I'm going to try a renamed airframe stress creak as a new stall.wav, and if I can still hear that above the engine sound in combat I will at least know it's possible, given the right sound. And it would be good to have one built in from the off (sic) in OFF2.

Thanks guys, grabbing it now!

Like that shot of the Aviatik! Do you recall where you got the skin? Don't see it here at CombatAce. I much prefer it to the stock light blue and darker tan versions.

...it's spreading...

One of the best (tho short) account's I have ever read of the Zeppelin raids is the chapter 'The Zeppelins Come' in Alexander McKee's excellent WW1 air war potted history, 'The Friendless Sky', which, like the rest of the book, is a good example of the author's uncompromising, whimsical, human and very readable style. This short chapter is full of menorable and often chilling accounts; including this one, of the end of L.21 in November 1916, caught with daylight breaking as she passed over the coast into the North Sea, probably already damaged and trying to get away: 'As she passed out to sea, three Naval aeroplanes were fast coming up with her. Kapitainleutnant Frankenberg and his men must have known it was the end, and decided to sell their lives dearly. A continuous series of bursts came up at the Naval pilots as they attacked in turn...the last machine, flown by E. L. Pulling, closed to point-blank range - fifty feet - under heavy fire from L.21's machine-gunners; and his gun chattered briefly in reply. It fired precisely two rounds, and then stopped. Jammed. As Pulling turned away from the German gunners, to attempt to clear his jam at a safe distance, he saw the L.21 suddenly catch fire from end to end. From out of the flames, from one of the lower gondolas, a German machine-gun continued to fire at Pulling; then it stopped, abruptly. But he was still being shot at. From the top gun position of the Zeppelin, above the nose, a single man was spending his last few seconds of life in trying to kill Pulling. Then, as the British pilot pulled away, and L.21 fell out of range beneath him, the man sprang to his feet, ran the whole length of the envelope, probably maddened with the pain of burns, and fell headlong towards the sea, thousands of feet below. It was the end of the main phase of the Zeppelin raids; gallantry was not enough. In a Suffolk churchyard, above the grave of the crew of another Zeppelin, fallen later, was to be the epitath of them all: 'Who art thou that judgest another man's servant. To his own master he standeth or falleth.'

Too late. Much, much too late.

What is this anyway - IN Flanders Fields, Farming Simulator 1918??? All together now - 'Four legs good, two legs bad!' Anything, to get the thought of muppet cloud faces out of my mind - hell and damnation, remembered it again!!!!

Lou means this, methinks: Nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse!

Please tell us this includes a stall sound (wind buffet or whatever) that can actually be heard above engine noise so you don't need the text warning or FFB!

Thanks for spoiling OFF for us, Sid, now we'll never be able to look at the OFF sky, without seeing muppet faces in the clouds, that we would never have looked for or seen before. Like Tolstoy being told good things would happen if he stood in a corner and thought of anything, except a small while bear. No prizes for guessing how that ended up. Can the mods please delete this thread, before Sid, encouraged by the spread of this phenomenon, also reveals he can make out the figure of Kylie Minogue lurking in the shadows of OFF's hangars, or masonic symbols in the patterns of tents, etc etc

So long as the first mod is NOT 'Sheep Sh**gers of the Western Front' I'll be happy (just because OFF2 screenies show sheep in fields, doesn't mean we have to simulate that kind of thing. Besides which, that would be a good name for an online squadron, if there's MP - any takers??? :)

I'm fairly sure LOD files, like the M3D files used by CFS3 and OFF, cannot be reverse-engineered, perhaps to protect the work of the creators. That said, there may be a GMX plug-in somewhere that would enable such files to be imported back in and edited, with the owner's permission presumably, otherwise I'd guess this could be a big 'no-no'. You could just ask the owner to make the change - the A Team have a forum for such requests and they recently moved forward the rudder of the Halb 'DIII' on WhiteKnight's request. Me, I'd like the Lewis guns gone on the F2B too, maybe a petition...:) Also the Spandau on the Walfisch replaced by a Parabellum, a more representative exhaust on the Pfalz DIII/DIIIa and a DH4 with a lower polygon count. But that'd be icing on the cake and I don't want to seem ungrateful or pedantic to the talented bakers! Not sure why your skins aren't showing, not my field. Have a vague recollection of needing to add 'textureset' entries to the plane's [plane_name].ini file, when adding new skins, but that may be wrong. Suggest a close comaprison of the files, paths etc for a DVII skin which is working, with those for one which is not.

Yes I agree, modding FE can be tedious and even convoluted at times but the way I look at that is (i) this is 'good tedium' as its extent is down to the fact there's just so much quality stuff so freely available and (ii) all this content transforms FE2 from a great sim with a merely decent planeset and SP campaign into one with a planeset that is so far ahead (and expanding) it'll never be bettered and likewise, the widest scope of an SP campaign system we're ever going to get in a WW1 sim. Re Bloody April, I'm fairly sure that it's important you download the exact planes specified, for any campaign. The planes used are named precisely in the campaign files and if the name doesn't match exactly...well I suspect the campaign will run rather than crash but you won't be able to fly the 'wrong' plane and nor will it appear for the AI. You COULD get around this by hand-editing the campaign files, to rename planes you don't have, with those you do, but it's obviously easier just to choose carefully in the first place. The variety of Nieuports I guess can be confusing for Bloody April but grab all the Nieuport 17s and there's only one DH2, FE8, FE2b, BE2c, BE2d and most of the other planes named in the readme. You will definitely need some Skunkworks planes for this campaign, don't be put off by the unusual registration process, they're a good bunch over there, just be polite :) I don't expect you'll need the Skunkworks Albatros DIII, the campaign must use the one that's been available with FE since the first Expansion Pack was released. NB don't forget the Wrench guide to installing 1st generation planes (most FE planes are made for FE1) into 2nd generation Third Wire sims like FE2 - basically some markings for some planes don't show unless you also copy a 'D' subfolder over to 'Decals, as described here: http://combatace.com...ickie-tutorial/ Re Peter01's FMs, you're quite right, it works fine even if you don't have all the planes it provides files for. I have nearly all planes and just installed the whole FM mod, ending up with a few planes or variants with just data files and nothing else. This didn't break anything. The FM mod does (deliberately) neuter 2- & multi-seater gunners tho, which i didn't want and had to hand-edit back individually to restore their rate of traverse and burst duration.

Welcome DeIGS, and thanks for sharing the great screenies - the Fokker is particularly atmospheric, it's like a publicity shot from 'the Blue Max' (apart from the accurate markings)!

Good luck with getting up to speed and welcome aboard!

...or maybe you mean THIS Moriarty (1.48 et seq)...

We should both be safe enough there, AFAIK there's no Reichenbach Falls Mod available for OFF :)

Hi Force 10! 1. I don't recall having any concern with Skunkworks registration but maybe it's changed since. I would strongly recommend going ahead regardless, it is very well worthwhile eg Pfalz DIII, DIIIa &DXXI, Dolphin, Snipe etc. They are a good, helpful bunch over there. I don't know if a campaign will crash or run with some planes missing. I'd suspect it will run but the missing planes will just not show up. You can always hand-edit the campaign files to replace the planes you don't have, with those you do, did this myself to give Jasta 10 in the stock Cambrai campaign the Skunkworks Pfalz DIII. these extra planes are too good to miss! 2. Sounds (sic!) like you did the right thing, creating a 'Sounds' (plural!) folder in your FE2 mod folder, so I dunno why you get no sound with the plane concerned. this process works fine for me. Two observations: (i) A solution for any plane with no sound is to hand-edit its data.ini file and change the engine sound name to a stock one or another one you DO have. But dropping the sound that comes with the plane in 'Sounds' should work. The Fokker Eindekkers I use (which I believe are the ones required for Armchair Aces) are Laton's ones as seen in the screenies above. Laton's EIII readme doesn't mention a sound file. From its data.ini file, it uses 'EngineSoundName=RotaryEngine'. (ii) Maybe the missing engine sound is non-stock and comes with another add-on plane. Some pilot figures are like that, too. You either have to install the plane that has it, in which case it shows up for all that use it, or you have to edit the plane's data.ini so it uses a stock one instead. My FE2 install has nearly all the add-on planes available which may be why I don't have this problem. I suspect that once you have finished installing just the planes needed for Armchair Aces you will find you have all the engine sounds (and pilot figures) you need. 3. IIRC this is the d/l you need for Peter01's FMs: http://combatace.com...fms-march-2010/ If you expand the subfolder with the FE2 FMs you will see that it has all the FMs for all planes and variants, all sorted into the planes' subfolders. I'd suggest you just install them all, it doesn't do any harm to have aircraft folders with just the FM files in them. If installing the FM mod before you install any planes included in it, make sure you do not over-write the .ini and data.ini files for each new plane as you will over-write the FM mod. One point to note - as the readme says, Peter has neutered gunners in 2- and multi-seaters; if like me you prefer them more effective, you will need to hand-edit their data.ini files to restore their rate of traverse and burst duration, after installing the FM mod (there is a recent thread explaining how to do so, in this forum). Another thing I found is that adding the ground MGs for Armchair Aces means they show up in other campaigns too. In a 40 Squadron 'Bloody April' mission last night, I flew low to check out some explosions only to end up rashly going head to head with a ground MG near the trenches; I lost! Yes it would be nice if there were all-in-one installers for all this but it's very well worth the modest effort when it's all up and running, or should I say, flying.

[quote name='OneoftheLost' timestamp='1332169705' post='560464' Lastly. I never did figure out that hat switch issue. Is it not customizable? (I want to speed up panning views in game. The kind you control with a hat switch or trakc Ir.) AFAIK you have to allocate the hatswitch buttons to the pan left/right/up/down key assignments using Options/Controls/Customise; that's what I did anyway and I find the panning is fast enough for me, it's certainly faster then default CFS3 for one. You can also pan around with the mouse, IL2-style. Your panning might speed up if reduce your horizon distance a bit. There may well be a setting inside a file somewhere which can also change the panning speed but I've no idea where that is, if it does exist. While you are waiting for your download limit here to reset, if you haven't already, check out the planes and ground objects availble from the A Team Skunkworks, you have to email to request access and it's well worthwhile. As you may have noticed by now, many First Eagles add-on planes were made in the days of FE(1) and their installation readme's don't describe the slightly different process for FE2; check out Wrench's guide here, which explains the drill, needed first to get the plane into your FE2 'mod' folder, and what you need to do then, to get all its markings ('decals') showing up properly: http://combatace.com/topic/70920-sf1-to-sf2-decals-folder-conversion-quickie-tutorial/ As you will have noticed, these forums and the content here are free, thanks to the goodwill and considerable efforts those concerned, and as far as I'm concerned, THAT is nice, regardless of when we get D/L limit warnings or for how long we can edit posts.

Hi HPW. I have enabled Bletchley's 1917 mod but am just about to try again with it disabled, next will be disabling all mods then enabling one at a time. I've flown a long mission into Hunland with 46 in Nov 1917 with the radar on and at max range, came across about 6-8 friendly flights but not a single enemy one, down as far as Cambrai. that was with bletchley's 1917 active sector mod may-dec 1917, which i doubt can be causing this problem. The other mods I've been playing with are your DM, your DM+arcmod+Fe2b, your Halb Empty weight mod, flakmod, sound tweak 2, new gun sound, mod, the AI weight mod+your FM mod for that. I can only think the prob must be in there somewhere, though that seems extremely unlikely, but as Sherlock Holmes said, when you eliminate the rest, what's left must be the truth, however unlikely!

Sorry but I don't buy this - no matter what he may have thought (i) his original post was inexcusable (ii) the 'reason' he produced for making it, in the face of justified criticism, was, frankly, incredible, if not an insult to the intelligence of readers and customers; and finally (iii) the apology, when it finally came, was half-hearted, accompanied as it was by a stream of self-justification. I've been reading the original thread for some days and one can understand the dev's frustration. But the fact is that 777 have made certain decisions as to the development direction of their product, which they are ENTIRELY entitled to do, and a significant number of players have expressed disappointment with that, which they are likewise entirely entitled to do, without being seen as trolls or promotors of a hidden agenda. Making a wild allegation of theft is simply NOT an acceptable (or even an adult!) response to some of your customers expressing dissapointment. If he thought some references to other sims indicated some kind of attack, well that's paranoia, and again no excuse. All he had to say was just that 777 have adopted the development strategy they have and while he regrets that some will be disappointed, others will hopefully appreciate it, and the commercial necessities behind it.