Polovski

I'd like to know too ;). Seriously it would be daft to post system specs and requirements at this stage as P4 is still in development we are still adding and optimising. Also these pictures are taken with various settings and on more than 1 PC. When we have a good idea of all the ins and outs, you will know. Yes my system is a good one although by no means the best, and I think P4 runs better than P3 for me, WM has tested with various and with a slightly older video card and it works well. As with HITR a good amount of video ram (1GB+) will be a good idea but specifics at this stage we cannot say.

Fantastic piece thanks Shred

Never heard of not recognising a sound card before - DirectX9 installed if you have Windows 7? If Windows 7 / Vista make sure you setup CFS3 to work in compatibility mode (see FAQ).

Change the weather from Historical to AI Weather generated in the Workshop maybe if you want to see more bright days. The war years were very bad weather.

OK no worries -will give the new ones a go anyway and see. Thanks for checking.

Fantastically knowledgeable and I'm sure he helped keep the peace with authoritative comments to decide a debate. All the best for the final flight Dan-San

Hellshade thanks - one thing we noticed in the past, you sometimes need to set CFS3Config set to enable some AA even if you use Nvidia to override. Maybe that has a bearing here.

No worries Lewie, I guess it's how you say it rather than what - I have said that a few times. For example in the past some people post a new thread something like "IT SUCKS!" then the content is something daft like not reading the FAQ or can't configure a mouse 6th button. That doesn't look great in a forum and is overall misleading.

LOL I give up no more explanations from me.

Lewie, It's OK I appreciate your enthusiasm and knowledge but why not balance some of the critical negative with more of the good things you find too? We do have a lot more good things than bad ;). Questioning the position of the Lewis on a Bristol that DID have it there is a bit left field to point it out as some kind of flaw and doesn't really help us. As I explained we did have 3 variants done at the time, almost ready but had to go with 1 for various reasons. It balances and fits in nicely as it is. It is definitely not so easy for us to do many variants in 2 minutes. Most things in OFF have been carefully considered and decided on with fantastic detailed research by Shredward and the guys, or sometimes for reasons to do with what the sim actually needs, playability, requirements for the sim engine etc, and other criteria. Very rarely are they done "on a whim" - although one or two in early Phase 1 were when we were just having some fun (bicycle and Ford cars for example ;)). WM is flat out on all things as usual, and us other guys are doing our best to keep up. Many of the guys have full time day jobs, families etc of course and so much to cover in WW1 simulation. Overall we have a great balance in there, of course people can feel this needs a tweak or that, but overall things fit in well and balance - yes one or two items can be improved but that's easy to pick on items in any sim. The DII for example I know for a fact is worse than the DIII in some aspects. When I made the flight models the DII climbed worse, was slower, and turned a little worse for example, but does have other better properties. The DVx series was known as generally a disappointment compared to the DIII - faster yes, but heavier etc. These days we are programmed to believe that a new version of something is a huge improvement than previous. As you know not necessarily so at the dawn of combat flight as requirements and problems change rapidly in war. In OFF we try to make you realise how bad some things were, and what the brave fliers of the day had to cope with. A side mounted Lewis on a Bristol is good for that in my book and a great experience to realise how tough some of these pilots had it. It should not necessarily be the best version we provide - although sometimes we do. For us half the fun is sometimes trying to fly a poor craft in a war not chosing the fastest best. DH5 for example is a great experience ;) The DII is already improved after requests from people to do so, it turns better than the original Phase 1 craft for example but as you see we go back and forth with what people want so it is what it is. Anyway hope that helps put some comments we make in perspective. Back to work for me. I like some of the early craft there Lewie, if you want me to look at a good one send it to me if you like.

No it's when you zoom in /out. Either don't zoom with it, or set your preferred screen view angle in the WORKSHOP settings, or turn off the In-Cloud effect in CFS3Config.

BTW make sure you keep a copy of the Hat In The Ring! expansion installation file (if you have it) if you will be wiping all from your old PC.

A few pics of England and others added today here http://combatace.com/topic/64931-p4-development-screenshots/ Enjoy!

Oh yes Ok and we'll include all the other few hundred variants we are missing ;) Seriously if all I had to do is edit a text file in 2 mins I'd be laughing ;) and we'd have a few 100 extra craft in my lunch break. First we have to finish P4, and if we have time (mwhahahaha) we'll look at other variants too. We also have to build squads and skins to cope with changes and variants, it all sounds so easy, but just doing it time wise is the issue. You can always send a model and I can look at, polygon wise we use a fair bit higher number in some craft now so often it's much quicker just to make a new one rather than bump up an old model and remap etc. If it is not to CFS3 requirements and our specifications then renaming and relinking and reanimating all the parts takes longer than just making em or using from what we have. I'm about to look at the Scout as it happens so we'll see.

Most people expect to see some effects, we had this discussion many times. P1 had little effects and was generally realistic - hard to down a craft hard to see any hits, few bits flying off - but people were vocal and wanted more things to see, more bits flying off, easier to kill etc. So P2 we added that. Then people said we see too many effects we want less. So we went in the middle for P3 lol. We even had polls - you can see where this is going ;). There are options as above for P3, or try dialling back the effects slider. P4 may be different again.

It is what it is Duke, and will likely break if you edit stuff. It would have taken a more work to implement squad types with correct numbers for P3. For P4 squad numbers are revised :)

Lewie there were as you say various attempts to mount a gun, several of them were rifles and also Lewis guns and also were mounted on the side too or on top etc. Hawker was one but not necessarily the only one with side mounted Lewis. Given they were experimenting at the time, and there are known instances of Bristol Scouts with a side mounted Lewis gun, then we chose that variant. Also saves us much scarce modelling time making 309 variants of guns - maybe in the future. Two side guns were used by some such as Bristol Scout in RNAS 2 Wing too. We also read comments in "Flight" referring to some craft with the side mounted Lewis too. It's an early craft and meant to emphasise the experimental nature of the period. Yes of course we did make others such as the over wing and 2 side guns at the time, but they never got to be used in OFF at the time and making a rifle variant of course is possible but more time, modellers etc (you remember the discussion we had regarding that?). It is what it is to try to balance it in the sim some. Something we tried very hard in OFF and generally I believe we did that very well. Whilst OFF is not "perfect" in every place I don't know of a sim on the planet that is perfect. If you want perfection the only way is to make it yourself. We chose that variant out of the three we made, because we wanted to, and it was known to have existed, and was possible, and fitted in with what we needed. Good enough.

Just for the record it's not "our wish" . Microsoft started the problem by turning off their MP servers so now people have to arrange games themselves more, plus we are a very very small team we do not have the hours in the day to revamp MP - our core has always been single player and we have always stated that's where our time is mostly spent. We do appreciate everyone who contributes to OFF in whatever way.

On sounds, don't forget you can set various levels in Workshop from realistic (mostly engine) to hollywood or others.

Ok guys there are better places to discuss this so closing for now.

SE5 150HP coming in P4.

Yes Lewie as I said not always possible to make all things perfect in sim as there are other factors too (I cant remember specifically for Roland haven't flown it for some time, but could be AI had issue with it given they use the same FM currently). We are working on AI coming in P4 so we shall see. Anyway off topic can we move any further FM talk elsewhere please - back to P4 for me..

Not sure Olham I didn't mean to turn this into a full FM discussion - it's a great solid craft and a good diver but we tried to get behaviours we read about a the time. The Pfalz's had problems from the various notes I read - a mixed pilot reception but mostly bad. Often problems with materials weathering badly or poor quality on reconditioned engines caused it to perform badly for some, yet others (maybe in a newly delivered craft?) compared it to the Albatros favourably. If time we'll look at again - I think you said this before. some examples "The D.III has too little power and is not very maneuverable. It dived fast because of its streamlining, but that was all. " - Jachtvliegtuigen by Anthony Robinson (editor), "Power on during approach, with engine off it must have fallen like a brick. - Wings of the Great War, by Jeffrey Ethell With power off it tended to drop off and of course depends on altitude too, higher up it wasn't good etc.

Lewie, you would have to manually edit the aircraft.cfg file rather than use Airwrench which usually changes the .air file.

I'm won't get into a discussion about FMs in detail as there are many many things that have to be considered when making a WW1 flight model work well in a given sim engine - in our case not only for the player but for the AI too - not just the numbers. In other sims over the years there have been massive arguments about flight models and many opinions, however mostly they have been well received in OFF and for 6 years so well tested. Not sure about Gyro "Roll" but the Gyro precession in AirWrench is for Pitch and Yaw not roll, the Camel is one of the better renditions in flight sims we believe and was one of the craft FMs we spent the most time on to get the feel good within the limits of the simulation. The Aviatik has very very minor precession 105 is nothing 100 is "normal". Also I doubt makes much difference in sim given original discussions with Jerry Beckwith about this feature. Gyro was added to AirWrench specifically at our request for OFF (with other new options for WW1) by Jerry who wrote AirWrench and you'll note the Camel has much much more added to get it to effect it in the sim. BTW you may get different AI behaviours depending on which AI you have set in Hat In the Ring if you have it. Wrong thread for this of course so apologies to Olham.