Polovski

Another consideration - if we track AI perfectly, then we also have to make AI behaviour more human-like (this is pretty damn tricky for ANY sim ;)) otherwise you will not get close to real looking results. Not only fighting but overall decision making in all situations, we'd also then need to have ALL craft types, performances, faults, squads in there in a region, active as they really were and so on to have totally perfect results. But we can do some of these things and get closer. So on the one hand you gain immersion, on the other you lose some. Many things we have already thought of, are working on, or will do :) as WM says.

Yes sad end really, they should have took you mechs up too James I think that would benefit everyone getting more of a feel of it. Working on it is pretty cool so well worth the story telling to the Grandkids.

I don't think "fault" comes into it. The young pilots were trained, at whatever high cost of life at the speed needed, and then the Generals had a job to do. If you need more fodder send more fodder etc. - if you have inferior death-trap machines you must send up until you can fix it, you do. Not good but war is war. Hindsight is a wonderful thing too, and right when you are in the thick of it, sometimes it's hard to step back and see the mistakes.

The other point that has come up many times Hasse is if you had ONE real life, and not 10000 hours of virtual flying and knowledge of WW1, would you engage and hang around in a dogfight much? So basically what we have currently in flight sims is a condensed situation. You have more flying hours, an easier situation without the real stresses etc. and can rack up kills easier.

Excellent info Olham thanks. The figure originally is from the RFC I believe. Also note the German squadrons are operating over their own lines mostly, so can disengage much more easily as few allied craft are going to head off deeper into enemy territory to chase. They can also attempt to land more easily if damaged to a friendly airfield. They have no need to struggle with a dodgy engine into a head wind, trying to get back over NML whilst being shot at by AA fire. And if they do emergency land will get the chance to learn from that and fight on thus gaining experience from the combat. If it was a British pilot, he'd likely be captured and now that experienced pilot learns no more and is of course replaced by yet another rookie ;) Various other tactics would help too. Each side fighting a totally different war basically.

Because CFS3 tracks NONE of it regarding your AI pilots (similar to many sims out there). CFS3 does at least output mission outcomes, which the OFF Manager can use. OFF does however track a lot more (see the mission replay which did not exist in CFS3) and may be possible later to add support for tracking and using all data, all things everywhere always, but right now nope. Don't forget this will also take extra resources to do all these things, writing a lot more data more often to disk blah as you fly, so may have some down sides.

If we heard Concorde was due to fly past at work we used to go outside to watch and hope to get some of the boom noise too - not many other passenger airplanes you'd do that for ;) At least you got to work on it James close up, great stuff you are part of history :) Thanks for the links and doing the interviews USAFMTL great stuff.

The damage model in the models isn't being changed by modding normally - the damaged parts are built into the model. The modding mentioned is usually adjusting values in the XDP file which holds the DM values of the parts e.g. how strong a wing is. So making a wing 200 damage when it was 150 will make it much stronger and reduce how often it breaks of course. With so many variables in preferred aircraft flown, enemy skill and aircraft you tend to meet (some people always fly certain squads) it affects what you perceive hence there are many opinions on DM. There are LOTS of options in the Workshop settings built into OFF (stronger bullets, wider spread, worse AI guns etc..) to customise things.

Good to see some more Jammer28 - excellent - the piano tune goes well. Must be oldish has the orange boom on crash still. We killed it thank goodness.

Not much I can say that hasn't been said many times, but there's a lot more that can be done with CFS3 engine, already many aspects of P3 are better than many flight sims out there (some of the best scenery and AI out there for example) and P4 will still add more yes. Yes time and money would be involved for a new engine. 2 problems 1) Suitable available engine that can cope with the whole of the western front, and not restrict action to certain areas, and not only populate small areas at a time, or have restrictions on that, cope with WW1 combat requirements (and better than now and contain all we have?) 2) Money If someone would like to step forward with both of those then we are listening ;) We are looking as always for options and engines. However we have already raised the bar some with P4 work so far, all I can say is watch this space. We won't divulge too much until we are somewhere nearer the end. We like to keep you on your toes :)

Siggi do you have a pic - could be flames or something?

Never noticed no we'll look into it when we get time. Maybe just drop the 25s then the 65s see if that works without scrolling through weapons first.

LOL well I'm from Lancashire originally, so that's a Lancs accent plus a bit of London these days. I always thought Mike Myres' was OK but not great Scottish accent. I'm sure a few Scots might chip in and tell us.

There is no real central location of authoritative WW1 flight model information. It's available by a lot of research, and in many locations, documents, books, internet, etc all in pieces. Many have incomplete, or conflicting info. Many modern craft may be similar but often have several differences, including materials or engines etc from the real deal but may give some useful indicators of how the real craft flew. Also modern craft are not flown under war conditions or stresses so again hard to quantify - also aircraft could be adjusted and managed in the field differently. Some test reports can be flawed for example some British tests of captured German aircraft could be skewed by use of incorrect fuel type. Many tests reports have for example figures noted for "top" airspeed but only at a certain altitude and in fact turns out not to be the top speed but the only reported speed at a certain alt. Several tests I have seen for some craft have several large differences in performance even day by day during the testing - could be due to weather, pilot, or some other issue. As you say there are various pilot anecdotes and test flight reports some excellent to be found in various books and references. and more modern reports in books such as Frank Tallman's Flying the Old Planes (these are often replicas). Some very recent efforts are extremely well done though. With all the inconstancies all you can do is gather all you can, study, read all the reports and come to a conclusion. Some craft may be almost fully documented and you can calculate mostly others have very little skimpy information and is very difficult.

Wow how flattering lol ...Shrek has a supposed Scottish accent though. For the record that's my voice and I'm from the North of England, At least it's reasonable choice as many of us poor sods would have been pulling props or getting shot at in the trenches.

Glad you are up and running probably due to your graphics slider settings. BTW Uncleal thanks for posting the links, fyi that settings link has a typo at in the last part , needs the extra /l removing.

I use high res often as the skins look fantastic. You won't see bulletholes, but you will see more serious physical damage for example wing tip breaks, wings coming off etc.

As the guys above explain you cannot expect all of the kills you believe are yours will be awarded. That's the point of a "claims" system you have to make a claim. It matters not that you are 100% sure you got it - it is what the department dealing with your claim thinks, combined with the other zillion variables in a war as I mentioned. Maybe one day we'll have you drive out in the Ford and find your kill to take a tail piece home ;) Also yep as Uncleal says only mission balloons are credited as kills, other random ones are ground targets - it is what it is at the moment.

Yes he will, the easy options make it EASIER to get promotion too.

It isn't just random RAF_Louvert by a long shot, there is reason and code to handle it. However as always we say please just add some obvious details just like anyone given a form to fill in. You would think then note.. where you were, what height, what location were you going/near, what happened, what did you do, what did you hit, what did it look like, where did it crash etc, use your noggin! :) If a craft is rejected, as per the other discussions, it can be for many reasons. It was another type (early late, more powerful etc etc) someone else got a critical hit - maybe AA, wingman, friendly fire whatever, PLUS fog of war, perhaps another pilot claimed it, maybe the AA gunner did etc, use your imagination and all is well. This subject has been discussed several times in the past, lots of past threads with examples and tips. If you go so far to work out which key words make it give you nearly 100% claims why bother using it (even so there will be some randomness added of course). Papers lost, mis-identification, Fog of war again blah. Do you want to "beat the game" or play realistically as best we can give it's software? Each person decides, and hence the workshop options.

409MB these days is nothing Wings of Prey is 6GB download (!) I know as I bought it and downloaded it lol (no DVD option at all!), Most people have broadband. Of course if you haven't it's not easy. We currently have no DVD option for HITR, and would not want to encourage any DVD shipping between players obviously - we may add a "backup DVD" option to the download, we'll look into it.

I think it will vary across the team and for sure vary during periods. Personally since 2005 just about every day, every free hour usually from early evening late into the early hours plus more weekends. Only recently with Christmas we had a short break and slowed down some but picking up the pace again now. In the few weeks before each release date we worked until 3-4am full 8 hour days there after a day job. Not a lot of time left for personal life/family for sure. It's not something I'd recommend certainly not to get rich. Luckily my partner is a saint. WM puts in more time than all of us, especially now and is also a whirlwind so does a lot more than we can do in the same time, we often accuse him of having 'clones'.

Fantastic work OvS !

Great story Creaghorn - hope you don't mind I re-posted it over at SimHQ forum too with some others from the guys.

It's a cfs3 bug somewhere, we looked but not been able to fix. Just warp in sorter bursts (good idea anyway).