-Hawkeye-

It's not that the IDs don't change for BoX.... but the game recognizes when they have changed. The next time you start the game, it asks you if you want to transfer all of the functions that were assigned to the "old" controller to the "new" controller. You definitely want to answer "yes" when it asks you that. It is doing, automatically, exactly what I did manually, in the O.P. The problem is that it thinks the original controllers actually exist as separate physical units that you might want to plug in again, later; so instead of recycling the ID numbers, it increments them to new ones sequencially each time. So, I'm up to about joystick 6 right now, and the file in the game that keeps track of all of your controllers is quite a mess.... ideally, in my case, it should only have 3 devices in it. I am wondering if it's OK to simply delete the obsolete IDs from that file, and if I did, what would happen the next time the game started, or the next time the IDs changed.

At one time I was going to do that. However, obviously the more controllers you have, the more complex it gets; then add to that any variations in controls maps you may have started with. For example, if I have 3 controllers, there are 8 different possibilities in ID combinations, for each map. Now, if I have 3 or 4 different maps, such as a default map, a map for single engine planes, a map for twin engined planes, and a map for a 4 engined plane....or maybe, you've made a map for a rotary type plane, as opposed to a water cooled plane, in addition to the default map. In any case, the number of required maps to cover all possible variations in controller IDs quickly explodes to 24 - 32 different maps. The solution of course is to develop one single, universal map that works for everything. RoF won't let you edit the "default" map....at least, not within the game.... so from that standpoint, you'd have to have at least 2 separate maps. It would be interesting to see if you could successfully edit the "default" map outside the game and be able to use that map alone. Even if RoF forced you to have the non-editable default map, you could effectively ignore it and work off of your other 8 (or whatever number, depending on your number of controllers), thereby minimizing the number to 9 total maps that would cover all possible ID combinations. What you're suggesting is doable, and far more practical for anybody who has fewer game controllers, and, ultimately, the least possible number of maps.... preferably, one universal map. Truthfully, I think I'm just about to that point anyway. I think it could be practical for anybody that wanted to work at it. Using the method in the O.P. would certainly be the easiest way to accomplish that.

I haven't tried anything yet. Haven't wanted to cause any breakdowns during FiF season. Updating is far on the back burner, now. It's going to happen in conjunction with some other hardware things I want to maintain....a couple of replacement fans, getting rid of an add-in card I'm having issues with, etc. Ultimately, regardless of the reasons for finickiness, I've pretty much had it with this MSI motherboard that I've been using the past couple of years. The onboard USB has been very unreliable, and that causes me a lot of headaches. If the latest BIOS updates doesn't change that, I think I'm going to build a new machine, at least a new motherboard, CPU and memory (going with a Gigabyte MB this time); I can keep my video card going for a while longer. Not sure about the SSD....it's a good one but there are newer ones now, and they're expensive. I'd like to hang on for at least the rest of the year, but these problems are getting me down.

@ Hotlead: yup, those things are radiators, regardless of whether they have shutters to close them off, or not. Coolant (in the case of all WWI water-cooled aircraft: plain water) flows through them, which cools it, and in turn, the engine. I recently had a laugh when I heard a pilot say that he was "losing glycol" in RoF. Nope, no such thing in WWI; just plain water. In fact, in the Fall/Winter/Spring seasons, the mechanics had to completely drain the engines at the end of every flying day, and refill them in the morning, so that the water wouldn't freeze if the outside air temperature dropped below 32 deg. F (0 deg. C) and crack the engine blocks. Imagine that! @ Vik and all: the RoF Alb D.II engine is actually very resistant to blowing it up....you almost can't do it without trying especially hard. Why? Because by the time it reaches the redline RPM, the plane is going fast enough that the lift from the wings overcomes the ability of the elevator to keep the nose down (what Vik called "I lost elevator authority"). That reduction in dive steepness in turn keeps the RPM's from going too high....like what is known as a negative feedback loop. The only way to overcome that and force an overspeed of the engine is to use the rudder to spiral and keep the nose down in the process. That's not a condition that's easy to duplicate unless specifically trying to do that. In the case of all types of Albs, that is unique to the D.II's; you will not get such engine robustness in any other model of Alb. Any D.III or D.Va will easily surpass 1,600 RPM in a dive and blow up; so throttle modulation and dive angle becomes far more important in those planes. Those specific idiosyncrasies that apply to the different Alb types in RoF are probably just the way the FM's turned out, in RoF. I doubt those specific things will translate to FC. I can't see that the parameters were that much different in those planes, that would cause those kinds of differences in engine management requirements. However, in RoF, it is good to know and make use of those idiosyncrasies; both as a user of those planes, and as an opponent to those planes. It should be very apparent that any Alb, regardless of the reason why, is pretty much incapable of keeping his gunsight on you during a straight-down dive. If he tries, he will either blow up his engine, or just plain be unable to do so due to his flying characteristics. Consequently, an experienced Alb pilot will not attempt to do that; instead, he will point his plane ahead of your trajectory and decend at a shallower, more efficient angle, and eventually meet you again, where he can damage you and slow you down, and then be able to finish the kill.

We all know what a pain it is when some Windows update decides to change all of your joystick IDs in RoF. If you have a lot of devices, and lots of buttons axis' assigned on those devices, it can take a long time to fix, and it's easy to miss something. Instead of going through all of the pages in your current controls map inside the game, re-assigning every one that has to do with a joystick, and then re-saving the file, you can do this: First, start the game and determine what your current joystick IDs are, compared to your old IDs. Click in any open field of the controls map, and actuate a button (or axis) for each game controller; take note of what ID the game now sees it as. Example: this assumes an installation that uses 3 different game controllers: a joystick, a throttle, and a set of pedals. Device: Old ID: New ID: Joystick joy0 joy1 Throttle joy1 joy2 Pedals joy2 joy0 Write down the above information; exit and close the RoF game. Now browse to the location of the ".actions" file that you wish to correct. For example, if the current controls map that you're using is based on a file that you've saved called "1 and 2 engine" in the game, find the file called "1 and 2 engine.actions". In this example, the location would be: C:\Program Files (x86)\1C-777\Rise of Flight\data\input Open the file using Notepad. In the center column of that file, see all of the entries that have either "joy0", "joy1" or "joy2" in them. All of the other entries that do not have "joy_" in them, you will ignore and bypass. Starting at the very first entry that has "joy_" in it, position your cursor just to the right of the number that follows "joy". That is your OLD or original controller ID for that controller. Hit "Backspace", and then enter the NEW number for that particular controller. Then, using the "down arrow", arrow down until the cursor is on the right side of the NEXT number in the file. Paying attention to what that number is, change it to the new ID. Using the example above, you would do this: Change every "0" to a "1". Change every "1" to a "2". Change every "2" to a "0". By starting at the first instance of a joystick ID in the file, and progressing down, in order, all the way through the file to the end, you'll be doing this repetitively: Backspace, [new number], down arrow, backspace, [new number], down arrow, etc., etc. When all of the "joy_" entries have been corrected to their current IDs, save the file by going to the top and hit "File>Save"; then close the file browser. Restart RoF, then go to Settings and Controls; then import the file with the name that you just edited. Then hit "apply". This will make the corrected file your current controls map file. DO NOT edit "_current_.map" in the "input" directory, directly. Use the above procedure instead. The above procedure allows you to more quickly correct the entire controls map without having to depress the correct buttons all over again, some of which may be tricky or finicky to duplicate, and avoids you having to remember exactly which button to push for each function, in order to keep it the same as it was before the ID change. Since you are only changing the number, you don't have to remember which did what. It also reduces the chance that you'll miss some single entry on a page of the controls map in the game, since you're going in order from top to bottom in the file. Once the imported file has been applied, everything should now work again, just like it did before, with a minimum of hassle. S!

How will the FM of the Rata compare with BoX's Rata? How do the FMs of other planes they may have in common compare?

@ Pragr, see this post concerning how to set the rof.exe file to run in "compatibility mode": compatibility mode If you've recently reinstalled RoF for any reason, you may have forgotten to do that. S!

I ordered it....seems like a great price. Wish I had had this when I was on vacation in Florida. Instead, I re-read Winged Victory by V.M. Yeates....an outstanding read. Bit confused on the format of this new book, though. Says it's a novel which implies fiction; yet it mentions real historical people, so that implies factual stories. Which is it?

Wondering if anybody has already updated to this or is running this. Previous version is 1803. I've been caught up with updates since I got back from vacation, and just yesterday I checked for updates, and up comes a "Windows Feature Update". Uh-oh! I hate those; an entirely new version of Windows. Why do they have to do that so often? Anyway, just like when I was trying to update to version 1803, it didn't work; same symptom too... only this time, I do NOT have "quick boot" enabled in the BIOS. Still, it locked up during the BIOS load, and after killing it and restarting, it booted back up into Windows ver. 1803, with an error code for a failed update. I went to the MSI website and checked the BIOS section, and they have one version newer than what I'm running (a beta version). Guess what the note said. "Improves stability with Windows version 1809". I'll report back when I get a chance to try this.

He looks great, at 88. Amazing service!

Not many like you Baron; not many at all. You have some great comrades, just like in the real JG1. I can't help thinking that if they all got together at the same time, what an unstoppable force they would be. Such is the paradox of our online unit. Few to none are the times we're able to act as one. If we could, none could stand up to us; of that, I have NO doubt. S!

Well here in Florida, due to the large population of old people, the term "Q-tips" is slang for those folks that you see driving around in their cars. It refers to what you see of them sticking up behind the dashboards of their cars...think about it Someday I hope to attain that status....

Very fine work! Do I even see turnbuckles on those wires? That's incredible detail!

Thanks guys! The things you learn, after all this time

Is it that the tracks disappear entirely, or that they just don't work properly or at all within the new version? The latter has happened to me within RoF. The track is still in the list, but won't play back properly. On another, sort of related note, I was wondering if others experience this during RoF track playbacks: If I watch a track entirely within the cockpit view (F1), it looks completely normal to me; just the way I saw it during the recording. However, if I go to an external view (F2) and then go back into the cockpit view (F1), that cockpit view then has a far smaller FOV (greater level of zoom), and then I can't see nearly as much going on at the peripheries of my view as I did when I recorded it; and it stays that way for the rest of the playback. That anomaly makes creating an accurate video much more difficult. You can get around it, but it complicates things.

IMHO I do think the Rescue / Pickup missions are under-rewarded. Those missions require the pilot to land in enemy territory, so obviously they're at a disadvantage tactically; and having flares mark exactly where they are to defenders is especially dangerous. While landing at aerodromes is often possible, at times they have to land planes that are difficult enough to land on a smooth aerodrome, on uneven, or tree-infested ground. Some of the missions even require the mission plane to further foray into other dangerous enemy territories before the trip home to be fully successful. In all cases, the planes start at ground level on their return trips, and are under time constraints that forbid them to take excessive time completing the mission safely, since their success depends on their return in time to allow secondary missions to take place. In all cases, the ground level / low level requirements in enemy territory expose them to far more dangerous levels of flak throughout their missions. In short, they're almost completely suicidal; more so when using ealier, poorer-climbing 2-seaters. The odds do get better with later, faster planes that hopefully will be carrying a good human gunner; but they're still incredibly difficult. In fact, there are few pilots who even want to attempt them, and honestly only do so for the benefit of the team, since death / capture is almost guaranteed. I'd say that successful completion of those primary missions should be worth at least 3 ground kills / points. IMHO, these would be the types of missions that would be considered one-off, medal winning missions, if they took place in WWI.

Doesn't appear to be big enough for squadron level participation anyway.

Great job, everybody! Congrats, and S!

Well, in the end, I suppose the side-switching aspect of events evens things out regardless. What's the real point of bailing out at all, if, as Kliegmann points out, you can just run into the canopy and basically kill the enemy every time he does it, without consequences. Personally I don't think it's right if the DM let's you get away with that...ever seen a cord get wrapped up in a boat motor? Stops it dead and it isn't going anywhere until you disassemble the prop and get it out. In any case, if it was that risk-free why would anybody have wasted bullets on shooting the jumper? After all's said and done I think for events we're better off without that capability at all....where lives matter. It would be especially wrong if they just applied it to all German planes in general. I have a feeling though that it's one of those current game engine things because it's universal on both sides of the WWII genre and they never foresaw the possibility that it might need to be limited in some way. Just another reason why it was a bad idea to lump the two time frames together.

Away from home now and can't remember if the 'chute is always available, or a piece of pilot equipment you select, or some kind of mod you select. If not, it should be. That way in certain events, where match-ups with as close a level of parity as possible are desired, the 'chute could be restricted or eliminated by the server op. For all I know it already works that way. But if not, it doesn't seem like that hard of a thing to change in the game. After all, the 'chutes were not universal...every single German pilot was not equipped with one, especially in early deployment.

Oh.

Of course we can! Nobody here would question the hardships that the Netherlands went through in WWII, and nobody here has any sympathy for the Nazis; the very least of all, the German people. Not sure if you got that impression somehow, but if so, it's a mistaken impression. The only thing I can think of is that there are some skins that are as close to historically correct as possible, which have that emblem included. These are clearly labeled and of course no skins at all are required for anybody who does not wish to use them.

Never forget the difference between the people and/or culture of a country, and the government of a country. They are not one and the same. Many like to portray them that way. That's very convenient for the purposes of war. I see the vast difference in our own country, and the trouble that causes. One thing I know is that the people of the U.S. are good people. They don't always agree with the actions their government takes. I think that's true of most countries. A wise person might see this, but the wise do not rule the world, IMHO.

I see I missed a lot, Emely. Maybe another time. Well done....S!

All you do is add the empty folder? I'll need a reminder on this... can't take any action on it right now. Seems pretty important.