-Hawkeye-

Is there something that reads out the G's on that HUD?

Not even close Don't see any special events going on there now.....is it a good place to ride?

Yessir Drucker, looking forward to hearing more from you; stick around!

Thanks gents, always looking for prospects for the winter season.

You guys were really having a great day. I really loved how you both worked together in the first engagement; 2 against 4 and you never got into trouble, each advising the other what to do or how to react. You really showed how to effectively use the Hanriot; great job! When Brit got "Kermit the Frog", was that from the pass he just made on the Alb, or was that just a coincidence of the message? If so, that was really fast! Were you guys both using a balloon gun? The single gun seemed very effective, Bart took out Hardy in that Brandenburg in one pass too. I'm thinking "the end" happened because of what I think is a common thing in RoF....with all the zooming in and out of FOV, the true distance of a plane can become misjudged; you judge a plane is out of range when really he has a pretty viable shot, and if you were able to see it from an outside view, alarm bells would have gone off sooner and you probably would have maneuvered a lot more aggressively to deny his shot. Anyway that may be a bunch of BS for your case, but it's happened to me often enough. Also, I wonder if the rudder loss is a DM characteristic of the Hanriot. The N17 used to have an overly easily lost rudder and there was a big outcry about that way back when, and the devs "fixed" it in one of the last updates, and it suffers no such problem anymore. After all, I'm sure Chunko was using just the standard Alb guns, and that wasn't a long lasting shot; yet, you lost your entire rudder and vertical stabilizer for what had to be few hits. Oh well, they'll never be fixing that problem I assume, and it's something that would keep folks from flying an otherwise decent plane, once they realize it. (EDIT: the sortie log registered only 3 hits; .006, .047, and .005. That was the entire amount of damage done to Barton's plane.) Salute to both of you for flying the Hanriot and doing such a great job. Often the vast majority cries about the worthlessness of a particular plane, and I think sorties like yours disproves their complaints and validates the use of such planes in FiF and other venues. S!

I hear they FORCE you to play it (SP) in BoS or one of those, so you can accrue the weapons you need to compete online? That's a flippin' crime....

It's free (CFS3)....cause I'll give you a copy if you want it. I tried it a long time ago for a very short time. I found the gunnery pretty hokey, inferior to RB3D. If you look at the videos, you'll see little flashes of light around the plane you're shooting at, even when the rounds miss, like exploding ammunition. I attribute that to the base program being based on a WWII sim. I thought it made gunnery a little ridiculous, since even misses "registered". Also you can see some of the damage destruction looks foolish. The bottom line is I found the physics, FMs, DMs all vastly superior in RoF, which is in fact a far more advanced sim. Obviously if RoF had all the planes that OFF has, nobody would be looking for something better. But hey, maybe they made it better somehow, but I think it's limited by the game it's based on. If anybody wants to try it, at least I can send you CFS3 and you can go from there. If you're really into SP, you might like it better than RoF, which is a joke in that area (not that I ever play it to know). Just let me know.

Now there's an awesome way of looking at things!

Inspiring is a great word for you all. S! and THANKS, gents!

A great get for our squad, very nice fellow; S! Jocassee!

Roll on, RR !! Great job! S!

Thanks Snaggle, that's good info. I configured updates to notify before installing....this is the way I've always had it set in previous Windows versions.

Was there supposed to be a link in that, Snaggle? As for controlling updates, I had from the beginning set my machine to never change drivers. But I didn't think you could stop the actual updates for Win10.....

Glad it helped Fred! Guess if you guys find problems with your other flight sims or games, this might be a good place to post about it! BTW, I haven't had any problem playing the game in SP mode (online). Haven't been into MMP yet. Fred, what apps did you get rid of, and how hard to do was it?

We'll leave the back door open, vW, visit any time! Feel better soon!

I agree with all of Barton's conclusions, which apply to RoF's "updated" FM for the Alb D.Va and Alb D.III. Prior to that update, my belief is that the D.III was superior in holding altitude in turns than the D.Va used to be. Timing complete revolutions is the way I've always tested planes, since RB3D days. My suggestion would be to use the compass that's available in the mini-gauges (cntl-I). That compass is completely analog and so eliminates any digital ambiguity, which Barton mentioned. It's easy enough to do exactly as Barton did and time the turn from N to N or whatever you choose, once your turn is already initiated and stable. It's also beneficial to look at a plane's instantaneous turn rate from full level speed. Higher speed planes often have a surprising turn rate for the first 180 degrees or so. I think if you're talking about absolute turning ability, you have to test it at ground level, because in this game the engine has the most (useable) power there, except for the altitude throttle models, and the best wing performance there. Also doing it at ground level forces you to keep a completely level turn, where as being even a couple hundred feet up will allow you to sacrifice a lot of altitude that will help the turn, even if unknowingly. That's what you'd do in real life, but it hard to quantify exactly how much you're doing it, and therefore hard to do exactly the same thing for two different aircraft. That said, just testing a plane at low level can be misleading, and most often it's better to maybe try them at ground, 1K, 2K, 3K, 4K, 5K, to get a true idea of where the plane's best strengths lie. Once you have a good idea of what your plane can do and also what the other guy's plane can do, it helps you make that quick decision before a fight that will determine how you engage, proceed, and disengage if necessary. One glaring area of neglect in the first video was indicating what the relative fuel levels were. This obviously can make all the difference, and although these two Albs should have very close tank capacities, this is not true of other planes even in this series, and is something very hard for us to match in actual weight, even if that is the bottom line; some planes have such terrible fuel usage that they HAVE to carry more fuel to start with to be of much use. Still there's a fuel level point with every plane above which I'd hate to engage an enemy, and even these planes are pigs with 100% fuel, so it's important to know at what level the turn performance really drops off. As for the DM's, IMO there's a BIG difference between these two planes. The D.III just can't be dived too steeply, it will shed ailerons once it starts to vibrate and there's nothing you can do about it if it gets to that point. Also, if it's hit in the wings by fire, it does the same thing, and then ALL the turn performance is gone. The D.Va just doesn't do that for whatever reason. It will lose it's wings if you pull too hard at too high a speed, but both planes do that. The last DM disadvantage for the D.III is that the engine is practically a one-bullet wonder, and quits running completely once oiled almost always before you can ditch it, which is going to give that enemy a shoot-down credit very quickly. For some reason the D.Va oils less easily and stays running longer when it does. All in all, I think the devs wanted to make the D.Va the better plane, after their update, for whatever reason. Actually before the update the comparison was a little more logical in which the lighter D.III had a little better maneuvering performance than the somewhat heavier D.Va. The Alb D.V was a lightened version of the D.III, but once the D.V's dangerous structural weaknesses became apparent, the strengthened (and heavier) D.Va quickly took it's place on the line, and all the hoped-for performance improvements of the D.V were basically lost.

OK, I think I've found some answers. First, there's apparently a lot more to this Windows 10 update than I had realized. I did a video driver update, no help. I did an RoF recovery, no help. But after the recovery, I started the game and it came up not full screen and a smaller resolution, because I hadn't set up my game settings yet. Then I saw this little green notification bar come up inside the game main screen. Only thing was, it was a Windows thing; nothing to do with the game. It said "to take a screen shot, push "Win + G". First thing I noticed was that the game shut down OK, since it wasn't full screen. So I went into the RoF settings and set up everything as it had been before (including "Fullscreen mode"). Again the game wouldn't shut down properly, black screen. So I went back into settings and left all of them the same, but left "Fullscreen mode" unchecked. Restarted game, and with resolution set to it's original optimal settings, it came up looking just like regular full screen as before; I couldn't see any difference. Only now when I quit, it quit normally. If you get this update, leave the "Fullscreen mode" setting unchecked in the "Graphics" tab of the settings! Now for this "Windows + G" key thing..... Somehow Windows, with this update, has added functionality that works INSIDE the game (not just this game, I'm sure). You can take screen shots, videos, record sound, all as a part of Windows. And it has some connection to X-box too, but I didn't look into that because I'm not set up there and didn't want to spend the time. Anyway I think recording videos in the conventional manner (outside the game, with sound, etc.) might be easier or better, but at the very least is definitely an integral part of Windows now, after the upgrade. Who knows, ye gaming video makers may actually see this as an advantage..... One thing I have to admit, in troubleshooting this, I had to bomb out of the operating system multiple times because as things were, there was nothing else you could do when the problem occurred. Upon reboot nothing was corrupted and Win 10 hardly missed a beat. It seems to recover very well or be immune to problems from improper shutdowns. I haven't tried playing the game yet with the "Fullscreen mode" setting unchecked. I doubt it will have any noticeable effect but I'll let you know when I get a chance to play again. For now, fiddling around setting up a new cell phone (Nexus 6P).

All, recently I got a BIG update for Win10. I could tell something was unusual because it took a really long time, almost like an initial Windows installation, and restart multiple times before it was done. After it was completed, I could see differences in the way things looked in the Windows start menu, and other places. It was like what they used to call a service pack, but it never really explained what the purpose was. Now when I play RoF, everything runs completely normally, except when I quit the game. Then I get a completely blank screen and can't do anything....no cursor, no ctrl-alt-del menu, no alt-tab, nothing. There is no choice but to bomb and force it off, then reboot. Everything comes up normally, and the game runs normally again, until I go to quit. This has happened every time I've run the game since the update....which is only twice. The first time I thought it was a fluke, but now I see it's going to do it every time. I tried to look at my update history to see if I could roll it back to before the update. Unfortunately there isn't a single update listed now, because it seems like it started from square one since the big update....again making it seem like a whole new Windows installation. I checked to see what the latest updates available were on my other computer. It seems there's a thing called the Windows 10 anniversary edition, or something to that effect. It's something they'll force on everybody eventually, but they don't do these things all at once anymore. You can make it do the update, if you for some reason wanted to. I guess I'm just "lucky" to have been chosen to get it earlier than most on my main machine. Beware of this update! I don't have time to deal with it right now, and I'm not sure what I should do. I'm afraid my latest image was AFTER the update, but I'm not sure. I might try to recover RoF to see it that fixes anything, but I hate to lose all my settings. Just wanted to make you aware and to be careful. It did not ASK if I wanted the update, it just chose to do it, and when I started my computer one day it went through all the big changes before I could do anything about it. Take care-

Thanks for the continuation of the saga.....I was getting withdrawal symptoms!!

Fine work, gentlemen!!

Well done fellas! S!

Wondering about the mechanics of what you're describing. You format your backup, but in what manner do you copy your disk? I didn't think a regular copy copies all the sectors and system areas that Windows uses. I thought only a disk image is an exact copy. Being an exact copy is why an image isn't workable for migrating from HDD to SSD, since how Windows handles storage on either differs and you'd just get an error if you tried to do that. Also, when you make the replacement disk the boot disk, how are you doing that? BIOS? I thought the whole reason for recovery disks or drives was that they're bootable and you can work from there to restore your image. Just wondering if you've ever actually used this to recover, and had it work. There's a lot I'm ignorant about but I usually muddle through somehow. I have an external drive like you do, but what I've always done is just make a disc image to it periodically....and all my other machines too, once they're scanned and verified OK. I've only had to recover with an image once. It worked well, using the Windows recovery disk to boot to and initiate restoration with the external drive connected. It recognized and restored the images without a problem. If the new drive is bigger than the old one, it just has unallocated space on it when it's done, and then you just append it onto your main sector with the disk manager to utilize all the space available. I think things might get more complicated once you have SSD's. For instance, my 950 Pro M.2 has a special driver to make it work right, and I'm not sure what would happen if you replaced it with any other kind of SSD. The only sure thing would be to get an exact replacement, and that's usually not possible once they stop making certain models. Who knows what will happen?

So my new machine with the Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD is working extremely well. It made my previous machine with a Seagate 1 TB magnetic HDD seem slow, even though it's got plenty of good memory and a quad core running at 3.6 GHz. I've been thinking why not upgrade it to an SSD, and the standard SATA III ones are plenty fast, and not that expensive. I'm sold on Samsung, in part because of the Magician software that has optimization, benchmarking, and a "Rapid Mode ". I found the prices for the 850 Evo and the 850 Pro, and decided that since the Pro is supposed to have twice the life, and considering it wasn't terribly more expensive, I decided to go with the Pro. I bought two 512 GB drives; one to replace the magnetic drive in my old machine, and one to add to my new machine. 512 GB is more than adequate for me, I've used only less than half of that, and the price compared to the 1 GB capacity is much less. I remembered what Butzzell had said about the Macrium Reflect software, and saw recommendations for the free version online too. I downloaded, installed, and even created a recovery drive with it. But when the new drives arrived, I decided why not try the included Samsung migration software, it really should work, right? So I installed the Samsung software suite, which included the Data Migration program, and the Magician software. When I ran the migration software, it immediately found a newer version than what came on the disks with the new drives, so I upgraded to that before I started. I ran that newer version, and it seemed a LOT simpler than what I saw of the Macrium software, but at the same time, it didn't automatically create some kind of recovery disk or drive.....it just went straight into the migration operation. In any case, in all the videos I looked at online, and in the instructions that came with the new drives, it showed using a USB to SATA III adapter (not included) to connect the new drive to the computer, for migration. I can't really understand why you need that instead of just connecting it directly internally; but I decided not to mess with fate and ordered one (it was about $12). Once the new drive was connected via that adapter to my USB 3.0, the migration software was all set to migrate from C: (old drive) to C: (Samsung SSD). I had around 190 GB of data on a 1 TB drive (less than Butzzell, I don't do all that skinning or mission building, etc.). It took about 35 minutes. The transfer rate started at about 56 GB/s, and by the end was at nearly 100 GB/s. Then I disconnected the new drive, shut down the computer, and installed the new drive using the exact same connections as the old drive. Booted up.....BOOM, she works! (Not surprised? Get this: when I was installing the new 2.5" SSD into the 3.5" drive bay adapter, I accidentally DROPPED the entire thing onto a CEMENT FLOOR from about chest high! ARRRRGGHH!!!) After it was up, I ran the Magician software and optimized the new drive for speed, then ran a benchmark test. The various read/write speeds were a little less than half of the bar graph scales shown.....disappointing but still far faster than before. I looked at the various parameters to see what I could see, and looked to enable the "Rapid Mode". However, of the various requirements that are needed to run it, I saw that the program did not recognize the operating system, which needed to be Win 7 or above. Well, since I had Win 10 it should have seen that no problem. When I had started the Magician program, I didn't notice it checking for a newer version, so I googled "newest version Samsung Magician" and found a version that was a lot newer than what had been installed from the install disk. After I had upgraded to this and run it, I could see that it now recognized Win 10 and that all buttons were enabled, so I turned on the "Rapid Mode", which required a reboot. Booted up, restarted Samsung Magician, and re-ran the benchmark tests. BOOM! The speeds were now MAXED OUT on the scales shown, and the speed numbers were actually DOUBLE the bar graph limits. Wow, helluva improvement. So my old machine got some serious speed improvement and it now boots up almost as fast as my new one. Later, I'll add the other new drive to my new machine and double the storage capacity, and probably use it for image backups, which should then go like blazes.

Sweet! Nice work!