Rise of Flight : Now with Red Baron 3D-esque dynamic campaign

[milko]

Thanks. Giving that a go, not super-bothered about stats and yet to dip a toe in multiplayer but I'll be getting there.

[Tim James]

Do you guys set the FPS Limiter to 60? I'm pretty sure I've had it at unlimited. I just switched it to 60 and it seems to help keep framerate smoother and more consistent.

I also saw someone on the forums suggest enabling Multi-GPU even for single cards. I think I've been using that for a week or two. I did a frame timing analysis and it's definitely worse with my single ATI 6970.

I tried making more of those charts with FRAPS but I should've done it with a repeatable timedemo instead. It's kind of hopeless though: in the end the TrackIR / force feedback stutter is worse than anything I get from reasonable graphics settings. (Unless I throw 25 AI planes into a quick mission -- that always kills framerate!)

I'm tempted to consider a non-FFB joystick. It's hard to tell how much I get out of the game from force feedback. Maybe I'll pull out my old Saitek this weekend.

[Mr Bismarck]

Firing at the enemy while upside down with shell casings coming out past your ears?

Sure, why not.

[Jasper Phillips]

Did you get him?

[Mr Bismarck]

Yes sir.

[Mr Bismarck]

Meanwhile, one of the Camels tries to sneak behind German lines in disguise...

[Penny Dreadful]

Looks legit.

[Dan_Theman]

Meanwhile, one of the Camels tries to sneak behind German lines in disguise...

Looks legit.

"It's an older code, sir, but it checks out. I was about to clear them."

[Penny Dreadful]

Lol. Well played.

[djotefsoup]

I gave these away but I hadn't actually spent that much time in them so far. So! Scramble mission - 15 DVIIF vs 15 Camel.

It turns out scramble missions with 'warm up engine' deselected is actually kind of a bad idea. The fight starts well before my engine is warm enough for takeoff and I end up turning the plane around 270 degrees just trying to rev it hard enough to warm up. Nevermind, I'm sure that everyone's waited for me to get airborne before starting the fight...


...or not...


The DVIIF climbs about as well as anything in the game, and has a separate 'altitude throttle' which is kind of similar (only not) to WEP/GM1 style systems from WW2. As with them engaging it at low altitude fries the engine, but you can get away with using a little tiny bit of it for a minor boost lower down that it's rated for. So I'm quickly up to at least the point where the lowest dogfighting camels have blown their alt.


..and of course he drags me right back into the melee at the first opportunity.

[djotefsoup]

This was pretty seriously intense with all of the planes concentrated in about a 1km square box. Both planes turn very well, both have lots of power to scramble back into the fight and protect each other, so you tend not to see the same kinds of globular clusters of fights form as you do with other lower powered planes.



And if you just shot one down that usually means there's one close and coming at you the next second.


Sometimes very close.

[djotefsoup]

The Camel AI is pretty mixed in its abilities, and it mixes up well in a fight. It does actually seem to be aware of how to fight in it pretty well, and you see a lot of that instability it was famous for in the AI - one second looking like they're going to spin and stack it (though they will occasionally just stack it :)), the next turning that spin into something they can shoot you with.




And of course they aren't the only thing you need to watch out for.

[djotefsoup]

This guy actually nailed the Camel coming down, not that I saw it at the time, so by the time I got out of the way and swung back for my shot at where I thought he would be, he was in an unpowered spin and about 5 feet from my wing.



Bail out of that situation and I find I'm actually being passed by a camel on fire.


Then straight into another headon pass. Really can't look around enough in a fight like this.

[djotefsoup]

Down one, straight into crossfire of another Camel shooting another D.VIIF behind me.

[djotefsoup]

A pilot kill flips this guy inverted and it looks like we've got most of them now.


Except for the burning one nobody bothered to look at headed straight into this guy.

[djotefsoup]

Uh, oops.


Bonus shot of the exploding camel collision avoidance system from somewhere around shot 6:

[Tim James]

That last shot is great. It would look good in a dramatic Hollywood movie trailer about WWI.

I've been taking a break to work on my backlog a bit and play DayZ. I'll probably play a little RoF this weekend if my new videocard works out.

[Fishbreath]

The D.VIIF is an airplane for cheaters and cowards. :P

Edit: so I'm not just being insulting, here's a video of a Camel engine starting and running.

[Mr Bismarck]

Camels eat DVIIF's for breakfast, lunch and tea down low. The DVIIF is my favourite aircraft though - a beauty to fly and tries to kill its own pilot markedly less than the Camel.

Meanwhile, here's the correct procedure for dealing with an engine fire in the HP400.

[Tim James]

Was that to avoid getting counted as a crashed plane, or just for fun?

[Mr Bismarck]

A little of column A, a little of column SCIENCE!

It turns out the HP400 doesn't have enough power to take off with one engine.

[jpinard]

Camels eat DVIIF's for breakfast, lunch and tea down low. The DVIIF is my favourite aircraft though - a beauty to fly and tries to kill its own pilot markedly less than the Camel.

Meanwhile, here's the correct procedure for dealing with an engine fire in the HP400.

I did NOT konw that could happen. Awesome!!

[Tim James]

The news blog had a video of the rockets a couple weeks ago.

I might have to get those.

[djotefsoup]

Yeah, I bought all of them when they first appeared. It's like with the field mods - if you buy them all at once you're pretty close to getting the shit ones or ones you don't use for free anyhow.

The shots they've been showing off of the 6 gun Dolphin look pretty sweet, I'm going to have to take that one up first for sure.

[Fishbreath]

I really only want the two wing guns. I guess you probably can't lean out far enough to reload them.

[Mr Bismarck]

The HP400 doesn't have laser guided bombs, so you need to get really close to your target.

[Penny Dreadful]

Man, the Fokker Dr.I triplane flies like a freaking kite. It's going to take a while to really get used to maneuvering it in a dog fight. The nice thing about it though is I got half of one wing knocked off but because I still had two and a half wings left I was able to continue on and take down a balloon and then land without killing myself.

[Fishbreath]

The HP400 doesn't have laser guided bombs, so you need to get really close to your target.

That's the second-most impressive bomber stunt I've seen. The winner.

[Mr Bismarck]

Just taking off in the Gotha is somewhere in the top ten for most impressive bomber stunts, with all that adverse-yaw nonsense.

[Brendan]

Is it possible to play the entire single-player dynamic campaign in offline mode these days?