To counter the "Extremely disappointed with RoF" thread perhaps it's time to start a thread with a positive feel about OFF .... although I hasten to add the RoF thread reconfirmed to many the joys of OFFing.

So what is it ? What grabs you about OFF ? Why is it the best current WW1 flight sim on the market ? Why is the CFS3 stigma excuse used by some so annoying ? Are big boobs over-rated ? Are big bums under-rated for that matter ? Is the map, encompassing not only the Western Front but also England, the English Channel, Madamoiselle Fifi's Gentlemens Establishment and the Swiss Alps, too big ? Do you feel like "you're there" atmosphere and all ? Was it a good investment ? How does you wife/partner feel about it {Puts exempted } ?

Personally, I'm a campaign guy. The dynamic, non-linear, unscripted, non-respawning historical campaign is as good as it comes and often surprises me with what happens ... or sometimes what not happens ! It is the heart and soul of OFF and always has been. The improved scenery and terrain in P3 has of course increased the immersion factor .... and word is out the devs are working on joining all those pesky railyards with tracks ! That along with the recent cloud turbulence bug being squashed will provide even more immersion for those with a tactical bent and an eye on history.

That's me done. It's up to you now !

+1

I like OFF3 because I feel like I am really a part of the WWI Great Air War through the OFF simulation. I think this feeling is what the OFF 3 Developers were trying for.

I also think the Landscape, AI, Objects and flying are good but like catch I am a Campaign Guy as well. The OFF3 campaign missions are like snow flakes (always different) which is important to me so I do not get bored.

The Player support by the development team is super with regular updates and communication. The development team also has an objective to permit people to tune OFF3 to their "personal" taste by implementing parameter options (which as some know is my objective in my flight sim development).

The above is just not avaible for me in ROF. ROF is basicly a MP game, IMHO, but even MP has some missing content.

I like the OFF3 experience. The developers have captured the feeling of the Great War, not only in the air, but in No Mans Land. This sim has immersion, the feeling of actually being in a squadron, or Jasta of real people caught up in a life, and death struggle.

I`m also a campaign man, really enjoy the challenges, and new scenario`s that hold ones interest. I like all the content in the sim, it has good grafics, and landscape, a large variety of a/c, with more to soon be added. Looking forward to phase 4.

A developer, and team that listens to their customers, and allows them to tune the parameters of the sim to their own style of play. The single missions are challenging, and you can hone your skills in QC. There`s also MP for those who enjoy that. I think OFF3 has WWI in the Air well covered. Puts

Thank you Polovski and team.

Where else can you get a current WWI combat flight sim that has all that OFF3 BHaH offers? Besides the very good looking GFX, the FM/DM is very good and the AI is top shelf, but OFF3 BHaH does not stop there...oh no sir, you get accurate period aircraft in their historical timeframe, historical squardons and their locations through the conflict, the aces (and just not the well know one's), historical aircraft skins, a battlefield that actually moves historically and seems very alive and even weather that is historically modeled...... what a deal for under $30.00

I really don't understand the problem some might have with OFF using CFS3 game engine, all flight sims titles have there not so "great moments" in game coding but the devs of OFF3 BHaH have managed to actually make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I bought CFS3 when it first came out, played it a couple weeks and promptly removed it from my HD, never to see the light of day again until I got my copy of OFF3 BHaH. I am still in awe with what the devs have done with the CFS3 engine, if it wasn't for the fact I have to put my CFS3 disk 1 in my DVD tray to play OFF3 BHaH, I would never have believed that OFF3 BHaH uses the CFS3 game engine.

As for the dev's themself's not enough good things can be said about these guy's, they are what all game designers/publishers should strive too be

Good idea, Catch, nice to see a positive thread about OFF, in support of OFF. Well.. here goes, here are the things that really strike me as positive about OFF, and especially the pay for version 3, "Between Heaven and Hell" and it's latest free version updates:

1. The devs at OFF listen.
I have never seen such a responsive, caring developer go so far out of their way to take care of their paying customers. They constantly try to answer players questions, help them with their problems, and change OFF in directions they get positive directional feedback about.

2. Trust
No online log in requirements, no security checks. You, the buyer are treated as adults, trusted that you will pay for OFF, buy a legal copy along with a legal copy of CFS3. You are also not put in a position of not being able to resell your copy of OFF, and it's possible paid for add ons, or left in a position of feeling that the game may some day go broke and you will no longer be able to then play it because of logg on requirements, etc.

3. Value for $ spent.
A full featured.. loaded, sim, with a huge complement of historically accuarte planes, maps, news data, dynamic events, this is everything Red Baron would have wished to have achieved if it had survived.. but that is a no brainier, many of the creators of OFF were mod developers for RBII and RB3d and honed their skills over the years.

4. "IMMERSION" It's a very important word, one I coined several years ago in the early development of OFF and it has stuck and just gotten stronger over the years. You can't pin it down to just one thing. True, OFF doesn't have the very best flight modeling, but it's pretty damn good, true, recent sims will probably eclipse OFF in eye candy in some areas, but OFF has held it's own.. Why? ... because it puts it all together in a quality experience that manages to pull you into the action and put you there. NO other sim has been able to do that as effectively as OFF has so far. If some others can do it down the line, bravo, but OFF is here now, and it's a gold star in the rest of the wanna be WWI flight sims that seem to only be able to achieve success in limited areas.

5. Dedication
As touched on in #3 above, a dedicated bunch of independent contributors, from all parts of the globe, who are in this out of the love of the WWI flight sim attraction. Many of us have our roots going back to mods of the earliest Red Baron games. We love doing it and we love sharing it with others who are also attracted to this era, or to those younger who know nothing about it but are then blown away when they do get involved in the sim, get a true feeling of what it must have been like, and learn more about this amazing part of history. I have made some very good friends who have helped me as I contributed my efforts to OFF; we have all shared our knowledge and we all appreciate what each of us has offered to this joint effort.

That's about it.. all I can say is, until some one, or some group or company can put everything together as a whole, dynamic, engrossing, experience, Over Flanders Fields - Between Heaven & Hell is the most amazing WWI flight sim that has ever been offered to us to enter and experience.

Salute!

I completly agree with everything that was said here!

so:

+1

Couldn't write a better praise for OFF then what already has been written in this thread.
Even if it cost the double I still would get it. Amazing immersion. Pure fun.

It's a worthy successor to pick up the mantle of RB3D (hardly surprising given the pedigree of the designers). It's probably true that association with CFS3 hasn't exactly benefitted OFF, but it does mean that the game is undersold in respect to expectations. If CFS3 sent a shiver down your spine for all the wrong reasons - and I can understand why, having flown it once or twice waiting for OFF to arrive in the post - then flying OFF with what is ostensibly the same engine is an extremely pleasant surpise indeed.

Well, it's pleasant until you start running into enemy aircraft, then you get a somewhat more unpleasant surprise in the form of the AI. Ouch!

Not much really new here, I just wanted to add my tiny voice in praise of what I believe will be the standard other WWI sims will try to match for many years, as was Red Baron.

The graphics, both 3D and 2D, are superb. The ability of the hardware to process more informaton has made it possible to add variety and details that couldn't be done before. I personally am especially pleased with the terrain rendering. Identical tiles repeating over and over again in an identical pattern have been replaced by unique identifiable landmarks that can be used for vfr navigation just as real pilots do to this day, reducing or eliminating the need for using a gps-style map that is (game-wise) decades in the future. But that can be said about so many flight sims these days.

The one thing that Red Baron always over other flight sims of any era was its campaign. RB's engine was a marvel, creating dozens of flights some of which could intersect yours and others which came nowhere near. You could fly your entire mission without seeing a single aircraft besides the ones in your flight, which may make for a boring flight, but it is the way it was for the real pilots. OTOH, you can leave you intended flight path and run into several flights of friendly and/or enemy aircraft. You just never knew what you would find where, again just like it really happened. No other sim I've tried came close to the "What will happen when the wheels clear the ground?" feeling that must have run through the mind of every pilot from the newest replacement to the von Richtofen's, Ball's and Guynemer's. Until now! OFF's campaign engine does exactly what Red Baron's did, create dozens of missions for dozens of squadrons on both sides and lets fate and your choices decide what you see and what you don't. You could just miss bumping into a half dozen nice, fat, ripe BE2's only to find yourself mixing it up with the whole of RAF 56 or Les Cignones. Now that's 'as real as it gets'.

I have to say that the online experience is not as good. As a regular in Vasco's Sunday gatherings I can say that the interface is cumbersome at best (no metaservers means all games must be played on the host's ip, therefore if he has a problem everybody is toast). There is also a 'stuttering' problem that must be in the game because too many people see it for it to be a connection thing. OTOH, the fact that AI aircraft are available in multiplayer makes for more possibilities than one had/has in Red Baron.

And while we're on the subject of AI, if you're used to the AI in most other sims, hold onto your hat. In most games, they fly in predictable patterns and make the same moves over and over again. While I still rate human pilots better, these guys are tough. In Red Baron, IL-2, MiG Alley and the CFS series it was next to nothing to take on three and four enemies at a time, even on 'ace' settings. I'm a lot less reckless in OFF. They even seem to know when you're gaining an advantage over one of their comrades and will come to his rescue (although I've not had the same luck with my wingmen ).

Throw in full support for Track IR and overall it's what every simmer (at least the WWI crowd) would expect from Red Baron 4 or maybe even 5.

Well, gentlemen,

You've spoken about the elements that we all like in OFF, so I now invite you post your actual flying experiences in the campaigns you've undertaken - complete with documentary evidence!

Words and pictures, at your leisure guys, see the thread started this evening by YT.

This was a great find. At first, after reading a bit about OFF I was leery about the CFS3 engine being used, but playing Over Flanders Fields quickly put my hesitancy to rest. The devs have done a lot to make this as immersive a WWI Airsim as I was looking for, with tons of excellent historical data, archival footage from WWI to help set the tone, and a very well done campaign. The aeroplane modelling is well done and skins historically authentic. Well worth the time to fly.

lol.
cfs3 is what it is, but the team's done a great job evolving that into something else.

Uhh.. ya, that's the whole point, and it's quite amazing by any standards. Thanks.

I've just finished one rough Patrol Mission in campaign and my neck is aching of tension and my hands are just sweating (which normally doesn't happen). It was like if for 50 minutes I was right there. I'll relax now, tomorrow, another mission waits for me.
Thanks to the OFF's devs for having created such a combat sim.

Heck, I just jumped into a couple of Quick Combat scenarios. My hands were aching after I managed through great effort to down a couple of Jerrys before their squad mate got me. The Spads are not the best for dogfighting. Perhaps I just don't have enough stick time with the Spads.

I had to get use to the Spad myself, I think a lot of it is the closeness of the wing to the upper cowling in front of the pilot. After a lot of stick time with her, I`ve become more confident in furballs with her. Puts

I've been very happy with OFF BH&H from day one. Since the months of it's release I have only become more pleased with the continued developement and improvements. One of the aspects I appreciate is the modding by the community. The user made missions are very good and fun but I am excited by the skinners who have recreated many historic skins and some wonderful "fantasy" skins for download. Attached are some screenies of the most recent skin I have downloaded. From Spring 1919 it is the aircraft of Lt. John Jeffers. He was stationed in Germany as part of the U.S. 94th Squadron Occupation force. The Germans of course were known in part for the fantastic personal markings and paintschemes of the crates they flew. At the end of the war the U.S. 94th were allowed the liberty to repaint thier planes to thier liking. Many of these paintschemes have been recreated by OFF skinners. My many thanks to the developers and the modders.

Having trouble with the images. I will try again.

One of things that seem to be in common with many of the people that fly OFF is that we roleplay a WWI pilot. Even a career as a bomber pilot or observer is possible. We create the characters, give them names and decide on such things as name,rank, nationality and sqaudron/jasta assignment. Many of us have personal skins (that will soon be exclusive to our plane with the next update) because skins of our own design can be created. As these characters we create we care about surviving and living to fight/fly another day. Our men are less disposable in our minds and hearts this way and creates a special sense of being part of history. If you roleplay other games you'll know what I mean. We refer to this aspect in general as immersion. The feeling of being there.
On the other hand we have the ability to fly in Quick Combat or the new Scenario mode and select "pilot never dies" for some very fun and excitng action without suffering the lose of a created character. I fly in these modes when I don't have a lot of free time or when I get a new piece of kit like a new joystick and need to learn how to use it.
Below is a pic of a user made skin made for me by a good friend in Germany. I think the skin is fantastic looking and it has my characters name below the cockpit. I love this game!

Let's try this again.

Hey whaddaya know? Man I was disappointed when this thread was locked. Being new to SimHQ I thought maybe I had the wrong idea of how things worked. Ultimately I understand the situation. Now I won't see this thread fade into obscurity so fast and I had hoped to contribute some more reflections and pics. Thanks guod.

I agree, to get back on track with this thread.. Not trying to lure members away from SimHQ, but I was just reading though the "Reports From the Front" over on the CombatAce forum and it made me realize what an incredible Simulation/Historical experience OFF is Reports From the Front It was started in March and is already up to almost 300 posts, with some wonderful stories that players have experienced and some pretty incredible writing by many.
Again, just go visit, both these forums have a lot to offer and can be enjoyed, I know I check them both out all the time. Just as ROF and OFF both have a lot to offer in different ways, I just happen to think OFF has a lot more, so far.

Fantastic pics Rickity Keep em coming lad !

Catch, thanks. You'll be sorry if you keep encouraging me, hehe. Not much of a story with these pics. Today I took apart my laptop and cleaned out the dust as I was seeing a degredation of OFF performance. It was running too hot and the FPS were all over the map. So this was the first flight after the clean. I am very happy to report a much improved performance. I'll need to do a cleanout every few months to get the best from my low spec laptop but that's a small price to pay. True test too, with all those clouds and rain.

But that's the whole idea Rickety I'm still blown away that OFF can be played on laptops ! Yours looks to be doing very well. But good maintenance and a clean machine helps eh