As the tital says when did you give up playing CFS? was it when CFS3 came out with it's stupid run the war all on you own? If i wanted to run a war I would have gone and got a RTS not a flight sim. or maby it was CFS2 mabey you didn't like the change of Theater or maby you had aproblem with the orignal. Or maby you still play it ? so heres the wuestion if you stoped playing CFS why if you still play it what keeps you coming back?

I put it back on the computer so that I could play OFF.

^ ^ what Gwalch said.
If it wasn't for OFF my CFS3 disc would be in the bin where it belongs.

I did however enjoy CFS2.

I still fire it up once and a while. The sound for the 303 machine guns is the worst ever.

Same as gwalch! I only have CFS3 because of OFF.

IMO, The idea behind CFS3 campaign was good but unfortunally very badly implemented and in the end it was this that made me gave up from CFS3. IMO, what was wrong with CFS3 campaign was:
- It seems that it was designed so that you as player "decided the outcome" through your actions but it didn't matter even if you won all missions, the war seemed to have it's own will and that will was that the oposing side (AI) won all the times (no matter what you did).
- All missions were tactical and only happened in the front line which made the use of bombers such as the B-25 and B-26 almost useless (which IMO was the best feature of CFS3 - to have the B-25 and B-26 bombers). And if you had addon (strategic) bombers such as the B-17 or the Lancaster, the campaign become even more useless! For example, factories seem to produce supplies for each side but you couldn't bomb or have a mission to bomb an enemy factory unless that factory was located in the front line (a rare thing as you can easily imagine)! And BTW, bombing factories while rare in CFS3 campaign seemed to have even less impact in the campaign outcome than for example a dogfight/interception mission!
- In 95% of air-to-ground missions you would never face enemy air opposition!
- It was ridiculous the "front lines in the sea" with hundred of ships in each side. Even more ridiculous was to see hundreds of GERMAN (Axis) ships in "fronts lines in the sea" - We all know that if there was one area that Germany was very weak in WWII that area was its surface naval combatant force (Navy) that had very few surface ships specially when compared with the allies like for example the British (Royal Navy).
- The enemy aircraft that appeared near the player's flight, appeared thru a "spawn" system that while being ridiculous it worked very badly (afterall "in 95% of air-to-ground missions you would never face enemy air opposition"). This worked so badly that one of the first things that the OFF devs decided during OFF development was to completly ditch this spawn system and also the entire CFS3 campaign system!

Have returned to CFS3 now that I have less time/money for airsoft.

With the fantastic ETO expansion - a lot of downloading, but worth its weight in pure gold - CFS3 is still much the best option for anyone wanting to play an RAF later war campaign. IL2's SP campaign system is rather dull and while IL2 has a lot of RAF planes, RAF ETO campaigns are thin on the ground.

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/cfs-i-ii-iii/cfs3-eto-expansion-17765.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcs4pObm4js

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5ZDoHrvS8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H9rSLKkJ5o&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu5MEgGWr2Y&feature=related

Sure the CFS3 campaign system and the aircraft (and ship!) AI has its flaws, and the non-interaction with any form of Ground Control, except in the indirect form of the "radar", is a big gap. But with the ETO mod, I have a good combination of stock campaign and mission sets which enable me to fly and fight in all the planes I loved from my old Airfix, Frog or Revell kits. And relive the battles I read about in "The Big Show", "Fly for your Life" and "Nine Lives", to name but a few. Not only does the ETO expansion have great new skins for the stock planes like the Spit, Tiffie & Tempest, but it has a great selection of other RAF types, including a beautiful Hurricave IV and a fantastic Boston. Plus Beaufigher VIC and TFX for strike wing missions (pity no Norway but there is Biscay and the Dutch/Danish coast). And I gather that at last, the ETO crew will be giving us a realistic Mossie FBVI coming to ETO soon, to replace the stock CFS3 BIV repaint with its different bomber canopy. And all the many other flyable planes for when you fancy something different, including most of the RAF's light, heavy and medium bombers. Then you have a great range of Luftwaffe bombers and night fighters too. And ETO expansion transforms the CFS3 terrain, effects and clouds, watching the light flack's tracer zipping up towards you is a whole new experience!

Yes it would be nice to fly EAW-type Luftwaffe campaigns against the heavies but CFS3 works best as a tactical airpower sim and that's fine by me. Pierre Clostermann's "Big Show" (especially in the recent unabdidged edition, which has a great deal of strong content my 1970s paperback edition never had) is the most harrowing and memorable book I ever read on WW2 air combat and CFS3+ETO expansion provides a better simulation than anything else available of those intense, dangerous and exciting operations than anything else I have ever played.

Once I get my new graphics card, OFF will be another reason to stick with CFS3. Phase 3 at last has just enough 2-seater types to give a passable representation of WW1 air ops, and hopefully improves the AI, which doesn't seem to cope too well with flying slow planes, from what I have seen in Phases 1 & 2 (wingmen sometimes crashing on/soon after take off, the usual poor CFS3 formation flying, repetitive "boom and zoom" manoeuvres at low level) and the damage model (every crash a fireball). Even in Phase 2, OFF's a beautiful and highly immersive experience and I'm looking forward to getting Phase 3 soon.

I stopped using CFS2 when Il2 came out in 2001. Bought CFS3 about 6 months ago for $9 at BestBuy in the bargain bin so I could play OFF.
Disk had a crack in it and I tossed it. Few weeks later RoF Iron Cross Edition came out and that fixed my WW1 craving.

I still use CFS3 to fly OFF:BH&H. But you can't hardly tell it's the same graphics engine anymore. Very highly detailed scenery and the plane models and skins (all 4,000+ of them!) are beautifully done.
If it wasn't for OFF though, CFS3 was DoA for me.

Hellshade

Years ago! I sold CFS3, because at the time, there were rumours of CSF4. Big mistake - now if I want to play some of the great mods like Over Flanders Fields, I'll have to find a copy again - and I'm not really in the habit of buying games twice, unless I can find them super cheap (like £3 for Battle of Britain II). New policy: no selling of games until/unless a sequel to that game comes out that eclipses its predecessor.

Still, I've locked on to RoF now, so that'll finally fill the WWI hole.

Edit: Wasn't there a way to select a single pilot/squadron in CFS3, the way there is in Battle of Britian II? I like being able to control the whole war as well, but it's nice to have the choice and not have it forced on you.

The CFS3 campaign (3D and combat flight simulation part) was entirelly played in a single pilot/squadron perspective. What happened in the CFS3 campaign was that in order to choose a mission you would need to click in a frontline sector of the strategical map and then a list of missions available around that sector would appear and you would choose the desired mission in that list (and than fly the mission). Suposedly, if the mission that you selected was sucessfully completed, the balance of forces (specially around the sector where the mission objective was located) would or could shift towards your side.
But nevertheless the CFS3 strategical map campaign part was entirelly managed by the AI and this perhaps was one of the reasons why the CFS3 campaign didn't work well at all (a thing that doesn't happen for example with the Battle of Britian II campaign)!

Honestly I advise you to buy CFS3 again in order to buy and play Over Flanders Fields (OFF). If you like the style of immersive gameplay from Battle of Britian II and even CFS3 I believe that you will simply love OFF!