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Greetings All,

Available just in time for Christmas, here is the download link for my WOFF UE Farnborough Mod:

Farnborough and the Royal Aircraft Factory for WOFF UE

Once you have the file downloaded simply unzip it, open the folder, and run the auto-installer and it should place the mod directly into your JSGME "MODS" folder. From there you can activate it via your JSGME control panel. Once you have it up and running you should see something like this when flying from Farnborough:



To use this as part of your fledgling RFC or RNAS pilot's training I recommend running QC missions that will allow you to mimic the same type of sorties our RL counterparts engaged in. Those would be take-offs and landings, general flying and stunting practice, and cross-country navigation. Also, the chalk circle on the field was used to practice dead stick landings and the way this was done was to shut off your engine a mile or two from the field and then glide down and land, coming to a stop somewhere within the circle. I can tell you from my own experience that it takes practice to do it consistently.

Oh, and a word of caution, be mindful of Sgt. Browdy's dog, he tends to wander about on the landing field, (the dog that is, not Sgt. Browdy).

Give it a go Gents and let me know what you think.

Cheers!

Lou

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Dang! That is absolutely amazing. Great job.

Lou,you are the President of the Barmy OFFers Club - and with great justice you are!

I guess it is not WOFF's fault when even modern computers find it hard to present the sim
inclusive all the many mods that were made with so much detail.
It must be the sluggish progress of mankind that's a bit slow, trying to catch up with WOFF.

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Olham, barmy is as barmy does. As for mankind's sluggish progress, any forward motion is better than none.

Hayle55, glad you like it so far. Still hours and hours of work left to do on it but the basic outline is there.

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Geez Lou, you are a glutton for punishment! Speaking of having four facilities and all that goes with it, I hope it doesn't create a huge FPS hit. Might be wise to monitor this as you go. It is definitely looking good though.

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Thanks Robert, glad you like it so far. Yes, I am being very mindful to keep the number of objects under control. The two southern facilities will have very few objects apart from trees, and the northwest facility works out to be the same as any of the current stock dromes in terms of object count. It's really only the factory facility that I have to keep close tabs on.

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Great work Lou we all owe you a debt of gratitude for your hard work! Thanks

If this is a form of madness, I say "Let the madness continue!" Lou your work is amazing. Your continual contributions to the community and the sim are a huge blessing. Thank you. Rock on, good sir.

Nice going, Lou. Soon I'll have Maurice-Farmin Shorthorns and Longhorns ready for you.

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Thanks gents for the kudos and the encouragement, it is much appreciated. Hauksbee, I look forward to trying out those static planes you are building and Farnborough, as well as the CFS, will be the perfect places to give them a go.

I discovered this morning as I continued to work on this project that I will be able to drop one of the facilities. I thought I was going to need the fourth one for the western edge but as I pushed the road and hangars east to line up properly on the airship sheds it turned out I did not need it after all. And there was much rejoicing!

I have updated the screenshot in the first post to show the latest progress. It it really starting to fill in now.

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Looking very nice Lou and glad to hear you could drop one more facility. It all helps on performance.

Oh, and by the way, Mushroom Ward was asking me if you have set up quarters for him on that airfield yet, as he plans to drop in some time in the near future! He said something about standing you for a round, if I recall rightly!

Puttin' the eggs on my RE8 already. Fantastic work Lou.

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Glad you like it Dej. And please try to keep the damage to a minimum when you pay a visit with your egged up Harry Tate.

Robert, Mushroom has a corner room on the second floor with a lovely view of the woods and the morning sun.



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Hello All,

Just a quick update on this project. I've had very little free time as of late but I have been spending a bit of it trying to get Farnborough closer to done. I am currently blending it into the surrounding landscape and messing things up a bit so it does not look quite so sterile.

(right click on image and open in new window to view it full sized)


Slowly but surly it is moving along towards completion.

Later folks.

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Lou, this looks amazing. One of the small updates I'd love to see is to have England as a selectable region in the transfer process, allowing pilots well into their careers to transfer to Home Establishment. That way we would be able to enjoy your excellent work more often.

Thank you for your dedication and terrific work.

+1

Transfers of this type in campaign are possible with mission editor. Where you can choose any aerodrome to fly from and also have a solo flight. JJJ's ME is a powerful tool which can customize almost anything in a campaign mission (i.e. your flight hours will count towards the campaign total) and are easy to set up once you learn the ropes of navigating the ME.

+2

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Thanks for the encouragement and the kudos Raine, OldHat, and Duke, it is much appreciated. I agree that having the ability to assign pilots to Home Establishment would be wonderful as a standard part of WOFF, let's hope that someday soon it will be. But for now, as noted by OldHat, the ME works fine if you take just a bit of time to learn its ways.

I was able to spend another couple of hours on this project last night and I've update the above image to show the latest tweaks.

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RAF:
You talk about the object count limit per file, what is that count limit if you do not mind.

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PR, at the latest tally there are:

33 objects in facility #1, which contains everything from the airship hangars out to the speed course
142 objects in facilty #2, which is the entire factory complex
47 objects in facility #3, which is everything around the main landing area

The above numbers include the trees I've placed as well.

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So if I understand you correctly, you can have at least 142 objects in the .xml file.

Do you know the upper limit, and what happens if you exceed that limit ???

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Actually PR, you can have a lot more than that but right at the moment I don't remember what the max number is. Of course, it is still about total pixel count rather than how many objects you are attempting to load when it comes to overall impact to FPS.

As to what will happen if you exceed the object count limit in a facility file, I believe it simply won't load any more after the cutoff.

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I was just wondering, since I plan on populating each of your new airfields once you release them for us to use and I did not want to exceed the total item count.

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How do you know they won't already be populated when I release them?

BTW, does it appear to anyone else that all of Geezer's figures and such are already in the appropriate WOFF UE folders, or am I only seeing them because I loaded and unloaded PR's work via the mod installer and it left them behind?

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That looks fantastic! It's a great preview for how good your Johannisthal airfield will look when finished!

What, you don't remember telling me about that in Dayton? It was over by that desert table. You were probably distracted by the baklava and just don't remember.

If you populate them, it just saves me from doing it.

As for Geezer's models, all the stock fields are still sterile, so I would say that the JSGME "hick-upped" and left the models in when you deactivated the Airfield Models folder. It does not happen often, but I have seen it do this in the past every few years.

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mmmmmmm, baklava - well - OK Jim - I mean, if that's what I agreed to. Damned dessert table! Not the first time that it's been my undoing.

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PR, thanks for checking that. Apparently my mod installer is not doing its job properly as it left all of Geezer's items in my UE install. Not that it affects anything, but I do wonder why it did that.

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As one article I read several years ago stated "it is truly amazing with all the software on modern PC's, that everything works the vast majority of times in spite of the conflicts and incomplete coding".

Like I said above, in all the years I have used the JSGME, it may have happened to me twice where the JSGME "hick-upped" and did not clear out all the mods that I had deactivated. I consider that a very small price for the benefit of using that great piece of software.

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I agree completely PR, the JSGME mod enabler is super and I have been using it with great success for years. It's very seldom that it ever acts up at all.

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Same here!

Lou, your work on Farnborough is looking amazing! I used to live about 10 miles away from there, in SE London.

Inspired, I did a quick search for Farnborough and very quickly turned up this wonderful story along with an incredible pic of the pilot logbook!.... http://www.farnborough-kent-parish.org.uk/village_memorial_someone.html

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...but I realize now, that wasn't where the Farnborough facility that you are so splendidly recreating was located. It was actually in Hampshire! Different Farnborough

H

RAF:
Is this going to be a mod, or official part of WOFF UE ???

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PR, I will likely be offering this and the Central Flying School at Upavon as mods and use a couple of my generic British dromes in UE for both so that folks can choose to load these when they want to via the mod enabler. Since most folks won't be flying in England all that often I don't see a need to be eating up resources to generate either Farnborough or Upavon unless you are actually going to see them.

HarryH, thanks for the encouraging words, glad you like the effort thus far.

I returned home from my latest road trip yesterday and had some time last night and this morning to continue work on the project. I now have the OR's barracks and campground done as well as the officer's quarters and mess. I also added in the boggy area that was situated at the southeast corner of the main field and which, during the rainy season, could spread up and onto the southern end of the actual landing area and cause some issues for an unwitting pilot. Here are a few screenies showing how the place now looks.

(right-click on an image and open it in a new window to view it full size)


Looking to the south.


Looking to the east.


Looking to the west.


Looking to the north.


A view showing off the bog and the OR's camp.

Later all, off to do a bit of flying!

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Great Work!. as always nothing short of excellent Lou!

Great work Lou..You have made some wonderful additions to WOFF! Thanks !

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Greetings All,

Here is a quick update for those of you wondering about my Farnborough mod. Despite RL being crazy busy I have continued to plug away at this monster facility and have in fact sent it to Robert Wiggins for some testing. If everything goes well in that regard all I'll have left are a couple of the winter textures to build. Once those are done I'll ask Robert to work his magic and package it up as a JSGME install and, hopefully, I'll have it available in time for Christmas for you folks. Here is a screenshot of how it has finally shaped up:

(right-click on image and open it in a new window to view it full size)


While they don't show in the above shot there are a fair number of Geezer's figures and airfield objects included. Many thanks again Sir for the use of these most excellent items.

Later everyone!

Lou

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Lou, this is breathtaking! Amazing work. Now if we only had a Maurice Farman for our training missions...

Great work as always Lou, many thanks for your hard and excellent work!

I am working with Lou on testing this mod and should have a vid posted here in the next couple of hours. (takes forever to upload these things to YouTube!!)

It is truly an amazing airfield to fly by as you will soon see.

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Many thanks gents, I think you are going to enjoy this one. I have to head out for a while but here are a few teasers for you all:

(right-click on images and open in new windows to view full size)


Repair and rigging hangars north of the air ship sheds.


Test and training hangars west of air ship sheds.


Training hangars on west edge of southern field.


Training hangars on the east edge of the southern field.


The Officers' Camp.


The OR's Camp.


A pastoral view.

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WOW Lou!

Amazing! Can't wait to take a tour in game!
Thanks for all your work sir. Would love to get with you on some city/town projects sometime.

Cheers

Ok, so here is a vid of Lou's Farnborough mod:



You may note some occasional white triangles appearing in scenes where there is quick panning. That is not due to Lou's mod but rather due to my tuning issues with Nvidia.

Blue triangles happen between 1,000 ft. and 1,500 ft. while looking sideways or rearward and have been there for years.

I don't want to steal this thread but I would like to know the "WHY" ABOUT THE TRIANGLES.

You and me both, brother!

Great work, Lou. If I were wearing a hat, it would be off right now. Also, thank you to Robert for the video. Love the smoke from the factory.
Question: will the airplanes change with the time period? Also, would be cool to see some dirigibles inside the hangars.

As to the blue triangles, the way I solved mine was by accident. I've read in one of OBD's FAQs that the triple buffering should be off. Mine was on, so I turned it off as directed and the triangles started popping up. I turned the triple buffering back on and never looked back. Well ... I look back all the time, but that's a totally different story.

Yes but I have triple buffering on and it has not eliminated the triangles for me but I get fewer of them.

Excellent piece of work, Lou.

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Thank you all for the continued encouragement and kudos, much appreciated as always.



Jenks, that would be an excellent project to look into. I learned while reworking the placement of all the factory facilities that they were originally meant to be towns and the factories were only serving as placeholders. If you look in the global layer files you will see that each factory entry has a specific town name attached to it.

To Farnborough, I am nearly done with the winter textures and if all goes well I am looking at wrapping up the project this coming weekend. Here is the place in the dead of winter:

(right-click on image and open it in a new window to view it full size)


I really REALLY like the new winter textures and trees in WOFF UE.

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Excellent work, Lou, thank you.

Wow, Lou. That looks incredible. I agree the Winter tileset in UE is fantastic.

Thank you for your ongoing work to enrich WOFF and for this latest extraordinary achievement.

Barkeep! More Grog for this man!

Lou, I absolute love this work. Thank you!

Here is a question asked not to be greedy but out of genuine ignorance. Your maps show a number of landscape features which you added for historical value, but which are not in the game world (Mossy Face Wood, for example). Would it be a huge task to add some of the more significant ones as a mod one day?

Just wondering...

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Raine, I am already working on doing just that very thing.

Thanks again Gents for the thumbs up on Farnborough, it will be available to you all soon.

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Lou thanks for all your hard work adding these great touches to an already great sim! We are not worthy

Lou, you deserve a special place in the Woff pantheon. Or a pint at the bar at least. You have made this history geek very happy.

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Raine, if that special place is locked away in a windowless room down in the cellar with a sign on the door that reads in bold letters "BEWARE THE NUTTER", then you're likely correct.

As for Havrincourt Wood, a.k.a. "old Mossy Face", what I've sorted out is that it will require, conservatively, eight separate facilities to create. Because it will be nearly all trees I am still in the process of seeing what impact such a mass will have on frame rates. I can of course keep the trees to a minimum and create ground textures that will give the familiar appearance of the landmark from the air, which would be the primary purpose of such a mod. Still, I'd like to 'plant' as many trees as possible while keeping performance at a playable level.

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It's done, it's done! Please see the updated first post in this thread for the download link and latest info.

Cheers!

Lou

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Looks absolutely brilliant Lou,thank you so much for this..I'm downloading now and will try it when the missus picks me up WOFF UE as my Christmas present. Thanks once again to all the modders that strive to make this great sim even better. And most of all thanks Winder and Pol and the rest of the OBD team for your continued work with WOFF.

great work! much appreciated!

Thanks Lou much appreciated!

Downloaded and installed - very impressed - well done Lou for the airfield and for the ever helpful JSGME program.

Thanks Lou, it's like a Merry Christmas Gift!

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Thanks Gents, my pleasure. Do let me know how it runs for you all and what kind of impact it has on your FPS and performance.

By the way, have any of you yet to see the Sergeant's dog roaming about?

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Hi Lou
FPS didn't seem to be affected at all - still hitting 60 FPS on my work station PC, which is less powerful than my gamer PC (see my signature).
Haven't seen the dog yet but I'll keep my eyes peeled

Same here as well. I don't think there's much traffic/activity over England like there is at the front, so this MOD should be perfect for training... Good Show Lou!

YES!!! Damn thing was in the middle of the runway &^%$%*

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I hope you waited for him to get out of your way Robert. Sgt. Browdy would be most upset if you ran over his canine.

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Posting here just to express my gratitude Lou, next round is on me.

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My pleasure ArisFuser. And since you've offered, a pinta' red, and park two fingers of Tullamore Dew 15 right beside it if you'd be so kind.

Also, please let me know how this runs for you once you have it all plugged in.

Happy flights!

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hi,

i have "airfields - models for airfields 5.0" mod installed and when i want to install Farnborough JSGME reports:

Folder "OBDWW1 Over Flanders Fields\buildings\a_hangarl3" has already been added by the "0 - Airfields - Models for Airfields v5.0" mod.
"a_hangarl3.bdp" has already been altered by the "0 - Airfields - Models for Airfields v5.0" mod.

plus a ton of others.

is it safe to overwrite and use both or should i deinstall "airfields - models for airfields 5.0" before enabling Farnborough?

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mbarbaric, I recommend you disable any other airfield mods before loading another as there will be shared files. If you don't disable the other mods what will eventually happen is that you will end up with some of the shared files no longer being able to revert to their originals. One mod will save what it thinks is an original file but in reality is a modded file that was installed by the earlier mod that is still activated.

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thanks Lou. My pilot just died any idea how I could force the game to do the training from Farnborough?

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You are very welcome. As for doing your training at Farnborough, for now you will have to run QCs and do training flights that way. At some point in the not-too-distant future OldHat will be providing a full series of training missions that will launch from Farnborough, (and many thanks again OldHat for coming up with and taking on this most excellent project). He asked last week for my input on what such a series should entail, historically speaking, and I provided him with the following outline to work from. For now, if you like, you could follow this same list as you run your QC missions.


WOFF UE RFC/RNAS Primary Training missions

The following should be performed in non-rotary aeroplanes, preferably the B.E.2 for dual control and the B.E.12 for solo:


At least three dual-control flights, all below 1,000’ and within sight of the field. Practice turns, take-offs, landings, and taxying around the field and up to the hangar.

At least 15 hours of solo flights. The first several flights should be 15 to 20 minutes in duration, below 3,000’, and within sight of the field. Further flights should be 1 to 2 hours in duration with altitudes up to 5,000’ and ranging farther afield.

At least one “high altitude” duration flight in which the student climbs his machine to around 7,000’, preferably more if possible, and maintains said altitude for an hour before landing.

At least 10 successful solo take-offs and landings.

At least one successful solo "emergency" landing somewhere other than an aerodrome.

At least one successful solo dead stick landing where the engine is shut off at an altitude of 1,500’ or more. Student must bring his machine to a stop within the chalk circle.

Student must complete a 3-hour, three leg, cross-country flight navigating with paper map and compass only. Student will land at each point along the way to refuel and receive a signature as proof of completion of leg.

At least one successful take-off and landing at night. Student must fly in a set direction away from the aerodrome until it is out of sight, then return.


Keep in mind that the only flight aids that should be used are cockpit instruments, landmarks, and paper maps. No tac screens, text messages, or in-sim maps should be used. This will require that the student stays within sight of the aerodrome until he becomes familiar with the surrounding landscape. This will minimize the likely possibility of the student becoming lost.

Once the above is successfully completed you could then have the student move to advanced training in an early rotary aeroplane, the Bristol Scout would be a good choice. This is when such things as loops, renversements, vrilles, virages, and spins would be learned and practiced.



Hope this helps.

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thanks Lou! great help, do you think it would be possible to force take off field from Farnborough in capmaign via mission editor?

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JJJ65 will be the one to ask that question of. I'm betting it can be done with his ME, it's a pretty amazing piece of work.

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Yes, it is possible - personally tested a minute ago :-).

Thx Lou for great christmas present .

thanks JJ and Lou!

great work you've done with these add ons!

Here is the first training mission file which is mostly done.

To use it, make a test pilot and select that he starts training before deployment. In workshop, select to use the mission editor.

Then when you click on "go to field", the mission editor screen will pop up. Alt+Tab out of WOFF and go to ":\OBDSoftware\WOFF\OBDWW1 Over Flanders Fields\missions\historical" and replace the OFF_Camp_Mission.xml with my file. Alt+Tab back into WOFF and select ok. Let me know if it works out.

great OldHat, really great add on! thanks!

This is really great. I always felt a trainer was needed in this series. I hope it matures into something bigger.

Thanks, MikeC. (wiiired)

Really hope you can do a full training scenario at Farnborough OldHat

Edit: is the file you provided ONLY for the 1st circuit as observer with Captain Triggers OldHat? Many thanks

Well Sgt Browdys dog was a lucky canine on this landing.
He was doing his usual early morning airfield walk Great work Thanks Lou

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Every time I see that dog wander across the field it makes me laugh out loud. Glad to see you managed to avoid him Adger.

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That'd be absolutely brilliant OldHat

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One of the primary reasons I added the nearly 60 additional aerodromes to Britain, along with reworking the generic facilities and creating a few new ones, was to allow for a more diverse training experience in the sim, at least as far as the Brits, Canadians, and Yanks are concerned. All the new dromes I've added were training facilities during WWI. When you add the following original WOFF dromes that were also training facilities you end up with a lot of historically grounded choices: Biggin Hill, Eastchurch, Hounslow, Netheravon, Rochford, Sutton’s Farm.

OldHat, I recommend that you begin by using Thetford for advanced navigation and bombing training, and Catterick for aerial gunnery school. And once you have made your decision as to which facility you are going to use for the navigation portion let me know and I'll see if I can't find the time to put together one of my maps for an area about 100 miles square surrounding the aerodrome. This would allow for some real map reading and navigation for our fledgling pilots.

I am already sensing great WOFFy things for 2017.

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