Gentlemenses,

Good day to you all.

Weather here is beautiful. Saturday we had another of our hangar BBQ’s. Pilots and friends. 37 people. Good time. Did some flights so people could get airplane rides.


Dux, haven’t been able to get it to run in Win10. Win10 is being problematic with other games as well. Why oh why couldn’t they have kept it running old games like Win7 ?

Hi OG!


Certainly seems like you have an ideal life out there on the airfield. How I envy chaps like you!

I'll be putting BoB2 back in the section: Archaic Flight Sims for the time being.

Folks,

Happy Monday everyone.

Dux:

A valiant effort old man. I can only speak for myself. BoB2 will not run under Win 10 for me even if I hold my mouth right, in fact, no matter what I do. The last report from the BDG indicated that was unlikely ever to happen. Perhaps someone has figured out how to doit? If so, I'd like to know the secret.

This statement from the BDG was years ago. Win 7 would likely be the way to go but that will soon be unsupported by M$ without paying for updates. I have an elderly XP desktop in storage with a working copy of BoB2 modering on the HDD along with several other sims.

At least BoB2 was working a bit over 3 years ago. The thing has been in a non climate controlled storage facility a long time. Your guess is as good as mine whether the computer might even boot to Win XP or not. Much less run BoB2. I admit I've been considering going after it and trying. Maybe I will.

XP is no longer in good standing with MS either, so if I ever did get BoB2 running on that box again I would never connect it to the Internet with any confidence. These days unsupported software is a real and present liability online. There be many dangers lurking there. Besides the crooks and black hat hackers, Big Guys and littl'uns are hoovering up every tiny bit of info on us they can get. Something like the CIA for us innocent folk.

OK Folks. Merrily off on another mental tangent we go again. That reminds me of my first boss in advertising. He was an old CIA man. Smart as paint was he. Honest and fair. Everyone thought highly of the man. He even seemed to like me. I was starting out in middle management you might say.

The fellow immediately over me was a tyrant compared to the big boss. A right nasty fellow from top to bottom, riding or walking. Nobody, but nobody liked this guy. I learned later the big boss wanted to get rid of the man. Being fair minded he could not. The man, we'll call him "J" somehow managed to stay just one toe this side of the chopping block.

One day my immediate boss "J", the one not likely to be getting any Christmas cards from his staff, got on my case. He threatened to fire me. He claimed I had not completed a document he had requested. I knew that I had done so promptly and left it on his cluttered desk. You could not argue with this man. I finally stopped protesting.

So, when he was away from his office, I slipped in and looked in his desk. I found the document that was in dispute. Next, I slipped out of the door and went straight to the big boss red faced and cussing all the way.

Now, as I was not particularly noted for accenting my sentences with peppery expletives, especially when in the presence of the big boss, walking into his mahogany paneled office with several choice invectives spouting from my tongue seemed to surprise him.

"What's the matter Rog", he asked with eyes wide and a concerned look. "Boss, I've tried but I've had about all I can take from "J" and I won't take any more." As I stood there trembling with rage, I explained what had happened. No argument, he believed my story. Then we went into the office of my immediate boss and I opened the desk drawer revealing where the document in question was still hidden from view where "J" put it..

The big boss took the document to his number two with me following along just behind. There was a brief conversation letting the number two guy in on what was happening. "Let's get this guy", said the big boss. The man was paged and shortly he arrived at the big bosses' door. He was ushered in and the big oaken door with the brass plate on it was closed. I do not know what went on in there. a premonition told me I should just be glad it wasn't me.

After some time, the door opened to reveal the big boss seated behind his desk. The expression on his face was solemn. To the right in front of the desk "J" was seated in a chair looking rather sad and worse for wear. The number two guy was just standing near the door looking somber. "Is this the document in question?", the boss asked me. I said, "yes". I was thanked and the door closed again. I went back to my own office and waited. I did not know for what.

I never saw my boss "J" ever again. I did meet his wife in the drugstore where she kept books once. I was a bit embarrassed but completely surprised when she took my side and admitted her husband was wrong and got what he deserved. I had been promoted to his job.

So it was that I started up the ladder and I became my on boss. And though I did the job well, I was really not long enough employed to have expected it. I have always wondered if the old CIA man, the big boss, might have been slightly impressed by my ameteur "cloak and dagger" actions that day.

In truth, after all was said and done, I had felt sorry for "J". He had a kid enrolled in the local school for the deaf. Being transferred to our town had been a good thing for the boy and the family.

The transgressions had, however, been many over several years and it was a big company with a long memory. My big bosses' boss had wanted a valid excuse to fire the man for years. Of course I knew nothing of all that, I was, just defending myself to keep my own job.

I have been justly accused of repeating myself here on several occasions. The previous story is one I have never told here before as far as I can remember.

Yes, LeRoy, I cannot remember much past breakfast, that is, until you get to about a decade ago and that stays crystal clear. 006 ¾ at your service.

Gents,

Dux: A big thread on BoB2 and Win 10 over at Combatace , the gist being that You might get it to run somewhat in Win 10, but 7 is your best option.

Might there be a shimmer of hope, with the continued development of the DxDnd Util? Seems someone got Mig Alley to run on modern equipment using that nifty package.

Folks,

MG:

I hope you are right. I still have an account at CombatAce. I went there for other sims in the past mainly the Strike Fighters series. I haven't been back for some time now. All my Strike Fighters mods and games are in storage on that old XP system.

My password manager will still have my password so I'll log in and check it out.

Y'all,

Mother Nature is PO'd. Evening and nightly rain, storms and a couple of tornadoes in the (not immediate, thankfully for me) area. Winds of fifty mph and more are raising heck, roofs and other structures.

A main airport that should have been closed to airline traffic some thirty years ago but kept open for a now-major airline through sweetheart arrangements by politicians, had its lower parking garage flooded. Yes, we're talking Dallas Love Field.
Never let it be said we don't have the best politicians money can buy.

Folks who left town have been returning to flooded cars that have been underwater now for a few days.
Under Texas law, the airport and municipality is exempt from responsibility.

Ahh, what a great vacation. While you were swimming in the warm Caribbean waters, your vehicle was also staying wet and murky.
Imagine coming back from helping Aunt Mabel heal and realizing the insurance company's number is not on the phone you are carrying but in the car you can not get to?

Welcome home! Just don't ask: "What else can go wrong now?" Karma has a sense of humor.

Excuse me while I find a replacement cooling fan for the desktop. Maybe I can find the nerve to install an SSD so I can use the updated flight sim program.
I will not be asking "What's the worst that can happen?"

Gents.

Fittop; Or what could possibly go wrong is another thing not to be asking!


It is slightly cold, windy and winterish here but otherwiase nothing much else to report.

Folks,

We've had a week or so of high to low 80's F. for daily highs. MG, I suppose it is colder in Denmark and hotter in Texas, Fittop? We expect more severe weather this weekend with lower lows starting Monday night. Those hot daytime temps often bring severe weather. Glad the twister missed you folks Fittop.

Fittop:
It's been a long time since I flew into then out of Dallas Fort Worth. That's a big place. Because of JFK there is a powerful historic provenance with Love Field of course. Those films of the arrival of the doomed President and First Lady at that airport are still showing now and then on TV.

It seems scandalous that the airport assumes no liability for what occurs on their physical property... even "acts of God". Of course if drivers are notified the airport assumed no liability for damage and that they park there at their own risk, they were forewarned.

BoB2 runs fine for me on Windows 10, EXCEPT I get a CTD when I exit a mission (approx. under half the time) plus an earlier CTD on a similar frequency during campaign missions, which is the bigger nuisance. So can still play training & historical missions fine, just no debrief sometimes. Campaign could be played, except that I would have the hassle of reloading and resuming from the save every time I got a CTD (and presumably let the AI fight the mission I had just flown, so I could get past it to the next one offered to fly).

For Win 10 (and later, 7) I did the usual thing recomemnded for older games and installed it outside of Program Files x86. Don't think I used any special settings but it definitely wasn't much hassle to get it working in Win 10. Then tried about everything to get past the CTDs but no dice. Hence the resort to Win 7 on a second SSD, which I will boot into by default until Win 7 support ends, and thereafter when I need to, possibly disconnecting from the 'net when I do. Don't see any reason I won't be playing BoB2 on Win 7 for as long as the fancy takes me.

Good hunting!

Chaps,

Thanks for the info JRT, MG. I have a Win7 licence so I could use the old PC if I really want to go back that far.


Also, thanks for that revelation 33lima! Nice to see a BoB2 screenshot back on this thread. I think that Spit was a mod by Capt. Farrell, way, way back. He did quite a few others, too.

Since you already have Win 7, Old Dux, you could do what I did - get a c.£25 125Gb SSD from Currys, slot it into your new PC's drive bay where there is likely to be a spare bay (I got enough screw holes that lined up, not to need an adapter), get power and data cables if you need them (also available from Currys for peanuts) and you have some extra very fast-loading, fast-booting storage as well as the perfect home for BoB2. So far, I've never needed to use the BIOS to boot into Win 10 as all my other sims play fine on Win 7 (some like First Eagles and Open Rails after a bit of tweaking) and I will worry about how I manage when Win 7 goes out of support when I get there.

The RAF fighter 3d models and their textures in BoB2 are IMHO still the best available. Their well-stencilled, well-worn, very matt finishes looking more realistic than the 'warbird finishes' seen on more recent sims. Better, higher-polygon and more detailed cockpit canopy framing for the internal view would be all that could be asked for. Dynamic shadowing would be great too (I even tried Ankor's DX9 mod for CFS3/WoFF but predictably it didn't work). Still they look superb all these years on, and even better when in a scrap with lots of Huns.

Folks,

Another warm day on tap. 77 degrees F. right now with the high expected to be 86 degrees F. late in the afternoon. That is for you distant chappies across the big wet spot 25° and 30° C. respectfully.

Dux, 33lima:

To have Dux posting after action reports again on HWH, as he used to, could only come a close second to my being able to . Maybe we all can one day? I may very well get that ancient XP/Win 7 computer out of storage and try to get it up to speed once more.

It needs a new used monitor. I do remember that I had reached the full limit of patching BoB2 before I stored it. Not a system worth putting more money into, I think. But worth the effort to resurrect as all my sims ran on it. I suppose that is why I didn't take it out and shoot holes in it like I did with the previous box of wires and lights.

Though I never got BoB2 to run on Win 10, I did get my Strike Fighters 1 series WW2, Vietnam sims to run. That also included all my mods and the Korean War campaign addon. F86's against MiG 15's. I loved that. Getting the Korean War addon to close properly took a bit of tinkering but it was worth it. I never got 'round to try adding any SF series 2 upgrades.

Yes, Dux, it has been turtle's ages since anyone posted a BoB2 screenshot here. Thanks for your good work 33lima. We all check into your thread regularly to see any new additions. We'd love for you to visit here more often.

Dux, keep us posted as you stubbornly attempt to get BoB2 running on Win 10. Perhaps the upcoming big Win spring update to Win 1903 will be more hospitable and play nicer with BoB2? Most of us should be at 1809 right now. Please don't ask how they numer these builds... I haven't a clue.

Thanks JR2 for the warm welcome extended to a BoB2 newbie/blow-in! I feel a bit like I've arrived at the BoB2 party a few years late, but even if it has peaked, BoB2 has soared to heights that even more modern sims fall well below...



...and within the engine's limits, has potential to get higher still. Would be great if that Win 10 update happens to eliminate the quit mission crash.

Gentlemenses,

Always good to see another person to sit down and join us for tea and tales.

33lima, I have had no luck getting BoB2 to run on Win10. Could you give us a primer ?

Gosh it's been six months since I made my Win 10 Install, OldGrognard.

Best uninstall if you have a non-functional BoB2. restart the PC for good luck, and start with a fresh install.

Being an older sim, when the CD spun up I would have right-clicked the installer (bob2.exe) and selected 'Run as administrator', and then installed normally, EXCEPT that when the default installation path came up, changed it so as NOT to install in a path with either Program Files or Program Files x86. As in, installing in C:/Battle of Britain II.

I would DEFINITELY have accepted the installation of DirectX 9 from the CD, during the installation process.

After installation is complete, I suggest making the compatibility settings, by right-clicking bob2.exe and then selecting the Properties option on the menu that opens. Click the Compatibility tab on the Properties dialogue and on that tab:
- set 'Run this program in compatibility mode for' to Windows 7 (XP SP3 is also said to work);
- tick 'Disable desktop composition', and
- tick 'Run this program as an administrator'.

Then click 'OK'. Win 10 has a compatibility wizard thingy which you can use for this sort of thing but being Old School I probably did it manually, as described.

Then I would have launched the sim, just to prove it ran. Possibly just as far as the main menu, old style with the BoB movie Heinkels IIRC.

Then I would have installed 2.13 including Multiskin and launched the sim again, being careful to set the installation path to the same one I used for the game itself. At that point, I would have launched the game and

- gone to Options/Gfx and set all the graphics settings to max (except leaving particle density at Medium);
- ensured the selected video was my graphics card (from the drop down menu); and
- set 'Use desktop resolution' to Off, the 3d resolution to my monitor's native resolution from the drop-down list (1600x900 in my case, ignoring the exclamation mark so I have this - !1600x900@60 ) and the campaign (2d) resolution to the same (which the drop-down list displays without the exclamation, in other words 1600x900@60).

I'm pretty sure that got me running in Win 10. I didn't turn off antivirus, having just Win 10's built-in one working. But then I didn't have any other AV going that might have objected to something during the installation.

I think the only thing I did in BDG.txt was set autogen trees to the recommended settings to get the aforementioned trees doing the aforementioned autogenning, which settings I found on the A2A forums IIIRC.

No amount of trying anything I could think of or anyone else had suggested online prevented me from getting intermittent Alt+X CTDs in Win 10, but I could play normally that apart.

I would suggest trying all that, then posting details of what problem if any you got. Should be easy to troubleshoot as it seems routine to get as far as the program working apart from the Alt+X CTD. There are also reports that BoB2 can be got working in Win 8 provided you do not go beyond BDG 2.01...

https://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=67364&p=512022#p512022

... which may work with Win 10 but I have no incentive to try and don't want to miss out on 2.13's features anyhow.

Good hunting!

Folks,

33lima:

SNAFU's thread has always welcomed new visitors and new members. Anyone willing to act in a responsible and adult fashion is welcome to post. Per SNAFU's prime directive, no matter how stupid I may seem to be, flaming is still 100% prohibited.

You are especially welcome here having been posting regularly and responsibly on the BoB2 forum since 2010. Thank you for posting info that may well help get Win 10 playing well with BoB2.

Folks,

I wish our friends of the spanish speaking persuasion a happy Cinco De mayo. As we know, that is the time every year when we Gringos say "May the Fourth be with you."

OK, that was a stupid thing to type. Anywhere else and I might have been flamed for that. Not good. My asbestos lined britches are hanging on the clothesline.

I'll be more careful in future. According to a new poll of 2,000 Americans, only 22 percent of respondents knew that Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of the Mexican army’s victory over the French empire.

Y'all,

That is just the second time I had heard that phrase, JRT.
The first time was yesterday when the lady here proclaimed it was Star Wars Day.
Living in a cave, I asked: "Huh?" and then she kindly explained.

To be fair, it was before I had consumed my coffee quota.
My self-excuse is that she does belong to that generation and her kids keep her up to date.
Mine does not even ask me for money, though I do remember taking him to see the first movie.
I wonder if he still has that poster? It was signed by the good doctor and Scotty.

Folks,

Fittop:

Yup, I remember taking my son to the first 3 or 4 Star Wars films. Later he returned the favor and took me.

Recently, he went to see "End Game" without me. He claims it was not as much fun without his dad. Going to movies with my dad are some of my earliest memories of my dad.

Folks,

Belated sympathy to those who cranked up Firefox last Friday and found your addons missing.

It seems Mozilla missed a ton of addon certificates were expiring on Friday. I mostly use Chrome these days so I missed that particular malfunction until today.

Fortunately, Mozilla had a patch waiting for me this morning. All I had to do was go into the Firefox settings/Help/about Firefox/ and update the browser.

I finally watched the Peter Jackson WW1 film "They will not grow old" last night. It had been too pricy for me until recently. I found it on Amazon Prime for $5.99.

Well done say I. My paternal grandfather survived that terrible war so I had a special interest in viewing period B&W film in true colors. amazing difference. I recommend it to you if you have an Amazon Prime subscription or view it somewhere else perhaps at a higher price, maybe not.

It was a bloody business to be sure. Millions died. However, for me, what overwhelmingly got to me were the horrible living conditions the troops lived and died in. Well fed rats, rotting corpses, viscous mud, ravenous lice, constant bombardments, oceans of barbed wire barrages never cut as expected and more appalling conditions prevailed. More noncoms were killed than any other ranks. Immediately after being promoted many men removed their rank insignia and pretended they were still privates.

Returning home, Brit soldiers found civvies had no idea what it had been like and found it impossible to absorb the brutal reality of the conditions. Thus it was that most soldiers sought the company of other soldiers with whom they could speak of what they went through knowing others had as well and understood.

This activity seems to have been the same for soldiers returning from all other wars. So it was with my wife's Uncle Bill, who was a Ranger who participated in the Battle of the Bulge. He was shot in the head and captured to spend the last part of WW2 in German hospitals. For many years Uncle Bill would not speak of his experience with any family member.