from yesterdays and todays night intercepts at gameranger









the last one is MrJellys landing



2./Jg1_Luth

rob

Who put that tree there LOL!

Hope you found it not too difficult to take off in the dark, hehehe. It's kind of hard to stay on the runway eh?

VonBeerhofen

Sure is VBH, especially from Hawkinge which is a grass runway and gives you the WW1 style take off across the paddock. However, today I set an airstart.




Both missions were a lot of fun though!

Jel

What a shame, a scramble airstart, ah well just too bad, better luck next time Cooper. I'm sure you gonna love it,

VonBeerhofen

Hey Guys,

you need to make it on "Ace" difficulty, then you will get the radar, without icons.

I dont know a better immersion killer than icon hunting at night.

Use a Bf110G vs B24th and Mossies as oponent, a few WildeSau 190´s or 109´s could help you.

Greetings,

Knegel

radar? what radar?

Need some runway flares

Moggy DCM

capt_cooper, when you fly in "Ace" mode, you don't get icons, but you do get a red arrow pointing to any plane that is OFF screen. This helps you move into the general direction of your target, which you eventually acquire visually.

This is very similar to the methods available through most of the war...

So I "adapted" your nightblitz Moggy, and a WW1 takeoff is very hairy indeed as I suspect the "flares" are fuel dumps, and a collision with one is terminal LOL.

Jel

Capt Cooper and I just flew two great groundstarted intercepts

Jel

The radar is the normal HUD systhem, but you dont get icons.
You need to have the "Target Director Display" (alt D) activated(in the little arrow on the screen edge to show you the shortest way to the current target.


You toggle a enemy with "Target best enemy" or "target next enemy". If a enemy i close, you will see its speed and height like usual and the little arrow on the screen edge show you the direction you need to turn to, to get the target in front of you.
When the arrow dont show up, while the target speed etc still get displayed, the target is in your current sight, although you might not see it cause the darkness cover it.
By using zoom, you can decrease the possible area, where the target can be.

Once you got close enough, you should be able to see the target like a shadow, then you can sneak in and shoot it down.

Like CJ wrote, thats somewhat the way the WWII Radars did work. They gave you a rough direction and height, but finally you had to find the target by eyesight.

When its night and Ace mode is active, the reaction distance and the "sight possibility" of the tailgunners is decreased very much, so you have a good probability to sneak up very close, without that the tailgunner shoot.

Appart from the real no icon "Wilde Sau" like night fight, this is for me the only way to make a immersive night combat.
Icons are already ugly at daylight, but at night it make the screen looking like packman.

Greetings,

Knegel

OK I have a version working using Moggy's flares, with a TMod.dat file where the "fuel dumps" have a hit bubble of zero size so you can drive over them in complete safety







I took off, and later landed back at base with no trouble

Jel

All 100+ airfields (times +/-10 lights per runway) and fully relocatable so it works on all airfields, or just the one Moggy tried before he gave up?
The only way to make this work is to either have all airfields on the same terrain tile facing the same direction or to modify the targets for each base in every campaign (1000+ objects each).
Must be a new feature in the 1.28d version. Awaiting this one with much anticipation.

VonBeerhofen

1.28D is an exe not an addon, and is is extremely flexible because of the 1.28C/D folders system. The upshot is that some of us are having plenty of fun flying groundstarted night missions in real time online with 1.28C or D as they are completely compatible. The external TMod.dat works well, with Moggy's flares on a number of fields we use which are ideal for groundstarts. The seasonal terrain switch is a bonus.
From what you tell us you cannot fly 1.28C or D, so I do not know why you are waiting in anticipation



I have added this so that VBH can flog it

what i really need is a radar that "sees" trees, so i dont fly into them on landing approach like last night. ouch.


thanks for the explanation, Knegel. now i understand what you were talking about.

the night takeoffs and landings arent really a problem, if you take your time and have a little patience. it adds a lot to the "immersion" factor.


2./Jg1_Luth

rob

Sorry to hear that Ralph, I was hoping it was something new, some new idea or something. But it's no different really from what I have by extracting a few files into EAW. I can't see it'll make campaign creation any easier or shorter, only more difficult and more timeconsuming.
The only good system I can really think off is an ingame theatre selection controlled by the host but that won't work when players don't have the campaign installed. It's the same with OAW, that's why you have to stick to unified and why it can't do anything ununified, unless files are shared and put into some subfolder (more choices then filetypes). You say it's so easy, I say it's not after 5 years of OAW frustrations and constant changes which require upgrading about every week. As I said before, there's nothing easier then plunging a .ZIP into a fresh install and it works just as fast too.
Just the opinion of someone who's into creating this stuff every day and who thinks that more choices isn't necessarily better, easier or faster.
BTW, I've had what you show there on my computer since around 2002 I believe, the same goes for illuminated hangars, control towers and a few other objects.

VonBeerhofen

Iam not sure what this have to to with my post??

Anyway, the foldersystem of EAW1.28c/d have some extreme advantages over just a new unzipped addons.

1. The different setups stay untouched, so a user cant mess them up.
2. Each of this setups got its own savedata folder, so simgle mission and campaign files are stored fitting to the theatre(less CTDs etc).
3. The loding time of a complete new setup goes down to almost zero.
4. No disc fragmentation.
5. Still additional addons can get loaded into the EAW directory, like usual.
6. Each theatre can have up to 5 plane sets, the plane set is controlled by the Host.
7. We even can pack additional CDF´s and point the exe to them, alongside the folders.

All this gets more important, when someone use Multiskins, cause they have a huge size. To load/unload one Skin set would need a long time and would fragment the HD very much.
Of course you dont need this, cause your exe dont support multiskins and of course you dont like them.
But also for very big setups, like SAW, SPAW etc this is very nice.

Looks like you never did understand OAWunified, cause OAW unified wasnt static. We always could add things.
OAWunified is still the most flexible EAW setup ever, where 200 planes could get used without a static plane set, just by sharing one file of just 1kb size!!

And for sure you never had a radar as host setting.

Of course you dont need all this, cause unzipping is as easy and flexible and in general you had all this already when EAW got release.

Btw, i just got the planes.dat splitted and we are just working on splitting the loadout.dat.

When we have this, we will have real freedom regarding the planes, and yes, iam able to implement the current selected planes as host setting!!
Then we can have a huge folder with several hundret planes and the host determine which planes get used.
But of course you also dont need this, unzipping a new plane set into the EAW diectory is as good as this.


Greetings,

Knegel

Unlike you VBH we provide links here so that anyone who is interested can download our stuff as 7-zip self installers to run in their single EAW folder. Nothing else needs to be done:



Check out the number of different scenarios available with a single mouseclick.


Something you would be gloriously ignorant of is the ability of 1.28C and D to handle different planesets:


These can be set by OAW128 which conveniently modifies the ini. This could be done manually if necessary.



The planeset number is transmitted by the host to all players, and becomes automatic without their having to do a thing.

Now it is a "statement of the bleedin' obvious" that two players cannot play a campaign unless they both have it installed. With these campaigns we may need to post the occasional link at GameRanger, but the users soon learn what to do, and there's never any need to create yet another EAW directory.

Whilst we are considering what gets transmitted by the host are you aware of what does not get transmitted in 1.2 and your FXExe?
When you do a 1943 sweep does every player always see the same AI's, or does one guy in a 190A see a P38H and someone else sees a P47C because each player's PC generates the AIs.
You claim to be a champion of online EAW, but would any serious gamer want to use an exe where they can only pick a region, not a target, and no bases? Of course, they could run parallel systems with multiple EAW folders so they could use yours if there were no other choices, or OAW128 with 1.28C or D.

As Ralf noted we cannot see what relevance your comment had in this thread, you just used it as another chance to flog the OAW dead horse.

Meanwhile, another night intercept is under way at GameRanger - gotta fly!