Pacific Fighters game from Ubisoft

QUOTE: yeah I thought about it after I wrote that... didnt go back and change it... my fingers were thinking faster than my head! I've been contemplating a Blenheim for the BoB GB and must have got stuck in my head! Thanks!

No problem. Anytime

QUOTE: I'm quite disappointed with the recent bad news concerning PF and the exclusion of certain aircraft types due to licensing horsesh*t, though. One of the types which will be excluded is the P-61 and I was really hot to trot for that one because I'm a nightfighter fan. Damn lawyers...

That's the hot topic on the PF forum right now. Oleg and those who are supposed to be in the know are swearing up and down that they are not being sued, and that the delay has nothing to do with legal issues, but they cannot yet explain what it is. Strange, and very frustrating for those of us who really appreciate Oleg's work.

yeah I thought about it after I wrote that... didnt go back and change it... my fingers were thinking faster than my head! I've been contemplating a Blenheim for the BoB GB and must have got stuck in my head!

Thanks!

QUOTE: on the RAF/RAAF side is the Blen

Sorry, Tom, but that would be the Beaufighter, not the Bleinheim.

awww... you went and ruined my morning there Steve... I had no idea the P-61 was a possibility in that game... that would have been something!!

It still has a very nice selection of AC... from the Brewster Buffalo all the way up to the F6F and if I am not mistaken the F8F in quick combat mode... (a what if thing I guess..)

on the RAF/RAAF side is the Blenheim, several flavors of Spitfire etc... I think the Japanese side is more highly populated than the allied side.. I guess because you can play so many different countries on the allied side they tried to give them all a share. Most interesting was the float plane showed in the screen cap... first time I remember seeing one in a combat flight sim... would have been interesting to put a Kingfisher in there as well...

I never get sick of IL-2, FB or ACEx. Haven't tried PF yet but it looks groovy.

I'm quite disappointed with the recent bad news concerning PF and the exclusion of certain aircraft types due to licensing horsesh*t, though. One of the types which will be excluded is the P-61 and I was really hot to trot for that one because I'm a nightfighter fan.

Damn lawyers...


Fade to Black...

QUOTE: Originally posted by Snowy I haven't purchased CFS3, I guess because it got some very bad reviews when released and a lot of people couldn't get it to run well enough to even play it. Top that with the fact that Microsoft don't offer much support in the way of patches or fixes for the problems and it's not a very attractive alternative when you have guys like Oleg Maddox who gets involved and listens to the flight sim community and continually upgrades the IL2 series to make it more accurate and realistic based on the community feedback and available historical aircraft data. Cheers....Snowy

I agree Snowy... CFS3 was a decent game with a good variety of AC but there were no patches before I became "disinterested" in it... overall I love dit but no new missions.. no new AC.... kinda got old! I still have it and will probably pull it out to see how it runs on my current system.. (dont think I have worries there... went from a AMD K-2 450 back when I bought it, to a P4 3.06 GHz HT processor, 1 GB XMS DDR, 320 GB RAID array etc... with a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro) keep wishing Lucasfilms would redo some of their old titles.. not like SWON though,, more first person like SWOTL...

hmm which one is CFS3? tactical support? I cant remember... from my experience the microsoft line left something to be desired in single player... I remember playing ETO and each mission was just like the last..

so far PF has kept me interested... just enough to get better at it... the flight models are deadly if you go full realism... something I am getting used to... but once I turn off the IFF and the plane labels it is pretty fun.. I imagine it was a tough job being in the air then... nothing but your eyes to tell you what that dot on the horizon really is...

So far I have only flown the USN, USMC and RAAF ... the Blenheim is fun but wanna get into the fighter aspect more... the only bomber I have gotten halfway good at is the SBD.. only because of personal interest.. my uncle flew as tail gunner/radioman in one in WWII... never knew much about it till right before he died...

---edit---

just looked it up and I do have CFS3... tactical airwar over europe... it was fun.... especially flying the P-47 and the Typhoon... good graphics and with a decent video card no skipping,...

Tanky... I suggest trying out PF later on... a lot better graphics! the 9800Pro is what I have at the present and you cant go wrong... note the previous post I made about the Omega drivers... you'll get a lot better performance out of them! omegadrivers.net choose your card then your OS and check em out!!!! provide really smooth game play.

As a side note I am about to embark on upgrading my motherboard to the PCI Extended type so I can try out the x800 series of video cards by ATI... double the bandwidth of the 9800!!

on a separate note I just noticed the GeForce dual GPU cards out... they look nice too!

I haven't purchased CFS3, I guess because it got some very bad reviews when released and a lot of people couldn't get it to run well enough to even play it. Top that with the fact that Microsoft don't offer much support in the way of patches or fixes for the problems and it's not a very attractive alternative when you have guys like Oleg Maddox who gets involved and listens to the flight sim community and continually upgrades the IL2 series to make it more accurate and realistic based on the community feedback and available historical aircraft data.

Cheers....Snowy

i just picked up MCFS3, and boy.... realistic. almost to a fault. the planes are incredibly hard to fly, but once i get the hang of it, it should be cool.

QUOTE: Has anyone ever tried MCFS 3? that looks awesome!!! (microsoft comb. flight sim)

I bought CFS 3 before I bought IL2-FB, and I enjoyed it. However, I didn't like the campaigns at all. The FB campaigns are better. Overall, I think that the IL-2 series is more accurate, and less buggy, but that's just me, and I'm not an expert by any means.
From what I've seen over the past year or so, the flight sim community tends to be very tribal. If I ever posted anything even remotely complimentary about CFS 3 on the IL-2/PF website, I get flamed to a crisp!

QUOTE: they dont have a lot of little dweebs with modded planes? (i.e. just trying to win no matter what loss of enjoyability?) or is it pretty up and up... as in controls on cheating and all...

You're always going to get onliners who are immature, or boorish, or just plain pains in the backside, and IL-2 doesn't seem to be an exception. That being said, cheating does seem to be quite rare,and difficult to do, but Snowy would have more experience than I do with the IL-2 online environment.

pf looks awesome, but i usually wait until the price goes down a little. mcfs is a pretty cool game, but i still play red baron 3d, which is the best ww1 sim ever made

hehe. i love my video card. i forked over 200 bucks for my ATI radeon 9800pro and I absolutely love it expecially when i play call of duty. my old video card sucked. the 9800 is one of the top cards out there. also, tho, would yuo reccomend pacific fighters? im considering either that one or microsoft combat flight sim3, which also lookas amazing. i have one and two, but they got a bt rpeetitive over time. so if you say PF is a great game, that'll be th eone i get. if not i'll go with MCFS3 I should be able to run the game easily, because i have a 2.53 gig processor with 80 gig hard drive with 512 mb of ram. (running a pentium 4) it makes a great gaming system as you can imagine.

IMO you guys are leaving ut a biggie. Has anyone ever tried MCFS 3? that looks awesome!!! (microsoft comb. flight sim)

cool! thanks Snowy! I might go online today just to check it out.. still wanna familiarize myself more with the interface and flight models...

Tom, that's the beauty of flying with a squad against other squads in arranged war missions on a password protected server. Although I'm not saying it can't happen, I haven't seen any cheating in those circumstances, as the other players in your squad are known to you and there is enough respect between squads to avoid this problem. The main emphasis in these circumstances is on teamwork, to achieve the mission goal and cover your team-mates or wingman's ****** and get home. On the other hand I have seen the sort of thing you mention when flying online alone in a dogfight server, although not much of late. I think it's getting a lot harder for the cheats now than it was a couple of years ago. Besides, if you go online alone without a wingman you're just going to end up a target over and over again to the sort of senario you describe, and I agree, it wears thin very quickly. If you really want enjoy it my advise is to join a squad, using a program like Teamspeak to communicate with each other as you fly against other teams in a password protected server and you'll find cheating is very rare.

Cheers...Snowy

QUOTE: Originally posted by Snowy Good to see a few other virtual pilots here. I too love my combat flight sims and fly with No 457 Squadron vRAAF as No_457 Snowy. We train together and fly war missions with and against other squads on Wednsday nights at Hyperlobby. Heaps of fun and a great insight into the teamwork and tactics WW2 pilots needed to survive. Also a great extension of this hobby as the historical accuracy of the IL2 simulations is quite fanatical. Cheers....Snowy

so you fly the PF game multiplayer? I haven't tried it yet but plan to... just want to get more aquainted with the game first...

they dont have a lot of little dweebs with modded planes? (i.e. just trying to win no matter what loss of enjoyability?) or is it pretty up and up... as in controls on cheating and all...

I tried flying one of the combat flight sims online once, and some guy flying a Sopwith Camel buzzed me, he was doing about 700mph... then he swung around and demolished me with his quad 20mm cannons... (I was in a P-51 and he flew past me like I was sitting still) that was the last time I flew online...

Good to see a few other virtual pilots here. I too love my combat flight sims and fly with No 457 Squadron vRAAF as No_457 Snowy. We train together and fly war missions with and against other squads on Wednsday nights at Hyperlobby. Heaps of fun and a great insight into the teamwork and tactics WW2 pilots needed to survive. Also a great extension of this hobby as the historical accuracy of the IL2 simulations is quite fanatical.

Cheers....Snowy

QUOTE: mebbe someone could start an fsm users sever... that would becool!

Yea, it would.
I'd love to teach ya all how to dogfight

wow there are other gamers here besides me!!! I really have to get that gaem. mebbe someone could start an fsm users sever... that would becool!

Sorry about taking so long to respond, Tom. I read your last post, but couldn't reply right away, and it sort of fell off the radar. Thanks again for the tips.

hmmm.... I can count 33 on mine and most of that is just the essentials... Go through and make sure things like Real Player and Quicktime arent in tyour processes and that should help a LOT.... Good luck though, I think with a little tweaking you will be a LOT happier with your PC, not just with games... it will be like a new PC for ya!

Thanks, Tom. The biggest problem I have right now is that I have way to many processes going on. I'm in the 30's, and I'd like to get that down to under 20 if possible. I've checked them out, and know which ones I would like to get rid of, it's just a matter of getting it done.

here ya go Buff, it's in another forum from a game I used to play... it's prety good and works!!!

http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/desertcombat/topic.asp?fid=6543&tid=1197978&p=1#12700533

hey Buff, here's the nVidia drivers from Omega... he tweaks them just for games. I've been using them on my ATI Radeon 9800Pro and have ntohing but good things to say about them! Just make sure you have your old drivers in case you decide to go back to them... (if nothing else you could redownload them from nVidia)

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

just click the nVidia link at the top then click on your OS...

assuming you are using XP (works on 98 too just a different way of getting there) one thing that really helps is making your page file static... what this means is when windows launches programs and runs out of memory it starts spooling unused things in memory to the harddrive (virtual memory if you will) until it is needed again. By default Windows changes the size of this file as needed on the fly. This slows you down as your hard drive is the slowest of your gaming components...

You can speed this up by setting one size for the drive so it is not changing while you are in the middle of a game slowing you down. Take the size of your RAM and multiply it x 1.5, in your case it comes out somewhere around 1100, I would go ahead and set your page file to 1.5 GB though just in case...

(In XP) Go to my computer, right click ond click on properties. Choose the Advanced tab, then choose advanced again... click on the performance button then advanced again, towards the bottom is the Virtual Memory settings. Click on change and a new window will appear.

You want to choose custom size, then in BOTH minimum and maximum boxes, put 1500. It will require you to restart your computer. I wouldn't do this unless you are a little comfortable changing things on your computer. The worst that would happen is when it tried to reboot it would freeze and tell you out fo virtual memory. You can reboot into safe mode and reset the page file from there.

Again, this is your call, if you aren't comfortable there are other things you can do to make it faster.

_______________________

One would be before you start your game (unless you are playing online) turn off your virus protection, kill everything in your taskbar that is running (and not necessary) as well as control-alt-delete and go into task manager and kill apps processes uneccesary, things like printer monitors, quicken reminders etc... if it is essential to windows then it wont let you kill it. Look out for things that look like they are related to your nvidia, or joysticks etc... you dont wanna kill these! you can experiment and find the ones to kill, if it doesnt work when you go into your game, restart the PC and try again... no permanent harm is done from killing processes... >>>>>>>>>>>THEN go into the game.

I'll be back in a bit and list some more things to do... I have a list somewhere of different things that will speed your computer by freeing memory etc...

QUOTE: what speed processor and what size HD do you have?

Tom, I have a 2.3Ghz Intel Celeron processor. Not really made for flight simming. I have an 80Gb hard drive. Thanks for all the tips.

well your RAM looks ok, the 5200 is not a bad video card... let me ask my buddy at work who is an Nvidia freak and find out which driver he recommends.,.. (I'm a Network Admin in an IT dept so have a lot of sources in the tech side) for the ATI I recommend using the drivers at: http://www.omegadrivers.net/ (in case any ATI users are reading this) I think he has Nvidia drivers as well... will check it out and let ya know...

I will try to hook you up tomorrow on tweaking, but the video drivers do a lot of the main work... what speed processor and what size HD do you have?

the HP's arent real bad... just need some tune ups! you were smart getting that much RAM...

QUOTE: I've got a FAQ about tweaking a computer for games somewhere buff, I'll see if I can find it and fire it off to ya...

Tom, if you find that FAQ, I'd love to have it. Thanks in advance.

QUOTE: What kind of video card are you using? There are a lot of aftermarket drivers out there that REALLY enhance the game and even improve the graphics...

I've got an NVidia FX 5200 PCI, and I'm using the driver recommended by the developer. When I bought my computer, I didn't know much about them, and I've paid the price in terms of performance. What I really need is more RAM. I've got 768 Mb, but could really use a boost to I Gig. The problem is I've got a Hewlett Packard, and compatible parts tend to be very expensive. I looked into it, and it would cost $200.00 Cdn for a 512 Mb stick. Same price as last year when I bought the same stick last Feb. You'd think the price would have dropped some.

I've got a FAQ about tweaking a computer for games somewhere buff, I'll see if I can find it and fire it off to ya... it's not really that hard if ya follow the steps. What kind of video card are you using? There are a lot of aftermarket drivers out there that REALLY enhance the game and even improve the graphics...

Pacific Fighters is really light on content as a stand alone. I have it installed over Forgotten Battles and the Aces Expansion Pack, and I really like it, even though I can't run it as well as I would like. I don't have enough computer, nor the skill to tweak my computer to get the most out of it. Oleg Maddox makes great games. Nobody does WW2 better. Oleg's product support is first rate as well. The real problem is that PF was not a finished product when it went to market. That's Ubisoft's fault. The first patch is out, and the second won't take long, but it never should have been released the way it was.
Battle of Britain will have a completely different engine, or so I've read. I think it's going to require alot of computer to get anything out of it.