Im almost through Richthofen's book now (highly recommended btw !) and he also wrote a lot about the feeling he had while flying.

A great story is how he once flew through a thunderstorm.

Something of which he said "i will never ever do again except my fatherland asks me to"

During the Battle of the Somme, one day he had some private buisness in Metz and when it was time for him to fly back to his base in Mont and he pushed his plane out of a hall , he could see that the whole horizon was getting dark.

He remembered what other pilots had to say about thunderstorms "Dont even think of it" and it was not long ago that a whole british squadron ended up into captivity as a thunderstorm forced them to land on the german side of the front.

But he made the decision to fly nonetheless.

Already during lift off it began to rain and he couldn't see anything through his goggles anylonger so he had to take them off.

He was flying at what he says must have been around 10 meters of height with nothing but blackness on the horizon and was literally jumping over hills, houses, and even church spires in "what must have looked spectacular" with little sight or orientation except the compass in his cockpit and the mountains as point of orientation.

Wind and rain in his eyes and lightings coming down around him, "the stormwind and not me was now flying my machine" "no chance of landing with all the hills underneath me so continuing was the only option"

"I was convinced of my certain death as the storm would smash me into a village or forest any minute now" "Had the engine failed, this would had been my end"

"Then suddenly a brighter spot on the horizon ! With the energy only a young and reckless person can have, i made my way for it and eventually left the storm"

When he landed at his aerodrome everybody was already waiting for him as they had recieved a telegram saying "Richthofen disappeared in thunderstorm on way to Mont"

There are quite a few entries in the RoF forum requesting paypal, but I do not know if it has been added yet.
I hope that they do get paypal set up for you, because you'll find that the S.E.5a is a real delight!
I'm waiting impatiently for a Sopwith Camel or Sopwith Triplane.
I can never seem to get beyond two kills before being killed myself ... but I'll continue to fly in RoF just for the sheer joy of it!
If you haven't read it already, get a copy of Cecil Lewis' "Sagittarius Rising" ... very good first-hand account from the other side.

Well they still have time to implement paypal as the german version was just delayed (again) to 22.October

Whats so hard about that stupid translation ? This is not a role playing game with hundreds of thousands of lines.

Is this an online multiplayer game or a first person single player game or both? It looks awesome.

quote:

Originally posted by cnelsoniii:
Is this an online multiplayer game or a first person single player game or both? It looks awesome.

It has single player mission and a campaign and also multiplayer.

This video shows the game at maximum graphic settings, absolutely great : Video

Yes the Nieuport 28 really made such strange noises as it had a rotating engine. (You can see the cylinders spin at 00:32)

Hello Celeon999.... I just recently purchased Rise of Flight and I have found that when I play it is quite jerky, hard for me to even shoot anyone down. I don't know a whole lot about computers so I was wondering if you could help me out? My processor: AMD Phenom X4 9100e, Quad-Core, 1.8GHz, 4x 512kb cache, 3200MHz FSB, and my video card is an ATI Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics. Like I said I don't know a whole lot about graphics card, but I am thinking that I might need to get another one? I have all my setting on low right now and it says that my video memory usage in the game settings is still high at 84%. I've looked at other peoples' setting online and I see some people at 22%. Please let me know if you can help me, I've been dying to play this game! Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by bjackson18:
Hello Celeon999.... I just recently purchased Rise of Flight and I have found that when I play it is quite jerky, hard for me to even shoot anyone down. I don't know a whole lot about computers so I was wondering if you could help me out? My processor: AMD Phenom X4 9100e, Quad-Core, 1.8GHz, 4x 512kb cache, 3200MHz FSB, and my video card is an ATI Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics. Like I said I don't know a whole lot about graphics card, but I am thinking that I might need to get another one? I have all my setting on low right now and it says that my video memory usage in the game settings is still high at 84%. I've looked at other peoples' setting online and I see some people at 22%. Please let me know if you can help me, I've been dying to play this game! Thanks

Hi,

Did you try to set all graphic settings to low ?

I dont know much about the HD 3000 series of ATI but judging by the current price they dont offer much gaming performance.

Onboard graphic chips also make use of your system memory while seperate graphic cards have their own RAM and dont burden your system's RAM. They are not good for high end gaming like RoF.

1,8 Ghz is a bit slow for gaming aswell (2,4 Ghz Quadcore is recommended for RoF) but i dont know how much of a performance difference the four cores really make and if the relative slowness of your CPU might contribute to the stuttering or not.

RoF makes use all four cores of Quad CPU's when available. (Im using a 2,2 Ghz Athlon 64 Dual Core) and i would say the demo was running between good and moderately good with some graphics settings to medium and switching Anti Aliasing completely off.

Anti-Aliasing is a immensely performance hungry feature.

I would recommend a PCI Express Nvidia GTX series card which are in the 150 to 500 Euro price range and a new Quad Core CPU aswell if it should not run satisfyingly afterwards.

I cant say anything to the memory usage value as i cannot run the demo anymore (runs only for three days) and the full version arrives in about three weeks because of constant release delays for the german version.

Hey, Celeon ...

Rise of Flight has now implemented Paypal!

quote:

Originally posted by AtlantikEel:
Hey, Celeon ...

Rise of Flight has now implemented Paypal!

Really ? Most excellent !

A new patch is there aswell including two new planes in the store. Sopwith Dolphin and Pfalz D.XII

Rise of Flight Store

Ive heard of a list of improvements which the devs plan to put into the coming patches.

Among them : Directx 11 support of Windows 7 (New graphic features!) and a total makeover of the campaign system in the more distant future.

The full version has finally arrived today.


Just like SH-4 , it comes with a cool and very detailed map of the french frontline with every airfie......sorry aerodrome of the war aswell as all cities ,towns, roads and forests on it.




The backside of the map has the Dicta Boelcke on it.

The 8 basic rules of air combat. Listen to uncle Boelcke and maybe you'll survive the great war that was supposed to end all other wars.

I have been quite interested in this game so its good to hear some first hand reports. Its now available as a digital download but I haven't purchased it yet because the reviews seem spotty. Also I do not like the fact that you must stay connected to neoqb's server when you are playing in single player mode. That just seems odd to me.

Yeah its DRM is not the coolest one.

Had several problems to login to the game today. Its seems their serves have some problems at the moment.

Nonetheless ive had my first air victory today

A Nieuport 17, shot down over the french side of the front.

Actually, i first noticed it after my return when the statistics credited me with a kill.

I did not saw the plane crash nor did i notice that i had actually hit my enemy.

Maybe ive shot the pilot ?

Anyway, my second mission started in bad weather with rain and strong winds and so i crashed my plane immediately during takeoff.

Seems that ive sustained some light injury (Statistics tell me that) but i was soon flying my third mission.

Good for you. Let me know what you think of this game after a few weeks.

Ive made a little video showing some of the new planes for RoF.

Hope you like it


You will see how difficult it is to fly a Fokker Dr1 but at the same time this plane is capable of doing some cool stunts.

Its constantly pushing its nose upwards, propably because of the additional uplift that comes with the third wing. This makes landings with running engine very difficult.

Celeon's flight

Good film, Celeon!

But ... no Camel?!!

Does it frighten you?

Just kidding, Celeon! I've only just learned how not to auger her in, myself!

quote:

Originally posted by AtlantikEel:
Good film, Celeon!

But ... no Camel?!!

Does it frighten you?

Just kidding, Celeon! I've only just learned how not to auger her in, myself!

The Sopwith Camel is on my list too
But that still has time.

The Pfalz D.XII seems to be cool plane aswell

@Celeon999

so what are your impressions after a few weeks? What kind of graphics card (s) are you running and how does the game perform that way. I've heard from others that ROF lacks realism but everything I've seen seems to indicate otherwise.

I have a Gforce GTS 250 and with anti-aliasing off and trees set to low i only have minor performance issues.

Mostly in really huge air battles involving more than a dozen planes it can become a bit laggy.

The game may lack a few things but realism is definitely not one of them. In my opinion and that of the flight sim press, it has one of the most realistic flight engines out there.

The engine model is wonderful. Recently i made a small mistake during warm up of my engine resulting in a unexpected power loss right after take off and clearly audible malfunction of the engine.

There was sort of a barely recognizable whistling sound behind the normal noise of the cylinders. That and the lack of RPM when you go to full throttle is the only thing that tells you that something is indeed wrong with your engine.

After 15 minutes of normal flight the engine suddenly started to get RPM hickups and failed another 5 minutes later

Of course similar things happen when the engine gets damaged in dogfight.

The career mode is quite repetitive, lacks squadron informations like the names of the pilots, different painted airplanes or general statistics on the performance of your squadron mates and it also lacks the historical background infos one would wish to have.

But the devs already said that the career mode is not final and was just made good enough for releasing a working game. A total makeover of the career mode is already on their to-do list but they cannot give estimates when it will come yet.

Patches are provided regularly (Usually one per month) and almost always introduce new planes and features beside the obligatory bugfixes.

The upcoming patch for instance, will introduce a record and playback mode, adds the winter season to the game (complete with snow and all that) as well as ships on the rivers.

Read about it and see screenshots here


So is it worth it ? D E F E N I T E L Y


Review from PcPilot flightsim magazine :

quote:

"If I were to use one word to sum up this simulation it would be authenticity.

Having 'flown' Rise of Flight for some time now, it is apparent that a lot of research and attation to detail has gone into this product.

In fact the more you fly this sim, the more you discover.

There is a lot of depth to RoF on so many levels, from the sumptuous modelling of the airtrafic and the evocative and detailed scenery, to the authentic and often haunting sounds that combine to immerse you into its dynamic world.

Yet, it´s only stunning in audio and visual sense, it does an excellent job of conveying a feeling of danger and vulnerability. Rise of Flight is not only fun, it´s also educational at the same time.

It is true that some criticisms have been levelled at this sim since its initial release, not at least because it did seem to have a few technical 'bugs', while some felt that more than four aircraft schould have been offered in the initial release.

However Neoqb has, to a large extent, addressed the former criticsm with release of a series of patches, while the latter has been ractified with the availability of a further six aircraft;admittedly these have to be purchased, but for a nominal fee.

One thing is certain, however, RoF has all the essentials ingredients of becoming a classic titel! For me, Rise of Flight is one of the moste atmospheric simulations I´ve flown recent years." www.pcpilot.net