19RFC, back in my day...

You and your new fangled contraptions with your GPS maps and your aircraft icons and your parachutes and the like, bah - it were different back in my day...

Played Multiplayer Rise of Flight for the first time yesterday, took a SPAD VII (yeah, I know...) in 19 Squadron markings (huzzah!) off on a sortie to escort a two seater R.E.8 Photo Recon crate over to sausage land, together with another SPAD from the Lafayette Escadrille, resulting in much excitement, and an encounter with the infamous Black Baron!*

*might not actually be called The Black Baron



Incidentally, the SPAD VII is a crap Aeroplane, all the dials are in French, it can't turn for shite and the visibility is bloody awful.

And that's what an Aldis Sight looks like, Hinkel.

Another super high tech modern video of a Multiplayer session:

If its a multiplayer game how do you get clips from the Axis guys view ? Or did u put that in later ?

Nice vid MJ but your plane is filthy. Get it sorted man !

There's a record funtion that makes a copy of your sortie, then you can play it back and change camera angles and the like, which makes for fancy videoage it must be said, the game itself is all in 1st person view (on the realistic servers anyway.)

And I think it's meant to be that colour.

Nice clips MJ, i had forgotten you had ROF.

I haven't dabbled with the multiplayer yet, as I'm still trying to master the Se.5a in offline mode. Plus when I do have the time to fly recently it's mainly in BE!

Do you turn all the realsim settings up to max? I do and trying manage the engine is part of the battle what with the mixture, radiator, over cooling, over reving etc. I often find my engine giving up on me before the end of the sortie.

Looking at your vids you don't use snap views to look down the gun sight. I find aiming really tricky with the Se.5 I've trieds to use the snap views, but found them a pain to set up properly so end up not bothering.

If you ever fancy winging up in the multiplayer let me know and I'll don my silk scarf and googles.

Funny you should mention the S.E.5a Speedy, as that seems to be my ride of choice at the moment, not sure I got close enough to the Pfalz in this fight from this afternoon though...



I find the S.E.5 to be one of the easier of the late war crates to fly, it doesn't turn too good, but the controls are responsive, its faster than your average Hun, it's a stable gun platform, the cockpit layout is reasonably sensible, there's good visibility, it's easy to land and it doesn't have any of the unfortunate quirks like the Sopwith Camel and the Sopwith Dolphin.

I'd like to get into the Sopwith Dolphin (seeing as it's the reason we have a picture of a Dolphin on our crest ) but I think I need more experience before I can use it proper, it has rather a vicious spin characteristic to it (note the Sopwith Dolphin behind me, 51 seconds into my S.E.5 video for an example), though I have just worked out how to land it without decapitating myself, which is always nice I find.

As for engine settings and the like, aye I generally fly full realism servers and fly full real on offline careers, I find the main trick is to look at the tachometer in a dive and to lower the throttle to keep it reasonably the same as it was before you dove, whilst also closing the radiator to around 25%, there was also a bug with the S.E.5 which made the engine very sensitive to over-revving and the like, which got fixed recently, dunno if you've tried it since then.

And as for views, I always go with standard TrackIR head movement rather than snap views, I quite like the quirkiness of some WWI Aeroplanes that means you have to stick your head out of the side of the cockpit to aim the guns.

Do you have the Field Mod pack for the S.E.5? It has an Aldis Sight in it, which is smack bang infront of your face, so makes aiming a lot easier.

They're also bringing out Weapoin Mod packs soon, which has stuff like Le Prieur anti-balloon rockets and extra guns, plus making it so you can rotate the wing mounted Lewis on the S.E.5 for reloading and attacking two-seater from below, etc - they're also adding cannons to some aircraft, which should be interesting.

Biggest thing I've found in MP though is that no matter what aircraft I choose I can never outturn anyone to save my life, so I obviously need more practice at something.

speedy77 wrote:

If you ever fancy winging up in the multiplayer let me know and I'll don my silk scarf and googles.

Sounds good to me, Speedy! Outside of Spitfire office hours of course.

I seem to recall Hinkel saying he plays Rise of Flight too.

We'll have to work out some form of communicating with hand signals and wing waving first though...

We can grab our S.E.5s and do it Aces High style (minus the horrible deaths, of course)

MJDixon wrote:
Do you have the Field Mod pack for the S.E.5? It has an Aldis Sight in it, which is smack bang infront of your face, so makes aiming a lot easier.

I did notice that sight in your clip, it would make life a lot easier. I'll have to get hold of the Mod pack

Aye, the SE5 is the crate for me.

Never guess who I ran into during an online sortie this afternoon!

Had a rather eerie one yesterday, killed the Pilot of an Albatros - but his crate just kept on flying!

Damn easy mode Germans with their planes that fly themselves!



Who knows how long it would have gone on for if a cheeky SPAD hadn't come along and shot his wing off...

Spooky indeed.

Ive been trying to download the trial off the site but its not working dang it.

Did some more flights yesterday

purchased some new planes and upgrades.

first time i used the aldis in my camel: went head on with an enemy, shoot a 2 second burst about 100m away and saw him go down immediatly. apparently huit him right in the engine and got congratulations for the kill

tried to spent some time on realism server ( syndicate )

cant seem to zoom in on the map so i loose my way and doing my best to fly on compas.
loose several planes due to engine failures
don t really now what is the reason. lost a few due to overheating i think but can t seem to find good setting for radiator as there are no gauges or indicators how open / close the radiator is or how warm the engine.
other failures i don t really understand.
example: i see a bomber passing under me so i turn the plane while starting the dive and poof i got oil in my face and engine dies ( still shot the gotha down )
had this problem a couple of times that suddenly i get oil in the face and did not even had combat yet or was shot by flak.

If you're not overheating then it's probably that you're over-revving the engine in your dives, something like when you dive the prop spins faster, which makes the engine rev more, which screws up the engine.

If so you need to keep an eye on the RPM gauge (tachometer) to make sure it doesn't go too fast.

Think that's also a bigger issue on the rotary engine aircraft like the Camel because its not as easy to slow down the engine (due to the torque of the whole engine rotating, rather than just the prop) so you need to use the blip switch (the thing that cuts power to the engine momentarily) to stop the engine over-revving.

Is there any particular Aircraft you're having trouble with? If so I can try to make a video to show all the dials and the like in dives and such (presuming I can get it to work that is. )

As for the Radiator, I have my Throttle, Radiator and Mixture mapped to my throttle quadrant, so I can tell how open/closed it is by the position of the throttle lever, also if you look around the in game cockpit you should be able to see the Aircraft radiator lever moving, which can help to see what setting it's at.

For zooming in on the map it works for me if I RMB to open up the mini menu thing, then put my mouse cursor over the map and use the mouse wheel to zoom in/out.

i had most problems with the camel. did not even knew about that blimp thing.
think i also had it once with the se5.

is it enough to cut down on the throttle to keep engine cool or you have to use the radiator thingy?

The Camel doesn't have a radiator (don't think any of the rotary engine aircraft use radiators), just throttle, mixture and the blip switch (infact some rotary engine craft don't even have throttles, only the blip switch), can't say I have much experience with the Camel as I'm more into the SE5, but I guess to keep it cool you just throttle back.

With the SE5 I usually fly with about 50% - 75% radiator open, then I close it in a dive, you can usually get away with just going to 0% throttle in the SE5 to prevent over-revving in a dive, there's a temp gauge on the left side of the cockpit, I usually try to keep it about a third of the way up or so by varying how open the radiator is.

I'll go make a little SE5 video as I have nothing better to do.

i am trying to master the game but i m not good with all the technical stuff
its like what is this button for => engine stops hmmz what about this button => engine goes boom => hhmz panic ???

Here's a video for the S.E.5a, I also did some stuff about spin recovery, as seemingly if you try to use the proper spin recovery technique it doesn't end well (not sure if the one in the video is the best way to get out of spins, but it seems to work for me.)

Equally, not sure if 55c - 65c is the ideal engine operating temperature, but I usualy go for about 60 and it seems to work alright.



The S.E.5a has most of the fancy stuff like mixture control, radiators, etc - so it applies for most of the Aircraft, it just doesn't have a blip switch as it isn't a Rotary.

Nice vid MJ very helpful. I had found the spin recovery very hard, meaning that I end up crashing, so I'll try your method.

It might be worth mentioning tweaking the mixture for max revs as you climb. You can actually judge it by the engine tone. But rule of thumb is at or near the deck, where most of the fights end up, you want to have 100% or just under.

I did notice you took off with a cold engine, your ground crew would be spitting out their tea, you need to warm it up first..

It must be said, I do like the challenge of a more complex engine managment.

speedy77 wrote:I did notice you took off with a cold engine, your ground crew would be spitting out their tea, you need to warm it up first..

Honestly Speedy, there is a war on you know.

Sometimes I sit on the ground at about 90% throttle to warm it up beforehand, but it takes a while longer.

As for the spin thing, you have to keep rocking it until the spin starts to slow, then hold the controls in that position until you fall out of bottom of the spin - it's all a bit hit and miss.

I'll put this one out there, I'm going to be online in RoF tommorow (wednesday) from about 7:30pm on the Syndicate Full Realism Server in either an S.E.5a or a SPAD VII (depending on the year) if anyone else fancies a flight or two.

In game name is Mike Dixon.

I'll log into the WW2OL TeamSpeak too, not sure how in-game comms will work though, guess I'll use hand signals!

don t know if I will be able to join you. if will if i can.

btw thanks for the training video.

can fly se5 without problem now.

I also found a-out that AI in twoseaters are very deadly. they don t seem to miss much and take out your engine or your pilot. so for now attack from below .

I did 1 run in a albatros v yesterday ( syndicate ). did some patrol but found no one. got bored so attacked a truck collum and destroyed 3 trucks with mg fire. going back to the front I spot an allied triplane little higher. He did not spot me and i gain altitude to attack him. After some minutes I m in a good attack position. lock and load the guns, aim en then poof engine stops out of fuel. . i try to put down the plane as i am far in behind allied lines. getting low to the deck a flak round explodes right next to me lightly wounding me. I saftely land the plane finish the mission and get a killed by ground fire lol.

This could get v interesting on comms if we have people playing both games using the same team speak. I can inagine Hinkel or Speedy calling out "Break MJ Fokker on your 6" ! Much hilarity will follow. We could ask HQ for a "ground" channel for our squad. Bit cheeky but we are at war. In two different timezones. thats just how good we are !

btw MJ You should change your name to Mike "Go West" Dixon, although people may think you bat for the other side ;-)

lets make that mike the other west dixon

Dezey wrote:

btw MJ You should change your name to Mike "Go West" Dixon, although people may think you bat for the other side ;-)

Surely not, Dezey! I'd better be 'Drag and Bag' Dixon, close relation to:





This next one's about dastardly side switchers!

Suppose seeing as there are no icons I'd better show what my crate looks like.

S.E.5a will be from No. 92 Squadron (three white stripes at the back) with a red wing streamer.



SPAD VII 150hp will be from No. 19 Squadron (two black balls connected by a horizontal line) with a red wing streamer.



I'll also be wearing a red scarf, but if you get close enough to see that you'll probably have taken my wing off.

Will be on in about 10 - 15 mins, need to finish killing off 20,000 Samurai first.