DD_Brando

This may be new for some: FitnessStudio.wmv

PropNut, m8, I'd be really glad of some missions to try out. I've been stuck in limbo for the last 6 months or so, weighed down with family issues, but the fog is clearing and I'm looking forward to getting back into the virtual skies! Your offer is gratefully accepted and it'll be a good way for me to get into the mission-builder side of things. I have heaps of literature regarding the aerial combat of the era and so on: I expect I shall eventually be able to knock out a few scenarios myself. Re: CloD. Don't get me wrong. I'm really hoping that the team pull this one out of the hole it's in. I do feel, however, that having paid almost £50 for a "Collector's Edition" that turned out to be a badly printed, un-hemmed dish rag and a couple of sets of notes, that I'm entitled to be a bit pissed off. The DVD is of no value at all - except as a coaster - and I feel conned by Ubisoft. So I'll postpone my desire to fly a Spit over the Channel a bit longer and go for a spot of wind in the wires. See you up there. B

Personally, I'd wait it out. The delay is because neither IC or Ubisoft are prepared to release the thing as it is now to the wider US audience 'cos, frankly, it's a POS at the present time. While some of us old IL-2 fans who've been in since 2001 are prepared to cut the dev team a bit of slack to get things right, any new pilot will be rightfully angry at paying for such a bugfest. Once I've finished my new pit and weird HOTAS setup I'll be focussing my enthusiasm onto Rise of Flight. I won't exactly be using my CloD disc as a coaster, but I'm not prepared to be an unpaid beta-tester for Maddox games. Maybe in a years time I'll check it out again. B

I used the MS stick for quite a while back in the 90s and I was impressed by its sensitivity and response times. This difference stems from the way the MS stick senses input which is quite dissimilar to anything with pots or even Hall sensors. As Rog says, this stick is worth the time spent tuning those inputs, which will be totally different from the rather clumsy X45. I'd still be using mine, but the perennial problem with having only one arm is button inputs. I can't get enough! That's why I switched to my much-modified CH Fighterstick and lost the Force I'm fighting back though - in the middle of converting a CH Force (gameport) stick into a USB device with the Fighterstick buttons - 102 separate buttons available and FFB to boot, yummmm! Anyway, don't give up on the MS stick. It'll be a real 'joy' to use once you get it right.

I have this vision of me going down in flames, screaming "Control E, Control E, ffs, Control E!" The only time I used a voice recognition utility it was made by IBM and was fairly slow. I was dictating a sentence and had to cough. The program promptly typed the word Lutheran I never could work out why a non-conformist church was in the vocabulary or how a cough would bring it to light.

I'll raise you two badgers

You'll be pleased you have Win 7..... For one thing it seems to be the best OS for the new sim (CLoD) - plus it supports DX11 and previous viz DX10.1, DX10, and DX9

Thanks!

It shows £59.99 on the Saitek UK site - do you know a cheaper source?

CH all the way for me. Whatever premium you pay now is easily returned when you're still using them 8 years down the line. B

I had to let go of my dandy outfit - a 16-valve K100RS BMW tied to a steel, military sidecar - this year, as the combination of the battery/ stimulator unit implanted in my left chest plus the total lack of a right arm has meant I just don't have the physical strength to ride it any more. So I've hung up my boots and helmet and bequeathed the Green Meanie to a deserving friend who lives up on Dartmoor and is otherwise cut off. Sixteen years ago a moronic nonce came six feet over the centre-line and crashed into me, with the result being a horrific list of damage to my right shoulder and my spine. If that ain't bad enough, it's more or less ended my flight-simming days too. It ain't one of those injuries that heals up and goes away, and my condition is deteriorating. Yes, I know I spent most of last year building the wall in my garden, and a fine job it is too; but if I'd had a spare grand or two around I would've happily paid someone else to do it! I ain't saying don't ride: just ride really defensively. Any of the other drivers around you is just as likely to be as stupid as the #@;^ that did for me, and don't ever forget it. Take lids, boots and leathers, and your brain - but leave your ego behind B

Yeah, what they said

You need to get this sucker out, root and branch, and eradicate it. The trouble with the browser hijack bit is that it can send you anywhere and keep infecting your drive. It's one of the reasons I use either a partition or a separate drive for Windows and the basic apps. If necessary, I can do a format and reinstall without affecting the other partitions and/or drives that carry my games and so on. Worms usually spread their tentacles through Windows and the associated directories and it's not always clear what their full threat actually is. That said, I would download Hijack This! and run a scan AND follow it up by sending the logfile to the specified forum. They are a bunch of dedicated geeks there who will advise you on what to delete and so on. Once you have cleaned up I recommend a good back-up service like Acronis. B

CH owners take a look on the CH Hangar, where Revvin' has mapped a Fighterstick, Pro Throttle, Pro Pedals (FSPTPP) HOTAS for CloD.

Happy Easter BG and Dogz! I'm enjoying spending time with Valda who is finally on holiday after months of intensive work. We've started planting out the garden I built last year and today we finished the rewiring of the garden shed. Power & light is just what every good shed needs and almost my first project will be to build a good, new cockpit. I just read, on the IC forum, that working force-feedback is coming with next patch for Cliffs of Dover, sometime in the next couple of days. So I'm bringing my CH Force-based, one-armed HOTAS off the back-burner and up to speed. Despite all the nay-saying gits who haunt the banana forum, CLOD is shaping to be a first-rate sim. I can remember how frequent and fruitful the patches were for FB, but the genre seem to have attracted a lot of people with the attention span of a gnat. Oh dear! Easter and I'm ranting Time to go back to the garden for a sundowner! catch you B

8x, 8x, all sliders fully right works for my 5870

My all time favourite one-liner comes from a Billy Connolly rant about beauty products, specifically hair shampoo. "What the fuck's a jojoba?" Priceless.

I'm glad to see that the cheating issue is being taken seriously this time around. It's a pity that it has to be so Draconian, viz. a perma-ban, but the truth is that cheats ruin the on-line game for everyone. They deserve whatever they get. Did anyone catch this clip? I'm instantly suspicious when anyone says, 'I'm only showing this cheat because the devs need to see how easy it is....blah, blah' More like 'I'm showing this to show you how good I am at hacking code'. Now I always thought that Zloy Petrushko's AAA_mod for AI performance is a highlight of the UP2.01 package - but I feel really alarmed to find him and his ilk sniffing around this brand new sim. Contradictory? Even hypocritical on my part? Well, yes - but I still don't trust his spiel. So I'm happy that cheating cops a big hit. B

There's a beta set of version 5 drivers at Naturalpoint - give them a go. salute B

Whatever you do, keep away from clicking any links in the message - be it Unsubscribe or whatever. A relative of mine got sent a self-activating virus that first opened as a desktop icon, bright yellow banner with SEX written in large, bold type black right across it. At this point he panicked and right-clicked and deleted the offending icon before his Missus saw it , and Bingo! - the viral package opened, spread right across his system, hijacked his browser and probably set him onto a bot-net. Every time he tried to activate his Antivirus the machine crashed. It came to me in the end, the machine that is, and I just put in a new hard drive and installed Windows on it. I did take a look beforehand, not connected to the web, and managed to run Hijack this! using a CDR, but there was masses of rubbish everywhere. Fortunately he had backed up his data before the whole thing went off, so he had learnt something from me. Shit like this, there's only one option for it - Delete B

Ha, yeah, I did the very same with the clip on the original NP cap. I'm not a great believer in too many gizmos - but I'm seriously pleased with the latest addition to my flightgear; which is the Trackclip Pro thingy ... I probably wouldn't have bought it straight out, but a buddy of mine bought an extra unit by mistake and gave me the spare as a present. This is the 3-LED clip that fits neatly onto your headphones, and TrackIR really benefits from the accuracy this system brings. Just a thought B