Rico

Oops, sorry about that! I had intended to link to the gallery, but forgot. Looks like Arthur's got me covered, though. =) Pretty crazy to think that they were in a wall, and who knows for how long. The one of the USS Colorado passing in front of New York City is actually from the same series of pictures as the one linked in the Wikipedia article on the Colorado Class Battleships. I happened to have scanned another picture, but the one in the article is in the box. Also found commendations and letters from the US Navy to the guy who took the pictures, so we have his name, and some dates to go along with them. It really was a fun several months going through these things and putting that book together.

I know I haven't been around much lately. With the new company, Christmas, Skyrim, and now Star Wars out, I'm suprised I've even slept! =) One of the other things I've been doing over the past month is going through and identifying stuff from a box of old photos my brother-in-law found. He was tearing down an old house in Oklahoma and inside the wall was a box full of hundreds of photos. Among them, about half were photos of US Naval ships, aircraft, and Sailors. He's a big history buff, and with some of my skills developed during my previous career, I thought I could help him identify them. So I put together a little book (I say little, it's about three-inches thick) for him listing what each is and giving some history behind it. Caution when reviewing the photos. I named them best guess, and then adjusted fire while putting the book together. Some might be mislabeled because I was too lazy to go back and change the filename. =) In any case, I wanted to share these with my old friends. I thought you all would get a kick out of it. These ships saw action in Operation Torch, Leyte Gulf, Perl Harbor, Coral Sea, and plenty of others. My favorites of the bunch are the Shellback Ceremony on what I believe is the USS New York. That ceremony is a Naval Tradition dating back hundreds of years, honoring the point where Sailors cross the Prime Meridian or the Equator. Hope you guys enjoy!

Dude, that is some seriously excellent photography. That looks increadibly professional.

yeah, steam will work in offline mode, but I don't think you'll be able to get SH5 to do it. Even if you installed with the physical one instead of steam, you still have to connect to UBI's servers to get it to work. I believe CoD is using the same protection, btw. I haven't looked to be sure, though.

DRM = Digital Rights Management I won't get into my rant about the morality of modern DRM, but since I'm such a Linux nut, it shouldn't be hard to guess my stance on the subject. =) In this case and UBI is really getting known for this crap, they require an active internet connection to play the stupid game. So games that I might normally play while on the plane, or while away from home, I suddenly can't without tethering my phone, and not everyone has that option. You additionally run the problem of not being able to play at all when UBI has problems with their servers, which has no direct impact on the game at all, other than to prevent your enjoyment of it. It's a unfortunate trend by current publishers to include this form of DRM in their games, but there are some things in the pipe that give me hope. The new Free-to-Play model that a lot of MMOs are going to is promising, and you're seeing that model crossing genres really well. Plus you have a lot of indie games getting some serious attention (ie minecraft) and that can't help but be healthy for the market. So yeah. That's rant free. lol

Awesome, Snacko! Silent Hunter has been one of my favorite games for years. When 5 came out, I was... angry might be an appropriate word for it. Besides the completely ridiculous DRM protection, it was just such a huge step back in terms of the gui and gameplay. I was really sad about it. Looks like I'll have to reinstall and give it another go!

A buddy just linked this to me and I had a bit of a laugh. Thought I'd share! Arma II or IRA II

Some new recruit from Scotland, I imagine. =)

lol @ Prop. All looks good, Flyboy. Like the guys said, ditch the soundcard (I used to work for Creative, and I love their stuff, but it's really not needed in this case). I like GIGABYTE motherboards better that Asus, but I had a bad experience with Ass-us, so I'm a little bitter. I think both suggested video cards are good, and I don't think you'll hate either. The ATI is a little more horse-power, but the nVidia has better drivers. Either is a win for their own reason, so just get whichever you like better. Everyone else has said what I would have said, so that's all I got. =)

Okay, OT. Here's the basic run-down on what you want to do. Let me know if you get to a step and it doesn't make sense, or you don't see it. I don't have XP in front of me, so I'm having to do this from memory. =) First thing we want to do is download the latest drivers for your card, which I'm betting you already have done. Just put them on your Desktop or something so you can get to them easily later. Next, we need to uninstall any software they may have installed. Go to Start>Run, type appwiz.cpl and hit enter. That should launch the add-remove programs window. Look for anything that says ATI. It'll probably be something like ATI Catalyst, or something like that. It's been a really long time since I had an ATI card, so I don't know for sure. Once the software is gone, Start->Run, type devmgmt.msc and you should get the Device Manager window. Near the top of the list, hit the plus symbol next to Display Adapters and drop that down. Double-click the video card (if you see more than one here, let me know), that should pop up the properties for the ATI card, go to the Driver tab, and select Uninstall down at the bottom. Just walk through this and choose the obvious options to uninstall that card. If you have any questions, feel free to stop and post and wait for an answer. Now, let's disable anything running in the background on boot. Start->Run, type msconfig and hit enter. This starts the system configuration utility. Go to the Startup tab (probably last tab on the window). You'll have to use a little thought here, but you're going to go down through the list and uncheck everything in it. Anything that's specifically required to allow you to work on the computer, leave. That means that if printer software shows up, you'll get rid of it. If there's software there for your mouse, then you might just leave that. (Later when you reboot the computer, you're going to get a message about system settings being customized or something like that. Just check the box that says "do not show me this again" and hit okay.) Okay, now we've done that, we need to boot into Safe Mode real quick. To do this, Start-> Shutdown->Restart. As it comes up, there'll be a point where the screen goes black just before the Windows splashscreen comes up. When you get there, start tapping the F8 key. You should get a menu and be able to arrow up to Safe Mode. Hit Enter and let the computer boot. It'll come up in a really run-down looking form of Windows (jokes about the true nature of Windows comes to mind, but I need to stay on topic!). You'll have to log in (as administrator if it offers it as an alternative choice. Once in, follow the directions above to get to Device Manager, and then to your Display Adapters. Right-click and delete/uninstall all the video cards listed there. Close everything, reboot, and when you come back up, run the install script fot the files you downloaded. That should install your video card and then ask you to reboot, go ahead. When you're back up again, try the game. If it's works, awesome. Just go back to msconfig (as above), but this time, you'll be re-checking the stuff you want loading. If you see something you know you don't want, it's okay to leave it unchecked. (remember on the next reboot, you'll get that message again because you've made a change.) I know it seems a little long, but it's actually pretty straight forward. I don't think you'll have any trouble with it. Good luck! PM me if you have problems, and I'll get you my phone number so you can call me.

Hmm. This is certainly a bit of a tough one. That's for sure. These things are always confusing, honestly. Unless you get lucky and the answer is obvious, you usually have this wierd trial and error troubleshooting. It sucks, I know. Just hang in there. btw, I looked into the card, and the 4870 is a good card with fairly low amount of driver issues. How much are you looking to spend? This is completely personal preference, but I'd be tempted to look at the nVidia GTX 450, they have them on newegg for under $200, and I think pretty well under $200. The 4870 probably benchmarks a little higher, but the 450 has Directx11 support. Rise of Flight supports Dx11, so it MIGHT be worth it. Of course, RoF is such a hog, I'm not sure how well that card would do. Seems like it'd do well, but I don't know for sure. Other advantages to the 450 is that it pulls less power, so the upgrade means you won't need to look into your power supply and see if you need to upgrade. I think both are pretty solid choices from what I can see, though. No real wrong answer here. Back to troubleshooting, though. What version of Windows? I'll write out instructions for how to get rid of the drivers for your current card, and we'll reinstall and see what happens. Could be a driver issue. Also, it's possible that something is running in the background causing problems, so we can look at both in one smooth series of steps. Just let me know what OS you have.

Have you checked Expert Mode and selected the 4BG Address Space option? I'm not sure a new video card is the right answer. Not a bad one by any means, but it might be a little premature, unless you've just decided that you really want one. My problem with that being that it worked before, and doesn't work now, unless I missed that part. That would suggest it's not a hardware problem, and be more likely to be an issue with setting, file corruption, or something like that. What version of windows are you running? We might just nuke all your video card drivers and have the system redetect it and reinstall. I'll look up the card when I get a chance (might not be until tomorrow, though) I personally am more of an nVidia guy, but ATI does do good cards. They're drivers just occasionally leave something to be desired.

Might try adjusting some of the setting for RC4, slide RAM up and down a little. Have you tried downloading new video drivers? What card are you using? Might even try older drivers as well. Might try it windowed too and see what that does to the framerate.

maybe there are no humans to be loaded??