Madfish

I'm always a bit sceptical when mass market is mentioned. There is no mass market for flight sims and DCS is the last company that comes to mind when thinking about an entry to the flight sim scene. Also I have my doubts about the potential as their past developments were focused on either mil-backed technology (thus subventioned) and / or only a single or few pilotable planes. It'll be an interesting comparison when P51s are introduced to CloD but then again... it's only one plane for a hefty price tag and thus far from the content you get with CloD.

Wow, this looked different on my machine. Maybe a 4.11 issue - it was a fun landing though

http://randomtextgenerator.com/ You can even select greek as a language!

I have no idea what this thread is / was about but it reminds me why I reported that moderator rights to everyone might turn out to be a bad idea.

Actually there are a number of ink based printers with lower cost / page, especially if you take energy consumption into the calculation. The main strength of a laser printer is it's printing speed and nothing else really. I'd advise to analyze the requirements for a printer on a per acquisition basis. Factors are: - size of print - printing quality - ink / toner cost - power consumption standy / use - multi-purpose? (scan, fax, copier) - if multi-purpose then size of scan, does it have ADF (automatic document feeder - automatically scanning multiple pages) etc. It really depends on how you use it. Generalization can lead to very negative results. If anyone needs a printer I'd ask the following quesions: How often and how much do you print? What do you print (photo, charts/presantation, text)? What sizes do you want to print? Do you want to use it primarily as a printer or an all-in-one device? If so, do you want to scan multiple documents for office or home-office digitalization? Based on these answers it'd then be possible to give a valid recommendation.

Just as an info. A harddrive cache doesn't really help when it comes to previously loaded data. It is meant to buffer through times where a seqential read or write is not possible due to the disc or operating system performance. For example if the harddrive has to write data onto fragmented discs or if the operating system requests data but can't read it due to queue issues or because it's stuck due to performance bottlenecks. It also helps during the process of compressing / uncompressing. There is a hybrid generation of drives now, these try to combine the speed of SSDs with the size of platter based drives. It's not working too great though. Basically these drives analyze what data is being accessed often and then move that data onto the SSD part of the drive. I'd recommend going for an SSD + platter drive though as the algorythms used for deciding what data goes where aren't working very well yet. This might change in the future but there are other issues that these types of harddrives have. Rule of thumb: An SSD helps most where a lot of random reads / writes take place. Namely operating systems and normal workflow with software and smaller data chunks. As for physical (platter based) drives: A.) Fast drives, like the raptors, with high RPM (rotation per minute) like 10 or 15k are good for raid environments or when used solo for huge chunks of sequentially written or read data, for example video editing, as their random access performance is good but not nearly as good as SSDs. They have the benefit of lower cost per size though. B.) Slower drives, also called green drives, with low RPM around 5k are good for data storage. They do perform fairly well in sequentially read data. Especially if there is NO random access taking place By the way, RAM isn't magic. I run 8 and 16Gb and I still get issues and performance problems from disc access. Especially if your pagefil is hosted on a platter based drive.

Jediteo is correct. It is "Niederdeutsch", basically influenced by the medieval age and preserved. Especially in the northern parts (lower) of Germany. "Lower" (Nieder) means altitude here as "upper"(Hoch) usually means south (the alps). That also goes for the language - Niederdeutsch and Hochdeutsch. Niederdeutsch is also often called Plattdeutsch (Flat-German). It means "Schau in die Küche" (look into the kitchen) and was a term used for high buildings and towers since you were able to look into the kitchen of the households of the settlement, village or city. It is likely that this sign indicates a high tower or building. Due to German history you can find examples for this even outside of German territory today. Especially close to the baltic sea and generally North-East Europe. Danzig(Dantsig) in Poland or Tallinn in Estland are examples for this. Both towns have "Kiek in de Kök". In Germany it is usually "Kiek in the Köken" though. "Kiek" is still a dialect term today. For example in Berlin some say "Was kiekste so?" which means "Was schaust du so?" or in english: "What are you looking at?" "in de" is easy: "in die" or english "in the". "Kök/Köken" is also easy as the German word is Küche/Küchen (kitchen in singular or plural).

Uhm... time sure goes by fast

A couple of things. RAM you don't need special RAM, even when overclocking, on sandy bridge systems. The reason is rather simple. The frequency you set in the BIOS will stay the same no matter what you do (BCLK, the base clock, is now fixed). Unless you have a locked (non K) CPU that is. So 2500k, 2600k etc. are all good. Sandy's can run 800MHz, 1333MHz, 1600MHz and 1866MHz - above that things are tricky. You won't see any noticeable real world performance improvements beyond 1333 with okay'ish timings. So if you're on a budget invest into your GPU and skip deluxe RAM. Soundcard Since Vista dedicated soundcards are kind of useless, especially if you're using TOSlink for audio quality. Yes, dedicated soundcards are sometimes better shielded and might have better pre-amps and other enhancements but it's not worth it if you're on a tight budget. Avoid software soundcards by the way! With Windows 8 things will change again it was announced. Right now it's not the very best idea to invest into a dedicated soundcard if you're on a budget though. I'd skip it and wait what will happen with Win 8. Misc The rest of your setup seems to be decent and some dogz made good recommendations. I won't go into the GPU debate because much of that depends on the game you play / benchmark and personal preference. Generally it is recommended to invest into the CPU and GPU. In your case you have a pretty strong CPU already so invest as much as possible into the GPU. If things are tight you can always overclock the CPU (since you wisely picked a K version). It doesn't mean buy the most expensive GPU but buy the most bang for the buck you can afford. Also I'd recommend a dedicated CPU cooler and a 120mm case fan to help sucking hot air out of the case. As for the CPU I'd recommend a Scythe Mugen 3 Rev. B or if you want it cheaper a Cooler Master Hyper TX3 Evo. For the case fan I'd say a Scythe Slip Stream 120 PWM Adjustable. As the name says it's a pulse width modulated fan with a 4 pin connector for your mainboard. It thus reads RPM and can be adjusted nicely and runs and starts on low RPM. It also comes with a pot so you can adjust RPM manually (handy). For UK pricing I recommend to look them up on http://skinflint.co.uk/

Good read. It was an awesome plane indeed. Funny to see how little they knew at the time - much was just guessing around after examining wrecks and captured planes. It really shows how much our knowledge today affects flight sim realism; now that we know many details and weaknesses, which wasn't the case back in the days. Anyways, here's what they got wrong I highlighted a few points. Ironically the earlier article they mentioned was right. The "Ruderbremse" WAS a parking brake - just not for the wheels but actually for the control surfaces. I quote the original Ju 88 A1 manual here: And since I know you guys speak German fluently and only want to check if mine is that good as well I'll just add a translation: So it's just a temporary locking mechanism after all... I found a version of the manual online on a russian server but it was taken from deutscheluftwaffe.de so I'm not sure about the copyright issues... There could be more in the article that's not exactly accurate but the flutter thing was just too much and I had to correct it.

I'm always amazed - whenever you look at the dangerdogz forums you'll find a new birthday thread

You're absolutely right. The P51 will not have a virtual cockpit. I edited the opening post.Yes, I'll try the free version... but I'm getting mixed feelings. Obviously it might be a game useful to draw new people into flight simming. Especially missions, challenges, score hunt and other social things are very desperately needed to keep the genre alive. Something I tried to communicate to maddox games as well. The thing is that this doesn't have to affect the sim community in a negative way. Let the newbies fly with mice and keyboard (I've flown IL-2 with keyboard and landed etc.) as that may be fun to them and inspire them to buy more hardware etcetera. On the other hand side they'd have to make sure that realism is conserved as flying is way too simple and if the flightmodels are simplified it's just no fun at all. That said it raises one question. How much would you have to pay for a decent pool of planes. Obviously they'll charge 15€ for a small plane with virtual cockpit. What about a few dozen different planes of various sizes and a decent area to fly above? With the entry price points they currently have you'd quickly end up paying several hundred dollars for the planes and thousands for new areas. Not to mention the effect this would have in terms of multiplayer. If everyone has different planes and areas unlocked... the community is bound to get clustered. I guess that means I'll stick with the free version for a very long time.

Carp aren't destructive - they're actually a very valuable part of the ecosystem over here. However, as they are bottom feeders inserting them into environments that are not adjusted to this is simply stupid. Generally it is stupid to introduce any animal into foreign ecosystems as you never know how it turns out. As carp are very tolerant and can exist in water without much oxygen it is really a gamble. Here in Germany the carp is preyed upon by many predators so there is a balance. From the many eggs it lays almost none grow up to a respectable sized fish. That aside it's absolutely needless to murder and torture the fish like that. If they ruin the lakes ecosystem then it's the people introducing them to it who should suffer. Most likely greedy fishers who thought that they'd profit from these huge "meatballs".

I didn't find a better place to post this thread, I hope it's okay here. Microsoft will launch Microsoft Flight on the 29th February. Changelog: - edited P51 Mustang - flyable from outside only Price and content available Some content, the biggest island of Hawaii and the plane Icon A5, will be "free". Additional content, planes and areas, will cost money. At release they will offer a few paid extensions: the first expansion called "Hawaiian Adventure Pack". It'll cost 1600 MS-points (about 20€). and will offer the other (I believe 7), much smaller, islands and the Vans RV-6A, an agile civil and trainer aircraft. Additionally it'll offer about 20 new missions and challenges. For another 1200 MS-points (about 15€) they will offer the Maule M-7-260C, a robust "outback" plane that can be used for transporting cargo and passengers and landing on grass and dirt strips. For 640 MS-points (about 8€) they'll offer the P-51 Mustang. Flyable from the outside only (no virtual cockpit), it won't have weapons either and will be lighter than the original and can be used for "stunt" type challenges. That means the game would cost around 43€ total for the complete area of Hawaii and 3 ½ planes. While Hawaii is pretty big and awesome... it's not exactly cheap. Gameplay Gameplay will be civil aviation. Each pilot will have a career, the career is linked to paid add-on content though. There are numerous missions and challenges available, an interesting concept. I don't know if missions and challenges can be flown in co-op. The game will be very flexible in terms of experience requirements. Beginners can fly with mouse and keyboard in a simplified external view. Experts can bump up realism and are required to even prep their planes before flight. A detailed cockpit will be available of course. Complex control options are available (probably even hardware linking). System requirements Minimum Dual Core CPU (2Ghz+) Dirext-X 9 GPU OS: Windows XP Recommended CPU: Dual Core (3Ghz+) GPU: ATi Radeon HD 5670 or nVidia Geforce 9800T RAM: 6 GByte System requirements seem to scale pretty well. It should be possible to run the game even on low-end hardware and laptops. Take-off? Personally I'm a "little" sceptical about the price point. Why release a "free" game if even minor add-on content costs about 8-15€ (11-18$)? I guess the community will end up clustered and scattered like this. I'm interested in the missions and challenges but I'm disappointed you require special planes for them. While it's okay to buy a few I don't want to end up buying hundreds of virtual planes worth a real one just to progress on my virtual pilot career or to have fun with friends on-line. Personally I'll wait and see how it progresses instead of dumping money worth a full retail game on 4 planes and a few islands. Please discuss

Also I fear that the issue of "spying neighbours" has just gotten worse.