DD_Brando

You have an Ati graphics card? And just upgraded your Catalyst drivers beyond 9.10?

Your Zuti missions have really gotten polished Snacko My gang just spent a couple of hours flying the Suwan airbase - love the action & the ebb and flow of the front line, et cetera. I feel honoured that you would choose one of my coops to transform into a WW1 scenario. If you want to update it at all, may I suggest you add the I-15bis to the Central Powers list? There is a great set of skins at Mission4today, made by JG26-EZ, all sporting the Maltese cross! Keep 'em coming mate - they are greatly appreciated. B

Excuse the delay K. File is posted to the Vault now HERE B

That's right - the older atioglxx.dll gets rid of the blocky text problem. I'm not sure whether it has been uploaded into the Vault. If not give a shout and it can be done. Tha ATI team are aware of the problem and are looking to fix it.

The fruity colour is fixed by changing the settings for Vertex Arrays, as below: [Render_OpenGL] TexQual=3 TexMipFilter=3 TexCompress=0 TexFlags.UseDither=0 TexFlags.UseAlpha=0 TexFlags.UseIndex=0 TexFlags.PolygonStipple=0 TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0 TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=0 TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=0 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0 TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1 TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1 TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1 TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=0 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0 TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0 TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1 TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=1 TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0 TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1 TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0 TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1 TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0 HardwareShaders=1 Shadows=2 Specular=2 SpecularLight=2 DiffuseLight=2 DynamicalLights=1 MeshDetail=2 VisibilityDistance=3 Sky=2 Forest=2 LandShading=3 LandDetails=2 LandGeom=3 TexLarge=1 TexLandQual=3 TexLandLarge=1 VideoSetupId=17 Water=2 Effects=1 ForceShaders1x=0 PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.0625 PolygonOffsetUnits=-1.0 These are my current conf.ini settings for OGL. I am using Catalyst 10.3 with the earlier atioglxxx.dll inserted into the games root folder. My card is a Radeon 4890. CPU etc details in my sig below. Performance is very good in coop and MDS missions which I also host brando

From "Somewhere in France........." Best wishes to you all B

Nice one Rog

Yes - the guy with the cat tee-shirt, who is seen using the bolt action and loading a round, was the only person who looked experienced at firing an elephant gun. Most of the other guys had very little experience of rifle-shooting in general as far as I could tell by the elementary mistakes they were making, white Arabs included. I wonder what the point is of a .577 rifle round and the rifle itself? Killing elephants and rhinos has rather gone out of fashion these days. One-upmanship I suppose. Sad.

About fifteen miles away from here, Trib, close to the Buddhist Studies Centre where I set up all the computers and networked them. That was the view as I went home every evening. Nowadays I live by the sea B

I can't see the images any more either. It must be something to do with the change of web sites Here's a picture with, er, water in it RiverDart.bmp

1 /1 /70? I was 20 and I had a heck of a hangover! Nearly everyone I knew looked like this back then: or this Scary times Anyway - I really like the new site layout Rog. Thanks for all the hard work cheers, Ross

I'm running an AMD 955 Black Edition (3.2GHz) at 3.6GHz. As far as I can make out, the air-heads get a 30-35 idle and a 45-60 load range. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I just prefer to have less fluctuation and a lower average temp along with less dependence on fans for doing anything more than assisting convection. I did consider the cooler for the heatpipe setup which cools the southbridge, northbridge and mosfets. I may yet do it, but the figures for the passive cooling are quite reassuring. When the ambient temperature climbs (if summer ever returns) I'll look more closely at the situation. Fitting a block and piping it up would be quick and easy. Snacko, yes, the black box at the back is indeed the radiator. It's mounted to the case on 1 and 1/4" standoffs, and carries a 120mm fan which is set to draw air through the radiator. Some of the air is drawn from the case while some of it comes from outside thanks to the standoffs. There is another 120mm fan at the front of the case, drawing air in over the hard drives and into the case, while the 120mm fan in the top of the case draws warm air out and away. Some of the flow is redirected, viz. the memory cooler fans and the graphics card fans, but the important point is that the air flows constantly through the case. The pump is mounted on velcro to dampen the sound and keep it still. The reservoir lives in the vertical space between the hard-drive cage and the underside of the DVD/RW. I took one of those finned, rubber-mounted sidepieces used to mount 2.5" drives in a 3.5" enclosure and modded it to hold the reservoir mounting. I'm quite proud of that bit of modding 'cos it proves my brain is still functioning despite all the prescription drugs I gobble in a day! I may press on to get the 3.8GHz overclock running stable. Don't forget that the temps I quoted are overclocked, not stock, and I think you'll agree that I've got a bit of headroom yet. B

I've had water-cooling for five years now and, despite replacing almost every part of the original set-up, I never got around to losing the original radiator that came with the Vantec Stingray that Bird-dog gifted to me for building a rig for him. I finally got down and did something about that just yesterday. I thought a few pics would be of interest to water-heads and those considering the step. Remember that everything you see has been put together by a bloke with one arm - so you really should be able to do this sort of thing easily. I didn't photograph the wet part of the dismantling, but I can tell you that clamping off sections makes the job easy. I actually turned the rig onto its head for removing and replacing the radiator. This enabled me to fill the new rad with water before securing it to the case. I carried on and replaced the pipe to the CPU block and then the pipe to the pump. All the rest is just fine, even if the appearance is a little confusing. Some of the tubing is Tygon, which is thick-walled, and some is EK's own, which is blue under UV. The new stuff is thin-walled which was needed to go with the elbow-fittings on the rad - but all of it is 3/8" ID. After about an hour I was at the pumping stage and there she blows Time to partake of your favourite beverage, empty the dishwasher, feed the cats, whatever. Due to the clamping-off 'trick' there wasn't much air in the system, and most of the bubbles were gone after an hour. I sealed up the reservoir and placed it back in its hidey-hole I checked all the connections for leaks but didn't find a trace. The compression elbows are good, and my method of using zip-ties where the tubing goes over the barbs has never let me down yet. Only the section of thick-walled Tygon tube needs screw-driven clamps. The final pic was taken with the case-door off but otherwise in its normal position and all connected. Temperature-wise I'm pleased to say that the CPU now idles at 27*C, and peaks at 32*C during a long session of IL-2. The extra thickness of the new radiator is probably responsible for the drop of 3* overall. It looks good and keeps up my permanent 12% overclock with total stability. Radiator: XSPC RX120 ~ �25 Elbows: �5 for 2 Tubing: �1.50 Hose clamps: �4.50 for 2 all from OverclockersUK. The other parts are an Alphacool CPU block - an EK reservoir - and a Laing pump. At current prices the whole lot doesn't exceed �200, but the results are definitely worth the effort and the wallet-shock. B

Three women die together in an accident and go to heaven. When they get there, St. Peter says, 'We only have one rule here in heaven: don't step on the ducks!' So they enter heaven, and sure enough, there are ducks all over the place. It is almost impossible not to step on a duck, and although they try their best to avoid them, the first woman accidentally steps on one. Along comes St. Peter with the ugliest man she ever saw. St. Peter chains them together and says, 'Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to spend eternity chained to this ugly man!' The next day, the second woman steps accidentally on a duck and along comes St. Peter, who doesn't miss a thing. With him is another extremely ugly man. He chains them together with the same admonishment as for the first woman. The third woman has observed all this and, not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly man, is very, VERY careful where she steps. She manages to go months without stepping on any ducks, but one day St. Peter comes up to her with the most handsome man she has ever laid eyes on .... very tall, long eyelashes, muscular. St. Peter chains them together without saying a word.. The happy woman says, 'I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you for all of eternity?' The guy says, 'I don't know about you, but I stepped on a duck . . .

I think the readme is saying that the programs need placing in the main game folder and that it's not necessary to go any deeper into the file structure for primary installation purposes. You need to use the word 'into' in place of the 'at' which the author has used below. The underlinings are mine: Likewise with the rest and so on. The need to edit manually is explained next, and when or if it is necessary: This is saying that you need to disable earlier QMBs byfolder deletion or adding a hyphen in front of the folder (eg -QMB) and also deleting "the [quick] header with all the lines CustomXX=MapName" from the file Conf.ini in the game folder. The author's reasoning makes good sense - and the rest of the advice is worth reading through and taking on board.I haven't actually installed this mod yet, only having downloaded it last night to get at the Readme. You definitely don't want to go deeper into the game folder than the IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 directory. Just drop the folders in and let it activate itself. If you have installed these folders into the JSGME folder then you need to remove them and start over. cheers, B

Owww! My ribs! made my Monday cheers Capt Jack

Yeah, 60 Hertz is the standard refresh rate for pretty well all TFT/LCD monitors - but don't worry about it. 60Hz on a flat-panel-screen looks as good as a 100Hz on a CRT. The main thing to look for is a good contrast ratio and an absence of dead pixels when the thing is delivered. Make sure that there is a guarantee regarding dead pixels and RMA'ing

I bought a 24" Digimate from OverclockersUK about a year ago. It has a native resolution of 1900x1200 @ 60Hz and scales better than the increasingly available 1920x1080. It cost about £120 if I remember rightly. I switched from a 19" Iiyama CRT, capable of 1600x1200@100Hz, a real beauty; so I wasn't particularly expecting this cheap panel to be as good as it is. But it has really transformed my desktop work, especially since Windows 7 came along. And 24" isn't a monster size, really. You'll soon be dreaming of a 32" Go for it. 5ms is fine. B