With the level bombing thing I think you'll find that thats how it was done in reality. The whole formation would drop there bombs when they saw there leader lay his eggs. If you find the Campaigns too easy then increase the difficulty and realism. The lack of enemy aircraft is explainable. If you are winning the campaign then the enemy airforce will be pretty much run into the ground. And if you do see enemy aircraft when your in a bomber then I hope that the enemy don't see me cause if they do then your dead. Your problem with the speed indicator might be a glitch in your program or it might not be. But then I rarely fly those B25's because the guns in the nose have no method of aiming.

May I just add that while IL2 might seem a much better game they failed to give it the gameplay of the CFS series. Combat Flight Sim has so much more potential than IL2 mainly because the range of addons is so much more vast. I have had IL2 for over a year now and I havn't seen 1 3rd party plane avaliable for download. CFS3 has been out for months and already 3rd party aircraft are being released along with a vast range of other addons. Also IL2 looses realism in the way that you can blow up a 6 engined bomber with 3 cannon shells at a range of 4 miles. THAT IS NOT REALISTIC!

Rest assured there will be more patches for CFS3. It took M$ 3 patches to get FS2000 correct. Just realise that M$ have turned to a whole new graphics engine for this game which means that there going to have some initial problems. I realise that M$ were to hastey on releasing the game in time for the christmas market and for that there probably kicking themselves. Most people here including me have tried both CFS3 and IL2 and we all continue with M$'s program because its so much more enjoyable. Don't just throw CFS3 away because of a lack of enemy aircraft in the campaign (remember the game is based on GROUND ATTACK and so enemy aircraft are not part of the game. If you want enemy aircraft then do a CAP mission or an intercept.) and because the AI in the bombers are more realistic. I found it really annoying that they would go and dive bomb a target before. Then they died cause they couldn't pull up. It's realism not M$ making a mess of it.

Just remember that CFS4 is very likely to be set in the pacific theater from 1943 onwards (the bit they missed in CFS2).

So there you go. I have had my problems with CFS3 and have fixed them. If you have problems then post them here and someone will try to eliminate the problem.

Remember CFS3 is a big step forwards for M$ and in a few years time CFS will leave IL2 and every other WWII combat sim for dust.

As I remember CFS1's campaign was very easy also, but when third party developers started putting out missions and campaigns, like the piilot war series, you had to constantly scramble to survive. Microsoft, with the generic campaign that came with the sim, just built a platform for third party people to build on and I believe that CFS3 will be even better in time. There are already some pretty intense missions out there to download including a couple of add ons from Microsoft.
When the scenery and terrain sdk comes out in a few months we will see this sim develop into what it really is, the best combat flight sim to date.  I am sorry to hear that so many people are having so many problems after the patch. I have a low end machine and although the patch didn"t improve my framerates, the sim flies a lot smoother than it did before, even after putting the add on aircraft and Ghostponies effects back in.  This week I am finally going to upgrade my mem ffrom 256 to 512 and I believe this will give me all the performance I want.  I have seen some other posts like this one on other sites and I hope these people don't give up on CFS3 even though it can be a pain in the butt to set up on any given machine, because in a few months I think it will improve immensly.

il2 forgotten battles is a standalone ww2 simm, not an add on.
The campaign i'm currently playing is for the lufftwaffe using the ju88 a4 as i said in my 1st post today.
in my last mission i ordered my flight to bomb the railyard which was the target for the mission, and for 20 minutes i circled around the area waiting for them to do so, this was in suffolk possibly nr ipswich, and as you probably know there was a heavy concentration of airbases around there, as there is in cfs3, without a single enemy fighter coming up to intercept!

after 20 mins i gave up on my flight who had refused to attack the target, and did it myself.
being intercepted was part of a bomber pilots "life" (for want of a better phrase) so why should'nt it have a bigger part in cfs3?, i'm not some kind of nut who only gets off on playing games at the hardest level, but some sort of opposition to bombers would  make it more interesting and raise the realism.
after all what is printed at the bottom of the cfs3 box?
"As Real As It Gets!" and at the moment cfs3 is not.

forgotten battles is STANDALONE simm.

belgium to suffolk is approx 125 miles - no fighters.
yes of course fighters were a hazard to bombers, and if you recall i said "life for want of a better phrase"
the point here is that if this sim is to be as real as it gets then there should be more interceptions. to answer a point in your previous post, at the moment the allies hold paris and the rest of north east france, so you could say i'm loosing at the moment. taking il2 as an example again, fighters appeared in almost every mission but they do not automaticaly shoot you down, ie you can evade or shoot back, this does not make it any less playable, in fact the opposite is true!
so why should cfs3 be different? should anything that is difficult be left out?

Several days ago after installing the patch, I flew a bombing mission. When I reached the target I ordered all my wingmen to attack it. They flew nice and level and when I got over the target I dropped my bombs followed by my wingmen dropping theirs, but I accidentally missed the target. Guess what, all of my wingmen successfully hit and destroyed the target and the mission was a total success

Let me settle this fighter thing.

Who's read 'Bomber' by Len Deighton?  If you have you will notice that it says that crewmen rarely ever saw fighters!
You're group will be part of a huge bomber stream in the game.  The stream is so wide and long that is likely that you'll never see any friendly aircraft.  You have to look at that way and then ask yourself where the fighters are...they're attacing the damn bombers that arrived before you.

As for them all dropping there bombs and missing...tell them to attack, give them a few minutes because they do it all by the book (as they did before the bloody patch) so it takes them longer than you.  Once they've all got rid of there load, then you finish the taget off or destroy a nearby installation.

One thing that's wrong though...B-24s were used by the RAF for anti-shipping and submarine attacks, while the other bombers performed night raids only.  But since there is no way to have a Mossie fly before and mark the target, this can be forgiven.

Thank you...I'm off to get the No CD 3.1 and pound the Huns into submission.

yes dad

I'm sure that woodlouse would agree that this is only a difference of opion and not any sort of personal attack on each other