Well, I am not yet at the "eating crow" stage but I do have a better opinion of CFS3. I have spent the last three days working with  a  service assistant at Microsoft games and my game is working much better.  I had to download a driver for my NIVIDA  and  perform several tweaks suggested by the Service Rep.

It works much better but we are still not out of the woods, it still stutters a little.

It really doesn't matter how well it works because it is still trash.  They ballhyooed this game as the European Air War. I , like everyone else, assumed it  would take up where CFS1 left off. This game is a fantasy definetly not a flight simulator. 

Some of the missions are ground attack missions conducgted at night.  In Korea and Vietnam
Fighter Bombers did attack at night under flare light provided by slow-moving flare planes flying high overhead.  This type of mission  could be flown because the enemy lacked Night Fighters and  would not dare fire any major caliber weapon after dark.  Muzzle flashes from Artillery or AA would bring in instant "smokin' death" such as 18 or 19 Battalions of Artillery firing counter-battery fire.  Germans had an abundance of Night Fightrers and AA which they employed to the max.  So night fighter bomber missions were out in WWII.  Also I ha e had missions that take off in Driving rain and Snow Storms, arrive over the target at night. still snowing/raining.  One mission in particular required a flight of 198 miles in instrument conditions only to arrive over the target in heavy cloud, snow/rain with a heavy fog obscuring the ships I was supposed to attack.  I having been Returnig to base and get jumped by ME262's, pitch black, unable to see the wingtips, etc. 

Also on the P51D(all the American aircraft for that matter) the sight reticle disappears when yhu roll in on aground target in low light conditions.  Not to mention when jumped by fighters at night. The wingmen will not do what you ask them to do and afre downright insubordinate--worthless. 


I am at the point in the game where the XP-55 and P-80 are available.  These two aricraft were post
WWII developments with the XP-55 never reaching more that prototype stage.

I still think the game sucks!

PS:  I know about the night attack missions in Korea and Vietnam--Iwas there.

I have been able (after much fiddling, enquiring and crying) to get CFS3 to work on my P.C.

As I've said before I have what most would call a "low end" machine but many things just don't make sense.
The reason for this is I have access to a P.C. at work and have used the Sim on both and I just can't make head or tail of it.

My P.C is:

PIII 766Mhz, 256 RAM, Intergrated Intel 82810e graphics (as I said pretty low end but runs CFS2 beautifully at top settings).

Office P.C. is:

P4 1400Mhz, 384 RAM, Rage 128 pro graphics.
(Getting up there as far as the important things go).

First of all the Sim would not even initialise on my P.C. as the Intel graphics were listed in the Config as insufficient. At the prompting of a fix at the Intel site, I edited the Config file to allow initialisation.
Of course, the default graphics settings came up as 1.
But the Sim runs smoothly, with no stuttering at all and initialisation and selection processes are relatively fast. All this lasts for about an hour, until I run out of memory ( I get a little message and the computer finds some more but it's then unplayable).

On the better office P.C. the default graphics settings are 2. (great improvement!!). But the machine runs with stuttering to the point that it is unplayable after about 30 mins. I dropped the graphics to 1 and expected a performance improvement, at least as good as my less powerful and equipped machine and it made no difference at all.

On both P.C.'s, even with running level 3 gaphics on the bigger one just to see what the graphics quality is (giving no consideration to performance) the best I could describe the graphics result as is a "cartoony version of Fighter Ace (which is a cartoon anyway)"
The quality of the graphics obviously has to be set at 4 or above to get the advantage of this new and wonderful setup they seem to have revolutionised the Sim world with.
I shudder to think what size machine one needs to get the FULL benefit of this Sim.

I understand that there are many variables and my comparison is basic and simple. But it still makes no sense. How can a person even try to update or improve their P.C. for this Sim alone when the symptoms and behaviour of it seem to make no basic sense.

I have seen, many times, that people are saying that low end machines with the better graphics cards are getting the best results.

Guys,

There never was a P-55 and definetly never a P-55A as Microsoft  has put in their game. There was a XP-55 and  there was only three of them produced.  One crashed during stall tests leaving the other two to complete further flight  testing.  Stability problems were encountered and "trailerons" were added near the wing tips in attempt to correct this.  Due to inherent stability problems the project was abandoned in 1944.  Aircraft was never accepted for service and never entered production.

The Lockheed P-80 started life as the XP-80 which was designed around the 2,460 lb. static thrust  De Haviland H-1B turbojet.  Work on the XP-80 began on 23 June 1943, and the first flight was effected on 8 January 1944.  The Aircraft attained 502 MPH at 20,480 feet during the flight test.  Non-availability of the H-1B engine necessitated redesign to accomodate the 3,850 lbs ST, GE I-40 turbojet.  Two additional prototypes were built as XP-80A's , these flying on 10 June and 1 August 1944.  The initial production version was ordered on 4 April 1944 as the P-80A, the first order was for 1,000 aircraft. Following VJ day the initial orders , now totalling 3,500 aircraft was cutback to 917.  The first P-80 A was accepted by the USAAF in February 1945, the last being delivered the following December. Since the aircraft was in the developmental stage I do not think it was involved in combat operations in the European Theater.  The first combat the aircraft was involved in was the Korean Police Action and it was found to be vastly inferior performancewise to the MIG-15. The final production model was the P-80C the frst 238 of which (including 50 delivered to the USMC as the TO-1s) were [powered by the 4,600 lb ST J-33-A-23 and the remaining 561 by the 5,400 lb ST J33-A-35.  The P-80 meanwhile redesignated the F-80, was phased out of the active inventory shortly after the end of the Korean conflict, but remained with the Air National Guard until March 1961.  After withdrawal from service with the USAAF the aircraft was supplied to the Air Forces of several Latin American countries.

These two aircraft, just like yours truly, never participated in combat operations during WWII.  I am a veteran of that conflict but never left the Continental US.

It is my understanding that there were a few P-80s flying around in England and Italy during the last few months of the war. They were not in combat. Just a behind the lines visual for our troops for moral purposes. So they would not get the idea that since the Germans had Jets they were superior. Our troops were promised that they too would have jets very soon. The US new that the war would end before they could be deployed.

I also believe that the Brits had some jets operational, not at the front lines, they didn't have enough yet. They kept them home and used them to chase/destroy V1's. Heard they were pretty sucessful at it too.

So the first jet on jet fight was a Brit vs a V1. A loose description, I admit.

Oso:

The first P-80 was delivered to the USAAF in Fe ruary 1944. This would not have given the USAAF enough lead time to organize a unit, train the pilots, ship the aircraft  (didn't have the range for ferry flights) and spare parts to the European & Med. Theaters of operation.  As a morale booster the aircraft would not need to be flown in Italy since the boys on the ground knew nothing of the German Jets except what they read in the Stars&Stripes.  German jet aircraft were only active against the Allies in Western Europe.

The Brits had organized a Squadron equipped with the Gloster Meteor and did employ it against the V-1's. But no American Jet Aircraft flew during the War in Europe/Med.

Now why did MS include an P-55 and leave out the Hurricane?!?

MS even claimed to only include only the most popular aircraft of 1943.

B;acl_ZR-1:

Thank you.

But in the words of the Great General William T. Sherman:  "If nominated Iwill not run, If elected I will not serve."

Batman sends.