Hello Simon!
I knew why I spared my first post here in the new year for something special
let me be the first to say WOW after getting that manual
that is a work of art - all those screenies make me want to fly a little more IL2 again, as recently WOFF took away most of my limited flying time;
I am looking forward to getting my hands on CFM, that looks really pretty comprehensive and should be the best reason to retire my heavily modded newTFM/4.10 install;
just one question though, I have to admit I just flew over what is included in CFM - will the USN Light Carriers be in CFM as well? I did mostly carrier flying before I switched to WOFF in autumn so I want to start again where I left back then
cheers and a heartfelt big THANK YOU to you and your Hangar19 team for all your work
phil
Hi Phil, that's affirmative, Plowshare's beautiful Light Carriers are part of TFM-412 and those and much more have scrunched down into CFM. It is all described in 27 pages of which 12 pages are credits. As a big enthusiast of Naval Aviation the carriers have long held my particular interest and I became an avid fanatic of such work years ago.
Many additional ships complete the FMB picture and functionality; thanks to the modelling talents of: Archie, Asheshouse, Diving_Hawk, Flakiten, gio963tto, Plowshare, JFC, Sani, Ten101 and western0221.
WOFF is interesting too; Because I never saw anything to touch VPMedia team's DBW1916 and thoroughly enjoyed doing a number of campaigns in that era. Once CFM is established I would very much like to see how the latest DBW1916 plays in my 412 install and get back up to date, as it were, with the Il2 based WWI sim. What I really enjoy about DBW1916, and SCW and CFM, is familiarity with the controls and the FMB tools. However; with heavily modded installs and growing collections of aircraft across several eras; version 412 was quite a jump, in fact a quantum leap, for a number of significant reasons:
The Problems:
1) New-TFM in 410 was starting to hit the Java Wall. Too many aircraft and mods made the sim unstable and it began to do things I had never seen in Il2: - CTD's, lockups, slideshows, memory errors, mostly due to the out of date Java code and a game engine starting to show its age.
2) FMB Functions; FMB in 412 gives us a flightsim. Ie: Taxi to takeoff, parking and spawning assignments, formation control, skinnable statics. It is light years ahead of 410 FMB.
The Solutions:
1) Flying a modded 412 setup: no more Java Wall! This alone is worth its weight in gold! No more CTDs, slide shows, etc, bottom line, no more limitations. It feels like it can take a lot more, the stabilty is superb and performance is much improved over 409 and 410. That's right; performance in 412 is better, you will get more out of it, handle more planes in the air at one time, enjoy bigger dogfights etc.
2) FMB 412 Missions now comprise elements you would expect when flight-planning in FSX or DCS, which I also like to do. 412 feels contemporary and flexible enough to handle anything. Beside it 410 is limited, stuck with default static skins, stuck with runway starts every time, stuck with the bloody Java wall and a whole bunch of limitations.
Yes, it is a pain in the arse to retro-patch missions, rebuild mods and planelists, redo your maps and campaigns etal... But with 412 you are getting WAY MORE gains over losses and even the losses are temporary. Look how quickly the 412 content has caught up to what we had in 410!
When people see that you can Supermod 412 in 10 Minutes, they will NOT want to go backwards. I guarantee, you can take that to the bank...
Simon