Derbysieger

No. I didn't take a cam with me. But I think there are some pics of my arrival at my friends house in Luzern somewhere (not in digital form though). I'm looking for a helmet cam for the summer though. I imagine filming a downhill part in the alps is quite something. My plan at the moment is to follow roughly the same route to Luzern and then cross the Alps, visit Milan, Genoa, Florence, Verona, back over the Alps, Lake Constance and home along the Rhine (possibly through France)

done ;)

I love those tours. 25-30kph is the normal speed on long tours (80-160km/day depending on weather conditions and terrain) when I'm not in the mountains. The most important thing when you're in the mountains is that you check your brakes every day and have a spare pair with you at all times. I learned that the hard way. On my tour to Switzerland I burned two pairs. Started with a new one, got a new one halfway through (checked the brakes one morning to find that after a rainy day with muddy roads there was nothing left and I didn't have spare parts with me) and needed a new one when I got back home. I wasn't even in the alps, I just followed the Rhine until Basel and then over a mountain pass (~800m iirc) to Luzern, stayed there at a friends house for a week and then back via Schaffhausen, through the Blackforest (beautiful landscape!) and then I followed the Rhine back home. I brake as little as possible in the mountains. You won't find me go downhill with 30kph, more like 45-55 depending on the street and the traffic, just don't do this on a bad road or with a backpack. Seriously, backpacks are a bad Idea if you want to do a tour, your back will thank you if you put the luggage on your bike! This is what I use: http://www.ortlieb.de/_prod.php?lang=en&produkt=backrollerplus two of those + tent, sleeping bag and insulating mat.

Biking. I do ~50-60km per day (about 2 hours) if the weather is not terrible and I like to go on tours on holidays. I've been to Switzerland (~1600km tour) a few years ago and I'm planning to make a tour to Italy next summer (2400-2600km). I love mountains and the speed on downhill parts. It's not particulary extreme but when you've tried to ride down a mountain pass you will think otherwise. When you reach 60kph with 30kg luggage on your bike it's getting uncomfortable.

This happened to me when I was downloading BAF DLC from Sprocket a few months after it came out. Just that I had 1.9-2.4MByte/s dl speed. Didn't notice it until the download was almost finished. The files were absolutely fine though.

Considering how good TW 2 looks I don't worry about graphical fidelity. I just hope they manage to finally make a game that doesn't get progressively easier the further you go into the game. If it wasn't for the really good story telling I probably would have stopped playing after the 2nd Act. I have played through TW 2 twice because I wanted to know how the other path plays out, thinking about doing a 3rd playthrough atm.

World is now running beautiful for me. It almost never dips below 30fps (*cough* CBU-87 *cough*); most of the time it stays at a solid 60fps (vsync) Multiplayer and Singleplayer (high settings, 2xAA, no HDR, no TXAA, mirrors enabled). I'm mostly flying medium/small custom missions with a few german speaking guys. Me, fooling around in the singleplayer:

True on the SFM part ;) but I don't agree with the mediocre part... Well I've flown coop in the A-10C with two F-15C on CAP against AI controlled by a gamemaster. It was great but it's nothing that would work on a public server. So I agree that it is not a good idea to mix the two unless you fly in a small group or community on a (semi-)closed server.

That is true, however it's also dependend on the mission. I don't see a problem to get some FC3 F-15C pilots to protect DCS: A-10C pilots during a coop mission or even in a red vs blue scenario with a few russian aircraft if it is within a small community. On a public server I agree. There shouldn't be a mix of SFM and AFM aircraft because, well, it's public^^ But again that's the responsibility of the host/mission maker. But imagine we'd get a F-15C on DCS level. Do you think SFM pilots would stand a chance against good(!) DCS pilots who would be able to share data with each other and also the AWACS? I would expect them to win because they have much better information and can engage much quicker. By the time they get into dogfight SFM Pilots should be outnumbered.

Yeah, he is obvieously talking about DCS:W + modules (A-10C, Ka-50, P-51D). And you're the first I come across who would want to fly a DCS aircraft in game mode. If you just want to fly in game mode there is really no point in paying 40$ for a module with only one aircraft, right? I don't think another company would step up should ED cease to exist so I really hope they will keep making modules for DCS:W. I enjoy DCS Multiplayer greatly. There is nothing like it. And no matter what people say about their business practices - there is no alternative to DCS. BTW you really don't need to read the flight manual to get the plane into the air and deploy its weapons (at least with the A-10C and the P-51D). I read a few parts of the flight manual and I printed the checklists, that's all. The interactive tutorials are usually enough to learn all the basics. And if it is still too intimidating there are always communities who are willing to help. I fly with a small german/swiss group (about 8 people) and up to this point we were always able to get newbies into the air on their first day (I'm talking about the A-10C here; the P-51D, while much simpler on a technical level, is so much more difficult to fly and there are only two or three of us who can effectively deploy the Ka-50 with it's weapons but everyone can fly the A-10C).

Like Max Power said, check if the collective is assigned correctly. I fly with the Warthog throttle as collective and I can make very precise adjustments (I don't use the Warthog stick for TOH though).

Yeah, I have. Almost ruined my last year at school with it xD I was decent with support and helis. I played mostly 4v4/5v5 clanwars and matchmaking with the occasional puplic game. Destroying arty noobs with helis on nukeneedle? hell yeah (I know I'm a bad person for ruining highscores for the artyplayers xD). Good times. So sad it's essentially dead. The last time I tried to play Multiplayer there was no matchmaking going on and the public servers I joined died quickly because skill level was unbelievably low - no matter what role I choose the balance changed instantly in favor of my team. Anyway the player lobby in WiC was great. You could create chatrooms, form clans, you had servers for cws etc. It was a great Multiplayergame.

yeah 100 bucks for that psu is incredibly good. I would argue that you don't need 750W for that build but at that price it really doesn't matter^^

As far as I know the Hind isn't easy to land irl as well (btw I found the Black Shark to be incredibly easy to land). Be careful with the pedals and don't try to land out of a hover at first because that's really really hard. Make the final approach at ~50-60knots and slow down to ~25knots before touchdown then roll out. That's how I do it most of the time.

I wouldn't pay 40$ for FC3. From what I've heard they probably should have called it F-15C 6DOF DLC and slapped a 10-15$ pricetag on it or something like that. ED likes to make some questionable business decissions but I don't really see an alternative to them when it comes to combat flightsims. I decided to pass on FC3 around the time when the SimHQ Preview came out... I don't have FC but I love to fly the A-10C. It is so much fun when you play in multiplayer with a gamemaster who constantly changes the battlefield and also acts as a JTAC giving you coords, marking targets with smoke etc. It is amazing how that changes the dynamic of the multiplayer experience. And I love that. I logged about 100 flight hours in the A-10C and about 10hrs in the P-51D in the last two months - singleplayer and multiplayer. I'm still trying to figure out how to land the P-51D though - it has so much torque ... I'm looking forward to the other WWII planes and I would definitely buy a european themed map if they should ever decide to make one. I also dabbled a bit with the Black Shark some time ago but the lack of interactive tutorials put me a bit off and I didn't find the time to sit down and read the manual. I should probably do that at some point. It's a shame ED dind't do more with FC3 because I think a more simple flightsim like FC could potentially attract a much wider audience than those hardcore simulators like the A-10C. To me it feels like they just wanted to release this to make a quick buck and it is kinda sad that they didn't update all the aircraft. Maybe not necessarily 6DOF cockpits for all the fighters but one should definitely expect better textures across the board - it's 2012 for God's sake.

What EagleEye said. However I have to say that I don't like to use the HOTAS Warthog in TOH because the centering force of the stick is just way too strong. As silly as it sounds - in TOH I get more precision out of my old shoddy Logitech Extreme 3d Pro because I don't have to fight the stick as much. Trimming helps a bit but that's more of a workaround than a solution. My recommendation would be to either use a cheap stick with a weak centering force or have a stick where you can remove the centering spring. Of course you can use the HOTAS Warthog but it's not really suitable for helicopters.

win 7 home premium 64bit is about 70-80€ here in germany. I'd strongly recommend to buy it in an other EU country because 170€ for home premium is absurd. That's 90-100€ more than here in germany. price developement over the last year doesn't show any large spikes like you describe: http://geizhals.at/de/?phist=620886&age=365

Gainward is just a brand like Sapphire or ASUS ;)

No need for 750W if you're only running a single GPU. The Sys in my sig runs on a 525W PSU ;) and I still have room for a few more HDDs (currently 3HDDs plus 2 SSDs). If you want to be sure go for a 600W PSU but unless you plan on SLI/crossfire and/or a huge amount of HDDs more than 600W is definitely overkill. Just make sure it's a certified PSU and not some cheap no name product.

First of all a big thank you to BIS for the Free DLC and the new TTs! Truly appreciated! I don't really like the music (it kinda fits though) but the design of the new TTs is awesome! I love the challenge they offer and the NC times are really good. Nevertheless, I think I'm getting there. So watch out DnA :p I'm still working on So High and I just beat Gold. Expect a video once I beat NC time! http://www.abload.de/img/sohigh9bcij.jpg Thanks again! Derby

iirc it will be released with or shortly after the FC 3 module

I'll be all over this ;) I'm currently learning to fly the P-51D Mustang which turns out to be quite a challange to get into the air and an even bigger challenge to land.

So how do you dance with the skyscraper? I tried many different approaches (including quite a lot screwups and a few crashes :D) and stuck with the one you see in my video because you keep a lot of speed if done right.

Here we go: Noisecontroller time for the time trial "So High":

I did it! So much better with TrackIR :) 3:34.513 Video coming tonight!