How have we lost so many people to this wonderful game?

[CptTrips]

I wrote A LOT of offline or "staged" missions for AH2, and got discouraged when AH3 came out without enough backward-compatibility to support any of them.

Your Youtube series on Staged Missions were very helpful.

[Meatwad]

This is true (or at one time was true) for many of us.  Half an hour is all you get, and that may only be three or four days a week.  So far as I'm concerned, it's still worth the money ($2.00/hour?  Less?), but it does mean that you aren't particularly interested in flying a bomber across the map, cleverly planning the conquest of the virtual world, or flying ten minutes to a capped base.  You want some prompt action, which you can repeat over that cherished half hour of your day.

- oldman

Generally for me it was leaving a nice trail of smoke before hitting the ground. Planes dont fly good while missing parts (Should of joined SAPP). But overall it was fun, just dont have time like I wish I did

[TequilaChaser]

No offense bbosen,

But I honestly think there is a misunderstanding regarding AH2 vs AH3, where people think that AH3 requires a more powerful computer.....when in reality AH3 only requires a better possibly more powerful videocard only! and that's only true if you want to turn up the graphics!

AH2 relied heavily on CPU, that flipped with AH3 to where the CPU load became a lot less and the GPU load increased substantially (again, if you want the graphics turned up)

I was in the Alpha & Beta testing of AH3 and testing 3 to 5 different computers

I was able to play AH3 on an old AMD dual-core 555 (3.2 GHz if I remember correctly) using Windows 7 ult. 64 bit and 8 GB system ram, videocard was an ASUS HD3870 512MB GDDR4..... Default GPU settings I could play around 28 fps upwards to near 40......(edit: this particular CPU was only using 1 CPU core playing AH2 and AH3)

There is a lot of misconception regarding what it takes computer-wise to run AH3

You had a lot of self-created staged missions/offline missions and other stuff, and I can understand the frustration of the incompatibility of AH3 not able to load/use all the stuff you created

YMMV

~S~

TC

[CptTrips]

You had a lot of self-created staged missions/offline missions and other stuff, and I can understand the frustration of the incompatibility of AH3 not able to load/use all the stuff you created

I had successfully hand-converted a couple of Coogan's old broken missions he had loaned me the source on to experiment with.  I believe it is possible. 

His biggest problems was that the terrain he had targeted had been redone and things moved around and so you could get the mission to function, but would take a lot of work to rearrange things again.  Some other terrains may have never made the conversion at all.


Seeing that taught me one lesson.  I'll never put a lot of work into missions where I don't control the terrain file.

[TequilaChaser]

I had successfully hand-converted a couple of Coogan's old broken missions he had loaned me the source on to experiment with.  I believe it is possible. 

His biggest problems was that the terrain he had targeted had been redone and things moved around and so you could get the mission to function, but would take a lot of work to rearrange things again.  Some other terrains may have never made the conversion at all.


Seeing that taught me one lesson.  I'll never put a lot of work into missions where I don't control the terrain file.

Yes, controlling or having access to the "terrain source files" is a big deal, if a person is wanting to update or make changes to a particular terrain....Dux taught me that well over 15 years ago...heh

[bbosen]

No offense bbosen,

But I honestly think there is a misunderstanding regarding AH2 vs AH3, where people think that AH3 requires a more powerful computer.....when in reality AH3 only requires a better possibly more powerful videocard only! and that's only true if you want to turn up the graphics!

Well, yes. I have read about people that were able to get adequate AH3 performance on somewhat marginal hardware. But my situation is unique: I abandoned Micro$oft Windows many years ago. I had AH2 running spendidly under the LINUX "wine" emulator, but every attempt to do so with AH3 was disappointing. Maybe it is better now (wine has improved a lot) but it just didn't work for me when I struggled with it. I even got a personal phone call from Dale with advice on the subject. He even (very kindly) offered to send me ONE computer, at his expense, to solve the problem, but for one reason or another that never came about.

Ultimately, in view of my commitment to LINUX, I chose a different direction, hoping my creation of a LINUX combat flight sim wouldn't compete with Dale's Windows-based business.

[bustr]

I took part in the alpha\beta for the full term of it's testing with 3 different video cards. I only recently had an epiphany about why in the whole time AH3 has been live my gunnery skills from AH2 acquired by creating all the gunsights, sucked. I thought first Hitech had changed something fundamental for the sake of the eyecandy and didn't mention it. Being focused on terrains all that time I relegated myself to secondary combat support with my squad. I just couldn't hit a derned thing while all I saw in the game was flippy floppy while my lead shooting to me was 24x7 rubber bullets since day one of AH3 going live.

One of the differences between AH2 and AH3 I think was Hitech capped FPS at 60 in AH2 so we all pretty much saw the same frames and developed the same muscle memory. With AH3 the graphics engine supports FPS of what, 144 or is it 240? My 24in monitor from AH2 capped at 60hz with 5ms latency.

Recently I started playing PlanetSide 2 which is intensely FPS dependent if you want to win any gunfight. My 60hz monitor was getting me killed 100% of the time even though my video card could give me 144 or better FPS. So I was forced to buy a 165Hz 1ms latency Gaming Monitor. In PS2 it was like night and day and I salughtered red guys with impunity. Funny the next time I flew in AH3, my FPS was 165 and all my AH2 learned gunnery muscle memory worked when I shot at people. Makes me wonder how many players left for this same reason while I was building terrains.

[avionix]

So my 60Hz monitor is going to be an issue even though I have a decent video card?

[TequilaChaser]

So my 60Hz monitor is going to be an issue even though I have a decent video card?

Not at all

[TequilaChaser]

bbosen, I had completely forgotten about you running AH/AH2 on Linux....iirc wasn't you a Scout Leader and created your Lan Party for your scout troop and your own kids back when you created/designed all those training missions, etc... You were 1 of a very small few that was able to play AH2 successfully on Linux using one of the emulators (wine?)... Always found your posts interesting back then when you was telling the AH community of what you were doing ....

Your mentioning that you have designed/coded your very own "Linux Air Combat Simulator/Game" sounds awesome and I'm intrigued, is it private for your personal use with your kids or have you hosted it anywhere as "open source" if you don't mind me asking..... Just  curious....

 

TC

[Lusche]

So my 60Hz monitor is going to be an issue even though I have a decent video card?

After some field of view adjustments, there was no much difference in my gunnery between AH2 and AH3 on my 60Hz monitor.

[Shuffler]

I am one of them that has been lost. When I first started I was single and in college, then stopped then started back over again for college degree. I had all the time in the world to play for hours a day.

Now I have a full time job, family with grade school children, and mortgage/bills. With my hours I may only have 30 minutes of play time after work and unknown on my days off. When I resubbed and tried again, this is what happened:

Fire Up game, get in flight, 5 minutes later one of the kids come in and "Im booooored, get off the computer and PLAY!" (game time over)
Fire Up game, get in flight, 5 minutes later, wife comes in and says I need to get off computer for "insert reason". (game time over)
Fire Up game, get in flight, 5 minutes later, kids fight and wife says get off my butt and be helpful (game time ends)
Fire Up game, get in flight, 5 minutes later, one of the kids say "mooooom, dads playing a game on the computer!" Wife yells (game time over)
Fire Up game, get in flight, 5 minutes later, wife says "I dont need to spend my day off playing on the computer" (game time ends)
Fire Up game, get in flight, 5 minutes later, wife wants to go somewhere cause she is bored (game time over)

Now after everyone is asleep, I can get on and goof around, but a half hour may only get a few sorties before I have to get to bed before work again the next day.

My problem now is that I just really dont have the time to play and do something constructive at this point in life. $15 a month makes it hard to pay for something and not get my moneys worth out of it if I only play 5 hours a month

Family ack......  Importance FAMILY. Enjoy it while you can. They grow up so fast.   

[FLS]

...

One of the differences between AH2 and AH3 I think was Hitech capped FPS at 60 in AH2 so we all pretty much saw the same frames and developed the same muscle memory. ...

AH2 wasn't capped.

And I doubt the player experience was ever that homogeneous.

I wonder if higher fps or lower latency is the bigger difference in your improved shooting or if they combine to improve visual hit detection.

[Shuffler]

AH2 wasn't capped.

And I doubt the player experience was ever that homogeneous.

I wonder if higher fps or lower latency is the bigger difference in your improved shooting or if they combine to improve visual hit detection.

I think it is more a combination of Tequila and Triple-sec.

[bustr]

Instead of trying to burn me at the stake, how many people had similar problems who canceled their subscriptions becasue of the flippity floppy, rubber bullets, weird tank combat and so on? Stop trying to kill the messenger and think about why we lost so many when the game changed over in the simplest terms possible becasue that will be much closer to the truth. In my case half way through the alpha\beta I had to get a new video card which combined with my new monitor gives me 135-144FPS in PlanetSide, which grinds your PC worse than AH3 ever can. Oh and by the way, I worked 3rd level server support for BofA so I'm not a neophyte for you to dismiss out of hand becasue you don't agree with what I presented.

Once I changed monitors and my FPS in AH3 was 165, all my muscle memory shooting from AH2 works exactly like it did then. And now the famous flippity floppy maneuvering by Yak3 and Doras is just slow rolls and postivie G pushes of the nose which gets them killed for slowing down like that.

Many of the old ferts who supported AH2 who have left us with AH3 and bitter complaints about game play issues like rubber bullets and flippity floppy. The simple answer is the change in game engine was more than they probably could afford to upgrade for a kiddy game with the state of the economy when AH3 went live. The answers are usually this simple made complicated by people who need complication to fulfill their world views. You know that cognitive bias that screws how scientists bias their outcomes to fit their world views. And then the answers stop mattering while the world view becomes the reason to fight senselessly. And in our case, kill Aces High.