Dear Pilots,

We are pleased to present you the version 1.025, which sees the introduction of the Airco D.H.4, a multi-purpose British aircraft.

During the process of working on this plane it surprised us with its quality design. As we wrote in previous blog posts, it has excellent speed, which makes is a not so easy target. Also during the process of working on the D.H.4, we found it has quite good maneuverability in the horizontal plane. This flexibility allows a group of such planes to effectively repel a melee attack of German planes, causing them losses. The aircraft in flight is very obedient and enters into a tailspin very reluctantly. All this together with more than 200 lb. bomb load makes this plane a real "soldier" of the First World War.

This month we have surpassed 3 years since the release of Rise of Flight on the market. And we would like to say thank you to everyone who has been with us on this journey and thank you very much for your congratulations on the forums. We are really proud of our relationship with our users, many of whom have become true friends to us. This support allows us to set ambitious goals and to focus on our job tasks, recognizing our responsibility and mindful of your attention and desires. Very few games even in more popular genres can boast of such a careful and respectful community of creative players. Your support has allowed us to continue our work and gain precious experience under "field" conditions. This experience is equal to many years of reading many books and theoretical exercises. This recognition from the community has transformed us from passionate players with a vision into a professional team. The author and developer of modern innovative project, dedicated to rare and complex subject, the history of aviation during the First World War. Thank you for that!

Also I must say thank you to the ROF development team! Guys, you have coped really great with an infinite number of difficulties that have arisen on this winding road. Only a mere three years ago, on the day when the first discs with ROF were released in the stores, did we first identify ourselves as real "developers". We are very proud of ROF, our first title.

The three year mark has now come and gone, we need to now turn the page and write the story for our fourth year. After the release of version 1.025, we will focus on the big task of version 1.026, which will include items like Weapon Mods, new approaches and changes to existing modules. We will try to resolve these tasks as soon as possible. Further work will be connected with achieving the main goal of this year which is creating a new big map "The Channel Map" and two new seaplanes, with completely new physical features upon contact with water. It will be a complex and very interesting stage of our work, but the work has already started involving our entire staff!

As always, a full list of changes included in this version will be posted in our forum. As is tradition, we wish you maximum immersion in your role of a pilot of the Great War and many hours of discoveries and victories in Rise of Flight!

Dear Pilots,

On May 7th it will be the 3rd anniversary of the initial release of Rise of Flight onto the market. From one perspective this is a long time on the market for a modern game, but on the other hand it is not a very long period for flight-simulator projects. As this milestone approaches, we remember some of the more difficult challenges of ROF development and some the funnier moments in the past three years, but today's post is dedicated to another special and interesting development - a surprise that we have prepared for you.

Last May we released the popular field modifications for ROF aircraft and from the first day after release we began to receive requests and recommendations for other modifications such as different weapon configurations for various ROF airplanes. As you know, the First World War was a period experimentation and testing of new engineering solutions for air combat. They were expressed in a variety of inventions and many were implemented based on small discoveries made at the frontline airfields. Many of these ideas had a large effect on future combat aviation. As the headline says above, we will now introduce to you some talented ideas aimed at increasing the firepower of WWI aircraft.

As is the case with the field modifications, we have followed the strict guidelines of archival documents which we have been able to discover, trying as best we can to be historically accurate within the limits of our engine. It was a large amount of study, which encompassed several months of hard work. As a result, we can now introduce you an interesting set of weapon modifications which can be mounted on up to 19 different aircraft, among which you'll see:

• 20mm Becker Autogun, installed on such planes like Albatros, DFW C.V and Gotha
• 4 additional machine guns mounted on Sopwith Dolphin (2x wing mounted, 2x angled in cockpit)
• 57mm Davis Gun for HP 0/400
• Le Prieur rockets for various planes

…and several other weapon options which you will learn about in the ROF Store.

Thanks to the preparation work done on these weapon modifications, the reloading of upper wing guns will now be more realistic and you can finally angle them upward for sneaky attacks from below. To accompany these new abilities there will be new motion animations for machine guns on the rail etc. We know these were long requested features and we remember all such requests, but some of them were not possible to do until now. Finally, since these are weapons that can have a big affect on gameplay, weapon mods will be a server-side option in Multiplayer. They can either be all On or all Off. Sorry, we cannot pick and choose which ones to allow or disallow. All of these weapon modifications and features will be available beginning in version 1.026, which is scheduled for release in late May - early June. To help get ready for this new and interesting development, you can now pre-order Weapon Mods in the ROF store. Of course, such support helps fuel continued ROF development.

Now back to our current development tasks, namely to version 1.025. Tests of version 1.025 has begun, which you'll see very soon. We plan to release it the first week of May. This version will see the release of the Airco DH.4 along with various bug fixes and other improvements. We will include more information about 1.025 and the DH.4 in our next blog post, but for now I can only say that this plane has a top speed of 200 km / h and should prove to be an effective, useful weapon. It will deserve your attention in combat!

We wish you a healthy return from all your flights and victories in ROF as we continue working on new updates!

Dear Pilots,

As we reported earlier, after the release of the Halberstadt CL.II, the next plane released will be on your PC with minimum delay. We are pleased to present Airco D.H.4 to you. Now we are finishing up final 3D parts on this machine so we can begin the first flight tests, the results of which will reveal the “character” of this plane.

In the meantime, we would like to share with you what kind of plane the D.H.4 was. Despite the fact that it is less well-known than the Red Baron's Fokker or the English Se.5, the D.H.4 probably deserves the title of one of the best aircraft of the First World War. This plane was the forefather of a series of popular aeroplane designs and modifications. These design decisions would have been very successful by themselves, but good construction and performance made this plane attractive to many countries where it was produced under license. The UK, U.S.A, and USSR (Polikarpov R1) were armed with planes that were based on the D.H.4. It was still in use performing various tasks till the 1930s. Its track record certainly deserves our respect!

During the war, this machine showed its best qualities. The D.H.4 was often used for deep raids behind enemy lines without escort fighters. Its high speed and good maneuverability aided in its protection. We believe that with such good characteristics it will find success in the ROF world. The release is scheduled for the end of April.

In the next version, we will also fix several bugs found in version 1.024, such as strong network stutters (periodic screen freezes for a split second) caused by the destruction of trains and barges not moving on their route. Also in conjunction with testers, we continue to check other bug messages or loss of performance. For example, we know about the bug associated with the loss of sound in multiplayer, but, unfortunately we do not know yet the exact method of replication required for solving this issue. We also continue our work on the new technologies required to create the new Channel map and seaplanes (Brandenburg W12 and Felixstowe F.2A). We are also working on other new unannounced items. So stay tuned and your continued support of our development goals are much appreciated. Let’s keep fighting the good fight!

We wish you success in mastering your airplanes and continued pleasure flying ROF!

Dear Pilots,

We are glad to present the version 1.024 of Rise of Flight to you. You've been waiting for the release of this version for a long time and we have worked hard to create it for you. Of course, the main news of this version is the appearance of the Halberstadt CL.II.

The plane was essentially ready more than a week ago, but early tests revealed the weakness of the Mercedes D.IIIa 180hp. Engine when coupled to this airframe. At the same time, our tests proved that we modeled the plane’s performance with sufficient accuracy. Nevertheless, the plane was not what you would expect to get from it. So, we decided to create another engine for it - the D.III au 200hp. Historically, Germany has started the modernization of this type of aircraft with the new engines around March 1918.

Thus, we are proud to present our small gift to all who made a pre-order for the Halberstadt CL.II, which greatly helped our team. You waited a long time for it and now, hopefully it worth the wait. You get the plane with two types of engines for the pre-order price – the price of one plane. The D.IIIau 200hp. engine really transforms the plane and makes it a dangerous enemy, increasing all the main characteristics of this aircraft. Testers noted good controllability and predictable behavior for this plane. We are pleased to introduce you to this next page of aviation history of World War I with the Halberstadt CL.II.

In advance we would like to answer some questions you will probably ask us regarding the bomb load of the aircraft. There are many historical facts that the plane carried hand grenades and bombs that were placed in the cockpit or on the outer needle holders on board of the aircraft. But this functionality doesn’t exist in the ROF yet and we didn’t want to restrict its possibility to attack ground targets. However, we found few photos of this plane with bomb racks for bombs. But we have decided to install such holders and to increase the bomb load to 150kg, which we think the plane could handle. We have added the racks under wings. We believe that this choice is correct; even though we do not have 100% accurate data. But as you know, you can limit the bomb load for each aircraft and you are able to determine whether it is permissible.

As is tradition, this version will include a new set of skins, created by the best creative forces of our community, as well as various bug fixes and other improvements. For example, the AI is now able to determine that a target is too high and it will not choose to attack it hence making a long chase. This will make the tactical behavior of the AI more human. Also we have prepared a small SDK on how to use interactive dialogs and make some cool functionality in custom missions. The SDK is currently only in Russian, but we hope that with the community’s help we can translate it into other languages as soon as possible. We believe that the use of these new features will make missions more interesting.

Due to the long-awaited release of Halberstadt CL.II we present the HUGE sale in our store from March 24rd till March 30th - Aircraft (50% discount on all aircraft, except Halberstadt CL.II, Felixstowe F.2A, Brandenburg W12, Airco DH4), Field Mods (50% off), Demo ICE Upgrade ($ 9.99), Demo Ultra Upgrade ($ 39.99), Lite Upgrade ($ 4.99), Personal Package (50% off). This sale gives many new and old pilots alike a chance to improve their hangar selection with great savings!

As always, a full list of new features and bug fixes for this version can be found on the ROF forum. We would also like you to know that we are already working actively on version 1.025, which hopefully lands on your computer without delay. Good luck to you in your air battles and strong friendship!

Dear Pilots,

The big news is that Halberstadt CL.2 is in the final stage of testing and refinement. There is a closed beta test of this bird now ongoing and soon it will enter the open beta phase. The aircraft is almost ready and now we have only to correct some visual errors and inconsistencies. But we can estimate the final level of quality for this plane you've been waiting for and it will be very nice. During development, our research discovered some inaccuracies in the historical documentation about this plane including some discrepancies in the top speed of the aircraft. During the building process we were able to achieve a very high degree of accuracy of modeling performance features such as rate of climb, speed at sea level and the theoretical ceiling (maximum altitude). Using this data and comparing to the available reference material, we found that our simulation was made very accurately, but old figures about the maximum speed at altitudes of 10,000 - 13,000 feet when compared to our test results when put into our the engine yielded some surprising results. In the end, after much discussion and research, we concluded that our modeling is as accurate as we can make it and it appears that the true performance will be lost to history, but part of our fun is finding these kinds of mystery’s and seeing the results when we apply modern day technology to the issue. So, we have determined the maximum speed at these heights on the basis of our mathematical models and available data.

In this post we would like to show you a picture of the CL.2 cockpit, which will be unlocked with your pre-order once it is available. Also, we want to inform you that the Airco DH.4 is being worked on as we speak, which we plan to release it after the CL.2. The next post will be dedicated to version 1.024 where we hope to also tell you about the progress of the new Channel Map.

We wish you a pleasant spring days and, of course more air victories!

Dear Pilots,

Thank you!

Before we go any further, we want to say thank you to all our loyal fans that have chosen to support ROF these past two and a half years! Because of that support ROF has grown both technically and numerically since launch. Our product was improved even further last year and the user base continued to grow little by little allowing us to reach our development goals. But we’re not out of the woods yet. As you know, 777 Studios is a small, independent studio and we rely on our supportive community to allow us to continue our work. This year will be no different and as I mentioned in my Holiday note this past November, we will need that same kind of steadfast support in 2012. Just the like the soldiers of the Great War nearly a century ago, we need you - the everyday working man and woman, to provide us the support, the strength we need to fight on in this great ordeal. So dear friends, over the top once again! We can’t do it without you! For flight-simming! For Rise of Flight! Charge…………….!

It is now time to share with you our plans for the remainder of the year. We want to continue to push ROF to new heights and offer you even more interesting content and improvements. Since release in 2009 through 2011 we focused on trying to add new features and other gameplay improvements to Rise of Flight so you could experience a well-rounded and deep combat flight-sim experience. In 2012 we plan to continue that tradition, but this year we want to focus a bit more on adding new content for ROF, both payware and freeware and re-learning some old skills like map-making and object making. What we have planned for this year is pretty exciting. It is my pleasure to share with you now our main goals for 2012 and how the community can help us make them a reality.

Plans

First, we have finally committed to making a new map, namely a Channel Map covering parts of Northern France, Western Belgium and Southern England. This will be incorporated into the Career mode and feature our new 3D ocean technology. This means ships and submarines will be active on this map! This map will be sold as an add-on to ROF. It will feature new towns and cities and costal scenery. Building a new map is a BIG project for us, but we feel this will add immensely to the ROF experience. This will also open up the door to adding the Belgian Air Force as a flyable faction during the Career in the future. Obviously, if this new map project is successful it can open up possibilities for other new maps in the long term.

Secondly, the new map also inspires us to build the technology necessary to support seaplanes! We will initially create two unique seaplanes to fly on this map and they will be sold as separate items in the store apart from the map. We will begin work very soon on the hefty Felixstowe F.2a and the interesting Hansa-Brandenburg W.12 seaplanes. Battling for control of the English Channel will now be possible in ROF. Imagine the possibilities of naval combat with our game engine and the glorious surface to surface and air to surface battles that can result. Work has already begun on providing you with some wartime surface vessels that will be made available with the map.

We also plan to release the Airco DH.4 two-seater after the Halberstadt CL.II. The D.H.4 is a classic Entente craft that was used for bombing and recon throughout the war and it will be very useful in the Career. It flew a wide range of missions including coastal patrol with the RNAS and DH.4s even sunk a U-boat! See the U-Boat picture above and let your imagination take over. The D.H.4 was popular amongst its crews and easy to fly. It was also used extensively by American aircrews in 1918 and many were even built in the U.S.A. Adding the D.H.4 is going to be a winner. Work on the 3D model is already in its early stages.

In addition to new maps and planes, we plan on creating some interesting weapon mods which will be made available for purchase. As a result, we have worked to improve how free-fall and free-flight weapons behave in our engine. For example, bombs fly through the air more realistically now. We will also offer some additional makes of pistols and other personal identifiers to further individualize your aircraft if you so choose.

We also have plans to once again work with our good friend SYN_Vander to create another great scripted campaign for you. Please show your support by purchasing his St. Mihiel Campaign. It really is a wonderful addition to the ROF experience. He did an awesome job and was great learning experience to allow him to make even more cool campaigns in the future.

With the increased focus on content we also hope to work on some new ground objects that will allow mission makers to create some more interesting ground scenery at airfields and on the roads etc. We will first work with some select individuals to establish a procedure making these models and then eventually, assuming all goes well, we can include other members of the community in this modeling effort.

Finally, we know you want us to continue to improve the sim in other ways and we will continue to do that as best we can with the resources we have available. We will try to improve the flight-models of various aircraft and make improvements to the AI and other parts of the sim. Based on what we have been told by the community, we are working to prioritize what we can do for you and balance our schedule and resources to make some of them become a reality in 2012. As always, the community wish-list is long and exhaustive, but we do look at it to see what can be done. A lot of the requested changes cannot be easily done, so it takes time to research each one before spending the resources to complete them.

Pre-Orders

As an independent developer in a niche market, we always need more capital to keep the development train rolling. Many times members of our community have told us that they are willing to pre-order new and exciting content and features to help facilitate more development. Since our plans for 2012 are now under way we need your monetary support today rather than tomorrow. So, we are going to try something different this year that we think you will like. We are now offering the following items for pre-order starting today. If you believe we have kept our past development promises and want to support us, then these pre-order opportunities is a great way to help us. Now available for pre-order in our store are:

Channel Map - $19.99 (reg. $24.99)

Airco D.H.4 - $8.99 (reg. $11.99)

Felixstowe F.2a - $12.99 (reg. $15.99)

Hansa-Brandenburg W.12 - $8.99 (reg. $11.99)

Due to the complex scheduling, contract commitments and our parallel project work environment, the money from your pre-orders made today avoids release issues later. We think our track record of producing what we promise speaks for itself. We hope you agree and will choose to support this plan.

So this is our overall plan for 2012. More content, more planes, more objects, more improvements and more ways to support us, makes this one of the most ambitious years yet for ROF. We hope you will continue to fly with 777 Studios and continue to help us make ROF something even more special. In the spirit of the brave boys and their flying machines who risked it all to win their war, we are risking all we can to win our little war. Come on...let’s go!

Hello Dear Friends!

We have completed our planning process for 2012 and later this month we will release a special message in our blog which will explain these plans to you. We are confident you will find them very interesting, but let the future remain in the future for the time being. Now we are confident that the biggest issue on your mind this new year is…"Where is our Halberstadt CL.II!?"

As you know, this is one of the longest periods of aircraft pre-orders in the ROF history. We apologize for that, but today we would like to tell you the reasons why this long pre-order period has occurred. Believe it or not, it's a positive reason.

In November 2011, due to a change in personnel, we began training and cooperation with a very talented modeling team from the Ukraine. And today we are proud to present them as the authors of the CL.II:

"Our story began in 2004 with a proposal from our leader Vladimir “Saqson” Kochmarskiy to gather a group of 3D artists for the IL-2 Sturmovik : Pacific Fighters project. Our first experience cooperating on such a project was quite successful and was followed by a series of further additions to the IL-2 franchise which included models and maps which were created mostly by our team.

In 2007 our modeling team was refreshed and ready to start work on a new project based on the Korean War, but this game was not destined to be released due to circumstances beyond our control. So we moved on to work on the Battle of Britain project from 1C:Maddox Games. This work produced some very tangible results. In the virtual skies over the English Channel fly eight types of aircraft that were built by our team. Cooperation with 1C: Maddox Games continues and our models for their new simulator sometimes cause heated discussions in the forums and fan-sites.

As time moved on, we felt the need to expand the scope of our activities and started to look for new opportunities. Our friends at 777 Studios reached out to us and offered an opportunity for cooperation on planes for their awesome simulator Rise of Flight. We enthusiastically took up this new direction for us - the history of World War 1. We hope that our work will bring even more fun to the ROF community than it gave creative satisfaction to us. We have enjoyed learning how to create such a cool airplane like the CL.II for ROF."

Work on the CL.II has finally reached the final stage and very soon the plane will be in your hangar. We hope you will like it.

Another blog post will soon have news about what other interesting things we are preparing for you in 2012.

We wish you to have more interesting aerial victories!

Hello Dear Friends!

We are proud to present you version 1.023. With this version we are finishing out development for 2011. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and wish you all the best in 2012. The version will soon be available for your PC and we would like to take a minute and talk about some of the innovations that we created for you in version 1.023.

Artificial Intelligence

Starting with this version, we added some new features to the AI, which will make it more human in its behavior. Our first foray into AI changes has to do with their "eyes." As you know, our UAVs have excellent radar and know all surrounding events in the surrounding digital world. We cannot say the same thing about us. And because of the fact that AI plays the same role of a pilot like you do, we tried to create some limitations. It was a risky step and tough challenge, but we have made excellent progress. The first changes in this module touched two key elements: clouds and night darkness. The AI now cannot see you through clouds and in darkness. You can use these advantages in a fight and authors of such missions should consider this feature in the design of missions. A few words more about night flights, the AI cannot see you until you give away your own position. Firing of your guns or using navigation lights or shooting a flare will show your position to the enemy quickly. The AI will monitor the sky closely; trying to find your position based your actions. And of course, air defense fighters are counting on the help ground crews, who now have at searchlights at their disposal.

Searchlights

Searchlights will now appear in the game modes "Career" and "Quick Mission" and will be available as an object in the mission editor. Searchlights are implemented as a full logical set and have their own AI. As we wrote earlier, they form a system with anti-aircraft artillery and even with aircraft in the air. The searchlight AI can now "hear" sound and it will focus on it in the search for air targets. The same group of searchlights can interact as a team and if you are in the beam of one of them, others will see you as you light up and then train their lights upon you to make you even brighter. Anti-aircraft artillery is waiting for this moment and as soon as the beam grabs you, they will open fire on you. Falling into a searchlight just makes you visible to enemy aircraft as well. Be careful, but try to explore the features of the searchlights to find ways to leave the cone of light as soon as possible.

Here is one suggested tactic: Searchlights have good freedom of movement, but they cannot go through a point located directly vertically above it. So if you fly directly over a searchlight, the searchlight team will have to temporarily lose you and turn the searchlight in the other direction and start to search for you again, so making a horizontal maneuver at the point contact is lost will confuse them a bit and you will become invisible to the enemy for some time. Now make your escape!

Updated Flare Pistols

Some time ago we gave you the ability to fire a signal flare in ROF. This has been an entertaining feature and a way of communicating for pilots. But from the moment of its realization we had a feeling of incompleteness. Some skeptics doubted we could make such a feature for a simulator properly and if we did it, it would not be as good as in a Shooter game. However, the more complex and ambitious the task is, the more we want to solve it. Now you can see the result. By clicking «Ctrl» + «1» in the cockpit you will see the complete weapon held by your pilot’s hand. On the screen you will see the number and color (type) of selected flare rounds. You can switch the type of combination by pressing «Ctrl» + «1-4». All ROF pilots receive this new and improved flare gun free of charge. (Keys combination true only for Default profile)

Colt M1911

Now that we have improved the flare pistol, we also wanted to add a new feature. We wanted to give the pilot a personal weapon that he can use as a last resort. This is fun new feature and it is the last argument in the battle. We chose the M1911 as the first gun of several possible models that may be included in future updates, assuming this feature proves popular. The M1911 holds 7 rounds of .45 caliber ammunition and you have 4 magazines in the cockpit with you. It is fatal in contact with the pilot and can seriously damage the engine or break the tank with fuel. Choose a weapon with the combination «Ctrl» + «5». You can buy this gun in our store as part of the "Personal Pilot Package" for ROF users.

Personal Pilot Package

Even if we released all the possible planes of this period and recreated even the smallest events in ROF Career, this era could never have been complete without some of the attributes of an aviator from this early era of flight from the last century. This means a scarf, mustache and a streamer on a wing of the flight leader! Simulating of twisting of a pilot’s mustache from the impinging vortices created by the propeller would be too great a burden for your PC, but the scarf and the banner we could do!

Scarf: Wearing one will not give you any bonuses to your pilot’s health and it will not help with gunnery accuracy, but we’re sure it will increase your charisma! And without charisma what kind of fighter pilot are you? Strong charisma boosts confidence and confidence wins battles! We tried very hard to make this feature as good as possible, but as you know it's still a compromise of compromises and we are asking you to be understanding to its limitations. The scarf (and banner), is a physical object that responds to most events such as wind and air flow from the propeller.

Streamer: The iconic WWI symbol of the flight leader and it’s made from the same technology as the scarf. We have the knowledge and information about how they were attached to airplanes historically, but in our case, we had difficult technical issues that caused ugly problems, so we have only one option to mount them effectively. Therefore, the streamer is attached to the upper wing unless the plane is a monoplane. They are attached on the right side for Entente planes and on the left for Central Powers planes. The effect is very convincing and they look great in flight.

Both the Scarves and Streamers are available in four additional colors – Red, Blue, Yellow and Green. The White scarf is our gift to all virtual pilots for every plane without exception.

The additional Scarf and Streamer colors along with the ability to use the Colt M1911 pistol are part of the "Personal Pilot Package" which is available in the ROF store for $7.99. Scarves and banners will be automatically added to AI aircraft in various game modes, no matter whether you buy this package or not.

St. Mihiel Campaign

In a first for ROF, we are now offering a custom Campaign in the store. This campaign was designed and built in cooperation between talented community member SYN_Vander and the ROF Team. We hope this will open up a new era of mission content creation and distribution for ROF. Our Mission Editor is a very powerful tool and seeing a dedicated member of our community master its use to create a commercial grade product impresses us greatly. It is now available for sale in the ROF Store for just $9.99. Here is a brief description of the campaign.

The Battle of St. Mihiel campaign is based on actual events which took place in September, 1918. The battle was the first major independent offensive of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. The goal was to reduce the salient that was created in the Allied lines by German efforts to capture Verdun in 1914. It was considered a major success for the American army as the Germans were caught in the process of retreating. St. Mihiel was also one of the greatest air battles of the war.

To be able to get a complete picture of the battle, the player will fly a total of thirty-three missions as four different pilots from both the German and American perspective. Each pilot has a different home base during a specific period of the battle. Three special free-fly bonus missions with randomized events will let you re-visit the battleground after you have finished the main campaign. The scenery in the St. Mihiel area is highly detailed and features most of the important towns and villages that played a role in the battle. Airfields and many villages will be populated with aircraft, vehicles and AAA; not just along the flight path, but in the whole St. Mihiel area. All airfields and unit placement are historically accurate. New, authentic skins have been developed for the German squadrons. Special media content will fill you in on the historical background of the various phases of the battle and pilot diary entries will narrate the progression of the campaign.

Also, in this version we have added a lot of other new elements, such as a new type of mission for the Career Mode known as a "Transfer Mission” where your squadron moves to a new airfield. We have also updated the flight model of the Nieuport 11. It is now a much improved flyer in the tradition of our previous FM updates. And thanks to your feedback, we have updated the "oil on the goggles" effect which we think looks a lot better now. There are also a number of other bug fixes included as well. The entire change list will be available on the forum as is our tradition.

We would like to wish all our dear friends a successful 2012! In keeping with our tradition of giving a Happy Holiday award to all the ROF community you will find a special and unique award on your game interface. We hope you like it! Go check it out. Again, thank you for your loyal friendship and support this past year and we hope you continue to have beautiful victories in the virtual sky. We will return to you soon after a little New Year’s break. We hope you will enjoy version 1.023!

Hello Dear Friends!

We are pleased to introduce the next plane that will soon rise into the ROF sky! It is a well-known German two-seat fighter, the Halberstadt CL.II. It was a successful aircraft originally meant to escort bombers, but it was soon found to be an excellent ground attack aircraft. In fact, this is the first real dedicated German close-air support aircraft used in the war. We expect good maneuverability that is comparable to single seat machines. In the Career it will appear as a substitute for DFW in the later stages of the war. In multiplayer battles we hope it will be a symmetric response to the British Bristol F2B. We are opening the pre-order for this aircraft now so you can save a few bucks and we will make every effort to finish this aircraft as soon as possible and have it flying on your PC.

We'll be back very soon with news about the version 1.023.

Good luck in your air battles!

Hello Dear Friends!

Let me tear you away from your joystick for a minute and fill you in on version 1.022. We hope you will enjoy this update because it is very difficult to please everyone in our great and sometimes controversial community. We try to read all of the major forums and we read your messages carefully where you have either praise or criticism of ROF. Our first rule during each development cycle is to try not to break what works and second, try to change some broken items to make ROF better and more enjoyable for you to play. Any criticism sent our way should be constructive and not laced with insults. That turns us off and hurts the image of the community and project as a whole.

Along those lines, when we look at items to change or fix you have to remember the challenges that we face as a developer. We have to please all parties. For instance, many of you have been playing for a few months, maybe years and you know about everything in ROF. And of course, there are issues you want us to change or there is something that you think ROF is missing and you are trying to bring it to our attention. Now imagine a new pilot who joined our community just a day or two ago and is still under the influence from the first flight, first air battle or the first mission in the rain when you are completely lost and could not find your base. There are very different segments in the community due to different levels of understanding of the game and it is very important to find ways to please both these groups. For us, it is important to view both the concerns of the master and the novice pilots equally. Believe me, we are on your side and it is a great joy to know that you enjoy your time flying ROF, but we have very limited resources and thus have to carefully choose the amount of tasks we take on. Some of your requests can be addressed very quickly, but some require several months of work. If you are constructive in your criticism or requests we will try to find the time to read them and make changes to the game. Remember that your opinion is one of many thousands and when you let your emotions do the talking the chorus becomes too loud and we perhaps won’t hear the most important or helpful voice.

Now let's get back to the new version. We are pleased to present you the R.E.8 or “Harry Tate” as it was known. It’s a famous British two-seater which was used as a scout or light bomber. As always, differences in hard data and emotional descriptions of the pilots cloud reality. We expected to get quite a weak and unstable aircraft, but actually, even with all its shortcomings it is a pretty robust platform if flown appropriately. From the moment it entered service early in the war, the R.E.8 became the essential two-seater and will work well in the Career. Of course it has its own character and sometimes it can show in a surprising moment, but if you maximize its strengths and avoid its weaknesses it is a stable and pleasurable aircraft to fly. So get your keys for it, the machine is already in your hangar.

During this time, we were able to revise and clarify the performance of another plane - the Nieuport 17. As is the case with S.E.5a refinement does not always mean better. Of course, this plane has become more dangerous at low and medium altitudes, but now loses all the advantages at higher altitudes. Altitudes higher than 3km are now dangerous for N.17 pilots and to fight high up in this plane is difficult. No one can say more about the plane than the engineer who tuned it. Here is Andrey in his own words:

"The plane turned out interesting, with a character that was different than before, but now it has some special characteristics. Good response to inputs, sharp, nimble, agile, but at the same time possessing a sharp breakdown when you drag the handle. It’s able to work in small areas. For takeoff and landing a piglet size runway of 50-60 meters is enough! It has a high thrust-weight ratio. Immediately after take-off Nieuport 17 can perform a spectacular climb, reaching its maximum altitude at a speed less than 100kph. A large area of ??the rudder and elevators are in a powerful stream of the propeller wash. N.17 pilots can experience fantastic pirouettes in the air at extremely low speeds, but when combined with the unpredictability of the aircraft near the stall envelope requires some skill. Personally, I liked to pilot the new Nieuport 17, once you touch it, it leaves an impression of a daring thoroughbred horse and if you speak its language then you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish with it. It's a real fighter. I'm sure many of you will like it and you'll get real pleasure from flying on this remarkable airplane."

In the future, we hope to revise a few more previously released planes as well. Thanks to all those who helped us in during this work on the Nieuport 17.

We have also completed some changes to the in-game interface. We have copied all the basic settings of the game that were in the launcher to inside the game, as well as added some much requested flexibility. This new flexibility now enables users to assign any button to the Service functions, such as the "Map" key and others which were previously blocked. We know this will be a welcome improvement.

We also took on the huge task of allowing the user to assign a unique Response Curve for each individual aircraft. This is an optional feature and for all those who do not need this additional tuning capability you can be assured; we still provide the ability to us a single curve for all aircraft. Please read the message about how we separated the Key Assignments and the Response Curves from your old input profiles into two separate files. You will be presented with this message after you complete the update and launch ROF.

We’ve also taken a big step with DServer functionality in this update. We have transferred to user’s new abilities and functions in controlling DServer. Of course, this change is almost impossible to see in the game, but we hope that the fruits of this change will be seen on MP servers. Now the owners of servers or users who are familiar with programming will be able to create entire systems to manage ROF servers. This may lead to the creation of powerful projects that reconstruct the various stages and aspects of the air war in WWI. We are very curious to see what comes of this new server functionality.

And finally, we have changed how Mod On mode loads missions so now the load time of Mods On and Mods Off game modes are similar. This should make using and creating mods more popular and enjoyable. However, we have not had a lot of time to test this and we are not sure it is completely perfect, so please use with caution and report any problems to us. We didn’t want you to wait any longer for this change, but again, we are cautious about how well it works. In Beta we had no bad reports, but we need more testing to be sure.

As always, you can find a complete list of changes on the forum. We leave you to begin the preparing of the version 1.023, in which you will find many surprises.

Best wishes!