user38

Guys, can't we just calm down a bit. We each have our different points of view. I may be an optomist, but I truely believe if we try to put aside our difference everyone can live together in harmony, and by everyone I include jew and bigots.

Sorry to disagree, but I think you have misunderstood the purpose of the internet. The exchanging of information is only incidental to the true purpose of the internet, which is to annoy, argue and complain.

Yes, but those holidays are on Sunday.

I have a ATI 5770. Shock Force runs fine on at 1080p with the details on high. I am not sure about the frame rate: it doesn't look like 60 Hz but I find it acceptable. I think the prudent thing to do is to wait until the game is released and see how it runs. However, from your posts (and given the force runs strong in my family) I predict three things. You are going to buy a second 5770 anyway, you won't be sorry you did and if you wait, you'll wish you had done it sooner.

Sorry, I just reread your post: I have a Radeon 5770 card and have had no problems with it. I did some google research and I found the quote here:

ATI has recently released the HD 6990 which, I understand, is stupidly fast.

I think I have to take issue with this post from Battlefront.com Clearly what we have with this post is an over concentration of facts. Obviously that is unrealistic in a forum post. Shouldn't there be some internet mechanism that ensures forum posts contain only mad and unsustainable opinions?

I myself have no love for WW2. That's why I am hanging out for the Russian front module Napoleon 1812: the war in Russia.

So you are suggesting that everyone on this forum stop waiting for CMBfN to be released and start waiting for Panzer Command: Ostfront to be released?

Except that your post will get deleted also because when you quoted the post with the link to the commercial product you also quoted the link to the commercial product as well. Is this like the paradox of going back in time and killing your grandfather?

The scenario might have been a bit more evenly matched if the allied side had a Sherman. As General Patton said "A Sherman can give you a nice edge".

LFJHutch, we are actually in agreement here (and arguing semantics). A lot of things that people do for "fun" resembles work. For example, people spend hours on back breaking labour gardening or restoring cars or building furniture as a hobby. Pawter is correct that it is unrealistic to see the entire battlefield. In a real battle a commander has limited knowledge of the terrain or of events as they unfold. They don't micromanage their troops. I imagine they spend most of the battle waiting and trying to find out what is happening so that they can give critical orders. I imagine they don't find out what has actually happened until they read the after action reports. I guess you could play CMBfN with the computer in another room. You could have a friend working the computer and you could yell instructions to him through the door. Afterwards he could tell you what happened. He might even say "You should have seen that Panzer IV knock out those three Shermans: it was spectacular". And you might think "Yes, I would like to have seen that." That would be realistic. I doubt it would be fun.

One thing really confuses me here: the quest for realism. My dad fought in WW2. He didn't really talk about it much, but as far as I can tell he didn't enjoy the experience. A realistic wargame would be horrible. A game is a game and the point of a game is to have fun. Otherwise it is work. If we want to talk about unrealistic it is probably more productive to talk about flanks. In these Combat Mission games the battlefield is a defined area. You can play on it in the secure knowledge that your flanks are completely secure: no one is coming at you from your left or the right flank and your opponent cannot move its forces beyond the boundaries of the defined battlefield. I am sure this leads to more gamey tactics than a perfect knowledge of the terrain. But what are you going to do. You can’t model a battlefield the size of Europe. And if you did you would never find the enemy and you would never have a fight (which is the whole point of the game). The thing is, games are inherently unrealistic. It is not because the games are poorly designed. It is because a game that accurately models reality would be boring. And hard work. Games are art, and what simulation designers try to do is model the fun bits of reality so that the player can have an enjoyable experience. I myself have flown military jets in simulation. I’m sure if I dedicated several hundred hours of my life (and if any airforce was foolish enough to employ me) I could fly military jets in reality. But I wouldn’t want to play a game which makes me sit through 20 hours of class room lessons before they even let me sit in a cockpit. Pawter, as far as I can tell what you are looking for is a game which prevents players from using “unrealistic” tactics. Maybe there is a deeper question here: why is it you consider an over concentration of force to be unrealistic. As MajorJerkov pointed out “Isn’t this how battles are won in the real world?” When I was in the army I was taught to keep my distance from my squad mates. It wasn’t because bunching up would make the squad a less effective attacking force: it was because bunching up renders the squad more vulnerable to attack from mortars and grenades. In real life military commanders are cautious because real lives are at stake. Because it tears them apart when their soldiers die. Because they get court martialled if they screw up. The real source of the “unrealism” you complain about is not an imperfectly modelled game: it is the fact that it is a game rather than real life. Gamers are never going to play a game as if it were real life because they don’t suffer the consequences of their bad decisions. I imagine a victory for a real life commander is bitter sweet. I imagine that after a battle, a victorious real life commander does not so much savour the intellectual challenge as mourn the loss of the troops that, through his decisions, he condemned to death. Unless the commander is a sociopath I doubt he revels in the destruction of the enemy. I expect if he were sane and given a choice he would rather not have to fight at all. Sun Tzu said (something like) the real art of a commander is to win a battle without fighting. And where’s the fun in that?

I have to agree with poesel71 and Wodin here. A game is a game and it is supposed to be fun. Real life is not fun, except in retrospect. On the other hand, I have to disagree with MickeyD: Toasters are actually crap at making toast. I recommend that anyone who is interested in quality toast throw away their toaster and use the grill instead.

There are actually two versions of Steel Panthers available. I recommend winspww2 which is the windows 7 version.

I think the issue with artistic representations of reality is that colour and lighting affects the mood. It is similar to the way music is used in movies to create an emotional response.

You could try Powerstrip With Powerstrip you can set up a colour profile and associate it with an application so that Powerstrip automatically loads the colour profile with when the application's exe file is executed.

Congratulations on your first post (and I am looking forward to Moon's reply). On the WW2 wargames you haven't played, I hope one of them isn't Steel Panthers: If you haven't played it you should check it out. Steel Panthers was almost responsible for my failing company accounting (the real reason I failed was because the subject was stupidly hard and, lets say, undifferentiated laziness). If you don't need great graphics then Steel Panthers is right up your street.

It should be the same (if you select the 1080p video stream on youtube).

Good God: 3.2 GB. At that size I hope the video is better than Avatar.

1.3 GB and we are at the 40 minute mark. This is one seriously huge video file.

1.1 GB and still going - this is getting a bit boring.

1.0 GB and still going.

906 MB and still going.

If you use Firefox you can install an extension called DownloadHelper. With it you can save youtube videos at whatever resolution youtube plays the video at. This one is pretty big. I am currently downloading the 1080p video - so far the file size is 672MB. I will notify of the final size once the dowload is complete.