As some of you old-timers here already know, I have wanted to fly in this oft overlooked WWI theater ever since the early OFF days. The Italian Front saw some of the most horrific battle conditions in some of the most beautiful terrain in the world, and it also saw the first use of massive strategic bombing raids, by the Corpo Aeronautico Militare against the Austrian Army, (in fact, the Italians were the first to use heavier-than-air aircraft in armed conflict way back in 1911 in the Italo-Turkish War). In preparation for my DID pilot's RFC squadron moving to the Italian Front in November, (provided he survives until then), I have started work on the western end of this front as that is where he will serve. After a couple morning's efforts I have the entire front line coordinates mapped for the situation after the battle of Caporetto, (the lines remained basically unchanged from this point until war's end). I also have a handful of aerodromes placed on either side of the lines, and have tested the placement of defenses at the lines in the valley south of Rovereto, after which I was treated to both sides shelling each other and some nasty MG fire as I flew over. My intention is to get enough built so that I can fly historically accurate sorties in the AO, all of which I will have to create as I go along for now, unless the devs would like to add the Italian Front into the sim - nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, say no more.
Here's a quick peak behind the curtain for those of you who might be interested.
Approaching from the north the Austro-Hungarian/German aerodrome at Croviana. This is the westernmost of their fields along the front and is located high in the mountains.
A portion of the map showing the area mentioned.
Cento di questi giorni!
Lou
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Three RFC Brass Hats were strolling down a street in London. Two walked into a bar, the third one ducked. _________________________________________________________________________
Former Cold War Warrior, USAF Security Service 1974-1978, E-4, Morse Systems Intercept, England, Europe, and points above. "pippy-pahpah-pippy pah-pip-pah"
Looks fantastic, Lou. I don't know if there is anything I can do to help, but if you can think of something within my limited range of abilities, please let me know.
“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
A wonderful surprise - always pleased to see emphasis/work placed on the "obscure" fronts - perhaps a new title is in the works too ... Wings Over Omnifarious Fronts (WOOF), courtesy of Old Brown Dog Software.
For those who would currently enjoy flying the Italian theater, also specifically Caporetto, as well as the eastern and middle eastern fronts - I recommend a heavily modded First Eagles 2 install.
Von S
Last edited by VonS; 05/25/2004:35 PM. Reason: Added obscure humor.
~ For my various FM/AI/FPS/DM Mods. for First Eagles 2, WoFF, RoF & WoTR, and tips for FlightGear, recommended is to check over my CombatAce profile (https://combatace.com/profile/86760-vons/) and to click on the "About Me" tab while there. ~
Lou, you always continue to amaze. If your past efforts are any indicator, I am sure this current project will be fantastic. It appears to already be off to a great start! Thanks for doing this.
That looks amazing Lou. It would be brilliant to have the Italian front to fly in, I remember back in the old Red Baron II days you could get campaigns in the Italian front using several mods. Rise of Flight had the eastern front (but with hardly any relevant aircraft available to fly in it )
Here's hoping
"A great deal of an aeroplane could be holed without affecting its ability to fly. Wings and fuselage could be—and often were—pierced in 50 places, missing the occupants by inches (blissfully unaware of how close it had come until they returned to base). Then the sailmaker would carefully cover each hole with a square inch of Irish linen frayed at the edges and with a brushful of dope make our aircraft 'serviceable' again within an hour."
My mouth is watering! This would be a tremendous add-on to the sim. It would seem a massive undertaking, but is there any way that campaign missions could be generated for squadrons on the Italian front or would you have to set up missions in the ME?
Thanks everyone for the comments and feedback and offers to help, it is much appreciated. Raine, it would be a massive undertaking to build it all, for the entire war. For now I am focusing on the last year of the war and the western end of the front, and even that will be a considerable task. Missions will have to be built as stand-alone files and run as scenarios as I've no idea how to write everything into the sim engine itself. That would be a job for the dev team or for someone with similar understanding of how it all works.
I just stumbled upon this threa!! Cudos to you for starting the ball rolling!!
There may be hope for a Barker career in Italy yet!!
Best Regards
(System_Specs)
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Late to the party...as usual...wow, wonderful! Stunning and absolutely great work! As was mentioned above by Robert I just checked in and stumbled on your post! Hoping the Dev’s might include this in an upgrade in the near future! Would be awesome to fight in this theatre along side William Barker. Can’t wait to see more! Thanks for the time and effort putting this forward! Cheers!
. . Robert, Barker's time in Italy could certainly be represented in this mod as it will cover his AO and arrival time. You simply need to build missions for him.
Deejan, there would be mountains of work to do, (pun intended), in order to have this a permanent part of the sim. All the Italian and Austrian squadrons, and to a lesser degree the American squadrons, would need to be created to cover the entire war, as would additional aircraft types to fill in the numerous gaps, and the changing front lines earlier in the war would need to be mapped, and on and on and on. But it would be wonderful if it could all be there one day.
No doubt Lou, absolutely a “mountain full” of work it appears would have to go into an add on for the Dev’s to undertake. It is nice to dream though, sigh..lol..perhaps one day...I suppose that’s why we have the wish list thread...anyhow love what you have done! Great work! Cheers!
Thanks Deejan, I'll keep plugging away at it. As of this morning here is what I have mapped out and placed, (I've been marking in the cities and villages as I find them as well):
What you see in terms of aerodromes is a little better than a third of what should be there as I work my way eastward. Of course I have lots of front line positions to install, as well as balloons, factories, railyards, and city defenses, but it is starting to take shape.
And here's a shot I have to share, it is the Italian aerodrome at Sant'Anna d'Alfaedo. It literally sits 1000 metres up on top of a mountain, across the valley from Prada. Stunning! Also, not a runway you want to overshoot as it's about 500 metres down to the valley floor below.
500 hundred metres is plenry of time to get your revs up and recover
(System_Specs)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper PSU: Ultra X3,1000-Watt MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4
loftyc, I have it on hold, primarily because I need to see what changes are going to occur in the terrain with the new WOFF. Like the aerodrome and landscape mods, this one is very time-consuming, and I don't want to have to duplicate the bulk of my efforts by creating the many landscape tiles to mesh with WOFF: PE only to have to recreate them all again to mesh with WOFF: Name To Be Determined. I was also waiting as I wanted to use the stellar water mod that was being developed by xjouve, but this artisan has been MIA for quite some time now, so the new rivers and lakes and such may yet be only a dream.
Lofty had asked me a week or so back if he could try out what I have so far for the Italian Front. I put together a WIP download for him which he has been enjoying, so much so that he suggested I make it available to others here who might like to try it out and perhaps even build some custom missions for it as it currently stands.
So, to that end, here is the download link for a RAR file containing the Italian Front mod: WOFF PE Italian Front Test Mod
Download the file to your computer and unzip it, then copy the folder "WOFF PE Italy Test by RAF_Louvert" and paste it into your "MODS" folder in your WOFF install, the path to which should look like this if you have it on your 'C' drive: C:\OBDSoftware\WOFF\MODS. This all assumes you are using the JSGME Mod Installer, if you're not none of this will work. Once you have the mod file in your mod folder, open up your JSGME Mod Installer and activate the "WOFF PE Italy Test by RAF_Louvert" which should now appear in your list of mods.
WARNING WARNING WARNING!!! Activate this mod last and ONLY when you intend to fly in the Italian Theater. Do not attempt to fly anywhere else in the 1917+6 Period (July thru December 1917), as this mod strips out nearly everything along the Western Front and loads instead the Italian Front. Do not activate any other mods on top of this one.
Once you have the mod activated, start WOFF and pick either a British or a German pilot and go to "Quick Scenarios" and on the list of choices you will see either "AA ITALY TEST B1" or "AA ITALY TEST G1" depending on which country you've chosen to fly for. Start the scenario and enjoy flying around the Italian countryside. The mod loads a custom skin for the Spad VII and for the early Alb D.III, Italian and Austrian respectively. The mod also loads a custom map so you will see the front and the various aerodromes, guns, railyards and such I've placed so far. There is no air combat at the moment unless you create your own scenarios to include it, (which would be great if you did and then shared those scenarios with others who are giving this mod a look-see).
WARNING WARNING WARNING!!! When you are done flying in Italy deactivate the mod immediately and you will have your WOFF PE back to where you had it before. Again, do not activate any other mods on top of this one, and do not attempt to go to the Western Front during the 1917+6 Period with this mod installed. If you do things could get potentially ugly.
Let me know how it works for any and all of you, and if you like what you see feel free to share some of your screenshots in the forums, as well as those custom missions you build.
So glad to see you post this; I look forward to more capable people than I to come up with some scenarios, and whatever else. I seem to have an incurable disability to get every comma and mark correct in a mission file, but I did manage to modify your Brit one to have a Pup taking off and two D3's coming over. Not much, but maybe others can take it from there. And as I noted in the past, if nothing else, it's just enjoyable to fly around the area with what objects you've already included. And that Austrian skin!
Note please, the attachment manager yelled at me that I wasn't allowed to load the mission as an .xml file, so I had to turn it into an .rtf. I'm guessing that you'd need to change it back to .xml if you want it.