Basic Equipment
Rundown
In fighting in the airail arena every advantage employed to get a edge over the opponent possible is a plus ..many of the most essential and important advantages can not be acquired in a material form but rather must be learned or taught through experience. While the skills you have to learn my not be bought as a quick-fix... Some good equipment may be ..
.
Joysticks
The battle over what
joystick is the best rages on and on as it will due to human nature and personal
preferences
All I have to say is that a good joystick is essential
in this game,, The coordination required to pull of close rolling shots
and long convergence shots can be severely hampered by poor joystick PC
readings what = lousy control
The solution for this dilemma is usually
solved by buying a better joystick like A CH Saitek or Thrustmaster product
while I endorse these products ...I personally use
a Microsoft Sidewinder Pro for the reason that the twisting handle provides
a source of rudder input that only a set of rudders could provide. All at the
same price as a joystick. Also when purchasing a joystick get one with a Hat
switch on it or your wasting your money.
Throttle Slider
As you know if you don't have one is that the keyboard throttle settings are cumbersome and inconvenient to use in a tight situation. This is the very first item you should purchase after a good joystick. many of the joysticks out their have a throttle built into them,but with the throttle and all the extra programmable buttons at your fingertips your agility and mauverabitity as well as visual awareness <when you set the cockpit views on the throttle hat> greatly increases .Visual awareness is a essential attitude to have if you want to live long enough to kill anything be fore your dealt a hefty helping of cannons and Mg rounds..
Rudders
If you don't
have rudders and would like to watch other people suffer under your guns for
a change try getting some. Not do they only make take-off a snap
<if you play in ez mode your missing a lot of extra performance by wusssssssinng
out> They also make the one on one turn and burn fights a lot easier to
get on the opponents six
While their not a Wonder weapon when properly
employed they make all the difference in the world.
PC power
While Warbirds runs well on lesser PC's the frame
rate issue can be solved by at least having a 166MHz or better PC this is just
a general statement cause sometimes frame rates become A issue and other
problems occur that are sometimes caused by processing power this is just
a safety zone and I am not in to PC snobbery ...But hey who doesn't want a 500MHz
Pentium III..hehe . 3d requires at least a P200 with A Voodoo 1 video card for
640xres And A PII 233 Voodoo2 or higher for 1024xres *note theirs are both baseline
systems for the above 3d resolutions Warbirds 3d is a DOG! it takes enormous
resources to run it smoothly ,I suspect that this is due to it being ported
to Microsoft Direct 3d witch is a notorious Performance slacker because of multi
platform capability ...and of cause its from Microsoft ...If Warbirds 3d were
ported for 3dfx's Glide like originally intended there would be a substantial
increase in frame rate for all PC's but that's was scraped due the the fact
Warbirds was bought by IMOL during the WB2.0 development .as usual big companies
do dumb things so its WB 3d in D3D for now...
A Dedicated Game Port <Card>
This is a way to free up processor usage which means better Frames Per Second or F.P.S . As well as improve control Cause your standard game port which resides in your sound card has to feed sound as well as your joystick axis reports throughout the same port which makes for a bottle neck and CPU drain. They make many types of Game cards and usually be bought for around 25$ to 40$ ..They have digital game cards now witch are supposed to be better ...I'm sure they are but just freeing up your processor even if it is a PII will help in control overall I recommend one of these no matter what your PC speed is .
4 meg Video Card or 3d Card
Just
another performance booster 4 megs is a good safety zone to elevate many video
sluggishness related problems and it will improve your windows speed overall
especially if you like to work with many windows open <or Borrowers> at the
same time. Now with 2.0 and 3d the requirement for 3d is a direct 3d capable
video card . Most video cards are d3d capable but the don't have the architecture
to handle WBd3d.So I would say right at this moment anything with a Voodoo 2
, Banshee , Riva TNT or Rage chips are good enough to pump out the fps ..There
are other chipssets that can handle the heavy demand thats WB3d puts on them
but make sure you get AGood D3D preformer when your looking for A Warbirds Video
upgrade.
Modems
Get
A 56k modem . They are inexpesive enough now that their is no excuse not to
have one ...unless you don't have anny money at all and never will heheh . ISDN
is exspensive but ehh if you have extra cash go for it. If you have Cable Modem
avalibility get it, cable modems are the fastest connects you will ever see
on-line for a long time to come, they are 50X as fast as a 56k modem and worth
every penny you will pay your cable company .Now this is a bit of if your connect
is good don't fix it things .Your ISP has everything to do with this and nothing
at the same time,sometimes the net is just overloaded,sometimes like in Warbirds
2.0 rev 2.0 1 they just did not optimize their software with there hardware
causing many many mini-warps. Warping as you know is the difference of lag times
caused by Internet latency. Warps are part of the game.......
BUT!!..some of the lower pilots know how to intentionally warp and jump all
over the place when your on their 6. This is because they are chickenshit .
I have figured out how to successfully do this but I can't stand pilots who
do this and don't want to put the directions on the page. If you encounter one
of these blinking jumping wusses remember they will eventually give you a good
shot so save your ammo...hehehe