Com-Central.net

- JG300-Stoopy

Well so far, it certainly seems that GameRanger works well and we had 4 people in a room last night - a new record for the week, LOL!

Thanks for joining us, Dakota, Fr8ycat and I enjoyed getting shot up again!

Dan736 showed up just as I was taking the room down, well after midnight. Sorry Dan!

Only bummer deal is, it looks like CFS3 definitely has issues playing online when it's running under Vista. WilliFock has been unable to join any rooms due to aircraft mismatch problems, even though he's both updates installed. I installed on Vista yesterday and duplicated the problem. It doesn't seem to be GameRanger's fault but more like some slight difference in the way XP and Vista see the validity of the A/C files, perhaps a checksum difference or something. Am going to experiment with what's going on.

As far as GameRanger goes it's been a very positive experience. two things to mention:

1 - I used a "safe" email account to register with GameRanger. This is a very dormant account that only gets 2 emails a week tops, from the same source. Since registering with GameRanger, I'm happy to report that NO new emails have shown up from any other sources - so they are certainly not sharing any emails for spam purposes, marketing, etc. That's great.

2 - As for any concern about potential spyware being installed, I've been keeping close tabs on this with tools like SpyBot S&D, etc., and all week my system has remained completely clean (just a couple of the usual web browser tracking cookies you get from some of the "other" sites).

3 - I've been hosting rooms in order to let new users try it out and see if they can join, and as a result ended up doing a fair amount of impromptu "tech support" this week, and some folks have experienced issues in joining rooms if they are coming straight from a private IP game. Had this happen myself. The fix was to go fire up CFS3 stand-alone and start a Quick Combat flight, then end it, and exit, then come back to GameRanger, and it all worked out. Sounds like typical fussy CFS3 behavior again, which has always been a little odd now & then.

We even met one flier who had joined our rooms and mentioned he was running Vista, which is perplexing, so it gives me hope that the Vista issue can be tracked down. Unfortunately that person lacked the comm skills or desire to tell us much about his install but swears he's definitely running Vista and isn't having the A/C mismatch issue.....so the solution could be simple, who knows, just a matter of figuring it out.

So overall it's looking GOOD and I'm not sure how we could have asked for a better solution!!

- JG300-Stoopy

3 - I've been hosting rooms in order to let new users try it out and see if they can join, and as a result ended up doing a fair amount of impromptu "tech support" this week, and some folks have experienced issues in joining rooms if they are coming straight from a private IP game. Had this happen myself. The fix was to go fire up CFS3 stand-alone and start a Quick Combat flight, then end it, and exit, then come back to GameRanger, and it all worked out. Sounds like typical fussy CFS3 behavior again, which has always been a little odd now & then.

- JG300-Stoopy

Here's an example of what I would call the unsubstantiated, unfounded rumor mill....second post down:

www.sim-outhouse.com/s...php?t=8582

"I personally am not keen on joining the Game Ranger set-up as I don't want someone I don't know able to get into my computer..."



It...just leaves me speechless, is all. Someone has no problem posting their IP address publicly for private IP games, yet they think that GameRanger, which isolates the user's system from such threats, is a risk? Talk about getting things bass-ackwards.

It's a dang pity. But then again it takes all kinds, and in a case like that, the kind that would just say something so remarkably dumb with no basis in fact or anything to back it up whatsoever...I'm not a member over there which is a good thing since I'd be tempted to challenge such a baseless statement which just turns more people away from a good thing for no factual reason. But until someone does challenge rumors like that, the community will by and large just stumble along with it's head in the sand. Makes ya wanna bang your head into a brick wall to kill the pain....ARRRGHHH!!!!

Sadly, half the people I meet on GR tell me to go to SOH and when I do, I see this, and remember why I quit going there long ago.

BTW I had a GREAT time flying with some old friends tonight and the only time they "took over my computer" was when they shot the hell out of my BF109....LMAO!!!