The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Nice

I've just been paid too, but it's all going to fill the hole in my savings... That being said, with each occasional blue screen I really am losing the patience not to change the CPU/board/RAM in my file server. Will have to organise it eventually, will see how I go...

 

Excited about the 970. SLI bridge and extra PCI-E power cables waiting to install, haha. Good list of titles I want to play.

Far Cry 4: on the verge with a single card. SLI should mean absolute max settings. Everything Nvidia with 4xAA

Tomb Raider: See above

Modded Skyrim: See above

Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor: Video memory hog, but can be tweaked down a bit with negligible loss in quality. Otherwise see above.

Witcher 2 and 3: See above

Possibly Fallout 4, same engine as Skyrim

Possibly Total War Warhammer

Possibly Star Wars Battlefront

Star Citizen

3DMark and Heaven, lol

As you can see, a good number of titles just off the top of my head. All are, or should be upon/after release, SLI compatible. All are also top quality games that make SLI worth consideration.

 

I can't pretend I'm not a little envious

I look forward to seeing your results!

 

I agree with Sam, that is a nice little list of titles, Jeff, most of which I have never heard of.

(Do you think I would like any of those games? I tried Skyrim, and for some reason, it's not my cup of tea. But I didn't want to play Metro, until you talked me into it, and it ended up being on my top list of all time favorites. Are any of those you just mentioned, in the Metro category?)​

Hi guys - I've now finished Arkham Asylum, and also Arkham City - but according to the game itself, I have only played 39% - there is that much left on side missions. Besides, you can alternate between playing Batman, or playing Cat Woman - there are 3 places on the map you can go to in order to switch characters. I don't know if I'll continue for all the side missions - it is interesting, but not as compelling as the main game itself.

The cool thing about playing as Batman, is the gliding. It's almost like you can fly. Catwoman can't do that - but she is able to leap huge distances by throwing herself off buildings and shooting out her whip. Neither character can get hurt in a fall - Batman can expand his cape and land gently - catwoman is a cat - you know they can't get hurt no matter how far they fall, lol.

As Jeff said,

Not a short game at all - a very compelling story that sucks you into 6-8 hour sessions until you finally a ready to drop from exhaustion.

Asylum I played at Normal. I started it at Hard, and fortunately there was a thug battle about 10 minutes into the game - I failed and failed and failed. LOL

I wonder if I could beat it now - I'm a little bit better at evasion - except that I am not sure some of my better moves, such as the double space bar which allows you to leap over enemies, were available right at the beginning of the game, or did I have to upgrade to them. (I guess I could always re-start Asylum at Hard, and see if I could get through that first fight.)

Anyway, I went back and changed to Normal, and still, it was BRUUUUUTAL. Especially at the end when I had to watch a few youtube movies to see how the pros did it. Like I said before, it was so hard, I started up City in Easy mode.

Consequently, most of the time in City I did not get killed in the battles, which was nice. A couple of them, however, were really tough, and I DID get killed several times. But only once did I have to watch a youtube video to get the idea.

I do highly recommend both games!!

At $20 each for Asylum and Arkham City, those are very good games and well worth the money. The graphics are outstanding, and the games are very atmospheric, with excellent and compelling characters.

Here's some more Jeff:

When they fix Arkham Knight, I'll get it, at the full $50.

The only thing lacking on a PC, regarding Asylum and City, is how they were ported over in terms of fight controls. Mostly you will spam the punch key - left mouse - and many times you will double tap the space bar to fly over their heads. But as long as you don't try to play over your ability - like me thinking I could do it at Hard on Asylum - it won't be majorly frustrating - you will beat those battles, even if it takes a couple of tries.

Here is a really good tip:

USE THE TITAN TO YOUR ADVANTAGE - I FORGOT THIS A COUPLE TIMES
A good trick when the titan comes (the 10 foot high guy on steroids) is to go for him first, beat on him a bit, which then results in you flying on top of his back, at which point you can direct him around to knock over and damage all the other combatants, including the other titan the one time they throw two titans at you. Battling the titan depends on the game - the second game, City, has a little thing you do hitting middle mouse, which just waves your cape back and forth - which somehow stuns the monstrous brute. Then you pound on him by spamming left mouse, until you finally are up on his back. The first game, Asylum, is different - I think you have to throw a lot of batarangs and keep an eye on him, otherwise jumping out of his way when he runs across the battleground. When he goes down on his knees you need to get over there fast, and a few punches will land you on his back - then direct him around to beat the others.

I have 70 screens that I'll pick through, and post 20 of them next time. I have become a convert to Batman with these two games. Jeff, you mentioned Origins - I didn't check that out - maybe I'll wait for your review.

======================================
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That's $1000 a week if my math is right - nothing at all to sneer at.

I only know UPS from a Christman driving job with them for about 3 months in the Valley (THE Valley) up and down Ventura Blvd. which involved a lot of business deliveries. One inside position was the guy who packed my truck - he knew the route perfectly, and he packed the truck in perfect order so I just grabbed boxes - they were always in order of what was next up the street. It sounds to me like you are considered a valuable employee - so I would say, yeah Kevin, go for the full-time inside position. It is a good company. Are they still Teamsters? That's a strong union. Once you get that if you want to try again for the driving, that's fine. It's a bunch of hussling around - I don't know that it is any better a position than the others that don't involve driving.

Thanks for that Jeff. My brother asked, "How can memory get loose." I answered, "I'm not sure, galvanic action?" Sounds like what you just said is precisely that - oxidation, galvanic action. (I can't remember what galvanic action is - dissimilar metals touching? I know what oxidation is - combining with oxygen.) I think I'll tell him what you just said.

Rich

 

Rich, you would definitely like Far Cry 4 and probably Tomb Raider, which is a reboot of the much older Tomb Raider series. The rest of them are pretty focused stuff. Youtube is your friend here.

Fallout 4 will be similar to Skyrim in game style but is set in a post apocalyptic landscape.

Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor is a Lord of the Rings based game where you play as an assassin hunting orcs and Uruk-Hai in their homeland of Mordor. Kind of Assassin's Creed-ish.

I'm mostly looking to play Skyrim though. I finally have it modded to an acceptable level of fidelity. But the upgrades have taken it from over 100FPS to about 30-40FPS. The game needs Vsync for valid technical reasons and forces it on, but you can force it off if you want to gauge performance. Ideally, I want it locked at 59 to match my monitor most of the time.

 

Yes, you are right - I DID play Far Cry 4 and thought it was great. The flying was really cool. And some of the new weapons were nice - especially the crossbow with the 10-arrow cartridge. That is a sweet weapon!!

Graphically it was beautiful - BUT .... the wave runner was not the same at all. They do have a wave runner, and it handles very nicely - but those mountain lakes are placid - totally smooth as glass. In Far Cry 3 you were running through mild waves - especially when out in the ocean, but also even in the rivers. Maybe that has to do with the current of the river - but those waves created unbelievable reflections - and you just cannot get that in Far Cry 4.

Here is my favorite river - I call it the croc suicide river - expand the picture and you'll see why


The reflections and graphic effects were so nice that occasionally my gaming experience on a particular evening might just be two hours of cruising the river.

This is what I call some serious eye-candy - I noticed that Far Cry 3 has an 88 metacritic score vs. 85 for Far Cry 4



And I did play Tomb Raider - I liked it a lot!

I may not really be much into World of Warcraft type titles - for some reason the fantasy genre doesn't appeal to me - Batman is about as far as I can go.

I actually played a bit of Skyrim, but I just couldn't get into it - again I don't really know why.



You mentioned assassins creed in regard to one game that might be similar - I'm giving some thought to trying the new Assassins Creed Unity - the French revolution - one more time - to see if I can get into it this time. It's just sitting there - I abandoned it about 5-10% in, when Far Cry 4 came out. I'll try to have some patience, and see if it hooks me.

Rich

 

Most of my gaming choices center around complex games or fantasy titles. Large-scale RTS's, Space Flight sims, long, detailed RPGs. You seem to be more of an action-adventure and shooter person than a slow, deliberate strategist or pilot. I like games that take a long time or have a steep learning curve to reap any rewards, but the rewards are worth it to me

Skyrim and its older siblings, Oblivion and Morrowind, are incredibly epic, artistic, and engrossing games. I can completely immerse myself in their worlds for days at a time. I love to mod them because the process is very time consuming and tedious, but the benefits can be amazing. Currently have never seen a game that comes even close to what my modded version of Skyrim looks like. 1440p screenshots to come eventually when I have it where I want it. Crysis? Pfffft. Not many games top Crysis graphics-wise, even today. Skyrim with mods is one of a very small few that totally surpass it in every aspect(except those amazing facial features. Crysis got that perfect). And modding counts in the graphics realm. It is integral to the Elder Scrolls community, and the game/engine are designed with modding as a straight-up priority.

Oblivion's modding community is smaller and a bit less focused as it was a less popular game and there were far less PC gamers a decade ago. Despite that I have achieved a similar result with its graphics. It may not be the majestic visual powerhouse that full-monty Skyrim is, but I count my modded Oblivion among the more impressive looking titles around. And it turns 10 years old this year. To me, that kind of game enhancement is totally worth the decade of experience and learning it took to make it look that good.

 

Currently housesitting for my older brother, and enjoying a 12 - 15MB connection More than ten times what I'm getting at the other place.

I'm currently working on a colleagues computer. Whenever I allow the video drivers to load(normal startup), it hangs on the windows loading screen. Safemode always loads. I've tried uninstalling the graphics drivers, and rolling back to early 2014 drivers to no avail. And yes, I did do a clean uninstall of ALL Nvidia drivers, to be sure there were no conflicts. Apparently somebody else has had a similar problem with his card. And replacing the card solved his problem.

Could it really be a hardware/faulty GPU issue? Safemode always runs :S I guess minimal GPU memory is used under safemode. Logically seems that way anyhow. So faulty GPU memory could be the problem.

Opinions?

The system is an AMD 940 black CPU, Gigabyte AM2+ board I believe. 550W corsair PSU. Think it's too outdated to mess with? Or is there an older GPU that will run with the 940 well enough?

I really wonder about buying too much for this system. While working on it, it ran the Chckdsk function on its own accord...

Appreciate any help with this.

 

It's a Geforce 210. And they want to use it for moderate gaming soon. Not sure what type of games, but I imagine fairly modern. I only ever get the drivers straight from Nvidia. I prefer not put the card in my main rig, which is the only one I have. Oh wait... I have another machine! But it's 20 miles away (actually 3 other machines)
This housesitting has turned into a bit of problem lol But, at least I can update my machine, and download pretty much anything rapidly

 

A 940, Gigabyte board, and a 550VX I'd say it's still a viable PC worth putting a little money into. The PSU has at least 2 PCI-E leads.

 

Well, I went to the other house and grabbed a spare GPU out of an older PC. The 9600GT. Which if I'm interpreting the specs correctly, it more than doubled the GPU horse power. And big shocker, windows loads correctly now. No hangs on the windows loading screen. He wants to add more horse power in fall supposedly. So I've got some time to talk with him, and see just how powerful he wants it.

Thanks for your attention guys And I suspected there's still some life in the ol girl. She was mine once upon a time, after all lol. The addition of the Geforce 210 was merely for an HDMI connection once upon a time. Didn't need gaming capability.

 

The 9600GT is a fairly capable video card, if old. It should work pretty good.

 

What's really nice, is he's paying me $50. And the 9600GT was given to me, with a bunch of other hardware

 

$50 for the whole deal. I think it's fair. The PC shop in town would have charged quite a bit more lol

 

Also, the GeForce GT210 is one of the slowest video cards ever. It is totally broken, and the performance is far worse than its specs. Worse than the several previous generations. The 9600GT is orders of magnitude faster. Double? Pfffft more like multiples. It's in a whole other realm. The 9600 can actually play games very well if you sacrifice a few settings. Crysis is maybe the cutoff but its still playable with high settings, and that means it can run pretty much everything else.

 

I didn't wanna speak too highly of it. I have a way of hexing things LOL! Only the video memory is twice what it was. I'm sure the processing potential is off the charts by comparison.
Why did they even create the 210 anyway? LOL! Aren't we supposed to move forward!

 

Unfortunately I don't have anything to add - my nvidia experience is very minimal. I had good luck with the 8800 GTX that came with the 9450 - it allowed me to play World at War which I thought was exceptional, even though a Treyarch title, and I liked the digital vibrance ability to juice up the color saturation. (call me cartoonish!)

And I have a GTX285 that came with the i7. Is that a powerful card - I think it is, right? Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with my 7950s. I think you're right Kev - they should get more powerful, not broken.

After two Batman weeks without shooting anybody, I went back to my old favorite last night for 6 hours - Arma III. That title has so much value, it's ridiculous. But unless you're into the multiplayer aspect, which at present I am not, you don't want to allow steam to upgrade Arma3, because every time it does, none of my saves will work anymore. So I was horrified when I saw Steam downloading the upgrade for Arma3. I had it set to upgrade "only upon launch" which is the best you can do - you can't tell it NOT to upgrade - and so usually I unplug my internet connection. But I wanted to see if the store had Batman Origins, which they do for $20, and it is an 18 gig download like the others. I think I will be getting it pretty soon. It's not by Rocksteady, but by Warner Bros' Montreal gaming studio - I'll see how it plays, and then Jeff and I can compare notes.

I paused the arma3 download, and then removed it from the download queue. But damn - isn't there a way to get steam to "Back the F off - leave my games alone!"

Here's what I mean about Arma3 value. Click image for full size


I have spent a lot of time on the showcases - but right now I am mostly spending time on the Scenarios.



That image was the scenario menu for Arma3. These are all user-created missions - I have about 150 downloaded, and I have tried about 30 so far. I know that some of them won't work - the upgrades that have already occurred have killed off a few. But most of them WILL work. The one I'm on right now is Operation Scotch Lass. The one above Scotch Lass, Operation Hogs Cove, is one of my all-time favorites, and like Scotch Lass is one of about 5 scenarios in my ##GREAT folder for replay.

Jeff said,

That sounds about right.

The thing about Arma3, once you realize that you can easily find the save folder for any showcase, or scenario, or the main campaign for that matter - you can set it up to replay the best parts - cherry pick the most interesting segments, and just play the hell out of those bits, until finally you get tired and move on.

For example, further down the list, you'll see a green check-off for Contact Person. This one turned out to be a major challenge, and got me very familiar with the 7.6 mm powerful enemy machine gun, the Zephyr, single-shot or full-auto, with 150-round belt. We had to pacify one area so a helicopter could come in, and I thought it might be nice to flank the enemies through the light woods above the main farming compound, while my 3-person squad waited nearby in a little gully.

The 15 enemies caught on to what I was doing, and I found myself targeted by several of them, who alerted all the rest. They started to converge on my position.

I created a save point, standing wounded behind a tree, and then replayed that save about 50 times with various degrees of success. What worked reasonably well was to run to the left where the trees met the hill, dive into a large bush and heal, then surface and attempt to "keep my head on a swivel" and handle everybody who was attacking, while conserving ammo, and trying to keep myself healthy - healing when I thought there was a 30-second gap in the attack.

Later I devised an advanced strategy of opening the map during the first healing, and using the map to direct my squad to move up out of the gully to where they could target, from behind, all the heat that was focused on me. I had one marksman squad member, and he took out several of the Opfor. We were able to catch the enemies in a cross-fire - that increased mission success rate by about 300%.

This is a little bit similar to what Jeff talked about when he said "steep learning curve." In my case, I take a situation that is fraught with danger, and learn to beat it, and hopefully even learn to beat it senseless, until it is no longer such a challenge.

So now let's talk about Operation Scotch Lass.


The idea is to find an advanced drone that the enemy has stolen, find the UAV terminal they used in the theft (a laptop computer) re-couple the disconnected gas line, start the little bird up, and then fly it north, where friendly forces will be on the lookout, and their controller will take over.

Pretty little thing isn't it.


I had to kill a fair number of enemy, going through their barracks to locate the UAV (unmanned autonomous vehicle) terminal. But in later attempts, before creating this save, I left as many alive as I could, so they could come after me, giving me sniper target practice.

Some of these guys have marksman rifles, so it was sniper target practice for them also.

Here I am putting the gas line back together getting the bird ready to go airborne.


While this is going on, the enemy is in pursuit. Here the map shows where the runways are - the plane is facing down the main runway although it doesn't look that way at first - the large wing of the drone is in back and it has a small wing in front. This map shows my former favorite sniping rock, and my new favorite rock clear out by the paved highway.

Those green dots are the enemy soldiers coming to kill me and to get the UAV terminal back.


I marked the rock position on the map, as part of when I created this save point. In the confusion sometimes I found it difficult to remember where the rock was, so this way I could quickly refer to the map and get into position.

Here I am on the rock, ready to snipe. I back-tracked through the wire fence so they don't know where I am.


This rock worked okay for a while, but in coming back to this after a few weeks, I couldn't figure out how I ever managed to look though those bushes in front of me. I believe Arma3 has a director, like Left 4 Dead, and as you replay, the director tries to make the mission more and more challenging.

Anyway, I decided I didn't like the rock. I launched the plane, completing that part of my mission, and then ran through the woods to get to my new favorite position right next to the road.

Next to the road, this rock wall and tree provide good protection.

[Edit 2017 photobucket no longer provides full size pictures - these next two shots used to expand twice as large as they do now and you could clearly see the soldiers. I can solve this by hosting the pictures at my harvardguy.com web site - maybe I'll fix this post if I can find these shots again. Okay I found them - I have to get rid of the photobucket pictures because I am at the 20-screenshot limit for a post. So please expand to full size. Also you can adjust your chrome zoom to 200% and that adds extra zoom to the expanded picture. This guy shooting at me obviously did not have the marksman scope and so he was not particularly accurate, so I had time to fool around and take screenshots and change quality settings, lol. ]​

Here is an attacker about 150 yards out, in Very High graphics setting - expand the picture to full size.


The following looks like the same image, but the Video settings were changed from Very High to the Ultra setting.


Here is the same attacker, after I switched to Ultra graphics setting - expand again to full size.



I really can't tell much difference between Very High and Ultra - possibly a little bit extra AA and slightly smoother surfaces. The enemy soldier is quite visible either way. Are you guys able to see a quality improvement in the second image?

The game is very alive, with butterflies zipping around, dust flying by, the grass and weeds waving in the wind - my cpu is the bottleneck and occasionally on ultra I will dip into low 20s fps frame rates and experience some small lag. So I generally run it in Very High mode, not ultra.

Adjacent to this wall, there is a perpendicular wall, where I can lay facing the runway at the beginning of the save. I usually take off my silencer so they know where I am, otherwise it is hard to attract them - they have no idea where the hell I went.

I had been playing this for quite some time - with mixed results. Sometimes I nailed it - other times they flanked me and caught me by surprise.

Suddenly, one day, I had an interesting thought!

Damn - the map with its little green dots is not so reliable! It shows them still there - but one of them flanked me all the way to the left near the little village, and killed me from my side of the wall. Then one time when I prepared for that by getting to the perpendicular wall, after seeing him run way to the right, he apparently double backed, and killed me from behind again. What the hell!​

I can't trust the map and those green dots.


I wish I had a drone.


Wait a second!


I DO have a drone. Or, rather, I DID - I just flew it home. Well, for crissake, let's go back to that save and NOT fly it home! ​

"This isn't the little back-pack 4-rotor miniature helicopter drone that I was thinking of, but so what - this is a full fledged drone with the same type of turret control, with the same type of optics - meaning powerful zoom with thermal imaging modes.


"I'm supposed to fly it home - but as long as I fly it home before it runs out of gas, what's the harm of flying it home later, much later - after I use it to kill everybody?


"Why don't I start by using the drone to see when I am being flanked?


And so I went back to my save by the plane, re-coupled the gas line, and then DID NOT fly the plane, but ran through the woods to this wall again. The drone is still with me, to be used when I need it.


Here is the subfolder of Scottish Lass, with 4 saves - the drone is still here for wonderful and creative things.



There are 4 saves - save C has a very special attack opportunity. The basic save has the drone still on the ground. I have the terminal with me - I can launch the drone anytime I want to.


Notice that one of the elements of the subfolder is this text file I wrote to myself, to help me enjoy the scenario. "00 rock wall, have drone - read also about gas station, 4 saves.txt."

Late 5/24/15 - got idea of not flying plane, so I can use the drone to spot enemies when they disappear from the map.

Wow, that just worked perfectly. There was one guy left, and the map said he was still where the plane was - not moving - despite my taking off silencer and shooting a half dozen his way. But I don't fully trust the map. So I launched the plane.

Using turret control with WHOT, I could see the guy running on my left, toward the road. I released turret control, rose to crouch, and looked to my left through scope in WHOT mode, and there he was - I killed him quickly. That was textbook perfect.

I did it again, this time with 4 enemies left, 2 on left, 2 on right. I decided to retreat to wall 50 meters other side of road. I cranked up the plane, and it helped a lot. When I got the two on the left, the plane helped me see one guy very close to me on the right - 80 meters. I popped up and we exchanged shots and he wounded me. I healed and saw with drone that he had back-tracked a bit. Then he crossed over to the left. I got him.

How to do it
So if I want an eye from the sky, scroll wheel down and hit space to open the uav terminal - esc key closes it. Within the controller, find the plane, right-click and connect it to the terminal. Then open the pilot, and hold left shift to start the motor and get it moving. Use the S key to climb when it gets to about 90 km/hr.
​

The drone has rocked my world. Before the drone idea, I used to climb a tall hill and look out with my WHOT scope to find enemies - now I do the same with the drone. Much easier.


That's how I found the mega-patrol.


THE MEGA-PATROL CHALLENGE


Refer back up above, to that folder. Notice Save C.

I already went to Selakano, used the drone to help kill everybody, got the range finder, got the MK200 light machine gun with 6.5mm ammo, and 200 round belts, full auto only. I also traded a pickup truck for an extra quad (there were 3 parked in a garage over in that little town - but here the gas station is more central.)

The majority of last night's 6 hours was with the save that puts me at the rock wall, with the drone still on the ground, to be launched when I need it.


I forgot how to take off - to use the S key. I modified my self-notes to make it easier next time I take a long break.



But Save C. megapatrol, is a special rush - it gets my blood pumping!

Here we are at the beginning of Save C - notice the two quads. I'm holding the MK200 full auto light machine gun.


At this save, the drone is already airborne, ready to use to sight in on enemies. But I won't need it until after I battle mega patrol. If I survive, I'll need the drone to tell me which enemies are still dangerous.


Maybe, rather than auto machine gun, you are in the mood for single shot sniping from the 100-round MX-SW 6.5 rifle that I brought with me into this scenario. This rifle takes a special 100-round belt clip, a large square clip that fits a 100 round belt inside it. But it will also take regular 30-round clips which is very helpful when you run out of ammo, like in Hogs Cove.

It will fire full-auto also, and I set it to full-auto sometimes, in tight urban fighting, like Hogs Cove in the middle of town, when I don't know if I'll bump into an enemy around the corner, and I won't have time to scope in - just full-auto with the cursor sights.

But at distance, with a nice scope like the DTS, I use it in single shot mode to great effect. That is my favorite Hogs Cove loadout, MX-SW with DTS 10-20X scope.

For Scottish Lass, the TWS scope, with 12-27X zoom, has similar zoom as the DTS, but also several thermal modes, WHOT, and BHOT, just like the drone turret control. The WHOT is the one I use, but often I switch to normal colors. I found the TWS in the barracks while looking for the UAV terminal. Once I found it, I had no further need for the DTS scope.

Before we switch to the MX-SW, let's put the TWS scope into our near-empty backpack.




Now we can go pick up the MX-SW rifle with single-shot mode.


All those little packages around the gun are the 100-round clips. When you pick up a gun you also get the ammo.




Put your scope on your new rifle, jump on a quad, and go straight ahead, then make the first left. This will bring you up behind the mega-patrol.

If you're in a strange suicidal mood, turn around and take the road past the air base to catch the patrol head on.


from my text file notes:

Save Point - 11-man kill: At the C save point, if I go straight toward the red truck, by heading down the road toward Feres, making the left, then stopping just past the tree on my right which is the path to the highway, the drone will show me an 11-man patrol. The 7-man has teamed up with the 4-man. They are crossing before the house, from my right to my left, and if I wait a bit before continuing with the quad, then pull forward, exit and get on the wall right there to my left, I can see all 11 soldiers. Starting with the one in front, I can kill them all. Make sure I have full MK-200 ammo. I can also do it from the front - heading by the other road, then as I get close to the red truck, there is a wall on the right 10 meters from the road, near a tall rock. Get on that wall, and they are coming right at me about 250 meters away. That is a nice change of pace. ​

Tonight I am in the mood for head-on Opfor revenge - or maybe my own demise - so I'm heading this way.



The patrol moves fast - there is no extra time to lose - we lost 20 seconds changing rifles.


I'm going to cut across the corner to shave about 10 seconds off this trip - you'll soon see why.



Once you pick up the main dirt road, it's a straight shot, so hold left shift for maximum velocity.


Here we are passing the airbase, down at the barracks end where we created so much excitement earlier in the day.



We're getting closer but we can't slow down yet.



======================================================================

A major landmark around here is the truck extraction location - a big red truck parked at an intersection.


That red truck and the house next to it is how I get my bearings in this valley - I used to zoom in on it from the top of the hill that I went to, when I spotted patrols that way before coming up with the drone idea.

======================================================================​

Okay, it didn't take long to get a lot closer to our final position.

It's time to leave the road - look for the pointed rock - that wall next to it is our destination.



They are really close now, head off the road and get off of this quad.


I shouldn't park the quad directly in the line of enemy fire - one time my quad was completely destroyed.


I didn't lose too much time jumping off the quad and hot-footing to this wall.


Now I'm in position, and the moment of judgment is approaching - when do I fire the first shot?




Here is the situation as seen in the drone turret control.

Wow, that is a bunch of guys heading in my direction. Am I sure about this?




TO BE CONTINUED ...........


Rich

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