AIR WARRIOR(r) III UPDATES

Last Update: August 12, 1998

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.10
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New Features
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- The switching distance from simple to detailed plane shapes has been
  increased slightly (20%).

- For larger aircraft, the switching distances from dots to simple
  plane shapes and from simple to detailed plane shapes have been
  increased in proportion to plane size.

- The Thrustmaster Attack throttle is now supported.

- You can now zoom in closer to the plane in the rotatable view in the
  reference manual.

Bug Fixes
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- The rudder deadband now works the same as the stick deadband.

- The screen save function (F11) is no longer available online or in 
  head-to-head, in response to reports of people using it to induce 
  warps. You can still do screen saves in offline missions and during
  film playback. If you want to take a screenshot online or in 
  head-to-head, just press 9 to film the sections of the flight where
  you want the screenshots, then play back the film later and press
  F11 to save the screen during the film.

- The bug that caused planes to appear as dots in the rotatable view
  in the reference manual has been corrected.

- The slight stretching of the full screen text buffer has been
  corrected.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.09
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New Features
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- The player roster and player info dialogs are now available during
  online automated scenarios.

- The online automated scenario briefing now shows only one waypoint
  at a time, so you can also see the map.

- The final score for an online automated scenario is now written to
  disk (scenario.txt) if you are still in the arena when the scenario
  ends.

- Some shapes and textures have been optimized to improve the art load
  time and frame rates when near cities and airfields for people using
  3D hardware accelerated rendering.

Bug Fixes
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- A bug which could cause you to become trapped in the aircraft
  selection process has been corrected.

- Several small interface bugs related to online automated scenarios
  have been corrected.

- The bug causing blackouts to be too abrupt when using 3D hardware
  rendering has been corrected.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.08
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New Features
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- Planes are now double-sized in offline missions, solo flight and
  head-to-head.

- There are now messages to inform you whether your brakes are on.

- We have updated to Miles Sound System version 4.0e.

Bug Fixes
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- One cause of gunner dumps for owners of the box game has been
  corrected.

- One cause of an hour glass cursor in flight has been corrected.

- The page and complain buttons now work in the radio room.

- The black area above the page and complain buttons after returning
  from flight has been corrected.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.07
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New Features
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- Online position updates have been improved. This reduces jitter in
  nearby planes, reduces vertical warps and smoothes horizontal warps
  from jumps to 'surges'.

- A new arena setting allows planes to be rendered at an exaggerated
  size to make them more visible. Hit bubbles and shells, etc., are
  scaled accordingly.  All arenas will be changed to use double-sized
  planes.  In this release the planes in offline missions and 
  head-to-head are still normal size.

- The communications engine has been modified to reduce some types
  of 'blink-outs' and disconnects.  This of course does not address
  arena-wide problems, but only those local to an individual.

Bug Fixes
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- It is again possible to set custom country colors.

- The gunsight position in the MiG-15 cockpit art has been corrected.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.06
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New Features
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	None.

Bug Fixes
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- The large memory leak that was happening between flights when using
  3D hardware rendering has been corrected. The symptoms of this bug
  were a decreased frame rate on each sortie, eventually resulting in
  a dump while trying to get into flight.
 
- The artwork offset in the full screen (F7) view in software 
  rendering has been corrected. The primary impact of this bug was 
  that the bombardier sight was off center, causing bombs to fall 
  short. It also caused the gun sight to be slightly low relative to
  the dash. A player who has suffered long from this bug, =B17=,
  has asked that it be named for him. Thus, we hereby proclaim the
  =B17= bug found and fixed.

- A bug that was causing a GDI memory leak when using 3D hardware
  rendering has been corrected.

- The flakpanzer turret is now drawn at the correct rotation in 
  software rendering.

- Bombs can no longer sink islands online.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.05
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New Features
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	None.

Bug Fixes
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- Corrected fatal initialization error for ATI Rage Pro and Rage II 
  3D cards.

- Corrected a bug that could cause a dump to the desktop when dragging
  the situation map in European terrains.  This may also have been
  the cause of other dumps when looking at map views.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.04
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New Features
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- Ack bursts no longer grow as they dissipate.

- The smoke and explosion effects in 3D mode have been improved.

- The torpedo splash and wake animations are now working in 2D mode.

- Gunners now get the text buffer on the full screen view.

- The text buffer on the full screen view now uses most of the width 
  of the screen.

- Tracking data is no longer hidden by the cockpit artwork. It is not
  visible, though when the plane is hidden behind the art.

- Incidental sounds are now disabled in the radio room if network voice
  is enabled when the player enters the room, to avoid conflicts 
  between Bedlam and VOX.

- The program will now display a message directing the player to look
  in the faq.txt the first time it detects an AWE-32 or AWE-64 sound
  card.

- The five new Japanese planes are now available in head-to-head.

- Complain and page buttons have been added to all online conference 
  rooms.

- Tracers now stop when they hit the ground or a building, so there is
  no longer an apparent mismatch between the tracers and the impact
  animations.

- Kelton made a small change to the spin model.

- The German resource DLL has been updated to version 3.04.

- The mission editor has been updated to the latest aircraft performance
  data and bomb loads.

- Damage to buildings is now correctly cleared between check rides.

- The first time you run 3.04 it will claim to have detected new
  hardware.  This is intentional. It ensures that the saved settings
  are appropriate for the current version.

- The frame rate counter is now always displayed in films, for
  benchmark purposes.

- The game now takes advantage of cards that have more than 4MB of 
  VRAM.

- You can now view a message from the arena manager, which should 
  include the latest arena settings and notes on any recent changes.
  The hotspot for this feature is the loudspeaker in the 
  officer's club.

- When 3D hardware rendering is selected, and program will determine
  whether the 3D card has sufficient texture memory for good
  performance. If not, ground object textures will be disabled in all
  view detail levels. You will be informed if this has been done and
  can manually turn them back on, although that is not recommended.

- Linked online missions are now supported, so the outcome of a
  scenario will determine which scenario is loaded next for that
  campaign.

Bug Fixes
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- The effect for planes being damaged has been changed to make the
  chunks coming off more visible. In the last build it was almost
  impossible to tell when you were doing damage.

- The in-flight Help Screen now loads properly when view caching is 
  enabled.

- 3D cards (like the FireGL 1000) that do both stipple and alpha now 
  default to alpha, not stippling.

- Fixed the F5-no gauge problem when switching from F7-outside view 
  to F5 view.

- ME110 gunners online now get ammo and radio gauges.

- The player will no longer get the successful landing message when 
  ditching in the water.

- The bug causing crashes to the desktop when dropping bombs or 
  torpedoes has been corrected.

- Fixed the color-morphing gun sights for gunners.

- You can now record films in a gunner position

- One cause of getting the empty blue sky screen with no arena 
  selection dialog has been addressed.

- Kelton has corrected the jerkiness seen in the external view.

- The doubled Zero shapes have been replaced.

- The Local Hits checkbox now turns ON Local hits when enabled.
  It was backwards.

- The Damage Effects checkbox now actually does something. It toggles
  sparks, ground impacts and smoke plumes on and off. It does not
  affect explosions or smoke trails.

- When firing at the ground, the animations will now be drawn at the
  point of impact, not in your face.

- A velocity error in the bullet and tracer trajectories for gunners
  has been corrected, which makes aiming much easier.

- The starting positions for tracers from moving aircraft have been
  corrected. In offline missions tracers will no longer come from 
  well below and behind other planes, or your own plane in the external
  view, and when you are a gunner the tracers will now appear to come 
  from your turret, instead of someplace off to the side.

- You will no longer get a 'bailed successfully' message when you land
  a Corsair online.

- The problems with the La5, KI-43 and Ju88 art have been corrected.

- A fatal error in the I-Force 2 support has been corrected.

- Fixed blue background on Voodoo Graphics cards.

- The TBF bomb load has been increased to 4. It also now has a single
  cowl gun, instead of the wing guns.

- The critical mach number for the onset of compressibility for the
  P-47 has been corrected. It was too low.

- The critical mach number for the onset of compressibility for the
  Ki-43 has been corrected. It was too high.

- Fixed a potential problem changing view levels in SW mode.

- The missing trees and explosions in 2D mode online have been
  corrected.

- The excessive frame rate hit for smoke plumes, both 2D and 3D,
  has been corrected.

- The smoke from a damaged plane in 2D mode now rises at the correct
  rate again, so it will be visible in your rear view.

- Another memory leak(and resulting crash) related to re-entering 
  flight in different terrains, films, and missions, has been fixed.
  Load times may be slightly shorter between playing different films
  and missions (after the first load).

- Changes have been made to improve the accuracy of the after action
  reports, among other things.

- The invalid field message has been corrected.

- The problem causing the counts shown on the arena selection screen
  to disagree with the actual number of players in the arena has
  been addressed.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.02
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New Features
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- There is a new expert gunnery mode available for online play which 
  uses 'hit shells' based on the plane shape instead of round
  'hit bubbles'. It is controlled by an arena setting.

- Added smoke plumes to bomb explosions and destroyed buildings.

- Added bullet impact animations for ground and object strafing.

- Added special effect for shooting sheep. Try your marksmanship.

- Added new smoke, explosion and ack burst effects. On cards that do 
  not support the smoke alpha blend type, the old animations are used.

- Bullets now damage buildings, etc. Online this is controlled by
  an arena setting, and may be turned off in some arenas.

- Camera position control in the external ('N') view now defaults to the
  mouse if you are flying with the joystick. Hold down the left button
  to make fine adjustments. Hold down the right button to zoom in and 
  out.

- In the external ('N') view you now have the option of looking at any 
  friendly plane within icon range. The control for switching planes 
  is F9. You must already be in the external view for F9 to work.  
  When you leave the external view you will return to your own cockpit,
  not to the plane you were viewing. If the plane you are viewing is 
  killed or moves out of icon range, the plane will automatically be 
  switched. Your joystick, etc., will continue to control your own 
  plane, not the plane you are viewing. You might want to engage the 
  auto-pilot before you start switching planes.

- Using the KeyMap utility you can assign the F9 function to any key 
  or joystick button by re-mapping CMD_VIS_CAM_PLANE.

- The online roster can now be sorted by handle, CPID or country.  
  By default it sorts by handle.

- Alpha Stippling is now used on cards that don’t do alpha blending.  
  Now Matrox cards can do redouts, blackouts, and transparent 
  propellers. These cards use an increasing dot pattern to simulate 
  transparency.

- Sun flare is now disabled for cards that cannot handle that alpha 
  blend type. Before, you would get big black squares if the card could
  do alpha, but not that particular type.

- The warning dialog you get when you select a 3D card now reports more
  specifically what features it does not support.

- Pilots in automated online scenarios will now see a written briefing 
  when they enter the briefing room. The text is presented on a 
  chalkboard dialog. The content and format are similar to offline 
  mission briefings.

- When going into flight the screen will now start in the view mode for
  which the artwork has been optimized. The artwork optimization option
  now defaults to full screen mode. Together these two changes make 
  full screen the default screen mode.

- It is now possible to use analog rudder pedals connected to the 
  game port with a digital joystick connected to the serial port.
  You need to connect a joystick and rudder pedals to the game port, 
  and setup that combination as Joystick 2 in Windows 95.  Then just
  set the rudder pedals type in Air Warrior(r) III normally.

- Added support for the following controllers:  generic joystick with 
  hat, ThrustMasterMillennium 3D Inceptor, Saitek X35F, X35T, X36F and 
  X36T, and Logitech Wingman Extreme Force (not yet released)

- Added support for I-FORCE 2 force feedback API. This allows customers
  with the next generation of force feedback joysticks to customize 
  their effects by editing aw3.ifr with the I-FORCE Studios program.
  Note - Although this should work for any joystick supporting 
  DirectInput force feedback, it has not been testing with any
  controller currently on the market.

- It is now possible to assign on-screen tags to more than one plane.
  The new controls for this feature are on the User Preferences 
  Flight Screen page. The new in-flight controls are:
	<escape>c1<enter> through <escape>c12<enter> set number of tags
	<escape>ci<enter> toggles long/short IDs in tags
	<escape>cr<enter> toggles abbreviated range read-out in tags
	<escape>cf<enter> sets friendly bias
	<escape>cb<enter> sets bomber bias
	<escape>ce<enter> sets enemy-only option
	<escape>cu<enter> sets unbiased option, the default
  The old radar bias commands will also change the tag bias, and 
  setting tag bias will change radar bias.

- The SEL_NEXT_TARGET command now performs the same function as the 
  F3 key. This command can be mapped to any keyboard key or joystick 
  button using the KeyMap utility .

- Various optimizations to shape and texture handling to improve 
  performance.

Bug Fixes
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- The texture loading change which caused the white planes has been
  corrected.

- The lost track icons and range readouts on the radar map in software 
  rendering are back.

- The bug which caused all planes to become invisible when the map was 
  zoomed all the way out has been corrected.

- Fixed one cause of a crash that occurred when you go into SW flight 
  and then play a film in HW mode.

- Corrected the bug causing icons to track only in the center 2/3 of 
  the screen.

- Corrected the problem with islands disappearing when airfields on
  them are still visible.

- Corrected the green water bug in films.

- A bug which could cause false hits when firing the tank main gun at a
  plane or vehicle has been corrected.

- Fixed a crash that would occur if you had 
  'Allow only Normal/Combat Mode' selected and tried to use the new 
  tracking ccons.

- Tracking data no longer gets 'Stuck' during black and red outs.

- Tanks, trucks and flakpanzers can now climb onto the slightly raised 
  runways in the Oceania (Big Pac) terrain.

- Fixed a bug that caused cockpit art to not show up if the 
  Flight Window User Preferences where set to Normal Mode Only.

- The performance of the FW190D9 and the La5 have been adjusted.  
  Both were slightly too fast.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.01
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New Features
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- Added Enhanced text to airfield and waypoint labels in 3D hardware
  rendering. Added new buttons to the performance dialog to select
  standard or enhanced text.

- Removed the Poly Cache size setting control, since it wasn't doing 
  anything anyway.

- The contents of the User Preferences property sheet have been
  re-organized, and the contents of the Cockpit dialog have been moved
  to User Preferences.

- The full screen text buffer has been moved to the top of the view.

- The Ju88 is now allowed to carry a torpedo.

- In the film dialog, the file name now has input focus, rather than
  the directory path.

Bug Fixes
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- Made some changes to the map mode in flight that increase the 
  framerate quite a bit.

- Fixed a bug that caused gun tracers to be drawn above or below the 
  plane they are coming from.

- A bug that would cause plane textures to get lost after the first 
  time into flight has been fixed. This caused a disk hit the first 
  time you saw each different type of plane.

- Fixed one cause of slowdowns in RIVA 128 boards, mostly affecting the
  drawing of non textured objects.

- Fixed one bug that could cause periodic screen freezes if a texture 
  did not load properly.

- Changes to the shape loading can reduce the time to get into flight
  by half for some users, depending on the texture loading speed of
  the 3D accelerator card. It also corrects a major memory leak
  which could cause dumps to the desktop after a number of sorties.

- The artificial horizon and stick box instruments are no longer 
  updated during black-out or red-out.

- The T-34 is no longer the uber-flak. The main gun elevation is now 
  limited to +/-10 degrees, giving it a ground range of over 3000 yards
  but an altitude range of less than 700 feet.

- The new Santa Isabel textured shape looks much better and corrects the
  problem of not being able to hit the Hiryu with torpedoes.

- The 'unknown host error' bug in the situation map has been corrected.

- The F4U dive brake command (space bar) has been disabled. This 
  aircraft used the gear doors to reduce airspeed.

- The F4U gear has been strengthened so it can be dropped at up to 
  275 knots, for use as a speed brake.

- There is now a gun sound for the flakpanzer hull gun.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.00d
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New Features
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- Disconnecting from the host is now treated as a fatal error.  

- The disconnect dialogs are now displayed for a limited time before the
  game shuts down.


Bug Fixes
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- Fixed a problem with the first digit of the radio gauge on the full 
  screen dash

- Fixed the jumping sector counter problem, for good this time.

- The Radar Counters are now updated after you drag the map in the 
  Sitmap. Before, you would only get counters in the center 16x16 
  sectors of the terrain. This wasn't a problem in the smaller 
  terrains, but it was in Oceania. As a side effect, a single-click on 
  the map will update the counters.

- You will now get a full screen dash with the default cockpit art. Of 
  course, you still don't get full screen dash when you do have the 
  cockpit art, but not the corresponding *.ds_ file.

- A bug which could cause buildings to remain invisible after they were
  repaired has been corrected.

- Bombs will no longer sink islands online.

- Craters now appear where the bombs hit.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.00c
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New Features
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- There is now a checkbox on the Performance tab of the User Preferences
  dialog to control the Color-Key feature. Owners of FireGL cards will
  want to be sure this box is checked. Please see ReadMe3D.txt for
  more details.

- There is now a slider on the Performance tab of the User Preferences
  dialog that allows users to adjust the render cache size, which might
  have an effect on framerate on some cards. Please see ReadMe3D.txt 
  for more details.

- F3 tracking now works on the overhead map.

Bug Fixes
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- Buffeting now works in AWIII in both hardware and software rendering.

- A text formatting error in the F3 tracking display which could cause 
  the range to not be displayed for friendly aircraft with short CPIDs
  has been corrected.

- A problem with the find user feature has been corrected. The arena
  name in the results dialog is now correct, and the go to arena
  function works.

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.00b
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New Features
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	None.

Bug Fixes
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- The invisible film dialog bug which affects users of certain 3D cards
  has been corrected. The appearance of the film dialog is now delayed
  until you are in the conference room.

- A bug which could cause planes to become transparent within 200 yards
  has been corrected. A side effect is that the backgrounds of some 
  animations may not be transparent if your 3D card drivers do not have
  DirectX 5.0 support. * See 3.00c *

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NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES IN AIR WARRIOR(r) III V3.00a
======================================================================

New Features
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- The briefing room map will now center on Waypoint 0, which may not
  be at the home airfield for automated online scenarios.

- Force feedback effects for stall and for gear down buffet have been
  enhanced.

- Drone speech for ditching and returning to base has been improved.

- New drone speech has been added for final approach and landing.

- Two new drone commands have been added:  STATUS and POSITION.
  Usage:
	'[group id] STATUS
		All drones in the group will report damage, fuel,
		ammo and bomb load.
		If no group ID is specified, it defaults to the group
		you are leading or flying with.
	'[group id] POSITION
		All drones in the group will report sector, heading,
		altitude and airspeed.
		If no group ID is specified, it defaults to the group
		you are leading or flying with.

Bug Fixes
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- The sound dialog is now usable in the online-only build.

- A possible cause of invisible planes in flight has been addressed.

- Changes have been made to the 3D rendering code to address the 
  problem  of aircraft being difficult to see at mid range 
  (600-1200 yards).

- A bug causing aircraft to disappear when sitting on certain
  runways has been corrected.

- The information in the automated online scenarios group selection
  dialog is now properly formatted in columns.

- A bug which could cause you to become the Unknown User has been
  corrected.  This usually occurred if you entered an arena, went
  out to the arena selection dialog, then returned to that same
  arena.

- The hardness of the Me110 in offline mission has been reduced. 

- One cause of a flashing line on the left side of the 3D view on
  some 3D accelerator cards, include the Monster 3D, has been 
  corrected.

- Damaged airfields are now corrected colored orange (not yellow)
  in both 2D and 3D modes.
