Friday 2010-02-25 Development update:Interview by Grégory Lemasson/Discussion Thread

[Snake_C6]

As Oleg asked me here is the discussion thread about the interview !
As soon as he can I think he will come to answer all the questions you may have since this new update is out :-P

For those who doesn't know where to find the interview here it is :
http://www.checksix-fr.com/ and you will see the review in the news (with a special link for english people)

[Oleg Maddox]

Answer for:
Originally Posted by SlipBall View Post
Great up-date! Oleg I am curious your decision to have "click-able"...and I'm not complaining either



the text itself (OM):

Decision was done very long time ago. However I will never tell what we will see in final untill the time when I'm sure that it will works really.

My principle never promise anything that may not happens. At least in realease but not after. However I'm, sure that some features that are designed and partially done may go later than in release. Same way as it was with Il-2. You know how fast was progressing Il-2 from the day of the first release. Simply becasue everything or almost everything was designed from the beginning of development...
Serious new thing was open in Forgottent Battles when we simply included the new 3D engine as a perfect mode. Just for example.

Still you may see with the modes of some good guys - Il-2 engine was so flexible...
Even more things we try to put from the beginning in the SoW engine and code that to make possible for third party much more than with Il-2. And almost from the beginning of the series, but not in the end...

But... you all know that modes should be really "certified"... So third party should be more organized than it was in the beginning when the code of Il-2 was hacked.
When its organized - there is really would be the best gameplay online.

I'm thinking already very long time about how to do it (in additional to what we plan in engine itself)... Maybe third party developers will offer me good ideas. Ordnung muss sein! Sorry, don't know how to say it in English.

Anyway... probably we will make separate discussion in future about this problem and we may find real solution for all of the players or groups of players. This is really important not for us, but for end user. And speech about it we will need to begin some time later, when I will be finally sure in some of the designed features and will tell about them here on the forum.

My dream - to "create" some third party serious uindustry around SoW. At first time - for the WWII (wwI) aircraft...then for the early jets... then.... God knows... it is depending of many things and at first depends of BoB success.

Ideas, if not crazy - welcome :)

PS. I'm sorry that I make some time mistakes, but I think my speech is understand-able. ;) Still Olegish English.

[ECV56_Lancelot]

Thanks Snake for asking my questions about the FMB and third party tools and information. I would had liked more explanation about the FMB, and even some demonstration, but you cant have all. I'm more than happy with the interview, and some of the things mentiones make me drool all over the keyboard :D.

Oleg, hope yo dream comes true, because that would mean a better and bigger simulator for all of us.

Again, best friday update so far!

[Antoninus]

Thats really an amazing update. The smile on my face grew bigger with every line I read. Looks like the ultimate flight sim of my dreams becomes true.

[Lucas_From_Hell]

You know, I'm not sure about which one made me happier in this sentence, the fact that Roman did a complex start-up or that he did it with a clickable cockpit.

Great interview, thanks to both Maddox Games team and Grégory!

[T}{OR]

Excellent interview, many thanks to Grégory and especially Maddox Games team for making their and our dreams come true. :)

[13th Hsqn Protos]

Oleg ..... really disappointed in the Hardware your working with. It looks like we will still have the 'scale' problems and other issues that are currently in IL2. Really to my eye it looks like IL2 warmed over. I was hoping for a more


While I understand there are 'financial issues' at the moment.

It is very disheartening to see an 'High Definition' or 'Cinematic' 'Simulation' being created on such ancient and non representative hardware.

There is a saying in the west that I have always found has a lot of truth "The workman is only as good as his Tools"

I wish you well, but it concerns me greatly that even you the head of your company doesn't have a 'Basic Widescreen' 20-22 inch monitor on your desk. Its 2010 sir.

Since I don't expect and am resigned to the fact that scale and graphics are not going to be up to 2010 specs ....... can we at least get some 'gameplay' updates.

1. LoDs (dots for high resolution players)
2. Graphical User Interface/ Server Browser/ Friends Lists/ Squadron Tools
3. More information on 'Battle Engine' - What if anything can you tell us about your vision for online war in 2010.
4. What measures will be taken for anti cheat?
5. Will Dedicated Servers be available to host 'online war' so that Human Hosts (and their issues) can be removed.
6. Are we finally going to get rid of the 'Lobby' ?
**

P.S.
Did you get the Blu ray?

[ADorante]

Will TrackIR v1 still work in SoW:BoB? After the sim comes out I first need a new (expensive) computer and would like to re-use as much peripherals as possible long enough. 6DoF will sooner or later come to me, too. But in the meantime my trusty TIR v1 (must have bought it pretty early in 2002 after more and more glowing user reviews on simhq) should do fine.

[rollnloop]

Thank you so much Oleg for allowing Greg to see your office and get so many news on the game. I had the privilege of a voice report by greg and must say that, even if i already knew you would blow us with your quest for excellence, i grew even more excited listening to all those features.


Following Greg's report i'd like to have a deeper explanation on a few subjects though.

How will oxygen be implemented ? If a pilot does not put his mask above 1000m, will he suffer of earlier fatigue ? If he forgets to put his mask (or if he puts his mask and forgets to turn oxygen supply open) and climbs above 3000m, will he lose consciousness ? If yes, how will it show on screen ? If pilot has oxygen mask set, supply open and line gets punctured by a bullet, what will be the consequences ?

How will fatigue be implemented ? After many manoeuvers in a short period, will pilot still be able to fully deflect commands ? Will it affect greyouts/blackouts ?

Greg says you're happy with IL2 greyout/blackout model. I had only once a greyout flying aerobatics, but discussed the fact with fellow simmers that also fly for real and all say, as it was for me, that the main result of a greyout is loss of color (you see in black and white) before field of view gets really restricted and view blurred. This would require some kind of postprocess, but is most probably doable with current hardware. Any chance of seeing this kind of greyout ?

Thanks a lot for taking some of your precious time to answer our questions :grin:

[SlipBall]

Oleg ..... really disappointed in the Hardware your working with. It looks like we will still have the 'scale' problems and other issues that are currently in IL2. Really to my eye it looks like IL2 warmed over. I was hoping for a more


While I understand there are 'financial issues' at the moment.

It is very disheartening to see an 'High Definition' or 'Cinematic' 'Simulation' being created on such ancient and non representative hardware.

There is a saying in the west that I have always found has a lot of truth "The workman is only as good as his Tools"

I wish you well, but it concerns me greatly that even you the head of your company doesn't have a 'Basic Widescreen' 20-22 inch monitor on your desk. Its 2010 sir.

Since I don't expect and am resigned to the fact that scale and graphics are not going to be up to 2010 specs ....... can we at least get some 'gameplay' updates.

1. LoDs (dots for high resolution players)
2. Graphical User Interface/ Server Browser/ Friends Lists/ Squadron Tools
3. More information on 'Battle Engine' - What if anything can you tell us about your vision for online war in 2010.
4. What measures will be taken for anti cheat?
5. Will Dedicated Servers be available to host 'online war' so that Human Hosts (and their issues) can be removed.
6. Are we finally going to get rid of the 'Lobby' ?
**

P.S.
Did you get the Blu ray?





I think that their hard ware reflects what the masses would be using at the time of purchase of SOW

[Oleg Maddox]

Oleg ..... really disappointed in the Hardware your working with. It looks like we will still have the 'scale' problems and other issues that are currently in IL2. Really to my eye it looks like IL2 warmed over. I was hoping for a more



P.S.
Did you get the Blu ray?

We have good hardware if to speak about quality. Professional CRT still rules in terms of much better features of colors and depth of color. It is calibrated... And really cost a lot.
If you mean wide screen - then it works without any problem.
If you mean PC itself - sure we have probably better than you have now in terms of power. However I always prefer not so much powered PC for programmers... because the result of their work directly corresponds to the power of PC. If it is too much power - then the code would not be so much optimized. Hope you got my point.

Other your questios. Please read my answer above. I never tell before I would know how it will be in final. I know the answers. But I can't tell.
I don't like to look later like promiosed all, but developed nothing...
You have many such samples in this industry I think. Especiually in flight sims niche. Beginning from B17II and finishing.... Should I show it by my finger? :)

Finally. Graphics Engine of SoW is way more advanced than Il-2.
Il-2 can be "warmed up" to the photographic look on the surface. But will never looks like SoW and its features. Trust me.
Maybe you understand me if I will tell comparison by other way:

Compare quality of images of these cameras:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/624959-REG/Vivitar_5018_Vivitar_ViviCam_5018_Digital.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/592951-REG/Nikon_25442_D3x_SLR_Digital_Camera.html


The first is Il-2.
The second - BoB at initial release.






Blue ray. No. I heard form Dmitry Goryainov about some Blue ray...

[Oleg Maddox]

Will TrackIR v1 still work in SoW:BoB? After the sim comes out I first need a new (expensive) computer and would like to re-use as much peripherals as possible long enough. 6DoF will sooner or later come to me, too. But in the meantime my trusty TIR v1 (must have bought it pretty early in 2002 after more and more glowing user reviews on simhq) should do fine.

Can't tell you right now. Should test. I have one old still unpacked.

[Oleg Maddox]

1. How will oxygen be implemented ? If a pilot does not put his mask above 1000m, will he suffer of earlier fatigue ? If he forgets to put his mask (or if he puts his mask and forgets to turn oxygen supply open) and climbs above 3000m, will he lose consciousness ? If yes, how will it show on screen ? If pilot has oxygen mask set, supply open and line gets punctured by a bullet, what will be the consequences ?

2. How will fatigue be implemented ? After many manoeuvers in a short period, will pilot still be able to fully deflect commands ? Will it affect greyouts/blackouts ?

3. Greg says you're happy with IL2 greyout/blackout model. I had only once a greyout flying aerobatics, but discussed the fact with fellow simmers that also fly for real and all say, as it was for me, that the main result of a greyout is loss of color (you see in black and white) before field of view gets really restricted and view blurred. This would require some kind of postprocess, but is most probably doable with current hardware. Any chance of seeing this kind of greyout ?



1. Probably like you asking. Close to this.

2. Can't answer this. We put it in a wish list and not as the main feature. Really flyinhg in online battle you are also will be tired very much... Just try to think about it. I saw the guys all of a sweat... just flying in online duel for 20 minutes.

3. I never saw myself any blackouts or readouts. I mean flying with -3 to +6G. Speaking to many different real pilots - all had different feellings. No one said the same thing. Currently - approximation of all their answers.

[maclean525]

Oleg, will SoW have support for DX11?

[Oleg Maddox]

Oleg, will SoW have support for DX11?

DX9 DX10 and DX11

[maclean525]

DX9 DX10 and DX11

Great news, thanks!

[maclean525]

DX9 DX10 and DX11

Oleg, if you have time for one more question, have you tested SoW with the new ATI Radeon series of graphics cards that supports triple-screen through the 'Eyefinity' technology? I use this with IL-2 and it is incredibly impressive in 5760x1080.

[Oleg Maddox]

Oleg, if you have time for one more question, have you tested SoW with the new ATI Radeon series of graphics cards that supports triple-screen through the 'Eyefinity' technology? I use this with IL-2 and it is incredibly impressive in 5760x1080.

We have not yet this card. However should works.

[IceFire]

Thanks for a great interview and thanks to Oleg for answering so many questions today. I'm keeping my excitement levels at a moderate level but this is really really positive.

And your Olegish English is just fine :)

[Avimimus]

Hello once again,

Here are some questions. I have some very specific 3rd party projects in mind.


3d Modeling:

- Will it be possible to model African wildlife (eg. for a civilian 1930s addon)? What animation supports are there for elephants?

- Will there be support for wing warping (eg. in the Fokker Eindecker and other early aircraft)?

- Will it someday be possible to support distortions (bending) of damaged/destroyed aircraft like in Rise of Flight? Or will the game engine always be limited to the still wonderful approach to damage modelling seen in Il-2.


Artificial intelligence:

- Can the amount of variation between AI be set by the mission builder (ie. to simulate more highly drilled english pilots vs. the more unpredictable American pilots in 1943)?

- Is there support for higher level AI? More specifically is there support for formation level tactics (ie. Something in-between vectoring by ground control and a flights rotte/pairs)?

- Is there support for airplane specific AI (eg. Yak-7 and YAK-9 would have different AI modules)? Doing so would allow AI to change tactics depending on the airplane and mirror changes in tactics throughout the war (as later variants could use later tactics).

- How open will the AI be to tweaking and expansion by modders?[/quote]


Scripting:

- What support is there for music tied to in-game triggers? What about audio files? Will it be possible to have pre-recorded conversations that play out during gameplay?

- Also, is it possible to have the player activate a trigger via the radio menus?


Weather model:

- Will the weather model be open to 3rd party modification? (not only changing the weather to reflect a historic date, but changing the model: wind patterns near cliffs, wind from bodies of water etc.)

- How does the flight model function at >1 atmospheres (ie. a plane flying in a valley below sea level)?


Minor questions:
- Will it be possible to make minor features of an aircraft (eg. presence or absence of an armoured headrest) selectable via a separate tab (independent of the weapons tab)? This would be good for aircraft that went through many minor upgrades.

- Will it be possible for the 3rd party to make drivable trains (or will be be limited to trucks)?


I know it is early to get answers for many of these questions, but any hints will help with planning.

As always, many thanks and best of luck,

S!

[frentzen2000]

Was the question regarding the release date not allowed?
If not then please what is your time frame for the release?
Thanks and best regards
HHF

[Igo kyu]

Here Friday is 26/2/2010. ;)

[dflion]

For me, this interview has started puting all the pieces together for BOB/SOW - thanks Oleg and Gregory from Check-Six.
I liked the clickable cockpit option and engine management situation. These developments will give the fight sim much more immersion. The changing weather will also make flying much more realistic - I also liked the Stuka starting to 'ice-up' before puting on the anti-icing heating.
The fight simulator experience of flying a WWII aircraft in BOB/SOW will be a much more realistic experience than IL-2 - a lot closer to flying the real thing and I can't wait.
DFLion

[ECV56_LeChuck]

Hello once again,

Here are some questions. I have some very specific 3rd party projects in mind.


3d Modeling:

- Will it be possible to model African wildlife (eg. for a civilian 1930s addon)? What animation supports are there for elephants?

- Will there be support for wing warping (eg. in the Fokker Eindecker and other early aircraft)?

- Will it someday be possible to support distortions (bending) of damaged/destroyed aircraft like in Rise of Flight? Or will the game engine always be limited to the still wonderful approach to damage modelling seen in Il-2.


Artificial intelligence:

- Can the amount of variation between AI be set by the mission builder (ie. to simulate more highly drilled english pilots vs. the more unpredictable American pilots in 1943)?

- Is there support for higher level AI? More specifically is there support for formation level tactics (ie. Something in-between vectoring by ground control and a flights rotte/pairs)?

- Is there support for airplane specific AI (eg. Yak-7 and YAK-9 would have different AI modules)? Doing so would allow AI to change tactics depending on the airplane and mirror changes in tactics throughout the war (as later variants could use later tactics).

- How open will the AI be to tweaking and expansion by modders?


Scripting:

- What support is there for music tied to in-game triggers? What about audio files? Will it be possible to have pre-recorded conversations that play out during gameplay?

- Also, is it possible to have the player activate a trigger via the radio menus?


Weather model:

- Will the weather model be open to 3rd party modification? (not only changing the weather to reflect a historic date, but changing the model: wind patterns near cliffs, wind from bodies of water etc.)

- How does the flight model function at >1 atmospheres (ie. a plane flying in a valley below sea level)?


Minor questions:
- Will it be possible to make minor features of an aircraft (eg. presence or absence of an armoured headrest) selectable via a separate tab (independent of the weapons tab)? This would be good for aircraft that went through many minor upgrades.

- Will it be possible for the 3rd party to make drivable trains (or will be be limited to trucks)?


I know it is early to get answers for many of these questions, but any hints will help with planning.

As always, many thanks and best of luck,

S!

Very nice questions!! Hope Oleg answer!

[Skoshi Tiger]

Hi, It's not fair! Every time I see one of these updates I get more eager and excited. They make it harder waiting for the release of this sim!

I'm in the process of updating the layout of my home made control pannel and after reading this interview realised that the layout was based more on systems represented in IL2 and not BoB. (I hadn't put in a switch for carby heat and I'm sure there will be a lot of other essential systems I have missed that would be best on my controller - Tube Shooter for instance????)

Would it be possible for you to release a list of systems and controls that can be assigned before the release of the sim so that we can make (and engrave) an appropriate layout for BoB on our home brew controls and cockpits?

Thank you for your time and effort.


There is a saying in the west that I have always found has a lot of truth "The workman is only as good as his Tools"


There is also a saying that "A shoddy workman always blames his tools". From what I've been seeing and reading in these updates I get the impression that we are seeing a group of professional craftsmen and artists hard at work using the tools of their choice.

As a future client and user of this sim I don't think I would feel comfortable telling the artist what sort of brushes he should be using.

[MikkOwl]

Grégory, thank you very much for that piece of journalism. Merciiiiii! :) I enjoyed reading it a lot. I am sure the translation was hurried out as well to get it to our greedy communities.

An English writing tip: the "!", "?" and ":", in fact all of the special signs, are written directly after a word, like this "That's right!". French puts in a space after the word. Just a difference, but the French way is quite noticable for the non-French people when reading :P

[AdMan]

Compare quality of images of these cameras:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/624959-REG/Vivitar_5018_Vivitar_ViviCam_5018_Digital.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/592951-REG/Nikon_25442_D3x_SLR_Digital_Camera.html


The first is Il-2.
The second - BoB at initial release.

:lol:

[Avimimus]

Very nice questions!! Hope Oleg answer!

Thanks.

I put quite a bit of thought into finding questions which Oleg won't have been asked yet and which are also likely to reflect what certain projects will need in a few years time (although this is always the hardest to predict).

[zapatista]

Oleg,

thanks for the update and interview

2 questions:

1) the re-fueling and re-arming issue:

A) this has been extensively discussed in the last few years at ubi forums, simhq, and the other main flightsim forums. the conclusion was that historical evidence presented confirmed it is possible, and was done in real life, to re-arm and re-fuel a spitfire or hurricane in under 15 min during the busiest periods of BoB (iirc) when every aircraft counted and they had to relaunch aircraft as fast as possible on certain days !

i even still have the historical video footage that shows the whole rearming procedure for the spitfire or hurricane (one was easier then the other, iirc the hurricane was significantly faster then the spitfire because the ammo boxes in the wings were more accessible). with that footage you can time exactly how long it takes, it was either 9 or 11 minutes, using the normally available ground crews for that situation (they had a team of 2 men working on each wing, so 4 ground crew per aircraft)

note: historically you didnt usually have 15 aircraft all land together for quick refuel and rearm, but it was aircraft coming in solo or in little groups of 2 and 3. when a whole squadron came back from a mission and were debriefed, aircraft made ready for next flight etc, this would take much longer obviously, but that is entirely different.

if you have any doubts about this, then let us present some of those facts to you so it can be implemented, it makes a BIG difference in coops and online play, even for stand alone missions in solo play. obviously if you would land a plane at an airfield that has been extensively damaged by a recent enemy bombing raid, the airfield would be disorganised and crews and supplies might be damaged or destroyed, but that should not determine how quickly this can happen at a normal airfield. maybe add a pilot command to airfield "stand by crews for refueling and rearming", so that once landed and taxi to the pit spot, it can be done in historical time. if we dont pre warn the airfield, and it is chaos on the ground, maybe it can take longer.

in the options for re-arming refueling we also need a setting to choose for ex
a) realistic refuel rearm = 15 min
b) accelerated refuel and rearm = 3 min
etc..

B) if landing a damaged aircraft, or one that needs to be refueled or rearmed, we also need an option of "choose other available aircraft at airfield", with a small delay before we can start the new aircraft (equal to the time needed to walk/run to the next aircraft, and not have the instant refly we have now when selecting an aircraft for ex)


2) for the new complex engine management, will we get messages of the type of problem encountered ? eg:
- icing of wings/windscreen
- low oxygen for pilot
- "right wing ammo box exploded" etc ?

if you physically sit in a real aircraft, you get a lot of clue's physically with your body senses about what it happening to the pilot and aircraft, sitting behind a pc monitor we dont experience this. for ex low on oxygen an experienced pilot notices before blacking out and does something about it, similar with vibration of flaps are not retracted (or gear) etc.. the game software needs to SIMULATE this pilot awareness, if need be with some basic msg's flashing on screen (as an on/off option in preferences, so the fake-real people who want to fly deaf dumb and blind can do so to)

please consider :)

[MikkOwl]

if you physically sit in a real aircraft, you get a lot of clue's physically with your body senses about what it happening to the pilot and aircraft, sitting behind a pc monitor we dont experience this. for ex low on oxygen an experienced pilot notices before blacking out and does something about it, similar with vibration of flaps are not retracted (or gear) etc..

the game software needs to SIMULATE this pilot awareness, if need be with some basic msg's flashing on screen (as an on/off option in preferences, so the fake-real people who want to fly deaf dumb and blind can do so to)Many if not most systems, including all engine related, give no special clues to the pilot if in the real aircraft. Possibly some vibrations from something being unbalanced being the exception. Otherwise, only what you hear and see, which we can do quite well these days. If the monitors are too small and low resolution, and the sound quality is poor without detailed sound differences that should be present when an engine is acting strange, then, yes, something additional is needed.

But I think the sounds will be great, graphics great, systems simulated accurately and with the instruments finally working properly, there's no need for me to have any helmet projected display handicap to understand that something is wrong.

Having options for helmet mounted display projecting system status is is OK to have as an option, and I don't think it takes any development time away.

EDIT: in the example of the low oxygen, there's other more creative ways to give clues to that something isn't right (slightly blurred vision, more suseptible to blackouts, blacking out even when flying straight, a bit sluggish controls, some head-sway when moving around with headtracking). Imagine a drunk person - they often have such bad judgement that they cannot even understand that it is they who are the problem when trying to do something requiring accurate control, instead they can think something is wrong with the system.

Wing ammo box exploded: Just what kind of special thing does a pilot get that make is blind and deaf in comparison? Surely some loud explosion, major wing damage, severely affected handling (if the wing is still even attached). We have everything we need to figure it out similar to a real pilot.

Icing: This is already described. Check the temperature gauge, look at the ice on the windows (visually) and on the wings, and note how it affects the engine performance. If it also affects handling like it should, then you'll notice this as well when moving the stick around and seeing how the aircraft behaves in contrast to how it normally should.

Landing gear vibrations: Vibrations are trickier. It can be seen visually if the gears are out as the plane just doesn't fly without vibration (shaking the camera and the horizon a bit). Also, force feedback makes a big (trust me) difference here, but not everyone has such hardware. I think if the sound engine was more realistic, there would be some other sounds as well in those old planes, maybe rattles, squeeks etc.

[Romanator21]

]for ex low on oxygen an experienced pilot notices before blacking out and does something about it...

Not true. You would not even notice that you were losing oxygen until it became far too late. I don't want to get into all the details right now, but do a quick search on hypoxia for more.

Besides the gauges for oxygen pressure and oxygen quantity, the pilot had to check his mask, and squeezed the tubing to make sure there was pressure and that no ice was forming.

[tagTaken2]

There is a saying in the west that I have always found has a lot of truth "The workman is only as good as his Tools"


Actually, no-one says this- you've misunderstood the phrase about a bad worker blaming his tools.

Great update, every time I get something that exceeds my expectations dramatically.

[MikkOwl]

Not true. You would not even notice that you were losing oxygen until it became far too late. I don't want to get into all the details right now, but do a quick search on hypoxia for more.

Besides the gauges for oxygen pressure and oxygen quantity, the pilot had to check his mask, and squeezed the tubing to make sure there was pressure and that no ice was forming.
Then the task is to come up with a system that simulates SOME of the symptoms of it, in the same similar sneaky way. Then it is up to the observant virtual pilot to notice these symptoms before it is too late.

Seems like awesome fun. In that case, the 'already too late' symptom should come as a shock. Like a sudden blackout without any chance of acting on it (as the real pilot might simply be too affected by hypoxia to notice some of the more obvious-to-others signs, so they should not be blatantly presented to the virtual pilot to make an accurate judgement either).

If judgement especially is affected, what would be appropriate? :P Clicking the transmit button sporadically? :D Accidental discharge of weapons? Or wait, get this, having a friendly plane (spitfire for example) looks like a Nazi plane. Creeping at first, seeing swastika markings, but the shape yet looks like a spitfire. But then, even the shape. Other symptoms.. Perhaps instruments showing wrong numbers (reading north as south for example).

[Romanator21]

Making symptoms will surely be a challenge. It would have to depend on altitude firstly, but to make a creeping loss of consciousness is impossible unless our computers gradually injected carbon monoxide into the room.

For the purposes of a game, and to avoid possible lawsuits, it might be ok to just gradually dampen movement of the head and stick. This will be less noticeable during cruise when the inputs are more relaxed (but imagine being bounced at this point :) ). At some point the screen could go black, but by then there would be nothing you could do to wake up unless your plane was diving into thicker air. Whether or not you woke up before hitting the ground would also depend on many factors, but your chances are slim.

[MikkOwl]

But I want my nazi spitfires! :P

Seriously, imagine (if playing without icons, which is the way it should be) your wingman suddenly engaging you, while talking on the radio that he's on the enemy's six but lost sight of you. Could happen during an engagement with real enemies. Talk about realistic simulation! :) And you're like "That's me you're firing at! You fool! Stop!", and he's like "No no, it's a 109". Then you go "Check your oxygen right now!".

[AndyJWest]

But I want my nazi spitfires! :P

Seriously, imagine (if playing without icons, which is the way it should be) your wingman suddenly engaging you, while talking on the radio that he's on the enemy's six but lost sight of you. Could happen during an engagement with real enemies. Talk about realistic simulation! :) And you're like "That's me you're firing at! You fool! Stop!", and he's like "No no, it's a 109". Then you go "Check your oxygen right now!".

Oxygen deprivation isn't necessary to make this authentic. Consider the 'Battle of Barking Creek': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Barking_Creek
Sadly, inexperience combined with 'knowing' what you are looking at is quite sufficient to bring about this sort of cock-up. Almost makes me feel less guilty about doing much the same thing on UKDed2. Almost...

[MikkOwl]

That is true, and yep, I am familiar with that tragedy. But some (many) of us know to not open fire unless the enemy is positively identified. If unsure, don't shoot. But we too could get affected when oxygen deprived. :)

My stats say I have killed one friendly aircraft online, but since I have only shot down two enemy fighters, the friendly must have been some freak random accident. Maybe a spawn collision or hit by a stray mk 108 30mm shell. Even the rear gunner could have hit a friendly far away that was already going down by mistake when spraying. The rules of FPS games, and Armed Assault, are like a reflex to me. Don't shoot until sure.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Many if not most systems, including all engine related, give no special clues to the pilot if in the real aircraft.

Icing: This is already described. Check the temperature gauge, look at the ice on the windows (visually) and on the wings, and note how it affects the engine performance.

When we're talking about carburetor icing the diagostic would be reduction in Manifold Pressure with a constant speed prop ( reduction in RPM with a fixed or manual pitch prop) and eventually a rough runing engine leading to total failure in extreme cases.

I know atmospheric modeling will deal with temp, but will we be able to find relative humidity in BoB?

Most of avoiding things like carburetor icing comes down to preventive actions, knowing the conditions and using good airmanship so you don't get the problem. The instruments required to diagnose the problem will be modeled, but diagnosing the problem will be the hard bit (as in real life)!

Although unlikely, I wonder if fuel injected motors like the German planes will have similar problems with induction icing?
Cheers!

[zapatista]

Not true. You would not even notice that you were losing oxygen until it became far too late.

complete bollocks !

your saying there that there is only 2 states possible for a ww2 pilot in relation to oxygen supply
a) perfectly normal and healthy
b) "far to late" (presumably instant near death state, or death itself)

which is obviously total nonsense

even holding your breath for 60 sec is possible (ie instant no further new oxygen), so even if the oxygen tube is shot out or the system has a major leak (while breathing normally), it would take btw 30 and 90 sec or (even longer) for the pilot to be completely disabled, it is NOT instant. and in a gradual reduction of oxygen in a non pressurized aircraft climbing this would take place over a number of minutes, the pilot gradually getting a bit disoriented, trouble concentrating on his tasks, be more clumsy with controls and switches (fine motor control), getting a headache etc. blurring of vision and then blacking out is really the final phase.

my point is this:
1) in both those situations in real life you would get some physical indications from your surrounding, and the physical senses of your body. a trained and experienced pilot would also recognize those earlier then joe average from the street.
2) sitting behind a monitor in your living room is a very dulled experience compared to being in the cockpit and experiencing it, are you really going to argue that point ?

so to SIMULATE the experience of the pilot it would be helpfull to get some additional clues, and this can take many forms and is really what the discussion should be about
1) simple "oxygen status" msg flash on screen ?
2) having the oxygen dial "light up brighter" so that with an initial glance at your instruments you get increased awareness of the important one
3) etc ... etc... many ways to do it

take another example, wasnt the fuel tank right in front of the pilot in some of those aircraft ? damage to the tank could leak fuel into the cockpit, the pilot feels it on his face, sees the liquid maybe, it stings his eyes, he smells the fuel etc... and no not all those events meant that the pilot was instantly on fire either, so it is not about modeling the flames as an on/off status.
- so how do you "model" the pilot smelling the fuel in the cockpit ? if there was lots of fuel splashing about in the cockpit onto the pilot, a strong smell of fuel, and the pilot was in a dodgy dogfight situation, he might well decide to bail out rather then wait for the next spark to set him on fire. even if he stayed in the pit and flew on, he would make sure his goggles were on and he was ready to quickly bail out

again, some kind of visual msg or other feedback is needed to get that sensory information and SIMULATE the information the real pilot would have at that time, sitting behind your monitor just doesnt provide it.

[13th Hsqn Protos]

1. Should I show it by my finger? :)
2. Trust Me.
3. Blue ray. No.

1. :-)
2. Been doing that for almost a decade.
3. I am sure he will ship it with next load. Say hi, hes not talking to me cause I give you a hard time :grin:

When you coming to (demo) USA ?

[MikkOwl]

your saying there that there is only 2 states possible for a ww2 pilot in relation to oxygen supply
a) perfectly normal and healthy
b) "far to late" (presumably instant near death state, or death itself)
I think he means that the signs are difficult to notice at all, in particular (and this is important) because the judgement is impaired, like with drunk people. Therefore there are signs, but when very quickly stepping into these conditions, the signs are probably easier for others to notice than for yourself. People with 'altitude poisoning' can do crazy things and don't realize what is really happening. But yes, I agree with you that there's not only two states, there's other things that we could and should notice. :) But these should not be so obviously apparent when just cruising that we always see directly what is happening.

so how do you "model" the pilot smelling the fuel in the cockpit ?
Try to think beyond just 'smell'. How do humans react to strong fumes? Especially in your example of it splashing around.

If I was a designer for Maddox Games, I would:

1. Make the eyes mist (vision become foggy).
2. Coughing (sound effect & movement of the viewscreen matching the cough attacks).

And more things maybe, depending on what was appropriate. I think you will agree that these two points would be clearly noticable, even in a dogfight, just like it would be clearly noticable to the real pilot. It is true that we still don't smell it, and that is a disadvantage. But the other multiple signs are clear for anyone to understand that nasty fumes are in the air.

EDIT: (Sorry for editing, I just realized I had more I could reply to)

so to SIMULATE the experience of the pilot it would be helpfull to get some additional clues, and this can take many forms and is really what the discussion should be about
1) simple "oxygen status" msg flash on screen ?
2) having the oxygen dial "light up brighter" so that with an initial glance at your instruments you get increased awareness of the important one
3) etc ... etc... many ways to do itGood ideas. The on-screen message is appropriate if other proper signs are not there, or the user does not have good enough hardware to see the signs/instruments properly. Or if they just feel like having it obvious because of whatever reason.

The oxygen dial lighting up brighter is a great idea if the user does not quite have the hardware (you know, like need to zoom a lot to be able to read the instruments, while others with bigger better monitors and graphics cards can see it without much zoom), but still doesn't want the helmet mounted display message telling him that there is an O2 problem. Because then he can just look casually at the meter, if TRYING to check it, and see easier that it is not normal. Really great idea actually. I support it 100% as an option.

[AndyJWest]

There is another solution here, that also solves the DRM issue discussed in another thread. SoW:BoB shold be sold with a stink-dongle that releases the appropriate aroma during flight - a scent of hops and new-mown hay as your Hurri lifts out of Biggin Hill, acompanied by the aroma of 100-octane fuel leaking slightly into the cockpit. Suddenly, a scent of saurcraut and jackboot-polish alerts you to danger. You notice the metallic tang of 20mm cannon shells as they whizz by, but also notice the undertone of inexperienced youth and a distinct odour of wishing to be back home in Dusseldorf. Before you know it the threat has gone, leaving nothing but the scent of a half-empty fuel tank and the vaguest hint of Hermann Goering's aftershave.

Flying back to base you notice the pleasant aroma of new-mown-hay (again), and a vague hint of singed Dornier from somewhere along the coast. Turning into finals, your senses are assaulted by the overwhelming smell of bacon. Yum, lunchtime!...

[zapatista]

........... re fuel leak in cockpit ...............
Try to think beyond just 'smell'. How do humans react to strong fumes? Especially in your example of it splashing around.

If I was a designer for Maddox Games, I would:

1. Make the eyes mist (vision become foggy).
2. Coughing (sound effect & movement of the viewscreen matching the cough attacks).

And more things maybe, depending on what was appropriate. I think you will agree that these two points would be clearly noticable, even in a dogfight, just like it would be clearly noticable to the real pilot. It is true that we still don't smell it, and that is a disadvantage. But the other multiple signs are clear for anyone to understand that nasty fumes are in the air.

you are slightly missing my point, it is this:

for ex, when the hurrican pilot is in his cockpit flying around believing he is alone in the air, and suddenly
- some bang noises and a physical jolt (depending if large shell or small caliber hit, there might be little jolt or noise other then like rocks falling on a tin roof)
- his aircraft continues flying (so no major damage, and pilot initially unsure of what the jolt or sound was, or what it did to his aircraft)
- he feels liguid sprayed on his face and clothing
- strong smell of fuel
- no fire

there, in 5 sec the pilot know exactly what happened, how serious and threatening it is to him, and because of training knows his basic options and risks, and procedures to either evade (escape from cockpit), or reduce physical risk (put goggles on if not allready, close jacket, hand on canopy opening etc...). so how do you convey the same information to the virtual pilot sitting in his living room behind a monitor in the same 5 sec ? blurring some vision and making the pilot cough just doesnt convey the same information, especially since the same type of reaction could be from smoke or even glycol leaking into the cockpit and affecting the pilot (oks, not exactly the same, but you catch my meaning)

for a leak in oxygen, or sudden or gradual oxygen loss in supply to the pilot, the time delay in real life could vary from 30 sec to many minutes (particularly in a gradually climbing aircraft which might take several minutes)

so the problem is, for events like low oxygen, fuel leak into cockpit etc.. we need a way to convey the same information a real pilot has in the same time delay , other then using some "non real" messages onscreen or "virtual visual clue's" in the game to SIMULATE this pilot information i dont think it is possible to have our virtual pilots behave in the same way a real pilot experiencing a real life event would.

for those that dont like the idea or dont understand the concept, give them an on/off option in the preferences and they can fly around in a sensory deprived virtual space to their hearts content.

[Skoshi Tiger]

[QUOTE=AndyJWest;146586]You notice the metallic tang of 20mm cannon shells as they whizz by,
QUOTE]

Closely followed by the smell of soiled underwear !)

Cheers!

[Oleg Maddox]

Answer to Avimimus:



I will answer a bit later. However you are right - many things for third party are more on the design paper or in my and main programmer mind. But some things already programmed.

[MikkOwl]

you are slightly missing my point, it is this:

for ex, when the hurrican pilot is in his cockpit flying around believing he is alone in the air, and suddenly
- some bang noises and a physical jolt (depending if large shell or small caliber hit, there might be little jolt or noise other then like rocks falling on a tin roof)
- his aircraft continues flying (so no major damage, and pilot initially unsure of what the jolt or sound was, or what it did to his aircraft)
- he feels liguid sprayed on his face and clothing
- strong smell of fuel
- no fire

there, in 5 sec the pilot know exactly what happened, how serious and threatening it is to him, and because of training knows his basic options and risks, and procedures to either evade (escape from cockpit), or reduce physical risk (put goggles on if not allready, close jacket, hand on canopy opening etc...). so how do you convey the same information to the virtual pilot sitting in his living room behind a monitor in the same 5 sec ? blurring some vision and making the pilot cough just doesnt convey the same information, especially since the same type of reaction could be from smoke or even glycol leaking into the cockpit and affecting the pilot (oks, not exactly the same, but you catch my meaning)
I don't know the differences in how glycol and petrol affects the senses, so something should be done to distinguish them if there should be a noticable difference.

A principle can be followed in most cases however: if one sense cannot be simulated but others are enough to convey the same information adequately, then nothing more is necessary. But if it is not enough to convey the information, then exaggerating some of the other simulated senses can compensate for the loss of one sense.

Using text to spell it out should be seen as a failiure, only to be used as a last resort. For if it was not, then why do we even try to simulate anything, could just write everything with text instead.

If text is used, I would like it to at least limit itself to only replacing the lost sense. In IL-2, we have an instant "FUEL LEAK" 10 millisecond after a leak begins. If we talk about fuel leak into cockpit it would be better to just have, after several seconds "You smell gasoline" appear in an elegant way.

for a leak in oxygen, or sudden or gradual oxygen loss in supply to the pilot, the time delay in real life could vary from 30 sec to many minutes (particularly in a gradually climbing aircraft which might take several minutes) so the problem is, for events like low oxygen, fuel leak into cockpit etc.. we need a way to convey the same information a real pilot has in the same time delay , other then using some "non real" messages onscreen or "virtual visual clue's" in the game to SIMULATE this pilot information i dont think it is possible to have our virtual pilots behave in the same way a real pilot experiencing a real life event would.

for those that dont like the idea or dont understand the concept, give them an on/off option in the preferences and they can fly around in a sensory deprived virtual space to their hearts content.
Cannot be 100% accurate, but can be a fair approximation. Just like anything else in simulators. Using the principle I mentioned above, as long as there is enough information, through the senses that can be simulated (sight, hearing, vibrations), or by exaggerating some of the information, in the same time that a real pilot would notice similar things; it is a good simulation of reality.

Your suggestion of spelling out exactly what is going on is the opposite of what you are concerned about - flying sensory enhanced, much better than real pilots. The 'symptoms' of something is then instead a line of text, impossible to miss, telling us what is happening, and we can respond like a pro and notice and diagnose the problems every time because we don't have to check for any symptoms at all. The same problem as with IL-2's hud log spelling out status about all the systems even though we already have information similar to a real pilot, even if it is not easy to diagnose problems easily (just like real life is difficult).

[Romanator21]

complete bollocks !

your saying there that there is only 2 states possible for a ww2 pilot in relation to oxygen supply
a) perfectly normal and healthy
b) "far to late" (presumably instant near death state, or death itself)

which is obviously total nonsense

You misunderstood me completely. When one is oxygen deprived, they do not know they are oxygen deprived. It's not as if one is perfectly fine and healthy, and then suddenly die.

Try this experiment: Get only 5 hours of sleep a night for a week. You will not feel tired. In fact you may feel energetic and alert. However, you may notice that you are forgetting things more often, and making more mistakes in every day activity. You THINK you are fine, but really, you are dealing severely reduced mental capacity. You won't suddenly die at the end of that week either, but you may pass out. The difference is that passing out in a plane is pretty dangerous.

Again do a search for hypoxia and exactly what it entails. Here is a quick excerpt:

Unfortunately, the nature of hypoxia makes you, the pilot, the poorest judge of when you are its victim. The first symptoms of oxygen deficiency are misleadingly pleasant, resembling mild intoxication from alcohol. Because oxygen starvation strikes first at the brain, your higher faculties are dulled. Your normal self-critical ability is out of order. Your mind no longer functions properly; your hands and feet become clumsy without being aware of it; you may feel drowsy, languid, and nonchalant; you have a false sense of security; and, the last thing in the world you think you need is oxygen.

As the hypoxia gets worse, you may become dizzy or feel a tingling of the skin. You might have a dull headache, but you are only half aware of it. Oxygen starvation gets worse the longer you remain at a given altitude, or if you climb higher. Your heart races, your lips and the skin under the fingernails begin to turn blue, your field of vision narrows, and the instruments start to look fuzzy. But hypoxia by its nature, a grim deceiver makes you feel confident that you are doing a better job of flying than you have ever done before. You are in about the same condition as the fellow who insists on driving his car home from a New Year's Eve party when he can hardly walk.

What this means is that you will be deprived of oxygen, but you won't be able to tell that you are deprived of oxygen because you are being deprived of oxygen. Carbon monoxide poisoning has similar effects of oxygen deprivation since CO attaches to hemoglobin in the same way as O2. You feel euphoric, maybe a little drowsy. But you are not in the state of mind to say to your self "I am drowsy, this is bad, I must be lacking oxygen". Instead you decide shut your eyes for a few moments...which ends up being the last thing you do.

As for training, you can not know the effects that hypoxia will have on your ability to PERCEIVE it until you've gone through it. I don't think the RAF had pressure chambers for the recruits. :)

[Oleg Maddox]

3d Modeling:

- Will it be possible to model African wildlife (eg. for a civilian 1930s addon)? What animation supports are there for elephants?

OM: Probably yes. But not right from the beginning. For animation itself it is possible to use many professional and expensive tools, however the main thing is how to port it in engine. We’re planning to issue tools for importing external animations in time.

- Will there be support for wing warping (eg. in the Fokker Eindecker and other early aircraft)?

OM: In aircraft currently modeled it is impossible. If the longeron(main wing spar) is damaged to the moment when possible “warping” then the wing will be out. Simple physics. In realty it may happen, but not in air, say for such aircraft as Spitfire or Messerschmitt. More or less realistic “warping” of some panels due to damage – yes we have it.

- Will it someday be possible to support distortions (bending) of damaged/destroyed aircraft like in Rise of Flight? Or will the game engine always be limited to the still wonderful approach to damage modelling seen in Il-2.

OM: Like in RoF – never. I don’t think that to make incorrect things, replacing real physics is right way. This is my opinion as aviation engineer, but not as a programmer.
Of course for the very old biplanes with bracing construction in some really very rare cases may happens in air some shit damage, _looking_ like distortions, but it can’t be standard and usual situation or often (each time) happened damage.
Really what we are doing is many times more complex and realistic in terms of DM. RoF isn’t even close in comparison to our system modeling and its interaction. I said what I said. Hope you will understand it.


Artificial intelligence:

- Can the amount of variation between AI be set by the mission builder (ie. to simulate more highly drilled english pilots vs. the more unpredictable American pilots in 1943)?

OM: I think yes. There is an option to selects different character. I said character. It’s not a mistake. However it isn’t done yet 100%. But I can say now that we have AI restrictions by level of experience (or by other word – education) and also in additional - by character.
Don’t ask me the types of character. It will be known for all only when I will use it for real advertising later, but not for the speech with you all here.

- Is there support for higher level AI? More specifically is there support for formation level tactics (ie. Something in-between vectoring by ground control and a flights rotte/pairs)?

OM: I can’t tell you all details. I think in interview for the current moment all things were said enough :) And the short answer of Dima covering well the main part of you request.

- Is there support for airplane specific AI (eg. Yak-7 and YAK-9 would have different AI modules)? Doing so would allow AI to change tactics depending on the airplane and mirror changes in tactics throughout the war (as later variants could use later tactics).

OM: Such things were in Il-2. But in BoB it is way more complex restrictions and specializations.

- How open will the AI be to tweaking and expansion by modders?[/quote]

OM: Probably will be not open. Same reason as above about weather and online gameplay.

Scripting:

- What support is there for music tied to in-game triggers? What about audio files? Will it be possible to have pre-recorded conversations that play out during gameplay?

OM: Wish list. Not less then in Il-2. I can say that there are triggers with the regulating zone – making own mission you may put in some place of the map the point with own sound and define the zone (diameter) on which distance it will begin to work for you aircraft. This is minimum. However you should try to understand how much features such “simple” function may offer you.


- Also, is it possible to have the player activate a trigger via the radio menus?

OM: Interesting … Will put in a wish list. We have not such thing.


Weather model:

- Will the weather model be open to 3rd party modification? (not only changing the weather to reflect a historic date, but changing the model: wind patterns near cliffs, wind from bodies of water etc.)

OM: Can’t say right now. Maybe we will open. However first time – probably no. There is so many innovations, that I don’t like to show for all developers in the world. At least for the first time after the release.


- How does the flight model function at >1 atmospheres (ie. a plane flying in a valley below sea level)?

OM: It is depending of atmosphere density. It is one of the functions.

Minor questions:
- Will it be possible to make minor features of an aircraft (eg. presence or absence of an armoured headrest) selectable via a separate tab (independent of the weapons tab)? This would be good for aircraft that went through many minor upgrades.

OM: Only these things modeled in 3D model and given selectable in menus. Same for third party. So probably in life time of sim series such things will be also possible.

- Will it be possible for the 3rd party to make drivable trains (or will be be limited to trucks)?

OM. If BoB will go on the market with enough success then I can say yes. In principle any vehicles later will be possible to make dive-able. Including from third party without us.

[MikkOwl]

O mighty Oleg,

IL-2 has tail gunners in Bf 110 that we cannot interact with in any way, and in multiplayer, they cannot even communicate.

I wrote suggestions on things I would like to see if you saw that. My question is: what might Storm of War might be offering regarding these important rear crew members (especially in multiplayer with AI tailgunner)?

[Oleg Maddox]

O mighty Oleg,

IL-2 has tail gunners in Bf 110 that we cannot interact with in any way, and in multiplayer, they cannot even communicate.

I wrote suggestions on things I would like to see if you saw that. My question is: what might Storm of War might be offering regarding these important rear crew members (especially in multiplayer with AI tailgunner)?

I already answered that we have something changed in that area. In interview. How much will be done - can't say right now. You should understand my position and principles.

I already answered even more than usual was answering in time of the Il-2 peak.

[MikkOwl]

Well yes, you said that the speech engine was 'new'. That does not say anything for if AI can even speak in multiplayer though :(

I was not here before IL-2 was released (I wish I knew about it) and I understand you do spend quite some time on posting here. And sure, I understand your position about not revealing before being sure, but I did not know that you were not sure ;) I heard no one talk about the gunners or even speech in multiplayer before.

[Oleg Maddox]

Well yes, you said that the speech engine was 'new'. That does not say anything for if AI can even speak in multiplayer though :(

I was not here before IL-2 was released (I wish I knew about it) and I understand you do spend quite some time on posting here. And sure, I understand your position about not revealing before being sure, but I did not know that you were not sure ;) I heard no one talk about the gunners or even speech in multiplayer before.

There was some speech about it.

Community, that knows me for a very long time, knows that I remember almost all my answers and important questions from users.

[SlipBall]

(quote)
Happy with his little surprise Roman decides to show me something else on the Stuka, he begins showing the new physics engine and has fun letting mortar shells fall besides the Stuka on the ground. There is no possible comparison with Il2 anymore, the blast of the explosions damage objects and may even disturb them.





Is this to say that a bomb blast will move lite objects (light bulbs, chair/table, barrel etc.) that are a good distance from bombs ground zero, but yet close enough to be affected:)

[MikkOwl]

There was some speech about it.

Community, that knows me for a very long time, knows that I remember almost all my answers and important questions from users.
Well, at least there is plenty of opportunity for the features :)

Ever thought about making an appearance personally in SoW? As pilot, instructor (that would be something) etc, both in voice and graphically? It would be a suitable easter-egg :)

[Sutts]

What a fantastic update, thanks:grin: This simulator promises to be everything I'd hoped for and more. Thank you for going that extra mile for us. I'm truly staggered by the level of detail in this product.

Thanks to Grégory and the 1C team.

[Oleg Maddox]

(quote)
Happy with his little surprise Roman decides to show me something else on the Stuka, he begins showing the new physics engine and has fun letting mortar shells fall besides the Stuka on the ground. There is no possible comparison with Il2 anymore, the blast of the explosions damage objects and may even disturb them.





Is this to say that a bomb blast will move lite objects (light bulbs, chair/table, barrel etc.) that are a good distance from bombs ground zero, but yet close enough to be affected:)


yes. Even cars. Its why we model them from all sides with so good details:)

[SlipBall]

(quote)
yes. Even cars. Its why we model them from all sides with so good details:smile:




Movie makers are going to love that:cool:

[Oleg Maddox]

(quote)
yes. Even cars. Its why we model them from all sides with so good details:smile:




Movie makers are going to love that:cool:

Sure. Some time it will looks like real cinema if to go by some simple rules.

[Insuber]

Hi Oleg,

Just wanted to say "you're doing a great job, Sir!". Investing so much time and money in such a venture denotes a real passion for combat flight simulations, and passion + competence yields always good results.

I bought all the Il2 series as soon as they were published, I'll buy the BoB series too ... look forward to SoW, hopefully very soon! By the way, when? :D

Bye,
Insuber

[Snake_C6]

yes. Even cars. Its why we model them from all sides with so good details:)
to have seen how the cars are modeled I can tell it will be georgous :-P

[Schuetz]

Thank you for this great update, Oleg. I think SoW will be a very good sim!

[Oleg Maddox]

Hi Oleg,

Just wanted to say "you're doing a great job, Sir!". Investing so much time and money in such a venture denotes a real passion for combat flight simulations, and passion + competence yields always good results.



Not me, but the whole team. We have very experineced programmers and modellers. Their level of knowledge is dedicated to aviation (some were working in Sukhoi bureau).
We also have Vladimir Veryugin, that knows I think everythng about tanks of all sides... And his many years hobby corresponds to his work. Of course he can make anything and now he and his co-workers doing other things... because modeling of ground vehicles is finished (that can be used in the next our sims also! The most hard to make the basis for the series!).

[slm]

As for training, you can not know the effects that hypoxia will have on your ability to PERCEIVE it until you've gone through it.

Yes, pilots who had not experienced it before didn't know what was causing the gradual change in how flying felt. Because of this I hope lack of oxygen will be modeled so that it's not obvious to the pilot that the problem is oxygen. There are some similar cases in IL2 already:
- when you turn too rapidly you may black out.
- If your plane dives and you try to pull up, plane controls may react slowly because of high speed

I hope oxygen deprivation would be modeled in some similar way, instead of showing the player some text which makes problem solving so much faster and easier.

[Oleg Maddox]

I hope oxygen deprivation would be modeled in some similar way, instead of showing the player some text which makes problem solving so much faster and easier.

We had this mornig some speech about it. Probably we'll have even graphics representation of the mask. It looks after a small test well.


As for the effect itself. I'm experienced myself in low oxigen situations. I was so many times in mountains and even over the 4000 meters altitudes. So don't worry. To miss the mind on such altitudes is almost impossible... what may happens when you move faster than possible - tachypnea (hope this is right term) and then if you are continue to move fast - even more frequent respiration and then the effect that looks close to blackout if you didn't stop movement even for a short time for the recovering of oxigen in the blood (recovering happens very fast). That is possible just in the first day of moving there at such altitudes. Then the human organism begins to get accustomed... and its already never happens. At least up to 5000 meters. Of course it is depending of the lungs volume. As more smaller lungs - more great time of adaptation. In terms of aviation and oxigen starvation - effect will be very different for different people. Say the good swimmer and trained phisically human will have no problem maybe up to 6000 meters. But these, say like vietnamese people may have the problem already at 2500 m. Some friends of my father (I saw and spoke with them many times during hunting in the forests in the past) told me very long time ago that for Vietnamese pilots there was special order to use mask right from the ground....they were not able to control aircraft in the same conditions as Russian pilots.

So.... we should have, like I pointed above with blackout-redout some average value. Roman knows it. So I expect that we satisfy all.


PS. movement in moutains and work in a cockpit - a different thing. Movement takes more oxigen.

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

Oleg, I know this may be a more technical question better suited for you programmers, can you say what sound API will be used, DirectSound3D, OpenAL or other? Windows Vista and Windows 7 no longer support sound card hardware acceleration for DirectSound3D but do support hardware acceleration with OpenAL.

[philip.ed]

Oleg, if you need any more info on the oxygen mask (RAF) then I am happy to help.

BTW, during the Battle of Britain, the RAF were using the type d-oxygen mask. This was made a wool, similiar to barethea, and the mask itself had no real self-sealing capability on the wearer's face (unlike the later rubber masks).

Now, if you are to model oxygen effects, then the next part becomes very important ;) Because the mask had no real sealing capablilities, a lot of the oxygen espcaped at the sides of the mask. In the event of a fire, if the pilot never turned off his oxygen then the mask would become a human-blow-torch, and the effects of this really speak for themselves; this was the fate of many BoB RAF pilots.
My question to you is, could SoW model this feature? It wouldn't be pretty, but it would be extremely realistic.

[brando]

Oleg, if you need any more info on the oxygen mask (RAF) then I am happy to help.

BTW, during the Battle of Britain, the RAF were using the type d-oxygen mask. This was made a wool, similiar to barethea, and the mask itself had no real self-sealing capability on the wearer's face (unlike the later rubber masks).

Now, if you are to model oxygen effects, then the next part becomes very important ;) Because the mask had no real sealing capablilities, a lot of the oxygen espcaped at the sides of the mask. In the event of a fire, if the pilot never turned off his oxygen then the mask would become a human-blow-torch, and the effects of this really speak for themselves; this was the fate of many BoB RAF pilots.
My question to you is, could SoW model this feature? It wouldn't be pretty, but it would be extremely realistic.

How ghoulish!

[JVM]

Grégory, thank you very much for that piece of journalism. Merciiiiii! :) I enjoyed reading it a lot. I am sure the translation was hurried out as well to get it to our greedy communities.

An English writing tip: the "!", "?" and ":", in fact all of the special signs, are written directly after a word, like this "That's right!". French puts in a space after the word. Just a difference, but the French way is quite noticable for the non-French people when reading :P
When you use a french default set writing software this is what you get... and like you said, it was hurried... no time to check everything, and some sentences are not as correct as I would have liked (I was subcontracted a part of the translation)

JV

[slm]

We had this mornig some speech about it.
....
So.... we should have, like I pointed above with blackout-redout some average value. Roman knows it. So I expect that we satisfy all.


Thanks for answering! It will be interesting to see how this all will work in the release version.

I've read some WW2 cases where a pilot with oxygen equipment malfunction lost consciousness. When the plane started losing altitude, in some cases he "woke up" and was able to pull up before the plane crashed to ground.

[philip.ed]

How ghoulish!

It is rather isn't it? But then, so is war ;)

[JVM]

Oxygen issues are really very difficult to notice: high profile accidents in business jets and light aircrafts (one pressurized in US, the other with a portable oxygen system in France) with highly experienced people (the light aircraft pilot was a test pilot on a ferry flight) in recent years and the countless accidents in the military tend to prove one thing:

- the pilot cannot (except by incredible and rare luck, or specifically trained to recognize deprivation initial symptoms) realize by himself he is is suffering of oxygen deprivation

- for him, everything appears normal up to the point he will brutally loose concisousness

- the only way to get out is to have a wingman (or sometimes ground control) understanding something is wrong and able to reach at whatever useful mind is still there by yelling orders...but usually when the problem is noticeable from the outside, it already very late in the drama, and only luck will allow a positive outcome!

- If for instance the aircraft is trimmed properly for cruise, there is not chance that the pilot will ever recover: if he did not died of oxygen deprivation the loss of power at the end of the fuel tank and the ensuing imbalance (no more torque, dissymetric loads) will precipitate the descent to such an extent that the pilot may very well have no time to wake up, as already pointed out before...

- so the only way to simulate is quite simple: for some reason (failure or battle damage) the oxygen is cut off...

- then if a blinker is present it will cease working (this is only "positive" way for the pilot to know in time something is wrong with the oxygen but he must be disciplined and trained to check his blinker often at altitude!)

- after a while depending on possible factors like fatigue, health, injuries and whatnot, the screen becomes black, with a message "OXYGEN", no more. At this point the pilot has no means of action, has a limited life expectancy (defined by the game), and may be allowed to wake up with a gradual removing of the black screen (much in the same way as blackout) and be given back his controls...if the aircraft reaches a breathable altitude and assuming it did not crash or be shot down before!
Once the oxygen is failed a randomly aired message may be given to the wingman or ground control to simulate a visible problem (random to simulate lack of awareness of the wigman/control).

Believe me it will be as realistic as it can get (I am quite familiar with hypoxia, having already flown up to 30000 ft with an failed oxygen mask and a friend with a good one!)

JV

[Runar]

Great update Oleg. I'm really looking forward to this game now :)

I'm just wondering, will the 'thing' Roman uses to shoot at the Stuka with the .303 guns come with the game so we can play with it and do experiments ourselves when it is released?

Edit: This is the 'thing' I'm talking about:

Roman carries on with demos of the Junkers damage model. He is using his mouse and select an english .303 weapon. He then clicks like hell on the Stuka and explains that all small caliber bullets will be taken in account in the aircraft DM and indeed after two dozens of mouse clicks I notice after every click a hole appeared in the aircraft fuselage at the exact location where he clicked.

Edit2: Today is my birthday, and I believe that is a valid reason for demanding answer! :grin:

[brando]

It is rather isn't it? But then, so is war ;)

I don't disagree with your statement. I just don't think it's necessary or desirable to depict such a gross image in a flight simulation. Pilots got burnt on any area of skin that was bare - we mostly know that. In Britain many seriously burnt pilots received pioneering skin-grafts and facial rebuilds from Dr Archibald MacIndoe - we mostly know that too. I just think that requiring to see the human torch effect of the oxygen mask is morbid and macabre. We're not asking for a snuff movie, we just want a flight sim.

[Oleg Maddox]

My question to you is, could SoW model this feature? It wouldn't be pretty, but it would be extremely realistic.

Probably no.

However.... even the simplest russian oxigen mask of 1930th had two valves - in and out. On the oxigen balloon was the simple reduction of pressure (same as we may see on the British balloon). That is enough when you are not using it - oxigen isn't going.... hovewer possible oxigen seepage in case of bad valves and for this of course is the close cock on the balloon.

[Oleg Maddox]

Believe me it will be as realistic as it can get (I am quite familiar with hypoxia, having already flown up to 30000 ft with an failed oxygen mask and a friend with a good one!)

JV

Probably you are completely right.

[Oleg Maddox]

Oleg, I know this may be a more technical question better suited for you programmers, can you say what sound API will be used, DirectSound3D, OpenAL or other? Windows Vista and Windows 7 no longer support sound card hardware acceleration for DirectSound3D but do support hardware acceleration with OpenAL.

As told me Rudolf Heiter(our sound engineer) when I noticed him about such a problem, he said that all there will be fine. More precise I can ask him on Monday.

[Flanker35M]

S!

Good news since sounds have been a bit problematic in IL-2 during the years. Currently I am using a Realtek AC1200 sound chip installed on my motherboard. It seems to work just fine, even better than my Creative X-Fi I have there. That card caused popping sounds etc.

[Oleg Maddox]

S!

Good news since sounds have been a bit problematic in IL-2 during the years. Currently I am using a Realtek AC1200 sound chip installed on my motherboard. It seems to work just fine, even better than my Creative X-Fi I have there. That card caused popping sounds etc.

Probably you was need to minimize the channels and frequency, then - no problem.
However yes, the sound of Il-2 was designed for hiend sound cards and good speakers with subwoofer.
Now it is designed for both - entry level and high. Should works everywhere the same. Now it is independed of sound drivers of different producers that had different panning and other features and quality. For Il-2 the lowest was Creative SB Live - only on such cards you may hear the supercharger separately of other sounds.
modders simply killed it... :)

[KG26_Alpha]

Oleg

Is Open GL dropped from SoW in favour of DX ?



S!

Good news since sounds have been a bit problematic in IL-2 during the years. Currently I am using a Realtek AC1200 sound chip installed on my motherboard. It seems to work just fine, even better than my Creative X-Fi I have there. That card caused popping sounds etc.

Strange i have completely the opposite experience !!

[Oleg Maddox]

Oleg

Is Open GL dropped from SoW in favour of DX ?



Yes. Unfortunately.
And this is done also becasue of future possible portings. It is more easy from DX...
However to make better is still better in OpenGl... even it is harder now. But the life dictate us DX...

[Oleg Maddox]

S!

Good news since sounds have been a bit problematic in IL-2 during the years. Currently I am using a Realtek AC1200 sound chip installed on my motherboard. It seems to work just fine, even better than my Creative X-Fi I have there. That card caused popping sounds etc.

I shoulkd tell one strory... it was when we just finished Ace Expancion Pack (which was really like stand alone sim with the content, but was going like add-on with Ubi... ok... it is other story, back to the sound...)

Ossi, wellknown in the past German online player (now owner of own company producing add-ons), was in Moscow and I invited him to visit my home. First of all he was asking me to show something new. I had there betat of some new add-on and the first his question was what we did with the sound? He was so impressed...
I told - nothing... He didn't trust me....
Then I simply explained him why it sounds so good...
there was SB (don't remember model) connected by 5.1 to Inspire 5.1. He simply drooled off by the sound of 109.
First what he did when he was coming back in Germany - he bought the same or almost the ssame system.
And I had not time to show him if I would connect it to my home HiEnd musical modular system with B&W speakers of big size (9.1 system with Yamaha MZ system sound processor). I think if only I would show how it was sounding there... prbabl;y he would also to by something like this system...

Now Il-2 is on my Sony notebook. There is very simple 5.1 sound chip connected across HDMI. And I can't get the same quality sound.

[Avimimus]

Hope you will understand it.

Completely. It will be interesting to see what work-arounds the 3rd party builders will attempt for the 1905-1916 aircraft that didn't use aerilons. In some sims the wing-warping control technique has been attempted by making the entire wing out of an aerilon.

I have a great deal of confidence that whatever decision is made it will be the right one (although doing so with such a ground breaking project is never easy).

Thanks for the replies. I've never been disappointed with the answers.

- Avimimus

P.S. Actually, it is not quite true: I asked you ten years ago at Combatsim.com about modelling some of the challenges in photo reconnaissance. I'm still waiting to see the outcome... But, I am very patient.

[Oleg Maddox]

- Avimimus

P.S. Actually, it is not quite true: I asked you ten years ago at Combatsim.com about modelling some of the challenges in photo reconnaissance. I'm still waiting to see the outcome... But, I am very patient.

We have soomething in design doc. But still not sure that it will be finally programmed as I want (fly mission, take photos and then see them in menu of the next mission with the pointed target).
Really not easy to make if we want this good.
And my principle for the whole life is
better to do nothing than bad.

[Oleg Maddox]

Completely. It will be interesting to see what work-arounds the 3rd party builders will attempt for the 1905-1916 aircraft that didn't use aerilons. In some sims the wing-warping control technique has been attempted by making the entire wing out of an aerilon.



Ahh Ok. Now understand other thing.
From the beginning Sow isn't designed for the visual effect of such thing - distortion of the whole wing surface (with cambric (percale) covering) around the main spar. But... if there will be needs in future... and for the long leight wing of glider for example... we will make it. Should be success with the first in series... then almost everything will be possible....
For the first time for the third party modellers I would remommend to develop aircraft having normal wing with aileron. And cockpits for already modelled other(AI) aircraft in the sim. This would be the great suggestion from our side. And for such developers that wil make it on a serious basis we will give these models (AI) to help them to make it well.

[Richie]

Dropping bombs on targets with a Stuka with Storm Of War might make me feel so bad that I'll just have to stick with my good old 109 if it's so realistic with the explosions. I'll drop a bomb and think..."MY GOD I"M HURTING PEOPLE!"....I always feel much better when I see my enemy bail out of his plane when I'm fighting in my 109 :)

[ECV56_Lancelot]

- Also, is it possible to have the player activate a trigger via the radio menus?

OM: Interesting … Will put in a wish list. We have not such thing.



- Following the lines of this great idea of Avimimus, i would as a wish the possibility to add radio options on the menu. I don't know if its easy, i don't think it is, but i mean it would be nice that we can add radio menu options for single missions that can attached to triggers.
For example, add in the radio menu the message "Anybody want to hear some music?" and that triggers an audio file of music of the time that sound like hearing on the radio. Or some other message that triggers an action from and aircraft, flight, whatever.

- Seccond, this also give the idea that it would be nice that you can set triggers that make and aircraft, vehicle, ship, house or something explode, set on fire, shut down, sink, and so on. So, for example, we can make in a mission an aircraft accidentaly set on fire and the pilot bail out or cry on the radio that its burning hiimself, or have to return to base, and so on. Increasing this way the deficult of the mission.

Just some ideas for making more "alive" and dramatic missions. :)
Guess this should be on the Luthier thread :)

[philip.ed]

Probably no.

However.... even the simplest russian oxigen mask of 1930th had two valves - in and out. On the oxigen balloon was the simple reduction of pressure (same as we may see on the British balloon). That is enough when you are not using it - oxigen isn't going.... hovewer possible oxigen seepage in case of bad valves and for this of course is the close cock on the balloon.


The design of the british mask was so simple it didn't have this feature. The pilot would have to turn the oxygen off in order to stop the 'blowtorch'. I mean, you could call it gruesome, but all it'd have to be is virtual flames in front of your face until you turn off the oxygen, with the message on the screen saying pilot wounded (or similar).
Anyway Oleg, you know my e-mail is open so you can ask me for more info at any time.

This brings me on to ask whether you will model flaming parachutes, Oleg; so if your rear fuselage sets alight and your parachute catches, could the pilot bail out and have his parachute fail? :)

thanks for answering our questions :D

[philip.ed]

I don't disagree with your statement. I just don't think it's necessary or desirable to depict such a gross image in a flight simulation. Pilots got burnt on any area of skin that was bare - we mostly know that. In Britain many seriously burnt pilots received pioneering skin-grafts and facial rebuilds from Dr Archibald MacIndoe - we mostly know that too. I just think that requiring to see the human torch effect of the oxygen mask is morbid and macabre. We're not asking for a snuff movie, we just want a flight sim.

Firstly, sorry for the smiley in my last post as it makes me seem really morbid.

I am with you here on this, as I would not like to see the pilot being burnt in such a way. However, the effect I think should be modelled. War is hell, and I am for full realism. I don't neccesarily want to be in a bomber and see this happen to one of the crew close-up, but I think it should be modelled as an effect in front of your face when in cockpit view. A flick of a button, and the flames stop coming out; just like turning the gas off of a bunsen burner.

[fireflyerz]

Good Greif philip what were you thinkin....now get out of MY forum.;)

[philip.ed]

Good Greif philip what were you thinkin....now get out of MY forum.;)

:confused: :grin: hero, is this you? :)

[SlipBall]

Oleg I just visited the site showing your photo's, very high quality, so crystal clear, so centered. What sea creature is #34, is #28 a Angler fish?...oh and by the way #8 is a favorite of mine:grin:

edit: not #8 with the bird, #8 of the lady underwater

[fireflyerz]

:confused: :grin: hero, is this you? :)

Yes young padawaaaaaa....its all in the avataaaaar;)

[Blackdog_kt]

Best update so far and i think it will stay this way for some time, at least until we see videos of some of these new features at work some time later.

Big thanks to the entire developer team for working on such a big and detailed project. An equal amount of thanks to Gregory, who was not only kind enough to go to Moscow and get the inteview, but also asked us for questions that we wanted answered.

It looks like this is going to be the best simulator series of the decade, well worth the wait.
At least as far as i'm concerned, everything i liked in IL2 is being improved, the few things i didn't like are being improved and finally, a lot of new features that i always dreamt about in a combat flight simulator are being included. It seems perfect to me and i haven't seen any meaningfull amount of in-game action yet, although i imagine we will all find something to complain about sooner or later :lol:

The only negative thing so far, i'm glad they took their time to make this so detailed but never the less the wait is killing me :grin:

[Richie]

Me too Blackdog this waiting is torture but it's giving me a little time to buy the monster I need. That's the only positive thing about it.

[imaca]

.....I had there betat of some new add-on and the first his question was what we did with the sound? He was so impressed...
I told - nothing... He didn't trust me....
Then I simply explained him why it sounds so good...
there was SB (don't remember model) connected by 5.1 to Inspire 5.1. He simply drooled off by the sound of 109.

My first time playing the IL2 demo doing circuits in the 109 I was blown away by the sound.
I was so impressed I went out and bought a new PC so I could play forgotten battles.
Because it had a NF2 motherboard with good sound chip I sold my SB Audigy. It took me a long time to figure why the sound wasn't as good as I remembered form IL2 demo.

[mark@1C]

Well, I'm reading the interview note, the first question is about the statement "Once we passed the security filters where I was nicely asked my passport I found myself in the middle of the very studios...',
A security filters in a Game studio? And foreign visiters must show their passports before entering, even accompanied by Oleg, the Boss? Is it true? Or just a welcome joke...

[Abbeville-Boy]

My dream - to "create" some third party serious uindustry around SoW. At first time - for the WWII (wwI) aircraft...then for the early jets... then.... God knows... it is depending of many things and at first depends of BoB success



the choice to have click pit may be the most important made to realize your dream. best luck to you

[EJGr.Ost_Chamel]

What sea creature is #34, ...
A sea turtle eating a jellyfish.

[TheGrunch]

Oleg, will the onset of compressibility be modeled for every aircraft in SoW? Will each aircraft have an individual Mach number that determines when the onset of compressibility occurs if so?
Will each aircraft have its own individual structural load limit (I believe it is 13.5Gs for every aircraft in Il-2 at the moment, although I may be wrong)?
Really hoping you'll answer these questions, there's been a lot of discussion about it on the Ubi forums.

[Dash 8]

Probably you was need to minimize the channels and frequency, then - no problem.
However yes, the sound of Il-2 was designed for hiend sound cards and good speakers with subwoofer.
Now it is designed for both - entry level and high. Should works everywhere the same. Now it is independed of sound drivers of different producers that had different panning and other features and quality. For Il-2 the lowest was Creative SB Live - only on such cards you may hear the supercharger separately of other sounds.
modders simply killed it... :)


This is why I have never had a problem with the sound in IL-2. I have always been running it with an Audigy 2 sound card and a very nice 5.1 surround sound system. I can hear all kinds of little subtle sounds and effects in the different engines, including the turbochargers and little pings and knocks from the engines.

I tried out the sound mods but didn't like them. They sound more like being at an airshow than being inside the cockpit, so I went back to stock IL-2 4.09. I have over 8000 hours in Real Life flying as I am a commuter pilot on a DeHavilland Dash 8. I am quite used to what a prop driven aircraft sounds like from the inside, and IL-2 with higher end equipment is VERY good. I can't wait to hear the sounds of BoB!

[Freycinet]

Great update, thx!

Oleg, with MSFS dropping out of the game, I think you have an opening for making civilian flight sims based on the SoW engine. I really wouldn't want to see that personally, because I like to shoot things up, but I think you could do it, and that is where the really big money is.

The whole issue will be decided by how you approach the third-party developer issue. How to make tools for them. How to allow them or not allow them access to core features. Third party involvement is essential, because one single developer can never satisfy the thirst for content by modern-day users.

If you step back from all the extremely detailed issues these forums are full of, I think you should try considering yourself more like someone setting the ground rules for a whole industry, rather than just a developer of a single product. It would be the next step.

[philip.ed]

Yes young padawaaaaaa....its all in the avataaaaar;)

:D

[Caveman]

Great update, thx!

Oleg, with MSFS dropping out of the game, I think you have an opening for making civilian flight sims based on the SoW engine. I really wouldn't want to see that personally, because I like to shoot things up, but I think you could do it, and that is where the really big money is.

The whole issue will be decided by how you approach the third-party developer issue. How to make tools for them. How to allow them or not allow them access to core features. Third party involvement is essential, because one single developer can never satisfy the thirst for content by modern-day users.

If you step back from all the extremely detailed issues these forums are full of, I think you should try considering yourself more like someone setting the ground rules for a whole industry, rather than just a developer of a single product. It would be the next step.

OLEG... LISTEN... THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE! I've been watching the industry since the early 80s and I can tell you that the timing is now to capture the entire flight sim industry that MS has left behind... I'm sure you know that, but I can tell you from a grass roots level of looking around those types of forums, etc that the shell has been cracked and folks are looking for a new base to build a general aviation simulator on...

Do you have anyone aggressively pursuing the opportunity? I've noticed that even BOP has been able to make users in that community giddy... And... X-Plane of course... 20 years from now, let's hope you're living off the royalties of a 3rd party A-380 :)

[Caveman]

Oleg,

BUTTKICKER question:

I can't speak for all the planes, but I've always thought the IL-2 Sound Engine was incredible on IL-2 for the 109 which I fly about 98% of the time. The turbine whine, the 3D capability to capture correct dopplar affect at all speeds of the plan and at all throttle settings was incredible.

Then I bought a BUTTKICKER GAMER and took the experience to a new level. For me, the positive change was analogous to going from no trackIR to using a trackIR... a great thing.

http://www.buttkickergear.com/ButtKicker_Gamer_p/bk-gr.htm

Is the sound code being worked in such a way to specifically take advantage of the BUTTKICKER device? The device works reasonably well in IL-2, although the settings were somewhat sensitive, making adjustment to a sweet spot somehat difficult when different planes were flown...

Can you comment on any specific considerations done for this device?

[WhiteSnake]

S!

Good news since sounds have been a bit problematic in IL-2 during the years. Currently I am using a Realtek AC1200 sound chip installed on my motherboard. It seems to work just fine, even better than my Creative X-Fi I have there. That card caused popping sounds etc.

ASUS Mobo???
Realtek ALC1200 is a Realtek ALC6xx wich ASUS bought in huge numbers wen Realtek dumped them, ASUS added a few new features trough the Mainboard and Relabled it as ALC1200, its a pretty poor Soundchip, maybe they where hoping to sell more Sonar cards that way?

Only way i see that being better than an X-Fi is if you where using a ExtremeAudio wich has no X-Fi procesor and is simply a Rebranded Audigy with an X-Fi user-interface, or if you where using the wrong settings for it.

Realtek HDA ALC8xx are the ones you want an they beat a X-Fi ExtremeGamer easly for this game but only because IL2 uses DirectX DirectSound (not DirectSound3D, wich is difrent but gives the same isue) so it cant make use of anything the X-Fi has to offer and your better of (higher FPS but it can also solve crashes) if you Disable all the Soundcards features both in Windows and in the Game.

Here is a quick explanation of the difrences between DirectSound(3D) and OpenAL Sound under Vista (Windows 7): http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/OpenAL%20Wiki/OpenAL%C2%AE%20and%20Windows%20Vista%E2%84%A2.aspx

[Flanker35M]

S!

Yes, ASUS M4A79T Deluxe (AMD 790FX chipset) mobo. The Realtek seems to work just fine, all games I play I have had zero problems. Could be an ExtremeAudio card I got, need to check. I would rather buy a really good sound card if I knew SoW will support it :D I have had no problems with this AMD rig I use for now, works at least and even slightly better than my Intel rig I had before, heh!

[Old_Canuck]

Hi Oleg,

Just wanted to say "you're doing a great job, Sir!". Investing so much time and money in such a venture denotes a real passion for combat flight simulations, and passion + competence yields always good results.

I bought all the Il2 series as soon as they were published, I'll buy the BoB series too ... look forward to SoW, hopefully very soon! By the way, when? :D

Bye,
Insuber

Insuber, I'll second this even though Oleg's already answered your post. IL2 came into my experience somewhere around 2002 when a friend gave me a demo he found inside a magazine. The "passion + competence" that went into this simulator was immediately apparent and it just kept me coming back for more. Attention to detail and desire to improve are marks of a true artist. Oleg and his growing team are true artists IMHO :grin: Look forward to SoW also and if my computer won't handle it the DVD package will look great on the shelf until a new computer comes online.

[Oleg Maddox]

Great update, thx!

Oleg, with MSFS dropping out of the game, I think you have an opening for making civilian flight sims based on the SoW engine. I really wouldn't want to see that personally, because I like to shoot things up, but I think you could do it, and that is where the really big money is.

The whole issue will be decided by how you approach the third-party developer issue. How to make tools for them. How to allow them or not allow them access to core features. Third party involvement is essential, because one single developer can never satisfy the thirst for content by modern-day users.

If you step back from all the extremely detailed issues these forums are full of, I think you should try considering yourself more like someone setting the ground rules for a whole industry, rather than just a developer of a single product. It would be the next step.

It is really very hard task but my target.
At the moment we can't begin with civilian big aircraft. There is not some special features that are neccessary for modeling such aircraft and envirouments (modern radar system, speeches, etc)
But....
Right at the time when we will release first tools will be possible to make:

1. Sport piston engine aircraft
2. Almost any or any piston engine or multi engines aircraft of WWII time
3. envirouments, including new ground objects that will corresponds to that time (cars, ships, U-boats, tanks, rail road cars and many other things...)
4. to make own campagin engines, including for online. As a separate modules, that are using our API.
6. To program new devices for aircaft and other technics (this will happens a bit later that all above).
7. To add new calsses of controlable units in the game (cars, tanks, ships, u-boats, maybe even human as a first person... ). But this tool will be relased as the last from our side and for this we will need a time. The most complex.

Then... at the same time we should make own next sim. The next will be separate sim, but it will be possible to install as a merged version with previous one... Experience show me that this is the only one right way.
With new sim we will add new features (like in the past). Half or the models already done for the new sim so probably you may calculate what the sim it should be. Can't name you... because everything may happens... And in reality we was planning two sims right after BoB.... Maybe this also happens. All will depends of success or no success on the market with BoB. Hope success... everything will be fine then. I even can image how fine and how great will be life of this project :):):) Then I can to retire on a pension :):):):) after some 10 years of SoW success :):)

[MikkOwl]

Oleg, you're going to be like that Hideo Kojima guy who does the Metal Gear Solid game series for Konami. He keeps stopping it but then comes back to do another, then another, then another. I don't know how much of your simulators are thanks to you (because this is a major team effort, and you must have incredibly talented intelligent guys working for you to have such few people responsible for so many areas, and still making them so good) - and so I don't know how the IL-2 game series will go if you retire. Maybe someone to take over.

But hey, SoW isn't even out yet, and 10 years is a long time. Imagine what leaps can be made in technology and how your urge to develop more cool things can be revitalized even more.

EDIT: As for the next sim, if half the aircraft already made.. Battle of France including Dunkirk maybe. :) Possibly Barbarossa as it uses all the German planes. MTO also a strong possibility.

EDIT2: After my question on the rear gunners of aircraft like Bf 110, I went and looked around the forum searching, and I found one answer you gave stating that there are plans to make the gunners communicate positions of enemy aircraft to the pilot.

[Oleg Maddox]

Oleg, you're going to be like that Hideo Kojima guy who does the Metal Gear Solid game series for Konami. He keeps stopping it but then comes back to do another, then another, then another. I don't know how much of your simulators are thanks to you (because this is a major team effort, and you must have incredibly talented intelligent guys working for you to have such few people responsible for so many areas, and still making them so good) - and so I don't know how the IL-2 game series will go if you retire. Maybe someone to take over.

But hey, SoW isn't even out yet, and 10 years is a long time. Imagine what leaps can be made in technology and how your urge to develop more cool things can be revitalized even more.

EDIT: As for the next sim, if half the aircraft already made.. Battle of France including Dunkirk maybe. :) Possibly Barbarossa as it uses all the German planes. MTO also a strong possibility.

EDIT2: After my question on the rear gunners of aircraft like Bf 110, I went and looked around the forum searching, and I found one answer you gave stating that there are plans to make the gunners communicate positions of enemy aircraft to the pilot.


I can develop with team any type of the games. However I'm with love to aviation during all my life. And I understand that it is small niche in the games market, where are going not so great money like in other some genres. The principle of meged separate sims in one in time - the only one system that can help stay on the board and make hi-end class avia sims.


Rear gunner: Speeches of them is work of Ilya. Programmer can make some limited AI interaction. The main thing - to make some most important and useful things.
Already now we have much more commands to AI comparing to Il-2 (I'm speaking about control by command across the Tab button in Il-2)

[MikkOwl]

I can develop with team any type of the games. However I'm with love to aviation during all my life. And I understand that it is small niche in the games market, where are going not so great money like in other some genres. The principle of meged separate sims in one in time - the only one system that can help stay on the board and make hi-end class avia sims.


Rear gunner: Speeches of them is work of Ilya. Programmer can make some limited AI interaction. The main thing - to make some most important and useful things.
Already now we have much more commands to AI comparing to Il-2 (I'm speaking about control by command across the Tab button in Il-2)
Well, life isn't only about making even more money. Having fun doing it and being able to focus on something one has passion for ranks very highly I think (as long as you meet some minimum standard of life quality otherwise). I would choose the same thing as you I think... and by the way, I loved airplanes my whole life I think. At first more modern looking jets (starting with F-4 Phantom II to modern times. I found myself in the middle of the 1980's (born in 80) with the planes then, where it was cold war type aircraft. Thanks to IL-2 many years later, I got a big, if not bigger, interest in WW2 era aircraft too :)

The method you use for selling more versions is clever and logical. Eagle Dynamics are doing similar things, and they realize it is the best way too I think. Because then the older sims can be benefit from technology of the new sims, and at the same time keep the 'family' of the sims together. But a requirement for this to be successful is that the start sim engine technologically is 'future proof' so that can upgraded and adapted easily for the coming sim stand-alone expansions. IL-2 was like this and SoW will be too.

The gunners don't need that much AI or commands. But since they are always with us, they probably need a bit more variation to their speech than other aircraft. Even when everyone else is shot down, you still have your crew members/gunners in the same aircraft so it is logical.

I use a program called "Shoot" for Windows sometimes, that can recognize my speech (very accurate and fast!), and I use it to talk to the AI in IL-2. It is a bit complicated to set up with all the keypresses needed, but I managed to make it so fast that it is impossible to see the HUD radio stuff appear (realistic). I think that a native feature in IL-2 to support speech recognition would be a good idea for many reasons, including for third party expansions etc. For civilian flying too. There is a lot of possibilities for anyone developing the AI speech and pilot speech interaction using such a feature. Native is better than external. And this is an area that has very little development in the game world, developers just didn't care about developing and using it.

EDIIIIIT: Some things would make speech interaction much easier and useful (here are suggestions).

1. Logic to permit someone to be talking only to one other plane (selection basically, other AI ignore the commands). This way it is possible to keep closer communication with a single wingman or leader. Naming another aircraft or the group makes them listen to commands again.
2. Related to 1, tell the other pilot to execute basic maneuvers like "break left/up/down/right" or "tach weave". Wingman tactics benefit a lot.
3. Be able to use numbers to tell them more specific things. Like altitude, heading, speed, the direction of a contact, how many contacts, the range at which to open fire (just examples of possible uses). This is impractical for typing but not a problem for speech recognition.

[AKA_Tenn]

yea speech recognitions is possible... in one language... and if u have an accent... makes it even harder for the computer to understand... and if someone else wants to play... the computer has to learn their voice too... and not many people want to read an entire novel to their computer so that it can understand their voice enough to command AI in a game...

[MikkOwl]

yea speech recognitions is possible... in one language... and if u have an accent... makes it even harder for the computer to understand... and if someone else wants to play... the computer has to learn their voice too... and not many people want to read an entire novel to their computer so that it can understand their voice enough to command AI in a game...
Don't have to read a novel (although that SHOOT program, which is based on very old technology, needs a bit of training to function properly).

Nothing to force English, can use any other language that has support from whatever speech API/engine is being used.

And, nothing that says that one must fly with this specific option. A simple way of calling out a contact to an AI could be just to look at the contact (with your headtracking or whatever) and then click a button, and the right direction, height, distance etc is done automatically.

[Oleg Maddox]

1. Having fun doing it and beiI use a program called "Shoot" for Windows sometimes, that can recognize my speech (very accurate and fast!), and I use it to talk to the AI in IL-2. It is a bit complicated to set up with all the keypresses needed, but I managed to make it so fast that it is impossible to see the HUD radio stuff appear (realistic). I think that a native feature in IL-2 to support speech recognition would be a good idea for many reasons, including for third party expansions etc. For civilian flying too. There is a lot of possibilities for anyone developing the AI speech and pilot speech interaction using such a feature. Native is better than external. And this is an area that has very little development in the game world, developers just didn't care about developing and using it.

2. EDIIIIIT: Some things would make speech interaction much easier and useful (here are suggestions).

1. Logic to permit someone to be talking only to one other plane (selection basically, other AI ignore the commands). This way it is possible to keep closer communication with a single wingman or leader. Naming another aircraft or the group makes them listen to commands again.
2. Related to 1, tell the other pilot to execute basic maneuvers like "break left/up/down/right" or "tach weave". Wingman tactics benefit a lot.
3. Be able to use numbers to tell them more specific things. Like altitude, heading, speed, the direction of a contact, how many contacts, the range at which to open fire (just examples of possible uses). This is impractical for typing but not a problem for speech recognition.

1. We had the very first in the word own game with the speech recognition build in game driver. With the training it was working 100%. Used for voice control of weapon, like on some soviet aircraft of 70-80th (MiG 25 had it for example)
The game, except not so modern for that time Engine (better than Duke 3D but worse than Quake II, had a lot of innovations, that never had before. Some features like two hands weapon control, fancy weapon, etc - was copied later by other developers.
My game simply was born too early... (except 3D engine and used DOS OS).

The game called Madspace and released in 1997. Currently I found just one english language source that describing other features of the game (12 years ago):

http://www.stereo3d.com/madspace.htm

Original box of the game was looking: http://www.old-games.ru/games/M/madspace/madspace_cover.jpg


2. We did many new commands... especially when you now can command up to 40 aircraft at once. Or separatelly...

the structure of commands we tried to keep as more as possible close to IL-2 structure. - more easy to learn. Also we add there new features (for example like typing altitude :)).

[MikkOwl]

1. We had the very first in the word own game with the speech recognition build in game driver. With the training it was working 100%. Used for voice control of weapon, like on some soviet aircraft of 70-80th (MiG 25 had it for example)
The game, except not so modern for that time Engine (better than Duke 3D but worse than Quake II, had a lot of innovations, that never had before. Some features like two hands weapon control, fancy weapon, etc - was copied later by other developers.
My game simply was born too early... (except 3D engine and used DOS OS).

The game called Madspace and released in 1997. Currently I found just one english language source that describing other features of the game (12 years ago):

http://www.stereo3d.com/madspace.htm

Original box of the game was looking: http://www.old-games.ru/games/M/madspace/madspace_cover.jpg


Hey, that's neat! I didn't know you made anything before IL-2 to be honest. I always assumed it was probably something flight related. You do seem to like to push for new things other people have not yet exploited (innovator).

2. We did many new commands... especially when you now can command up to 40 aircraft at once. Or separatelly...

the structure of commands we tried to keep as more as possible close to IL-2 structure. - more easy to learn. Also we add there new features (for example like typing altitude :)).
I will see how it works out, then pass hard but fair judgement. :mrgreen:

Anything that involves typing for stuff can be made to work with external programs, like "Shoot" that I mentioned (since it pushes keys). Request: ability to hide the interface for anything related to AI commands. Like NoHudLog=1.. It should still work, just not be visible. This makes it look better when using external voice programs - no hud stuff, no typing of letters being seen. Also the structure should be such that there is no need to reprogram the button presses when switching roles (for example, from being a new pilot at lowest rank flying wingman, and then another mission flying as squadron leader - the keypresses should always be the same to reach a plane/group. Otherwise, voice commands suddenly mean something else in one mission to another).

I vaguely remember reading that SoW will have it's own voice protocol, like IL-2 had it (no one uses it now though, people mostly use nothing, sometimes teamspeak or ventrilo). And something about the radio reception and transmit being simulated by the radio type and atmospheric conditions, range etc. It would hopefully mean too that getting your radio shot means no communication. And no communication when bailing out or crashed (this is a very unrealistic part of using teamspeak online, I don't like it). Perfect for multiplayer. One reason people don't speak can also be because they have to be quiet (play at night, people nearby, thin walls bla bla. Headphones make them hear everything but cannot talk).

A problem is still that some people don't want to talk to others directly. And people are divided by teamspeak and such other things. Maybe they are shy, exhausted whatever. It would be nice if we could make these people communicate by allowing the AI radio interface work with human players too. One can talk voice, the other can reply with the tab-number key interface if they want, instead of typing (because typing is really impractical and unrealistic). They can even use speech recognition to push those buttons.. funny but it would work. For really shy people :P I just remembered that Battlefield 2142 has a bit of this system. Limited, but worked.

More EDIT

Wish: Radio commands assignable to controller.Method for non-speaking people to interact with others online: To call out contact, zoom in on contact and push some button. Then it transmits the contact report to the flight group in voice actor voice, just like AI would call out contacts.

One top-hat on a joystick is enough to control a lot of practical radio interaction without even having a microphone. If advanced, can be context sensitive. Call out the correct plane, determined by plane is closest to center (and distance) on view screen.

Example (top hat):
WATCH OUT (someone on your tail) - Context Sensitive.
BREAK LEFT! - Context Sensitive.
BREAK RIGHT! - Context Sensitive.
HELP ME! (anybody :P )

If held for 1 second:
AFFIRMATIVE
NEGATIVE
CONTACT REPORT
WHERE ARE YOU?

Some things can be automated. Like "I'm bailing out", "I'm wounded".

To permit interaction properly with voice users and avoid spam: timer before the next command can be sent. Commands are not sent if someone is actively talking in the same flight - delay until they finish their transmission.

[Oleg Maddox]

Hey, that's neat! I didn't know you made anything before IL-2 to be honest. I always assumed it was probably something flight related. You do seem to like to push for new things other people have not yet exploited (innovator).




We did from 1992 too more than 40 games small or big before Il-2. There was one fancy flight sim called Stormfighter (1995). Also we were working with City Information System GmbH - the final result Navigations maps in cars (first was for PC).
I hope when we finally will have a separate site - all or main part of that info will be placed there.

You may also find other very popular our game in the world - gagboy or under other name - Minx (then all was copying this game even for sells) :):):) Don't fall from the chair when you will read "about" in this game by the second click of mouse :):):)
It was free distributed and was one of the puzzles in erotic game Gag

[SlipBall]

Oleg, can the altimeter gauge be set on the aircraft in SOW

[Oleg Maddox]

Oleg, can the altimeter gauge be set on the aircraft in SOW

Do you mean to set zero altitude on the airfiled by the user-pilot? You all want to know too much! :) Yes we have it. By separate command-button. If you don't press it before the flight - will show Sea Level. Youi need to set it before each flight. Don't know if it will be saved auto for the currently used airfield. Maybe yes.

Also I was asking my guys to make presets for trims. Saved for each aircraft by user. How it will looks/works optimal - don't know yet. Probably it ill be 3 sliders in the panel of arcraft customization. Default - trimmed for cruise speed. At least I have such idea. Useful or not - you may discuss already now. I personally thing it is very useful, especially for the beginers that begun to use more complex settings... My lder son have a problem using trimmers... my little son - simply don't understand it yet... and ask Papa to set plane to fly normal without constant input of stick.

[csThor]

You have dealt with us for over a decade, Oleg. You must have known we're a bunch of over-inquisitive misfits. :razz:

[SlipBall]

Thanks boss :grin::grin:

[Oleg Maddox]

You have dealt with us for over a decade, Oleg. You must have known we're a bunch of over-inquisitive misfits. :razz:

I simply have a great list of suggestions from around the world on my computer. From the beginning of first Il-2 and for the latest dates. And not only on PC, but also in my own head. I remember almost all suggestions for the last years as a general line.

We make the sim not for us, but for all. No all things are possible due to limits of resouces and time, but we try to implement everything possible using experience of Il-2 nd suggestions of community (if not crazy suiggestions :):):)).

And as you know all I don't advertize anything untill the time when I'm sure that it is done.... at least in 98% cases.

[MikkOwl]

Presets for trims - yes please!

I am developing it for IL-2 already. It's not very complicated (not for you SoW guys at least, for me it's worse using devicelink etc).

I made the following functions that are logical. I imagine SoW should use the same functions (what else is there?)

Set range of trim possible (to avoid excessive sensitivity and extreme trim we never need anyway).

Set trim off-set from center (since many aircraft only need to be trimmed to one side from center, it's a waste to always have the other side included. With this users can make use of the whole range of their trim axis, not just half. It also permits even lower range used, further making trim less sensitive and easier to be accurate).

Only one profile so far. To add in user customizable trims for different planes.. work work work.

[sport02]

many good news this week ,

also can we have wreck of plane , boat , vehicule , bom crater , smoke , haze of smoke when massive bombing or blitz etc ...., all of that which d' ont disappear after a few time but stay during all the mission ?

it's will be shame to not see your nice DM during the party and better for immersion but not good for fps :grin:, also perhaps a game option ?

[Oleg Maddox]

Presets for trims - yes please!

I am developing it for IL-2 already. It's not very complicated (not for you SoW guys at least, for me it's worse using devicelink etc).

I made the following functions that are logical. I imagine SoW should use the same functions (what else is there?)

Set range of trim possible (to avoid excessive sensitivity and extreme trim we never need anyway).

Set trim off-set from center (since many aircraft only need to be trimmed to one side from center, it's a waste to always have the other side included. With this users can make use of the whole range of their trim axis, not just half. It also permits even lower range used, further making trim less sensitive and easier to be accurate).

Only one profile so far. To add in user customizable trims for different planes.. work work work.

So probably I'm right with this at least for a sim. :)

[MikkOwl]

So probably I'm right with this at least for a sim. :)
Heh, yeah. :) It's the way to go.

Just consider that if using off-center function, there must be a way for the users to know that their trim is centered (they can no longer rely on physically watching their real controller). I tried without and it's very difficult to know (watch the rudder pedals move? heh).

On the G940 I am made a throttle button light shine yellow if a trim is centered, just like the Pe-2 aircraft does. Will add a sound effect too I think. I don't know what you can come up with. :)

[Oleg Maddox]

Heh, yeah. :) It's the way to go.

Just consider that if using off-center function, there must be a way for the users to know that their trim is centered (they can no longer rely on physically watching their real controller). I tried without and it's very difficult to know (watch the rudder pedals move? heh).

On the G940 I am made a throttle button light shine yellow if a trim is centered, just like the Pe-2 aircraft does. Will add a sound effect too I think. I don't know what you can come up with. :)

I will think about it. Should be useful for all doesn't matter which one of devices they are using.

Currently we are using customizable and saved separate profiles for each aircraft. They can be selected and loaded by user for using with his beloved aircaft. The is is also tuned curves for Joy.

[ECV56_Lancelot]

You have dealt with us for over a decade, Oleg. You must have known we're a bunch of over-inquisitive misfits. :razz:

Over a decade? I´m 37 and plan to live at least 50 more years. So Oleg, you better be alive and making sims or your decendents will pay the treachery! :mrgreen:

[HB252]

Hi Oleg and teamwork guys!!!:-P

-Suggestion:

will be there a option for a 1/1 scale cockpits view?
(for the cockpitbuilders)

- Question: Will be there a Ju 52? I dont see it by any side, and the Junkers 52 was omnipresent in all war campaigns.


A GREETING :grin:

PD: In this site you found very interesting photos of BF 109 in Spanish civil war:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/394728/message/1211917803/Messerschmitt+BF-109-+Primeros+ejemplares+en+Espa%F1a+-+Parte+5

thx

[MikkOwl]

I will think about it. Should be useful for all doesn't matter which one of devices they are using.

Currently we are using customizable and saved separate profiles for each aircraft. They can be selected and loaded by user for using with his beloved aircaft. The is is also tuned curves for Joy.
How many of the aircraft in SoW have visible functional trims in the cockpit? Real pilots could probably see this before take off and in flight. Then our off-set makes no difference and causes no problems (it does in IL-2, because IL-2 often does not have these cockpit details). When airborne we can just see or feel if we need to trim so center doesn't even matter there.

Optional helper: Small, transparent pop-up window (at any time) showing the position of our flight controls. Useful for more than just checking trim positions.

Profiles: Force feedback tweaks, and the 'force sensing joystick' tweaks (I posted topic a week ago suggesting how it should work) could be useful for each aircraft. Our force feedback joystick motors are not strong. Also some hardware doesn't work that well with too much or little forces involved. Flying a heavy plane can make it function badly while a normal one is ok. Profile tweak can fix so we don't have to alt-tab each time.

Force feedback for SoW. Much better than IL-2? There's a big spring deadzone in IL-2 from the old FFB drivers, and the center of forces is always in the same place.

Trims and joystick center - This is a big topic for controllers. IL-2 trims control surface deflection directly, making it possible for us to let a spring joystick rest in at center yet still fly straight. Can even fly aircraft completely without having a joystick connected.

In real aircraft, trims only changes the forces on the stick, allowing the pilot to push the stick to a new position (required for flying straight) and keep it there without force. With the arrival of the G940 (and other existing no-absolute centering joysticks - Tarmac Aces in France make some amazing things) and probaby more to come, we could allow trims to work like real trims; change the force feedback, not the control surface deflection (they still permit the control column in game to move further during compressability though, as this cannot be simulated purely through a consumer type joystick).

If using curves with a sharp center point on the joystick it can become slightly less intuitive when the stick is off-set. If trimmed forward because of high speed (dive etc), moving the stick can give a different response to input. But (edit) we never need to move the stick far for trimming anyway (except in exterme situations, but then we are not gunning, or the plane simply cannot move much anyway due to compressability), and we don't have to use a 100% spiked curve for the joysticks. A bit flatter, larger center of the curve and it won't be noticed. The offset in our hand also makes it obvious the stick is not centered.

[Oleg Maddox]

From this point(above) will read-answer tomorrow.

[Runar]

I'm just wondering, will the 'thing' Roman uses to shoot at the Stuka with the .303 guns come with the game so we can play with it and do experiments ourselves when it is released?


I don't know if you didn't quite understand what I meant or you have some other top secret reasons for not answering my question, but I'll take a chance and ask about it again :)

[Flanker35M]

S!

Gagboy, that game sounds..umm..I rather not write down those flashes of my imagination here :D That other game sounded very interesting, maybe a version of 2010 could be made?! ;) Duke Nukem became history so now..

MikkOwl. Your ideas are good, expecially the ones with the sticks. But indicators on screen..well..maybe for testing etc. In real aircraft you can see from the trim wheel or and indicator near it the position of your trim. This in most planes. And with SoW having very detailed cockpits, from we have seen so far, this pose no problem to actually look at your trim wheel for the indication. Spitfire has this trim position Up/down in the dashboard etc.

Thank you Oleg for the respones in this thread, really interesting read :) I have one question about SoW. As it is mentioned in some interview or a website, the planes in SoW will wear in use etc. If I recall right that is. So for this, can we see the plane get dirty, the bullet holes (fixable, minor ones) and other tear & wear visible on "our" plane in outside view, for example after landing or in briefing?

Many times mechanics of FiAF mentioned the noses of the Bf109's being greyish of guns being fired and they had to clean the glasses etc. This applies to modern planes as well, seen under years how the planes gradually turn from factory fresh to dirty, paint patched more used planes today :) So possibility of dynamic dirt and show of damage etc?

There could be some nice features of the ground crew added later, but which ones are interesting for a few times and pointless to the game and those that really would matter is another issue. Maybe pilot (gamer) checks the plane before flight, the pre-flight inspection etc. Just a few..

[ECV56_Lancelot]

In real aircraft, trims only changes the forces on the stick, allowing the pilot to push the stick to a new position (required for flying straight) and keep it there without force...

I´m at work and can´t search properly for a good source to confirm what i´m stating, but i think you are mistaken. It might be true what you say with aircrafts where the stick does not have direct physical connection to the control surface, but have connection to an artificial force system. But on WW2 aircraft, and modern light airplanes, where the stick have´s direct physical connection with the control surface, using the trim does imply moving the control surface, and by doing this, you are releived of the effort of continously have to apply force over the stick.
The trim could work by moving the control surface directly, or moving a tab that moves corespondly the control surface, but triming the aircraft does imply that the control suface is moved.

[MikkOwl]

S!

Gagboy, that game sounds..umm..I rather not write down those flashes of my imagination here :D That other game sounded very interesting, maybe a version of 2010 could be made?! ;) Duke Nukem became history so now..

MikkOwl. Your ideas are good, expecially the ones with the sticks. But indicators on screen..well..maybe for testing etc. In real aircraft you can see from the trim wheel or and indicator near it the position of your trim. This in most planes. And with SoW having very detailed cockpits, from we have seen so far, this pose no problem to actually look at your trim wheel for the indication. Spitfire has this trim position Up/down in the dashboard etc.
Well that settles it. Oleg has no excuse for not permitting off-set adjustment of trims. :) The problem for him to tackle is instead: "are my SoW models awesome enough for the task? :confused:". :P And, it is optional after all. If anyone doesn't want to use it they don't have to. But anyone can benefit a lot from it with trimming, as it makes our poor little devices so much less twitchy and crazy sensitive with trimming in game. And if we reduced range to make it less twitchy, we can even get increased range again by using off-set trims (positioning the range at the 'right part of the trim' makes sure no part of axis is wasted).

I´m at work and can´t search properly for a good source to confirm what i´m stating, but i think you are mistaken. It might be true what you say with aircrafts where the stick does not have direct phisical connection to the control surface, but connection to an artificial force system. But on WW2 aircraft, and modern light airplanes, where the stick have´s direct physical connection with the control surface, using the trim does imply moving the control surface, and by doing this, you are releive of the effort of contnously have to apply force over the stick.
The trim could work by moving the control surface directly, or moving a tab the moves corespondly the control surface, but triming the aircraft does imply that the control suface is moved.
Well yes, I know about how trim tabs work, and that only describes the mechanism behind the result: as far as the control surface and stick goes, only the forces acting on the control column changes. If stick is kept centered and trim tabs are moved, nothing at all happens, the control surface does not move (only that tiny tab).

I don't know how non-trim tab aircraft function, but I am not really aware of any WW2 combat aircraft having that sort of trim. If you know of any I would be happy to read up on them.

If they move the whole surface directly, completely independant on the control column, then yes, they should be like now (just far smaller range of movement). But I'm fairly sure they are by far the exception, and that nearly all aircraft are using trim tabs.

[drafting]

Wow, this update is really incredible! As I said to a friend, it sounds like you guys are raising the bar, loading it into a cannon, and firing it into orbit! :grin:

I especially like that you'll offer even more detailed start-up procedures and cockpit controls...

Roman is busy starting up the Stuka and its systems using his mouse, clicking here an there!!! This is the first big new: the cockpit is clickable! Roman completes his starting procedure by switching the sight on and adjusting to his preferred brightness. <...> and clicks the windows de-ice button!!! <...> In full-real mode you are to operate the range of controls – from throttle to mixture, wep enablers, radiators, carb heaters – and failure to keep the engine in its limits would result in premature wear, loss of performance, and failures. This applies to all-out full real, you can change into a il-2-like simple system where you can’t damage your motors whatever you chose to do."

It sounds like we'll have our hands full! So... I really, really, really hope that we'll get descriptive, interactive tutorials! Like, have a narrator highlight the various controls, tell you what they do, and let you click them in order!

In IL2, the tutorials were just movies, and it was hard to find info on engine functions. I bet many new 109 pilots damaged their engines and never knew that they had to engage the MW50 at low power and then WEP and afterwards drop the power and then turn off the MW50. ...or maybe they didn't realize that you had to set the supercharger to the next stage at a particular altitude or else you'd lose power and your engine would run rough.

It'd be great to have a flight-school with an in-game narrator to go over what prop-pitch, radiator flaps, mixture, magnetos, etc, etc, etc, do and when you'd want to use each... It'd probably help break the ice for newbies trying to get into a complicated and daunting simulator.

[TheGrunch]

Oleg, will the onset of compressibility be modeled for every aircraft in SoW? Will each aircraft have an individual Mach number that determines when the onset of compressibility occurs if so?
Will each aircraft have its own individual structural load limit (I believe it is 13.5Gs for every aircraft in Il-2 at the moment, although I may be wrong)?
Really hoping you'll answer these questions, there's been a lot of discussion about it on the Ubi forums.
Better repost this...:)

[WhiteSnake]

Oleg, I know this may be a more technical question better suited for you programmers, can you say what sound API will be used, DirectSound3D, OpenAL or other? Windows Vista and Windows 7 no longer support sound card hardware acceleration for DirectSound3D but do support hardware acceleration with OpenAL.
As told me Rudolf Heiter(our sound engineer) when I noticed him about such a problem, he said that all there will be fine. More precise I can ask him on Monday.

I wanted to know the same thing And is there going to be 64 bit Suport (64 bit .exe) so the game can make use of more than 2GB of System Memory etc. under a 64 bit OS?

[ECV56_Lancelot]

If stick is kept centered and trim tabs are moved, nothing at all happens, the control surface does not move (only that tiny tab).

You are correct, and now i think understand the problem you are refering. The problem comes of what happens inside the sim whem we use trim, and what happens to our joystick in the real world.
I think IL-2 hadles well trim, because when you aply trim, inside the sim the virtual control surface moves, as the virtual stick. But meanwhile on the real joystick without any force feedback, you have to release the joystick so you are not adding more command that the needed and giveng by the trim, and you get the result of not having to push you joystick anymore (if its pitch trimming, for example).
But how can you make that while your real joystick is on its center position, when you apply trim, nothing must happen. You cant, because on the virtual world of the sim you are moving the tab and the control surface, and also the virtual stick.

At least that we use a force feedback joystick that when you move the trim on the sim and at the same time the real joystick chage position accordingly, i don´t see how the problem can be solved. The problem is that our joystick do not move according to the virtual stick, thay go to the center position, instead of staying on the trimmed position.

[KG26_Alpha]

I wanted to know the same thing And is there going to be 64 bit Suport (64 bit .exe) so the game can make use of more than 2GB of System Memory etc. under a 64 bit OS?

Well Rudolf Heiter has worked on Birds of Prey and way back on Forgotten Battles, and probably some projects I haven mentioned, I'm sure he knows what's required with his experience :)

[ECV56_Lancelot]

Several times i asked myself what if BoB recommend four or more gigas of RAM. Then obviously an 64 bit machine and OS will be needed.
How many people would be left out because they have a 32 bit OS?

[Flanker35M]

S!

If I got it right, SoW will have DirectX 9 mode as well and it should pose no overwhelming obstacle to anyone. DirectX 11 is the mode for all the bells and whistles aka eye candy. This is why I referred that SoW will make even a high end machine to sputter a bit if EVERYTHING is cranked up ;) More graphics and fidelity in all areas of the game = more horsepower you need to run it :) But as seen before I am sure SoW will be very scalable for many computers without suffering from looks that much. And I am sure the program can use more memory than IL-2 can :)

[MikkOwl]

Scalable architecture should make it all fine as long as we turn down settings. It would be unfeasable to sell a game in the year 2010 that requires 4 gigs of memory to run properly. I would be more worried about what kind of extreme graphical cards are needed for pushing the detail settings. It's already been said that no contemporary computers will be able to run it full on release, due to this.

[Antoninus]

They released FSX in 2006 that requires 4 GB to run properly with high end add ons. I plan to buy a new 64 bit PC soon after BOB is released. 64 Bit is the future and this future is very close. Most new PCs are delivered with 64 Bit windows version now. According to the latest Steam hardware survey 2/3 of all Windows 7 versions are already 64 Bit. Since SOW series should last for 10 years a 64 bit .exe will probably be necessary sooner than later to stay competitive. Of course most people still use 32 Bit operating system so any sim released this year should support it. Maybe in aspect it's a bad time to release anything that should last for years now, when transition from 32 to 64 bit is underway at full steam.

[MikkOwl]

You are correct, and now i think understand the problem you are refering. The problem comes of what happens inside the sim whem we use trim, and what happens to our joystick in the real world.
I think IL-2 hadles well trim, because when you aply trim, inside the sim the virtual control surface moves, as the virtual stick. But meanwhile on the real joystick without any force feedback, you have to release the joystick so you are not adding more command that the needed and giveng by the trim, and you get the result of not having to push you joystick anymore (if its pitch trimming, for example).
But how can you make that while your real joystick is on its center position, when you apply trim, nothing must happen. You cant, because on the virtual world of the sim you are moving the tab and the control surface, and also the virtual stick.

At least that we use a force feedback joystick that when you move the trim on the sim and at the same time the real joystick chage position accordingly, i don´t see how the problem can be solved. The problem is that our joystick do not move according to the virtual stick, thay go to the center position, instead of staying on the trimmed position.
I don't see any reason why Storm of War would have to use IL-2's trim and joystick system. If a force feedback stick is detected and we choose to use this real-trim behaviour, then the control column in the simulator will move only from movement of the joystick. Trims will change the force feedback only (and permit the control column to move more when controls start to freeze up at high speed, just like in IL-2).

[ECV56_Lancelot]

Graphical scalability is more "easy" that cpu and ram scalability. I mean, you can reduce number of polys, texture quality, viewing distance, and lots of graphical related things to make the sim run on a lower en graphic card. But for number of objects you NEED ram and cpu power. RAM for handle all the moving and fixed objects, and don´t have an slide show because of continuous reading the hard disk for loading fixed objects, and CPU power for handle all the physics and AI of all those objects. And at least that the user edit manually every mission, we can assume that the numbers of objects of a particular mission are the same on every pc, so also assuming that you have similar cpu power that can handle lots of aircraft, if you make a realistic mission where you have hundreds of planes and ground objects, not to mention building on citys, RAM becomes a very serious issue, specially if you have OS RAM limit.
Still, seeing from other perspective, right now with il2 1946 we have big maps with thousand of objects, and most people still have 32 bit OS systems, and RAM doesn´t seem to be a problem on missions, the problem is usually cpu power or graphical, so probably RAM OS system wouldn´t be a problem to have the optimum system.

[Foo'bar]

Hi Oleg and teamwork guys!!!:-P

- Question: Will be there a Ju 52? I dont see it by any side, and the Junkers 52 was omnipresent in all war campaigns.
thx

In 2005 we've already seen these two. No further process reported since then, though I think the models have already been finished.

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/ju-52_03.jpghttp://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/ju-52_01.jpg

[dce21b]

7. To add new calsses of controlable units in the game (cars, tanks, ships, u-boats, maybe even human as a first person... ). But this tool will be relased as the last from our side and for this we will need a time. The most complex.

Then... at the same time we should make own next sim. The next will be separate sim, but it will be possible to install as a merged version with previous one... Experience show me that this is the only one right way.
With new sim we will add new features (like in the past). Half or the models already done for the new sim so probably you may calculate what the sim it should be. Can't name you... because everything may happens... And in reality we was planning two sims right after BoB.... Maybe this also happens. All will depends of success or no success on the market with BoB. Hope success... everything will be fine then. I even can image how fine and how great will be life of this project :):):) Then I can to retire on a pension :):):):) after some 10 years of SoW success :):)


Hi Oleg I'm a stalker on forums usually just read a lot and ask a question from time to time so I would just like to say hello and say how wonderful your products are.

With what you are saying is possible as far as adding vehicles and people etc have you ever thought of maybe the next add on would be for ground warfare? I have read somewhere that you are allowing Human controlled AAA on airfields which is really cool.

What I am getting at is that sims for all niches are hard to sell and be profitable and If it were possible to make the community explode by having an all in one game like World War 2 online. It is so hard to find a game where all aspects can be represented.

Sometimes I will crash near a target area and just hang out to watch the AI tank battles etc and think how cool it would be if I could be in control of that King Tiger on the hill pushing through to capture a town and its airfield.

We are living in amazing times and technology is advancing everyday, IL2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles has lasted 10 years and still looks and plays great. So with a life expectancy of maybe another 10 great years would this be possible?

I know some people would say that this type of game, with this type of detail, would take to much resources. But what if the add-ons you released were stand alone as well.

For instance perhaps you are a tank simmer and you have no interest in flying at all you just want to drive tanks etc. You could buy Tubruk, Operation Barbarossa or how ever you wanted the timeline to go.

Im not sure how well the game would look to troops on ground level but you could have their stand alone adapt for them where as all the graphics and mechanics of the game would be geared for "tank simulation". And it would be able to interact with SOW.

Where as all the flight mechanics wouldnt be needed and could be instead be replace with the tanks. Then for online play the way the missions are setup you could just have the tanks spawn in a staging area on the map where as not to be too far from the frontline. Possible have tanks be AI controlled unless taken over by Human. Have breakthroughs where your line crumbles from not enough air support and now your pilots have to stop the blitzkrieg from reaching the town.... the possibilities are endless.

Point being is you make such a quality game if you could unite the differents sim communities together in one package with high quality sims that work together it would be amazing. Then that for sure would garuntee the success of the game. Imaging if you add human soldiers you would get lots of FPS players to the game. Not only supporting a great sim but helping to grow the community. Even naval warfare is possible.

How sweet would it be if you could have a Normandy scenario where everything was alive take your posion... invade or defend the beaches bombard the beaches with your ships strafing the beaches in your 109.

Wow Im rambling sorry its just that this has been a dream of mine for so long and I hope to see the day it comes true. I just know it will but when.

[Rodolphe42]

...

Guys, need some "intel" about those two equipments ?

I would greatly appreciate .


http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/b636aea3.jpg


http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/0bd5c3a8.jpg

...

[Oleg Maddox]

Hi Oleg and teamwork guys!!!:-P

-Suggestion:

will be there a option for a 1/1 scale cockpits view?
(for the cockpitbuilders)

- Question: Will be there a Ju 52? I dont see it by any side, and the Junkers 52 was omnipresent in all war campaigns.


A GREETING :grin:

PD: In this site you found very interesting photos of BF 109 in Spanish civil war:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/394728/message/1211917803/Messerschmitt+BF-109-+Primeros+ejemplares+en+Espa%F1a+-+Parte+5

thx

Suggestion. Didn't understand you question about scale 1/1.

Question: Ju-52 - will be. AI

thanks for the link

[Oleg Maddox]

...

Guys, need some "intel" about those two equipments ?

I would greatly appreciate .


http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/b636aea3.jpg


http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/0bd5c3a8.jpg

...

these are elements of German system of radars.

[Oleg Maddox]

many good news this week ,

also can we have wreck of plane , boat , vehicule , bom crater , smoke , haze of smoke when massive bombing or blitz etc ...., all of that which d' ont disappear after a few time but stay during all the mission ?

it's will be shame to not see your nice DM during the party and better for immersion but not good for fps :grin:, also perhaps a game option ?

Maybe in time. There is some problems with such features in continues buttles (sigle or online. At least possible to make special models - damages and lace them as an objects , add smoke , etc... But in automatic code - don't know yet. this is a geat work with additional models (various damaged).

[Oleg Maddox]

How many of the aircraft in SoW have visible functional trims in the cockpit? Real pilots could probably see this before take off and in flight. Then our off-set makes no difference and causes no problems (it does in IL-2, because IL-2 often does not have these cockpit details). When airborne we can just see or feel if we need to trim so center doesn't even matter there.

Optional helper: Small, transparent pop-up window (at any time) showing the position of our flight controls. Useful for more than just checking trim positions.

Profiles: Force feedback tweaks, and the 'force sensing joystick' tweaks (I posted topic a week ago suggesting how it should work) could be useful for each aircraft. Our force feedback joystick motors are not strong. Also some hardware doesn't work that well with too much or little forces involved. Flying a heavy plane can make it function badly while a normal one is ok. Profile tweak can fix so we don't have to alt-tab each time.

Force feedback for SoW. Much better than IL-2? There's a big spring deadzone in IL-2 from the old FFB drivers, and the center of forces is always in the same place.

Trims and joystick center - This is a big topic for controllers. IL-2 trims control surface deflection directly, making it possible for us to let a spring joystick rest in at center yet still fly straight. Can even fly aircraft completely without having a joystick connected.

In real aircraft, trims only changes the forces on the stick, allowing the pilot to push the stick to a new position (required for flying straight) and keep it there without force. With the arrival of the G940 (and other existing no-absolute centering joysticks - Tarmac Aces in France make some amazing things) and probaby more to come, we could allow trims to work like real trims; change the force feedback, not the control surface deflection (they still permit the control column in game to move further during compressability though, as this cannot be simulated purely through a consumer type joystick).

If using curves with a sharp center point on the joystick it can become slightly less intuitive when the stick is off-set. If trimmed forward because of high speed (dive etc), moving the stick can give a different response to input. But (edit) we never need to move the stick far for trimming anyway (except in exterme situations, but then we are not gunning, or the plane simply cannot move much anyway due to compressability), and we don't have to use a 100% spiked curve for the joysticks. A bit flatter, larger center of the curve and it won't be noticed. The offset in our hand also makes it obvious the stick is not centered.

The features of this is freezed already. Open was only about trims.

[Oleg Maddox]

Better repost this...:)

There is different in Il-2 and in BoB. In I-2 just for some parts was selected identical. There was a limit.... say mustang wouldn't fly at some maneuvers without damage of spars.... 6 G.... was limit in technical manual.

[Oleg Maddox]

S!


Thank you Oleg for the respones in this thread, really interesting read :) I have one question about SoW. As it is mentioned in some interview or a website, the planes in SoW will wear in use etc. If I recall right that is. So for this, can we see the plane get dirty, the bullet holes (fixable, minor ones) and other tear & wear visible on "our" plane in outside view, for example after landing or in briefing?

Many times mechanics of FiAF mentioned the noses of the Bf109's being greyish of guns being fired and they had to clean the glasses etc. This applies to modern planes as well, seen under years how the planes gradually turn from factory fresh to dirty, paint patched more used planes today :) So possibility of dynamic dirt and show of damage etc?

There could be some nice features of the ground crew added later, but which ones are interesting for a few times and pointless to the game and those that really would matter is another issue. Maybe pilot (gamer) checks the plane before flight, the pre-flight inspection etc. Just a few..

Yes we have this feature in code. In time from mission to mission the plane looks older. But of coure it isn't 100% real life changes. Just approximation. But looks superb and add immersion

That to make inspecition we should add a lot of other features of unprepared or prepared for the flight aircraft. Then it will have sense. But we don't plan to go in this direction. It is too complex code in terms of time cration and don't have too good effect on the gameplay if to calculate ration time/money = final effect

For any feature is some calculation in these terms. In two words - how much cost and what the result...

[Freycinet]

HB252, thanks for the link to Spanish civil War Messerschmitts, some great pics there! Lovely photo of Mölders and really funny photo of the two 109s with broken landing gear. If they had only learnt from that they would not have had so much trouble with the 109 in WWII...

Oleg, now you have had a chance to see the wonderful comics by Romain Hugault. Incredible, aren´t they? I really think you should consider having him work with you. He is very happy to do work outside of comic books, and he knows your sims too. He could do some magnificent illustration for SoW-BoB in a very momorable and unique style.
- His blog:
http://romain-hugault.blogspot.com/
- Cover of his latest album, girls and planes, what more can you ask for!:
http://rhugault.free.fr/images/bd/PW2couv.jpg

BTW, if you go to rome one day, you should really see the Italian air force museum at Vigna di Valle. Quite a few well-preserved WWII types there, I think you would find it interesting... ;)
- Panorama of one of the halls:
http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd80/cenciotti/panoramiche%20high/Vigna-di-Valle-2009.jpg
- more pics:
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?placesearch=Vigna+di+Valle+-+Seaplane+(LIRB)+(closed)
- Info and link to home page:
http://luftfahrtmuseum.com/htmi/imh/iva.htm

[tagTaken2]

Will there be an upper altitude and speed limits on the SoW engine?

Cheers.

[Oleg Maddox]

Several times i asked myself what if BoB recommend four or more gigas of RAM. Then obviously an 64 bit machine and OS will be needed.
How many people would be left out because they have a 32 bit OS?

Currently 3 Gb RAM minimum for running the game. More - beter.
Waht will be final specs... can't say. Maybe 4 minimum. I'm unsure.
Sure that if there will be more greater size map with the same level of the details - then we will need really more RAM if we would like to play smooth.
We try to optimize everything and keep balance in that.

[Snake_C6]

I have only one thing to say ....
Thank you Oleg to take time to answer the questions of the community !!!

:grin:

[Oleg Maddox]

Will there be an upper altitude and speed limits on the SoW engine?

Cheers.

Didn't understand. If you speaking about some unprecise things in IL-2 over 10,000 meters then I would say that SoW has totally new physics engine.

[Freycinet]

It is really very hard task but my target.
At the moment we can't begin with civilian big aircraft. There is not some special features that are neccessary for modeling such aircraft and envirouments (modern radar system, speeches, etc)
But....
Right at the time when we will release first tools will be possible to make:

1. Sport piston engine aircraft
2. Almost any or any piston engine or multi engines aircraft of WWII time
3. envirouments, including new ground objects that will corresponds to that time (cars, ships, U-boats, tanks, rail road cars and many other things...)
4. to make own campagin engines, including for online. As a separate modules, that are using our API.
6. To program new devices for aircaft and other technics (this will happens a bit later that all above).
7. To add new calsses of controlable units in the game (cars, tanks, ships, u-boats, maybe even human as a first person... ). But this tool will be relased as the last from our side and for this we will need a time. The most complex.

Then... at the same time we should make own next sim. The next will be separate sim, but it will be possible to install as a merged version with previous one... Experience show me that this is the only one right way.
With new sim we will add new features (like in the past). Half or the models already done for the new sim so probably you may calculate what the sim it should be. Can't name you... because everything may happens... And in reality we was planning two sims right after BoB.... Maybe this also happens. All will depends of success or no success on the market with BoB. Hope success... everything will be fine then. I even can image how fine and how great will be life of this project :):):) Then I can to retire on a pension :):):):) after some 10 years of SoW success :):)

I know it is a big task, but who else is there to pick it up? ;)

MS threw the hat in the ring, Austin Myers is doing his (great) thing but doesn´t seem too interested in systems modelling of more complex planes. But that is exactly the point: systems modelling of complex modern planes CANNOT be made by the same guy who makes a civil flight sim "back-bone". It MUST be outsourced to 3rd party developers, who will flock in if they get the right engine to work with.

As Obama learned in politics: If you are a small player, it is necessary to start a MOVEMENT, not just do all yourself, or with a small staff. If SoW can become a civil sim backbone, then giving the right instruments to 3rd party developers could possible create a catalyst effect, and we would have Take-Off!

From what I see in the Spitfire vid and elsewhere, SoW has the technical capacities in-built for professional developers to create content. The requirements are too high for amateur developers like the third-party scene around Il-2, but professionals who can actually earn money selling add-ons should be able to work with it, I guess. Just get some translators to work on documentation (very important!) and change the name of the engine (SoW is too warlike).

[tagTaken2]

Didn't understand. If you speaking about some unprecise things in IL-2 over 10,000 meters then I would say that SoW has totally new physics engine.

Sorry, asking if SoW engine will support space flight parameters, very very high altitude and speed.

Example, in future, would it be possible to do X-15 expansion properly with this engine?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

Thanks.

[MikkOwl]

The features of this is freezed already. Open was only about trims.
Frozen, ok :) But I was asking: force feedback taking any step forward (significantly) compared to IL-2? And then I made a wishlist request on how it could/should behave. :-P

[Oleg Maddox]

HB252, thanks for the link to Spanish civil War Messerschmitts, some great pics there! Lovely photo of Mölders and really funny photo of the two 109s with broken landing gear. If they had only learnt from that they would not have had so much trouble with the 109 in WWII...

Oleg, now you have had a chance to see the wonderful comics by Romain Hugault. Incredible, aren´t they? I really think you should consider having him work with you. He is very happy to do work outside of comic books, and he knows your sims too. He could do some magnificent illustration for SoW-BoB in a very momorable and unique style.
- His blog:
http://romain-hugault.blogspot.com/
- Cover of his latest album, girls and planes, what more can you ask for!:
http://rhugault.free.fr/images/bd/PW2couv.jpg

BTW, if you go to rome one day, you should really see the Italian air force museum at Vigna di Valle. Quite a few well-preserved WWII types there, I think you would find it interesting... ;)
- Panorama of one of the halls:
http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd80/cenciotti/panoramiche%20high/Vigna-di-Valle-2009.jpg
- more pics:
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?placesearch=Vigna+di+Valle+-+Seaplane+(LIRB)+(closed)
- Info and link to home page:
http://luftfahrtmuseum.com/htmi/imh/iva.htm


Thanks for the links. Sad, I never was in Italy. Just my wife was there several times with our son. If I will be there - of course aircraft museums are my target to visit. I do it simply in every country if there is such museum.

Comics I saw alive :)

[Oleg Maddox]

Frozen, ok :) But I was asking: force feedback taking any step forward (significantly) compared to IL-2? And then I made a wishlist request on how it could/should behave. :-P

Can't say you right now. We put it in the final development.
As for my personal opinion - FF doesn't reflect real things. No one existed. And in realistic flight sim really FF is more bad then the good feature comparing to real life.

So the work over FF is the very secondary in our plan. This should be important for totally arcade game.

In the past I tried to communicate with all manufactures of FF joysticks to make some standard in forces, that would reflect more realistic things... Really only Trustmaster and partially Saitek were listening me in the past.

Hope with BoB this communication will be again up and probably we may set the stadards in future. But untill that time to spend a lot of time for FF I personally very dislike.

This should be done by some third party - special driver for any FF joy.
Manufactures should follow that standard (non MS SDK code, that we were using in the past with Il-2). Should be tunable special separate tool not in the sim, only external.

I can't spend right now time to explain all my thoughts about this issue.

You should talk to real pilots asking their opinion about joys with FF.
Probably they will say the same... also they would say that Joystick do not replace real control column 100% in feel of aircraft control.

With some of manufactures we had in the past the speech about what should be done for realistic control column useful in flight sims... But the price would be really more higher... and effect on the market (to sell it) will be not so successfull.

However I have several good ideas and drawings how to make it with more or less commercial success. But for this - SoW should be on a horse...

[Flanker35M]

S!

Thank you for the answer, that covered it all. I agree on the checklist etc. IT is a lot of work to implement correctly as you would have to know the procedures Luftwaffe, RAF and others used for their checks. And investing time for research it, code and implement = not worth it in terms of returns it gives. And most users would not use the feature after a few times anyway. So best is to just implement those that are used, not too hard to implement and give immersion to the sim.

Museums..you should visit some plane museums in Finland too, some nice planes to see. I have great interest in the VL Pyörremyrsky (Typhoon) and if it could be done for IL-2, we took pics and such at museum last time visited. 1 was made and it flew 27h and 31 flights. Performance surpassed Bf109G in climb and turn easily, speed was somewhat the same.

I am sure Ville and Raimo did speak about them when meeting you. Boy was I green in face when they showed the pics and told how it was :D Maybe some day could haul my son and myself to Moscow, Monino would be great to see and MAKS :)

[Oleg Maddox]

Hi Oleg I'm a stalker on forums usually just read a lot and ask a question from time to time so I would just like to say hello and say how wonderful your products are.

With what you are saying is possible as far as adding vehicles and people etc have you ever thought of maybe the next add on would be for ground warfare? I have read somewhere that you are allowing Human controlled AAA on airfields which is really cool.

What I am getting at is that sims for all niches are hard to sell and be profitable and If it were possible to make the community explode by having an all in one game like World War 2 online. It is so hard to find a game where all aspects can be represented.

Sometimes I will crash near a target area and just hang out to watch the AI tank battles etc and think how cool it would be if I could be in control of that King Tiger on the hill pushing through to capture a town and its airfield.

We are living in amazing times and technology is advancing everyday, IL2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles has lasted 10 years and still looks and plays great. So with a life expectancy of maybe another 10 great years would this be possible?

I know some people would say that this type of game, with this type of detail, would take to much resources. But what if the add-ons you released were stand alone as well.

For instance perhaps you are a tank simmer and you have no interest in flying at all you just want to drive tanks etc. You could buy Tubruk, Operation Barbarossa or how ever you wanted the timeline to go.

Im not sure how well the game would look to troops on ground level but you could have their stand alone adapt for them where as all the graphics and mechanics of the game would be geared for "tank simulation". And it would be able to interact with SOW.

Where as all the flight mechanics wouldnt be needed and could be instead be replace with the tanks. Then for online play the way the missions are setup you could just have the tanks spawn in a staging area on the map where as not to be too far from the frontline. Possible have tanks be AI controlled unless taken over by Human. Have breakthroughs where your line crumbles from not enough air support and now your pilots have to stop the blitzkrieg from reaching the town.... the possibilities are endless.

Point being is you make such a quality game if you could unite the differents sim communities together in one package with high quality sims that work together it would be amazing. Then that for sure would garuntee the success of the game. Imaging if you add human soldiers you would get lots of FPS players to the game. Not only supporting a great sim but helping to grow the community. Even naval warfare is possible.

How sweet would it be if you could have a Normandy scenario where everything was alive take your posion... invade or defend the beaches bombard the beaches with your ships strafing the beaches in your 109.

Wow Im rambling sorry its just that this has been a dream of mine for so long and I hope to see the day it comes true. I just know it will but when.

I hope that in time some of listed of your dreams will be possible.
Its way aleady in BoB we put so many ground objects, AI for them...
Simply because BoB shouldn't be limited only for battles over channel.
It is important for online gameplay, for other than channel scenarios, developed by users and of course by third party.
It is important for futures modifications...

You also should understand that we unable to make everything by our small team.
Say... that to contro tank there should "cockpit", system modeling, charging shells system and o on, control system ... and... command interaction with other such units doesn't matter AI or player controlled.... It is simply sim in the sim.
But it is possible in future if, i will reapeat:

1. Success of BoB.
2. Support for and from third party
3. Probably understanding of publishers or other owners of my team to invest in that direction even with separate team inside. 1C has other teams... but they are busy with other projects. That is a problem.

So without item 3 - just part of my and you(all) dreams are possible...
Howver is possible licensing of engine and work in cooperation with other teams...
But it shouldn't be like it was in the past with Il-2 where finally we simply gave sourse code for nothing....

[Freycinet]

Regarding the civil flight sim, I realise it is probably too much to start a huge, big project covering all the Earth and complex airliners.

But, what about a smaller project based on SoW, which would open up the eyes to the 3rd party scene regarding the potential to work with the engine?

A small modern sim showing off superior modelling of flight, weather, landscape.

OK, I will admit, I already have one idea in mind :) But I will keep it to email, I think. "You´ve got mail" at your 1c.ru-address.

[MikkOwl]

Can't say you right now. We put it in the final development.
As for my personal opinion - FF doesn't reflect real things. No one existed. And in realistic flight sim really FF is more bad then the good feature comparing to real life.

So the work over FF is the very secondary in our plan. This should be important for totally arcade game.

In the past I tried to communicate with all manufactures of FF joysticks to make some standard in forces, that would reflect more realistic things... Really only Trustmaster and partially Saitek were listening me in the past.

Hope with BoB this communication will be again up and probably we may set the stadards in future. But untill that time to spend a lot of time for FF I personally very dislike.

This should be done by some third party - special driver for any FF joy.
Manufactures should follow that standard (non MS SDK code, that we were using in the past with Il-2). Should be tunable special separate tool not in the sim, only external.

I can't spend right now time to explain all my thoughts about this issue.

You should talk to real pilots asking their opinion about joys with FF.
Probably they will say the same... also they would say that Joystick do not replace real control column 100% in feel of aircraft control.

With some of manufactures we had in the past the speech about what should be done for realistic control column useful in flight sims... But the price would be really more higher... and effect on the market (to sell it) will be not so successfull.

However I have several good ideas and drawings how to make it with more or less commercial success. But for this - SoW should be on a horse...
Agree that there should be standards. Third party tweaking - hmm. Sure, why not. It can allow specialists, or the manufacturers themselves, to tweak things to suit their hardware. Users too. Instead of having to rely on game developers to work with specialized hardware OR having 'one size fits all' force feedback which is not ideal either.

I have a personal story that I want to relay regarding the topic of force feedback. I like racing simulators, and racing around a bit in real life as well (especially in the past). The force feedback wheels used to be very crappy. The racing sims did not use even that old hardware well either. Back then, maybe I thought a bit like you, that it just isn't close enough to a real car and is even worse in many ways. But then comes some better simulators using hardware, and then the Logitech G25. It completely changed things. I have it now and it really turned force feedback from something clumsy and badly flawed into the most realistic option (for consumer price range).

Flight sims are the same now (SoW not yet released) with force feedback as 9 years ago. Maybe even worse. Manufacturers have not done anything for force feedback sticks over this whole time, except some optimizations (quieter, smaller etc). Only Logitech's G940 which just came out advanced the hardware noticably. But the market is empty of flight sims that use the hardware.

And think about what you said: you asked me to ask pilots what they think of force feedback joysticks with sims in the year 2001, not what it can be with existing hardware. If I ask racers what they thought of FF wheels with sims from the year 2001 they would also say it is horrible compared to reality. It is not a sound argument against force feedback for flight sims. You have such an innovative approach; I think you might have overlooked how the new hardware can be used, dismissing it based on how it was like in the year 2001.

EDIT: Maybe I was a bit unfair. You did point out that you cannot relay all thoughts on it, and that you have tried to make the manufacturers more responsible for allowing better force feedback programming (not just the hardware itself in the past) etc. I hope SoW will bring something new with FF to the market because that sort of thing is needed to get FF advancing. Only having hardware, or only software without hardware, does not bring it forward well.

[Flanker35M]

S!

Freycinet, maybe 1930-1940's airlines first as many are there..like Ju52 for Lufthansa, DC2/3 for others, Dragon Rapide..We already would have maps of that era with SoW :) Just a thought..then later expand to more modern days..

[SlipBall]

(quote)
And think about what you said: you asked me to ask pilots what they think of force feedback joysticks with sims in the year 2001



I think what he meant was to ask real pilots about stick forces in real aircraft...ff is very arcade and unreal in flight sim:)

[Freycinet]

Good idea Flanker! - Maybe it won´t be a big sell, though, it is a rather specialised subject...

Oleg, you write that "Support for and from third party" is essential. Yes, and the most important thing is TRANSLATED support documentation. Translated by mother-tongue English-speaker.

I have seen that this small but crucial step is often missing from Russian sim developement teams. Neoqb didn´t get it done either.

Translation work should be done now. Doesn´t matter that the programs will change later on, the documentation can be updated later (as a living document online). The big 95% of translation work should be done now. Please dedicate half a day to hire someone to get it done...

[MikkOwl]

(quote)
I think what he meant was to ask real pilots about stick forces in real aircraft...ff is very arcade and unreal in flight sim:)
Yeah, and who makes those sims? :-P There has been no (flight) sims to make advances in the programming of force feedback and only recently any real hardware advances. Racing games have more mass appeal than flying, yet they also had loads of bad FF devices and sims not using it that well. It's only in the past 3 years or so that it made a huge (really huge) jump forward. So to ask pilots what they think of FF joysticks with flightsims, is to ask what they think about how it was like in 2001 basically. Of course it will be pretty negative. EDIT: And most things are unreal and arcade with our consumer grade sim gear, as I pointed out. Yet we think they are better than going even lower, like go back to keyboard and mouse because spring joystick just doesn't behave like a real control column etc.

[dce21b]

I hope that in time some of listed of your dreams will be possible.
Its way aleady in BoB we put so many ground objects, AI for them...
Simply because BoB shouldn't be limited only for battles over channel.
It is important for online gameplay, for other than channel scenarios, developed by users and of course by third party.
It is important for futures modifications...

You also should understand that we unable to make everything by our small team.
Say... that to contro tank there should "cockpit", system modeling, charging shells system and o on, control system ... and... command interaction with other such units doesn't matter AI or player controlled.... It is simply sim in the sim.
But it is possible in future if, i will reapeat:

1. Success of BoB.
2. Support for and from third party
3. Probably understanding of publishers or other owners of my team to invest in that direction even with separate team inside. 1C has other teams... but they are busy with other projects. That is a problem.

So without item 3 - just part of my and you(all) dreams are possible...
Howver is possible licensing of engine and work in cooperation with other teams...
But it shouldn't be like it was in the past with Il-2 where finally we simply gave sourse code for nothing....


Just so everyone understands what I wish for is a quality in all aspects of a game. The one thing that erks me about WWIIOnline is that the flight model of planes is childish and the FPS aspect of it is primative I only enjoy the armor in that game.

When you say its sim on sim I understand that then maybe yes it wouldnt be to much to have all at once since it is already there. But the manpower to make it all work and to share your hard work with someone for nothing doesnt make much business sense either.

But if you were able to make an arrangement with a 3rd party such as Gaviteam the makers of STEEL FURY that benifited both parties and added more to SOW why not.... thats a big IF of course.
\
They too are a small team and have a wonderful tank sim which can be found here http://graviteam.com/games/steel-fury-kharkov1942.html

Maybe it would be possible that since you both have a quality sim you could team up together.

LoL im such the match maker anyways I know its all far fetched and its alot easier to say it then to do it. But like I was saying the people that play SOW and Steel Fury are hardcore simmers that demand the best. And since it is after relatively a small niche in the game market if you could put multiple great sims into one it would benifit both parties.

[JVM]

The requirements are too high for amateur developers like the third-party scene around Il-2, but professionals who can actually earn money selling add-ons should be able to work with it, I guess. Just get some translators to work on documentation (very important!) and change the name of the engine (SoW is too warlike).

You have a really low opinion of "amateurs"...Most often "amateurs" are professionals in other ways and understand what it means to start, drive and complete a project and in consequence some of them can perfectly tackle add-ons for SoW...

Most of the "professionals" in MSFS third-parties have started as "amateurs" (you have to start at one point!), and many top-level add-ons for MSFS are from "amateurs" and will give nothing in quality to any of the professional ones...

Another advantage of being an "amateur" is that you are not in for the money but only out of passion, of willingness to prove something etc...this allows them to explore ways which would be too costly in time for the developer for an unforeseeable result, and/or to not be constrained by time considerations!

Give everybody a chance at it and be prepared to be surprised...and also to get some sub-standard stuff but that's the name of the game!

JV

[Oleg Maddox]

You have a really low opinion of "amateurs"...Most often "amateurs" are professionals in other ways and understand what it means to start, drive and complete a project and in consequence some of them can perfectly tackle add-ons for SoW...

Most of the "professionals" in MSFS third-parties have started as "amateurs" (you have to start at one point!), and many top-level add-ons for MSFS are from "amateurs" and will give nothing in quality to any of the professional ones...

Another advantage of being an "amateur" is that you are not in for the money but only out of passion, of willingness to prove something etc...this allows them to explore ways which would be too costly in time for the developer for an unforeseeable result, and/or to not be constrained by time considerations!

Give everybody a chance at it and be prepared to be surprised...and also to get some sub-standard stuff but that's the name of the game!

JV

Perfect words!

I would add just following:

To make the base - the first game or sim with special tools that allowing third party to make additional content is way more profesional work than to make additional content...
To develop the base code of engine and its initial main features is way more different and more complex than to modify it....

You can be professional creator of add-on, but you can't make the main thing - the engine and its features.

Investments in development of the main code around which all the things doing third party isn't even close in comparison to investments of third party. By other words... to add something in already ready advanced product isn't the same as to develope from zero this advanced product.

Simply people should understand this great difference.

[Oleg Maddox]

Just so everyone understands what I wish for is a quality in all aspects of a game. The one thing that erks me about WWIIOnline is that the flight model of planes is childish and the FPS aspect of it is primative I only enjoy the armor in that game.

When you say its sim on sim I understand that then maybe yes it wouldnt be to much to have all at once since it is already there. But the manpower to make it all work and to share your hard work with someone for nothing doesnt make much business sense either.

But if you were able to make an arrangement with a 3rd party such as Gaviteam the makers of STEEL FURY that benifited both parties and added more to SOW why not.... thats a big IF of course.
\
They too are a small team and have a wonderful tank sim which can be found here http://graviteam.com/games/steel-fury-kharkov1942.html

Maybe it would be possible that since you both have a quality sim you could team up together.

LoL im such the match maker anyways I know its all far fetched and its alot easier to say it then to do it. But like I was saying the people that play SOW and Steel Fury are hardcore simmers that demand the best. And since it is after relatively a small niche in the game market if you could put multiple great sims into one it would benifit both parties.

Mergin of two different base codes isn't possible. Cooperation could only be by other way: SoW is the main... others can add or in cooperation with us to make cockpits for tanks etc.... that will corresponding to our engine features or programmed by us additional features.

Then online code will define everything if we would like to "get all in one"

True not so easy.... and direct merge is impossible.

[Oleg Maddox]

Good idea Flanker! - Maybe it won´t be a big sell, though, it is a rather specialised subject...

Oleg, you write that "Support for and from third party" is essential. Yes, and the most important thing is TRANSLATED support documentation. Translated by mother-tongue English-speaker.

I have seen that this small but crucial step is often missing from Russian sim developement teams. Neoqb didn´t get it done either.

Translation work should be done now. Doesn´t matter that the programs will change later on, the documentation can be updated later (as a living document online). The big 95% of translation work should be done now. Please dedicate half a day to hire someone to get it done...

We have Ilya, native american guy. He is superb writer. Probably it will be his personal additional work.

[Freycinet]

We have Ilya, native american guy. He is superb writer. Probably it will be his personal additional work.

And maybe Ian Boys can give a hand too... ;)

Ok, sorry JVM, I didn't mean to belittle amateurs, I love much of their work. But I was talking about for-sale add-on work, which - by definition - is not done by amateurs, but by people who are paid for their work.

For sure amateurs are doing great 3rd party work. But on an un-paid basis, I think it isn't realistic to have an amateur do more than maybe a few models at the standards demanded by the SoW engine (lod's, damage modelling, weathering, etc, etc.). For a whole add-on package a more professional business set-up would be required.

[Flanker35M]

S!

I see your point Freycinet. But a so called amateur, no pun here, can make a lot if he/she has proper documentation and specifications on the standards required for the job. Hard to do anything if info is vague and you have no real clue what is required. Sure it could take a bit longer from this individual than from a dedicated team, but good instructions take you a long way already.

SoW will be the base for everything when released. Oleg & Team have a base with all the tools required, a ready graphics/physics engine, the knowledge and professionalism. With time it will expand, as have many other games done, for example EVE Online. Even from a different planet literally, this game is continually expanding. So why would SoW be any different in this matter. And this time with SoW Oleg & Team have all the experience from IL-2 and the lessons learned from there. So it gives a huge advantage.

It will be really hard to let go of IL-2 as it has grown on me for the last almost 10 years. Like did EAW before it. But good thing is that IL2 still gets support from TD and Oleg so it will co-exist with SoW quite a time still :)

Good times ahead for sure..

[Skoshi Tiger]

S!

It will be really hard to let go of IL-2 as it has grown on me for the last almost 10 years. Like did EAW before it. But good thing is that IL2 still gets support from TD and Oleg so it will co-exist with SoW quite a time still :)

Good times ahead for sure..

I think that even if SoW is all that we hope and expect it to be, IL2 will be on our hard drives for many years to come. It's still looking good!

As more expansion packs and 3rd Party additions are released for SoW, we will just play Il2 a little bit less until gradually the SOW series fills all our requirements and areas of interest.

Until about a year ago I had copies of Janes WWII fighters installed on my home network and used it to "introduce" my nephews to flight sims. They were only six and eight at the time and we used to play co-ops. It was only after I made my latest computer that I realised that as the boys had got older we were playing IL2 more often and hadn't touched WWII Fighters for a while so I didn't try to get it working on my new PC.

Cheers!

[Flanker35M]

S!

Exactly Skoshi, IL-2 will co-exist until SoW will have more than just BoB. IL-2 has it all and more right away and in a package that is STILL playable and looks good. SoW will eventually phase out IL-2, but not in a year or two. TD's new additions help with this as well. It was one helluva slick move to get TD work on IL-2 to ensure longevity for it until SoW gets on full speed with additions :D

[dce21b]

Mergin of two different base codes isn't possible. Cooperation could only be by other way: SoW is the main... others can add or in cooperation with us to make cockpits for tanks etc.... that will corresponding to our engine features or programmed by us additional features.

Then online code will define everything if we would like to "get all in one"

True not so easy.... and direct merge is impossible.

I understand what you mean about the code what I was suggesting was that since their are people out there with this work done as far as all the armor values, true ballistics data, modeled interiors and optics etc. that they could add their work to your exsisting models and suggest how the characteristics should be. See how you guys are the experts at flight maybe not so much for other stuff.

Because like you said its alot of work to do but if most of its is done or at least all the data was there and needed to be remodeled for SOW engine it could be done. Steel fury also has a good mod community that has made some excelent mods.

Perhaps you could take a poll or ask your team members how they fell just to see if people are interested in the idea and its worth pursuing.

[Bobb4]

I think that even if SoW is all that we hope and expect it to be, IL2 will be on our hard drives for many years to come. It's still looking good!

As more expansion packs and 3rd Party additions are released for SoW, we will just play Il2 a little bit less until gradually the SOW series fills all our requirements and areas of interest.

Until about a year ago I had copies of Janes WWII fighters installed on my home network and used it to "introduce" my nephews to flight sims. They were only six and eight at the time and we used to play co-ops. It was only after I made my latest computer that I realised that as the boys had got older we were playing IL2 more often and hadn't touched WWII Fighters for a while so I didn't try to get it working on my new PC.

Cheers!

I do not share that view. I wish it was true though. Let's face it once you fly the next generation sim (SOW) in this case you will be left expecting more that IL2 can offer. What I expect is a faster delivery cycle.
While IL2 was ten years in development (if you consider it is not yet finished thanks to TD) SOW will move faster and quicker, driven partly by third party developers and partly by a proven fan base for particular theatres of the war.
Most of Westen and Eastern Europe will jump at a Barbarossa expansion.
then you have the pacific theatre and of course Korea.
While IL2 meandered it's way into our hearts, SOW is going to leap forward.
I predict two years after release we will be exactly where Il2 is now in terms of planes, maps etc.
Look at the original IL2 expansions as marketing gambles. With SOW you know which theatres sell best. You also know which planes are flown the most.

[JVM]

@Bobb4

I believe you may be slightly optimistic...Considering the already hinted at numbers of hours needed to make a proper SoW aircraft model (ca 6 Months as average) it will take a sweet time before we can properly fill a specific theater in...And this is not taking in account the map itself which is so far removed from the Il2 one in terms of details it's almost frightening!

Do you know of all the nooks and crannies of all the Japanese main bases in the Pacific? have you all the road and railroad maps of Philippines (maybe a bad example this kind of map would be reserved to Oleg and team)? Detailed depots, marshaling yards, bridges, harbors etc etc

With some clever sleights of hand work it may be possible to do away with the maximum amount of detail but that will still be huge work (and guess what: I suspect only passionate amateurs can do it...it will be difficult to justify such a time investment for money seekers)!

JV

[kendo65]

I think that even if SoW is all that we hope and expect it to be, IL2 will be on our hard drives for many years to come. It's still looking good!

As more expansion packs and 3rd Party additions are released for SoW, we will just play Il2 a little bit less until gradually the SOW series fills all our requirements and areas of interest.


Personally I have to disagree. I'm already having problems dealing with some of the more dated aspects of il2 now (mainly visuals - maps and terrain objects, effects and explosions, damage modelling, some older cockpits (eg 109s), some ai issues, etc).

My feelings on il2 are that I've more than had good value and enjoyment from it. In its time it was a major leap forward for a WW2 flight-sim. It is still the best on the market all these years later, certainly from the simulation side (engine management, etc) but visually I find it lacking now, more due to expanding expectations as the technology has advanced so much in 10 years.

So, for me, I expect that after my first flight in a SOW Tiger Moth or Spit, I'll find it very difficult to ever 'settle' for the il2 experience again.

I know I'll miss out for a time on a lot of WW2 theatres and aircraft, but I expect that SOW will have such a depth of gameplay and visual 'you are there' quality that I wont be able to take that step back anymore.

[HB252]

Hi Oleg :)

Sorry, i try explain better about 1/1 SCALE cockpit view:

I said that there will be like a option.

- 1/1 scale is 1 cm (Centimeter) of the screen must be 1 cm of the real cockpit views. In this way, we cuold see all things in his real size: buttons, levers, throttle, gunsight....

Thx

PD: thx Foo´bar for show me the Ju 52 :grin:

[MikkOwl]

i try explain better about 1/1 SCALE cockpit view:

- 1/1 scale is 1 cm (Centimeter) of the screen must be 1 cm of the real cockpit views. In this way, we cuold see all things in his real size: buttons, levers, throttle, gunsight....


On a view screen? This is a function of how big your monitor is, how far away you are sitting, and what FOV you have in the game. That's all. There are tools that calculate this. I am interested in it because it is related to realism and immersion.

On my 24" monitor, if I sit 50cm away from it, things have 1:1 scale if FOV is 55. Sit further away and the fov must be much smaller...

[Rodolphe42]

these are elements of German system of radars.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=147199&postcount=150


Thanks Oleg for your answer, but I'm looking for further information, like a accurate denomination/description like :

FuG 404 Jagdschloss A or FuMG 451 Freiburg II.


I've made some extensive researches on many specialise web sites but I can't find any picture / name of the real thing.

http://www.fortendenhelder.nl/radars/radarafkortingen.htm

http://www.atlantikwall.info/radar/technik/flum.htm

...

[csThor]

THose aren't radar systems but devices for Radio Navigation (Wotan I and II used for X- and Y- blind bombing procedure).

The only land-based radar system in Germany at that time was the FumB FREYA (although the exact type escapes me).

[No145_Bunny]

Oleg,

I have never asked you a question before, but I have been an avid player of IL2 since it was released, so I would like to ask a question about SOW.

This may have already been asked before:-

Will you model random engine or system failures? It would be interesting (maybe a little frustrating for the player of course) if just after you have taken off in your Spitfire, your engine starts to cough and splutter, forcing you to turn back and land.

This is maybe a degree of realism that some players wouldnt like, so could it be an option perhaps?

1 more question please,

Again, this may already have been asked. Do you have plans to allow 4 engine bombers (Lancaster, B17, B24 for example) to be flyable by players in future releases of the SOW series ? I hope so.

Thank you for IL2 and SOW looks like it will be every armchair pilots dream!
S! Bunster

[Rodolphe42]

...

THose aren't radar systems but devices for Radio Navigation (Wotan I and II used for X- and Y- blind bombing procedure).

The only land-based radar system in Germany at that time was the FumB FREYA (although the exact type escapes me).


Thanks csThor !


Y - Zweistrahlbake "Fridolin" , FuSAn 733,
Y7 "Anton" , Jobourg, Cotentin
Peilanlagen dienten zur Führung von Bombenangriffen

Bearing plants served for the guidance of bomb attacks

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/b636aea3.jpg

http://www.atlantikwall.info/images/radar/technik/peiler/049719.jpg

http://site.voila.fr/bunkers/ygerat1.jpg



And this mobile canteen ???? :grin:

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/0bd5c3a8.jpg

...

[CZS_Ondras]

As for my personal opinion - FF doesn't reflect real things. No one existed. And in realistic flight sim really FF is more bad then the good feature comparing to real life.

Well, I believe it is all only in deeper thought about the problem.. I do not think that there is anything unrealistic about increasing of forces with the speed and additionally sensing of flight envelope edges (everything of course applied and adjusted in accordance with known real aircraft data/observations).

Of course, all other kinds of "shaking" during various events are nonsenses.. (well with possible exception of take of run and landing... but that's only my experience with L-13 Blanik on grass field with many tumps and burrows of European suslik :lol:.. have no idea about WWII fighter plane.. :cool:)

O.

[major_setback]

S!

I see your point Freycinet. But a so called amateur, no pun here, can make a lot if he/she has proper documentation and specifications on the standards required for the job.....



I agree. A dedicated amateur with a passion for the game will give everything to reach his goal.

I don't do any game devolpment (other than hunting for reference materials for others), but I know from my own personal experience that I will put in 1000% effort, and go without sleep and meals for a hobby that I am passionate about. The pure pleasure of watching your own work (or a project you have taken some part in) near completion is all you need to keep going. My energy is endless for such a thing.

It would never be like this at a paid job, and I would never want it to.

[Oleg Maddox]

THose aren't radar systems but devices for Radio Navigation (Wotan I and II used for X- and Y- blind bombing procedure).

The only land-based radar system in Germany at that time was the FumB FREYA (although the exact type escapes me).

It is working as radar system. Radars may have different purposes. As one of many - radio naviation. So anyway the name of this system is Radar in English.
Antennas of radar can be receivers or transmitters or both at once, depending ot the purpose and constructions, range of frequiency, etc, and so on...
Votans was just a part of the whole system of radio navigation.
Later we wiill see other types of devices used in that system. Including working devices in aircraft.

[Oleg Maddox]

Well, I believe it is all only in deeper thought about the problem.. I do not think that there is anything unrealistic about increasing of forces with the speed and additionally sensing of flight envelope edges (everything of course applied and adjusted in accordance with known real aircraft data/observations).

Of course, all other kinds of "shaking" during various events are nonsenses.. (well with possible exception of take of run and landing... but that's only my experience with L-13 Blanik on grass field with many tumps and burrows of European suslik :lol:.. have no idea about WWII fighter plane.. :cool:)

O.

Unfortunatelly FF systems do not give us increasing of force except that this force is present in a couple of levels. So what you mean is really iompossible to make realistic. Usually just one stage FF IS and FF no... with jumping as wish the driver and system of FF joy.

[Oleg Maddox]

Oleg,

I have never asked you a question before, but I have been an avid player of IL2 since it was released, so I would like to ask a question about SOW.

This may have already been asked before:-

Will you model random engine or system failures? It would be interesting (maybe a little frustrating for the player of course) if just after you have taken off in your Spitfire, your engine starts to cough and splutter, forcing you to turn back and land.

This is maybe a degree of realism that some players wouldnt like, so could it be an option perhaps?

1 more question please,

Again, this may already have been asked. Do you have plans to allow 4 engine bombers (Lancaster, B17, B24 for example) to be flyable by players in future releases of the SOW series ? I hope so.

Thank you for IL2 and SOW looks like it will be every armchair pilots dream!
S! Bunster

Probably yes. As an option. Can't say right now with 100% sure.

Yes we plan in future bobers of such types. Depending of success again.

[Freycinet]

And this mobile canteen ???? :grin:

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/0bd5c3a8.jpg

...

It is part of a FlaKstellung, an anti-aircraft battery:

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/vvv-04_01.jpg

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/vvv-04_06.jpg

[wilky210]

Hi Oleg! I'm not sure if this has been asked (110% sure it probably has) But how will tracers look? Just like IL-2?

I always thought B-17II had the most realistic looking tracers compared to gun-camera footage.

[Oleg Maddox]

Hi Oleg! I'm not sure if this has been asked (110% sure it probably has) But how will tracers look? Just like IL-2?

I always thought B-17II had the most realistic looking tracers compared to gun-camera footage.

B17II had one of the most unrealistic Z-looking tracers.

Vibration of the camera with corresponding frequency to the low frame rate(film speed) of camera was a result of Z-looking tracers in some films.
Developers of B-17II didn't research well...

The eye see other than that picture in reality.

In Il-2 we used colors of tracers found in the documents for exact shells and bullets used in each modelled weapon. So in reality the tracers in Il-2 maybe some time too bright at day light, but anyway was the most realistic. :)

[Qpassa]

Dear Oleg:
I have asked before and I think that you havent answer
Is going to be delivered the simulator in Spanish?
Thanks,keep working at this level ^^

[Oleg Maddox]

Dear Oleg:
I have asked before and I think that you havent answer
Is going to be delivered the simulator in Spanish?
Thanks,keep working at this level ^^

Sorry, I don't think so. However anything may happens.

[Oleg Maddox]

It is part of a FlaKstellung, an anti-aircraft battery:
[/IMG]

Really no. It is part of guidance system.
On this screen shot it was placed simply for the picture, but not as it is the system of AAA.

[DJB]

Dear Oleg:
I have asked before and I think that you havent answer
Is going to be delivered the simulator in Spanish?
Thanks,keep working at this level ^^


Sorry, I don't think so. However anything may happens.

Maybe a simple tool to make possible to translate the whole text?
Can be two columns style, left column with text in english and right column to enter wanted translation...

Thank you very much Oleg, for maintain contact with users;).

Sorry for my bad english, but I hope you can understand me:).

[Caveman]

Oleg: Can you comment on Buttkicker support for SOW? It works decently in IL-2, but it's a bit "digital"... Wondering if the sound code programmers will pay special attention to this device to smooth out the transitions from on to off in the low frequency range it's designed to operate in...

Using a Buttkicker for sound augmentation is analogous to using a Track IR for view augmentation... It's a big improvement.

Can you comment?

[PilotError]

oleg: Can you comment on buttkicker support for sow. It works decently in il-2 but it's a bit "digital"... Wondering if the sound code will pay special attention to this device to smooth out the transitions from on to off in the low frequency range it's designed to operate in...

Using a buttkicker for sound augmentation is analogous to using a track ir for view augmentation... It's a big improvement.

Can you comment?

+1 :)

[Zorin]

A FREYA installation, for anyone interested.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb107/ZorinW/th_render_3-1.jpg (http://s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb107/ZorinW/?action=view&current=render_3-1.jpg)

[RAF74_Winger]

Unfortunatelly FF systems do not give us increasing of force except that this force is present in a couple of levels. So what you mean is really iompossible to make realistic. Usually just one stage FF IS and FF no... with jumping as wish the driver and system of FF joy.

I understand your meaning Oleg. Do you think it would be possible to pursue an intermediate course and make certain flight parameters available through devicelink or equivalent interface? Such as: IAS, control surface moment of inertia and position, engine power, and perhaps some sort of buffet signal as the airfoil approaches critical AoA so that those that have the wherewithal can construct their own FF mechanisms. I know that much of this is already present through devicelink, but the control surface information in particular would be useful.

I'm aware that a buffet signal could be abused, so perhaps that shouldn't be available online, there isn't much stall buffet noticeable through the stick in some aircraft anyway.

W.

[Tartag]

Oleg,

It would be great if you could add compatibility with motion seats-motion platforms that exit outhere. More and more people are building their own motion platforms by themselves with their hands (see x-sim, mycockpit etc) for flightsimming and more companies are selling them too. Like Flightemotion, Ckas, Simbolrides, D-Box and so on. For my part I own a D-Box platform for flightsim. You often talk about immersion, and devices like this bring you a real sense of immersion.

I know for a fact that DCS Black Shark, FSX and X-Plane are compatible with D-Box. But the best one is missing: Il-2. I'm not an expert and I don't know how the compatiblity is done, but I heard it's very fast and easy to do.
How about something with SoW-BoB (and Il-2)?

look this with Black Shark: It gets more interesting at about 1m35'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL9dLB_5dT0
It's not my video.

It doesn't move a lot, but the effect combine with the view is incredible. Pitch, roll, engine vibrations, rolling on tarmac, rolling in dirt, grass etc.
I can imagine what it would be with gun effects and feelings of explosions.:grin:
Why not try with Il-2 first?

Like I said, more and more people are getting and building these and are less expensive than before. DSC is fantastic with motions. One part of future of flightsim is in this kind of immersion, I think.

thanks for considering
Ben

[Oleg Maddox]

Oleg: Can you comment on Buttkicker support for SOW? It works decently in IL-2, but it's a bit "digital"... Wondering if the sound code programmers will pay special attention to this device to smooth out the transitions from on to off in the low frequency range it's designed to operate in...

Using a Buttkicker for sound augmentation is analogous to using a Track IR for view augmentation... It's a big improvement.

Can you comment?

It is really something like subwoofer which instead of sound wave distribute the floor/chair wave.... by other words sound wave trasmitts into mechanical vibartion ... It is working exactly like subwoofer in terms of connection to sound card or home theather. Digital sound? It is only depending of this device. No needs any special support of such device. Its a toy.

You may place several such devices and tune it for different frequency of sound range... then it will shake you from guns by one device, or from engine by other device. Our by both in case of shell hit...

It is very simple device in terms of engineering.

[Oleg Maddox]

I understand your meaning Oleg. Do you think it would be possible to pursue an intermediate course and make certain flight parameters available through devicelink or equivalent interface? Such as: IAS, control surface moment of inertia and position, engine power, and perhaps some sort of buffet signal as the airfoil approaches critical AoA so that those that have the wherewithal can construct their own FF mechanisms. I know that much of this is already present through devicelink, but the control surface information in particular would be useful.

I'm aware that a buffet signal could be abused, so perhaps that shouldn't be available online, there isn't much stall buffet noticeable through the stick in some aircraft anyway.

W.

In device link we plan to give alsmot any information. And now we wouldn't limit it only for single play. I do think now that it was my little mistake to listen user's votes to prohibit it for online gameplay. To know G loading or to have separate normaly visible gauges on other panel isn't a cheat. We simply closed the development of some small industry around Il-2 in this case. it was really some mistake.
Not I think by other way. Experince of Il-2 gave me a lot of things to think :).

[Oleg Maddox]

Maybe a simple tool to make possible to translate the whole text?
Can be two columns style, left column with text in english and right column to enter wanted translation...

Thank you very much Oleg, for maintain contact with users;).

Sorry for my bad english, but I hope you can understand me:).

I think we will have totally open texts in separate folders. Maybe not totally, but many. Anyone will be able to translate it.

[Oleg Maddox]

A FREYA installation, for anyone interested.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb107/ZorinW/th_render_3-1.jpg (http://s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb107/ZorinW/?action=view&current=render_3-1.jpg)

This is one of the late variants. In 1940 such phased array antenna wasn't existed yet.

[Oleg Maddox]

I agree. A dedicated amateur with a passion for the game will give everything to reach his goal.

I don't do any game devolpment (other than hunting for reference materials for others), but I know from my own personal experience that I will put in 1000% effort, and go without sleep and meals for a hobby that I am passionate about. The pure pleasure of watching your own work (or a project you have taken some part in) near completion is all you need to keep going. My energy is endless for such a thing.

It would never be like this at a paid job, and I would never want it to.

There is other case... when hobby correponds to work. Then also maybe excellent result.... There is only one limit in this case ... funds and time ... this limit is some time very critical and stops some very good ideas or even decrease possible quality.

[AdMan]

will I need a pilots license to play SOW?

I'm kind of getting that feeling

[Foo'bar]

There is other case... when hobby correponds to work. Then also maybe excellent result.... There is only one limit in this case ... funds and time ... this limit is some time very critical and stops some very good ideas or even decrease possible quality.

Only very few people have that luck...

[Oleg Maddox]

Only very few people have that luck...

Sure. One of them still me :)

[Oleg Maddox]

will I need a pilots license to play SOW?

I'm kind of getting that feeling

I understand the joke...
Of course nothing can be perfect. We only try to tend to a limit...

But... we also remember about console and WoP players... so for them the sim will be also playable... But I'm sure - way more interesting in terms of long life use, learning, to be anxious for success. Very scalable difficulty setings will allow this.

[Abbeville-Boy]

I would like if the static camera view could be set to a certain degree such as S 180, good idea?

[Flanker35M]

S!

I think SoW will be a harsh reality check for many of us with full realism. No more slamming carelessly throttle to firewall without consequences etc. Fidelity in DM and FM unrivalled until now. Bringing back the challenge to online flying, the use of tactics instead of whiteknuckle endless furball..Oh yes, the good times are coming!


I think I should check my medication..:evil:

[MikkOwl]

In device link we plan to give alsmot any information. And now we wouldn't limit it only for single play. I do think now that it was my little mistake to listen user's votes to prohibit it for online gameplay. To know G loading or to have separate normaly visible gauges on other panel isn't a cheat. We simply closed the development of some small industry around Il-2 in this case. it was really some mistake.
Not I think by other way. Experince of Il-2 gave me a lot of things to think :).
I am working on getting the G940 throttle colored lights to work with IL-2. I already succeeded, and will soon release a version to support the G940 in IL-2. But it really sucks that some of the good information I need is blocked in multiplayer. I cannot make buttons light up if an engine is on or off, because devicelink won't even let me read such information in multiplayer. I cannot even know if the aircraft is airborne or standing still on the airfield.

If enabling this is a simple switch in the code, could you please let the Team Daidalos guys know that they should do it for the next patch they are working on? This way, you can also try out what the change can result in, ahead of SoW, and I can provide a bit more fun stuff for IL-2 for the community while Storm of War is still being worked on.

EDIT: I think I could possibly even improve the force feedback. If I read the airspeed, I could try to make a program to use the self-centering on the G940 (much tighter centering, and some damper type forces (a bit like hydrualic/wire resistance) become harder or looser with the airspeed, and set any threshhold. It would also fix the bug where FF is centering on the ground before take-off (only when lifting the tail a single time will the force feedback centering become normal).

EDIT: I can also make the AI crew speak a bit in multiplayer, and make it hard coded so that it only works in planes that have ALIVE crew members. A co-pilot can tell you your altitude, heading, radio beacon heading, and indicated air speed (fun when trying to bomb stuff, no longer 'alone'), they can freak out when pulling crazy maneuvers, they can tell you if you shot down someone or destroyed a target, and scream when they get injured or killed etc. This requires reading the logfile at the same time, but in combination it can bring some more realism and life to multiplayer without any chance of cheating.

[Mysticpuma]

Will SoW being accurate in weather for the dates campaigns are flown in? Just wondering if the weather effects will match those of the dates in real-life 1940?

Also will damage effects on aircraft where holes appear and/or wings break off be able to have ragged edges rather than the straight ones we have now?

Thanks, MP.

[Oleg Maddox]

Will SoW being accurate in weather for the dates campaigns are flown in? Just wondering if the weather effects will match those of the dates in real-life 1940?

Also will damage effects on aircraft where holes appear and/or wings break off be able to have ragged edges rather than the straight ones we have now?

Thanks, MP.

Proabbly it is possible only in single historical miossions or campaigh that merged from such single missions. We did such thing in original Il-2 where each mission was with exact time, weather of that day and situations.

[ECV56_Lancelot]

Will BoB scenery look like this or better? ;)

http://i994.photobucket.com/albums/af64/scoobe58/4-14.jpg

http://i994.photobucket.com/albums/af64/scoobe58/5-14.jpg

http://i994.photobucket.com/albums/af64/scoobe58/6-13.jpg

Images taken from SimHQ about ORBX addon for FSX. Noh idea what ORBX is, because i don´t have and fly FSX, but i must say i was impress with those screenshots.

[Qpassa]

i think that rof looks better than that screenshot
http://i48.tinypic.com/25qrxjq.jpg
http://i48.tinypic.com/dh3hgl.jpg


Too big,open them ;)

[Caveman]

It is really something like subwoofer which instead of sound wave distribute the floor/chair wave.... by other words sound wave trasmitts into mechanical vibartion ... It is working exactly like subwoofer in terms of connection to sound card or home theather. Digital sound? It is only depending of this device. No needs any special support of such device. Its a toy.

You may place several such devices and tune it for different frequency of sound range... then it will shake you from guns by one device, or from engine by other device. Our by both in case of shell hit...

It is very simple device in terms of engineering.

Oleg, thanks for response. Yes, it is a simple device, but one that works quite effectively for increasing immersion :) By "digital" I meant that transitions in/out of the crossover frequency seem rather abrupt in IL-2 ("on" or "off"). Specifically, a more proportional response magnitude throughout the throttle range would seem to make it "perfect".

For instance, when the 109 is idling, the BK just about rattles one out of the chair. This is great, but the vibration amplitude tapers off quickly and "smooths out" when engine RPM is advanced past a certain "critical point". This gives the illusion of entering or exiting a vibration harmonic disturbance, instead of transitioning from a relatively "rough idle" to a "pleasant midrange engine-induced vibration hum". I spent some time adjusting/balancing the BKs freq cutoffs, crossover, and volume, and was able to get something "good", but IL-2 seems very "dynamically sensitive" when compared to other sims like MSFS, Lockon, etc... I attributed this to the complexity of the IL-2 sound engine with it's ability to play multiple tracks simultaneously to create the right "engine note" at any given frequency. In my mind, I surmised (incorrectly?) that the BK was "sliding" off an "amplitude step" on a low frequency track that the BK was picking up and therefore causing the abruptness.

It seems like BK-optimized code would have to use a Low Freq track of it's own, running very quietly in the "background" that could be turned up to the desired level using the BK...

Perhaps an independent "vibration track" to capture a balanced, realistic vibration throughout the freq range... A user could set the BK freq range anywhere, but setting it near a BK track "tuning freq" would force the BK to follow that predetermined "vibration amplitude map" that you specify.

Keep in mind this is all in the context of improving the IL-2 sound engine/BK experience that last 10%... I just wondered if any specific thought had gone into this...

Your suggestion to use multiple BKs was unique and so true... What a great idea! I had never thought of the advantages to that sort of setup.

Thanks for keeping the dialogue open for comments. It really is something amazing to chat with a developer. I've been simulating since the early 80's and all I can say is that you've made many dreams a reality. Can't wait to see the birth of SOW.

[Bobb4]

Will BoB scenery look like this or better? ;)

http://i994.photobucket.com/albums/af64/scoobe58/4-14.jpg


Images taken from SimHQ about ORBX addon for FSX. Noh idea what ORBX is, because i don´t have and fly FSX, but i must say i was impress with those screenshots.

Well I hope Oleg does not have rivers that flow over a hill :grin: and not through it :) Could just be an optical illusion though

[Antoninus]

There are lot of rivers that fly over hills in FSX, but usually not in handmade high detail scenery. Thats the drawback of having a global scenery. FSX creates the landscape from mesh, landclass and vector data such as roads or rivers. If the coordinates don't match well enough you get stuff like that.

[WhiteSnake]

Oleg, I know this may be a more technical question better suited for you programmers, can you say what sound API will be used, DirectSound3D, OpenAL or other? Windows Vista and Windows 7 no longer support sound card hardware acceleration for DirectSound3D but do support hardware acceleration with OpenAL.
As told me Rudolf Heiter(our sound engineer) when I noticed him about such a problem, he said that all there will be fine. More precise I can ask him on Monday.

I wanted to know the same thing And is there going to be 64 bit Suport (64 bit .exe) so the game can make use of more than 2GB of System Memory etc. under a 64 bit OS?

Im building a new Rig and selling the components of my old one so i was hoping for an awnser to this so i know if i should hang on to my Soundblaster X-Fi or sell it also.

[MikkOwl]

is there going to be 64 bit Suport (64 bit .exe) so the game can make use of more than 2GB of System Memory etc. under a 64 bit OS?
Oleg posted in the past few days stating that 3gb would be minimum (I think), maybe even moved up to 4gb. That will definitely means that 64bit is OK, maybe almost a must.

[AdMan]

I understand the joke...
Of course nothing can be perfect. We only try to tend to a limit...

But... we also remember about console and WoP players... so for them the sim will be also playable... But I'm sure - way more interesting in terms of long life use, learning, to be anxious for success. Very scalable difficulty setings will allow this.

maybe aircraft manuals can come included with SOW? Either originals or re-written to include information that is important to SOW. If they were accessible in-game would be cool, even simple text files on disc would be nice.

It's not always easy hunting down original flight manuals and then figuring out what is emulated in the flight model and what is not, having some type of manual included would encourage novices to learn realistic settings. I guess this also depends on how training missions are designed.

[MikkOwl]

maybe aircraft manuals can come included with SOW? Either originals or re-written to include information that is important to SOW. If they were accessible in-game would be cool, even simple text files on disc would be nice.

It's not always easy hunting down original flight manuals and then figuring out what is emulated in the flight model and what is not, having some type of manual included would encourage novices to learn realistic settings. I guess this also depends on how training missions are designed.
I love it! I find it intriguing to read the old manuals to learn about the machines, the pilots requirements, and how to fly better. I also think such a move speaks to how realistic the maker thinks his simulation is. :) The manuals themselves do not have to be full length with very irellevant (to the pilot flying SoW) detail, but can be a bit condensed. And by now, there is no copyright on the manuals. Can print and sell them. Just need translations.

I will pay a premium for this, and it makes buying the game even more tempting (also for people who might want to get a pirated copy because of convenience or that they think there's nothing the purchased version offers them). It is good business.

Do what was done for Silent Hunter IV Collector's Edition (that I bought). It was not printed in very huge numbers, but people like me loved being able to buy it.

1. A game box made out of thick paper.
2. A large, fold-out map of the theater of operations.
3. Ship recognition guide.
4. Manual, soundtrack CD, game DVD and minor extra goodies.

Keep the map and instead of recognition guide, a pilot's handbook for a few of the aircraft.

Not every customer needs these things. A regular DVD case with disc (or online download, with PDF file) is OK for many. I think for SoW a typical customer would prefer the extra material.

___________

I bought several flight sims even as far back as 1988. In 1990 and 1991 I especially loved "Their Finest Hour" and "F-19 Stealth Fighter". One reason was the great manuals with a lot of things to read and learn about the aircraft, flying and history. I still read them sometimes, because they are still that good.

[4H_V-man]

When the rest of the Horsemen helped Ccrashh test his Korea '51 campaign, he actually printed up the pilots' handbooks for the P-51 and F-80. We flew the campaign with HUDLOG off, and used the recommended engine settings, etc. This gave it a more realistic feel and added some challenge as well.

[=Kike=]

Hi all,
First to congratulate the team of SoW. BoB on the excellent work we are seeing Friday after Friday.

Ok...sorry for my English...I was use google translation...sry..

In Il2 1946, when we make a sudden maneuver is produced or can produce a "black out" is the only way in which forces reflected "G" excessive, but in reality the driver who performs these move suffers overload whole body and therefore everything it does cost more.
Il2 In this we can not apply such force that we apply to the joystick, it is ""impossible"", but if you use a peripheral where there might be applied G forces blocking their profiles or changing its structure, which is the TrackIR or Freetrack.
I think we can give a little more realistic if an excessive G-force impact on the functioning of the Track-IR / Freetrack or completely block it until the blood drop or raise the head of the feet.
Just an idea ;)

[ECV56_Lancelot]

Quick question to the TD:

With the new AI, will the patch for team killing AI gunners make it into 4.10? I recall seeing a video which shows work on the AI gunners.

I beleive you mistake the thread for this Question T.}{.O.R. :)

You should post it here:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=12568&page=37

S!

[T}{OR]

Thanks, I posted it there. :)

[Ernst]

What is additional price for a Stuka with light-made chromed gears, air conditioner, hydraulic controls, perolized painting and fog lights? :-P

[hugso]

Oleg: Can you comment on Buttkicker support for SOW? It works decently in IL-2, but it's a bit "digital"... Wondering if the sound code programmers will pay special attention to this device to smooth out the transitions from on to off in the low frequency range it's designed to operate in...

Using a Buttkicker for sound augmentation is analogous to using a Track IR for view augmentation... It's a big improvement.

Can you comment?
Just come across this post. I very much agree that vibrations from bass shakers enormously increases immersion. My first mod to my IL2 set-up was to simply to feed audio into my seat. Good, and well worth doing, but what made it much better was to feed in FFB signal to feel bumps and thumps on landing and taxiing and vibrations when entering stall and when flying with gear down etc. This was pretty complicated, involving opening up joystick and filtering signal from motors. This would be enormously simpler if the FFB vibration signal was available as an audio signal, maybe through DeviceLink. This would be fed directly into an amplifier without any need for Buttkicker (which I have to say I have not tried). I would imagine it would be very simple to implement in IL2.

[MikkOwl]

This would be enormously simpler if the FFB vibration signal was available as an audio signal, maybe through DeviceLink. This would be fed directly into an amplifier without any need for Buttkicker (which I have to say I have not tried). I would imagine it would be very simple to implement in IL2.
Vibration level is available through device link, and this is (as far as I know) representative of the vibrations that are also used for FF. It is just a number.

You would want some software that could generate sounds repeating at the interval specified to a number it was being fed.

[hugso]

Vibration level is available through device link, and this is (as far as I know) representative of the vibrations that are also used for FF. It is just a number.

You would want some software that could generate sounds repeating at the interval specified to a number it was being fed.
I have tried using Vibration Level. We used it to drive a servo motor and it just moved the motor to one position for one level of vibration and then on to another position for the second level of vibration. I used this to drive a mechanical vibrating device on my seat. It was not very good. It is not the same as the signal which goes to FFB. What I am doing is taking the electrical signal fed to my FFB motors, passively filtering the higher frequencies out and it leaves rather nice bumps and rumbles which I feed into my seat. Feels really good, but a lot of tinkering about and modifying was necessary. It could be really easy if this audio signal was available without having to tear my joystick apart. Also I am sure the feeling could be made even better if it was designed in game to be used as audio. It really could be superb, and I would imagine not that difficult to add.