What Sim will SOW be?

[furbs]

After looking through all the updates and reading the SOW interviews over the last 12 months its left me wondering what sort of sim SOW will be?

To me there is no question SOW will look and fly fantastic and be the next standard in flight sims.

The flight models, plane models and all the rest will be leaps and bounds above what we have been used to in IL2 and other sims.

BUT...

Can the SOW engine make us believe we are fighting the "Battle of Britain"? or will SOW be more like a "Small online engagement with Battle of Britain planes sim"?

With current Hardware i cant see we will be able to have large scale BOB battles that we have read about.
To feel we are a pilot taking part in the BOB we would have to see at least 60-70 (and thats a small scale battle) planes in the air at the same time.
The closest ive seen to that sort of battle has been 2-3 missions in WOP and will all know WOP is very limited in what we call a flight sim and is no where near what SOW will be.

I just cant see that sort of battle happening in SOW for at least 2-3 years until much faster CPUs and GPUs are on the market.

I think we are much more likely to see what we get now in IL2...offline maybe 20-30 planes in a small engagements.

And online, small COOPs of maybe 20 or so planes and in Dedicated servers even smaller engagements of maybe 5-15 planes.

Im just trying to not build my hopes up of SOW being more than what we can expect with todays hardware.

what do you guys expect from SOW?

[David603]

Just a point, its quite possible to have missions in Il2 with 100+ aircraft if you have a good computer or if you turn down the graphics options.

[Tree_UK]

Good post furbs, considering that Oleg has chosen to start his new flight sim with the battle of Britian rather than any other theatre then i would hope that we will be attacking swarms of bombers escorted by enemy fighters in the same kind of numbers that are historically accurate, if this is not the case then what is the point of covering the battle of britain at all? Personally i think that its the magnitude of this task that has been the hold up with SOW well at least I hope so, we have already seen that Oleg has been backtracking a little on what may or may not be happening regarding single player campaigns, it appears that our dreams of being invoved in a squadron sramble may be completely dashed. I guess only time will tell but I am certainly more than a little worried when I see only 2 planes on a screen in low res and low detail without DX11 running at 14FPS. Hopefully whoever took that screenie was doing a virus check at the time.

[The Kraken]

I guess only time will tell but I am certainly more than a little worried when I see only 2 planes on a screen in low res and low detail without DX11 running at 14FPS. Hopefully whoever took that screenie was doing a virus check at the time.

He may have taken a screenshot at that time. Something that in many previous games has momentarily halted the execution until it was saved, thereby reducing the effective FPS figure for an instant.

As has also been pointed out, the figure is completely meaningless unless we know the hardware the sim was running on, the mission complexity, code status (debug mode anyone?) and whether some other performance-limiting thingies were going on that are not unusual during development.

Too early to panic yet.

[proton45]

LOL...another funny topic. Just the kind of light reading I like with my coffee.

[furbs]

Expain proton? seems a valid topic to me.

[The Kraken]

With current Hardware i cant see we will be able to have large scale BOB battles that we have read about.
To feel we are a pilot taking part in the BOB we would have to see at least 60-70 (and thats a small scale battle) planes in the air at the same time.
The closest ive seen to that sort of battle has been 2-3 missions in WOP and will all know WOP is very limited in what we call a flight sim and is no where near what SOW will be.

It all comes down to the AI handing, which is the main bottleneck with Il2 (and other sims as well). Try Wings of Victory for really huge air battles, i.e. hundreds of planes at the same time. Which is achieved by simplifying the AI behaviour for planes which fly in formation, and even more so for far-away planes. Doesn't come without its issues (there's a reason why only the 2nd installment was finally playable, the original Rowan version was a buggy mess) and I never really got caught on that sim, but it sure has the right amount of planes in the air.

No question this will be interesting to see, and with far more impact on how the final game will play out than variations in tree size...

[swiss]

This discussion is quite funny - as I don't plan to spend a single hour in offline modus (other than the few to get accustomed to the new FMs) I couldn't care less about the AI. I hope for a ton of online players. :mrgreen:

[The Kraken]

This discussion is quite funny - as I don't plan to spend a single hour in offline modus (other than the few to get accustomed to the new FMs) I couldn't care less about the AI. I hope for a ton of online players. :mrgreen:

You realize AI is not limited to offline play, except if you're exclusively into fighter-vs-fighter fragfests? Bomber squadrons, non-flyables, gunners, AAA all require AI programming. Even the online-only minority is still affected by it :-)

[BigC208]

Furb,It will all depend on your own imagination. I can set up a qmb in Il2 with 12 he111's and 4 me109's. Do a head on with 3 hurricanes over the Bessarabia map and I'm there. Heck I used to run around the room with scale models pretending to be in a dogfight. Anyone expecting more than a souped up version of il2 with more detailed aircraft is going to be disappointed. This is not going to be the second coming of the Christ. If it's what I expect (souped up Il2, optimised for DX11 and multiple processors) I'll be extremely happy based on what I've seen so far in the progress threads. If it takes another 2 years people will be expecting photo realistic graphics and Gallands AI. For those, who can't stand the suspense any longer and feel they have to go at eachother here on the forum: Get a life, girlfriend/boyfriend or take up gardening. That will teach you about patience.

[Chivas]

I agree that Oleg will have a very hard time optimizing this very highly detailed simulator too allow hundreds of aircraft in the air with playable framerates. BUT I wouldn't expect it to be that hard to simulate hundreds of extra dots in the sky as you would only get close to a couple of hundred at any one time. CPU bubbles?


That said having six hundred aircraft in the air is not totally necessary to feel your flying in the Battle of Britain. I can assure you that seeing a two hundred aircraft in the sky is more than enough. Your only seeing those hundreds of dots for a few minutes as the battle joins then all hell breaks loose for a much longer period of time where your focused on the threats in your immediate area. Then like many pilots have reported your suddenly alone in the sky. Also these huge formations didn't happen every day of the Battle of Britain. Much smaller engagements where just as common.

I'm sure Oleg will do everything in his power to have these huge formations where historically accurate. But there is no harm in being totally pessimistic.

[swiss]

You realize AI is not limited to offline play, except if you're exclusively into fighter-vs-fighter fragfests? Bomber squadrons, non-flyables, gunners, AAA all require AI programming. Even the online-only minority is still affected by it :-)

In fact, I am in bomber squad. I get the point 'tho.
I'm still hoping to man all(online) planes with real pilots.

Since we're talking of real humans: there's an event on the 9-12-2010, there are still a lot of red slots open...
(time-wise, this is probably for continental Europeans only)

http://www.76-iap.de/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=3014

[Skoshi Tiger]

After looking through all the updates and reading the SOW interviews over the last 12 months its left me wondering what sort of sim SOW will be?

To me there is no question SOW will look and fly fantastic and be the next standard in flight sims.

...

Can the SOW engine make us believe we are fighting the "Battle of Britain"? or will SOW be more like a "Small online engagement with Battle of Britain planes sim"?
...

what do you guys expect from SOW?

This is something we won't know until we get to jump into that cockpit and play the game.
To make us believe we are fighting the battle of Britain the game will need to induce a thing called the "willing suspension of disbelief"
It has very little to do with the hardware that we will be running the game on. The game will need to provide a atmosphere that we can immerse and loose ourselves in. This can happen even when your reading a skillfully written book!

For me this has already happened in IL-2, Chuck Yeagers Air Combat, Janes WWII Fighters and occasionally in a few other sims like XWing (Sad I know- but I was a lot younger then and the prequels hadn’t been released at that stage).

For me it manifests it’ self when I get in position of a E/A tail trying to get that firing solution, the adrenaline starts flowing, a cold feeling envelops my body, my heart races, I get a pounding in my ears, Time Slows down and I’m in the Zone. 110% of my attention is focused on trying to nail the enemy!
Then, like a noob, I usually get shot from behind and tumble in the twisted burning wreck of my aircraft to the stony ground.

Like I said, believing we’re there has little to do with graphics quality - you only need enough to set the scene; Frame rates – as long as it’s not a slide show; Flight models- I doubt I will ever get the opportunity to fly a real Spitfire or 109 so I will have nothing to compare my siming experience with so as long as the flight models of the various aircraft show the historic strengths and weaknesses of the different types I’m happy; or realistic start-up procedures- We’re never going to get a “realistic” representation of making errors in our procedures . Damage Models- as long as the effects of damage to a system produces the effect on the performance, handling and how we conduct the remainder of our combat mission that we would expect we don’t have to model individual popped rivits!

Clickable cockpits are a real immersion killer for me – Black Shark, Longbow, F18 – using a mouse to flick a switch is just not natural for me. After you map a key to a switch of your simpit, HOTAS or keyboard and learn it’s position so you can throw it without looking, your actually using the same physical skills that you use in a real plane, The position of the switch or what it looks like doesn’t matter, in general after a while you’re not looking anyway.

Will the graphics of SOW make it easier for me to suspend my disbelief? – Hopefully!

Will the flight models of SOW make it easier for me to suspend my disbelief? – Hopefully!

Will getting a round through my plane give me a sinking feeling in my gut and make me assess the situation and have to decide whether to continue with the mission or RTB? – Hopefully!

Will we get silky smooth frame rates and will it make it easier for me to suspend my disbelief? – Don’t know – I will probably spend quite a bit over the life of the sim to try to! But that will depend on whether I enjoy the playing the game and atmosphere that the game envokes. On of the reasons that the Microfost CFS remain in their boxes in my back shed is that for me they never had that atmosphere that allowed me to imerse myself into them.

Cheers!

[Blackdog_kt]

I remember back in the day, Microprose's European Air War could do 256 planes in the air at the same time. It had BoB campaigns for Luftwaffe and RAF, as well as another campaign starting in 1943 where the USAAF was also featured, so there was a lot of big bomber formations. It also had one of the best radio/command systems i've ever seen and wingmen who actually did as they were told.

I don't know how they did it but i doubt CPU bubbles made a difference, since all planes were in the same vicinity.

I have in fact flown sorties in that sim where i nearly hit the limit and it was running just fine. There were 3 formations of 36 heavy bombers (three full groups) and 3 flights of 12 escorts each...144 total on the allied side. On the axis side there was my flight of 12 Fw190s, another flight of 12 Me109s, a flight of 12 Me110s and a further 2 flights of reinforcements with 12 aircraft each (you could request them from the radio menu, sometimes you got one flight, sometimes none and very rarely you got two) for a total of 60 axis planes. All in all, 204 aircraft in a very small part of the sky.

They could be using CPU-bubbles for the random encounters though. You could either use time compression or skip to the next waypoint. Skipping gave you the scripted events of the mission, you appeared a few miles away from the target to get set up and went at it. However, if you used time compression you got random targets too. When using high TC, the view changed from the cockpit to the map but TC dropped to x8 whenever there was something interesting close by...so, you could returning from an escort mission to Berlin with ammo to spare and when the TC dropped you knew there was a convoy or something similar to strafe. Since skipping to the next waypoint/encounter never gave you bonus targets, i'm led to believe these targets were obviously spawned when the player actually flew over certain areas, even in time compression, instead of being hard-coded into the mission, sort of like an AI unit bubble mentioned before.

The point is, EAW was a much older sim with much worse graphics and less sophistication, but it also had to run on the much less powerful PCs of the day. SoW will be much more complex, but it also has much more powerful hardware available to it.

I'm not expecting to run SoW with 256 planes in the air at the same time on full detail. It would be nice however to be able to run sorties with 100-150 planes at a fluid FPS rate by turning down a few post-processing filters.

As for ingenious ideas to create atmosphere, there are a lot in this thread:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=10993

Finally, on the question of interface, i'm expecting options to suit most standards. Immersive or not, clickable cockpits are a must for those of us who want the full experience of doing everything there is to be done in a plane but don't have expensive HOTAS sets or home cockpits.
I mean, how am i supposed to work the autopilot's electric/servo panel ,the engine controls, the bombsight controls, the radio navigation equipment and i don't know what else in a B17, if all i have is an aging MS sidewinder precision pro 2 and a keyboard? Sure, there's no B17s in SoW yet, but if this is to become a series of sims, i'm sure the team has planned ahead for most eventualities. With the added complexity of multi-crewed airfcraft i doubt it's possible to operate everything without a mouse, unless i use a custom sim-pit that costs a small fortune. Clickpits may not be optimal, but they are the cheapest interface for high realism/high complexity simulator modelling. I'm glad that their existence has been confirmed, because i don't want to miss out on all the added realism of SoW just because i lack custom-made or high-end controlllers.

Likewise, the option to map everything to keyboard and HOTAS should be there for people who don't like using the mouse.
In my opinion Black Shark does just that, you can use the mouse but everything is mapped to a keyboard shortcut as well and you can also re-map it to something else. It's just that Black Shark features a modern helicopter, so that naturally the keyboard shortcuts become too many to remember because of the complexity of the aircraft.

Personally, i'd use a hybrid system in SoW. Stick and keyboard for important things (armament, flaps, gear, things i need to use in combat or fast), mouse for the controls that i will need to use once every 10-20 minutes (switching fuel tanks, priming the engine, turning on the fuel choke, these things happen between one and three times per sorties so i wouldn't want to waste a key-map on them).

That is a question of clever interfacing and it's negotiable. What is not acceptable to me would be to dumb down the simulator because some of the fans dislike a certain interface. For example, if some of the fans say "no clickpits" then give them the option to use other means of control. However, don't go about disabling things like complex engine management, switching fuel tanks and the like for everyone else just because a portion doesn't like the controls available to use such functions.

This has been an obvious red herring argument in the past, when a part of the community used the disadvantages of the clickpit interface to argue against increased complexity of aircraft operation in the new sim.

[kedrednael]

I made a mission with 150+ planes in il2 with graphics at excellent and with clouds, it was still verry playable (on my laptop). Could anyone have guessed that you could play il2 with 200+ planes in 2001? I don't think so, it will probably be the same with BOB. :cool:

[bf-110]

SoW will be in many aspects like IL2,right?
Like,Main Menu,options...

[Tree_UK]

Some fine posts here gentlemen and two great examples, X-wing was fantastic for sucking you into the game, a great feature in X-Wing which i really hope Oleg allows in SOW was being able to change the pilot roster, you could put the names of your friends into your squadron which gave you that extra zest to save your AI wingy. Also EAW was a very absorbing sim, and like Blackdog as already stated it was fantastic to see formations of bombers coming in, I really hope SOW manages to capture some of these things.

[Feuerfalke]

I'd like to take the chance to say that I'm really glad we have so many software, QA and marketing experts on this forum.

Thank all of you.

[zauii]

I made a mission with 150+ planes in il2 with graphics at excellent and with clouds, it was still verry playable (on my laptop). Could anyone have guessed that you could play il2 with 200+ planes in 2001? I don't think so, it will probably be the same with BOB. :cool:

On screen with FM , DM and everything? Not gonna happen dude, besides didn't Oleg or Lutheir already mention in one of their posts, how many planes they could currently draw on screen.

[Blackdog_kt]

I'd like to take the chance to say that I'm really glad we have so many software, QA and marketing experts on this forum.

Thank all of you.

Not experts, just excited people running comparisons with games that are older than IL2. From that point on, it's just like people betting on horses or football.

Some think that PC processing power scales well with complexity, so they consider it possible we'll get massive formations just like it was possible in older games like EAW and Falcon. If processing power and complexity scale evenly (and only then), it means that 100 planes on an old PC with old graphics would be just like 100 planes on a new pc with new graphics.

Others think it doesn't scale evenly, with complexity being added faster than processing power can keep up, so we'll get reduced numbers of aircraft on screen.

Finally, some go by what IL2 has shown us, which is a realistic and middle ground solution: medium on-screen traffic on release, which is increased as faster hardware becomes available. That's pretty much what i expect to see as well.

I don't expect 200 planes on screen when it's released, but with multi-core optimized architecure it would be cool if an i7 could do 50-100. Who knows, maybe they'll devote an entire core to the AI logic? Then, as the years go by and expanasions arrive to run on faster hardware, we might reach the massive scales again.