This just isn't even remotely possible , a tank sim of it's own scale sure but if you're gonna merge a tank sim with the large scale maps seen in this flight sim, it would be ridiculous .. it's not practical, its not fun.
Are you gonna cope around in tanks on maps the size of Britain?, the scale just isn't possible to be merged with each other, it would be like attempting to add First Person Combat to IL2...

Number 1 issue is the distance, number 2 is performance, 3 is the huge amount of players needed to fill any void..(even 100vs100 would be a ghost country on the ground)
Oh yeah and number 4 the huge amount of development time and effort to pull anything like this off would be insane..
The BOB engine might be capable of different types of simulators, that does not mean its practical, logical or fun especially to merge them.
To merge you would have to do something like Arma 2 series and have very small maps compared to what we have in IL2, you just can't make a reasonable multi vehicle game
with the size of the maps of an Flight sim, something has to be scaled down, besides are you planning on having hundreds of thousands of tanks in one game?

Red Orchestra 2 will have the most advanced tank combat simulation to date, even the first RO has a physic system which goes beyond 98% of all the other attempted sims out there. And yes i quoted that directly from TripWire they've said that they are more than confident that their Tank module is the most realistic and authentic one to date, if one choses to believe it or not is another thing but I trust them, TW always delivers.

Actually, i've given lots of thought to how it could be done.

First of all, regarding development time it could be something for a 3rd party developer.

Second and most important are the issues you mentioned about distances and numbers. In most cases when flying online, the action is centered around certain points. Let's also take into account the growth of IL2 servers in the numbers they were able to accomodate along the years. We've gone from 32 players to 64 and maybe even more (i've seen 60 or so people on a single IL-2 server and it was running just fine). I'm not entirely sure about this, but doesn't the current limit on IL2 servers stand at 128 players, with many of them running a mod that adds moving AI units on top of that (the same mod that will be included in the official 4.10 patch)?

It's not a stretch to assume that 5 years from now we could be having 128 players on a SoW quality engine, as the only thing that gets transmitted is positional data and maybe some speed vectors to assist in predicting motion and "filling in the gaps" in case of lag (which results in warping when the client ends up receiving the updated and correct positional data). The rest is handled client-side so the main limiting factor is usually how much and how fast your PC can render at one time and not the connection speed.

If actions are centered around certain points of the map with a total area of 100 square km as it already happens with IL2, it doesn't really matter if the map is big and a lot of it is empty. But what about the distances and the time needed to travel them on foot or with ground vehicles on a 1:1 scaled map?

Well, there is a solution to that but the only case where a combined arms sim would work that way is with a revised multiplayer mode, something like a dynamic online campaign. Imagine a persistent scenario that runs for a couple of weeks, just like a 3 hour mission on a dogfight server but longer. Aircraft already have spawn points on their airbases. Infantry and ground vehicles could have similar spawn points and they would naturally be closer to the front lines, in order to simulate the advance of reinforcements towards the front.

However, the best thing would be the ability to set up AI units in "travel mode" that you could then take control of. Say that i wanted to organize a tank offensive. I could make a few calculations and then set up an AI tank convoy, set the speed to 40km/h or something realistic for tanks of the time, specify a couple waypoints, a starting time and then let it do its thing. Knowing the speed and distance to cover we can calculate the time needed, let's say the convoy needs 8 hours to reach a certain point where the human players are supposed to take control of the vehicles. Since we could schedule the starting time, we could arrange the AI units to spawn on the right time so that after 8 hours the human players would be logged in and ready to take control of them.
As an extra cool feature, suppose we add the ability to password protect your units and an expiration time for this protection, so that people who don't know the mission objective don't take over your tanks and botch your carefully planned assault but at the same time allowing others to step in if some of the original players don't show up.With such tools, it would be entirely possible to set up offensives during the previous day and hop in the drivers seat the next day in the evening.

This is not limited in usefulness to ground units. It would come in handy for long range bombing missions as well, arranging them so that the players could take control of a B-17 formation just as they were nearing enemy airspace, fly the ingress, attack and egress parts of the flight and then revert the units back to AI control when crossing back out of the range of enemy fighters. I doubt many people would be keen to fly a 6 hour raid to Berlin, but having the ability to jump into a pre-made formation before the coast of the Netherlands and jump back out of it at the same point on the way back would probably cut down on the time needed to half. That's still 3 hours but it's not that much of a stretch, especially if we consider that most of the objective oriented DF servers for IL-2 routinely run 3 hour missions. Instead of flying multiple sorties lasting for 20 minutes to an hour on a 3 hour DF map, we could be flying a single 3 hour sortie on a two week online campaign.

Does this take development time? Of course.
Is it possible with current technology? Entirely.
Will it be a feature in SoW? I don't know, but i hope to see it in one of the future patches/expansions.

It is kind of encouraging however that Oleg Maddox has said in an old interview that there will be a new multiplayer mode, one that would enable servers to host scenarios with a longer running time. For all we know, the foundation for such a feature could be already built in the SoW engine and waiting to be enabled in a future patch ;)

Or just have the ground portion take place on a much smaller portion of the map. The air battle can rage all over the map, but the ground objectives can be contested in a very small area.

Is it a "sim" at that point? Not really. Good game? Quite possibly. BF '42 did quite well and it was stone-age compared to what we see now. Of course, the flying portion was terribly modeled.

Splitter

A tank sim wouldn't be any problem at all for the SOW maps. Tank battles didn't happen all over the map they happened in small sections of the front lines.

I wonder if th emost practicable solution would be not to merge naval/air/ground sims togetehr (too many impracticalities, and action timings too different) but make them "compatible":
- same engine
- able to communicate and to exchange positions/statuses in real time,as well as information/orders...

Then it would be needed to choose which sim you are playing: say for example the ground forces call for an aerial support, then another player using SoW on a common map will execute this task...
The player on the ground could perfectly well have a detailed ladscape typical of ground based games, as he is playing in its own game. On the other hand the air player does not need the same level of detail, which again is not a problem as he is playing on its own air game. All this would work the same way between an air and a naval sim!

To be solved:

- common maps with different level of details
- command and control system to define

But the result would be great and doable I think...

JV

I played Steel Fury.Is quite hard for someone used to be a tanker of Battlefield games.It also looks a bit unfinished.

SoW tanks and etc have a quite high amount of detail.Totally different of IL2 tanks.If they work on the engine,maybe we can experience ground combats.But,still,infantry is needed for a better ground combat atmosphere.And not just static infantry,real AI infantry.

To have a naval sim at SoW would be far more difficult.If SoW tanks are already ultra detailed,ships,specially aircraft carriers and battleships will have an amount of detail that will crash the game even on the best computers.

Thats very interesting!
If Oleg manage to do that,we will have a real time WWII experience.There will be nothing like that in the games history!
But we should get back to reality for a while...

nothing like that? look ww2online call too battleground europe ;)

Well if DCS Blackshark can share servers with Lock On FC, why the hell shouldn't this be possible? I like the idea and it would definitely contribute to the game experience. Only from my squad we have multiple people playing the World Of Tanks beta, for pete's sake. The guys that won't play it, refuse because it's not a sim.

Not gonna happen. Someone mentioned the development time could be handled by 3rd party?
For crying out loud , if you expect say the quality of an FPS, the realism of a simulator, the graphics of say Unreal 3 & Storm of War on all fronts that being on the ground,
in air etc..and with high tech damage models and god knows what, and in the end a quality game with few bugs.. and a release date within the next 15 years..

Jesus it's just not practical, use your brains.'
But as i mentioned only way to do it is to scale it down tremendously and soften the realism factor,
aka Arma which by no means is anywhere near a simulator for instance in Air combat, let alone buggy as hell since it's such a huge open world game.

And the problems still exists.

1. Fun ? no
2. Practical/Doable ? no
3. Performance demands ? Insane (not talking netcode here)
4. Development time + quality? Insane
5. Ingame distances ? Not practical too much void,
6. Buggy
7. etc..

There is no reason to merge planes with ground combat, it just doesn't work in a realistic way.
Scale it down then it's do able, otherwise its not.. why do you think RO doesn't have airplanes and why do you think IL2 dosn't have Infantry Combat?
(if you can't think of the logic behind the answers then...)

By the way, BF1942 didn't do anything like this they did an Arcade shooter with planes, tanks etc
nothing compared to what you guys are dreaming and asking for.

Please re-read thoroughly my last message...I said two different games, with different scales suited to the nature of each game, but able to communicate positions, status, orders etc. It seemed clear enough so I will not repeat myself...
It is certainly doable, and the common control would need work, but the net code to mention only this would not be more difficult than between several air simulations.
You obviously have to accept that if you drive a tank and get destroyed you will not spawn at the controls of an aeroplane...another tank, maybe?

JV

I believe I still have some brains left, thank you, and I even know how to use them (sometimes) :-)