How often have you to tell that SoW hasn't been finished yet? :facepalm:

Hello Foo'bar...

Thanks for that Foobar and there was me thinking it was on the shelves already, what would i do without you guys. :grin:

I've thought for a long while that alot of what you see in BOP/WOP was the basis of the original SOW that was to be released along time ago but Oleg wasn't happy with it. Hence some employee's and publisher parting ways. Some of those lost employee's may have become a part of the Gaijin developers team. Oleg's gift to Gaijin of IL-2 FM's etc sounds alittle suspect and I wonder if there is much more to it. This could be where Oleg gets his funding to continue work on the SOW project, especially if UBI is no longer in the picture.. Oleg has stated that SOW is better in every way than BOP.


This is based on some early screenshots of SOW that were almost copies of what I've seen in BOP, especially the White Cliffs of Dover, and village lay outs.

UBI announcing the eminent release of SOW in 2006/2007. SOW had to be close to completion in that period. What happened?

Not an official comment about SOW from UBI since that announcement around 3 years ago.

Aspects of BOP are very similar to IL-2, and not just because they're both combat flight sims. ;)


Anyway its fun to speculate, and I don't really care either way, as long as we eventually see a new combat flight sim benchmark in the SOW series.

+1 to that chivas.

If you look at the vids for SoW when it was in the first edition engine (based on Il-2) you can see that clouds, planes, cockpits and terrain are all really good; I'd say that all three of what I've mentioned (bar the terrain) is better than WoP.

Now if Oleg wasn't happy with that, then I'm expecting wonders here....

thats pretty much what i think...WOP looks so much like the Mysticpuma video from a while back to me.

100% Agree Chivas, Ive been telling people in here that Ubi are no longer involved with SOW for the last 2 years but I was flamed and eventually banned for repeating such things, so be careful. I mean call me Sherlock but all I did was phone up and ask Ubisoft and they told me, still no-one on here believed me and yet again I was acuused of being a trouble making Troll/whiner. However I think its generally accepted these days that Ubi are not innvolved. <Apology accepted>.

WOP & BOP, its so bloody obvious isn't it, I mean They both have Maddox games written all over them, the ground detail is the same has seen on the SOW free DVD that we had all those years ago, and yet we are repeatably told that Oleg and crew had nothing to do with either project....., its laughable really. :grin:

I think we are all thinking the same thing: SoW is well on it's way. But we differ in how long we think it will take to get from the present stage of development to the final product.

I must say that I am sceptical about it being completed before the end of the year. The WiP's we saw from (for example) RoF looked a lot more complete at this stage (a year before release), and SoW:BoB will be very much more complex than that game, so will presumably take more time. Also I can't see Oleg releasing a game that is half-completed, as RoF was.

As has been stated before, time has to be reserved for: various types of testing on different computers, bug testing, bug fixes, adjustments to flight models/weather/etc.

I know Oleg has stated that most of the elements of the sim are ready, and just need to be incorporated in the game engine. But that will not be so simple. There are bound to be problems with each element, and how it fits with the others. I can imagine that even just one thing such as railway lines could cause lots of problems when added to the maps, especially when they have to cross towns, or hills.
And something as seemingly simple as getting the colour right has taken scince the end of the summer to adjust, and it isn't finished yet!

I'm optimistic - that the game will be released at some time in the future: when it's ready. It is because of my optimism that I question the release date given. It has to be completed first, whatever anyone wants to believe, and irrespective of the given release date.

It is common project management wisdom that the last 10% of the project can last 10 times more than what was estimated ... fine tuning, punchlisting, troubleshooting can take an umpredictably awful amount of time, especially when not managed aggressively and in a disciplined manner. And the develoment of this sim looks anything but linear and predictible ...

At any rate, when the glorious Il2 will fade away in the shine of the triumphant almighty SoW, I will miss it a lot ... hundreds of planes, dozens of maps, an unparalleled playability ... trade in all that for a handful of flyable old crates and one single map ... SoW must be really really good...

Ins

All this guessing what will take how long and when will it come if at all is a complete waste of time and space!!!
Those which talk aren't knowing and those who know aren't talking.