Comparisons to Rise of Flight
 

Was always in 2 minds re. voicing my opinions in my personal comparison between the 2 sims because not only am I a huge fan of Olegs work but also for the fact that so many other posters have been ripped apart for merely having an opinion on this title at such an early stage.

I fully realise that Neoq/777 Studios Rise of Flight has been around for a while now & has received much love & attention in the way of enhancements & upgrades aswell as a healthy user input & for that part it may be rightly unfair to voice comparitive opinions when CLoD has been out a matter of days & as yet, is still awaiting its 1st official patch.

With all that in mind, I still have concerns for the future of CLoD because in my opinion, the gap that seperates the 2 sims is huge in all areas.

My system is nothing fancy by any means; an Intel Core Quad Q8400 @ 2.67GHz, 4Gb DDR3 RAM, Windows Vista 64-bit with SP2 & before CLoD, I was running with the GeForce 9800 GT card on a 32" LCD screen @ 1360x768 resolution.
This setup had me running RoF with all sliders set to high or max & this gave my FPS between 35-50 depending on the amount of a/c in the mission. Bloom effects, Lighting, etc were/are fantastic & breath vibrant realism into its graphics & atmosphere. I've included a couple of my Rise of Flight videos to show an example.

Enter the much awaited IL-2 Successor; a title I (like many others), have waited quite literally years for & after much tinkering & fiddling, managed to get a framerate of nearly 30 with everything set to low or very low & with no other a/c, over sea. Land was between 5 & 17 FPS.
Wanting to upgrade the GPU anyway, I went & treated myself to the GeForce GTX 580 Amp! edition Card & was staggered (£400 later) to find that I'd gained an average of about 5 to 10 FPS (6 to 13 post BETA patch) yet RoF FPS are now well into the 60's, 70's & 80's.

I won't dwell on this because we all know the FPS problem but it's everything else that concerns me. The visuals are far from surpassing Rise of Flight's crisp, realistic, gorgeous world; & the sound is way, way behind. RoF in my opinion, also has better physics & handling but that's not to say CLoD is a slouch in this dept as it's easiest, still the best WWII flight experience out there.

Like I said, RoF has received many updates but I remember in it's infancy, RoF still looked & sounded much like it does today & I just can't see CLoD coming anywhere near it in performance or visuals but I really am hoping & praying that I am proven wrong & wish the devs all the very best in their work to nurture this title to good things & thank them for any improvements that they are currently workin on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_svtcUQaTY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxBkXMQ4Xxo

Even if I'm very unhappy about CoD's current state, I can't deny that RoF was facing some massive troubles in its' initial release. Not as bad as CoD though, but still.

About the whole "performance / visuals" topic, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully the major hic-ups will get ironed out in the near future.

Yeah, and how many planes playable ? :rolleyes:

No doub it looked and perform good, but no wonder why ...

ROF was unplayable for me (just after release)..massive stutters etc....and is optimised pretty well today (with some graphical glitches above no mans land, flashing/flickering textures etc.) ......however I must admit that some folks had smooth gameplay right from the start....
Looks like I will need to pass through same "horror" again...its my destiny with sims I like, it seams....

Tvrdi,very true.Although,I still can't play online in RoF for more than a few minutes without being kicked out,and thats the only game that happens with.
Their online code is crap.

Rise of flight came with 5 planes and a terrible loading time, horrifying GUI and nothing close to a campaign. There wasn't even QMB so you had to fly the russian roulette missions and fly 1v1 until you ran out of ammo or died.

It was worse than CoD is at the moment on its release. I just un-installed ROF after a few days and shelfed it. Now, I play it oftenly. It's gotten a lot more flyables and recently 2-engine planes.

Rise of flight also has MUCH simpler damage models and the physics model is still slightly bugged (wings bending and clipping through other wings as if they weren't there which you can see in the trailer vid you posted too). For me, when I got RoF. It was unplayable at minimum specs. A year later on the same machine, works very well maxed out.

Sorry, but that has got nothing to do with the performance of the game engine.

Of course there were very few flyables in RoF at first, but how does that influence the game's performance?

everything is happenin through master server which can be buggy sometimes...but recently that settled and you can play online no probs...the things that bothers me with their multiplayer is bad optimisation of ground units...you cant use more than few units without crashes when more ppl are on the same server...

Off course everything has his influence in the development of a game, how you invest your time and resources is one of them.

If ClOD was delayed just a week the shuttering patch was included.

So in the case of Rise of Flight if you develop less planes you can invest more resources and time in the game engine.

Some really good points made. I guess I was one of the lucky ones with no initial problems. Will agree that CLoD has more to offer, straight-out-the-box compared to RoF but how on earth can you explain the performance differences with RoF's utterly beautiful landscape, dense forests, completely miniature model-like towns & villages; to CLoD's FSX-like Lego brick blocks for buildings. Both sims have huge maps & tons going on within their theatres. To me, RoF looks & feels far superior at much greater hardware performance value.

RoF has been pure hell for me for the first half year, nothing but crashes and stutters. Another half year went past and 777 studios took over development which resulted in its succes, at least for me. I find it very enjoyable but it's lacking serious content, in terms of game features. Especially online there's not much do do except for being a wannabe Richthofen in a Dr1. Nothing wrong with that though. Although the actual ' war ' in the game is very very limited to the air and especially fighter vs fighter I prefer IL2 1946 much more. Now that 777 studios released a 2 seater I was happy, finally something to ground pound in and create a real war scenario. The aircraft is limited however to a quick offline dogfight mode, and online play, they did not add any missions for it. There's I think 2 'realism' servers which you can use the 2 seater if you are lucky ( not all the time) and then you better start praying you get across the enemy lines;)

The RoF-future is bright though, it's only on a rather slow pace.

So for me the sim ranking on the moment is:

1: IL2-1946
2: RoF
3: IL2-Cliffs of Dover
4: DCS series ( Ka50,A-10c)

CoD and RoF are very competative right now, but due to performance limitations I can't get the 'War' feeling out of CoD yet, so I decided it deserved 3rd place.

This is my "comparisons".......about the engine at least.

Looks great, isn't it!?

London after the beta pacth (thank, now i can fly over the city.......)
http://www.150gct.it/users/150GCT_Veltro/LONDON01.JPG
http://www.150gct.it/users/150GCT_Veltro/LONDON02.JPG

http://www.150gct.it/users/150GCT_Veltro/ROF01.JPG
http://www.150gct.it/users/150GCT_Veltro/ROF02.JPG

My guess: RoF uses better optimization, also has a lot less detailed trees it seems, far less buildings and villages are a lot more scattered. Basically the ground is very naked in RoF compared to what IL-2 CoD sets out to reach. A lot of calculations in CoD would never have to be used in RoF due to simper aircraft systems, controls, etc. Whilst RoF probably uses the "left-over" resources to produce the nice wind/air effect that lets the wind rip off wings/carry them as they fall towards earth. Yes, RoF is very immersive at the moment, but that was also their goal. To really create the impression of flying. Wind effects, sounds, weather effects, atmosphere... they are all there and near-perfected.

But you will also find countless real-life pilots saying "What? feeling of flight? pfft, more like freedom in a small box with windows traveling through the air".

Closed canopies, higher speeds, more G's, better aircraft stability all reduced the feeling of "floating" that you get in RoF. Btw planes from WWI were practically gliders with a weak engine :P


Anyways, I think this is a piece of art...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pov-j4b6YY

I feel very luky to have a game like ROF , its a great product, and its only a matter of time fliying it to love it, WWI aircombats are other experience.
The way in wich they implement feature are always with a excelent taste, UI, view sistem , management sistem effects , colors etc.YOu have to work a bit like in all games to get used with those planes. joy config etc.But cant feel the air in another title like in ROF.
I think that eventually, clod will be as good and bigger as ROF, and imgoing to be very happy with a WWI and WW2 flying simulator installed in my computer.
All the community should support bot teams intensibely, and being constructibe.
I hate mensajes like, "do not buy this game" because not buying games makes team to be break, makes distributors like ubi soft not to support games, that are only a matter of time that becomes great.
If you whant than a game becomes better, put money on it.

I think its very good that we have both teams working on similar problems, because we can compare and see diferent solutions , competition is good for us customers.

You dont have to choose a team...

If never flyed ROF, give it a try.

So.....you took some screens of COD on minimum settings and some screens of ROF on max...........hardly conclusive.

wow!!!

@ Veltro

I find this picture better in terms of representing CoD's beauty in stead of some low setting shot, I don't think you took it on low in RoF either;)

http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/4...0331200648.jpg

Wooooowwwww, i hope eventualy, i will get a picture like that in my computer, now is totally diferent inclusive in high settings, shadows flikering, no aa, etc.very diferent.

Great screenie Sven. That does much more to represent a fairer comparison than the previous posters because I agree in that CLoD was unfairly made to look bad in low settings up against the RoF grabs.

Fanboys again....

CoD is on very low graphic because this setting is the maximum i can run with my PC, when RoF run great also with maximum setting, also online.

In 2011 i was waiting for something more than a Commodore 64 game for XP and DX9.

No.....just pointing out the obvious bias.

Notice the number people viewing CoD forum was over 340. There's no doubt what that means. Interest is high and only time will tell if this continues to bleed off others from the remaining sims.

@ Sven:

Very nice screenshot, indeed! But you're not actually playing the game with those settings, do you? If yes, I'd be impressed :)

No, it's because 300 ppl bought this game and now they are searching internet forums to find out why it doesn't work like it should ;-)

I'm not worried about graphics or sounds...the developers will fix some and the modders will fix some, even if they can't be adequately optimized our hardware will catch up in 6-12 months, etc...

Long story short, i don't worry about stuff if it's only a matter of waiting until they get better. I prefer to worry about stuff that can't be added at a later date and thankfully, CoD has a lot of that already built-in.

That's the reason my personal choice goes in favor of CoD, it's just a matter of what each one prefers.

I never liked RoF's online restrictions and the fact that they don't offer any full add-on/expansion packages but only individual flyables.
I've tried the demo a few times and i got the impression that RoF is perfect for flying the aircraft, but not for flying a simulated war: the 2km visibility bubble, the inability to use large numbers of ground units, the lack of a common content base between players (they don't all have the same aircraft available to fly), etc.
They got the feeling of flight perfect, they just didn't have time to model the war around it and they are still filling the pieces in, more than 2 years from its release date.

CoD on the other hand is the exact opposite approach: here, take all these undocumented features that you can hardly use today but which will be useful in the future for a full-on dynamic war experience, take these flyables and AI units that are enough to cover all the major players for the scenario, experiment with it and by the time you've figured it out we will have improved it sufficiently so you can use what you've learned.

None of the above methods are ideal and that's due to money and time constraints, i just prefer CoD's method because it's better geared towards long term development. The fundamental building blocks for the future are already there, they are just hidden under the heaps of disorganized stuff that lies on top. When the easier to perceive features are sorted out (graphics, sounds, etc) and people start looking under the hood, it will be easier to realize and appreciate the complexity involved.

I've also Slovakia in 1946, with superb textures, much better than what i've in CoD now. With low setting this engine should have been at least like IL2 at maximum, and it's not....is worst than IL2.

So, yes...fanboys.

One of the things I do love in ROF are the incredibly realistic tracers that smoke through to their target,see any WW1 or WW2 gun cameras and you'll see what I mean.

Whilst I love COD,nice graphics,the tracers for one are pretty sub standard and not realistic at all.Incorporate the ROF style tracers and it will look superb.

After all it is the tracers you see firing and landing on you're target,so for me these have to look good.

Saying that the cockpits and workable options within COD are superb,love it,especially start ups with complex engine management,to a real sim flyer like me this is nirvana.

In short I hope COD does improve it's issues as it has tremendous potential,let's face it at present it can't get any worse.

Making you look bad does not make someone a "fanboy".

please... no... more... tracer.. opinions.

I'll give you an example: I'm an amateur oldtimer-motorcycle tuner, I work with old cilinders with great care and it's always a struggle to get the most out of it.
The step from let's say tuning the same cilinder to 80 HP to 81HP is much more difficult/expensive than from 50 to 51. Making things closer to realism is exactly such thing, Il2 was already pretty close to real life if viewed from a distance, and with the newest maps: Slovakia, things got even more realistic. CoD however does not only look great from a distance it also looks very good on very low altitudes. It's hard to make huge improvements if you are already so close to the real thing.

Another reason why CoD may appear rough is because AA is not working or not properly.

one would ask why you would bother buying COD if IL2 completely 'floats your boat', who is a IL2 fanboy?

I think theres alot of people who think their clique simming communities are under threat from a new boy because inevitably people will move on to something new, so they are trying to kill it.

For me the game is playable at maximum settings. That obviously doesn't help the contless people that are having problems, but it does show that the screenshot Sven posted is achievable and hopefully we'll all be there one day.

+1

It's still a sign of the Apocalypse for the old as we move into the new. Progress. You can't stop it. This ship has set sail already. You cannot turn back the clock hands. It's a steady progression of things like this. Remember Pong? That was all the rage for a long time.

and you just know any moment now some moron will claim pong has better graphics than COD

I am only stating a fact of life. Everything changes. Everything has a life until something comes a long that catches the attention of what is called "the invisible hand of the market".

8 Track players. Beta VCR's. VHS Tapes. Now the iPad and so on. It's the market. It goes from the old into the new.

Just stating that regardless of it being people looking for help or not its still a sign of where we're going. Nothing more. You don't have to like it or accept it.

It's still the way things work. The sooner I accepted this as a truism the happier and more able I was to adjust to the change.

Exactly the same i said to all my team and friends of italian SEOW community and not only: "It's time to look forward, and CoD will be the next step for WW2, as Rise of Flight is for WW1. Oleg can't fail so CoD will be superb....not worst than RoF, better than IL2....so a great succes, be sure". There is people, as you say, that (was) is afraid about the IL2's end, the same people who refused to donwload for ex. the RoF demo. This is true.

But now.......after purchasing CoD, i've to admit i was totally wrong.

Oleg is gone and for my opinion this game has not future at all.

I hope to be wrong, as i was wrong when i was waiting for it like the definitve WW2 simulation.

The next time i hope to see however more supporters than fanboys.

Pong has better graphics than COD.

Pong looked like crap on our black and white tv. HUGE difference when we upgraded to color. It was like I was actually there.

That doesn't make real sense. what you perceive as fanboys are just supporters, but you are little bitter about it, the game hasn't been out long enough to have a true fanbase.

Well reading through the multiplayer part of the forum, it looks like COD's multiplayer is OK (when it is not crashing). Good FPS and no stutters. So I think it is more of giving it a little time to mature.

Only time will tell. But whether anyone likes it or not you cannot prevent progression into the tomorrow.

You cannot prevent or slow down peoples gravitation away from one to another. It's natural it's the human in us that causes this. Yes we all do not like having our sanctuary disrupted in anyway. But its just life that's the way its been since man has been walking the earth. Progress

Imho you should write a book, its title would be 'The path to wisdom'

It's just human nature. It actually has a name. It's called a Normalcy Bias.

From Wikipedia "The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation".

The Normalcy Bias was the reason people went back to their staterooms aboard the Titanic. Even though the ship was listing heavily to one side and water was filling the lower decks people just thought "God can't even sink the Titanic" and they just wanted everything to be normal.

People hate change. It's normal. But it's coming. Like the second hand on the clock. It moves with or without any interference from anyone.

Good Grief.

insert audio of some finger cymbals and the smell of burning incense.

Stop liking the same sims I like, dammit. LOL

I've a rather humble machine by RoF's standards. Putting up a major battle with RoF would be nigh impossible, but I aams still managing to play 6 on 6 with full rain effects. Most of the eye candy I can turn on and still play instant missions fine.

I'm quite pleased with RoF. Who knows how I'd feel if I knew that my PC was a bear and it wouldn't handle RoF? I've never had any of the issues that were reported. I've been lucky I guess.

Anyway, I believe we'll see the same quality from 1C as we've witnessed in RoF from neoQB and 777 Studios. Hopefully better. Competition is a good thing. For what ever reason this cluster fudge has been sent out, it'll be fixed.


Oleg. Good to hear from you. I hope all is well on the home front. If the few posts I've read regarding your son are accurate I hope the best, and to me that's much much more important than a $50 game.

Ah! Back on topic. Thanks Rob.

Rise of Flight is a fantastic WW1 Flight Sim, but doesn't have anywhere near the lighting and shadow effects of CoD.

The damage model is also far simpler. In CoD, I took a wing off a Spit in a collision the other night, and was fascinated by the level of detail in the internal wing structure.
RoF's planes were obviously more simple in reality, but I've not seen any complex rib/spar detail that comes even close to CoD as yet.

The ground details such as grass and trees are there, but not as interesting or as varied as CoD.

I'm a big fan of RoF, but IMO once CoD gets over it's teething problems RoF won't be able to hold a candle to it in many ways.

I'll still fly RoF though, I just love those rickety old kites.

Love Spits and Hurris more though. :)

[QUOTE=Blackdog_kt;256925]I'm not worried about graphics or sounds...the developers will fix some and the modders will fix some, even if they can't be adequately optimized our hardware will catch up in 6-12 months, etc...

This is the ONE thing I'm worried about. Our hardware will not catch up this time around. CoD is using 30 t0 40% of the available hardware recources on todays computers. Basically todays top of the line rigs should be running CoD without any problems at all with 60fps on the highest settings. The modders won't be able to do anything if the core program is not optimized. Time is normaly our best friend but unless the devs optimize the engine to use 100% of our computers recources right now it's future is limited. Il2 went from 500mhz to 5ghz over 10 years. Don't count on that raw cpu performance spurt again.

RoF runs smooth with good eyecandy on my computer if I keep the amount of planes under about 20. When I get a faster machine things will get better in RoF. With CoD I'm not convinced of this. I'll get a better rig for RoF and DCS A10 and just hope that with time CoD will take advantage of the increased performance.

Yes,sorry Strike,but the tracer graphics are crap,not just crap but very CRAP,I'm afraid the truth hurts.These look like something from a decade ago.

They are prehistoric.With all the beautiful graphics that Oleg has incorporated in such things like the cockpits,they are without doubt just superb,you just would've thought a little more effort would've been spent on something so important like the tracers,as you are seeing these all the time whilst dogfighting.

That is one of the best CloD pictures i've seen so far! I can't wait to finally play it! Just have to decide what system to buy.

I agree with you on most points. But I really cannot agree with you saying RoF has the better graphics, even when maxed out. It still has a dreamy, somewhat generic look to it, in my opinion. But I know others feel the same way about the color pallet used for CoD's landscape. I suppose when you compare graphics, it really depends on each individuals opinion.

Stop comparing COD and ROF as competing oposing games.
I love them both a lot. Get a grip with reality. You all can enjoy both of them and have fun in both of them, without going anal in bashing one or the other.
ROF had big problems when it came out as well. It grew to an awesome game. So will COD.

If you are a real simmer, you should be happy that we have in the same time three such a high end simulators, ROF, DCS, COD, in a time when a lot of people thought the flight simulator's days are over.

Instead of bashing one or the other you should help out. Too much bashing of a sim is damaging the whole genere.

S!

As Jaws said. RoF an CoD are of different origin, but one thing is in common. Both are simulators that are rare these days in the world of ADHD shooters etc. ruling the market. So I would be happy that we get niché products like CoD, RoF, DCS:A10 etc. rather than nothing at all or half arsed arcade shooters..

That picture arouses me. I love that. Beautiful. You can pick anyone of them and go get'em.

thers no comparison...Rise of flight was better and better optimised with every patch...COD is sinking rapidly.....who wants to buy COD from me? good price guys...top stuff...PM me