Is COD still a flight simulator ?
 

After watching the latest patches I wonder in which way COD is evolving. My sensation is that the game will end up as a collector of several games at once, i.e a plane game and a tank game or what so...

It is going to be the one thing that wargaming.net isn't creating! A World of War simulator! :grin:

Honestly though I don't see what it matters when the priorities of coders, modellers and the entire development team is focused on the Flight Simulation aspect. The way I see it is that right now they are focusing on alot of coding problems and it appears that drivable vehicles had always been coded in since the beginning but just not implemented, the ground vehicles controls' listed being a fine example. The vehicles were already finished aswell, and possibly so were the interiors, it would not make sense to go and find resources on a vehicle and not get the interior while you were there.

Chancing a guess; even if the coders were needed, then possibly code was just adapted from the aircraft code, to work with the ground objects, obviously some new things were done, but they musn't have taken overly long. The ability to drive vehicles is a nice extra and the movie makers and mission designers are going to love it, obviously it won't draw the FPS crowd in to buy the sim, and that is not the point of it. As it is always said in the modding crowd for 1946; it adds a new dimension to the sim. Besides, if not now, it would have come at a later date anyway either from 1C or third party modders, as it has for 1946. :) ;)

Although I don't know why, I am still waiting for my Su-26... But still looking forward to it's anticipated arrival! So to answer your question:

Yes. But now, it's even more immersive and simulating of a simulated war, and nothing great like this has really been done before. ;)

I won't be surprised if things like clickable cockpits and whatnot get dropped for future aircraft. The dumbed down vehicles will create a whole new subset of compaints and expectations for improvement. This will certainly have a follow on effect for the aircraft side of the sim.

LOL what mindless drivel...

:rolleyes:

My boss once told me that to be successful you had to be good at something that other people weren't. IL-2 is good at flight sims, simple as that, and that is their point of distinction.

I am all in favour of the expansion to tanks and especially AA but IL-2 must always remain true to it's flight sim roots. If the flight angle becomes too arcade it will instantly fail against BF3 (for example).

So yes, it's still a flight sim but with some bonuses in the future to pull in new users.

+1
That's all we ever get from him.

Very true, but I think the Maddox Games guys are aware of that. Besides the BF3 comparison is a bit too harsh, a more fitting one would be the ARMA series, I love that one. They have the focus on infantry combat, IL2 here will stick true to the aircraft component, just like Aces High once did, if I remember right.

Useable ground vehicles opens a huge new world of gameplay possebilities. What we make out of that or if we use those possebilities at all to begin with is an entirely different question.

For speculations in regards to what this means for the future of the IL2 series it is way too early, imho.

+1

Feathered_IV - forever the bringer of doom and gloom, lighten up!

The tanks are not a bad thing. It will definatley improve the ground objects behave. For example if two objects in 1946 fb touched, they exploded. So this is definatly a step up.

Besides it might be nice to have a "for fun" tank war once in a while.

I was going to say that:confused:

Beowolf makes a good point that the added content will realy only be as good as we make it.

Pretty much my take on things overall. It's not like work has been dropped on the flight aspect, it's more like a case of "hey, this was in from the beginning but we couldn't turn it on because of low graphics performance, now that graphics are optimized we can finally enable it".

Seems to me more like a tech demo of what is possible with the engine, rather than a new direction that will materialize at the expense of everything else.

I mean, i've probably seen every single development update through all the years the sim was in the making and i clearly remember a lot of these things being in the sim since ages ago (and for anyone that doesn't, going to foobar's blog will refresh memories easily enough).

Months before the sim was released we were shown vehicle dashboards, moving suspensions and oscillating radio masts, it's been there all along.

Even if they "dumbed" down cockpits in clod and in future expansions it still would be metric miles above any competition out there.

Sorry I gotta disagree with you on that one Feathered, for myself I'm 100% sure the flight aspect will always be the focus of the sim and everything else will always be a second consideration, I still don't know how people can complain about things like adding tanks and other useable craft, it can only expand the sim making it more appealing to a wider fan base, hopefully increasing revenue and as a flow on increasing the overall quality of the sim.

As has been stated a thousand times to apparent deaf ears, its not like EVERYONE at 1C has stopped working to play with implementing this stuff, the people working on the coding, AI, ect. ARE still doing that, but if the 3d modelers are sitting around not doinf a hell of a lot, why not have them looking at this kind of stuff.

It can all only make the sim better imho

Mindless drivel? I`d say more of panic button troll.

+1

IMO, the main problem with CloD is really that they gold plated the flight sim part... Sure, a bunch of whiners and "fundamentalists" naturally chokes on a statement like that, but seriously - look at the cockpits of the planes we have in CloD now (and the externals). Look at the damage modelling etc. Sure, it's a dream come through if it would have worked like they wanted it to do, but it simply costs too much doing the sim they tried to do with the current business model. Selling a game for $39 where it takes six months to model a plane and people that are spoiled by the old IL2 series just whines that we only have three flyable brit planes... If they would have done decent CEM, some more "flight sim" details than IL2 and then focused on getting solid AI and FM:s based on the already existing IL2 code it would have been enough... Really. Cause who is the competition? Add a pimped up 3D engine with some Dx 10/11 effects as that is needed to get the attention of the magazines and spoiled kids brought up with Frostbite X and we would have been set... Then leave other suff until addons or expansions. Now we are in the current situation where they tried to do it all at once with 4x the stuff in Il2 and they ended up with a messy code base that has holes like a Swiss cheese, and nothing is really finished as they restarted two times and aimed too high time after time... Oleg pursued his vision and the funders got tired of it after six years and pushed him aside and put poor Ilya in the unthankful position of wrapping something together so all the investments where not lost. They did all they could but still the ghost of Olegs dream haunted them. People demand the product that Oleg had envisioned but it's just not possible with a game that no longer sells copies to try to fix it, whatever people demand.

I really hope they get the good flight simulator we know is buried between the bugs running in BoM and that they don't aim too high again. The ground war part (being part of the ghost legacy of Oleg) sure has the potential of bringing the desperately needed customers to finance the tidying up the whole code base, and who knows, maybe we get to see the old mans vision in full splendor some day? As it is today it's easily the best WWII flight sumulator out there, so why would that change if they just stay alive and manage to fix it piece after piece? The current problem is just all the holes that they are naturally very aware of. But... Adding a flyable Wellington or Fairey Battle will not bring a single new customer as they already own CloD. BoM at the other hand will bring new customers as games based on the great patriotic war sells like butter in Russia - and drivable tanks that actually works with some smart moving front that keeps it focused even though the the map is huge may save the life of the flight sim that naturally is the core of this game... In my opinion at least... Just look at World of tanks. It's huge in Russia as it depicts the eastern front and people there actually care if tanks have the correct guns for different models. Many young gamers have gotten their appetite for tank warfare now and want a simulator with larger and more realistic battlefields etc. They may not go to Steel Beasts Pro, but why not BoM? In the same way the upcoming World of Warplanes may get people to realize that they want a more realistic flight simulation and look at BoM/CloD if they manage to fix it. As the core simulation part of the code is already there I don't see why it would get less realistic, but maybe a bit less details, a bit more spread out like in IL2 can save the game for us?

/mazex

:D
 

Well..if the train in CoD is simulated corectly, does it means that we have a "train simulator"? Everything must be simulated correctly: tanks, aircrafts, wind, rain and train...more simulations of the objects and we have the perfect simulatior!

+1

Has it ever been one ? ;)

Do you really think this is a new orientation ? :rolleyes:

The problem I see is that every piece of ground hardware that is human control is going to reduce the number of aircraft that can be on a server due to bandwidth consideration.

WWIIOnline already exists.. it stinks, but it exists. And because they went for "Everything", then ended up doing nothing exceptionally well..

I'd prefer a much more focused package with highly detailed aircraft and a foucs on the flight sim portion.

I disagree with this. Have you ever tested your total bandwidth usage on a populated server in IL2COD? (up/down combined) I have tested mine with 70 players and combined bandwidth was only around 370kbps. Sounds a whole like old IL2 to me where people could play from a server on a different continent with dial up and have a good time. With most other online games I would agree with you, but this one doesn't use hardly anything client side. To give you an idea, when I was deployed in the middle east I flew IL2COD online on net far worse than dial up, and was surprised at how good it was. It was a lesson in frustration just to load google to give you an idea.

On the server side, it has streamed around 15mbps upload speed with almost 100 players on. But we have an all fiber connection, with speeds both in upload and download of 10 gigabytes per second. Honestly, I think you'll be surprised how well something like this will work online once all the quirks are worked out. I don't see client bandwidth to be a problem at all, just based on what tests I've done up to this point. And well, server side, good luck using 1% of the bandwidth available.

I beg to differ. Look at A2A's Spitfire and I predict DCS: P51-D will surpass CloD in regards of simulating the aircraft. But CloD could easily be the future of WW2 combat flight sims.

I don't see any of the above mentioned as direct competition to CloD once vehicles and tanks become drivable. I meant games like ARMA for example, they've got fps as their primary focus but there are vehicles, tanks and planes too. The new IL-2 series will have flying as a primary and the rest as secondary, fine by me.:)

no

I have to agree, CoD is becoming much more than a mere CFS!

If there is enough intrest in the gaming world.

When I take off in a JU88 or Heinkel, using my yoke, rudder pedals, and throttles, it sure feels like a simulator to me!

Even if that is/was true.. Keep in mind that new game engines don't necessarily target the current crop of video cards and networks.. They develop a game engine with the intend of it lasting a few years.. Take IL2 for example, 10+ years and still going, but when it first came out the idea of 32 people in one server seem like a lot for most games. That and 1C made CoD much more modular, so as time goes by they will be able to upgrade 'parts' of it to keep in current.

Agreed 100%

But based on 1C's track record of flight sims and from what some have reported from the Russian forums, 1C is not going to try and be everything to everyone. It appears that 1C is going to go down the ARMA path of FPS, land, sea and air. Where ARMA's 'main' focus is on 'realistic' FPS, and the rest is not as 'realistic'.. Thus if 1C takes that same approach, their main focus will be on 'flight' and all the other stuff will not be a detailed or realistic as the flight aspect. But I must say, based on the videos, the AAA positions, tanks, trucks, cars, etc all look much more realistic than anything ini WWIIOL or WOT.. Therefore I can see a lot of those ground vehicle lovers crossing over to CoD for a more realistic experience.

As do most of us here in the forum.. But the reality is the flight sim market is a very small one compared to the rest.. So to stay in the business of making flight sims they will have to open it up to others.. Or switch the way they do things, like switch to the pay to play model like AcesHigh or Warbirds, or switch to the pay per plane model like Rise of Flight

Really?! Really, you people are so frickin bored this is the topic that needs discussed?! Is it a flight sim?! Well DUH! Does it have some nifty new features coming out soon, why yes it does. I say good day to you sirs.

Quote from the 1C IL2:CoD manual listed under the controls option menu:

Vehicle

"This set of options is a taste of things to come. At this stage it is mainly
intended for use by 3rd party content developers."


Considering that this is from the manual, I'd venture a guess that a total war sim was something 1C has had in their minds for some time. I've already stated in another topic that many were happy to see the possibilities of a more rounded War sim when tank and AA models were shown a few years ago. Many a mind speculated at the possibilities.

For myself, if it doesn't come at the expense of the flight sim, I don't care. Considiering the attempted fidelity with the planes we already possess, I'm confident the two aspects of this game won't conflict.

From the manual it seems the inclusion won't interfere with the flight sim aspect either. Time will tell.

Do not know why people appear in this forum surprises and even outraged by the fact that CLOD come to include action on ground. Oleg had already promised that in the early days of the CLOD and no one complained, only applauded :rolleyes:

For me the developers are on the right way

COD is not only a Combat flight simulator it will be the best combat flight simulator when the AI, Commands, FM, etc are tweaking and finished. Because the sim will add drivable land vehicles and ships won't detract from combat flight immersion at all, it will only enhance the immersion.