I agree...Zap is just a messenger of the situation as it stands. The direction BOS takes in the future will be driven by its
community I suppose.

I'm not confused at all. You're comparing BoS against the best features of every game you can think of, because comparing each game in their entirety does not work so well for you. Landing the aircraft for CoD is too easy? OK, you compare it to DCS instead. DCS has a non-historical map and only a single WW2 aircraft? OK, you compare CoD's aircraft set and map. DCS WW2 doesn't exist yet? OK, you compare to CoD's modded version. And so on.

When DCS WW2 is released I'll buy it. Hopefully it does not have anything as idiotic as CoD's Spitfire Girl.

BTW, you are starting to sound like you are seriously unhinged.

The first of the new sims (COD, BoS, DCS) to put out realistic Pacific Theater carrier ops, wins, lol.

But seriously, and going off on a bit of a tangent here, with all the work that goes into maintaining a post IL-2:46 standard of flight model and graphics nowadays, I just don't think there's enough man hours available to cover as much ground as there was in the past. Not while still making a profit anyway.

At the same time, there's still a demand for different theaters of operation and plane-sets. What this says to me is, both/all sims need to focus on at least one map and plane-set for as many different theaters, as soon as possible.

The days of IL-2:'46 and COD style depictions of a huge variety of obscure planes is over, for the time being anyway. In my opinion, BoS and DCS need to focus on creating a diverse base of more limited environments and plane-sets and keep building from there over time.

Regardless of their individual pro's and cons in regards to flight models and graphics and other features (like mission building and multi-player), I think they both/all need to take a 'sample sim' approach to their content in the beginning. With a slower pace of development due to the added complexity of modern sims, they need to give people with an interest in a particular theater, and those who prefer a variety of theaters, something to do while they wait for the overall amount of planes and maps to increase.

It could be argued that kind of diversified approach would diminish the depth of the experience one could have in any one theater, due to the lower number of elements developed for it (initially). But how long would it take to get ten or more different kinds of planes and several maps for one theater of operations anyway? Better to get the whole community, with all it's different preferences, into the sim even at a more superficial level (content wise), than have them wait years just to see their preferred theater at all.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Oh, and if anyone out there is waiting/hoping for someone to make the perfect combat flight sim, forget it. They all have and have had their failings and flaws. You'd actually be better off taking a more wholistic approach by playing them all and just focussing on and remembering the best parts of all of them, that way you'd have the best overall combat flight sim experience, it just wouldn't be within the one program.:grin:

A good post, Les. We do need to sit back and see the wider picture.

Best Regards,
MB_Avro

the ballistics seem to need some work, and the tracers need a serious downsizing they are massive...hey its alfa :grin:

He still stands by his assertions that 777 stole an early alpha of SoW/Cliffs of Dover from Oleg's home computer in order to produce Rise of Flight. It doesn't do to place too much stock on what he writes.

I doubt they stole an alpha version of COD, but there is little doubt the Rise of Flight game engine learned from the original IL-2 game engine. Loft originally tried to build Rise of Flight using the IL-2 game engine, but said the game engine couldn't do all they were trying to accomplish, just as Oleg needed to build a new game engine for all the features he wanted in the new COD series. I'm quite sure Loft used many of things they learned from the IL-2 engine to build their own, just as Oleg used what he learned from building the IL-2 game engine for the new COD game engine.

lol, since you have nothing relevant or interesting to say on the topics under discussion here you are resorting to personal insults and paranoid fabrications, deliberately trying to mislead others here with misinformation again ? for those that wernt around in earlier years, let me clarify what DID happen at the time: oleg stated online that there had been attempts to steal the SoW-CoD code from his home (obviously not a normal burglary trying to grab a few valuables, but an IT specific attempt at stealing game code). AND around the same time period an untrustworthy employee(s) had taken some elements of unfinished game code out of the office (at least several times over a period of time), and that some of this material had ended up being passed onto competitors. from then on oleg never took game code home anymore and they tightened security measures at the office AND employees got sacked.

THAT is what we do know directly from what oleg stated himself :) (from various different posts he made around that time)

the second piece of the puzzle is that around the same time period when that happened (shortly thereafter ?) a number of programers/artists got sacked from olegs team and oleg decided to restart his project from scratch and decided to develop a new gfx/game engine that was even more ambitious (which is il2-CoD). again, that is FACT ! the third element must be a choker for you, because it is shortly thereafter that suddenly RoF popped up on the horizon and they seemed to have made an awful lot of initial progress out of the blue when they first started :) again, chronologically IN TIME that event is closely related to the previous 2 i mentioned and that is a simple historical fact. AND we know that some ex oleg employee(s) then joined the budding RoF team shortly thereafter.

since you seem to have problems processing bits of information in a rational and logical manner, let me help you a bit more by putting some of this together before you go off into more paranoid hyperbole. - the oleg code theft attempts were done by IT experts, not amateurs, but it was UNSUCCESSFUL. this was around the time lawlessness was high in russia, and it could have been by any number of maffia gangs for commercial profit, or it could have been done by a competitor (of which as a flightsim product there are very very few, particularly russian/east-block based)
- from the few comments oleg made about the untrustworthy employee taking code or unfinished game-elements out of the office (which was over a period of time, not a single event), it sounded like it might have been more out of stupidity than evil intent, because iirc this individual then showed/shared it with some programmer friends (not employees of oleg, but either "in between jobs" or working for other companies ?). the end result however was the same, some of this information (game design, in game objects, or partial code) DID end up reaching 3e parties.
- whatever was leaked could never have been a major finished piece of code, since oleg designs his games in a modular fashion and never one coder had access to the whole assembled game.
- the russian/east-block flightsim coding world employs only a very small number of people who are specialists in their relevant field, and it is to be expected that some of them will drift/rotate from one group to another, but what we DO know is that some of the same people who were sacked by oleg around that time then started working for the RoF project shortly thereafter
- oleg did restart the SoW project from scratch shortly after all of this happened. to what degree is it related to the thefts and leaks we dont know, but these event are overlapping in time. similarly, were the other sackings in olegs office all related to thefts and leaks, we dont know, it could have instead been because of competency and skill issues. but SOME were sacked because they were untrustworthy (unprofessional) or had leaked code, that we DO know !

and THOSE are the facts that i was previously referring to years ago in this forum (which you partially seem to remember and then wove your own fantasy from) :) . but to understand and recall these facts and events you might need to use a few more brain cells then you are using for your mentally lazy accusations, fabrications, and personal insults. however rationally dealing with actual facts in a logical manner makes the world much more interesting :)

I only read the beginning of your post and skipped the rest. Sorry.

its an interesting story, maybe llya will write a tell all book someday :-P