Quote:
Originally Posted by Romanator21
What's wrong with having an option? I want full functionality. That doesn't mean you have to suffer. You want playability and accessibility. I hope that doesn't mean I should suffer either.
Just a flip of the switch in the difficulty menu.
We can all be at peace.
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I'm with Romanator on this one. As for what is the potential gain for Mr.Maddox and his team in implementing such things, let's all take the time to remember that there will be no more MS Flight Simulator because the ACES studio was shut down.
Where are all these people going to go? These are people who easily pay $30 or more for a single flyable aircraft as long as it is adequately well modeled, people who even pay 15$-50$ for scenery packs that might range from an entire continent or be as small as a single major european airport. The more "FSX friendly" the new sim is, the more 1c company has to gain from it. There's a gap in the market and if Mr.Maddox is well prepared he can cover it just like that (insert snap of the fingers sound here).
It would be very interesting to see a similar poll in a MSFS forum. "Would you buy a combat sim if the aircraft systems were modelled in an accurate and comparable manner to the way they are done in civilian sims?"
I was about to open a similar poll myself after all the discussion in the other poll about clickable cockpits, but then i went out for a couple of beers
In any case, i'm glad it has surfaced and it's interesting to note that while most people dislike the FSX-style interface, they don't necessarily dislike the added realism that can be found in some of the newer sims and their add-ons.
If you want to see some well done WWII birds, search youtube for clips of the aerosoft catalina and the A2A simulations accusim series, which includes the Piper J-3 Cub, the P-47D and the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser (a civilian passenger/airliner version of the B29). The A2A guys are the people behind the remake of Rowan's Battle of Britain sim by the way.
I've flown all of these on a friend's PC and i was not a big fan of FSX, but truth be told, i was very pleasantly surprised with the added realism. The workload is of course increased but it's definitely not impossible to manage.
For example, the Stratocruiser is very complicated but you have an AI copilot and an AI engineer to help you fly it, just like you have AI gunners in combat sims to help you defend your bomber.
Imagine flying a night raid in a Mosquito in some SoW expansion two years into the future and having an AI navigator correcting your course via the signals he receives on the Oboe navigation system and the beacons that feed your direction finder gauge, would be cool as hell. Want more? Switch through the crew positions and manipulate the instruments on your own if you want to do it all by yourself, just like we can take controls of the gunners now. Want even better? Have a friend join you online and share the crew positions between you. You go "hey mate, i'll get navigation,piloting and the radio station" and the other guy replies "cool, i'll take care of bomb aiming, gunners and the engineer station to help you monitor the engines while you fly". Come on, i can't be the only one who thinks this will be a blast to do online
As for how complicated it is to transition from one plane to the next, someone mentioned having to "marry" a single airplane to make it work. Well, i have some observations on this.
First of all, the most succesful pilots in IL2 are those who stick to a select amount of airframes and that amount is small. Usually it's 1-2 aircraft for each time period/theater/side and even if the guy is seen switching sides, he flies aircraft that behave in a similar manner. I mostly fly 190s so if i have to switch teams for balance reasons you'll never see me in a spitfire, you'll see me in a P-47. If there's an early war scenario going that has neither of those, i'll pick the plane that fights the rest of the planeset in a similar way to the previous two, that is the fastest i can get with the heaviest armament possible and not the best dogfighter. In a sense, even though flying a total of 10 airframes or less (3-4 fighters, but i fly bombers too), i'm essentially already dedicated to a certain "style" because it works for me.
I don't like it so much and i'm neither good enough at it to go headlong into furballs in a 109G2, Yak or Spitfire, so i choose the other way.
With that out of the way, real pilots also faced transition issues from one type to the next and it's not unrealistic to have it happen in the sim as well. However, the initial flyables of SoW will not be of the same staggering amount that we now have in IL2 (even without the mod-packs there's a ton of flyables). I'm guessing that it won't be hard to learn a couple of fighers and a couple of bombers really well, so that you can use the right tool for the job no matter which side you're on.
Which brings us to the final part. Conversion between different aircraft in a flight sim is easier than it looks. As i told you before, i had no experience whatsoever with FSX. After i learned a couple of things in one aircraft, i could apply them to all the rest as well. It's like driving a car, you don't have to get a different license whenever you drive a different car, as long it's the same vehicle category. The only case you'll need another license is you want to drive a motorbike or a truck and it's the same way for aicraft as well, if you move from single seaters to four-engined heavies you will naturally have a few more things to take care of as you fly.
The bottom line is that if you know how to manage an engine, you know how to manage 90% of all engines available. All you need to learn is the different power settings necessary for the engine you're going to work with. I had zero experience with things like that in a simulator and guess how long it takes me to get used to a new aircraft that simulates them...two hours maximum for multi-engined airframes, less than an hour for single-engined ones. I might have to try a few times before i manage to start it up, or cook the engine altogether on my first couple of flights, have to go-around because i screwed up the landing approach or set it down heavy and damage the gear, but after a mere two flights it's a piece of cake.
It's not necessarily difficult, it's actually very easy once you learn how it all comes together (which you only have to do once regardless of airframe, all piston engines work in a similar manner). What it is is that it's definitely more involving and interesting and it gives you something to do on the way to the target area between scanning for targets, which is otherwise complete downtime.
On top of that, most of the military cockpits have marked areas on each gauge. You don't fancy learning that a Jug has a maximum allowable manifold pressure of 52 inches mercury and a maximum RPM of 2700? Good for you. You can either turn down the realism settings, or simply keep the needles pointing inside the green arc and don't exceed that redline. It's as simple as stealing candy from a baby.
