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Originally Posted by furbs
After looking through all the updates and reading the SOW interviews over the last 12 months its left me wondering what sort of sim SOW will be?
To me there is no question SOW will look and fly fantastic and be the next standard in flight sims.
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Can the SOW engine make us believe we are fighting the "Battle of Britain"? or will SOW be more like a "Small online engagement with Battle of Britain planes sim"?
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what do you guys expect from SOW?
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This is something we won't know until we get to jump into that cockpit and play the game.
To make us believe we are fighting the battle of Britain the game will need to induce a thing called the "willing suspension of disbelief"
It has very little to do with the hardware that we will be running the game on. The game will need to provide a atmosphere that we can immerse and loose ourselves in. This can happen even when your reading a skillfully written book!
For me this has already happened in IL-2, Chuck Yeagers Air Combat, Janes WWII Fighters and occasionally in a few other sims like XWing (Sad I know- but I was a lot younger then and the prequels hadn’t been released at that stage).
For me it manifests it’ self when I get in position of a E/A tail trying to get that firing solution, the adrenaline starts flowing, a cold feeling envelops my body, my heart races, I get a pounding in my ears, Time Slows down and I’m in the Zone. 110% of my attention is focused on trying to nail the enemy!
Then, like a noob, I usually get shot from behind and tumble in the twisted burning wreck of my aircraft to the stony ground.
Like I said, believing we’re there has little to do with graphics quality - you only need enough to set the scene; Frame rates – as long as it’s not a slide show; Flight models- I doubt I will ever get the opportunity to fly a real Spitfire or 109 so I will have nothing to compare my siming experience with so as long as the flight models of the various aircraft show the historic strengths and weaknesses of the different types I’m happy; or realistic start-up procedures- We’re never going to get a “realistic” representation of making errors in our procedures . Damage Models- as long as the effects of damage to a system produces the effect on the performance, handling and how we conduct the remainder of our combat mission that we would expect we don’t have to model individual popped rivits!
Clickable cockpits are a real immersion killer for me – Black Shark, Longbow, F18 – using a mouse to flick a switch is just not natural for me. After you map a key to a switch of your simpit, HOTAS or keyboard and learn it’s position so you can throw it without looking, your actually using the same physical skills that you use in a real plane, The position of the switch or what it looks like doesn’t matter, in general after a while you’re not looking anyway.
Will the graphics of SOW make it easier for me to suspend my disbelief? – Hopefully!
Will the flight models of SOW make it easier for me to suspend my disbelief? – Hopefully!
Will getting a round through my plane give me a sinking feeling in my gut and make me assess the situation and have to decide whether to continue with the mission or RTB? – Hopefully!
Will we get silky smooth frame rates and will it make it easier for me to suspend my disbelief? – Don’t know – I will probably spend quite a bit over the life of the sim to try to! But that will depend on whether I enjoy the playing the game and atmosphere that the game envokes. On of the reasons that the Microfost CFS remain in their boxes in my back shed is that for me they never had that atmosphere that allowed me to imerse myself into them.
Cheers!