When is Storm of War: Battle of Britain going to be released?

[FCIProject]

Hi

I have asked the same question in the past on the other IL2 forums;

When is Storm of War: Battle of Britain going to be released?

Apart from the amazing attention to detail what else is holding this simulation back from being released?

I know these are obvious questions to ask, however it would be nice to get some answers.

I am not criticising Oleg and his brilliant team of developers. I really want to be flying this simulation, not debating about it

[Lo0n]

patience.

[Feuerfalke]

I think it will be released shortly after it's finished and gone gold.

My guess is, that this will happen before Christmas.

What year I don't know, though.

[Lo0n]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

I think it will be released shortly after it's finished and gone gold.

My guess is, that this will happen before Christmas.

What year I don't know, though.

arf

[SlipBall]

I really feel that we will have it this fall...no good reason, just a feeling that I have

[Chivas]

My guess is the end of this year. Olegs stated that the beta is getting closer every day and he may be able to post an idea of the computer specs required by this summer. So the end of this year is as good a guess as any barring any long delay BUGS.

[VMF-214_HaVoK]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

I think it will be released shortly after it's finished and gone gold.

My guess is, that this will happen before Christmas.

What year I don't know, though.

+1

[Avimimus]

Q1 2009 (which also happens to be two weeks).

[Robert]

Originally Posted by Avimimus

Q1 2009 (which also happens to be two weeks).

Forgotten Battles was to be released by X Mas (to the best of my memory) but was released late February/March of 2003.

I'm still betting on a holiday season 2008 release, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were right Avimimus.

[Lionman]

Originally Posted by FCIProject

Hi
I have asked the same question in the past on the other IL2 forums; When is Storm of War: Battle of Britain going to be released? Apart from the amazing attention to detail what else is holding this simulation back from being released? I know these are obvious questions to ask, however it would be nice to get some answers. I am not criticising Oleg and his brilliant team of developers. I really want to be flying this simulation, not debating about it

HERE HERE!!!!! Having met Oleg back in the days of IL2 FB I have nothing but respect for him, his hypoer-realism agenda and his team's work.

However . . . . the whole online air combat community has been waiting for BoB SoW for so many years now with little or no clue ever being offered by Oleg as to when or even IF it will ever be published, that frankly I am starting to lose interest. I also fear from what I've seen of it, that by the time BoB is finally released, unless that is before 2010 it is going to be out of date and the market will have already moved on in new directions.

For example, once the recently released Rise of Flight (formerly Knights of the Sky with a similar history of years of waiting) has worked out it's kinks and got a few more aircraft, it may well shift everyone's attention away from Oleg's stuff. Certainly every virtual air combat pilot that I know is buying Rise of Flight and I don't personally know any virtual pilots who are even asking about BoB SoW any more. Oleg is leaving it way too long for the market which is constantly moving on.

Look at products like ARMA 2 for example and check the realism and quality of the landscapes over which flyable combat aircraft fly (admittedly with arcade level flight models but then these are primarily military ground infantry FPS games) or even the WW1 Flanders over which one flies in Rise of Flight. These are not rubbish generic landscapes with buildings that sit on the ground like lego bricks as in IL2 1946 but magnificent, believable, gorgeous, complex and destructible landscapes, with complex detailed towns and villages where almost every building is different and everything, right down to grass that blows in the wind, livestock in the fields, civilians in the towns, birds in the sky, birdsong in the forests and every tree is modeled in detail with real physics.

IMO I don't think Oleg has ever understood (or cared) how crucial to immersion great detailed and realistic landscapes are. After all every flight begins and ends on the ground and flies over it, often at tree top height in WW2 air combat. So generic landscapes and crumby blurry forests are just not acceptable any more, however good the flight models, however many rivets you can count or labels you can read in the photo-real cockpit. Look out of the window and the immersion is destroyed instantly. Also dynamic weather and a 24 hour day/night cycle is fast becoming a base standard in simulators of all kinds.

While I am whinging, how come nobody ever mentions in FSX or Oleg's sims that when you look down with your track IR inside the cockpit, your seat is empty and your avatar's hands and feet are not on the controls???? Even though that avatar is clearly visible from outside the aircraft and can even have your own face? This is just DUMB IMO A classic case of "The Emperor's New Clothes" which nobody ever mentions don't exist. The avatars in add-on FSX aircraft are laughably unreal lego figures from 15 years ago, yet in FPS simulators these days the avatars are damned nearly photo-real, they even SWEAT and all their body actions are so well motion captured that game-play increasingly looks like documentary news footage. (vis. Far Cry 2, Modern Warfare 2, Assasin's Creed 2 etc.) Yet in the flight sim world we are expected to accept empty cockpits, empty bombers, empty passenger aircraft and deserted terminals, airfields and towns. Don't tell me that the detailed aircraft and flight models use all the CPU and RAm either because in some FPS sims now you can drive every hyper-detailed vehicle from a bicycle to an Apache combat chopper. If Bohemia Interactive can do ALL this in ARMA 2 then it IS possible, so why should we accept such stone age ommisions in our air combat sims?

OK rant nearly over. I am just SICK of waiting for Battle of Britain Storm of War and totally pissed off at Oleg's failure to keep his fan base informed as to when we can expect it to be published, if ever. It has become "old" as the Americans say. If it is EVER published it will have to meet expectations that by now are already sky high and that I doubt anyone can deliver and if it disappoints Oleg's market will evaporate as there is a plethora of great sims in other genres out there now.

Maybe Oleg knows all this and that's why it's taking so long but if it doesn't appear before 2010 I think I and a lot of other people, will just cease to care any more. PC games seem less affected by the recession as in bad times folk are more likely to stay home and play their sims, than go to the pub or club as they have little spare cash.

As formerly one of his greatest advocates, I just hope Oleg is going to prove me wrong, as like every other virtual WW2 air combat pilot on earth I have been longing for Battle of Britain to be published for years and years now and have spent a fortune building a system with the controls and power to run it maxed out. [I can run FSX with all sliders maxed.]

SO TELL US WHAT'S HAPPENING OLEG!!!! Or you are going to lose your fans and your market because we are fed up with living on hope and being left to guess.

I am making this request in mid July 2009



P.S. Here's a multi-million dollar idea that I offer free to game developers in case they aren't already considering it. Why not start collaborating to develop "super-game-engines" that with a generational standardised modular coding structure to enable the products of different genres and houses to be dovetailed into each other as "Macro-add-ons" to create an alternate virtual world for any given period of combat history. The same code to be available to add-on and MOD developers, as the profits for EVERYONE are created by how many units every house sells. This is effectively what happened with Microsoft flight simulator which consequently helped breed an add-on sub-industry worth billions of dollars globally which now looks as if it will pay to keep the core sims going even after MS have pulled out of their own most successful game product ever. (How dumb is MS???? Oh wait I forgot! These are the same idiots who produced VISTA, the most obstructive OS for gamers in PC history!) Hell I'd like to see TV shows where characters from one appear in others in their same roles.