Hardware, software and the future of flight combat sims.

[SlipBall]

Originally Posted by addman

When you have stellar, super-gorgeous cockpits like CloD but basic wingman commands that doesn't function properly -and still doesn't- then you know they over-reached. Ambition should drive every development team but when it starts to conflict with budget and deadlines then you need to snap back to reality and sort out your priorities. As I mentioned before, some part of CloD are absolutely spectacular but the basic things that are missing and stuff they just threw together last minute just undermines the overall experience.

Game developers aren't charity workers, they're in it to make money and especially publishers. They look at R&D expenditure and then they look at potential revenue to make their decisions which games to develop. The games market is soooo much more diverse right now and people are playing games on their consoles, on their phones, on their tablets and on their PC's. Developers are far more spread out across the board and many are a one-man team creating 99 cent apps for iOS or Android and are making good money because of low cash-burn rates. The fight for resources to develop games are getting tighter, just the other day THQ (pretty large game developer/publisher) filed for bankruptcy and they have some pretty valuable IP's in their possession. All I'm trying to say is that we are going to have to face fact that times have changed and we have to make due with what we get. The SoW project was admirably ambitious but it became it's demise, whiners or no whiners.

What is 1 million copies x 50.- .....making money

Originally Posted by startrekmike

It is clear that you are so blinded by your loyalty to CloD that you refuse to even give anything else a chance, the new IL-2 is not going to be ROF reskinned for WWII, to even think that is pretty silly considering that they have made it clear that the engine is capable of doing more and that they are doing a lot of work to make sure it feels like a WWII sim.

You seem to think that the idea of this new IL-2 is somehow a personal insult against you and the CloD community and you refuse to accept that any sim might actually be better (in the case of barely touching DCS World and deciding it was inferior just because it is not exactly like CloD, even though it is clearly superior when it comes to systems modeling, flight physics and damage model).

Some random company could make the best sim in the world, a technical marvel and you would still say it sucks compared to CloD just because it is not CloD.

CloD is a great sim but it has some clear flaws that are never going to get fixed now, it's development ended with the last steam patch and perhaps it is time we accept that fact, continue enjoying the sim but also feel free to look forward to something new, something that might actually be good.

This pissing match between "the ROF crowd" and the "IL-2 crowd" is getting tiresome, perhaps it is time to just accept that things have changed that are outside our control (and possibly for the better, we will have to give them the benefit of the doubt) instead of just saying "if it ain't CloD, it ain't a sim!".

I don't even know why I bother reading these forums, I feel like I have to take a side (because I play both ROF and CLoD) and I don't want to.

Remember that BOS battle was largely a lot of ground pounding.

Originally Posted by kendo65

I really don't think the new venture is going to be the holy grail and I'm not ecstatic to be contemplating scaling back the ambition and dream of COD's vision. (though I'd given up on seeing a working, practical realisation of that vision some time ago. Maybe that's why COD's death hasn't affected me as much as it obviously has some others here. For me the COD dream died slowly and painfully 6-12 months ago)

But I think it's just too hard to say at the moment how far 1C/777 can push things in the next year to 18 months. Your characterisation that it will be ROF with WW2 aircraft is I think the most pessimistic reading possible of what the final result could be. Already in the last week there have been signs and hints that there could be fairly significant advances from the current ROF state of play with improvements to terrain, cockpits and even (possibly) DX11.

But, they seem to have made a decision right at the outset to dampen and underplay expectations - maybe a wise move given that it was partly the fall from 1C/Maddox Game's sky-high expectation to the reality of what COD was like at launch that created so much disappointment.

So, is it a very calculated case of under-promise and over-deliver from 777, or is it just the abandonment of vision and ambition for mediocrity and the art of the possible? I think it's really too early to tell, and I'm not writing any blank cheques for 777 concerning BOS. As more information becomes available and as they get a better idea of the rate of progress and how much they can do, then we will be able to judge.

Also, please remember that COD didn't cover itself in glory in its first year and a half. To hear some people you would think we were giving up a flawless and perfectly realised piece of software for a half-promise of mediocrity. COD had at least as many deep flaws and omissions to set alongside its successes, and ultimately it failed because it couldn't advance enough in the time since release to inspire the continued confidence of its investors.

I'm flying the release and having a blast...I work around a lot of the problems. I could be flying it for years to come