Future of simulations 2010 discussion

[PE_Tigar]

Originally Posted by The Kraken

Someone should call ED, it's not too late yet to cancel DCS:A-10 now that it's been shown to be boring and has no multiplayer; ElAurens has spoken... I guess all sim developers should follow the Rise of Flight approach and concentrate on Air Quake, seems to work fine for them..

I guess you're not 100% right on RoF being "air quake" - I find its FM, DM and "systems" modelling quite accurate - for primitive machines they model, that is. Now, to put that into perspective, A-10C, itself being a rather non-complicated airplane, if you discount the "bolt-on" systems added in A to C transition, is still many times more complicated that a WWI airplane. For WWII airplanes, though, there is a huge variety, starting with quite primitive machines, like Gladiator for example or Tiger Moth, and ending with F4U and similar.

But the most important thing for me is not accurate modelling of the switches you use once and forget (famously - magnetos in Il-2 - why do I need to switch them off and on, if there's no magneto failure option?) but the accurate modelling of the features really important in real airplanes - which are BTW inexplicably absent in Il-2. A good example for this is the fuel tank selector, or the fuel shutoff. If it's hard to model the fuel consumption from different tanks, than please at least let me shut off the fuel flow to a burning engine. It could've saved my virtual butt many times...

Again, the flight sim, and a combat flight sim in particular, is a very complex mechanism. With that in mind, the all new features we'll see in SOW, especially in environment modelling, will give us a huge immersion boost - be sure . The sims of tomorrow will need to follow the path of simulating the environment more accurately, and the interaction of the aircraft and the environment needs to be improved. For combat flight sims, a persistent, dynamic, war-like environment, with "jump-in - jump-out" features and a living, breathing world around it would be a "holy grail". For example, if we're modelling BoB, we could have a server (or a bunch of them) running the whole thing, according to the historical ORBAT, operations, weather etc., and offer pilots missions dynamically, which they could jump into and out of (with limitations, like no jumping out of the mission in combat, etc.). That wouldn't preclude the existence of some kind of more limited "offline training module" - but the main action would be online. I, for once, would pay a monthly fee for such an experience, and I'd gladly pay for any additional aircraft usable in such an environment.