Desireable level of realism in a comabt flightsim?

[Novotny]

Chaps, try to think about it in economic terms.

There are 64 votes on this subject, in this thread, 54 of which want the kind of realism you are asking for.

I'm not sure how many people are currently working on SOW, but they all need to be paid every month. Development time is expensive. Additionally, every extra day, week or month is lost revenue - Oleg cannot sell that which is not ready.

What price to delay the game two/four/six months? Imagine, how many sales would that be? You can argue the sales will come in anyways, but Oleg has made it clear he cannot delay the release any more. He needs to get this out as soon as possible.

It would take time to implement features that a mere handful of people wish for, and clearly, given their exacting standards, and Oleg's desire to do things well, this would be very expensive.

Not everyone who will buy this game reads these forums. I'd say, in world terms, it's a tiny percentage.

Adding features to please a tiny, but vocal, minority makes no sense at all. Sorry guys, but that's the truth of it.

[ElAurens]

+1

[Blackdog_kt]

Your oversight is that you view this as an isolated IL2 community affair. There's loads more money to be had from a sim that implements advanced systems management. How long do you think the FSX crowd will be able to keep their sim alive now that ACES studio is closed? Where will they go? The only other alternatice is Xplane and while their FMs are better than FSX, they lack in other departments and there's also a sort of rivarly between FSX and Xplane pilots. Fun fact in all of that, is that many real world airline pilots practice the next day's route on laptops during their flights, in either of those two sims while the co-pilot is monitoring the airplane during the "autopilot transit" phase, there are training schools that use FSX as a training tool and there's also a version of X-plane that is FAA certified for use in pilot training.

The point is, a market for these things is way bigger than "a vocal minority of IL2 users" as you put it. If something new is going to get the piece of the cake that FSX had, it might as well be SoW. More money for Oleg's team, more people working on the SoW expansions, everyone wins.

Will that be enough for these features to make it into the release of SoW? I seriously doubt it and i don't expect it. What most of us are campaigning for is a gradual introduction of such features during the simulator's life. And if someone doesn't like it, be my guest and lower your difficulty settings to what you're comfortable with in IL2, no problem, everyone's happy

[ElAurens]

I'll believe that when I see Oleg modeling a 777.

Not.

Gonna.

Happen.

And frankly I don't want the lack of fidelity that would have to happen to make SOW the next FSX. Nor do I want a bunch of United Airlines cattle car pilot wanna bees taking over and ruining the best air combat sim available. They have their playground, we have ours.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

Nor do I want a bunch of United Airlines cattle car pilot wanna bees taking over and ruining the best air combat sim available. They have their playground, we have ours.

I'm not sure, it would make for a target rich environment. And bouncing airliners might be more my speed!

cheers!

[robtek]

And who says that the "Cattle car-Pilot" wouldn't like to deliver a different kind of cargo, say 12 x 500 lbs when he can do it in a simulation?

[nynek]

I voted Yes . Guys I do know that many of you are /was pilots and some even military ones. The biggest problem with this issue of "realism" is that realism will be as good to use as good I can actually LEARN HOW to use it.
As far as I'm concerned tutorials in our game sux .
Things I can comprehend I've found on youtube and at school like joint-ops MANY YEARS after publishing first Sturmovik .
In short You can put ashtrays and working doorknobs in the game as long I will know why they are here , what to do with them and most important what NOT to do with them .
Give me video with step by step guide and training mission to beat myself to death and after month or so we can meet on more or less equal footing on some full real servers. Otherwise gap between experten and greenhorns will deepened and more and more people are going to choose "easy path".

With Olympic Salute
nynek
P.S.
Some of You show your kids how to walk Right ?

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

I'll believe that when I see Oleg modeling a 777.

Not.

Gonna.

Happen.

And frankly I don't want the lack of fidelity that would have to happen to make SOW the next FSX. Nor do I want a bunch of United Airlines cattle car pilot wanna bees taking over and ruining the best air combat sim available. They have their playground, we have ours.

Mate, do i have to spell everything out? Did i say anything about Oleg modelling airliners? What i'm saying is there's loads of money to be had if the SoW engine can "steal" pilots from other venues of the flight sim world.

For that to happen, the engine has to be modular enough to allow addition of extra features by 3rd party developers and players who are into modding.

New civilian sim on SoW engine? Oleg's team gets more money.
New WWI sim on SoW engine by the Over Flanders Fields team? Will probably be better than RoF and Oleg's team gets more money.
New Vietnam sim on SoW engine with everything from O-1 Bird Dog Spotters to F-105s, carrier ops, Mig-21s and choppers? Oleg's team gets more money.

None of this will be possible however, if there's not an option to tweak things under the hood.

Someone please explain how an increased revenue from engine licensing fees (in the case of possible payware add-ons, i doubt there will be licensing fees for free add-ons made by the community), a stream of controllable and thus, officially sanctioned, free add-ons and the resulting competition bringing down the prices on payware as well is going to ruin our fun, when that not only results in more products for us (both free and payware) but also makes the developers more financially secure and possibly enables them to upgrade equipment and hire more staff to bring us the expansions faster, because i seriously don't get it.


This is not aimed at you since you obviously realize the importance of options and user-selectable difficulty, but i get the feeling that we're getting collectively near-sighted hear and losing the big picture. I'm starting to get the idea that all the talk about how this will ruin online play is nothing more than some people being afraid of their favorite servers moving to more realistic/complicated settings which they don't want to adapt to.
I'm not one to take pride in my settings and my virtual achievements (or lack thereof) but there is a part of the community that thinks like that and to them, having their full-real settings in IL2 relegated to a "70% real" score in SoW could be a big deal, as they will have to adapt or lose the "bragging rights" for lack of a better word. If this is indeed the case, then all the rhetoric about lack of resources and how such features are out of place in a combat sim (i guess jet and chopper sims are not combat sims then) is not much more than an effort to drag the upcoming SoW down to a standard they will be comfortable with, but do it for everyone and not just themselves so they can still keep telling themselves that they fly "full real".
Well, there's no thing as full real anyway, just varying degrees of approaching reality, plus i can't see how flying full real equates to advocating simplified settings, as a combat airframe is so much more than weight, armament, horse power and material durability, ie more than simply FM and DM. It's a combat plane for crying out loud, not a bicycle with a gun that i can simply point and shoot once i get a feeling for how it handles.

I still don't see the problem if
1) it is possible resource-wise on behalf of the developer team and doesn't need major recoding
2) it is not a demanded feature on release but
3) there is only the underlying framework to support it so
4) we can do much of it on our own and finally
5) it is user-selectable

That's a lot of ifs, but we're talking about a sim with a projected lifespan of a decade or so that will have to compete with other products down the line. To simply expect a rehash of IL2 with prettier visuals is nothing short of a lack of vision and reasonable expectation on our part, which i think the developer team is not only aware of, but also better than. If people can't cope with some added complexity and a bit of a learning curve now and then, then i guess it's time to quit IL-2 as well, because Team Daidalos is implementing radio navigation and radar and "we don't need to tune radios in combat sims".

[Sutts]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Mate, do i have to spell everything out? Did i say anything about Oleg modelling airliners? What i'm saying is there's loads of money to be had if the SoW engine can "steal" pilots from other venues of the flight sim world.

For that to happen, the engine has to be modular enough to allow addition of extra features by 3rd party developers and players who are into modding.

New civilian sim on SoW engine? Oleg's team gets more money.
New WWI sim on SoW engine by the Over Flanders Fields team? Will probably be better than RoF and Oleg's team gets more money.
New Vietnam sim on SoW engine with everything from O-1 Bird Dog Spotters to F-105s, carrier ops, Mig-21s and choppers? Oleg's team gets more money.

None of this will be possible however, if there's not an option to tweak things under the hood.

Someone please explain how an increased revenue from engine licensing fees (in the case of possible payware add-ons, i doubt there will be licensing fees for free add-ons made by the community), a stream of controllable and thus, officially sanctioned, free add-ons and the resulting competition bringing down the prices on payware as well is going to ruin our fun, when that not only results in more products for us (both free and payware) but also makes the developers more financially secure and possibly enables them to upgrade equipment and hire more staff to bring us the expansions faster, because i seriously don't get it.


This is not aimed at you since you obviously realize the importance of options and user-selectable difficulty, but i get the feeling that we're getting collectively near-sighted hear and losing the big picture. I'm starting to get the idea that all the talk about how this will ruin online play is nothing more than some people being afraid of their favorite servers moving to more realistic/complicated settings which they don't want to adapt to.
I'm not one to take pride in my settings and my virtual achievements (or lack thereof) but there is a part of the community that thinks like that and to them, having their full-real settings in IL2 relegated to a "70% real" score in SoW could be a big deal, as they will have to adapt or lose the "bragging rights" for lack of a better word. If this is indeed the case, then all the rhetoric about lack of resources and how such features are out of place in a combat sim (i guess jet and chopper sims are not combat sims then) is not much more than an effort to drag the upcoming SoW down to a standard they will be comfortable with, but do it for everyone and not just themselves so they can still keep telling themselves that they fly "full real".
Well, there's no thing as full real anyway, just varying degrees of approaching reality, plus i can't see how flying full real equates to advocating simplified settings, as a combat airframe is so much more than weight, armament, horse power and material durability, ie more than simply FM and DM. It's a combat plane for crying out loud, not a bicycle with a gun that i can simply point and shoot once i get a feeling for how it handles.

I still don't see the problem if
1) it is possible resource-wise on behalf of the developer team and doesn't need major recoding
2) it is not a demanded feature on release but
3) there is only the underlying framework to support it so
4) we can do much of it on our own and finally
5) it is user-selectable

That's a lot of ifs, but we're talking about a sim with a projected lifespan of a decade or so that will have to compete with other products down the line. To simply expect a rehash of IL2 with prettier visuals is nothing short of a lack of vision and reasonable expectation on our part, which i think the developer team is not only aware of, but also better than. If people can't cope with some added complexity and a bit of a learning curve now and then, then i guess it's time to quit IL-2 as well, because Team Daidalos is implementing radio navigation and radar and "we don't need to tune radios in combat sims".

+3

It's a combat plane for crying out loud, not a bicycle with a gun that i can simply point and shoot once i get a feeling for how it handles.

[Sutts]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

I'll believe that when I see Oleg modeling a 777.

Not.

Gonna.

Happen.

And frankly I don't want the lack of fidelity that would have to happen to make SOW the next FSX. Nor do I want a bunch of United Airlines cattle car pilot wanna bees taking over and ruining the best air combat sim available. They have their playground, we have ours.

How could improving systems modelling possibly reduce fidelity?? Your arguments are getting pretty poor. I think you need to get that big chip off your shoulder mate.