Friday 2010-08-06 Dev. update and Discussions

[Chivas]

The terrain is becoming very believable, and much better than anything I've seen so far in a combat flight sim. Terrain graphics are very important for my immersion level as its something your looking at 90% of the time your flying. We know the aircraft and cockpits are beautiful. The DM will also be far more complex than IL-2.
The elephant in the room is the AI, and it can't be shown in screenshots. Oleg has suggested that the AI will be much better, and if thats the case, this sim is shaping up just fine.

~Salute~

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by swiss

Communication is not the problem - the different sight is.

The gunner would have to describe the situation to the captain.
Now Imagine 4+ gunners simultaneously ...

I hope the captain was female, talk of multitasking.


I'm still referring to the fire at will thing...

In the example i was talking about a blenheim wich has a single gunner. However, even with more gunners it's no different that a squadron of 20 or so fighters that are tuned into the same frequency during a dogfight. They too have this problem of having to know when to talk and that's the reason for brevity codes and teaching radio discipline.

In any case, on youtube you can find clips of both the memphis belle hollywood movie and wartime footage of the real memphis belle crew and hear how they are talking to each other. They are all on the intercomm at the same time. In the movie this is touched upon sometimes when they make a fuss and the captain tells them to keep it short and precise. In the films of the real crew that i saw, they talk like nothing's happening...totally calm and composed, in short precise sentences:

"109 coming in, 9 o'clock...he's moving towards the tail"
Simple stuff like that...the waist gunner is telling the crew he's tracking a bandit and that the tail gunner is about to see him in his field of fire. That's all the information everyone in the crew needs. The rotating top and belly turrets can try to shoot at the 109 and the tail gunner will definitely do so, but nobody is asking "hey, can i shoot him too from the top turret?". It's just the information passed on to the crew and each man knows what to do because they are trained for it. There's no case in such a scenario that the nose or right waist gunners would talk at the same time, they heard that the bandit is not in the quarter they are covering so they don't bother with it, they scan for other threats.

Originally Posted by kendo65

Quoting myself here , but wanted to make an overlooked point: the people on this forum may not be representative of the average punter who will buy SOW - in fact who will HAVE to buy SOW if it is to be a commercial success.

For many of us enthusiasts - those who actually know (or care about ) the difference between the E3 and and E4 sub-variants of the 109, or what kind of propellors the Hurricane used, or the precise layout of the instrument panel in a Spitfire Mk 1 - there will be many more (hopefully !) buyers who don't know and don't care (at least initially). They may buy the game because of a general interest in the Battle Of Britain; they may not know or care that it is Part 1 in the new, state of the art flight-sim series.

For these people what will matter is the BOB gameplay experience and graphical quality.

Maybe we overlook the importance of the standalone aspect of this game? I, and I'm sure most here, are firmly fixed on SOW as being PART 1 in the great new flight-sim scheme - we are already casting our eyes excitedly to the North Africa / Korea follow-ups and thinking about the improvements that Oleg will add as it progresses.

An overlooked question? - will SOW:BOB cut it as a standalone gaming experience? Will it recreate the Battle of Britain experience in an exciting, fun way or will it be mainly of interest to diehard, technical afficionados?

No disresspect to the casual crowd, but the right way to make a flight sim is to make it as technically rich as possible and then include difficutly options that the casual players can switch off, this keeps both ends of the potential customer spectrum happy.

If it's done the other way around and the technical details are overlooked, there is no way to please both ends and the game becomes an arcade game with aircraft instead of a flight simulator game.

Maybe i'll be swamped with the new FM and engine management and not use it, or i'll start using it after i buy better peripherals, but that's not a reason to ommit these features. It's evolution and since the game is tailored for a long life, much of the added difficulty and control schemes used to manage it will gradually become a standard during its life.

As an example, how many years have you guys had TrackIR sets? I used to fly with a hat-switch up until 2 years ago and i've been flight simming for 18 years. Just because i didn't have a TrackIR didn't mean that IL2 should cater to me as the lowest common denominator and force automatic padlock views on everyone, don't you think?

In a similar fashion, if time, money and PC processing limits permit it, then flying SoW should be as exerting and mentally straining as flying a real aircraft (well, minus the G loads and detrimental effects from combat i guess). Just because some people won't use the option to fly this way doesn't mean we should deny it to those who will, as long as it's possible to do it of course. It's not a question of wether to include the technical aspect. If the difficult things can be switched off the casual gamers will be able to enjoy it just fine. If they don't exist however, it's only the casual gamers that will, the others will not. I think this is not even a dilemma

[ElAurens]

Originally Posted by Chivas

The terrain is becoming very believable, and much better than anything I've seen so far in a combat flight sim. Terrain graphics are very important for my immersion level as its something your looking at 90% of the time your flying. We know the aircraft and cockpits are beautiful. The DM will also be far more complex than IL-2.
The elephant in the room is the AI, but that you can't shown in screenshots. Oleg has suggested that the AI will be much better, and if thats the case, this sim is shaping up just fine.

~Salute~

This, many times over.

The shot of the Hurri over the city is simply stunning on my monitor (Samsung PX2370). Not only is it verging on the photoreal, it almost gave me vertigo.

SoW is going to raise the bar much higher than the whiners on this board can possibly conceive of.

Kudos Oleg and Luthier.

[nearmiss]

My system is state of the art. The photos are awesome on 1920x1200 resolution x 24 inch monitor.

Nothing disappointing about them AFAICT.

They can stop now for my part, release the SOW and refine the scenery later.

My opinion of course

[Freycinet]

Thx so much for the update. Nice historical reference in the first image:

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/327...CFB0318981C9EF

[swiss]

Originally Posted by nearmiss

My system is state of the art. The photos are awesome on 1920x1200 resolution x 24 inch monitor.

Nothing disappointing about them AFAICT.

They can stop now for my part, release the SOW and refine the scenery later.

My opinion of course

+1