SimHQ preview: First Look: Rise Of Flight

[Blackdog_kt]

I just hope the European release doesn't take too long after the Russian one.
For example, i've been waiting for Black Shark to announce a boxed DVD distribution and there's nothing on the horizon yet.I don't want a downloaded version and i also don't want to pirate sims because we need to keep the developers getting paid, since we're a niche market. However, if they haven't released it by the time i get my new rig (thinking of the new i7 920 chip, as i want to have an upgrade path available ahead of me for the next year or so), i think i won't be able to hold out on it much longer, ie i'll try a copy until they ship a boxed set that i will buy.

As for ROF, i think they have given a lot of thought into not only making this a high fidelity product realism-wise, but a deeply atmospheric one too. There are numerous older sims that i remember fondly because of this.

This is what helped build up immersion and suspend the player's disbelief in an age where graphics were simple polygons. Does anyone remember Red Baron? Not Red Baron 2 with the 3d patch, the original one. Aces of the Pacific,Aces over Europe, 1942: The pacific Air war and European Air war? These were all milestones for me. I really loved the way the Dynamix sims were laid out (menus, loading screens, etc) and i also liked EAW's barracks and hangar screens.

Especially in Red Baron 2 and EAW, the campaign engine was also very good. In RB2 it was a static affair due to the nature of WWI, but EAW had a very clever system...a campaign that looked like a mix of dynamic and historical. The allies would land on the beaches of France either way, but how far the front lines moved was also subjected to your impact on the war effort as a pilot. I remember once starting a campaign as a lowly 2nd Lt flying P38s and by the time my unit switched to Mustangs i had command of a 12-ship formation in combat and soon made squadron leader.

Another very important thing...each unit had the correct aircraft types for each time period. This also happened in RB and RB2, and you could ask for a transfer to a unit that used a plane you liked, or where you had a lot of aces. This is what makes these games stand out in time, the ability to start as a nobody and work your way to medals, promotions and an elite outfit where you'll fly with the aces.

Last but not least, the AI in EAW was, i wouldn't say exactly intelligent, but it was believable. You could order your flight to do all sorts of nifty bracketing maneuvers, or attack a bomber stream head on in line abreast with 12 FW190s before breaking the formation apart. This gave a very nice tactical feel to the missions, to the point where i would loiter after expending my ammo just to direct my squadron to victory. If the escorts had left i would fly high above the bombers and direct the attacks on them, i would send my damaged wingmen back home and so on, making sure we did the most damage possible with the least loss to our side. Oh, and the AI pilots that stuck to their target like glue disregarding their own safety or the mission objectives were the exception, not the rule. I remember intercepting heavies and the AI escorts weren't focused on getting kills, they weren't even focused on getting hits on us. All they cared about was spoiling my attack run, just like they should! They would hang back up behind the heavies and dive on any of us that was commencing an attack run.

In RB2 i liked the period-specific feel that pervaded the whole sim, from the little video clips, to the ability to set up lone wolf patrols. To borrow some terminology from the MMO game genre, a good sim today needs to have a "sandbox" feel to it, like the old ones did. We have the technology for clickpits, amazing graphics and highly accurate FM/DM, but we are missing the sense of being there, ie some of the new sims feel too sterile.

What i'd like to see is a believable environment where you are somebody else leading a different life for the duration of your gaming session, much like it's done in MMO games. Don't get me wrong, i love IL2 but this is one area where it was severely lacking from the beginning of the series. No matter what, there's always the feeling that i'm playing a simulator, mainly due to the menu screen layouts and the impersonal way the AI is handled. I get the feeling ROF will walk some steps toward correcting this trend and i hope the final release and SOW (when it comes) will give us that feeling again.