CoD will be "only" a FS or something more?

[mazex]

Originally Posted by palvas

Well,i didn't say i want an incredible hollywood story such "squad leader that steals the new spitfire and conquer the world". That would be too much and i agree it would be a negative feature for realism
As someone else said,some cutscenes of you running at your plane while Luftwaffe is bombing the airfield,watching your best "virtual" friend hit by a bomb (and not just "Number three (cup of tea )" ) or by a 109 while landing , would be a very interesting feature without touching the simulation level of the sim.Or having an arrogant squad leader that mission after mission becomes like a second father for you and got killed during his last mission with a terrible hit over the spirit of your squad.

Not talking about incredible dramas ace combat style,just talking about true and possible backgrounds of your pilot during the BoB

+1 for that, as flying the same IL2 style "fly a fighter sweep to waypint x,y,z" gets a bit boring even though it's probably close to reality... If it gets too cheesy though I'm afraid there will be too much whining here. Something fun would be "Read Robert Wellums book included in the collectors edition or pdf in the normal edition and stop at page 21. Thats where the campaign start when you stand in the Hangar talking to Peter Sears and instructor Hayne comes up to you with the briefing for the first ride in a Tiger Moth"... They would need the Harvard too for that story though...

And Kraken, I also enjoyed the "cheesy" bond-style story of Strike Commander to have a break from my Falcon 3 campaigns and Aces over Europe "fly to x and back missions" in the early 90:ies

EDIT: having the Harvard to match the 108 is not a bad thought anyway - and can be used for further expansions too as it was used in almost every airforce in the "non axis" world at some point - and in Korea for active combat recon duty Imagine sitting in a T-6 when a Mig comes BnZ:ing

[JVM]

The Harvard is absolutely not the 108 counterpart: the Harvard is an primarily advanced 2-seater trainer, whereas the 108 was a 4-seater liaison/courier aircraft, far too delicate to be used for training purposes.
I do not believe there are allied A/C which could be considered as the 108 counterpart, the role of the 108 was filled with a variety of A/C, single and multi-engine, drafted from the civilian fleet (like the Percival Proctor, or the DH-89)...
We "miss" AFAIK BoB time advanced trainers both sides: Miles Master (probably more widespread in RAF than Harvard I) and Arado 96.
The counterpart of the present RAF Tiger Moth would be the Fw 44, the He 72 or the Kl 35 (the latter often used as JG hack during BoB), possibly the Bü 133...

JV

[mazex]

Originally Posted by JVM

The Harvard is absolutely not the 108 counterpart: the Harvard is an primarily advanced 2-seater trainer, whereas the 108 was a 4-seater liaison/courier aircraft, far too delicate to be used for training purposes.
I do not believe there are allied A/C which could be considered as the 108 counterpart, the role of the 108 was filled with a variety of A/C, single and multi-engine, drafted from the civilian fleet (like the Percival Proctor, or the DH-89)...
We "miss" AFAIK BoB time advanced trainers both sides: Miles Master (probably more widespread in RAF than Harvard I) and Arado 96.
The counterpart of the present RAF Tiger Moth would be the Fw 44, the He 72 or the Kl 35 (the latter often used as JG hack during BoB), possibly the Bü 133...

JV

Yep, you are correct - thought it was used for training but nope...

Anyway the Harvard would be good as it can be used as a trainer both for the RAF and the US air force (if they ever get in after the affair that can not be named )

Well, the days of getting non-critical planes for free are probably over so I'd better roll up my sleeves and do a Harvard myself when the game is released as modding will be allowed, and then do a "First Light" campaign myself...

[JVM]

I agree with you...I am also considering the idea for my pet aircraft...but it would mean a lot of learning, and I need time for that! we shall see...

[Krt_Bong]

Having some cut scenes of pilots running to the planes after getting the call to scramble would be great but the animation of these is sometimes of lower quality in a game that has high detail of machines and no FPS elements, realistic people are much harder than realistic tanks and planes IMO. Mission Briefs and Debriefs can be used for this and maybe the possibility to include still photos could be used for this as a splash screen while the mission loads.
Ex. Campaign start -splash screen shows pilots relaxing in lawn chairs with squadron puppy etc..15 second track of hundreds of bombers
Briefing; ..Scramble Chain Home reports Heinkels 100 plus..
Mission start splash shows a shot of pilots running to their planes.
After mission, debrief and map showing flight path, description of pilot accomplishments, commendations etc... Possibly inclusion of a 15 second track of the action from Gods Eye view of the battle.

I think that would be a more realistic expectation of the game engine not requiring making 3D people and a lot of animation.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Krt_Bong

Having some cut scenes of pilots running to the planes after getting the call to scramble would be great but the animation of these is sometimes of lower quality in a game that has high detail of machines and no FPS elements, realistic people are much harder than realistic tanks and planes IMO. Mission Briefs and Debriefs can be used for this and maybe the possibility to include still photos could be used for this as a splash screen while the mission loads.
Ex. Campaign start -splash screen shows pilots relaxing in lawn chairs with squadron puppy etc..15 second track of hundreds of bombers
Briefing; ..Scramble Chain Home reports Heinkels 100 plus..
Mission start splash shows a shot of pilots running to their planes.
After mission, debrief and map showing flight path, description of pilot accomplishments, commendations etc... Possibly inclusion of a 15 second track of the action from Gods Eye view of the battle.

I think that would be a more realistic expectation of the game engine not requiring making 3D people and a lot of animation.

I'm pretty sure that is what they have been cooking One thing I hope for is a campaign builder that allows users to create something like this themselves. Lets say you can add a chain of images with texts and maybe your own movies for the briefings that gets displayed in sequence with a simple "next" button? This way we could write a simple manuscript of the "beween missions fillers" in a "black and white movie / comic style". That would work for me and only requires someone with drawing skills doing some simple images to add a lot of story between the mission, or add in game screenshots for the story etc... The coding to add that would be really easy to do. You should then be able to add you own recon photos etc to the actual briefing to add some depth.

[The Kraken]

I remember HTML being mentioned as an option for mission briefings, so basically they would be completely customizable, including images and videos. Not sure if that's still part of the release though.

Personally I don't really care much for videos or animations as a transition to the mission; I usually skip those after seeing them a few times.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by The Kraken

I remember HTML being mentioned as an option for mission briefings, so basically they would be completely customizable, including images and videos. Not sure if that's still part of the release though.

Personally I don't really care much for videos or animations as a transition to the mission; I usually skip those after seeing them a few times.

I remember that too, I wrote some sample code to do that as a simple xml/xslt transformation instead so the mission builders don't write Html themselves as that would be to beg for problems. I sent it to Oleg in 2008 but no answer yet

For me a "fill outs" with some "slides" showing real images with historic background like "On the 15:th of September Luftwaffe put up another... ", or the casual style with cartoon strips with an image of two pilots having a pint and the text: "That night we realized that there was no use thinking they would find Paddy alive, Dan had talked to some of the pilots at 602 and... ".