Friday 2010-10-08 Dev. update and Discussion

[Insuber]

Xifon, I hate to tell you this... but a "serious" flight simulator costs IL2 x 10^6 €... and is used to train real pilots, not middle-aged gamers... and you normally don't find them in the 10$ bin of games shops together with Pacman and The Sim's... and above all they don't run smoothly on a home computer ... . Just look at this one:

http://www.thalesgroup.com/Portfolio...ator/?pid=6907

Cheers,
Insuber

[philip.ed]

Originally Posted by Splitter

ROFl, I am picturing you sitting there in front of your monitor with goggles. Next time you do this, you MUST take pics or, even better, video! I need something to show my wife and say, "See? It could be worse....". You will do us all a great service . Did they model that comic strip out of the other thread after some pics you posted?

Just having some fun, but I got a chuckle out of the mental image .

BTW, I can't believe that people are arguing against including switches to turn down realism. What is wrong with options?

Splitter

the things I do to prove myself right... LOL

[MD_Titus]

Originally Posted by robtek

As real as possible is, regrettably, not everybodys fashion.
Those, who dare the challenge, are even sometimes called snobbish
One can always hope that the arcade setting get boring for the masses and a few more
will find the way to the light of "arapatm" (as real as possible at the moment)

"regrettably" it doesn't seem to have sunk in.

Originally Posted by Richie

Then turn them off I'm sure

well quite. having options that help noobs understand that they are doing damage and what to, or anything in fact that means there is a learning curve rather than precipice, should be added as a selectable option.

Originally Posted by robtek

The "problem" is that easy gained success is worth less.
To "beat the system" (or here to master the 60 year old systems of those obsolete planes) is worth the work put into it.
There is also NO border between simulation and game, the switch is fluent, and simulation is definitively not only for training but also for entertainment.

only once it is easily gained, then difficulty gets ramped up again.

Originally Posted by jameson

Surely it takes longer to learn how all this other stuff works and then have to spend more time understanding what it's trying to tell you, than it would doing it in a realistic way. If you're too lazy/have no time(I sympathise!) to learn, I can't really help.

I hope there will be a MANDATORY training course so you will have to learn the right way to fly and shoot before you're allowed to play this 'game'. You'll only have to learn it once, like riding a bike, and then there'll be no need for statistics, arrows or whatever.

and that would put a large number of people off if you had to pass a training mission in a tiger moth before you could get at any of the combat. i mean really. talk about elitist and insensible.

an optional training mission, or missions, would be perfect. people could tool around then when wondering why they are doing badly, or not doing as well as they could, will go back to the training missions.

Originally Posted by Richie

If you sell a sim with a default full real setting and that's all it will not have no selling power. Many of the newbs who buy it will simply not have the patients to learn. After the 100th ground loop and firery crash into the fuel depot they'll give up and take it back to the store and get a Microsoft product.

and then whine on twitter, games sites, amazon and forums about it, further harming sales.

[winny]

Originally Posted by Xilon_x

the little child not have good pacience for learn a starting procedure of ww2 airplane this is a serius simulator not a ARCADE.
[/URL]

It could be both.. If you don't get your way that is..

[kendo65]

MD_Titus
+1

Fortunately the developers of this game are eminently more sensible than some of the people who post here. There is no way that they will risk alienating so many potential customers and damaging their chances of commercial success just because some people seem to have a hard time admitting the fact that they are sitting in front of a computer and not actually flying a plane.

And I use the word game very deliberately. It is a computer game - of the subgenre 'flight simulator'.

I should add that I have no problem whatsoever with those who choose to play on full real settings (or as near as they can get). I intend to do it myself (eventually), but what is it with this fundamentalist mindset that demands that EVERYONE else MUST do it their way???!!!

[philip.ed]

Originally Posted by kendo65

MD_Titus
+1

Fortunately the developers of this game are eminently more sensible than some of the people who post here. There is no way that they will risk alienating so many potential customers and damaging their chances of commercial success just because some people seem to have a hard time admitting the fact that they are sitting in front of a computer and not actually flying a plane.

And I use the word game very deliberately. It is a computer game - of the subgenre 'flight simulator'.

I should add that I have no problem whatsoever with those who choose to play on full real settings (or as near as they can get). I intend to do it myself (eventually), but what is it with this fundamentalist mindset that demands that EVERYONE else MUST do it their way???!!!

I agree. Perhaps this discussion should be continued in a separate topic though ?

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by jameson

Sow's box should have a label stating that the recommended age is "Over 25". What teenager could resist? It would be an instant 'must have'. Lol!

Lol, that might actually be a sound marketing strategy.
"For full difficulty settings: Recommended age 20 years or more.
Recommended experience with other flight simulator products of at least 3 years".

The little kids would not only want to pick it up, they'd also want to boast that they are uber and play in the "grown-up's" division, resulting in a drive for them to try and learn the higher realism settings.

Originally Posted by Splitter

To Blackdog and others who have posted similar: Yep.

I want to get my son (17) into SoW as one of those things we can do together. No way is he going to be able to know what I know (since I have been flying flight sims for almost 25 years off and on) or compete with me on settings that are more ""realistic".

But we could "dumb it down" and have some fun together right from the start. More realistic settings could be introduced to him as we go along. Eventually, we may go from playing "his" game to playing "mine"....and he'll probably kick my backside by that time lol.

Other people have friends and family they would like to get into "flight simming". 16 year olds are going to see the product on the shelves and pick it up. The wider the audience, the more copies that will sell. That helps all of us. Why limit the audience?

Just understand that people will be playing different games. Having the option to make it more "arcadish" would not take away from the "simulation" crowd at all.

Look at the Total War series. There are a dozen different way to play that game. Some people automatically resolve all battles. Some people control every little aspect of each battle. Some use diplomacy, others ignore diplomacy. The list and combinations go on. If the developers of those games said "Everyone will use diplomacy and fight all their battles" the over all market (and popularity) of the games would be severely limited.

As long as the "realistic" options are there, I am happy. If people can turn them off, how does that effect me?

Splitter

Very good analogy with the Total War series. I'm trying to get a few of my friends into flight sims and i would really love to be able to take them out for training flights and such, upping the scales as time went by. I'm talking about guys who will play anything from call of duty and company of heroes to theater of war, hearts of iron and silent hunter. They have a solid WWII background but no flight simming background at all, because "i don't mind it being difficult, good games usually are, but man it does take ages to learn" as they tell me

Xilon: Little kids don't have a lot of patience, but they have free time to learn and evolve.

My friends are all people in their late 20s/early 30s with jobs, enough money to get good PCs, HOTAS sets, TrackIR sets and enough patience to sit down and learn a complex game. You know why they don't use flight sims? Because they don't have the free time required to learn it.

I fly full switch or almost full switch (externals on when playing offline for screenshots). I campaigned hard and annoyed people in this forum to have more in-depth systems modelling in SoW, something that will be for me like a fusion of FSX and IL2 and when SoW arrives, i'll fly full switch again and i do want navigation tools and protractors to use in flight and draw up flight plans on the go as i'm skimming the waves on a cross channel raid to France in a Blenheim. But do you know how i started?

I was a 12 year old kid flying secret weapons of the luftwaffe, which by today's standards is even less realistic than IL2 with all the helper options turned on.
Also, RoF, DCS and all the other sims you mentioned have difficulty options. They are not "100% default difficulty" affairs.

It's just like school. If you teach simple arithmetics to small children, some will show enough interest and talent to become mathematicians when they grow up. If you try to teach advanced calculus to them, then none of them will ever touch a mathematics book again in their lives.

[BadAim]

Why am I surprised that this is still a topic? This is simple bloody math, us "full real" (whatever the hell that means anyway) fanbois are not numerous enough to pay for the development of a flight sim of sufficient complexity to have any settings that even approximate "full real".

In order to sell enough copies, Maddox games has to make this thing appeal to the widest possible audience, or SOW will end with BOB. Period.

As I've said before, I want the most realistic possible flight sim, but I also realize that I also need throngs of people that just want to play a bloody video game to subsidize the flight sim I want.

How does having scalable difficulty settings "hurt the community" again? Or does everyone have several thousand dollars to chip in for development? I'm sure that will work.

[Splitter]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

I was a 12 year old kid flying secret weapons of the luftwaffe, which by today's standards is even less realistic than IL2 with all the helper options turned on.
Also, RoF, DCS and all the other sims you mentioned have difficulty options. They are not "100% default difficulty" affairs.

NOOB! I go back to F-15 Strike Eagle. The ground had actual GRID LINES lol. Man, I just went back and looked at some of the footage of the flight sim games I have played. I look at what I used to think of as the sh!t and wonder what I was thinking (Aces over Europe, Aces of the Pacific). We have come a long way.

Let's be honest, Oleg is thinking bigger than SoW. We are already talking about how great the land warfare could be (totally unconfirmed future development). The game is going to be "scalable". Newbs are going to be able to jump in and fly. Old vets are going to have cool switches to click. They are designing a game that has "legs" and will go further than SoW.

Smart!

Splitter

[dflion]

Originally Posted by Foo'bar

Only Oleg will decide what to show in fridays updates. I even don't know if the A4 will make it into initial release.

Thanks Foo'bar - I hope Oleg puts the A4 into the sim. I have a particular interest in this steam engine. My father in-law (sadly now deceased) use to drive them. It was his favourite engine. He always said that they (A3's & A4's) had 'three beats to the bar' which meant they had three steam cylinders.

He told me a great story which should interest you - he was driving a steam engine with a goods train near Nottingham one night, I think after the Battle of Britain, and was strafed by a Luftwaffe nightfighter. He didn't realise that they had been strafed until they stopped at a signal and the guard came running up saying they had been attacked and the back of the train was on fire!
DFLion