What Sim will SOW be?

[furbs]

After looking through all the updates and reading the SOW interviews over the last 12 months its left me wondering what sort of sim SOW will be?

To me there is no question SOW will look and fly fantastic and be the next standard in flight sims.

The flight models, plane models and all the rest will be leaps and bounds above what we have been used to in IL2 and other sims.

BUT...

Can the SOW engine make us believe we are fighting the "Battle of Britain"? or will SOW be more like a "Small online engagement with Battle of Britain planes sim"?

With current Hardware i cant see we will be able to have large scale BOB battles that we have read about.
To feel we are a pilot taking part in the BOB we would have to see at least 60-70 (and thats a small scale battle) planes in the air at the same time.
The closest ive seen to that sort of battle has been 2-3 missions in WOP and will all know WOP is very limited in what we call a flight sim and is no where near what SOW will be.

I just cant see that sort of battle happening in SOW for at least 2-3 years until much faster CPUs and GPUs are on the market.

I think we are much more likely to see what we get now in IL2...offline maybe 20-30 planes in a small engagements.

And online, small COOPs of maybe 20 or so planes and in Dedicated servers even smaller engagements of maybe 5-15 planes.

Im just trying to not build my hopes up of SOW being more than what we can expect with todays hardware.

what do you guys expect from SOW?

[David603]

Just a point, its quite possible to have missions in Il2 with 100+ aircraft if you have a good computer or if you turn down the graphics options.

Good post furbs, considering that Oleg has chosen to start his new flight sim with the battle of Britian rather than any other theatre then i would hope that we will be attacking swarms of bombers escorted by enemy fighters in the same kind of numbers that are historically accurate, if this is not the case then what is the point of covering the battle of britain at all? Personally i think that its the magnitude of this task that has been the hold up with SOW well at least I hope so, we have already seen that Oleg has been backtracking a little on what may or may not be happening regarding single player campaigns, it appears that our dreams of being invoved in a squadron sramble may be completely dashed. I guess only time will tell but I am certainly more than a little worried when I see only 2 planes on a screen in low res and low detail without DX11 running at 14FPS. Hopefully whoever took that screenie was doing a virus check at the time.

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

I guess only time will tell but I am certainly more than a little worried when I see only 2 planes on a screen in low res and low detail without DX11 running at 14FPS. Hopefully whoever took that screenie was doing a virus check at the time.

He may have taken a screenshot at that time. Something that in many previous games has momentarily halted the execution until it was saved, thereby reducing the effective FPS figure for an instant.

As has also been pointed out, the figure is completely meaningless unless we know the hardware the sim was running on, the mission complexity, code status (debug mode anyone?) and whether some other performance-limiting thingies were going on that are not unusual during development.

Too early to panic yet.

[proton45]

LOL...another funny topic. Just the kind of light reading I like with my coffee.

[furbs]

Expain proton? seems a valid topic to me.

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by furbs

With current Hardware i cant see we will be able to have large scale BOB battles that we have read about.
To feel we are a pilot taking part in the BOB we would have to see at least 60-70 (and thats a small scale battle) planes in the air at the same time.
The closest ive seen to that sort of battle has been 2-3 missions in WOP and will all know WOP is very limited in what we call a flight sim and is no where near what SOW will be.

It all comes down to the AI handing, which is the main bottleneck with Il2 (and other sims as well). Try Wings of Victory for really huge air battles, i.e. hundreds of planes at the same time. Which is achieved by simplifying the AI behaviour for planes which fly in formation, and even more so for far-away planes. Doesn't come without its issues (there's a reason why only the 2nd installment was finally playable, the original Rowan version was a buggy mess) and I never really got caught on that sim, but it sure has the right amount of planes in the air.

No question this will be interesting to see, and with far more impact on how the final game will play out than variations in tree size...

[swiss]

This discussion is quite funny - as I don't plan to spend a single hour in offline modus (other than the few to get accustomed to the new FMs) I couldn't care less about the AI. I hope for a ton of online players.

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by swiss

This discussion is quite funny - as I don't plan to spend a single hour in offline modus (other than the few to get accustomed to the new FMs) I couldn't care less about the AI. I hope for a ton of online players.

You realize AI is not limited to offline play, except if you're exclusively into fighter-vs-fighter fragfests? Bomber squadrons, non-flyables, gunners, AAA all require AI programming. Even the online-only minority is still affected by it

[BigC208]

Furb,It will all depend on your own imagination. I can set up a qmb in Il2 with 12 he111's and 4 me109's. Do a head on with 3 hurricanes over the Bessarabia map and I'm there. Heck I used to run around the room with scale models pretending to be in a dogfight. Anyone expecting more than a souped up version of il2 with more detailed aircraft is going to be disappointed. This is not going to be the second coming of the Christ. If it's what I expect (souped up Il2, optimised for DX11 and multiple processors) I'll be extremely happy based on what I've seen so far in the progress threads. If it takes another 2 years people will be expecting photo realistic graphics and Gallands AI. For those, who can't stand the suspense any longer and feel they have to go at eachother here on the forum: Get a life, girlfriend/boyfriend or take up gardening. That will teach you about patience.