Realism/Simulation Elements in SOW-BOB

[jasonbirder]

I've created a thread because discussion of simulation elements people would like to see in SOW-BOB have got bogged down into discussing the merits and de-merits of a clickable cockpit...
So i'd like to ask here instead...what type of Flight Simulator would people like to see SOW-BOB as?
Do people want it to continue very much in the same vein as IL2 1946...very much a lite sim with forgiving FMs and little or no elements of Flight Systems/Engine/Fuel Management etc...Or as a completely realistic simulation with everything modelled including failures gun jams etc...or something in between?
What level of realism do people consider appropriate ina World War II Flight Simulator...do people want to have to spend hours learning their plane or would people rather hop in and zoom off to the nearest dogfight?
I confess I am a big fan of Sims like Falcon 4.0 so I would like to see it warts and all and to me that means from a Flight point of view...all Engine Management and Fuel Management modelled...with appropriate performance penalties and failures if you screw up...I want my engine to burn out if I manhandle it or don't manage the transition from cruise to combat flight correctly...I'd like my Fuel System managed correctly so my engine cuts out if I don't transfer fuel from the appropriate tanks and my plane to become unstable if I don't manage its centre of gravity...
I want a heavy work load so sometimes i'm heads down in the cockpit and get suprised by the enemy
I'd like failures modelled so that my guns Jam if i fire repeated short bursts or try to fire them while i'm pulling heavy G's.
I'd like realistic ground handelling so I can't reun 2000HP of engine up to 100% let off the breaks and then sail down the runway.
I'd like realistic landing parameters so I can't plant the notoriously glass legged Bf109 down onto a rutted grass strip at a high sink rate and then motor off to the taxi way undamaged...
I'd like realistic flight times and distances so Fuel conservation becomes important
I'd like it to actaully be difficult to find the enemy so many sorties pass without contact
I'd like a realistic communications environment
No more Vector to Home Plate or GPS style Direction finding...

What do people think about that level of realism or would people rather we stuck with the current survey sim style and simplified/generic models to allow a focus on dogfighting?

[Feathered_IV]

I'd very much like there to be some substance to the way things are handled between missions. In the Silent Hunter series you can manage your personel, request and recieve a transfer. Organise yourself and your ship....
The Il-2 series has no particular soul when it comes to creating an immersive environment outside of the next spaw-on-runway scenario. Belonging to a unit should mean more than just the squadron number in the drop down menu. Commanding at unit should involve more than just getting to fly up front.

I had a similar thread going a while ago.
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...ht=superficial
I hope you have more luck with yours!

It'll probably come to nothing though. Online players will sabotage any efforts to develop a sim beyond their two petty mission objectives.

[Codex]

I wouldn't go that far Feather. I'm an online flyer but also enjoy a beefy campaign as much as the next guy. I do like what you have suggested about managing a sqaud. I think actual pilot stats similar to BoB2: Wings of Victory should play a part as well.

[Chiz]

Good call starting a new thread, in hindsight discussing mouse interaction with the cockpit and more detailed aircraft in one thread was a bit of a mess

I'd like to see a realistic, high fidelity sim in SoW, with scalable difficulty. This gives everyone the option to fly the way they want and set up their multiplayer servers the way they want. I'd certainly fly it in the most "realistic" mode it offered and would find SoW far more appealing if it offered a high level of detail. For those who want a simpler game they could scale the difficulty so it's like IL2. More demanding simmers get the game they want, the air quake crowd get the game they want, off line players get better AI and campaigns...and Maddox Games shifts more copied of SoW. Everybody wins!

[Forgottenfighter]

I would like it to be ultra realistic. It would be nice to have a simulator that required real skill to fly in. Obviously you could change the settings if you didn't like it being extremely difficult. I don't know about clickable cockpits but it would be great to, at least, have fuel cutoff for emergency landings and some more engine management controls. Planes should be damaged by flying particles, e.g. when you fly through a column of debris after a bomb drop or when bits fall off an enemy plane and hit you. I also think that when your plane has been damaged, like a hole in the wing, it should be susceptable to buckling under high G's.

[tagTaken2]

I'd rather have a game that's fun.
This doesn't mean I'd rather play a game as unrealistic as Strike Fighters, I find a lot of stuff about that frustrating, and I prefer Falcon 4.0 to SF et al.
MiG Alley was a good example of what I'd like to see SoW become. Great FM, great immersion, great campaign, great AI (but crap stability). We'd expect more in terms of graphics, damage and engine modelling, obviously, but gameplay was the best thing about MG and that's what sticks in my head, not the cockpit animations.
If complex engine management and full startup procedures could be implemented in SoW, that'll be fantastic, and I'll use them. But if it's going to keep slowing down development time, it's just not worth it. The game designer has said repeatedly it's not a priority, and I wish the FS crowd would 'click' that this game is not being built with them in mind.
Let's also bear in mind that most of the people on a game forum before the game comes out are going to be the obsessive ones, which tend to a skewed viewpoint.

[KG26_Alpha]

Hmm

its a niche enough market already

clicking it down further to how many pilots ??

not many and not enough to warrant the time.

There will be im sure the development line as was with IL2 series over the last 9-10 years to eventually apease the clickers and twiddlers.

[Blackdog_kt]

It's drifting to the click-pit debate already, jesus.

Why isn't anybody bothered by Black Shark's clickpit? I'm sure it's a combat sim and not a civilian FSX clone, so why do 99.9% of the people who tried Black Shark love it still?

There's a very simple answer to that it's got all the functions of the original and you can manipulate them whichever way you want. That's what we should aim for in BoB as well.

Can you remember that ctrl+alt+shift+m switches between your magneto settings? Good for you, then do it this way.
You can't remember? No worries, reassign the keys for that or just click the damn knob.
You don't want to manually start up the engine? No worries either, press ctrl+e or something to that effect and watch the AI do it for you, just like it's done in FSX and Black Shark. You just have to wait until the AI pushes the buttons themselves, no instant engine on/off switch anymore, one more thing to think about when taking off with enemies nearby. A spitfire Mk.IX sequence barely took me 60 seconds maximum in a certain FSX addon when i first did it and that was because i didn't know where the buttons were, it takes half a minute to get it running normally and the automatic start follows the same procedure but is a bit faster as well.

So, what we should have is a sim that models as much of the airframe as possible, not just DM, turn rate/radius and engine HP. How the players interacts with these systems should be up to them, either via remapping keys or having a TrackIR set and clicking switches with the mouse, just give us both options and we can choose.

Did you know that maximum sustained boost in a late war Spit was a mere 7lbs and anything above that induced overheat and engine failure eventually? Or that a P47 had a very demanding engine management due to the existence of a turbo-supercharger (danger of over-revving)? A lot of the flying we do in IL2 is unrealistic and a lot of the match-ups and relative strengths and weaknesses between certain types of aircraft are wrong because of that one simple thing...we only model FM, DM and armament. We don't model the actual workload behind making these things work and that's what we should aim for.

Suddenly, aircraft that were inferior in performance in IL2 might become favorites because they are easier to manage. Planes like the Spit IX , the 109 or the 190 which had automated engine controls might suddenly become much more appealing than the P51 and P47 hotrods with their need for extra attention to the engine controls.

What's more, if the game engine can provide us a solid basis for modelling A/C subsystems, we might see a lot more interesting stuff in the future like radio navigation aids, blind bombing, airborne radar and so on. It would be a shame to miss out on so many things during the lifespan of the new series because our keyboards don't have enough keys to map functions to...i say copy everything from the real birds into the sim and simply let the users decide if and how they want to use it.

[robtek]

@Blackdog_kt

couldn´t have said it better!!!

In the end it will be the server settings that decide who has to use what and when.
So every single user can choose the server which offers his level of realism. Unpopulated servers change or quit, don´t they.

[csThor]

Apples and Oranges, Blackdog. In BS you had one (= 1) type of helicopter modeled and as it looks each following release will include just one more type. SoW on the other hand will have to incorporate more flyable objects right from the start and with each theater there will be more "must have"s on the list. It's simply a pointless discussion because you can't compare the two venues because of their drastically different focus.