There is a big difference between the idiots who bought Microsoft stocks and those that bought Bre-X gold stocks. One is a company that had known assets that continually evolved and the other company had nothing but false claims.

ROF has known assets that most early adopters are enjoying as we speak, with the strong likelyhood that ROF will continually evolve. Could ROF fail, of course it could, its a gamble, but a very cheap gamble. Its not like your investing your life savings.

Those that are waiting for the sky to fall or the sim to become more fleshed out are missing out on some very cheap entertainment right now.

chivas, i dont think that is a valid argument

you'r basically saying that we (the long term flightsim enthusiasts, rather then dabbling newbies) should always blindly support and unjustifiably glorify any flightsim program that gets released, no matter how bad it is or whatever problems it might have, just because we are a smaller subsection of the gaming world and somebody makes "something" for that genre.

personally i think we should take the exact opposite approach, and only support quality products that have good content, and those that provide us with content and features we actually want. to get a yardstick of what that minimum level of quality and content should entail, we should look for something that is BETTER then the best individual aspects of the current and previous state of the art products in that category (like il2-1946 or ms-fsX products, and the better previous ww-1 sims), not something that might only look a little prettier in the eye candy department then older games and then doesnt include (or even deliberately regresses or removes) many basic components/aspects that make up the now well understood minimum standard for a "good game" in the flightsim genre.

there are many many problems with the RoF sales model and the product itself, i wont extensively list them all here again because it gets rather boring, but at the moment of sale in the west it very obvious it is more like a late beta with multiple deliberate limitations added that cripple it even more (limited servers, limited type of online play, limited planes, limited maps, limited season of year, daytime flying only etc..), and whatever you buy is a disposable item that has no intrinsic or long term value or usage whatsoever. looking at some of the main RoF forums in the last few weeks the volume of complaints from disappointed and frustrated customers is very high, so severe in fact they already had to release a few of their precious extra planes as "free" extra's (jay, you can now fly 4 planes instead of 2 !, /sarcasm off, but it still has lots of lockups, crashes, and you cant play it offline at all etc..). btw in some of their western world game advertising they previously had already stipulated you could fly some of those new "free" planes, so not providing them could have landed them in more hot water.

if you are going to be so desperate to always accept anything new, no matter how bad it is, just for the sake of getting something, then all we will get in future is similar crap, if you pardon my french, because that product and sales model will be deemed a successful model for those that will make products afterwards.

your argument about already having an expensive pc with various expensive flightsim hardware addons is also the wrong way around imo. people buy pc's for multiple usage purposes, then most flightsimmers here spend an extra 30 to 50% to get better components and extra hardware for it, but they bought those extra items specifically to fly and enjoy the few good flightsims that already exist, and to enjoy them in the best possible way, not the other way around.

does that mean there is nothing good about RoF ? there are some good aspects, but with the deliberately imposed limitations and buggy state it is right now, for the better informed flightsim customers that make up a large part of this small market it definitely aint worth the full game price they are asking the way it is in its current form, and for the new type of product it is it should be avoided completely untill they correct some of the major limitations (currently they hope people wont look to closely at what they are actually getting before they spend their money, and the perpetual roiling carpet of paying more money they need to continue with).

they have essentially taken a console product sales model where you buy a locked item at full price that can only be played on one station at a time, but have then prevented you from playing it as a stand alone game offline which is what most people normally would do (and then still constantly force you to keep buying more extra's for it like more cars, planes, or scenery like you do with some console games), and then mixed this with aspects of the "online-only" flightsim model (where you normally get the game for free and pay a monthly subscription to play it, but in this case they make you pay for the game itself to), but they then added their own further twist on it, make the game deliberately incomplete to start out with (one season, one map, 2 flyable planes only, daytime only, etc..) so people need to start immediately buying more items and features from the start, and then also make it 100% reliant on some distant russian server functions that can be stopped or discontinued at any time, forcing you to buy their next product when they decide to shut it down (or fail), leaving you with absolutely nothing.

if that is your dream of the future of flightsimming, i think you have set your standards rather low

It is easier and less exacting to build a game than a flight simulator.

The mathmatics required to build a navigation system is pretty mind blowing stuff. Then you couple that with the physics, aerodynamics, and graphics.

Games are "hot" and the console has done a great job of bringing the kiddies to the box.

A combat flight simulator equal to an IL2 and upcoming BOB requires an enormous amount of work. The mathmatics, physics, graphics are just mind numbing.

Heck, I love air combat. If I were in the gamer business I'd study the kiddies with the console games and try to address that market. The setup, installation and continued game play is totally controlled by the application. No addons or improvements... just play the game and enjoy. That is probably the reason so many games are on the shelf.

A friend of mine tried to buy a Sturmovik 1946 at EA store, and the clerks didn't even know what it was. Sorry, air simulation geeks are becoming extinct or something like that.

Oleg will do alright, because he knows the Jets are too fast and complicated. The WW1 stuff is too slow, and the weapons too weak. There is plenty of speed, weapons are powerful and the pilot is the most important element in WW2 CFS. The player should be the focus and that is alot easier to do in a WW2 CFS.

Flight simulators like MS and X-Plane are complex, but pretty good if you are interested to learn many of the more cerebral things that go with piloting aircraft. There is even good crossover to the real world in both sims that is valualble to any one seeking to be or already is a real world pilot.

I read Oleg's responses in this thread. I am satisfied we are going to get a excellent product.

Actually my standards are quite high. When I see an emerging quality developer, I'll support him with my monies and words, and I'll keep supporting them as long as the quality carries on. Quite frankly what we pay for quality flight sims is a joke compared to the monies, talented people, and time required to devleop them.

Personally I'm mainly waiting for SOW, and have no problem waiting for a completed quality product. That said I'm able to enjoy another uncompleted quality product in ROF now. It also wouldn't have bothered me if Oleg had released SOW early with just a map, spit, hurri, 109, and He111 as it would have given me time to learn those aircraft and navigate the map. I have alot of respect for IL-2 series and how it was continually improved over the years. I see ROF having the same kind of future. The only difference is Oleg has the resources to hold off release until SOW is complete where ROF doesn't have that advantage.

You can chose to kill the developer withholding your monies and trashing the sim, but I've chosen to help them continue their quality work.

RoF has two pretty big problems - the legacy of Il-2 (as an example of a very extensive planepool) and the legacy of Red Baron (as an example of a near-perfect offline campaign). At the moment (and for quite some time, or even never at all) it will be able to compete with either of these things. I must agree with naysayers - at the moment the content of RoF is more Beta than full product (heck, the original Il-2 demo had two flyable aircraft!) and the unfinished state of several key features (Mission builder, online, campaign) seriously limits what you can get out of it. If flying and dogfighting is all you're interested in then it's probably quite good (have heard only good things about FM and DM), but if you seek a Red Baron - like campaign or massive online battles á la Il-2 you're going to be disappointed. To me it feels as if neoqb ran out of cash and had to release something to get new funds to continue work, because I severely doubt they'd have released the current product if they'd had the choice.

I'll wait until they add some stuff to the original game to start thinking about buying it.

Unfortunately, I guess that when this happens, I'll be too busy scrambling on my Hurricane trying to catch a Dornier formation before it reaches London, screaming "Atchung, Spitfeuer!" through my radio and immediatly break formation in my yellow-nosed Emil, followed by Black 6, 12 and 3, diving over "the few" to give the bomber boys enought time to drop their bombs on Bristol.

spare us the BoB drama it's not even been shown in motion yet..

Aside from that RoF has been exceeding my expectations and i am happy with my 38$ spent on it , rather have some fun while waiting for the "hopefully" successful and good SoW than be a sour old man.. I've no problem with enjoy some pure next generation quality. Nothing is perfect not even SoW will be perfect at retail, if it is flawless it would be the first game in the history so chill on the preaching.

I am pleased you like it, i have not tried it yet simply because the first world war is not really my thing. However just imagine how may updates and add ons there will be for ROF by this time next year, when we will still be here asking if we can have an update for SOW or asking questions that will never be answered in the appropriate thread. Actually ROF is looking more appealing by the day....

I can understand the viewpoints of those saying WWI is not their thing.....Fair dinkum its not everybodys cup of tea. I do however find the ruminations of those who have not played it, yet seem to somehow be experts on the sim a bit confusing......And no I am no "Cheerleader". I wrote a small review on it over on Simhq (I post there under "Biggles07") I think began with "I'm a believer BUT", with both positives and negatives. Those opinions are pretty much the consensus at the moment. That said, I had been playing it only around 3-4 days at that point, since then I have had some great fun with the sim, despite its frustrations.

It is not in competition with SOW, room for both in this world and then some. 99% of those who bought ROF will buy SOW too, no doubt about it. Why all the bitching?

@KG26_Alpha "These idiots are kidding themselves."

Thanks for that mate, charmed. This "idiot" here is having a great time with the sim, cheers. Don't worry, though your comment struck me as somewhat ironically "idiotic" itself being that you have never met me.....though I'm not quite puerile or immature enough to return the favour.

That said Alpha, if British you are more than welcome to attend Newcastles Cruddas park community centre boxing gym on wednesday nights and call me an "idiot" then.......I'm a middleweight so PM me if your interested. Relax, its just sport! Funny how the insults flow on computers isn't it? Aye, whatever Bonny lad, lmao ;).


@Tree, theres a new vid up on YT which you can find on the Simhq ROF page of the British SE5a coming soon......looking good. If that doesn't get yer in the "Tally Ho" Spirit then nothing will hehe.

Cheers.

Chumming the water again?