Thank you for your warm words.

+1 :)

Besides that, skill at making money should never be confused with intelligence...... they are two quite different things.

This sounds very exciting, the future will be a full load of a very diverse simulator...your workmanship is second to none:grin:

First of all, good posts by Ltbear and an even more welcome reply by mr. Maddox. I'm very excited to hear about all these features. :grin:


I fly it often when visiting a friend, on his PC. The stock planes are not that detailed. Add-on planes vary a lot and it's not like the free stuff is low quality. You can often find top quality freeware aircraft and payware ones that are bit lacking compared to them. However, most of the add-on ones are usually better than the stock planes that come with FSX.

This is also due to the fact that it's a resource hog, so in order to make complex add-on aircraft a lot of 3rd party developers waited for the hardware to catch up.

As for the payware add-on aircraft, i've seen some that are very simple compared to even the stock ones FSX ships with, some that model all the real effects but don't suffer any consequences for exceeding limits (this is a lot like IL2, eg, a plane might register excessive torque or cylinder temperatures on the gauges but nothing breaks, they depend on the end-user to fly within the limits for a realistic experience) and finally, there are some that you really have to pay attention flying.

These latter ones are a very enjoyable deal and i was actually suprised at how much stuff there is to do just trying to fly from A to B without breaking the plane and how much satisfaction you get from it. My favorite is an add-on catalina, it cruises along at a mere 100 knots (180mk/h your car goes faster than that probably and that's without running into headwinds :grin: ) but there's just so much stuff under the hood that time just flies by. I don't fly it often because it takes a lot of time and my buddy and i have to get settled for a long evening first, but on the two occasions i've flown it a lot i clocked a 10 hour flight in the caribbean along with my buddy (we were switching places taking control, just like a real pilot and co-pilot) and another one that we had to cut short at 4 hours or so.

As an example of how it flies, just seeing a cloud ahead of has me checking the outside air temperature, fiddling with the GPS to find the nearest airports ATIS frequency, tuning into that to get the weather reports for the area , then comparing the outside air temp with the condensation temp broadcasted by the ATIS to see if there's a chance of icing. If all is well, i fly through the cloud keeping a watch on the gauges.

If the dew point is close to the outside air temp, i turn on the de-icing equipment and monitor the carb temps closely, so that as the carb temps start to drop i can apply heating. When exiting the cloud, i have to turn the heat down because excessive carb temps are just as much of a problem as carb icing, they result in rarified air that reduces available engine power. All that while manually flying the plane inside cloud turbulence, trying to stay on course by tracking a nav radio station or flying a GPS route on the instruments. Yup, hitting bad weather is more frantic than boom and zooming people in IL2 :-P

The fact that we are getting such enhanced system modelling features in SoW is a big step forward and a needed one. From the description above, i think it's evident this will be a big boost for the people who enjoy planning their sorties and for those who fly bombers or other multi-engined/multi-crewed aircraft, because finally their slow speeds will be offset by their increased complexity being modelled.

Even with single seaters, having to account for healthy engine operation will have a massive effect on how people fight. I can't tell you how much i liked seeing all these people in Igromir damaging their engines or having them run rough with the propellers cutting out. The days of "slam the throttle and keep it there, take off from the taxiway and look for the nearest furball" while on maximum difficulty settings are finally a thing of the past :grin:

Up to this point, one of the main reasons a lot of people dislike flying bombers is just that...there's too much downtime. You cruise at a paltry 150 mph until you reach the target, you get a few minutes of excitement running through the flak and fighters, drop your bombs and turn back to another stretch of time where you do pretty much nothing. So when the enemy fighters get you, you get frustrated for spending so much time without having actually done that much, only to meet a swift fiery death at the end of a fighter's cannons.

Compare this to what is possible with the systems modelling that is, thankfully, coming in SoW. You will have your hands full pretty much all the way, managing your engines, staying in formation, checking that everything is in working order after each single combat action because you will actually be able to diangose what's wrong with your plane by interpreting what the gauges tell you, plan a more efficient use of your aircraft and when you do get damaged, you can actually use these new tools to increase your chances of survival.

Imagine flying an online sortie like this. Say your bomber is attacked and you have some serious damage, the moment your attacker breaks away you drop out of formation and dive away to escape, hoping he lost you. A quick scan of the gauges reveals a fuel leak. Trimming the aircraft to fly level, you turn on the fuel transfer pumps to save as much as you can and run the engines on the punctured tank to use as much of the escaping fuel as possible, trimming the ailerons and rudder as necessary to account for the fuel weight imbalance.

Then, as you have stabilized your plane and all the fuel in the leaking tank is gone, you tune in to the radio beacon closest to base. You might have gotten separated from your formation and flying at wave-top level to avoid detection, but lack of visual range doens't mean you have to get lost or fly arbitrary headings that might place you miles away from base with a damaged bomber. Just follow that needle pointing to the beacon. Nearing friendly airspace you climb a bit to prepare for the approach and pick a course to take you from the beacon to the base. Again, you can fly that course by using the beacon, only this time the needle will indicate the beacon is behind you.

Nearing the airbase and having a clear view of it, you prepare for landing. Slow speeds and assymetric loads are a bad combination, so you turn on the fuel dump mechanism to nearly empty your remaining tank and equalize the weight, trimming the aircraft as necessary. With the lighter load and a well trimmed bomber, you come in and land safely and easily, like you were never damaged to begin with.

Now imagine flying this with a completely human crew thanks to the new multiplayer features, having your friends help you along the way and provide information and corrections so that you can make the right decisions. Yes, it will be a real blast ;)

This is the best of news, being able to place static cameras in il2 was for shure one of its best options for movie makers, now there will be even more options...:grin::grin::grin:

Some food for thought would be the addition of camera shake, maybe in a post release add on that can be turned on or off as I know some purists dont like it, also it would be nice to see a dedicated film and movie section on the new website when its up and running.

Some of my fondest on-line memories involved flying a bomber on a full switch server. And it was very rewarding to take out one or two fighters, by jumping around and maning a gun. Sometimes seeing "Enemy Aircraft Destroyed" after many minutes of flight time after the battle, on the way home. Then limping home, trailing smoke (spawning aircraft on the ground seeing you were in trouble, and clearing the runway) and then having a successful landing. Certainly was very exciting for me, and challenging. Now with SOW, the choice to fly a bomber immersion level will be even higher:grin:

flying bombers in a COOP online war with all the other teammembers on voicecoms , bomberpilots and escort pilots in their fighters, is one of the highlights this game can give !

and fortunatly BoB will continue doing so :)

flying bombers alone on a dogfightserver, even worse on one with late war canonmonster fighters, can be frustrating like hell - very true ..................

Think about it, Oleg is trying to attract some of the small dev teams currently doing paid-for aircraft for the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. How are they supposed to work with a system that says you can only sell big add-on packs that rival the Maddox Games entries in the series?

If Maddox Games started selling their own aircraft individually I would be upset, but for a small development team there isn't a viable alternative (unless they want to give away their work).

If a system is established where developers who make individual aircraft that meet MG standards then give the aircraft to MG, who put the aircraft into an official patch, ensuring compatibility for all players, but the aircraft is AI only unless purchased then I would be happy.

Developers big enough to make stand-alone expansions (like Battle for Moscow) could either have it so the pack could be merged with the existing series or not, depending on their arrangements with MG.

This would not result in a system where you had to buy the best aircraft individually to remain competitive online. MG will I'm sure provide a wide range of aircraft that cover the bulk of any requirements for a particular theatre of war(like they have done for BoB), with the smaller teams either filling in gaps or providing aircraft that don't fit into a theatre. The first case would be adding something like a flyable Defiant to the Battle of Britain. It would fit in to the Battle of Britain scenario, and be interesting to fly, but players using it aren't going to be at an advantage compared to the planes available to a stock user. The second case would be something like adding a Spitfire IX or a Fw190A to BoB. It dosen't fit the scenario, so unless the host is trying to set up an unbalanced server they won't add it to the planelist.

+1


@Black-Dog. thanks for an excellent reply; all of your posts are a real pleasure to read. I agree with you on many points there too. I can't wait to fly SoW and experience engine difficulties, maybe from returning from a patrol where I didn't meet any action, or to come-back from a combat mission and (naively) try a victory-roll, only to meet an ironic end because I hadn't realised my plane had suffered any damage. Whilst it's morbid to get enjoyment from this, it adds to the realism which will make for a great experience.