Content like more missions, and campaign features are planned.

Mission making for most sims requires only a Mission Editor, and ROF has one of the most powerful yet. Again, it's much about the required learning curve, and of course the time needed for contributors to demonstrate their skills.

How old is CFS3 btw, so I'm pretty confident that ROF is already years ahead in its capabilities.

Combine the bolded part below...



with this...



and we could have a major winner on our hands.

The OFF modders are gearing up for phase4. Maybe it would be worth their trouble and Neoqb's possible willingness to divulge a few secrets, in order to supply them with some RoF tools and insight on how their engine works.

They wouldn't necessarily have to tackle the aircraft right off the bat. The main thing is they are sitting on a freaking goldmine of well researched information. Giving them the ability to start skinning aircraft, coupled with an early version of a dynamic campaign generator would work miracles for RoF.

All inherent to ROF's design and marketing plans.

There's a section on Neoqb's ROF forum officially soliciting for mission and campaign crafting, and has been since the sim's Russian/CIS release.

Mostly just involves the community getting a late start here.

100% in agreement with you there Blackdog. In the early days of development I had high hopes for a complete package, but over time it became apparent that we wouldn't get that. I'm happy with the notion of buying the game engine and adding content. I'm happy with that because at the heart of this sim is something very special. Building on that core engine will make this game a winner. Campaigns, Missions and aircraft will make a difference and as FlyRetired mentioned a financial reward for quality content will be a huge incentive for the talent out there.
We have already seen a few bites on the official site for modellers

Nope; no they didn't.

(To be clear, this isn't directed at you, TTTiger! Just a general aside.)

At the risk of being a martinet, I've seen loads of historical errors in OFF. For instance, erroneous rosters; wings that explode when you brush a tree or pole while taxiing; ahistoric campaign missions (e.g., Jasta 11 being sent 50 miles behind the lines to strafe an airfield in April 1917); generic aerodromes that do not resemble their historic counterparts in any way; an egregious absence of two-seaters; no Belgian operations, at all; no Schlachtflieger ops, even for AI; no multi-engine airplanes, even for AI; no seaplanes, even for AI; incorrect cockpits (e.g. R.E. 8); etc. One major guffaw is that instead of the Albatros D's throttle being on the control column, as it was historically, OFF uses what was actually the spark control handle on the left side of the cockpit--this is the third phase and nobody has figured this out and corrected it yet? Also, the port rudder Albatros logo is backwards on every Albatos skin I've seen on which the logos haven't been overpainted; thus, hundreds (although I do not know the exact amount) of Alb D skins are incorrect. Good news is there are hundreds of skins in the first place, which are mostly correct, despite discontinuity between the work of various skinners.

There are also many non-historically-related issues, such as clouds as thin as dinner plates that contain the turbulence of an F5 tornado; rain and snow that falls through the wings (i.e., the actual airfoils, not the gap); AI that zooms/stalls/crashes for no apparent reason; a well-intentioned but quirky claiming system that denies so many claims that, based upon the accept/deny ratio I've encountered, MvRichthofen would have had to claim 1,120 planes--and been denied 1,040 victories--to reach 80; airplane damage that cannot be seen when skins setting is above medium resolution; etc.

I'm not ripping the sim; it's cool in many regards and has been fun to fly. It contains a lot of things now that I hope RoF will have in the future, only better. But OFF isn't perfect. They're working on Phase 4, after all; one cannot improve upon perfection.

Hello,

just some history ... this is my personal point of view, so attack me - i don't care.
Hmm maybe i will ... lol

Since i was with Over Flanders Fields ("OFF") right from the start (if only observing and flying the first two free "phases", commenting and ranting ahem until i got phase 3), as i was with with RoF since the Kots and Sikorsky sim days, i would certainly like a joint venture of the two, but i think it will not happen.

The OFF team is a worldwide-spread team of (in the WW1 sim history and forums) well-known bunch of early-crate fanatics (sorry lol) that - after privately programming their idea of a WW1 sim - finally decided to sell this third "phase" of "Over Flanders Fields", after "RedBaron3d" did not provide the platform for an advanced flight sim any more. So they were looking for another engine and produce their own idea of what a WW1 sim should look like - with historical accuracy from squadrons including names of original pilots to moving frontlines, battles, tanks, army movements and wind/weather on certain days during WW1. It is not perfect (yet), but it is the best i have seen in any flight sim WW1-wise.

They chose MS's "Combat Flight Simulator 3" for the engine, it was the best at that time, and the Cfs3 sim offered a good base for modifications, even if the original or "vanilla" CFS3 sim itself was neither finished by MS, nor anything to write home about in its final state. So the OFF team chose the CFS3 engine, it only turned out then that it was not all that simple. (B.t.w. they just found out the cloud tornado thing, will be in the next patch) So it took now 7 years to develop OFF, but they already had experience with all kinds of WW1 themes before, and they were continously tweaking out the problems the earlier phases 1 and 2 of OFF suffered from. Finally only getting into the hard-coded things did really change this Phase 3 "Over Flanders Fields" named "Between Heaven and Hell" into something special.

Then the OFF team said that they would maybe buy another engine for OFF, providing a state-of-the-art flight and damage model, if the sales of OFF phase 3 would be good enough and the money would allow it. This seems not to have happened (as Winder put it "no fireworks"), mind you they did not pay themselves for what they did, but i guess they will go on with phase 4, maybe or not with another engine, and coming out in, well, 2020 ?

Just to put some remarks north of here into the right relation: OFF phase 3 is not an arcade game, it is a sim, and i wonder how people who obviously never played it can tell some #%&*$# like "OFF is a game and RoF is a sim". OFF phase 3 IS a sim, i wonder whether any of those bigmouths here would be able to land a Camel, or a SE5a in sidewinds, with OFF. Adjust mixture, cut fuel, switch off magnetoes a.s.o. is necessary to start, fly, and land, and with the DH2, the spinning incinerator" you have only one mistake to die. And yes, there are sliding matchboxes in some of the cockpits.


They are also historians and well present at the aerodrome forum, as well they have good connnections to the Swiisa bunch of WW1 flight fanatics (sorry again for this "fanatics"). I just doubt that they will be offered to join in the RoF team, because imho they would downright criticize each and every issue RoF has - and would drive the RoF team nuts with their expectations and demands lol. Besides i doubt that - apart from genuine interest - the RoF team has the intention of making a history sim rather than money. Which is fine, it just will never be what OFF is.

I personally WILL buy RoF for the Flight sim engine called "Digital nature", which the RoF team bought to program their sim around it, I can imagine that the OFF team already thought of doing exactly this, but independent "engines" with a decent flight and damage model are expensive, and they - at least weren't - in for the money. I buy RoF because it is one of the few WW1 sims floating around, and i hope they will get some more planes for me to fly in single missions offline, and try to feel how flying of these crates was like.

I will NOT buy it to get historical accuracy, immersion world war 1-wise, variety of planes, online requirement even for playing single missions privately (well not so) on my PC, leasing a game with an account rather than owning it, immersion landscape-wise or the currently inexistent online features of dogfighting.

Did i forget something ? I hope (but do not dare to) that RoF develops into what OFF is - with the most realistic flight model that ever was. As well i hope the OFF team decides to get another sim engine. Then we would really have two GREAT WW1 sims.

P.S. Hello Jim, sorry you posted before i was able to - you are right - OFF isn't perfect, but RoF is - currently as i might say - far behind.



Thanks for reading, and greetings,
Catfish

Every sim has it's shortcomings. . .OFF sounds like fun, but being stuck working with the MSFS/CFS physics engine will always make the FLIGHT aspects of a FS2004/FSX/CFS flight sim weak. I have flown MSFS since day one, and wouldn't be without it but what it's good for is procedural things, things where you can try to ignore flight fidelity (especially when talking about propeller powered short coupled biplanes). If flight modeling is important for the task, there are far better sims to use. . .dogfighting at the edge of the envelope in old taildragging aircraft with loads of adverse yaw, gyroscopic action, torque, p-factor, strong helical propwash effects, poor control harmony, very high induced and parasite drag, and in combat where high angles of attack are common, maximal control inputs are used, slips and skid dynamics matter etc. A Combat sim most certainly falls into the category of needing a top notch flight model. . .at elast to be convincing to those that know what it's like to fly in that regime in the real world.

For me it's a non-starter if the FM isn't there. . .and even the two or three FMs I've flown for MSFS that have been decent(two from RealAir, one from Long Island Classics) do not remotely approach the fidelity found in RoF. As a pilot, some things are option/wish list items in a combat sim, others are mandatory. . .the FM, DM are items #1 and #2 for me, other things can be put on the wishlist if items #1 and #2 are there. . .if they aren’t, I don’t bother with the rest. If I was more interested in gameplay that physics, if I was an offline player only, I might better appreciate a sim that is strong on gameplay content, and weaker in the physics area.

The good news is that most of us who can afford a gaming computer, can also afford to own a few different sims of the same genre. . .I’m used to picking the sim that best does what I need it to do, none do it all perfectly well. . .yet.

I might as well get OFF and give it a whirl, but I know the underlying engine's limitations all too well, have they done something miraculous to it? Your example of landing in a crosswind is a perfect one. . .I've only flown two aircraft in FSX that can do any semblance of a proper side slip, in anything else it's nothing like the real deal, and there are no realistic consequences to landing side-loaded anyway in MSFS sims. . .using sim techniques in place or real world techniques just takes all the fun and sense of immersion out of it for me.

Hello,
i did not "fly" FSX yet, but FS9/2004 is well-known to me. Guess which additional planes with working valvegear (!) and opening cowl i installed first ... (hint: begins with Alb. ...), but i must say this flight model of those additional crates is imho far much too forgiving.

I guess the OFF team has made some deal with MS and was able to get into the hard-coded parts, so we may well see some more different behaviour - there already is a lot.

Greetings,
Catfish

That's interesting news, thanks!

You know, in retrospect I think OFF seems more like a fantastic historical wargame, yes with warts too, but it's also never going to be my favorite sim to actually fly.

In comparison, ROF was built first and foremost with high-fidelity flying dynamics, damage dynamics, environmental dynamics, effects dynamics, and AI dynamics being paramount, which are the core elements we actually experince when flying sims. ROF does just have the beginnings of the wargaming content that's certainly appreciated too.

Btw, we can add incorrect U.S. 94th Aero skins to the list of historical OFF inaccuracies, a Lewis Gun drum that looks the same top and bottom, and I still can't overlook the crude aircrew models either.

Pay me a $ each for the rest, and I'll be buying my Engels E3 (Fokker D.VII replica).