...working on a realism mod for this? I had a look at the devs' forums, and saw an answer to the question:

"Will there be a patch to give us an engine ignition switch?"

"No, it's not that kind of game".

Ok, well that's fair enough, and it also lets us know where we stand...the game will not be brought up to simulation standard by the devs, so it's up to one of our fine crowd.

To save any possible wasted effort, duplication of work, or piecemeal solutions etc, is there anyone who's intending to go through every single possible parameter and apply a full-real interpretation to them? Fingers crossed...

Sepp that depends on your definition of Simulation.

This game, in its base, was never really designed to be a hard core simulation. I don't expect it to model all of the startup procedures that you would find with these aircraft.

In all honesty, that kind of stuff has never mattered to me. A more important goal to me is to create a bug free, polished game and if there are things wrong then they need to be addressed.

My opinion, I have never cared about playing with magnitos or crap like that.

With TK's earlier connection with EAW I am a little surprised by his stand on this.
Maybe his logic went as follows:
In EAW we had groundstarts in all facets of the game.
With the stock targets and bases in EAW multiplayer groundstarts were pointless because opposing sides never met in real time so nobody used them.
Therefore there is no point in having groundstarts in Thirdwire multiplayer. To simplify things further we will not have start and stop engine routines.

Now the facts are that by working on the target, frontline, and airfield files the OAW team have made it possible to have groundstarted online games in a range of scenarios, and we have been doing this since 2000. You take off get to the battle area, fight, and if you survive go back to home base and land- a complete mission, and it is very immersive. A complete game may last 30- 40 minutes.

Take offs can be "hairy", and they need to be coordinated. This is where the ability to start engines becomes critical, but not a hard core routine (as in the B17 sim) but a simple click of my "[" key to start my engine, and then again, if I get back, to stop it. Otherwise, if planes are rolling (and some seem to in spite of wheelbrakes), there will be collisions on the runway, and in a Thirdwire game that would be the end of it for the players involved.

So, I would really ask TK to consider a simple start/stop engines routine, and to allow groundstarts in multiplayer mode. We can do the rest, and it would make our (online) game much more immersive. A few people are flying SF1, WoV and FE on line, and there could be many more, especially if the games can be more immersive.

Jel

I am with Tom on this one, give me a polished game then we can talk about other things.

But I do feel that a simple start / stop is needed. I remember VERY well one of the scenarios in RB2 3D. It was where you had to beat off the aerodome attack and you had not much warning. I remember I would fire up my engine and just get in the air and the enemy was upon you!

You shouldn't be necessarily if you knew his role with the EAW development. My understanding was that TK was brought in late in the project to add what has become the visual immersion side to the game - i.e. the large formations etc. I may not have entire story however, if you search the EAW forum archives you'll find a link posted one of the team members concerning the story on how EAW was created. Anyway, there were others who may have been responsible for the groundstart aspect.

My take is, yeah, it would be nice, although it's not a show stopper.

an engine on/off button(and no more complicated than that) really wouldn't make it a hard core simulation, or up the difficulty to new and casual players by the slightest bit. It's when you add all the falcon 4 crap that it becomes undesirable.

please remember this is in TK own words a"lite sim".If you're looking for a hard core WW1 sim then this isn't it,BUT given time and TKs work it will be a great sim that fun to play and doesn't take a monster machine to run.

If you remember RB2 3D then you will see it as WW1 sim lite as well. You did not have to screw with the fuel air mixture or any of the other things for real flight and or starting and maintaining the engine. It had start / stop plane and simple.

Keeping it lite allows many people to play the game. Keeping frame rates high is very important for Multiplayer.

For me starting the engine isn't all that exciting. A nice touch, but doesn't make it much more of a sim. However the blip switch in some rotaries IIRC would be a more realistic feature- but thats down the road a bit.
Personally I feel anything that tries to be more than a lite sim on WW1 aircraft is over-reaching. With the variation of characteristics between individual planes and the lack of the kind of detailed flight data thats available for later era planes i think its overkill to try an IL2 like approach. In fact Oleg said he wouldn't do a WW1 sim for these reasons. Still, it doesn't hurt to say what you would like to have, maybe it will get added someday.
Now obviously I'm more of an immersion fan as opposed to hardcore flight simmer, so I'm not the most critical of these things.
Anyway, hope you get it & if not hope you can still enjoy FE for what it is.

I find it hard to understand that the reason for no engine stop/starts in Third Wire sims is that it “not hardcore” and was meant to be a light and fun sim.
Having engine stop/starts wouldn't make this sim “hardcore” and certainly wouldn’t scare potential light simmers away.

Even in very early Sims like Microprose F-19 , Falcon 3.0 and the likes of Nova Logics F22 series you could stop and start the engines. Flanker 2.5 was the only sim I have flown that you couldn’t stop the engines and it wasn’t regarded as a light sim.

TK has said “it was not part the game plan.”

I’m starting to wonder if TK is just adamant about sticking to his game plan or as he never intend it having this feature from the start. Now it is a whole lot of work or imposable to add stop/ starts with out re writing the game engine.

I think judging by the amount of people who have asked and the amount of people who are going to ask for engine stop/starts in the future TK would have added this feature or at least giving the expert mod guys a clue to a work around if he could.

SF

I agree that being able to start/stop your engine is a minor but important part of creating an immersion factor that currently is sadly lacking with this sim. I don't feel remotely attached to the game in the way I do with BoB2 where I at least feel a small part of a major offensive or defence of my country.
Hopefully, as the game and time progress and more modders get involved, we'll end up with an atmospheric and exciting WW1 sim - fingers crossed. Saying it's only a lite sim is, in my view, a negative approach and admitting defeat before it's even started.

When I say a LITE sim I am refering to ones such as MSFS 9 and X. Those sims are almost good enough for a private pilot to practice from. I know many private pilots and they all say that the MS FS series is a serious simulator. We do not have to mess with FUEL delivery, Magneto settings, and fuel air mixture knobs. Thus = somewhat LITE.

Could be easily simulated by using the speedbrake feature.

I'm pretty much dumbfounded here. Do some of you mean to say that there is a significant difference between starting in the cockpit, hitting the E (or whatever) key, hitting the throttle and taking off and starting in the cockpit, hitting the throttle, and taking off? Same again when landing? I'm seeing the forest and tree thing coming into play again.

Yes, particularly in online mission.

Oh yeah, online play......

Its all about the E...

Yes- online play, with groundstarts, and if you are not involved or interested then there's no need for more input. If you do not want engine start/stop then maybe if it ever does get included then it could get included as an option in your ini file.

Jel

Theres always room for pie! Er, input!

Tailspin you need to get with the program. Engine starts are critical for online play. I mean, clearly it isn't impossible to play online without them, but not being able to hit that E is a huge immersion breaker...as you sit at your computer...pretending to fly an airplane...in your underwear.

PS - If you are a humorless crumudgeon there is no need for more input.

You know, I never did like to be told to shut up. I don't see any restrictions like ONLINE ONLY in the header of this thread regardless I'll continue to post as I see fit. Ya'll aren't going to ruin this forum like you did EAW.