I know it's been said before, but looking at the new Logitech HOTAS I'm just baffled by why EA wouldn't bring this sim up to 21st century standards. It seems like most of the simming code is already done. How much would it cost them (compared to creating yet another new FPS from scratch) to give this sim current DX 32bit graphics, fix some bugs like the yaw, add modern control configurations, and bring all the TSH mods on board...minus the A-10/F-14 which clearly wouldn't be that important? Just a frigg'n shame. To use a 6 year old video card and do a little dance is too much to ask when there's Eagle Dynamics and Lead Pursuit out there. Enemy Engaged and WWII Fighters might have gotten lucky with their compatibility (or at least moddable to it in the former), but EA needs a wakeup call.

EA is out of the (flight sim) business. The Flight Sim market is a relatively small niche and was never much more than a pimple on the butt of their sports games anyway. They managed to assemble teams to create classic flight sims for flight sim aficionados, but the bottom line was never there.

And EA shut down Jane's Group years ago so that group has probably other jobs now

Matt Wagner is running Eagle Dynamics, is he not?

This sim is probably never going to get updated -- we'll squeeze a few more years out of it, I guess, while we are waiting for LP or ED or somebody to put out a decent Naval Aviation sim.

Or 7G. I'm hoping that between the release of the G940 and the rumored release of the X-65, there's a new flight sim coming out for a twin-engine military aircraft. And that seems to be the rumor floating around...

I do miss the sky and horizon in FA-18, though. And the balance of situational awareness: not insufficient like F4AF or godlike in TAW, but a nice balance between. Not to mention you get to use the IR pod for targeting, which falcon sorely needs, and no lame-arse 2D panels. Do any modern computers bought in a box run this sim with the latest TSH without any other dance? And fast?

Do any modern computers bought in a box run this sim with the latest TSH without any other dance? And fast? [/quote]

The Gateway laptop I bought about 2 1/2 years ago runs it perfectly. But then again, I also made sure to get it with XP instead of Vista.

It will never happen sadly but I want i new Fleet Defender or any other F-14 Tomcat simulator

Yeah but the thruth is that EA became the largest computer-game company in world circa year 2000 (according to the Guiness book of World records of that same year) mainly due to sims like:
- LHX
- Su-25 Sturmovick
- Chuck Yeager's Air Combat
- Jane's F-15
- Jane's F-18
- Jane's Apache Longbow
- Jane's Apache Longbow 2
- Jane's 688i Hunter Killer
- Jane's Fleet Command
- Sub Command
(and these are the ones that I remember of)

Since it was because of those sims that EA became the world's largest computer-game company in 2000 I would say that Simulations are more profitable than what many may think of (simulations are underestimated by many game devs and publishers as well).

True that simulations may be more expensive to develop and sell less than "ordinary" and "arcadish" FPS but Reticuli makes a very valid point that every game dev and publisher seems to forget of:
- For a simulation you can use the same engine for almost (or even more than) a decade with only minor updates (for the most part only small gameplay and graphical updates are needed). You see, the great advancements in terms of graphics are very secondary to most simmers - They only want some updated graphical improvements and don't catter much for those fancy lastest-tech graphics in their sims. This is basically IMPOSSIBLE to do with mainstream "arcadish" FPS games for example. In this regard (graphical and physics tecnology updates) simulations end up being IMO more economical since there's NO need for the lastest technology!
- With the same game engine you can make several NEW simulations but that's not so viable within mainstream FPS and other types of games, at least without major improvements in terms of graphical and physics tecnology.
For example with all of those 10 EA simulators that I gave above which ranges from 1990 (LHX) to 2000 (Sub Command) which is exactly a decade, you'll see that there is only a total of 4 game engines (LHX, Su-25 Sturmovick and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat uses one engine; Jane's F-15 and Jane's F-18 uses other engine; Jane's Apache Longbow and Jane's Apache Longbow 2 uses other engine and finally Jane's 688i Hunter Killer, Jane's Fleet Command and Sub Command uses other engine).

So and finally IMO, you can't have or can hardly have that same level of reusability (which means -> profitability) with mainstream games (like FPS)!

This of course, are my 2 cents...

I too, wish for an update or even a new version ..
..considering the hurdles like the AA slowdown, banding, ect..
and the need to improve other aspects like the Flight Model and addition of NVG ability.


but i think it's impossible now since the Jane's team were disbanded millions of moons ago..

I'm sure they probably have the source code and it's gotta have proper comments throughout. Any coders worth their salt could handle it. Look at Enemy Engaged 2: new graphics engine, compatibility fixed, and some minor revisions. Unfortunately, they started it prior to the biggest free community enhancements.

Amen!

I just hope someone will make a new Jane's USAF/F15/F18. I remember that it took all the space available from my HDD... with only 200mb available LOLLL

Actually for quite a while, particularly in the early days, flight sims were one of the hot tickets. The guys who were early adapters for computers were also people who could get into flight sims. I remember flight sims used to get magazine covers and there were monthly columns devoted to them. If they were a pimple they probably wouldn't have bothered paying to use the Jane's license and definitely wouldn't have had 4 teams working on flight sims all at the same time and each team lasting long enough to each put out at least a couple of titles. Also EA considered products to be successful if they made 5 times a return on investment. I know our team did that and I'm guessing others did as well so I think the bottom line was there.

The issue as I see it was that the number of people playing flight sims had remained fairly constant while the costs to create them were rising rapidly and the number of people playing other types of were also rising rapidly. Computers had become tools of the everyman and most of them didn't seem to want to bother with the time and learning it took to play flight sims especially when their interests were elsewhere. I think this poster sort of parallels what happened:

http://www.llbbl.com/data/RPG-motivational/target178.html

I think it would be more appropriate to say flight sims used to be big, just everything else got bigger.

Elf

Scott, I love that link to the Fantasy Football thing --- perfect.

And your comments also interesting about EA, thanks for this insight into the business side of flight sims. Damn, 5 times return on investment -- OK now I realize different companies have different definitions of ROI, so might not be talking straight-up textbook financial ratios here.... but still, geez. Imagine being able to make that in the real aircraft industry. or some other kind of heavy manufacturing. Think Boeing is knocking down even twice their investment, over a 10 year span? I guess in manufacturing you have to take the whole life of the bricks & mortar facilities and many decades of production to come up with that same comparison..... and the largest building in the world by covered sq. footage is the 777 plant in Everett WA. Sorry to digress, but that ROI number, that in itself is impressive. I'd invest in that, particularly in a short period of time like that.

Of course, you allude to something many here have pointed out -- why spend resources on this when you have EA sports and racing and that whole console gaming indstry that reaches what, 100 times more paying cosumers? And if I paid $40 ONCE for a Jane's flight simulator game ten years ago, I've flown the holy heck out of that baby for almost ten years now, and EA hasn't earned anything off me but my initial purchase. Now if I buy Madden 9 last year, then I am probably going to be tempted to go get Madden 10, and so on. Actually I kinda alternate -- one year I guy the college football game, and the next I get Madden NFL. But I probably have a half dozen different EA football games for computer, playstation, PSP, etc over the last 5 years. And I still want MORE! And that is just one kind of game, not even talking yet about other sports, racing, the SIMS series and on.

But all that said, even for this miniscule by comparison little market for flight sims, 5 times return on investment is still really nothing to shake a stick at. Just seems sad to see this great work not evolve, and get reused/recycled into something more modern and RESOLD.

Ripcord

Scott,

I stand corrected. No disrespect intended. In the waning days of the Jane's titles, I just remember seeing all kinds of references to the huge sales of the EA Sports franchise. As you point out, though, this was an evolutionary trend.

Never being much into sports myself, I did get addicted to one of the early of versions NBA LIVE..(98, I think) and had twin Gravis Grip Gamepads to play with my wife who has always been a big Basketball fan. I think we were pretty evenly matched on the Virtual court, but she seemed to be able to sink 3 pointers almost every time.

DAMN. 5 times on investment? Do you think ED and Lead Pursuit are getting near that? Heck, you should be able to get angel investors up the yin yang to dump money into flight sim development if you can promise anything remotely like that kind of return. If I had the dough, I'd put it in Scott right this minute. Jebus. It makes you wonder why on earth Electronic Arts would have canned it at all. I mean, Scott left for other things, right? What's the point in stopping a division with 5X ROI?! I would think you'd want to keep scaling your business up and ending one section of it when a lot of the coders are going to move on to different companies doesn't make any sense to me. The more people you can hire and the more product types you can move with those kind of numbers, the better. Is EA a public company? You'd think shareholders would get rid of whoever made such a dumb decision if they know what was going on. We are a niche. A profit potential niche. You don't ignore that. Managers and execs who do that should be gone in a heartbeat. It's not like there's actually some shortage of coders in the world.

The 5 times number isn't something that I ever saw it writing and I think was mentioned in passing so it's not like this was handed down from above like an official edict. Also this was to be considered a "Success". I'm sure if it only make two times ROI they wouldn't be crying but they'd also probably consider if changes needed to be made or if it was worth continuing with that product line. There are various costs that are project independent. This would be things like salaries, equipment, facilities for people like HR, IT, upper level producers and things like that. I'm not sure if E3 gets factored into a projects budget and I'm sure there are a bunch of other non project specific costs I'm not thinking of. I'm also not sure how licensing the Jane's brand factored into things.

Also this covers when other projects don't do nearly as well as they hope or get canceled for whatever reason. This also would fund the next iteration since if you only made enough to cover the project you're going to have to borrow/get advances for your next projects. Also if the 5 times number is correct then this means they had enough titles hitting it to make it a viable target. Yes, EA was making investors happy and around the time I was there or maybe a little later they moved from Nasdaq to the Dow and up until recently were the number one publisher.

As for stopping a division with 5X ROI well there were a few factors that came into play. First was that flight sims seemed to be losing their steam. Also a lot of the team I was on were also a bit burned out on them since we had been doing them almost non stop for probably 7 or more years with long periods of overtime. Then we had the stock market hitting a slump, we were a small team and our lease was up and we didn't want to leave the area. The funny thing was we were told by someone at Firaxis, who was being published by EA at the time, that someone from EA had just mentioned something along the lines of ours being a team that did it right. Oh well. As it was I wasn't really into the next project we were on so I was only so bummed out when the studio closed. Oh yes, I think there was also a bit of politics thrown in for good measure.

On a side note, I'm sure you all have probably seen this but I found it rather interesting, especially from the list of games that the team members have worked on:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2879084/Cascade_Game_Foundry_Forges_Ah.html#Post2879084

Recluse,

No worries. It was quite a while ago and the way things ended can color memories of how they began. To give you another idea of the change in things back when I was at MPS 100K was considered a success. I think about the time EA shut us down I think a game on a cartridge system had to be over 1 million units to be considered a success. I think I heard JF/A-18 might have actually hit this number in world wide sales but this probably includes when the price dropped down for the budget CD version. Still, I know "we done good" so I'm not worried about it.

Got to run.

Elf

I did not see that about Cascade Game Foundry.... thanks for the heads-up. Looking forward to hearing more about their projects.

Ripcord

The process of getting F/A-18 running without all those problems is not that difficult (within XP, have not tried W7 yet). In fact, the only remaining bugs to cope with are the intro video running poorly and a crash on game exit. Neither are show stoppers. There is even a 1 click updater available. Forget where at the moment but it's out there.

There are instructions here at SimHQ about the use of DXTWEAKER, as well. That is what makes the game run without all the graphical issues.

yah.. it does solve the graphical issues..

...but that DxTweaker thing produces other problems too (or at least for some of us...)

like that "sliding Aircraft carrier" that makes perfect trapping, really hard (or sometimes just plain impossible)

and the "sliding" across the ground when taxing..

well as expected, a program that's incomplete itself might not be the surefire solution anyway..

So this sim really needs some updates..
but since that's not possible right now, i'm just wishing for a brand new hornet sim instead~

Pauldy, I am with you -- I'd rather have the banding issues then have to jack with DXTWEAKER and live with even more limitations/consequences.

I also agree that there just has to be something brewing out there if we are seeing 2 possibly three new HOTAS products with dual throttles coming out now.

LP continues working on something, though nobody knows what.
DCS has a good product out and more on the way, including for the A10.
FO is FO, we'll see... won't discount them, certainly.
And there is 7G and Jet Thunder, both of which having gone a little quiet over the last couple months, but still something is happening there, it seems.
And now this Cascade Game Foundry? Maybe something there?
Could FSX ever be converted to a military sim? Some are working on that....

Sadly though, there are a number of truly 'naval' carrier-aviation related shades built into our Janes F/A-18, and I really hate to lose them. Is there any other sim that has the amount of carrier flight references in game? Add carriers to LOMAC or F4 or whatever sim you like, and even if you can get the cats and wires to work (which I doubt) are you going to get meatball and the LSO calls and all the little 'sweet & sweet, outbound' calls....? I wish those things could somehow live on, or get incorporated into something new and better going forward. Maybe....

Ripcord

Actually, TSH has been making some significant progress lately into understanding more about the JF-18 assembly code and implementing hooks into it. We may be able to make some more significant changes in the future.

Looking forward to working rudders and more accurate weapons effects...or anything at all that would generate some added excitement in addition to the recent TSH upgrades.

GREAT News joe looking forward to more info or a release

That's good news. In any case i hope your team could somehow solve the Air to Air mode slowdown and the sky banding because that's the root of the problems some of us face..

Running F-18 without DXtweaker is still way better.