Jason asked that I post this because he is sitting in economy class flying home from a business trip in Taiwan.
He will answer questions after the flight back and some sleep on Friday.


Rise of Flight: Iron Cross Edition

June 3, 2010 – 777 Studios is proud to announce that the award-winning WWI flight-simulation Rise of Flight is back and it’s bigger and better than ever with Rise of Flight: Iron Cross Edition! It will be released in North America in boxed form on June 29th, 2010. Rise of Flight: Iron Cross Edition will be available at major PC game retailers such as GoGamer.com, Amazon.com, Fry’s Electronics and others to be named soon. It will be distributed by CompuExpert. The MSRP is $49.99.

Download the full Press Announcement

Thumbs-up. Nice way to get some fresh interest generated and allow folks to jump into RoF with all (or most of?) the content the rest of us have paid for a little at a time over the past year.

I know I haven't read the release very closely yet, but is there anything new for existing RoF owners, and if so will that content be available to existing owners via standard update of the game (excluding any new aircraft that will need to be purchased separately) ??

Am wondering what the minimum PC requirements will be: the same or higher? Now flying and enjoying RoF with the bear minimum PC and hoping that that the Iron Cross Edition will be the same.
Any hope?

BadBud
www.simflite.com

Looks like it's a "Gold Edition" with more flyables inclusive in the price.

Quite a deal if one doesn't own the sim yet.

I did some math, and the included flyables, if bought seperately, come up to $45.72 (if one pre-orders). With an MSRP of 50 USD, it's a no brainer.

So current owners of ROF won't get anything from purchasing this, correct?

Apparently correct. New-comers to the sim get a nice little nudge however.

I suppose this means that the DFC version is somewhere down the line, in a year or so??

~~~

Does this mean I should start my RoF disk collection?? Only fitting since I have :

For the Red Baron series: RB, RB2, RB3D (four or five actually), plus several disks of mods and tools

For Il-2 series: IL-2, Forgotten Battles, Ace Expansion Pack, Pacific Fighters, 1946, plus expansion disks (PE-2, Battle Over Europe, etc., etc.) and countless home made disks of missions, campaigns, skins, mods and tools.

The answer is obviously "yes", since I am apparently a collector of things related to my favorite flight sims...

Hello Everyone.

Just arrived back from Asia and figured I would address some questions about ROF:ICE before getting to sleep in my own bed for the first time in a month.

ROF:ICE is the same product you have now and both versions are fully compatible with each other. ROF:ICE is simply all of the patches and enhancements you currently have to download (which can be tedious) included on the disk in new packaging. To spice up the initial offering we added 4 more flyables to the package and as a special bonus we added one more plane as a Launch Bonus (Retailers like this kind of thing). Which Bonus plane you get depends on which retailer you buy from. And the Free Bonus plane will be for a limited time.

ROF:ICE is a product designed primarily for North American retailers. However, it will also eventually be released in Europe and it will also be released in Digital form, but not for a few weeks later after it is established in retail. ROF:ICE will become the standard SKU for ROF moving forward and replace the original ROF Ver. 1.0 Box at retailers. There are few Ver. 1.0 boxes left in the channels and they will most likely go on sale to move them to make room for ROF:ICE. Also, the MSRP for ROF:ICE is $49.99. Slightly higher due to the added planes and new packaging and posters etc. in the box. Plus, it would not be very fair to those that already bought it and purchased additional planes if we offered it at the same or lower price. We hope to do something for current users who already paid full-price and bought some planes, but details on that will come later. Also, the average user has bought 2 or so planes from our store. Some have bought all and some none. So, we averaged it out and decided that the new MSRP should be close to the average amount we know most ROF users are willing to spend. The $49.99 MSRP is very close to that average. We felt that is a pretty fair way to do it. The general business model of ROF remains the same with some planes in main SKU and others as add-ons.

A lot of feedback from you the community was taken into account when we created ROF:ICE and it is much closer to what most of you expected at original launch a year ago. So this is a good development for ROF at retail and it should bring you some more wingies to play with or shoot down! Again, this is the new standard edition of ROF. We had to name it something other than the original name so not to confuse people or retailers.

The Iron Cross represents, to me at least, the strength and toughness of the team to march on and keep fighting to being you a top-notch simulation under intense criticism and pressure. We hope you also recognize their hard work and wish us luck with the new edition.

More good stuff to come.

Jason

The box art is absolutely great - I never liked the original with the rather stressed looking pilot.

Hope it sells well!

Cheers,

Nick

Hey cool, but I'm dumbfounded about the awards won by this sim? Could it have been the award for "Best Incomplete Beta Released at Retail Price"?

Cool. I still have the Original RB3D Eric Lanz from Dynamix sent me after beta testing it.

I would buy ICE if it were signed by the developement team......

yes you are right

Is there going to be additional paper manuals, etc in the new box? I'm in the category of one who bought the original, but then has not bought any of the add-ons, so it looks aobut 6 of one, half a dozen of the other in terms of buying all the add-ons or pre-ordering the new release.

Thee is an updated manual, but it's no a super lengthy one. This is not a study sim like BlackShark.

It's up to you if you want to buy anything further. I'm not holding a gun to your head. But ROF today is not the same thing that you bought a year ago, extra planes or not.

ROF:ICE is a re-launch that is fully compatible with the original release, unlike other sims throuhgout history we are sticking with that approach instead of asking all previous owner to pony up again.

ROF:ICE will give newcomers to ROF a faster, more pleasant and easier time flying and fighting.

Jason

Any news on whether you will be reconsidering the customer-hostile online DRM reqirement?

I still have a rather bad taste in my mouth from posting in the SimHQ ROF forum to announce my new interest in this game after the constant online thing was removed. I asked for help to get started and all I got was bashed from the faithful in the community for not being one who embraced it from the start, despite the DRM online thing. I was a bad guy and they patted themselves on the back. It became such a mess they ended up having to delete the entire thread! And all I asked for was help getting started in the sim!! No thanks now, I went and got immersed in the IL2 modding community instead! Holding out for Maddox's SOW now, will skip this one and their hostile fanboi community people.

I'de say you're doing the right thing Fishingnut. The way I see it, ROF was released a year early in an incomplete form and now they're trying to sell a more complete version of the game now. It doesn't work that way. If I could resell my coaster with the words "Rise of Flight" on it then I would.

Il-2 is still the way to go, and SoW will not let us down.

That's already been addressed. There is an offline mode now.

I suggest reading Darts new review of ROF. It's a comprhensive review.

Jason

I have to say something here. It does work that way if the owner of the sim (the guy whose money the sim was built with) decided to release it early against the team's wishes. But now there are new owners and a re-launch of a newer, more complete version is warranted. There is a lot to the story that the community does not know and probably will never know about ROF due to confidentialty agreements. The ferocious attacks on ROF by members of the community was very disheartening to the the team since they worked so hard, especially because some of the decisions surrounding it's launch and feature set was out of their direct control. That plus being a rookie team and a lack of English skills lead to some missteps along the way sure. But luckily, they didn't listen to the naysayers and decided to fight to save ROF and they have done a great job under tremendous pressure and now the team and new owners control it's destiny.

You'll get two-seaters and a new Career system in the not too distant future along with more aircraft. What the team needs now is the community to stop the negativity and forget the squabbles of a few months ago. The team and engine is capable of so much more if we support them. The future is already being considered.

Why throw all your hopes in with only one development house?

The genre has been stagnant for years. We're trying, along with others to revive it and bring back the good times. Help us, don't hurt us.

Jason

?

No, really, why would you pay any attention to a forum?

I've had numerous problems with RoF, starting with a seizure when they announced online reqs (and some did defend this in an unreasonable fashion, IMHFO), followed by ~$500 dollars worth of upgrades in a failed attempt to make the game playable. But the obvious heart in this sim keeps me coming back, the same care factor you find in Oleg's products and DCS team.

In the end I just took the long view, eventually I'll buy a whole new system and it should run smooth as silk. And if not, RoF + planes cost me less than I spend on alcohol in a week. Why get torn up about a purchase that costs so little for such a (potential at this point) return?

Thanks for the feedback Jason. Out of respect for SimHQ's policy and the devs I just want to say one quick thing and I'll leave this thread to you guys wanting to discuss other aspects of this release.

I really do appreciate what you are doing with the genre but calling it an "offline mode" is somewhat misleading as the sim needs to communicate with your server after each mission in the single player campaign. Unfortunately some of us do not have access to an internet connection wherever or whenever we play and this seriously hampers our ability to enjoy your product.

I find myself wanting to support you for keeping the genre alive but unfortunately I am unwilling to buy a product which is not fully playable.

Since RoF has been available for over a year I think that the release of Iron Cross would be a great opportunity to make your product as accessible as possible to a wider audience and those that did not buy it originally for whatever reason instead of trying to resell it to the same people who own it.

Brendan,

We're not trying to re-sell it to existing customers. It is aimed at new folks. But how can I do that without at least alerting the existing customers?

The internet connection requirement is something that we cannot take away completely or we would have. We have a small dedicated team that keeps plugging away, but we still have some things to add. If enough people purchase ROF:ICE we can go back and try to address some fundemental issues that bug some folks.

Jason

That's exciting news about a new career system! Anything you can say about it, or is too soon?

The lack of a good career system is in large part why I've not yet bought the game. If/when the career system is improved, I'll likely buy it.

Otherwise, keep up the good work!

No I can't say anything else right now about the new career system being worked on. Our team is as lean and mean as we can make it right now, so some work is stacked up and we're working through it. But from what I've seen the plan is ambitious, but have no idea what will make the final cut.

And Luke, you live like 10 minutes from 777 Studios HQ. I'm going to #%&*$# bring you a copy and make you fly it in front of me so you understand what you are missing. Plus you have never played the current career system so how can you say it sucks in the first place?

Jason

Well this really isn't new news. The ROF team has stated as such several times on the ROF forum, but hey glad I could help. :-)

Jason

Well, they have been inscruitable on that, other than to firmly state that they'll painstakingly place windsocks at every aerodrome (a task I don't envy)....which is even harder than one thinks, since they will then have to make an algorythm to not place it at every aerodrome beyond a given radius of the mission generated in order to ease system requirements!

Exhausted wrote:



There's a grain of truth in the first and an error in the last.

In many ways 1.012 is where I expected RoF to be at release, not eight months later. That's what prodded the re-look article - it's earned a spot in Prime Time with the improvements and inclusion of features one expects in a full flight simulation.

Where the quote falls apart is in the "sell a more complete version" portion of the line.

All of the content in the ICE edition is in the version someone who pre-ordered the sim before release has right now. It's the same version of the sim. The only difference is the inclusion of more flyable aircraft as a bundle - and if one could get a ten dollar off coupon come out cheaper buying ICE if they hadn't purchased the included ones (and darned near break even if one went for the pre-order bonus).

Want the windsock, QMB, updated skins, persistant servers, updated multiplayer GUI, programmable stick profiles that can be changed on the fly, etc., that come with the ICE package version of the sim? Fire up the copy you already own and let it update. Won't cost you anything but your usual ISP charge and some space on the hard drive.

10 minutes? It takes me just 10 minutes to reach the 91 Freeway.

As for the career system, I only base my opinion off what others (such as Dart) have written so far. Yeah, in the end, it's probably just a lame excuse on my my part. I can likely see me owning the game at no later than the end of summer.

BTW, I'm taking my MBA classes now at the University of Redlands.

If you are going to the U of R then that's 30 seconds from my house.

Jason

Riverside campus.

I'd drive to meet him half way for a free copy if I were that close!

I've met Jason in person (and Sim, for dinner and beer), and he's a stand-up guy.

Why are folks miffed about the early release? Nobody forced you to buy it, and those who bought it then are not forced to buy the re-release.

Personally I'm glad I didn't have to wait until now to buy it; I've gotten a lot of joy from RoF this past year. Even if initially it wasn't the gem it is now, in 2009 it was a solid, stable release with minimal bugs. Maybe lacking in some features, but deliciously playable!

Plus, they made money within that year. Developers don't work for free!

Heck, I'm going to buy it just to support the developers-I really want them to stick around and bring us more awesome planes!

I definitely can't play it on my machine but I bought it last Thursday.
Got it in the mail today.


Wheels

They could have made money and had more satisfied customers had they sold lemonade. The game was advertised in a way that was too good to be true, and I gave them trust and the benefit of the doubt, and it too was too good to be true.

S! Chaps!

Sorry if I have missed something here... I live in the UK and I want to buy RoF: ICE. I looked on Amazon.com (US) and it's there, available for pre-order, but not on Amazon.co.uk.. why? Is ICE exclusive to North America only? Are you saying I have to import it from USA and pay for international shipping and hope it gets here? Can someone please clear up this matter for those of us in the rest of the world outside of North America who want to buy RoF:ICE please. Thanks.

EDIT: on Amazom.com it says, "Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S."....

WTF?!

AH BS! What a distribution deal 777 worked out....

It helps to read the whole thread:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3024658/Re_777_Studios_to_Release_Rise.html#Post3024658



Oh yeah, that is just soooo BS.

BTW, Newegg has ICE on pre-order for $27.99.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832833003&Tpk=rise%20of%20flight

Thanks for the info. Looks like we'll have to forget all about buying RoF until / if ICE is available to buy in Great Britain then. Just wondering though, if Rof:ICE is "specifically designed for the North American market", the first thought I had was that it surely must be "dumbed down" in some way? Just a thought...

It's cheaper to produce in North America because we don't overuse the letter "U" and implement the letter "Z" when appropriate.

Hi guys,

The newegg price is incorrect. ROF ICE is not released until the end of the month and it will be available in Europe as well, but at a later date.

Jason

Jason,

will the European version be relased by the 777Studios or the old Euro RoF retailer, the Aerosoft (if it is not a secret)
Personally, I am very happy about the new relase, because the 1.12 RoF became a really great, complete sim. The Team did tremendous job by adding new dogfight modes and, what is very important as well, they improved the stability and performance. Two of my teammates are flying RoF on the Pentium 4 PC's and have some not bad fps (30-40). Of course, with the lowest settings, but at least we can fly together on the less populated servers. Smaller maps and the mentioned performance improved allowed people to set more servers, because the server software is no longer so resource eating. I'd say, there is 30% improvement or a bit more.

The 8 flyable planes out of the box, featuring the payware Dr.I, Camel, SE5a is a great deal, too. Previously many people complainded about the low number of the stock planes. Finally, they will get more, and those ones are really iconic birds!

Iam the owner of digital copy, but I am going to buy a box, too. Just to collect it and for the goodies inside.

Good luck and keep up the great work!

Lucas

Except in Canada

(although the "Zed" is used by most but not all)

They could have gone even cheaper with "Rize of Flite: Iron X Ed."

Lucas,

Sorry for the slow reply. Thanks for the kind words and enthusiasm for ROF:ICE! To answer your question about ROF:ICE in Europe - Yes, it will be distrubuted by Aerosoft just as the original was. So, no change there. They just won't have it for a little but after North America.

And I'm glad to hear you are happy with the improvements that have been made. We are too!

Jason

I'm sorry I have to disagree, no one marketed anything that was not true. A lot of people assumed stuff. Regardless, the team did a miraculous job cranking out improvements over the past 12 months based on their original plan and feedback from the public and the situation is much more akin to what Blue Heron said.

Also, I was not involved in the decision by the old owner to release it when they did. Myself, the Team and all involved never liked that idea. Anyways, I hope people are happy that now the engine is more mature and we can build on top of something that works quite well now.

Jason

Haha, excellent!

Thanks for the info Jason. When Aerosoft finally start shipping ICE here in the UK you've got a confirmed customer right here my friend. Can't wait to get it.

*Sigh*... the waiting though... it's killing me! Can't... stop... thinking... about.... Rise.... of Flight.... aaarrrghhhh!!!! Haha!

Howdy All,

General questions but probably only Jason can answer.
From which digital merchant(s) will the ROF:ICE download version be available from? Are Steam or Gamersgate considered by any chance?
Only asking because I already have an account with both and would prefer to stick with them! I keep forgetting new passwords and whatnots...

Also, any ETA for the digital version? I'm based in China so box version is not an option.

Anyway, looking forward to this new addition to my flightsiming

Cheers,
Slug

Slug,

Digital will come in a few weeks after we establish it in boxed retail. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Steam and GamersGate are being considered, but as of right now we don't have a deal with them. We hope to in the future. It will be available on D2D though and our website of course.

I just got back from China a few weeks ago. I hope you have a better Internet connection than I did.

Jason

Thx for the quick reply Jason !
You've got a winner here. No worries, I can wait.
Any sim download is at least a 12-hr job from Shanghai. I just got used to it somehow.

Besides low internet speed, I assume you've also fully enjoyed the net nannies's hard work during your stay in China...

Cheers,
Slug

Yes, no YouTube for a month was a blast! So incredibly annoying not to be able to excercise a simple small freedom like surfing the internet. Anyone who takes America for granted should visit China for a few weeks.

Jason