The bit of Jason's post that interests me is that the guys are getting a bit tired of the WW1 era.

In this case bring on the next era. Without inspiration and fire in their belly, the developers could one by one migrate to other jobs and projects.

I'll support whatever 777 do because of their quality and integrity so far.

I never get tired of ww1. I hope they release an SDK soon. If A.I., Balloons, and the lack of deadly front lines are feature locked as they are, it will be up to the community to fix them.

No, Im not saying they would, nor do I think they have any plans to stop delevoping for ROF for a while. However, At some point, they will consider other options like WW2 or other era's for the digital nature engine. I hope thats a long time away, as I prefere WW1 air combat to any other era. Im just responding to those who would like to see them move on to WW2 now.

Rob

I have always been interested in ww1 flight.
Not so interested in any other era tbh.
I'm glad to keep on supporting RoF development.
At some point, it would be great to address the memory issues confronting more troops, planes, action on the ground, which would entail re-hashing some of the engine itself...and I'd be happy to support that as well.

Jason, Han, and the crew are the mac daddys of the flight sim world...and I'm very happy they're focused on biplanes....hope they continue to be so for a long time to come.

A while back there were reports that some of the RoF boys were putting together a Polikarpov I-16 in their own time as a sort of after-hours project. If Maddox survives to produce their Battle for Moscow expansion, Maybe the Russian devs would like to try something more homegrown and start with a Khalkhin-Gol I-16 vs Ki-27 sim.

Yeah, but it's a very limited time frame and let's be honest here - most people outside of Europe don't give a darn about the history of the SCW. Whatever's next has to be something that has a wide market appeal, and the SCW sure isn't that.

I know! I was pointing out that is what makes it a big ask- can't just model 10 types and be done with it.

Pity, one of my favourite campaigns is Il-2 Campagn Espagne.

The Thunderbolts over the Pacific idea sounds interesting, other than Korea (which Luthier's team is supposedly still working on?) and Vietnam.

Yes, I indeed remember a lot of people being very "stupid not to" until very recently. Amazing how quickly people change...

Yes, I do wonder if the new ROF career mode engine could be moved to other projects along with the 3D engine and physics.

That'd be a huge plus if so.

Sounds excellent, Jason and the team. Pick a nice simple but cool WW2 theatre first of all then work from there. Of course it'd be impossible to cover the full extent of the conflict - that would be one big hurdle - but wow, the possibilities are drool-inducing.
Coupled with what sounds like a good campaign system it could be great.

Jason does say in his post that the intention is to continue adding WW1 content, even if they start a WW2 project.




I used to say the same but I just don't think its possible within the ROF engine without major re-wiring. I've given up tbh.

Early North Africa/Mediterranean WWII. The I-ties vs. Brits in obsolete biplanes, with just a handful of more modern types to make it a real challenge. It is a great transitional period for combat aircraft, good ground action, and likely would get more interest than SCW.

Somebody mentioned no AAMG along the front. Pat Wilson's campaign generator will auto-populate the frontlines with AAMG, as well as AAMG and AAA around airfields. I think I've heard these missions can then be used for online play, or as a starting point for tweaking online missions.

The only problem with N Africa are the rumours that Maddox will go there next.

For that reason I'd go with the Pacific. Maybe the dev's will want to do the Eastern front.

Hmm, for me nearly the inverse is true. I've always been interested in Second World War flight, and am barely interested in other eras. Great War aerial combat has too many luck factors. Same with missile-age jet fighter combat. Second World War flight is my favorite, and Korean War flight would be interesting, but anything outside of that window irritates me to some degree. I prefer Great War aircraft to modern jet fighters, because one flies the airplane more in the former. But, to be honest, I, too, am getting a bit tired of Great War. I truly miss Second World War fighters, and have for years. I cannot wait until a competent studio such as 777 comes out with a good Second World War flight sim.



If 777 Studios decided to take this route, I would probably support them, just to keep them going, in the hopes that one of their future projects would be more interesting to me. But this project you suggest does not appeal to me at all. I have no interest in flying either the I-16 or the Ki-27. If I bought this sim, it would remain on the shelf for all but a couple of hours in which I try it out to see how well they model the Second World War fighters. Then I'd wait for them to come out with some American, German, and Italian, aircraft. Those are where my interests are. I'd love to fly a P-38 study sim, or a P-47 one, or even an Me-109 one. Or something like Rise of Flight but with that sort of fighters.

I have to agree with this...I do understand why the field mods are being introduced...for money reasons...but they aren't really enhancing the game...I'd rather they concentrate on immersion and trying to get it to feel like your taking part in WW1...the career will be great when eventually all the significant planes are made..but it will still not feel like your actaully flying around in WW1...an awful lot of work needs to be done in no mans land and extra objects and I myself would have prefered less polygon models with good FM's and cut back on the special effects but expand the overall amtsophere of the game by adding to the enviroment..

Anyway it's a personnal view only...

I think the field mods appearance is a bit of an an experiment, playing around with the DLC concept. No ones marketed a sim like this before.

People have asked for this stuff over and over, particularly the extra gauges, Aldis and ring and beat centre sights for the Central planes. I wouldn't say they aren't enhancing the game, some people wanted this stuff.

The number of objects issue and numbers of players possible are much deeper and harder to fix I'd guess.

as much as i flipping HATE the DLC model for doing business, and yes it was a HUGE barrier for me to this game, it is better than waiting for "rise of flight gold" or whatever 3 years after release for full price and only adding a few features. Much like the madden games where every year is a few minor tweaks and a new roster and 60 bucks please. DLC is the bane of gaming right now, i get sick of watching devs milk people for short games missing content just to make a few more bucks.

That said, if it means i get a proper WW2 sim, with a proper campaign and decent graphics i'll still support it DLC or not. While i do think 7 bucks is a tad high for planes it's worth it if i get decent detailed planes. CLOD is an unfixable buggy mess in my opinion that will never be anything more than air quake for people that like that sort of thing. So to have another alternative that i can support as it goes along is something i look forward to.

I just hope if they go ww2 that it has a tad more atmosphere than ROF currently has with some actual ground battles going on. I don't care if it's just fluff. Just so there's something at all going on on the ground.

I certainly think anyone doing so on the 1c business model is crazy. An eight year development cycle is an insanely huge investment before seeing any return in a niche market.

Current software development thought emphasises the following:

1) Tight feedback loop - get running code in front of real paying customers as fast as possible to start validating your ideas.
2) Rapid return on investment - the model of investing vast amounts (and software development cycles of multiple years equals investing vast amounts) and possibly never releasing or having a flop is simply too risky. A crazily high percentage of software projects fail.
3) Avoid big bang releases like the plague. They are very high risk and very stressful, and tend to raise high hopes and then disappoint people, which loses customer trust which is your life blood.
4) Iterate, iterate, iterate - don't try and produce a gold plated version 1 with every feature you have considered, just a functional one with a very limited feature set. Then release very regularly delivering incremental improvements across the entire feature set - again, don't try and gold plate any particular feature, just keep them all going well. And in the process keep the code *clean* so you don't need to do a re-write.

The constant arrival of patches with features and new flyable planes has kept ROF fresh.

Although there's plenty available in ROF even if you didn't buy the DLC. I have all the planes but when I think about it the planes I fly most (80% of the time) are free with ROF ICE.

To be honest I thibnk you are way off the mark, from what I have read the FMB in CoD has the ability to do many things that aren't available in ROF, also as SYN_Bliss stated it is currently not possible to have trenches in ROF, this is a big let down for me, I believe this is something CoD can do, not that they are as important in WW2, also the limit of 50 planes and limits on objects allowed means that currently CoD's online is probably in better shape for the long term than is ROF's(I'm talking potential not what is currently available), already there are often more online in CoD than ROF.

Having said that I do like ROF and fly online a lot, but it does get a bit boring at times and is totally unsuited for squad wars etc. I would much rather 777 focus on ROF and get it to a stage where we can model WW1 air and ground (ground attack was one of the main tasks during the late war)instead of moving on and making a WW2 sim, we are unlikely to see WW1 modelled too often in the future, whereas we already have a couple of sims modelling WW2, so for me I hope they stick with this era and if trenches arent available in ROF, then maybe ROF2 will have them.