So the announcement did have something for us RoF players.
https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topi...enplatte-flying-circus-tank-crew-and-mo/


Looks interesting. Using the BoX engine, DX11 and VR included

Decent plane set and plans to expand it too.

I'm pleasantly surprised. Defo going to be on the preorder for this one

10 refurbished planes and a 100km x 100km map to dogfight in. Its a small but very exciting step and I know I will be pre-ordering it. Do you know anything about the AI in BoX? I am hoping it has received upgrades right along with the DX engine.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not sure about AI in BoX, I'm just excited that a WW! flight sim is under development.
I was beginning to think RoF would be the last one.

The thought of VR in RoF is very exciting. I have used it in BoX a few times to play around in VR, but not a lot, I'm not as interested in Eastern Front WWII as I am WWI.
But that is enough to make me smile at the thought of a RoF2 in VR and maybe even VR only maps.

The flight controls needed on these old birds will make VR combat flight more intuitive and immersive.

Cant wait to see some dev updates on FCV1

As soon as they put a robust campaign system in, I will gladly support them. I bought the Ice edition of RoF and have literally only played a couple of hours because online, even well-structured vs. online, just isn't that interesting a use of my time (co-op campaign would be vastly different, mind you!) So I really hope they get to that aspect and wish them well until then...

Rick what you have just said has been addressed.
RoF has had a robust career option for years, with the included career system and Pat Wislon's Campaign Generator.
Plus PWCG also will give you a very good COOP campaign option too.

They said that after they have released the base for FC they will then bring in the career ssytem as a later update.
I woud also imagine PWCG will be updated to work with FC too.

I loved ROF, bought pretty much everything but not played it for a good while.Will definitely be getting this though, and it might finally be the push I need to get VR.

Definitely excited for this one, as it addresses the VR needs (for those who needs it), DX11 etc etc, so it`s a step in the right direction considering they DID promise future development on RoF.
Though I have no big issues with that, still, with that said, as a guy mentioned on the Facebook announcement about the Teamspeak live stream: "do you know if a discount will be offered for Flying circus to RoF package owners ?", I seconded this basically by replying that would be a class act considering us RoF`ers were there for them from day 1.
My post was deleted

I have bought everything that RoF put out, just as I have with WoFF... I guess I will still buy into any decent WWI venture that comes on the market, as long as I have the funds to do so

Someone slapping an after-the-fact campaign mode onto the game doesn't really inspire me to support them out of the gate in good faith. I haven't been following the BoS progress so I don't know, is the company now paying Pat Wilson for his efforts or is he still being supported by paypal donations?

Sounds like you've already made up your mind. RoF and BoX have both moved on and are pretty good products in my opinion.

Yes this was a nice surprise and looking forward to it!

This is awesome and so unexpected. I guess I can entirely retire my pet project of coding some VR support for a ww1 sim - although I was planning to do that for WOFF, with Flying Circus we're guaranteed to get awesome VR implementation so I'll be more than happy to go with that. PWCG does a great job at generating interesting careers, no problem there. And we still have to see how the new career system (coming for IL2 BoK first) will work. It's supposed to be an improved version of the RoF system. I also hope we'll see a bit of improvement in terms of AI. But honestly, even if it was just good old RoF in VR I'd still be the happiest simmer!

+1 @Flying Monkey
Exactly. I see no negatives in the recent announcement for WWI simmers.
RoF in the updated digital nature engine with DX11 and VR, what's not to like.

Agree - the VR component to RoF will be fantastic (not a lot of dials to read!)

while FC is released the next gen VR sets are also being released. Si that will be the time to go for VR I guess (and a new GTX1180 to replace my GTX1080).

This could be either really good or simply meh.

It all comes down to what they retain, improve, and add.

Retain:

The sense of flight and the flight models. RoF, for all it's failings, is a helluva flight simulator. Heck, I practice in RoF for things I want to fly in my Real World 7/8ths scale Nieuport 11. Yes, it has an inline engine, but other than that - and it's much less an effect than one would presume - the N11 in the sim and mine fly pretty much the same.

Wind effects. RoF is probably the first sim that gets turbulence and gusts that feel right, IMHO.

Improve:

Unleash the AI. Good gravy, the Beta AI was loads better than the release one, and it only got worse with updates. I guess people complained when the AI, at higher levels, would extend away during a fight, attempt to climb away, and lower AI would actually run away if it got the chance when damaged. This was replaced with the knife fighting to-the-death AI we have now.

The weather system. Please, for the love of Fonck stop sending up missions into gale force winds with sheets of rain going sideways and half mile visibility. They didn't call it the Dawn Patrol because Captain Tennelle was in the Escadrille. They flew at dawn because that is when the weather was most favorable to flying...and more importantly, landing at the end of it. The air is less turbulent, which means recon aircraft can do their jobs better, particularly if they're trying to take photographs.

Draw distance. Sigh. I thought IL-2: FB had the right balance between prostituting contacts and making the enemy jump scare one. RoF's is just weird. Zoom in and the plane is easier to detect over distance; zoom out and they disappear. It's weird.

Add:

A more "campaign-y" campaign. I don't have a lot of gripes with the current RoF campaign - squadron management and stuff leaves me cold - but it's without context. Even when the front was static, there were specific over-all goals for the Air Services, either trying to hide reinforcements and artillery movements (and thus more scout interdictions of two seaters), trying to find out about the same (escorting two seaters), going for rail heads (escorting two seaters and bombers), or air superiority. It would be nice to know why I'm flying the set of missions in general, if not particular.

More aircraft in flights. Later in the war in particular, both sides had flights of 40 aircraft each stacked at different altitudes. Even if they halved it, it would be an improvement. Four on four was pretty rare.

"Little green men" running across the front. In Red Baron II they had them, and even though they were kind of cheesy sprites they added a lot, and when RB3D came out and they disappeared we all mourned for their loss. IL-2 had little men that would run from vehicle columns when one strafed them as well. Populate the world with little sprite men and stuff on the roads. If it makes the censors happy, make the horses indestructible and stand still, unharmed, in front of a burning wagon if you have to.

I found it really interesting to find out that a real world 7/8th Nieup 11 would feel a lot like the RoF version - before that I had no idea whether the flight modelling just felt good or was actually an accurate representation of what real world flying in these crates would feel like. I certainly got the feeling that the RoF birds felt a bit more lively in the wind and much closer to what I felt flying GA in the real world, something that other simulators don't necessarily capture that well.

Regarding the draw distance, a change for that is a given at this stage: the IL2 engine has already been significantly reworked for that and if I remember rightly that's still being improved now.

Regarding the campaign, Dart, do you fly the official RoF campaign or PWCG? PWCG does a great job for me, although it's true that more persistence regarding what happens on the theatre of operations would help feeling more immersed and having objectives that better feel like they fit into the grand scheme of things. The campaign system is being reworked for IL2 BoK, so I guess we'll soon see whether this new version pushes things further than RoF or not.

I fly the stock campaign system.

Now, a caveat: I haven't found a campaign system that really sparked me, and make up a narrative for the missions and my virtual pilot myself. The whole Martin saga in the AAR forums is proof of that. Heck, I did the same for IL-2.

Ideally, I'd like a semi-persistent world. One day flying up the Coosa River I saw a single wide trailer in flames, with the fire department split between hosing it down and apparently searching for hot dogs. It was a navigational landmark for most of a year, until it was removed, as a burned out trailer stood out pretty good.

I want the return of the dynamic campaigns from the 90s. I KNOW it can be done because they did it in the 90s with computers at a fraction of the power. Longbow2 was a good campaign, Total Air War had an awesome campaign.

It doesnt have to be perfect but a living world is the second most important aspect of a flight sim just after flight models and above ballistics IMO.

Right now I'm just pleased there are plans to release an updated WWI title. I had started to believe RoF was going to be the last WWI sim we'd see.

I agree with all of Darts statements about the weaknesses of ROF. I just reinstalled two days ago and I'm enjoying it again, but yeah, all valid. I doubt if Jason is going to release Flying Circus with all the same issues. It is going to be, basically, ROF run through the updated graphics engine. But, I'm sure, with all of the good things they've implemented in the new IL-2 series. I'm letting my guard down with this stuff they are anouncing, and getting excited about it all. Hope I'm not disappointed as I have been, so many times, in the past. But they seem to deliver and seem to listen to the customers. Got my fingers crossed. CLoD 5.0., Operation Bodenplatte, and Flying Circus will, hopefully, make 2018 a very good flight simming year.

What has me worried is that it will be all new flight models in an updated physics engine designed for higher speeds and altitudes. We will have to wait and see but I am optimistic.

Nah, I don't see that as an issue. They're building a Po-2 for the Russian Front sim, and I don't think that thing could go over sixty miles an hour! They seem to know what they're doing.

Jason talked about this in his Teamspeak session and said the current flight models from ROF will be ported over into FC, existing side-by-side with the WWII-era flight models.

No, what he said was that they imported a DR1 into the ww2 engine and flew it with a ww2 flight model. He said they can import the 3d models for the most part but they have to completely rebuild the flight models.

He also said on the forum that once it is done you should be able to fly them side by side with ww2 planes. As far as I know they have not to date imported a ww1 plane and built a ww1 flight model.

Sorry, but that is absolutely incorrect. Go back and and listen to what he said. They aren't rebuilding anything with the WWI flight models but directly importing the flight models currently in the Digital Nature engine.

Here is the quote.

"We imported the fokker dr1 into the engine several months ago to take a look at it. When I saw it in the engine, in the office, flying around with a wwii flight model, which was kind of funny, it held up. The plane looked great, it looked great in the engine."

They didnt import the flight model. They ONLY imported the 3d model and flew it with a makeshift wwii flight model. For these 10-15 planes just bringing the planes in and refurbishing them to work in engine will take almost a year. (thats a direct quote on the time frame.) So its not as simple as you think it is going to be. (from my interpretation at least)

Some of those FMs were flakey after the last update so I hope they're reworked.

They gutted the pfalz diii I hope they return it. It wasnt ever a great plane but if you had a bit of altitude you could hold your own with some of the better ent planes until you ran out of maneuvering altitude and then you ded.

On the last rebalanced they gave it a glass engine and cut it's engine output even more making it completely useless in game.

The biggest thing I hope they fix is the disparity between the two mgs. I know they were different rounds but the the ent side felt like it wasnt even affected by engine vibrations. It was just a lazer. And the CP side was like throwing hand fulls of gravel...

Jason said that right now they build a switch in BOX that will allow to use directly ROF FMs for FC planes, and for this very reason they might not allow WWI and WW2 planes flying at the same time, unless they find an easy way to donit. WWI planes FMs in FC will be ROF FMs, no alteration.

I am overjoyed that we get an improved RoF. Whether it will be improved a little or a lot is secondary to me: the fact that we get VR support is enough for me. FlyingMonkey, I fully understand that you do not want to make the time investment to develop VR support for RoF. But it will probably be a long time before the first Flying Circus installment is released, and is it certain that we will get all RoF planes and other features back? I for one would still be ready to draw my wallet for a payware RoF VR support add-on. But, again, I completely sympathize if you do want to make the effort.
Best regards,
Stickshaker

Flying Circus is indeed good news.


Just a question regarding ROF aeroplanes. Will they be able to be imported into the new game? Over time I've spent quite a bit of money building up my hanger (like a lot of guys here I would expect).

Jason said the plane was to bring more RoF models into the new engine.

But reading your post, it sounds like you are expecting that your RoF hangar and the Flying Circus hanger to be linked somehow.

They wont, you will be buying all the aircraft again.

The Digital Nature Engine in BoX has moved along quite a bit since RoFand Flying circus, although borrowing a lot from RoF will be a new titile and all players will be starting from new.




.

This (along with the problems with ridiculously weak damage models and too effective shooting at long range that Maddox games always have) is the main reason I gave up on buying a better computer so I could play ROF regularly. Enemy pilots don't behave like real pilots. No human stays in a dogfight when they're in a plane that's badly damaged and can't turn. I mean, it's just ridiculous that an aircraft that can outclimb or outrun me sticks in a turning fight with me when he's badly damaged but can easily get away. And it's not as if modeling the desire to escape from a no-win situation is hard to do. The result is a visually beautiful WW1 air combat simulation that fails to simulate one of the most basic aspects of WW1 air combat. It's fricken ludicrous.

To be fair, Beery, human players - with the luxury of a restart option - aren't much better in multi-player. Indeed, I was on a mixed server, with both AI and human planes, and was often fooled on which was AI and which was human operated.

Both out of a sense of personal challenge and experience in "Dead is Dead" tournaments back in the IL-2 days, I tend to either attempt to disengage if damaged or flat out avoid fights when the odds are against me (and the mission allows it). This is rare, no matter what the flight sim is.

Heck, the number of times when there were four of us humans flying formation in IL-2 and some lone guy below us would attack (when he could have tried to evade) were mind boggling. Nothing like being attacked from below by a Val when one is in a flight of four Corsairs.

But the AI does need improvement.

I like your ideas about dispersal of rounds, particularly on WWI aircraft. There's a reason why pilots flew so close to the enemy that they would have blood on their cowls after a successful kill, and it wasn't about poor marksmanship. A 300 meter shot should be pissing in the wind, and yet it's pretty commonly taken in RoF, with good effects.

As to the damage model, after building a modern style fabric covered biplane, I can understand why they often pulled and escorted newer pilots away from their aircraft after their first combat - they didn't want them to see the number of holes in the fabric due to bullets.

However, computer pilots lack a couple of things, and gain a few, that real pilots either have or don't have. First, real pilots feel g forces and fear. They tend to go hand and hand for most people, including pilots (which is why very few peacetime pilots perform aerobatics), and while it's a lot of fun to throw an aircraft into steep turns, dives, zoom climbs, tail skids, and all manner of maneuvers in a simulation, it's a different kettle of fish in an actual aircraft. I've flown some mild aerobatics and it turns out I do not like it one bit. It's important to learn for the sake of precision flying, but just awful. Throw in that someone is shooting at one, there are a lot of other aircraft in close proximity to avoid, and it's no wonder death rates were so high.

When one reads about aircraft kills, there isn't a lot about maneuver. The few extended fights with aggressive maneuvers are well documented because they were so rare. If it were typical they wouldn't get much mention. No, there were a lot of turns, dives and climbs, but barrel rolls and split-S maneuvers were out.

To make up for this, the DM is weakened a bit, to make every hit count. It's a way of decreasing the frustration factor, and I understand and approve of it, to a certain degree. Shooting a rudder off of a biplane is hilariously wrong on so many levels, but if we reduced the places where one must hit to bring down an aircraft like these the kill rates would plummet. People would think the guns are powerless and the sim too difficult. Oddly enough, the DM for pilots is too tough. The Irish Linen around pilots seems to be made of kevelar. Firing through the bottom of aircraft into the cockpit rarely brings any result at all - when this was a favored tactic against recon aircraft.

Quite insightful. Something else that should be pointed out is that nearly every pilot's kill count was wildly inflated (even with the supposedly draconian kill confirmation rules and static front of for most of WWI); for every legitimate kill that was not credited, there were several double counts, or planes damaged or that simply disengaged which were credited as kills. The point of saying this, is real air combat was not as bloody, in the short term anyway, as most believe. While bad days happened, it was not as if 2, 3, or 4 planes were being shot down in a flight every time a patrol went out. The casualties mounted due to the number of missions flown (punctuated by an extremely violent encounter every no and then), but the vast majority of pilots survived the vast majority of engagements.

First thing: Maddox doesn't have anything to do with ROF nor ever has.

Secondly, there is an AI feature in the game telling the AI to RTB when damaged, but the mission designer has to enable it. Otherwise, yes, they will fight to the death.

I bought BoK solely because of it’s rep for excellent VR. What I notice is that QM 1v1 fights still follow the RoF pattern of ace AI settling into circle fight until shot to bits. If the developers could improve this behavior they would have done so by now. I suspect the “will get to it eventually” posture provides cover for inability to effectively address AI coding. I have always felt that RoF ace AI sharpshooting is achieved by huge hit boxes placed around the player, making suspension of disbelief impossible for me. I suspect this “bubble” also is present online. Agree that there must be armor plating around AI pilots. The only reason for me to buy a resuscitated RoF would be the WW1 VR experience. I certainly would not preorder if VR (in dx11 engine) is the only inducement to buy.

Glad to see that they are porting WW1 flight over to the new engine they announced.
VR will be a very welcome addition to the experience.

Been too long: Can't wait to get up in the air again with those crates and fight some familiar foes!

S!

I still dream of a day where there will mix great graphics, great physics with a true Red Baron dynamic campaign and a very LIVELY battlefield... since IL2, the graphics ate the single player gameplay and made sim TOO STERILE (no life anymore).

Red Baron wasn't dynamic. It was scripted.

Will there be a new campaign ? or is it just MP?

edit... Just read up on it again, seems it will perhaps get a campaign in future modules that will get released. I'd missed that bit!
I guess I might just give the MP stuff a miss until they come up with a SP element

PWCG will most likely be available. Based on the fact that there is a PWCG for BoX and Flying Circus will be a "Battle of" module.
Which IMO provides a much better campaign mission than the packaged Career in RoF.

I know
I played RoF to death, plus Pat's campaign generator took up a lot of my time.
Currently in a PWCG Spitfire campaign in the Kuban at the moment, and loving it!