I'm done.

The ride was fun while it lasted but it's over.

Il-2, RoF, CloD, DCS can all kiss my sweet ass goodbye. I'm through eating #%&*$# and trying to smile while I ask for seconds. None of these #%&*$# idiots can code an AI to save their lives, none of them can be bothered to present their "Ultra realistic FM's" in the context of a decent campaign. What we really have here are three pretentious versions of War Thunder and I've had a #%&*$# gutsfull of it. The multiplayer meme has destroyed combat flight simming as a software genre, the entire paradigm has shifted from making authentic and compelling software that recreates the challenging and often heroic feats of bygone aviators to a one-upmanship contest between mentally stunted man-children over who scores the most virtual points in a simulated race to meet each other as fast as possible at a point between two conveniently placed airfields before the ritalin wears off and these pathetic, gormless gamer worms lose their attention span and slope off to some other game where their dopamine reflex can be activated in a more timely fashion. These so called "sims" don't pass muster, they don't recreate anything, they prey on the infantile fantasies of slackers and has-beens, milking dollar after dollar from them in exchange for the vicarious experience of controlling a somewhat convincingly constructed plane shaped avatar in modes of combat that would make even Hermann Goering blush in sight of their naivete and utter lack of any conceptual knowledge as to how the science of aerial warfare actually works.

Do you remember the time SimHQ when the meat and bones of combat sims were the campaign and the AI?

Do you also remember how popular such software was in said age?

Yes, that's right boyos, it was vastly more popular back then on a per capita scale. The drop-off of popularity in this genre of software can be directly correlated to the point in time that the paradigm shift occurred betwixt making a GOOD GAME and making a minimum effort skybox+terrain+assets that is capable of hosting a multiplayer clusterf**k of badly coded garbage.

I'm pissed off SimHQ and you should be too, what are these dickheads doing to our hobby?

Do what I did. BMS, Elite Dangerous and strategy games.

Take a break, come back to those sims later.

I'm not pissed off, I just move to the stuff that makes this possible.

Which flight sims and software bugs/issues are you referring to specifically? If you are wanting a return to the 1990's era of flight sims don't waste your time. Move on to something else.


I will say this much: If it wasn't for the Russian software developers there wouldn't even be a PC flight sim genre anymore. Period.


@ Ace_Pilto - Why are there three identical posts from you?

While I might not have the same strong feeling you have I must say I see the same thing you describe (in somewhat hot wording )
Flight sims have gone towards the vocal online crowd and dropping the "silent" SP crowd and I really don't understand why since the big money is with the silent crowd and not the few MP screamers.
Maybe the effort creating AI and Campaigns is too complex.

At the same time I'd say my old disappointment BoS, actually made a good effort in SP with their latest 3.001 update.

I did enjoy reading your post.

OP in jpeg form since it won't post correctly:

Would you be willing to pay $100 or more for a flight sim that has really good AI and a Falcon 4.0 style dynamic campaign?

Hell Yeah, I paid 100 buckaroos for BoS (only to be left dissapointed for 4 years)
For what you describe I'd pay even more (but money on this level isn't really an issue for me as I think it is to others)

Yeah, good question pal, here's what I see on my end compared to what I posted in the image at post #4412376:

Totally not suspicious at all right?

Can you edit the original text into your first post?
If not, will it work if you edit out the strong words (was thinking HQ might have some auto edit if text has too much colorful language )

Graphics have become the order of the day. Part of the reason is us. Simmers complaining that those rivets should be 6 inches to the left and that isn't the right kind of tree for that area and that's the wrong shade of pink in those clouds.
So...that's what has become important. I agree, though. Not as strongly, I suppose, but yeah I agree. The world's we fly in are lifeless. That's the worst part, for me. Almost more than the AI.
I still fly FSX. As flawed as it is. I like waiting to take off behind four other planes. I like the fact that some idiot cuts me off in the landing pattern. (Or maybe it was my fault!). Planes are pushing off of gates and on ORBX scenery, people are walking around. I'm not alone in this virtual world.
I loved watching a squadron of Eurofighters coming back from a strike as I headed out in my F-16 in BMS. And seeing the smoke in the distance as some other units were pounding targets that had nothing to do with our mission.
But now it's all about making things pretty. I like nice graphics, I do. But now it's at the expense of everything else. When a new sim comes out the developer proudly shows you the beautiful cockpit and the life-like textures because....well....that's all they've got.
I don't know anything about making games, so I don't really understand why it has to be either, or. Either realistic graphics, or realistic gameplay.
But, really, a lot of this is on us. If it's really pretty, we buy it. I've been as quilty as anyone else.

Generally SimHQ just spans $#^&$^#*^$&* for "strong" language and that's cool, c'est la vie. This is odd though.
Genrally SimHQ just subs random characters, I'm used to the auto editing taking care of that for me.

No, gfx are just a diversion. Look at WoFF, mutton dressed as lamb by enthusiasts but it tastes fresher than any digital turd that comes out of these other assholes.

Case in point, Kingdom Come Deliverance.

Here you have an RPG game that disposes with the Skyrim babby, hand holding god simulator mechanic and offer something that will kick your butt into next week unless you pay attention and get good. over 1 million sales in two weeks.

The tide is turning boys.

Thanks, apologies for the invective but that's just how I express myself.

Rather than spend $100+ on 2-3 other sims that ultimately disappoint? Yeah.






Bingo. Plus the obsession with every single system of the aircraft functioning exactly as that in the real aircraft.




My feeling is that non combat sims are in better shape today than combat sims. No need for a dynamic campaign for one thing.




+1

Excellent synopsis.

I have my doubts that this is really expensive and would create $100 software. Lately I'm drifting off into the land of cardboard board/war games, and some of these feature paper flowchart based systems which drives decently challenging AI through the length of multi-year campaigns covering the entire theater of conflict (both political and military aspects), with good variability and replay value.

A couple of points which I'd sooner attribute to the situation regarding lack of campaigns and realism in PvP multiplayer:
1. Few developers in the field, and they have small focus on this point.
2. The rise of multiplayer gaming, which serves as a broad replacement for much of what used to come "in the box" with single player sims.

More competitors in the market, operating with different game design goals, could see this change. The mechanics behind campaign design are completely possible (even in a cardboard game), and given modern computing power, I'd suspect that even decently deep campaign engines could probably run on a mobile phone.
The topic is relevant to my gaming past. After IL2FB, the popular jet sims which followed those days were really dry to me and I left them, and the combat sim genre entirely, never to return (aside from some old 90s DOS sims which, as you mention, aren't something that's going to be happening again soon).

And this is not to say that multiplayer wasn't a major part of the IL2FB days, I played this extensively near the end, in addition to the campaign generator. But IMO there is something about the scale of the maps and the performance of the aircraft in the IL2FB system that well suited realistic cooperative mission designs (meaning, that the coop play could encompass everything from takeoff, transit, attack, transit, and landing), at a level that felt relatively "right" and gave loads of gameplay experiences along the way for players in different supporting roles. In the later jet sims, I never experienced coop multiplayer missions that took me through that scale of experience (though it may certainly be possible, I don't know). Almost everything I played in multiplayer seemed a very short range furball, even with takeoff being often directly into immediate threat, both vs. AI and PvP.

Anyway, yea. I think these old campaign things are still quite doable and are nothing exceedingly difficult. They just aren't a big enough focus for developers (or even players), perhaps. Multiplayer, and player satisfaction with the experience it provides, seems ample enough to sell well.

You really can't compare RPG's to flight sims. Overall, the RPG genre is as popular as ever with mainstream gamers while hardcore flight sims are a niche market.

I just did.

You can compare the two, both have a communal yearning for "realism" within a context that is beyond their ability to experience. Extrapolate the rest.

There are a LOT more gamers who are interested in swinging a sword in a fantasy medieval setting than there are gamers who are interested in flying a KA-50 or doing CCRP bombing runs in an A-10.