KoE - Time to wake up 'n smell the coffee

Knights Over Europe will never come to pass - sad, because after having it's screenshots for my wallpaper for months, I was looking forward to it.

However, that's the bad news. The GOOD news is that there is now a WW1 sim with more than KoE could ever have had to offer. Really, Wings of War is simply the most unbelievable flight sim - combat or other - I have ever flown - and I have flown almost every FS since FS98.

The most amazing thing about it which blows my mind every time is the way the scenery remains sharp and focused no matter how close you get - even when you're crashing into it! And detailed: whoever heard of a sim with flocks of birds complete with sound effects, fire damaged trees, photo realistic train termini and marshalling yards. What I most feared with KoE has somehow been avoided with WoW - there is no 'burnt wilderness terrain' - or very little. Instead we get the most exciting mountain gorges and other treats to dodge around in.

Another thing - WoW is probbly the first sim to work on laptops - and boy, the graphics are not just sharp but super smooth on my Evo 2Ghz with ATI Mobility integrated graphics. You would just have to see them to believe them, really. If you try it, remember to turn keyboard delay very low for good insensitive control.

I'm not saying another word, this game is going to shout for itself. Time to change this topic heading to Wings of War. Nough said

Hi George

See the previous thread, WoW is certainly making an impact. IMHO it's not really a sim in its current form, doesn't claim to be, has many features out of place in a sim, and lacks some features a sim should have. But it runs well, has superb production values in every department, lets you turn off many of the arcade features, and might just be capable of being modded enough to merit truly the title of simulator.

Semantics aside, its fantastic, cinematic looks alone simulate WW1 dogfights very immersively, and all but the most hardcore simmers will be caught up by the experience, as you say WoW's environment is beyond anything that "real" simulators have offered so far, at some cost in terms of small map size (ok for WW1). That's a form of simulation too.

If KoE is resurrected so much the better, if it's any good at all, any WW1/prop combat fan will certainly buy it as well.

Hello George - good post. I am looking forward to where this sim is going.
IMHO, it could be the next EAW /Red Baron in terms of development, and that process could make WoW a tremendous leap forward in flight sim history.
Have you seen this WoW website?
http://www.hubertovo.cz/wow/eng/index.htm

Have you tried FRAPS with WoW ? I get 60 to 30 FPS, mostly in the fifties- at 1600 x 1200!!
I was wondering what your laptop would show.?

cheers

Thanks for the post .Yes I saw the train station in a video by Polovski and had the first sensation of flight down low that I have ever had . How is it at roof top level like the old opening movie from RB2 .

A couple of questions for WoW flyers
1. Do you start missions from an airfield?
2. Is the terrain right? It seems to be quite steep hills around in some of the screen shots - as I understand, the terrain is fairly level in the WW1 front area (at least it is in FCG which is built on correct landscape data).

Ursus S!
There are no missions as such - ( yet, I hope )
In Instant Action it is like QMB in IL-2/FB. You are already airborne in your Eindecker and meet your AI enemy. You can choose their numbers as you can your colleagues. Their planes are not necessarily Eindeckers!.
You also choose
location - Somme; Arras etc,
Weather, you can choose also. A nice touch is when "random" it changes as you fly in battle (and you can see the detioration coming. Best weather I have ever seen in any sim )

You can also fly in "Campaign" (This is where it is most arcadey ).
You take off from an airfield, looks quite good ,in a Pusher,( beautifully modelled- look at the engine behind you! Looks gorgeous )
with a colleague also in a pusher, , fight a duel versus eindeckers, then progress to "further adventures" where it seems the enemy keep increasing.
The idea - and this is what I don't like - is that you "progress " and if successful you get further planes to choose from.
I haven't progressed ( though the pusher is brilliant to fly ) because I fly Deathmatch - to keep to a sim scenario.
I imagine this "Campaign " is what will be left alone by simmers, hopefully when the "cheat" is found to unlock access to the other planes, and missions get written by the makers in a patch, or by modders, or both as in IL2/FB.
Yesterday, I created a four v four, landed soon as possible and switched off the engine, and with the mouse I watched the most realistic dogfight.
The planes moved so smoothly and at the right WW 1 "speed " , if you know what I mean!
As to the hilly terrain thing.
It is hilly in some scenarios, more than I suspect it actually is/was. The Somme is flat.
FCG didn't really know how to make hills, but the low ones in WoW are wonderful, as are the trees.
Remember in Blue Max, where Bruno switches from chased to chaser by using the tree rows. I reckon you can damn near do that in this sim. Certainly at tree height there are no pixels effects.

cheers

Six words that will send this sim the way of most every other sim thats come out over recent years;

No dynamic campaign

No mega multiplayer


I wont even touch the "arcade" aspects.

IL-2 started out with those words...and had up to 600 people playing online at the same time during weekends.

I think if you keep waiting for a dynamic campaign game with massive multiplayer then you better conserve your RB3D Disks very well.

Well Kess it IS fun to play that's the point. I like a sim to be realistic and tough like you over arcade anyday. However even though this is an arcade game it is great fun and looks fantastic, and has some great potential for modding or developer expansion. Also has some extra attention to detail to please hard core. Once you turn off most arcade features you get drawn into it even as a hard core simmer.

With all arcade features on or off for me multiplayer is excellent fun. TrackIR would make this superb. If this can be modded and a realistic IL2 type mission gen added, or even if the developers are planning this it's going to be stonking. I still want KOE badly too, but for now to have a modern game engine that's fun, zips along with stunning graphics then I want some of that please.

I posted some more shots here
http://www.polovski.co.uk/WoW

more AVI's http://www.polovski.co.uk/WoW/WoW-Campaign_start.avi
http://www.polovski.co.uk/WoW/wow_models.avi

Well I went and bought it yesterday. First of all it's not a sim - and unless there's some latent flight modelling in there that can be activated then it never will be. We're not talking about is FS or IL2 better at flight modelling, it'd be more like comparing those to a space game. The graphics are good, superb actually, but I wouldn't go too far in saying they're head and shoulders above anything else if we're talking sims here. First off the colours are very gaudy (some of the forests actually seem a bit radioactive!) - great for an arcade game not so good for a sim. Secondly the view distance is very limited indeed, not noticable on the deck where most of the action happens but very claustrophobic from higher up. The aircraft are detailed, but no more so than in any of the most recent sims to have come out. Neither is the terrain more detailed than in some of the add-ons for FS2004 or the busier areas of IL2:FB, although it does have a massive FPS bonus compared to those two.

Taken for what it is, I think its a wonderful game and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a fun game and is interested in WW1 aircraft (even if most of the colour schemes are fantasy). It looks and plays great, but as a sim? No. Unless the developers add a (or already have a hidden) flight engine (of which there's zero evidence at the moment in gameplay) and mission builder there's no chance at all of this game being the next WW1 sim.

Great fun though - recommended!

Have fun
Finn

Frankly, dynamic campaigns are not the Holy Grail - a decent-length campaign of well-scripted missions can beat the pants of a repetitive campaign of auto-generated ones - Panzer Elite is an example.

Many simmers are SP only or mostly, so lack of MMP isn't a Death Knell, whatever one sees on the forums or marketeers may claim.

We should judge a sim/game by a range of things and not from the absence or presence of one or two supposedly vital features.

WoW doesn't pretend to be a sim. It has some features out of place in a sim and lacks some others which should be in a sim.

Fortunately many of the arcade features can already be turned off.

It MAY be possible to mod the instant action to provide something more historical, though it's not too bad now and better than campaign where a lot of the arcady stuff is built-in (pity about the instand action rockets though, but I've had an MP session which didn't have them).

It MAY be possible to add a reasonably realistic campaign of hand-made, scripted missions, which don't employ the arcady elements, like that of Flying Corps Gold (another example of such a campaign being able to hold its own with a "dynamic" one)

It MAY be possible to mod the planes so the SPAD loses its unrealistic armament (hard) or that all paint jobs are realistic (possibly easy).

It MAY be possible to edit the maps to remove the arcady elements (rather a lot of buildings in odd places near no-man's land).

The hardest FM is not that bad - reminds me of CFS2 in many ways, so not hi-fi but will be acceptable to many simmers, even if we have to live with grossly simplified stall behaviour etc. This, and any limitations in the AI, along with oddities in a few planes like the SPAD's armament, may be the hardest things to fix.

The view distance is not bad especially for WW1. No worse than IL2 and its ring of fog which soon showed up as you climb. Each to his own but for me the environment, overall, is without any doubt a major step up from IL2 or CFS3 at their best. I've not seen anything remotely as good in any combat FS- for example, as WoW's factory area complete with quarry and coalpits. Would not be out of place in a ground-based FPS. so the occasional texture may be a bit gaudy, the forest blocks are not grat from certain angles. Overall it's outstanding in my experience.

There's an awful lot of "MAY's" in there. The more that can be tackled, the more WoW will merit being taken seriously as a sim. At present, it does exactly what it says on the tin/DVD box (action game) and seems to do it pretty superbly, with very considerable flair and artistry.

But it also has some of the qualities of a sim. How far these can be exploited, and how much it's inevitable limitations will kick in, is the key thing.

"Plead not what I have been, but what I will be"

Time will tell. Maybe it'll come off, maybe it won't; all in all, it's probably a long-ish shot. Even if it does come off, it won't be perfect; but show me a sim which is.

In the meantime, WoW's a lot of fun and IMHO well worth £19.99 of anyone's money, especially anyone interested in WW1 air war (well, anyone but the most Puritanical simmer, who's probably flogging himself for even reading this thread, and itching to burn the rest of us at the stake )

So is OPF

Just the flogging part. Always gets me in the right mood for hardcore simming

OK Bobby, have one on me (a lash that is).

I tried to do that last night in online MP, dodging around the factory stacks in my SSW DIV, but I still got my a** handed to me (again) by a hotshot in a Sopwith Triplane. Did get some kills tho when I managed to overcome my Puritanical half and fly in chase view. Not good for my simmer's soul all this, I'm having WAY too much fun with WoW, I'll have to try to learn Falcon 4 or something for pennance.

Frankly, dynamic campaigns are the Holy Grail. Scripted campaigns are so boring once they have been played, take Panzer Elite for an example.

Each to their own, eh?

Looks good but I'm not much for arcade games so I probably won't buy this. It really needs to have at least a small "sim" aspect to it or it's gone to the other end of the spectrum and become to easy and mindless.

That's fine though, I'll be playing Rome Total war untill a new WWI sim comes out. Got the demo yesterday, I'm already obsessed, nothing like recreating the battle at the Trebia River with the forces of the greatest General of all time, Hannibal Barca.

Better boring AFTER they've been played, than boring WHILE being played.

As you say, each to his own. I think the point is, there's no such thing as the Holy Grail. Jaberwocky maybe, the Reasonably Nice Grail very possibly, even the Particularly Flashy Grail, perhaps, but Holy?

Rowan software *sniff* - please come back We want Flying Corps 2.

It has - you haven't been reading the posts fully, have you.?
The terrain, the weather, the view distance ( despite what someone says above - and miles better than Red Baron in that respect ); the planes; the engine splutter on stall, and racing on dive; the damage modelling...
All as good as any WW1 sim.
OK - yet, there is no selection of planes readily available; no mission builder,no missions (other then QMB types ), no dynamic campaign ( ask Oleg re those ); but the basis is there.
And for purist simmers, there is no padlock either!
And for £20, are you not curious?
Oh- And it works straight out the box at 85-40 FPS at 1280 x 960. No jaggies, no stutter.

cheers

No in fact I haven't. I've been on vacation for the last two weeks, when I left KOE was dead and we were all boycotting WoW. Now I get back and everyone is buying it all of a sudden. There are so many posts I haven't been able to read them all yet!

Can't get RB3d to work so looking forward to this . What's wrong with fun . You'll never get a "true " sim from the get go for WW1 will have to be something like this modded by community or a sequeal by a company of a half sim half arcade game.

I'm afraid I have to disagree that it has the same (or even similar) FM as CFS2. CFS2, FS2004, CFS3 and so on all share the same basic FM engine and this game is nothing like them. It does remind me a bit of the one time I went online with CFS2 when there were loads of modded planes spiralling all over the skies with infinite ammo, but that's about it. Also all the action takes places at extremely low altitudes (no idea exactly what as I can't see an altimeter anywhere, but I'd guess at most a few hundred feet) which isn't at all realistic for WW1. Even kite balloons operated at 2,500-4,500 feet and except for ground attack and other low level missions most aeroplane activity happened well above that especially in the last year or so.

As to ground objects you should have a careful look at CFS3 which has even more detailed buildings and vehicles (plus infantry too if they're enabled). Take the trucks for example, they're simple boxes in WoW, in CFS3 they're as detailed as any of the planes. Sadly CFS3 suffers from MS's seeming inability to use the objects well and they're dotted randomly about and of course positioned on the icky low res base textures. WoW seems to share CFS3's coniferitis with pine trees (or what look like them) all over the shop. WoW scores heavily over CFS3 (or any of the MS sims) in terms of terrain due to the good overall design rather than the details of the 3D engine - and also of course by being massively smoother. I suspect it achieves this through the limited view range and the very simple AI and flight engine.

WoW is a great game, but without some major input from the developers I really don't think it will (or can) be what most people these days would call as sim.

Have fun
Finn

Finn S!
" through the limited view range and the very simple AI and flight engine."

I don't think the view range is at all limited. Furthest and best horizon I have seen in any flight sim - In Instant Action,that is.
Compare with BOB in this respect, and that is the most sim of Prop sims.

Let me say that this game/sim can be put into two parts.
1.The campaign , as they call it. This is daft and if you play only this then it is arcade and nowhere near a sim.
2. Instant Action - this is something else. Like QMB in IL2 you pick scenerios, AI numbers, weather etc.
May I suggest that you unlock the planes available in Instant Action ( see a cheat available at
http://gameguru.box.sk/cheat.php3?cheat=9669 )

and then set up with all arcade options turned off.
It would then be as difficult as qmb in IL2 without padlock!! See if the AI is as simple in that