Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber?

Provocative thread title perhaps..!

Personally I think that the reason sims have started to disappear compared to the golden 90's is because the sims have gotten too complex. In particular, flight sims now require a lot of extremely expensive hardware to run competitively or online - the PC and graphics outfit itself, the flight controls, headsets and high speed internet to download the huge patches that come out every other week, etc. etc.

But besides the hardware requirements, users have to learn very long procedures that were not necessary in the past. Example, in the A-10 or F-16 sims popular now, starting up the aircraft alone takes 10 minutes or more just to get all the systems online from a cold dark cockpit. Then you have to program the weapons or nav systems, etc.

In the old days of simming a lot of this stuff was simpler, but not toooo simple. I guess this made it a lot easier for people to jump in and play.

At the same time though, I do wonder if people (young people in particular) are just more stupid than they used to be. When I was 12, 13, 14 years old I was playing very detailed sims like Falcon 4. It was complicated stuff. These days I don't know anyone in their teens who plays anything other than minecraft, skyrim or some console trash. Time spent thinking or studying something seems to have shrunk to zero and answers to any problem are available immediately on youtube.

Dark times ahead for detailed sims?

It is sad because I have long hoped for a higher detail version of Dangerous Waters, the naval simulator, but it will never happen.

Maybe the only future for high fidelity sims is open source collaborative projects. Most independently developed sims fail after the first year or two of development and the programmer fades into obscurity. Perhaps if someone created a sim completely with open source from the beginning, it could be picked up by later developers and eventually become something good.

i'll prolly get shot for this, but theres 2 things that are killing them and both are woven together

1 - The sims are either mostly hardcore or nothing, because thats what the more vocal forum people have demanded. So comapnys have gone that route to keep the 'core' player base happy .. however ..

2 - The "community" are, on most forums, THE most elitist and opinionated around, it frowns upon anyone who DOESN'T want anything other than hardcore "simulator". It also bickers like feck and brands anything other than a hardcore sim a "game" that's not even worth trying and then unfairly bash it to pieces without even trying it, even though the very "simulator" they use IS just a game (non of them are certified as FAA/CAA/whatever approved simulators for use as real training, and their own set ups certainly aint)

The only way simulators are going to come back in full force again is by allowing it to be simple if you want it to be, ignore the more vocal and never pleased diehards, and making a game thats a good balance between firewalling it and "simulator" like options.

Its why, for example (and in my opinion), CFS2 was such a great game. You could make it as hard or as easy as you liked. It also had the ability to be pretty darn hardcore (by the days standards) if you wanted it to be.

Agree with Meatsheild, hardcore fans are killing the hobby, they are the ones that scream the most If a rivet is not on place always demanding more realism, (and at the same time calling sissies the guys that like to play less detailed sims), that means less planes, longer developent times and more bugs. Wondering how many FC3 level modules they could be done in the development space of the hardcore Hornet, or how many FC3 level F-16 or AH-64 modules they would have sell in the meantime...

Are we talking about PC gamers getting dumber or the general population getting dumber?


Personally, I think it's neither. What changed was the PC game industry. Why pour 10 million dollars into making a hardcore sim that will at most sell around 50k copies when you can pour that 10 million into an RPG or a first person shooter and sell 1 million copies or more?


From a business standpoint it's a no-brainer decision.

Agree, but don't you think simplet sims, not dumbs, but simpler ones will sold more then 50k copies?

Of course! There have been quite a few "lite" sims that have sold very well. They tend to be mostly racing sims like the Dirt series and the Codemasters F1 series.

I too agree with Meatsheild.

Read the other day at ED someone complained about the "used" looks of the MiG-21 destroying the immersion of flying a mission portraiting old era (expecting newly polished textures).

I had to re-read it.

Grew up flying monochrome pixel F-19 sim etc. I just couldn't believe what I read.

In the old days, immersion came from yourself and your imagnination mixed with knowledge about the craft at hand.

Nowadays it has to be spoon-fed it seems.

That's also how most people like their movies and news coverage but I digress.

+4 for Meatshield.


Make your sims as hardcore as you like, but allow lowerer "realism" settings for those of us who have better things to do with our lives (family for instance) than learn how to be an actual real world F-16 pilot just so we can play a GAME for an hour on a Tuesday night.

No.

There are plenty of hardcore games out there that are both popular and challenging.

All the so-called sims people play here are games. There games are not as challenging as the sim-gaming community wants themselves to believe.

The actual game play of the so-called sim genre hasn't evolved in a fun and entertaining way it has in other genres. Indeed, the sim genre is absolutely stagnant in terms of ideas.

In the 90's the sim genre was a cornerstone of PC gaming, now it is a mostly overlooked side note. Many of those games were hardcore and for the time popular. They also had innovative ideas on game play. Namely, fun and entertaining campaigns that added the core game play that made them interesting and gave a reason to learn game. There was incentive to learn the game to gain proficiency with it and to play it.

Now it is largely IL2 and DCS that keep the sim genre alive. Both focus almost solely on system modeling and little to nothing on game play. DCS is the worst offender of this.

To clarify this point, both focus on the experience of learning aircraft and systems; beyond that the game play of playing missions hasn't changed in decades. In fact, I would argue it has gotten worse. In addition to having stagnant game designs the campaigns that were once the core of the game are almost nonexistent. Beyond any entertainment gained from the learning experience there is little to no incentive to go and actually play the game and hence little incentive to learn to begin with.

For the typical gamer there is far more incentive to learn and get good at games that actually reward the effort with a fun and imaginative experience. That simply does not exist in this genre.

That's an outstanding post Pugio and it is 100% on the mark.

Most people are probably content with playing Candy Crush for a minute or two between checking what's new on Facebook.

I'am very curious how Cold Waters is selling. It's a throwback to 90's lite sims at it's best. Great mix of realism and fun gameplay. Hope they make enough money to expand it further.

If we are talking about the general population then that is very true.

I think we have been repeating ourselves a bit around these parts regarding the reason for flight sim's demise.

The core is, if you don't make interesting and fun sims that attract more players to the genre, you will never get any publishers and developers to invest money and time with them. Period.

When Microsoft decided to kill Flight Simulator, one of their cornerstone franchises, it was the big sign of the decline. Other developers could struggle and go down, but Microsoft could have kept it alive for tradition's sake, and they didn't. DCS practically keeps making a living of their existing player base by publishing separate modules for everything.

People are not dumber, but the sources of easy available entertainment have multiplied in the last 10 years. They all have much more to choose and limited time to enjoy them all. So if you can pick up a game and be enjoying it in the first 10 minutes, or invest hours and hours in a sim until you are proficient and can really get yourself into it....what do you think people will choose?

My guess is those who still invest a lot of time in sims do so because they have already overcome the learning hump, so they may have a disconnect with the newcomers that try a flight sim for the first time and find it frustrating and boring. I do not think it is the hardware cost so much. People are investing big bucks on VR, but just because they find fun games and experiences in it. A cockpit experience in VR would be very fun. Learning to fly in it, maybe not so much.

Developers have to concentrate to create software that emulates the flight sim experience without the workload. The feeling of flight with a sense of accomplishment. Once the numbers grow,then we might get people that want to take the hobby more seriously.

You have to appreciate the irony a post that denounces elitists while questioning if nowaday players are stupid.

I don't want to bring this to a meta-level since it started with games, but the vast majority of people are dumb and have always been dumb. Its why the world is the way it is and the reason it has been the way it has been. In case you were wondering.

Not when you are a publicly traded company and thus have stockholders and Wall Street to answer to.


Actually, if I was a major stockholder in MS I would have had concerns as well. Why pour millions into a product that is only appealing to a niche audience when you can instead put those millions into something with a greater return?

Bringing up casual gamers to this specific debate is, IMO, a strawman argument. When waiting at a bus stop or whatever your time-killing opportunity may look like, something like Candy Crush on your mobile phone is perfect. That doesn't mean that you can't come home to fire up the PC for some serious gaming.

No, I think that the argument about stagnant gameplay is spot on. Strike Commander, for example, wasn't a bad simulation at the time but it had a storyline (how ludicrous it may have been) that also appeled to people who would usually not play a flight simulation. These days - and that includes my own product - there's absolutely nothing comparable in the field. There are a number of reasons for that - unreasonable demands from certain vocal minorities certainly being a contributing factor, though not the only one. Systems simulation is easier, as are improvements to the rendering quality, and the core market actually largely rejects attempts at storytelling for "compromising fidelity". The pre-launch public atmosphere quickly turns toxic, which is a massive deterrent to publishers to try it. I've seen a similar process at work with Cold Waters. It never wanted to be anything but a glorified remake of Red Storm Rising, and it perfectly delivers exactly that. But immediately after release some people started the comparisons with Dangerous Waters and pointed out all the things that CW didn't have because it didn't attempt to replace DW in the first place.

My own excuse is that our team is so small that we couldn't possibly deliver the kind of storyline interwoven with a campaign that I'd like to see if we tried selling our product as a game. So, we're not selling it as a game, and consequently I'm not suprised that only few gamers actually bother to pay for it. But it's sort of a vicious circle here: Because the market is small, the team is small. Because the team is small, we concentrate on systems modeling rather than storytelling. Because we concentrate on systems modeling, the market is small.
WoT on the other hand shows that going light on the systems modeling and on the storytelling can still draw a significant number of players if you go down the freemium route (=casual gaming). I still have a hard time seeing this as the stellar example to follow, though.

No, I don't think people are any different.

I think Meatsheild is right to a good degree.

And Pugio as well. Much of the systems focused simulations really isn't gameplay.

My early sim days were largely oriented around what I was doing in a mission within the sim. Checklists and kneeboards were not required to get there. I may have even started in the air (cue shock and horror, clutching of pearls). I seemed to have the most fun with those sims. Then things started to shift more to systems proceedures, and less (or even zero) actual game/mission structure provided. At first, learning all the systems and procedure stuff drew me in, and pretty good. But once I had memorized some routine or another, there wasn't much left in those sims for me.

Regarding the ideas about simpler console games, and finding answers on YouTube and such...

IMO, this is nothing really new. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when I was into console games, there were the many "Guide Books" and things like the "Action Replay" system ( Wikipedia ). This was back when paper magazines were a primary part of gaming, before forums and YouTube. And the magazines were filled with advertisements for these products. Just like today, there were some players who were into that kind of thing, and some who weren't. They each had different goals with their games. Just like seeing solutions, tricks, or exploits on a forum or YouTube, back in the day these products (as well as the magazines that advertised them) were the way.

And another angle to this, which I think does play into the situation with modern game design... Sometimes a game may not be worth the play required to get to what a player wants to see. I can think of a few old NES games with dang annoying and aggravating levels. Without passing these levels, the rest of the game is often simply *unplayable* because there is no other way to reach it. Personally, I used to just drop a game that was annoying like that, but other players maybe didn't want to let it go. Products like the above could get a player past that situation, and on to what they actually wanted to enjoy.

There are modern examples. In Elite Dangerous, for example, there are some top tier ships (Cutter and Corvette) which are rank locked. To get these ranks in a shorter time requires boring and repetitive "play". Sometimes "play" is doing absurd things like reloading the game over and over, until a highly favorable mission appears. This isn't gameplay to me, and I will not sit there and do that stuff. Now that said, I *really* have enjoyed Elite Dangerous outside of this, and yes if I play another year or two solid, I might could unlock those ranks along the way without the "grind". But yea, I've headed over to YouTube to take a peek at what these ships offer, because they are content I will not be touching in-game for a good long time, if ever.

I think of the modern flight sim like DCS (and particularly with DCS Normandy) and compare it to my experiences with the old Aces series (Aces of the Pacific/Europe). Sure the systems weren't particularly well rendered but you could pretty much fly a mission a day (in-game days) for every single day of the war with historical battles on the timeline as well if your squadron and location matched. You also had an "advance to next waypoint" button that allowed you to cut down on flying time as well (my god how great that was!) so you could get to the action and maybe fly 2 or 3 missions in an hour versus one in a game like IL2 or DCS. Similarly games like X-Wing or TIE Fighter allowed almost endless replay-ability with very limited story presentation beyond a few cutscenes and narrated text boxes - again with pretty simplistic controls (I guess they don't count as sims but they were in MY imagination!).

Elite Dangerous is an oddity which I have yet to really put my finger on (beta backer here). It has a relatively simple flight model which was designed from the beginning to be usable on a console controller and it has an absolutely bare bones story with very little in the way of engrossing narrative (this is a particular bee in my bonnet) due to its 6 month to a year delivery method. But it renders the galaxy in beautiful relief and so I have played it for years (I am on a rage-induced hiatus after their E3 fiasco and general community strategy).


It's interesting to think that something which can be relatively simple like story falls by the wayside when push comes to shove and instead the button-rendering is focused on. Is depth of story really so costly a part of production?

What about trash like War Thunder though, that lets easy mode mouse users dominate everyone in a flying game? I installed it once, figured out that's what it was, despite there being a hardcore mode which... I could find no players in.

Oh, and yes, intelligence is quite possibly declining. Isaac Newton was perhaps the smartest man to walk this Earth and it has been downhill ever since. This is mostly due to the ease of acquiring food and safety--this ease has eliminated the need to worry, plan or strategize how to survive, thus the inept breed more frequently and well, we're seeing the results.

But it isn't only this, we also must look at the public school systems, which no longer teach right brained activities, and shun any form of imagination, instead preferring left brained "yes men" worker bee students that learn to do as they are told.

Don't confuse "sim" with meaning just flight sim, which is what most here do.
Racing sims are highly popular. Wheel tech is better and more accessible than ever. Stand alone racing rigs...seats...some even get a real racing career out of doing well in racing sims like sony's Grand Turismo, or iRacing. iRacing is HUGE, as are several others, but generally iRacing is considered the peak, since its a virtual career sim, a league sim, not just racing. Real tracks are being cloned by laser scanning and other means so you can drive and feel your favorite tracks. Thats just cool. Controls are much easier to learn with racing sims as well. Racing sims are peaking.

Space sims are huge. Kerbal, Space Engineers, Elite, Star Citizen. Fictional, but detailed sims nonetheless. Look at that VR Star Wars Bridge Commander game. That's a friggin sim. Like the Artemis game that came before it. They may simulate an experience more than technical knowledge, but thats still a sim.

So maybe the real question is why are FLIGHT sims down in popularity.? Probably because people are tired of props and want jets, which are complex. Theres so much to learn that its boring. You need to take a class to learn it. Then plan to spend a night or two just figuring out control assignments on whatever stick you have. For EACH PLANE. Which ones will be more crucial for this plane and need to be on the stick vs a button box? Which 3 button combos do I have to learn to drop my tanks? Alt shift f3 and crap like that, totally random and different from game to game?
Bottom line, flight sims are a PITA. Then you aren't rewarded with a full variety of aircraft and hardly any terrain variety. Always the same Germany all the time, or whatever it is. Dull. You have to play civilian flight for the good maps. You also need to be able to mod your game, because for some reason the devs lave so much work on the table. They provide framework, not games or complete sims. So, learn that too.
Give me that new Ace Combat ASAP please! I'll sit right down and play it, have fun and still a visceral experience. With a wide variety of terrain, aircraft and missions.

Flight sims don't offer enough reward in gameplay for all the crap you have to learn! Miss a few months and you start over.
Therefore, you have lighter sim games like War Thunder doing well. People have enough on them these days. They want enjoyment, brief detachment from life, stress relief. Not a 2nd job. Lite sims fit the bill more.
Just my .02


Oh and MP gaming with the public sucks. Theres no immersion, people don't play in the spirit of the game. Its about who can manipulate the game best to win. Like using less realistic controls than others in the room because it gives you an edge. People want MP, SO I'd say that ruins flight sims. Put that development into more terrain options, aircraft and making a FUN, replayable experience to save them. Give us private rooms for like-minded people to get togetherfor co-op, screw the unwashed masses.

Good post RK.


Another irony I've noticed is that many people on SimHQ who also happen to be the typical demographic for playing hardcore flight sims, complain that they simply don't have the time anymore to devote to learning a hardcore flight sim.


So the next question to ask is: Why aren't young PC gamers who have lots of free time and energy getting into hardcore flight sims?

For me, LockOn was the sim that I'd call my personal "Beginning of the End" of simulations. At that time, I was flying IL2 Forgotten Battles, and people back in the day would say that IL2 was lifeless, and dead. Well for as lifeless as it may have been to some, I did spend many hours with it's various campaigns. They may have lacked much in story, or some specific historical connection, but they did offer me a challenge, a sense of uncertainty of how things would play out. Would my pilot live, die, make it back across the line, survive after being forced to ditch the plane.

But with LockOn... There was like 1 mission for each plane, so far as I remember. The A-10 was the most appealing plane for me, and I recall having a consistently poor time playing that 1 lone A-10 mission. And then there was nothing else. I had to use the mission editor to build anything to actually play. And coming to that era's battlefield without a background on how to design decently realistic conflicts, again I had a terrible time. This was totally my fault, I cannot deny. Certainly I could have tried harder to educate myself on the subtleties of that era's battlefield, and learned how to design my own missions and campaigns that presented those kinds of objectives and challenges.

Maybe it was taking the easy way out with my leisure time, but I found myself going back to my IL2:FB campaign play. And for better or worse, my LockOn experience colored how I later looked at DCS.

And I realize this post is weird coming from me, a guy who plays Arma...which has long been thin on play outside missions and campaigns I make myself. I guess Arma worked for me thanks to the players I met, who already knew the battlefield, and how to make missions, and how to have fun playing, and freely shared their knowledge. They really taught me everything, and we had a good time playing, at the same time. I had fun learning by good example, and have thus far stuck with it. Without those early experiences, I wouldn't be playing Arma today.

I agree with you on diversity of simming and great point in Kerbal and other games. Lately I've been playing a lot of Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, which is pretty damn realistic for a shooter. Well, it feels like it to me, at least, who's played a ton of Quake in the past. The game is /hard/. But damn is it a lot of fun, and the fact they nailed the atmosphere makes it even more immersive--bullets crack over my head for crying out loud! Scary as #%&*$#! I respect my elders who fought in not only that war, but any war, more than ever before.

As for complexity in flight sims, I guess I take it for granted. Hopping in the F-16 cockpit to me is like jumping into a car and firing it up. It's a very natural process, even when I take months off from flying it. But the sim has been out for twenty years...

Curiously, I occasionally fire up old Microprose sims like the original Gunship (from 1986) and fart around for a little bit because, well, damn those old MPS games were awesome fun. I think we could use more light sims along that vein, with immersive interfaces and career mode, just like we played back in the day. That would bring more kids onto the scene I bet. I remember sweating balls trying to get a congressional medal of honor back in '87, sick with a fever but I didn't care, I was going. To. Get. That medal!




I'm on the opposite end--I prefer my opponents to be humans. I find AI highly predictable, even the best AI, and can manipulate it soon after. It usually doesn't take me long to see what AI will try and do if I do this or that, and once I do, much of my anxiety vanishes (much, not all, Rise of Flight still manages to unnerve me but mainly because you can get wasted by a single stray bullet or dumb wingman or... dumb self not paying attention to wingmen doing what they're programmed to do =) ).

Oh, and once I experienced Falcon BMS's persistent campaign online versus live opponents, well, that changed how I look at jet sims forever.

Young people barely play any SP, just MP. The more the better. What flight sim has a well made interface for MP on the level of the usual games? Firewall issues, hosting issues...who has a rig powerful enough to host a 50 person flight sim room AND play at the same time? And again, variety is demanded. 2-3 aircraft of the same era, 1-2 maps? Even IF you can make it through setting up controls for all aircraft, learn how to operate the aircraft, how to fly and fight...the reward just isn't there. You really want to spend all afternoon smoking and grilling some awesome meat just to eat a hot pocket in the end? Flight sims don't give you nearly the payoff racing sims do. With racing sims, you're eating steak with a killer brisket coming out next.

As I said, it is not a matter of time, but options.

You might not be the typical media consumer these days, but between the traditional ones (family, movies, music, outdoors and exercise, RL socializing) and the new ones (video games, Social Media (BIG), streaming, binge watching shows, mobile, blogging...and all the others I am missing because I do not practice them), there is simply too much to choose from to dedicate a significant amount of time to a single one.

A media and entertainment ADHD that has every content creator and business owner fighting for the consumer's attention.

Time+energy <> dedication to a single option anymore.

In my experience most younger folks lack any kind of interest for jets, cars, guns and other cool mechanical tech, be it real or simulated.
They seem to be more in to the next iPhone, fancy clothes, sports, the next party or something cool they can take a selfie with. A selfie with a Warthog stick won't get many followers on Instagram.. Well, depends where you put it, I guess.

In my flight engineering class of 20 people, average age of 25, only three persons myself included, were in to flightsims. And those guys ought to have an above average interest in the subject, one should think. The rest either didn't use a computer for anything but work, or they only played simple browser games.

People may or may not be getting dumber, but one thing is certain.
The competition for ones attention is much stronger than it was 25 years ago.
A lot of us cut our teeth on sims BEFORE THE INTERNET EXISTED.
I suspect many people are dogfighting away in War Thunder or somesuch right this very moment.

The competition for attention is indeed greater. Back in 1990 to 1992, my sole knowledge of PC gaming (and thus sims) was only due to the fact that the gaming magazine I preferred, Video Games & Computer Entertainment, featured PC games prominently, both in reviews, advertising, and even walk-throughs. Most other gaming magazines I remember buying, were almost solid console game coverage.

My preferring this magazine was a large part of what drove my interest to even buy a PC in 1994. Seeing ads and reading on games that didn't exist on my consoles. All those "adventure" type games, strategy games, and simulations. Otherwise, I'd have not been aware these games existed, outside of walking through the PC games aisle. And there's no way the boxes would have captured my attention anywhere near as much as those articles did.

The fact that - in the combat flight sim genre - there are basically only two fidelity alternatives (both with outdated graphics compared to other genres, but one more than the other) does not help, either. At least the older one has compelling gameplay. The other is a systems simulator in a sterile, boring environment. IMO, of course.

Combine the best features from those two, make the result more accessible, enhance the graphics some (see XP 11 with ortho or P3D with Orbx), and maybe "they will come".

Other factors probably are:
- a noticeable lack of interest in jets, helos, tanks, subs by today's kids (compared to the 80's and 90's). Back when I was a kid, most of us wanted to become fighter pilots; nowadays, kids want to become hipster arts majors.
- trend towards mobile applications.
- short attention span/ craving for instant gratification
- low tolerance threshold for failing in a game (= aversion to steep learning curves and lack of patience to master a difficult task)

Because there's a plethora of other games on the market that are cheaper and, frankly, more fun.

I'm not here to trash other developers, but most of the videos that I watch on YouTube that feature, say, some ground attack mission with a certain slow jet show a lifeless world where the targets are exactly where the briefing predicts them to be. You don't have to worry about target discrimination. There are no threats outside of what the briefing tells you about (like, dozens of non-target hostile infantry on your way to the target area that are equipped with low-tech AA MGs ... and maybe the occasional Strela or Igla missile launcher). There are no civilians on the street, there isn't much of a war going on except for those SAM sites that are more or less evenly placed over the map to force low-level flying (which is visually more spectacular anyway), etc.

I respect that there are a lot of flight simmers who take pride in their precision flying and the nerd factor of learning all the switchology. But for the average gamer all this sucks. No story, not much of a challenge to find your targets (arguably the the hardest challenge in reality). The fact that the game world is largely barren is obscured by a gazillion of switches and radar modes and whatnot - all of which are arguably detractors from good gameplay rather than contributing factors. "Realistic war" means 99% boredom mixed with 1% sheer terror. Clearly, this kind of realism is not a suitable recipe for a good game.

It depends. Play a mission in DCS with no labels, night time and bad weather while flying the KA-50. Let me know how easy it is to find the targets then.

See? For you such a mission will be a challenge that would bring great satisfaction if successfully completed.

For most people, upon hearing that description, the reply would be - " F that noise!"

This is another thing Falcon BMS is awesome at--friendly and enemy ground forces are often on the move and target discrimination is a critical skill to learn, especially when you've got four cluster bombs ready to drop hot on a column or formation. Often there are groups of enemies all over the map that never show up in briefing. It is a living, breathing theater.

Good heavens I wish more folks understood how awesome Falcon BMS is to play online. Especially Americans. It seems as if I only play stuff Europeans love and they're always in bed by the time I hop online. Anyways, If folks did understand this, the servers would be full every night(and maybe there'd be far more servers, too). There's nothing else quite like it, when it comes to jets, that is.

There's absolutely no doubt that the dynamic "living" battlefield of Falcon 4 is unique and will most likely never be replicated by any other sim but it is still nonetheless something that appeals to a relatively small niche market.

Lots of good posts in this thread.


To add:

I don't think a gamer's non-gaming interests are going to necessarily influence the games they play. Influence but not dictate. Gamers will play games that are primarily entertaining and will stick with games that encourage and reward gaining proficiency with. The latter is why trophies/achievements have become so popular. Along those lines, I also argue that it has nothing to do with learning curves or attention spans. There are many hardcore games and gamers out there you have spent hundreds of hours on single titles because they are compelled to do so.

Indeed many of these games offer complexities I argue match those of sim-genre games. After years of gaming experience I state this with confidence. Also after many years of viewing these forums and similar, I find that most of the excuses people use to explain why people don't play sims don't really add up. I think the real reason is that they are simply not good games.

Gonna go blow by blow as I respectfully disagree with most of it haha.

I strongly believe that there is still an interest in all those things, but when much of the products available are button-heavy and complex, the time investment vs. reward is heavily weighted in one direction. Add to it a lack of social engagement due to quirky multiplayer issues (Elite:Dangerous I'm looking at you..) or mods needed (IL2 or ARMA) and the weight gets pushed even further to one side. I used to be in an ARMA clan and we did events 4 times a week but we would spend almost an equal number of hours a week trying to get mod issues sorted or updated. I saw firsthand the number of people who just weren't willing to put in that amount of effort and I totally understand and sympathize with them. It was part of the reason I ended up retiring (that and moving in with my significant other).

I don't think mobile gaming is replacing PC or console gaming by any means. As has been stated earlier I believe, mobile fills the time standing around waiting for the subway or killing time in a line up. I am willing to bet the transit folks won't let me bring my HOTAS on the subway (the fools!).

There is certainly an argument to be made for short attention span/instant gratification in younger generations, but if these are real honest issues then the fault lies in the way the previous generations raised them (or the products they created). I don't have kids so I don't really want to accept that responsibility However when you compare War Thunder with something like IL2 (or a more modern full-switch flight sim) you can look at time investment vs. return. In War Thunder you basically are in the fight right away and you have a myriad of customization options for your aircraft/tank/ship that are easily accessible. In any other full-switch sim the time it takes you to get the engines started and maybe make your first waypoint is equal to the first round of combat in War Thunder. If I have two hours of gaming to spend (my god how lucky), do I want to fly two missions, or a whole bunch of missions (and unlock new aircraft)? Note: I hate War Thunder it just serves as a good comparison study.

I've trained enough kids in ARMA and before that Darkest Hour to know that there are certainly a few who have low tolerance for failure, but more often it is the lack of a good training system that lets them down. War Thunder you have maybe 4 or 5 buttons to use in Arcade mode whereas ARMA has a myriad of button combinations, some of which are totally situational. The tutorials are fairly limited and somewhat plodding and so again you are seeing time v. payoff come into play. The success of the whole King of the Hill/Battle Royale and Survival game franchises like Playerunknowns Battlegrounds or DayZ all stem from ARMA roots which is inherently complex. These systems are all born from ARMA but succeed due to streamlining the ARMA system into a usable and easily learned interface - something Bohemia Interactive is doing themselves with their ARGO gameplay.

It will be interesting to see where the flight sim world goes. I suspect, much like the space sim resurgence of the last few years, we will see a rise in flight sims that harken back to the golden days of old.

I get what you say Pugio, but I would not go as far as saying flight sims are not good games. i'd say that the flight sim titles we currently have available (that would still run in modern PC's without too much hassle) are challenging, technically accurate, but really not very fun to play for the majority of people.

I'd be curious as to see a few examples of other game genres you consider that are as complex, technical and time consuming as flight sims.

Pugio: Most don't capture the excitement and atmosphere that Red Baron, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and Battle of Britain did(to a lighter degree, SWOTL was absolutely superior), and Gunship, F-19 Stealth Fighter and Gunship 2000 did.

speaking of gameplay and why cfs2 was so great .. skip waypoint! It was a great feature in missions, you could take off, get set up onto course (if you wanted to), then press X and boom, you were either near the target area or knew that the enemy were close by. So in essence you could skip all the stuff that makes flying "boring" as such and cut down the mission time to 10-20 mins. Now could you imaging the uproar and #%&*$# that would go on if a new release flight 'sim' came out with that? It'd get blasted left right and centre as a game for dumb console players and candy crush players!

Imagine if hardcore sub sims like Silent Hunter IV and Aces of the Deep didn't have time compress or skip waypoint? LOL


Now THAT would be the ultimate example of a hardcore player. Playing a WWII sub sim mission with no time compress and no waypoint skipping. All real time baby!

LOL you'd have to render beard growth accurately too

I don't really think people are getting dumber; more like people want things NOW rather than put the time in to learn things and have a deeper experience. Get a mobile game that needs no instructions (see Angry Birds) and you get the idea. Instant gratification for minimum input.

However, I think you guys have a skewed view of the current "hardcore" sims. Even on 100% realism, it can be quite simple. It takes 15-20 minutes to cold-start the F-16...... or you can have the taxiway option which skips the cold-start entirely. The taxi option allows you to set up your ordnance and profiles before takeoff........ or you can do the runway option and do your setting up en-route! Programming weapons too complex? Load up dumb bombs and bomb in CCIP mode!

As for "hardcore or nothing," again, that's false. You have the Flaming Cliffs-level of simulation for DCS aircraft like the Su-27 and F-15. You can fly WWII or WWI aircraft which have simpler systems. Even DCS A10C and Falcon BMS have options that bring them down to near-arcade levels. The Warthog had one-button engine startup (well, two buttons, one for each engine) and Falcon has options for unlimited ammo, labels, and invulnerability. Hardcore or nothing? I don't think so.

Saying that "hardcore fans are killing the hobby" is an exaggeration. Anyone will tell you that the most vocal group on the forum is probably only 10-15% of the actual customer base.... even if it were 20-30%, it's still a minor group. Check out the activity on DCS and BMS here and on their official forums.... if the number of active forum members accounted for 70-80% of their customer base, these sims (or at least DCS) would be out of business!

As for dumbing down simulations, well, why call it a simulation then? Is a racing game on a mobile device the same level of simulation as Project Cars or rFactor? Is Falcon BMS the same level of simulation as Falcon 3? With the advancement of PCs, more stuff can be implemented and thus we grow closer and closer to true "simulation".... so what may be classified as "sims" before may no longer be "sims" now... but dumbing down simulations isn't the answer. DCS and BMS are simulators. Ace Combat isn't.

Now for Pugio's post, he's hit the nail on the head but it's not the only nail. Sims like FSX, P3D, and XPlane surely have their market otherwise why is P3D still developing it and why is XPlane coming out with version 11? Why is DoveTail Games trying to get in the action? There is absolutely no gameplay in civvie sims outside of learning the aircraft and systems and dealing with adverse weather and low-vis landings. There's no bombing modes to learn, no A-A maneuvering to study, or wingman tactics to employ, yet these sims continue on. Where is the "game play"? Where is the campaign? Simply put, there is none, but that's okay because there never was meant to be any. These sims simply cater to a different set of "hardcore simmers."

As to Bib's post.... feeling of flight? Joy of flying? Load up FSX/P3D/XP11/DCS/BMS and just take off and fly. Heck, take up a glider in FSX/XP11 and just fly. Why are people not doing this? Misconceptions and "myths" of flight simming? Either way, this experience **IS** possible and is **NOT** complicated. It does take a bit more work compared to Angry Birds or Candy Crush...




So here's my theory --- the current "population" of gamers has gotten bigger. Much bigger. Gaming is "cool" now. People wear glasses now to look "cool" while I used to be bullied in school because of my glasses.... yet today, people wear glasses without any graded lenses just to wear glasses. Back in the time of the Family Computer and SNES, playing on it as a kid was fine, but if you were 25-30 years old, well, you were probably living in your parent's basement and were a loser with a capital L. Now, people post about their latest XBox or PS4 toys on Facebook. Gaming is now "acceptable" and being geeky is now "cool."

The people who play hardcore sims is probably the same in number, plus a few percent in growth. However, this number did not scale with the growth of the overall "gaming population." The market for games has gotten bigger (XBox, PS4, Nintendo, PC... let's not even count mobile gaming) but the number of simmers hasn't really exploded like the rest of the genre. People are getting dumber? Maybe. Or most likely, more dumb people are now gaming and "voting with their wallets" and the market is responding appropriately. Want more shooter games that promote you to Vice Admiral Colonel Major 1st Class by the time you've killed 50 bad guys? Here you go!!

And strong body odors.

Where's War Thunder, BoS fit in this definition - because they are not too "hardcore".

War Thunder for example are more close than that "famous" 90's sim than DCS World.

DCSW - the "hardcore" exponent, still surviving and (slow) developed, jet "light sims" like Third Wire series is now declared dead by their developers.

The fact is the none of this tastes of the genre appeal for new generations.

Your love of flight sims and your experience blinds you a little on what the masses want regarding a flight experience.

You cannot introduce people to flight sims with a realistic experience, no matter how basic it is to you. For most people it is intimidating, especially if the simulated consequences of fooling around with the aircraft is the same as in real life.

When I say flight experience, we are talking a bit more sophisticated Battlefield type flight models and systems. They want to fly between buildings, zoom through a canyon like in Independence Day,, fly over the cone of a volcano...and combat should make them feel like the Red Baron from first try. I am talking a "gateway drug" into real flight sims.

For most people -

Setting a joystick is a hassle. Having to deal with changing realism options is a hassle, reading instruments is a hassle. Learning a targeting system is a hassle.The price of flight sim software, the gear and navigating DLC and mods is a BIG hassle. But if you give them the flight bug, they will accept those things in order to gradually get the accomplishment of doing the real thing.

DCS= Less than a dozen platforms, two maps (one is only suitable for training)

SF2= Hundreds of airplanes, dozens of maps.

I know what I prefer...

BUT the main difference for me is, that I can create a realistic mission in a matter of seconds in SF, or fly a realistic campaign in BMS (Yes I also fly hardcore sims), but I feel I'm flying a theatre play in DCS where I'm the only star and all the other elements are figurants working for me.

Aren't you comparing a survey sim with a hardcore study sim?

No, I don't think I'm blind at all. I just have a better vantage point. When I did my gliding lessons, I flew my aerotow from the first flight... this was because my instructor knew about my simming background. I am told that a regular glider lessons would see the student "have control" only once the tow plane is away and the instructor has had the glider in a proper heading and attitude. People just want the "fun bits" but neglect the training and study that comes with the "fun bits." I think this expands to almost anything nowadays for a certain age group and below, hence the shallow relationships whether it be intimate or platonic.

I do agree that getting to the "fun bits" quicker helps them connect more... and again, I think this expands beyond simming. For example, I play a bit of tabletop RPG as well. If I plunk down the Player's Handbook in front of a player and say "read this before Friday's game," I don't think he's going to show up on Friday. If I told him to "think up a character, come on Friday, and bring your imagination," I'll probably have an excited dice roller on Friday evening. Did I dumb down the game? Nope. All rules are there! Did they have to know about it beforehand? Nope! I take care of the background calculations and just tell them what they need to roll or what attribute or skill they need to look for and roll against. I tell them about rules stuff as we encounter it during the game. "You can shoot him from here and it'll be a HARD difficulty but if you take 2 strain to run down the corridor and duck behind that crate, it'll only be a MEDIUM difficulty." That talks about Strain, Range, Challeng Rating and tactics right there! (Star Wars RPG by FFG)

I did the same thing in DCS years ago. I would take people up on a training flight and we would cover takeoff, navigation, A-G dumb bombs and mavericks, RTB, and landing. I even ended up writing a newbie's guide as a few people didn't even know what an "OSB" was! Did I dumb down the sim? Nope. But I showed him the light at the end of the tunnel before introducing him to the tunnel!

If you want to be flying between buildings, zooming through canyons and going into combat in an F-14 Tomcat with 100+ missiles, then go fly Ace Combat but don't talk to me about "simulations."


link



Don't get me wrong; there is absolutely nothing wrong with Ace Combat and it can be a gateway into more serious flight simming for some folks. However, it is **NOT** a simulator but an arcade game.

For folks that find it a hassle to setup up a joystick, change realism options, or read and understand instruments, flight simulation is probably not for them. People can get the flight bug from anywhere.... maybe they had a toy airplane when they were young. Maybe they have a relative whose hobby was to build model aircraft. Maybe they watched Top Gun or Iron Eagle and thought it was cool. Maybe they just looked up to the sky and thought "I wanna do that!" However, the distinction has to be made between arcade and simulators. The distinction has to be made between a proper bug bite and a passing faze. The disctinction has to be made between Hollywood and real life.

Once the distinction has been made, there comes the thing that is necessary with almost everything that is worth doing in life --- commitment.

Otherwise, just go play Angry Birds.

I added some bits later, and yes comparing them, in the "FUN FACTOR".

This is a valid point. It's good to specify what I would like to simulate.

My interest isn't in simulating aircraft systems, these days. What I'd find more interesting is a simulation of a conflict.

Moving along a time line, presenting the missions in series, and where appropriate reflecting the results of my prior mission successes or failures. If my pilot is lost, let me choose to restart the mission, or even fully reset the conflict timeline to day 1, new pilot, play again. Options to fine tune the experience, such as sliders for variable friendly and enemy air density and skill, variable ground AA density and skill, variable friendly and enemy level of supply and reinforcements, and a variable minimum/maximum number of missions to simulate. Tie this together with a narrative generator which can provide mission overviews representing the impacts those variables (among others). At some point, the conflict draws to a variety of possible conclusions, with all these factors contributing.

Then maybe some fluff for the pilot narrative, with reports on health/injury (out-of-action and the timeline passes without me, or I get transferred to missions away from the front), rank progressions (or demotions?!), and maybe some sort of unit fatigue, influencing AI wingman performance. Perhaps have the simulation decide to transfer the pilot's group across the theater, as the conflict and group performance might require. Let the player put in a request to be transferred to serve in another area within the conflict. Maybe the request is granted down the line, or not.

As to simulating the aircraft, it's general flight performance, fuel performance, and weapons payload and performance are sufficient. I'd be OK with pressing a single key to start the engines. I'd also be OK with the choice of time compression, and whether to start/end the mission from the air or ground. I do realize that some systems, such as radar, might be poorly presented compared to a fuller systems-oriented simulation. My preference here, is that the simulation should presume my pilot to begin his career at a point of reasonable training and skill. The radar or other systems would be fine operating at a level of performance expected of that level of pilot skill. Perhaps even the pilot's level of skill might improve with mission experience and rank, giving some little performance perks over the rookie pilot.

IMO, something like this could be fun, easy enough to get into, and still quite in the realm of simulation. Lots of options on top of dynamic generation help give stronger replay value.

I do not say this to criticize the post, since, as a personal perspective, I agree with most of it.

But this whole post is the example why flight sims will die. We are asking for a level of commitment and discipline from people that consider themselves gamers, but are not into hard core. We need numbers create interest from developers and publishers. If we keep a division between simulations / arcade and disdain the latter, the masses will still look at this as a, boring, dull and pointless hobby. I know some that came into sims via Crimson Skies, or Jetfighter II. That is what I meant as needing a gateway, and accepting players of this games and bring them to the fold.

To the comment that said that sim enthusiasts are about the same as a decade or two ago and we have not grown relatively to other genres of gaming - if that was true we would be getting a new simulator now and then. Either we are not talking with our wallets, or we are shrinking faster than an islander's wee-wee in cold water.

Some of us aren't spending. With Falcon BMS, why bother with anything else? Until DCS can provide a similar heart-thumping experience, I'm not inclined to spend. Why learn all those systems to stare at pretty graphics with no substance?

On the other hand, Rise of Flight has a nice dynamic campaign, but no quick way to the action. I bet if the did have that option--like Red Baron did, it would have helped them sell more copies. Though... part of the fun in Rise of Flight is trying to find the enemy and worrying whether you'll be jumped or not. Some folks simply want to take off, press a button like in Wing Commander to fly to the next waypoint, fight the enemy, press the button, etc., repeat until they land. I know this is so because I had someone recently tell me the sim looks boring as hell after watching my stream. Well, it isn't boring, because those crates are hard to fly, but what does that matter to someone looking in from the outside? They have no idea simply by watching. So give them a button!

And I have no problem with that, if it means renewed interest in the genre. Hell, I might press the button, too, for some quick action packed sorties.

I just bought my first game/sim in quite awhile. Nothing hardcore as I don't have the time now. Cold Waters, my first ever sub game.

The fact it's NOT a study sim is why I bought it.

@ adlabs: Good point. When speaking of simulations, I take it as something that simulates you being a pilot or a racecar driver or a truck driver. What you want is to simulate a commander, something like XCOM or the Wargame series. You aren't the guy on the ground but more like the theatre commander looking over a battlemep. That'll still be called simulation if we're talking something like Combat Mission fidelity or RTS if we're talking something like Command & Conquer.




I do not agree at all about this "flight sims will die".... how long has PC gaming supposed to be dead? How long is simulations supposed to be dead? I just love it when people say "if DCS were not doing flight simulations, the combat flight simulation genre would be dead!" LOL. BMS, b!tch.

Also, "death" may not really be a bad thing. Would you rather a continued existence that is but a shell of it's former self? If Ace Combat were the only option left, would you then consider it "flight simulation"?

Then there's the notion of "if there's a market for it, someone will fill the niche"....



Nobody is asking anything from anyone. The REQUIREMENT is there. If the "gamer" does not commit, then the simulation is simply not for that gamer. Is that too elitist? So what if it is? Do we lower the passing grade for doctors so that more people can be doctors despite their lack of commitment and discipline? Do we lower the physical requirements for firefighters and SEAL team members so that more people can play out their fantasy without having to put in the time and effort?

Pilots, doctors, firefighters, elite soldiers, even people who play professional sports are where they are because of commitment and discipline. Nobody asked them for that, it is within them.

The entry requirements for any game, for any genre is different. The current spate of popular games may only have low entry requirements (see mobile games) and hence their popularity and profitability.



No argument there. We are a niche market, futher sub-divided by how "hardcore" people want to be. Making a sim that can cater across hardcore levels would be an art...



Hobby interest has nothing to do with division.... unless you're trying to make a point I'm missing? I do agree that while there is a distinction between hardcore levels, infighting between levels is pointless. We should encourage participation whether it be Ace Combat or 20-minute BMS startup, and celebrate when people cross the divisions to try out other hardcore levels of the hobby.



Mis-type somewhere? How can we be getting a new simulator now and then? That's the whole point. We've not grown compared to the rest of the gaming market and so we only get a cursory glance as far as AAA developers are concerned.

Then again, there's the whole issue with the genre itself. FIFA and NBA lines can make games year after year after year with only a few jersey updates and player swaps and make money. How many iterations of Call of Duty and Modern Warfare do we have now? But DCS can only be DCS. There can't be DCS 2015, then DCS 2016, then DCS 2017, then DCS 20th Anniversary Special Edition. Point is, this is a niche market with very low ROI.... both in the software and hardware aspects.

Actually, that setup I describe/imagine is what I would want in the background of a sim like IL2, LockOn, or DCS. Where I play as the pilot, and that system generates the actual gameplay.

Load up the A-10 sim, first screen I see is choosing and loading one of my several saved pilot careers. Second screen is an overview of the current conflict status for that save file. Third screen is a preview of my current mission within that conflict. It contains a briefing on my target, intel on the threats I'm expected to face (but maybe not all), and what allied forces in the area.

Accept mission and fly.

Hi, sounds like some you might want to check out Wings over Flanders Fields. http://www.overflandersfields.com/
Single Player only
WW1 Flight Simulator
Extremely Immersive Campaign.
Multiple Pilot Careers.
German, French, British, American.
Over 75 flyable aircraft from 1915 through 1918
Can be played fully hardcore - Dead is Dead, In an Instructor mode, or anywhere in-between.
Quick Combat or Long Flights Hunting for Targets.
Patrolling, Bombing, Ground Attack, Recon
User created Mods are still being produced.
Very Active Forum http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/forums/372/1/Wings_Over_Flanders_Fields

Agreed. I'd love to buy a lot of FC3 level planes such as a Eurofighter or F-16. I don't have the time or desire to learn every function in a plane I have little interest in. I do like things like BAe Hawks (I played with them a good bit in Jane's USAF) and whatnot, but I'm not willing to spend $30-60 each for them as I'll never get the time to learn them all. And they just aren't that fun to me. Same with WWII planes. I've held off on buying the M2000C for similar reasons. I wanted a -5F, -5 or -9. 4x air to air missiles isn't enough for me, same with the primitive radar. There simply wasn't enough info available to model any of those variants though. Razbam even had trouble figuring out which version of C they were going to make, and it seemed to be difficult to obtain info on the different radars (RDY, RDY, and some sub variations of those).

Luckily we're getting a proper Ace Combat for the first time in a decade + (!). But still, there is really nothing between that and DCS, aside from the same few FC3 aircraft. I would love to make a slightly more realistic Ace Combat type game, with a decent MP mode that had real world loadouts. Too bad I can't make video games though. :p

I have done that a couple of times but I only lasted about a week before I got killed.


Wheels

"the decline of simulations..."

No money to be made is all. For a few years fighter planes were the bees knees but like anything popular they come and go. Coupled with a tech bubble burst that left bad tastes.

How much do you pay a coder in russia.. compared to how much in the Valley...

Personally I dig abandonwares. I can play around with them and mod them freely, aka make my own game updates. They're not as great as developer updates, but self made ones are close to the heart.



[slightly different but related]

I wonder why most indie(?) developers involve themselves so much on the forums. IMHO it is a double edged sword, sometimes it does more harm than good. Have seen a few devs taking a quiet approach to their forums and I think it is pretty good. The forums are given to users to communicate and share gameplay experiences, and well, vent. hey...:) Tech support and bug fixing is promptly provided but other than that the devs stay quiet. They remain true to their own vision and no need to get influenced by a minority group of forum users.

Here's my story in terms of flight simulation: The death of MSFS almost stopped my enthusiasm.

Never could really get into X-Plane, although I'm now thinking about it......

I've been mostly out of the MSFS loop for like 7 years now - I have it installed, I have addons, but.......

Used to be every couple years we'd have these totally "new" versions, with incredible upgrades.

And anyone could walk into a store, see a copy of MSFS, and maybe buy it and get into it.....

That kind of transaction isn't happening with Prepar3d or X-plane - let alone DCS et al....

I "stopped" at FSX, LOMAC/Flaming Cliffs, and a few others.

VR is the only reason I'm getting back into flight simulators - don't have the gear yet, but that's going to get me back into it.

But the death of MSFS definitely was a huge downturn in this genre, and it didn't even need to happen. They made a profit from that, not like Windows, Exchange, SQL, etc, but it wasn't a money loser.....

Something i have been wishing for and tried to replicate with my meagre modding skills in EAW, IL2 and CLoD. The sim worlds all felt lifeless after you got over the initial wow factor. For a groundpounder it is fly to target, some flak at target, bomb, get in a scrap with some fighters and make it home or lawn dart. A lot of the mission is making it to and getting back from target and that can the boring part imo. Flying over a mostly lifeless world. Once again at first you don't notice this and everything feels busy in the cockpit from takeoff to landing but after a while it gets repetitive and you notice the lack of a world you are in. Sure limping home can be a challenge as can night flying but the sterility and detachment of most sim maps is painful. I spent months trying to liven up certain IL2 maps and the CLoD map adding historical airfields, towns, roads, hot spot flak points etc as it was so freaking sterile it hurt . Offline, ai basically sucks, bad, which doesn't help the cause either. Hopefully one day we get to point where flight sims don't feel so dead on the ground and the ai isn't terrible. I imagine i am a niche within the niche as most air combat you don't see what's below at 15-20k feet anyway. The general feel whenever the subject about ground sterility has been broached here is who cares, you don't look at the ground and what's around you when you are moving fast..that one always made me wonder..

War Thunder was fun for a bit but the grind factor sort of kills it. I found instead of learning how to use the plane i had properly my mindset was more, i need this much xp/credits to get to the next plane/module/crewxp so i need to kill x amount and bomb x amount plus we have to win yadda yadda and wasn't playing it how i would a traditional war based flight sim. Plus the made up maps pretty much suck and like someone above said, Sim mode is basically dead. IL2 and HL was the high water mark for me but hoping something catches my eye again in the future.

Over the decades I've played many games including sims that came with a thick book full of many pages of details on weapon and navigation systems, etc. As mentioned already those only appeal to a relatively small % of the computer gaming population and most if not all of those companies or production teams fell into extinction.

Ask Blizzard Entertainment - do you want to sell 100,000 copies of a simulation or charge a $16.00 month recurring fee to 10,000,000 loyal subscribers ?

Once upon a time, I worked here at SimHQ. My primary focus was being a utility infielder. I worked on a little of everything, wrote commentary on a lot of different kind of games. I can tell you exactly the moment that combat flight simulations held no further interest for me.

My go-to flight game of choice was Strike Fighters. I long regarded it as being a brilliant, low-cost option to play those old Jane's survey sims of yore. I played Flaming Cliffs 2 as well, but only on occasion because the sterility of LOMAC drove me nuts. Once you mastered a mission, there was little point in playing it again, because you knew exactly when and where things would happen.

Then came Strike Fighters 2: North Atlantic. What was supposed to be the apex of Third Wire's little omniverse became its swan song as it literally broke so much of the game's mechanics. No more flying at night in campaigns involving naval aviation. AI could no longer use external chaff/flare pods and didn't seem to know what ECM pods were for. Active radar homing missiles were introduced, but the avionics weren't upgraded to tell you when one was locked on YOU.

Then, one day I was looking through the DCS forums and saw that someone had uploaded a mission track in which an AA-11 successfully guided on and killed an AIM-9 Sidewinder. That was when I realized DCS wasn't realistic at all. It was just difficult.

I uninstalled it and never looked back. I concentrate on FSX: Steam, racing sims and the occasional shooter. I'm interested to see how Combat Air Patrol 2 will work out, but I'm not hopeful.

/end

I view PC flight simming in the same way I view opera. Both are stagnant creative forms that have failed to attract younger generations of fans while the current small fanbase is slowly dying away.

Any reason you're not playing BMS, PFunk?



Do you have to do anything to "attract" other people? Isn't the nature of the thing enough to be either something someone enjoys or doesn't enjoy? I mean if you're into flight sims, you're into flight sims. If you're into racing sims, you're into racing sims. You'll end up with your favorite sim-of-choice after trying a few sims, but it is YOU that goes to your hobby. When you have to do something to "attract" a crowd then it becomes popular, is it really "popular" or are people just jumping on the bandwagon?

Millennials have ADD, and no way could they get through reading a SIM manual.

Save for the fact that a lot of us Millennials started playing a lot of sims when we were young. F-15 Strike Eagle II and Red Storm Rising were my first two sims at 6 years old. TFX, DI's Apache, Jane's Longbow & Longbow 2, WW2 Fighters, USAF, Comanche 3 & Gold, and other similar sims were the mainstay of my computer time in the '90s.

It was somewhat well known around Strike fighters that it doesn't really support the 90s era.
But, one won't go for an elitist sim if he's looking for sim-lites for all these years.

When you are a business trying to make a profit on your product you most certainly do. Why do you think so many developers/publishers dumped flight sims? They could make a much higher ROI making other types of games.


If stuff like Falcon 4 and DCS was just as popular as games like Skyrim and Call of Duty, you better believe that the big time publishers like EA and Ubi would be making them.

I understand the concept of marketing and advertisement, but what I'm saying is that no matter how much marketing and advertisement you do, you cannot make a person who is interested in Skyrim play DCS. Sometimes, some products just aren't for some people. Sure, you market and advertise flight sims and racing sims as well, but it's more to "get the word out" or get awareness to the masses about this genre, but not to "attract" them.

The higher ROI is both due to the type of games (easier to code) and the projected market (short attention span, brief gaming sessions). I would wager it's easier to make a first-person shooter with 20-30 different guns than it is to code a DCS A10C-level aircraft. A typical "session" of Call of Duty or the like is also what? 10-20 minutes? Whereas that's probably only ingress to target area for flights or a practice session for races. So with less production overhead and bigger target audience, it's no wonder big-time publishers go for that market. Marketing and advertisement is just a minor icing on top of an already big cake.

I think there are indeed 2 sides to this argument.

There are small studios that consider advertising a waste of money because their target audience is so small. Word of mouth would already be enough to saturate the market.

However on the other hand, it is a pessimistic prophecy... if one don't advertise, there's no market, then one's less likely to have money to advertise. essentially it is somewhat like survival mode.

One cannot compare flight sims to those blockbuster games imo, even in their prime years the FS genre is still a small one. Otoh the mindset of non-profit modding groups that basically consider their public users of little value certainly is also an outlier.

In the end tho I agree with the saying that these are like menstruation threads now. In how many wayz does one say "there's no money".


----- I think the future of FS will be going/continue to go high end. 40$ a pop is pffft what. Ice, you assemble a cockpit and frequent viperpits.org I bet. How much does a quality part usually cost. Well-off individuals, governments, companies, those that can afford premium prices are the customers. Mass market volume no longer is the top priority on high end sales. There still is a business it's just usual ppl have little to do with it.

"Small studios" is the key phrase here. Small studios have lower overhead and they already know that their target customer base is a small one so they run their business accordingly to that.

It's analogous to these small film studios that make artsy/independent films that appeal only to a small niche audience. Hence these films are very low budget.

I do think marketing is a big expense for the big titles. For amount of dev work it probably will have to be judged on a case by case basis. There're FPS games that are more dev intensive and there're also niche-market games that are less.

Personally I even think realism based flight sims are just "copy-paste" from someone else's work (LM, Boeing...) and doesn't require much creativity from the development side. It is labor intensive, but code monkeys (over here we call them code peasants) can do it. A dynamic campaign engine or a rich story drive campaign for that matter even, does require good creativity to develop.

Yes but that is after the fact. My "self fulfilling prophecy" questions what factor drives them to that small market decision. If they expected they have a chance to reach the wider audience, ala "our flight sims should be popular", they certainly will do ads. Put it another way, if you do it, you might fail. But if you don't do it, you will 100% fail.

Ah, but here's the dilemma now. I would say I would happily pay $100 for Falcon BMS. I'm sure people who play Steel Beasts would say the same. However, such cannot be said for an individual "on the fence" about a certain simulation genre. So do you charge more per customer? Or do you charge less in hopes of attracting those "on the fence"? I think charging more is the key ---- but then provide a free demo. Imagine Falcon BMS, with DCS World demo where you can fly over a limited part of Korea and a limited part of Balkans... heck, make the tutorial missions free! Several TEs to show you how to fly the Falcon, a few missions of dropping bombs and firing missiles, then maybe a short mission. That should be enough for people to get a feel of the simulation with minimal or even zero outlay. Once they buy, they get the whole sim, the whole map (Korea, Balkans, etc.), and all the toys (GBUs, LGBs, AMRAAMs), plus other aircraft as well.

I think Steel Beasts did this a while back (are they still doing so now?) where a user can request a key that grants access to the FULL game for a LIMITED time.


But for a niche market, a small amount on marketing should be enough then most of it will be word-of-mouth.

LOL 100$? That is like chump change. A core dev once implied 500$+ to 1000$.

Personally for 500$ they'll be stoned to death by the amount of bugs. But I digress...

More importantly, this is the price range of institutional buyers.

Anything more than $100 and expectations change...
Although looking at DCS and Star Citizen...

I have no problem paying top dollar ($100 or a bit more) for a hardcore flight sim but it better have a dynamic campaign and full cooperative multiplayer support.

Eh. Those 2 have different circumstances, latter being space which is quite hot atm even.
I wish i could love the outer atmospheric stuff. But it just doesn't give me the goose bumps.

They are different, yes, but I was more referring to the cost... $40-60 per module for DCS so two modules can easily get to $100 and over, and that's not counting additional terrains. For Star Citizen, well, while you don't **NEED** to buy the more expensive ships with real-life money, the option is there and seems like there are many takers.

Low cost labor in former CIS states, aka made by code peasants...

But hell, DCS imo is UTTER SH*T. That's the end of it. Maybe some ppl is willing to settle for less, but not me. And afaik, not you either. How many here is still banned? If their product is actually good... ok NO, even if their product is excellent, banning ppl still makes them UTTER SH*T. But no, bought the Hog, played for a week and learned all the switchology. Deleted and NEVER installed again. -- what's the point?

For me, DCS is the glorified 'Made in China' version of a flight sim. It is a different example of the decline of the genre.

Actually, I motion for another subject. This one is so knee-jerk reaction nowadayz that it's not even remotely interesting talking about it........

Hahahaha....

But you missed the point there. I wasn't arguing about "product quality".... just the cost and the fact that the market **WILL** bear it. Imagine if people pay whatever they pay for DCS modules, but imagine if it were a proper simulation...

This is actually a good point. It is not exactly about the price, but about how to solve this problem of unpopularity, which should be solvable. Thing is we are unavoidably biased. The video gaming industry will have to believe it as well, which atm they do not. Like I mentioned in the "self fulfilled prophecy", if they break the loop, there's a chance it will happen.

Market perception in the end comes down to human psychology. Make belief. Or what is it they say make it and they will come. However I think it does take a visionary of sorts to take an innovative approach and make it happen.

How do you shape a flight sim that most gamers find boring, unapproachable, unrelatable and make it interesting - While remaining a full blown quality flight sim. Is VR the answer. Is AI the answer. Is open modding the answer. Or something else that I'm incapable of thinking. I don't know, but I think a solution is there to be found.

All of it is the answer. However, with limited resources, the art is finding which ones to prioritize and which ones can be put aside for the meantime.

DCS is the result of hardcore simmers wanting every rivet and switch in it's proper place and for all the avionics etc. to match the real world aircraft.

Concentrating on these things leaves little time and resources to build a dynamic campaign or otherwise make DCS seem "alive".

There aren't enough of you to make it economically feasible, I suspect.

I recently read a price list of a DCS related add-ons, that you could pay $800.- for everything. I suspect that there are a few people who will eventually collect all the DLCs (I have some doubts that they will thoroughly play them all). And still DCS doesn't have the dynamic campaign that you're asking for. Which to me suggests that on the one hand a full theater simulation is hard to do, and on the other there aren't enough people willing to pay the amount of money necessary to make it happen (or, that there are enough people willing to pay more and settle for less). At the end of the day $100.- is only 2 ... 2.5 times as much as a regular AAA game title, but I doubt that flight simulations sell 40% of the numbers of a AAA title. That's why you don't get AAA game content in the typical flight simulation (...or the lack of entertainment value, compared to a AAA title, prevents a bigger success, take your pick).

I don't think that this is the honest truth.
Rivet replication and focusing on systems simulation and maybe improving the flight model and the rendering quality simply is much easier to accomplish.
A fully dynamic simulation of ground and air war in a campaign would be something that had to be developed only once and could then be applied to every title and add-on that ED produces, and would immediately boost its value for rather obvious reasons. So, from a business perspective, if the task was relatively easy to accomplish, it would be a no-brainer to do it since it is an expansion that is "orthogonal" to the rest of your line-up - it has the potential to expand the value and depth of every single DLC that you have.

I suspect however that other flight sim developers have absolutely no idea how to make it happen - IOW, it's rather hard to do, and IMO this was the major know-how accomplishment that Microprose developed over a decade of wargame title development which culminated (and died) with Falcon 4. Just because Microprose demonstrated 20 years ago that it's possible to do it doesn't mean that you could easily replicate it, even if you looked at the Falcon 4 source code (which can be considered an "open source" - even if it isn't from a commercial/legal perspective). And apparently (see above) they can sell their games without it because the core fan base will buy new DLCs without this capability.

Scary.....but true.

Eh? Didn't ED say FC2 and FC3 were their biggest sources of income? Heck, the American air superiority fighter in that line isn't even DCS-level but is rather an FC3 aircraft!! How does the F-15C's avionics match the real world counterpart? Please don't use "fidelity" as an excuse... ED never had any intention to build a DC or make the theatres more "alive." Even after their poll showed that their customers wanting a DC, it isn't in their roadmap at all.



I think the typical DCS customer who is happy with ED's direction isn't one that looks for a serious study sim. They're more like the FSX crowd that want to try different aircraft and get a rough feel of how to fly each one, but never really mastering any single one. This market is also more likely to enjoy sight seeing (and posting screenshots), flying under bridges, or inside deep canyons. How much does a "serious" FSX simmer spend on the hobby with regards to aircraft, add-on airports, photo-real scenery, mesh updates, etc? They can easily pay a big amount!

Agreed. I'm not a coder but a coder has told me this. plus I also thought it as so before that. If you also do coding for SB that makes 2.



On the F4 DC code, from what the BMS coders (and other community coders before BMS) said it is very hard to understand. I suspect it is doable, but it just takes a lot of time and effort to do so, out of the scale of free modding. But I also suspect you know more about it because last I heard eSim employed one of them...

But I have my own thought on this from another perspective. "Too hard to do" is to some degree a made-up excuse by some because they don't want the users to know what they have is watered down. It is not "technically" impossible, because while it is indeed an MPS specialty, there are many other sims of the old era that featured a DC, made by other developers. While none of them to the complexity level of the F4 engine, most of them were pretty awesome.

There're also sims of old that do not have a DC, say some of Jane's, that were also fun. They featured story driven campaigns with continuity among them. I'd even say that DC is not an absolute must to make a kickass sim. But on the whole level, big changes rather than different business models or just strapping on new technologies, have to be made for this genre to move forward. If the 90s and 00s brought fun gameplay features and the 10s made system fidelity, what is next. Because the current ones are stagnating. If things like War Thunder is the answer, then yes this genre is probably dead. However I'm hopeful it will resurrect later if that is the case.

I think a big portion of it is simulators have gotten $hitty as of late. ArmA 3 is the center of this, and is the worst "simulator" to come out in history. Worst, sleaziest developers of them all to. I hate those guys with a passion.

What? I thought people loved ARMA 3 because it's good??

I think its that when we were young simulation games were the best in gaming.Nowadays you can be a thug running around a city robbing cars or planes while wooing a girl etc.Its just gaming surpassed simulations IMO.Now its just older gamers sticking with simulations and I believe its because we are old and know life is nothing like what you get in games.

I don't see any decline - quite the opposite : we are living in the golden age of Civil Flight Simulation

there never was so many choices and so many developers engaged in releasing so many high quality add ons

I don't code, so my word bears little authority. But I occasionally speak to those who do, and, well, I have a bit of a say in design questions for SB Pro.


Note that I didn't say "too hard to do", just "harder to do than rivet replication". And if today's audience is buying today's flight simulations without a solid story/campaign background, well, from a business perspective that's what most developers will do - focus on the low-hanging fruit that's still sufficient to help you sell your product.

I had a large write up planned in response then decided it wasn't worth my time. Then I realized that's what happened to a lot of the market for sims... It's just not worth the effort anymore to please the purists...

A change in intellect of the human species would be a genetic change, it would take millions of years to see any change. Just a guess on the millions part

Personally there are issues as I age, I am smarter but lazier, there was a time when I would be modding all my sims, now I rarely mod anything

My eyesight is a major barrier as well as I grow old. And bitter

I think this is wrong... sure, it may not be worth the effort to please the purists, but that is also probably a very, very, very small part of the overall customer base. Even then, if the developer is up-front and firm with their goals, then eventually, the purists either fall in line or go play something else. If the developer continues to promise the moon and can't even get 10 feet off the ground, well, that's a different story altogether.

Plus there's the whole career and family obligations thing that puts a damper on the free time of many people as they get past their teenage and college years.

I agree with bisher..Age does become a factor..Eyesight being the main one,,,I now days fly sims that are simpler and the missions quicker so i can fly a quick mission and take a break...I lean more towards wargames because they stay put if i get up and go do something else..Also back in the Falcon 4 days my mind could hold all the information needed to fly it,,now I tend to forget and have to constantly re read the manual EAW..SF2 and First Eagles are about the level I can handle,,Started messing with IL-1 BAT but mostly just to fly all the different aircraft,,,Guess I got ADHD or what they call old farts disease..Some times the grand kids come around and watch me fly but they gave me an older X box but it isn't plugged in anymore

LOL
We had fun in Birds of Prey! I prefer to laugh when I game, not feel like I should have earned some kind of certification. MP that is, I'm not crazy.

Once I got over the fact that I needed bifocals and got them, I feel like I have super-vision now.

Another factor with sims/games is that I rarely play for more than an hour at a time, if that. That keeps me from even the scifi sims like ED. I want to use that time well.

Yeah, one hour won't get you very far at all if you are flying a hardcore flight sim like DCS or Falcon 4. That 's barely enough to do one mission and that assumes an air start and a relatively short transit time to the target area.

I spent most evenings playing or modding sims, taking a break to go eat out or call for delivery, then back to my PC while wife watched TV. Spent countless weekends like this, even bringing manuals and printed material to the restaurant.

Then a health crisis hit me at the start of mid-life that shook me up good. I realized I was pissing my life away and on the verge of losing everything, causing a drastic change of habits and mindset. I'm not the same person I was even 10 years ago, I don't recognize that person anymore (and have been told something similar by many people).

Not that sims are bad but they can be very time consuming and one needs balance (a skill which eludes me), although I'm slowly getting back into some of the older and simpler ones (gotten off track at the moment with house stuff, but that's almost done).

Plus my eyesight (progressive trifocals) isn't what it use to be as well, with higher resolutions.

Good post Mark and it really brings up a very crucial reason as to why hardcore flight sims aren't really played by many people compared to the overall gaming community. Quite simply the time commitment required to get the most out of hardcore flight sims is more than most gamers are willing or able to dedicate themselves to.


The "casual" flight sims are a different matter of course since the time commitment is much less but even those games are played by a small percentage of the overall gaming market.

[quote=- Ice]
Eh? Didn't ED say FC2 and FC3 were their biggest sources of income? Heck, the American air superiority fighter in that line isn't even DCS-level but is rather an FC3 aircraft!! How does the F-15C's avionics match the real world counterpart? Please don't use "fidelity" as an excuse... ED never had any intention to build a DC or make the theatres more "alive." Even after their poll showed that their customers wanting a DC, it isn't in their roadmap at all./quote]

In part because of the plane choices, in part because they were the only fighters in DCS World. But also because it was an excellent value and easy enough to learn. I think many people enjoy these planes but they're suppressed on the forums. Few people seem to want more FC3 type planes on the DCS forums, and they're always asking for more and more realism. Personally I love the level of FC3, and I would rather see more improvements to the mission editor, AI and other things to add immersion. The argument seems to be that FC3 to study sim level is not that different from a development standpoint, but I don't believe that is true. Art and flight model wise it is the same, but you should be able to shave a lot of time off doing avionics and research into all the various radar sub modes.

I sincerely hope an FC3 version of DCS F-18 comes out. Similar control scheme to that of the F-15C and A-10A so I can map the functions to the same or similar buttons on my HOTAS.

I don't think you're correct, there a quite a few that wish for more FC3 level aircraft, myself included. I think the gist of the OP is correct. Switchology is not the holy grail. For instance I'm having a blast with Cold waters, it would reflect a sim of the 90-00s in terms of complexity, as such I can concentrate tactics rather.than system memorisation. However, as a counterpoint to my own argument, there is a great satisfaction to be had in being able to fly something like the A-10C, having learned the systems backwards. I'll never have the time to be able to do something like that again though.

Nate

Switchology is good, but you either end up like FSX/P3D/XP10 and be a civvie flight sim or you end up like BMS. Being in the middle --- combat flight simulator with lots of switchology but sterile environment --- is not a good thing. I think that's why FC3 stuff fared better... and I did cut my teeth in FC2/FC3's A10A. Little study timre required and you're into blowing stuff up quicker and because of the lower entry point, the sterile environment isn't seen in such a negative light.

I like to think my excuse is latent adult onset attention deficit disorder, along with, um, ah,,,, Wait, what were we talking about?

People aren't dumber, but it's too easy to lose interest now. The flightsim devs now don't make what I call a complete sim.

I understand cost, but remember Jane's? Upon purchase you had a "released" version of a product that contained a campaign,
a very well thought out and versatile "quick mission" builder, a full editor, training missions, cut-scenes to make it interesting,
AND a 300+ page spiral bound manual describing everything.

It was complete.

Now, without Chuck Owl's manuals for (every)sim I play I'd say screw it.

Hardcore sims have become far more detailed systems wise as PC hardware has advanced. You used to start at the end of the runway, all systems up and running in the most hardcore sims of the day. Now, we are at the point where we have to use a checklist and wait several minutes for the INS to spool up.

It really hit home to me that entertainment flight sims had moved to a whole new level when I purchased a King Air B200 addon for FS9 (Aeroworx?). I was just starting out flying the real airplane at the time and the sim really helped me with start and shutdown flows. In that context, it was time and effort well spent, but it was hardly entertaining, it was kind of hard work. I guess that is easy for me to say, seeing as I was fortunate enough to be able to fly the real thing.

It has become a lot of effort and extremely time consuming to become truly proficient in a modern sim. Proficiency is even more important when playing in a multi-player environment where your ability to perform is being judged by your peers. They are relying on you to know how to operate the airplane, how to fight with the airplane, how to communicate effectively with your squadmates etc etc. It was a lot simpler back when I was a teenager/ young adult with a crazy ambition to be a pilot. In the late 90's I started playing Warbirds seriously, the flight modeling was extremely good for the time, the online experience was awesome even on dialup. The people were outstanding, intelligent individuals, and yet we started at the end of the runway and pressed a single key to start our engines... and we loved every minute of it (which was fine until you realized how much your monthly bill was..LOL). I nearly lost my marriage to Warbirds. It was an addiction. Looking back, that was pretty dumb. I'm older and hopefully a little wiser now.

With the level of complexity that is the norm in sims these days, a new player would have to possess a keen interest in learning the nitty gritty of flying a complex machine. I wonder how many of us would have stuck with it if the sims of our day were anywhere near as complex as what we take for granted today?

Excellent post. As I've stated before, I don't want to flip every switch in the cockpit just because real F-16 pilots do. What I do want is for the weapons to perform as they do in the real world. Select AIM-120, get a lock and fire. I don't care about SOI etc. I want the sim to "pretend" that I know what I'm doing and "assume" all the switches were in their proper place when I pulled the trigger. I'm much more interested in the tactics of a mission and in the battlefield I'm flying over. I'll gladly spend a few hours flying missions over and over figuring out proper tactics, but I won't spend hours learning how to spool up the engine.

Hardware and programming limitations? Either way, sims today have come closer to real-life and you talk about it like it's a bad thing? You do know that sims like DCS A10C have one-button startup options and BMS has the "Start at TAXI" or even the "Start at RUNWAY" option, right?


Again, sims today are much closer to RL. You could use MSFS98 to practice patterns and scanning instruments, you could use XP11 or P3D to do the same.... and do much more. I can't see why that's a bad thing.... and I'm also sure stuff like XP11 and P3D have the "aircraft already running" option if the simmer wants to skip the cold-and-dark startup. Both sims also has the "exit aircraft" option which you can use in the air, on the runway, or on the taxiway if the simmer wants to skip the taxi-to-the-correct-ramp-and-shutdown routine.



Fair point, but where does the "pretend you know what you're doing" stop? Why not always be in the ideal shooting position as well because your pilot should know how to merge, go defensive, and get behind the bandit, right? Why bother about learning about the different radar modes? The game should just switch to the appropriate one for you to lock on the enemy since the real pilot would know how to select the proper targeting mode, right? Heck, if we're going down this rabbit hole, might as well re-implement the magic radar that can see everything because your pilot knows how to scan different radar ranges and elevations! Also implement auto-fire because your pilot will know when the best time is to fire a missile or drop a bomb....

All this talk about "I just want the fun bits!" and then complaining sims does not deliver? Or maybe the sims **DO** deliver, but people just can't get past the initial learning requirements and can't be bothered?

While DCS and BMS may have a "Start on RUNWAY" option, neither of them has an "automatic Master Arm ON" option.



Should only take 2-4 goes to learn a startup. After that, with a proper checklist, it should only be as long as it would normally take and the extra time spent on waiting for INS to align or for stuff to warm up can be spent adjusting bomb profiles, entering BINGO/JOKER levels, setting up IDM, etc... Stuff real pilots do because they want to stay alive. Just like defensive maneuvers or keeping up SA.

Lets take DCS as example:

1. Looks like crap - while some planes look spectacular whole map looks like toxic wasteland, effects are from early 2000s and sounds are meh
2. Runs like crap
3. Has more bugs then ant colony
4. Has MOBA toxicity level community managers

That's why flight sims are dying breed.

Arma was in similar situation with one major exception - its moddable! Arma community created some awesome mods that completely saved the whole arma franchise. From various zombie mods, battle royale mods to classic team vs team and ctf, there is something for everyone. Both offline and online. Arma community made arma FUN! That's why arma is growing while other sims are on life support. Space sims were in same position as flight sims. They became bloated and depressing and they died. But from their ashes rose up new generation of space sims that are fun to play before anything else. KSP is funny as hell and that's why is so popular. Its full of complex systems but they are all hidden behind fun gameplay. And again its moddable with great community outreach. You want more hardcore experience you can mod it, you want less hardcore you can mod it. Even NASA embraced it !
So to sum it up, if game/sim is not fun then its not worth it. If on top of not being fun its full of technical issues, well then that game/sim is lost cause and has no right to exist

I agree with most here, while simulations have become graphically better, the "feeling" somehow suffers. Best example is indeed DCS, but also Rise of Flight, at least in Single Player.
Compare RoF to WOFF and you know what i mean. I do not want to bash RoF at all, it is very nice and i fly it almost daily, online. But it sucks in single player, and offline campaign.

One of the best sims feeling-wise for me was Sierra's "Aces of the Pacific" and Microsoft's "Combat simulator 2", also in the pacific area. Especially the latter had a nice touch of life on those carriers or fields, a lot of historical info, but was also fine in flying. IL2 pacific theatre was also nice and graphically better, but it already suffered somehow of "being there". Nice sim, still.
When i need an almost real simulator, DCS is fine, But it is already more a tool for training, than a game. It is fun for us (or some of us), but the love of detail certainly will shock beginners, and thus hold back some.
I can enjoy cliffs of Dover because i know a bit about what happened, and where the action took place. Without that knowledge it is a bit sterile. And then, bugs.

Nowadays you download a game without any manual or only a very rudimentary one, hidden somewhere in the labyrinth of files and directories. And mostly lacking some info about the war, history and so on. The sim programmers are often fanatics (in a positive sense) who cannot understand there may be noobs who do not know anything, history or technical. Look at YT WW2 videos and those comments.. OMG !

If DCS built a modern or Cold war Submarine simulator, i guess you would have to micromanage the reactor and refill this rocket fuel manually, but i wonder what would be left for playing the captain..
Which is exactly why l like "Cold waters". If i think of Sonalysts' "Dangerous waters" with Killerfish's "Cold waters"' graphics, i'd be in simulation heaven.

I think what the new sims lack is information, the feeling of being there and a storyline, so to speak.

I did that once. I'll never make that mistake again.

Re-read the part you obviously missed.



Well that's the point of flight sim GAMES isn't it, to have fun? Do any DCS users really think they might get the chance to fly a real F-16 or A-10 one day so they better learn exactly how it works? And have you missed the multiple instances of us older posters stating that we just don't have time to learn all the switches and modes etc due to Real Life obligations?



Well I'm not trying to be a real F-16 pilot, I just want to play an interesting game, not fly a perfectly detailed jet over a sterile landscape dotted by a few enemy forces always in the same place.


I am fine with flight sims having hardcore modes, so long as it isn't the only mode. The most fun I've had in a jet combat flight sim in recent years has been with Third Wire products. Those may not have everything modeled in exacting, excruciating, detail but they're fun and you can sit down and be flying in a minute or less.

Ok. Switchology isn't wrong itself. But it is because sims focus only on switchology and nothing else. So if development resources are limited, it should be on the back burner instead of front end.

But what you are essentially saying is we prefer sim lites instead of sim hardcores (in today's language). To hell with buttons, to hell with avionics, WE HATE THEM!

I think this won't result in a awesome sim. It would produce some retard little game but with a cockpit so you know you're in a plane. It might have a DC engine but it is so stripped down simple it might as well just use a story campaign.

The fact that there no longer are sim lites is the problem itself. The fact that the sim heavies are button pushing procedural skeletons is a problem itself. It is BECAUSE the entire pie is so small right now. It is not the switchology button pushing sims are declining the genre. Rather, they are the result of it. Causality shouldn't be inverted.

There are actually quite a lot of sim lites still being made. They are mostly made by small independent developers though so their exposure to the market is limited. The "Strike Fighters" series was a very popular sim-lite flight sim but that ended a few years ago.

I am still playing and modding SF2 a lot. But... twas not the point.

Here is what I want in a combat flight sim:

1 - A dynamic campaign. Or the next best thing, a campaign that at least has variety rather than a set in stone number of units in the same place every time.

2 - Accurate flight models. It doesn't have to be 100% (it should be at least 90+% accurate however) but it should reflect the differing capabilities of various airframes. A Corsair shouldn't turn inside a Zero and a Zero shouldn't outrun a Corsair.

3 - Simple flight controls. I need pitch, roll, yaw, gear, flaps and that is just about all. A tail hook for naval aircraft. Start the engine with one keystroke.

4 - Simple avionics for modern aircraft. Simple keystroke for air/ground mode. Another simple keystroke for maybe 2 (3 at most) sub modes of each. Then pickle the weapon.

5 - Accurate weapons modeling. Missiles, guided bombs etc should function at 90-100% as their real world counterparts would once released/fired. How they function after release is much more important than how they were fired (IE going through all the steps of selecting modes etc.)

6 - Modability. Let the community make new skins, new aircraft, new terrains, new missions, new campaigns etc.

Of course I know that Ice . I'm not exactly new to flight simulation. The point here is that it takes a lot of time to build up the knowledge and experience to make this stuff second nature. I have been simming in one form or another for 34 years now. On top of that there are several thousand hours of real flying in my logbook, so what I might look for in a sim today is vastly different from the pre-teenager who only had a rudimentary knowledge of aviation back in 1983.

Hardcore sims from the 1990's would not cut it as hardcore today (even Falcon 4.0 in it's original form). We need some less high fidelity sims, with modern graphics to act as a middle ground. They should not be too hard to learn, but difficult to master. Flight physics should be as accurate as possible though. They should focus on being engaging and inspire the imagination. I don't think Flight School sims work because they are not exciting enough. The vast majority won't want to fly a virtual C172 when they could fly a F16 instead (with no physical risk).



Realism is generally a good thing, but sometimes ultra-realism drags the more boring elements into the game (which is supposed to be for entertainment purposes, right?). Don't get me wrong, there will always be an audience for the hardcore sims, and I hope that they continue to increase in realism (where it isn't detrimental to the experience). I just feel that for a new player, Falcon BMS or DCS would be a daunting prospect, especially if they have limited knowledge when it comes to the fundamentals of flight, systems and avionics. These sims are better enjoyed if you cut your teeth with a more accessible simulation first.

Sounds like a great concept to me. I think that would appeal to a wide audience.

Isn't this Strike Fighters lol. Looking at the end result of Third Wire it doesn't look like it will get a repeat from other developers, or be able to get the funding I think.

- Personally I like Strike Fighters and TK a lot. But many others do not think like this you and me.

I agree with the simplification and near realism (not full) as a concept to develop flight simulation. Much more so if campaigns are dynamic and there is a pilot career and a historical background to the campaign.

Developing a no compromise full realism simulation is very expensive and takes a lot of resources and time to do right. But that product would only appeal to maybe 2% of gamers. You can add arcade/simplified avionics as a way to attract casual simmers, but that does not bring down the cost, and initially might appeal to another 5-10% of gamers, with maybe 1-2% sticking with it.

We cannot populate the market and make the genre popular again with hard core simulators. There is a niche for that, and probably is currently full.

There has to be a progression, first bringing beginners to flight games with mass appeal and lower development cost (Ace combat and such), and have mid range/mixed games that keep the interest and learning going, until finally we have a crowd that wants to get into and enjoy sims with full realism.

You know...like it used to be...

Side note : space sims suffered to a similar dry spell. A lot of space RTS and such, but very few space combat sims. Once Chris Roberts started to market and promote his vision for Star Citizen, and due to the success of the Kickstarter campaign, there were more developers wanting to join the genre again.

We need a flight sim Star Citizen. How would that look, I do not know....I just know it is not DCS.

Close, but Strike Fighters misses on some of these points (dynamic campaign for example). But I don't believe that Strike Fighters has died out because of lack of interest but more of a lack of promotion, Third Wire being almost a one man show.

Plus TK figured out he could make more money going the handheld route.

Strike Fighters strikes a good balance for my preferences,,,I don't usually do campaigns but like the single missions,,,I can set something I like ,,Fly what ever plane I like,,I't is on the lighter side but I'm not looking for a PHD in sims just a quick fly also added in the PTO WWII..Russian air war and Korean War mod and later going to get the European WWII mod,,Been flying since the 90's and settled in where I'm at ease SF2,,EAW,,Il-2 BAT..Still got some old stuff in a box up to Falcon 4,,Too old to try to relearn all that stuff again and some of the recent wargames have got my attention,,At least you can get up and then come back and the games just waiting,,You can pause flight sims but you loose your rhythm .. Not dumber just older

+1


However, I do recall reading something from TK stating that the last title, "SF 2: North Atlantic", did not sell as well as he was hoping.

It was never offered for sale on Steam either.

I don't know if I can blame him for that decision. Apparently Steam takes out a pretty big percentage for each copy sold.

?? SF has a very good DC engine. My korea mod campaigns rely heavily on it. If it was not a DC engine I would not have the motivation to make them to begin with nor any other related stuff.

TK has a valid point: If the market is already maxed out promotion yields marginal returns, but the core issue with the series is it is closing to shelf life after 10 years, any more titles is basically more of the same. How many on SHQ bought all of the SF2 titles - far as I can see very few, many only has 1 or 2 of SF1 titles max. Considering the user demographic and zero DRM I dare say a lot of users didn't even buy them. Series 2 strictly speaking is already "new bottle, old wine". The pivot to the mobile market is definitely the right call on his part. Plus the "lack of promotion" as well as the "why are u abandoning us" is just an excuse for many users to want more free stuff.

CAP2 can be a valid successor to the category. However there is nothing new here and now. Also CAP2 did not meet the KS quota. As Ssnake pointed out earlier there isn't enough of us to warrant it. At least on the current product format.

^^But the exposure to a larger audience would probably make up for that.

That's pure speculation.
As someone who is involved in the finance/sales aspect (and not being at liberty to talk freely about it), all I can say is that Steam allegedly wants about 30% of the sales price. If you invested, say, 2 million Dollars in the making of a flight sim and you can somewhat reliably expect it to sell 50,000 copies at $40.- at "zero" distribution cost, you exactly break even. Take 30% away from it and you're short 600,000.- USD. So you need to sell another 21,429 copies at $40.- to make a $14 profit. The question is, can you expect the market size to be more than 70,000.- units at full retail price?
Once that you apply a 25% discount in a summer sale (say, after the first 30,000 full-price copies were sold) the break-even point shifts to 85,238 copies needing to be sold.

In practice there's a constant swing between sales and raising the price again to skim the late-comers, but every cycle produces diminishing returns. At some point you need to reduce the price permanently, and if you haven't reached break-even by then the "fat tail" won't save you, you just lost money with your project.


Of course you could always argue that 50,000 copies sold is very pessimistic. But to put things into perspective, Falcon 4 is said to having sold about 500,000 copies - and that seems to be the high-water mark. And I doubt that those 500,000 copies were all sold at full retail price.

I don't know either but I agree this is on the right track. However to begin with I wonder what (exterior factors) suddenly caused the space genre's popularity. ....Elon Musk???



Cold Waters is currently on 17k copies according to steamspy. 23 dayz since release. - Seems it does translates to 50k to 100k full life cycle, but just my guess.

To compare Atlantic Fleet is 40k total. Interesting.

Then why do flight sims at all? If you want tactics and battlefield control, then maybe you're better off with Wargame or Combat Mission titles. Or the new Steel Division title. There's no startups in those games, no systems to learn, just tactics to employ and battlefields to study.


So at this point, what's wrong with Ace Combat then?


You seem to be mixing up DCS and BMS...


And again, you've missed me stating numerous times that DCS A10C and Falcon 4 BMS do not have "hardcore modes" only. Here's a shot of BMS' EASY (Recruit) and ACE realism settings. Note that you can adjust for anywhere in between, these are just the two extremes.

Are both games about the same when it comes to complexity or is one more "arcadey" than the other?

I'd say the general consensus is AF being more "lite" as 'twas originally a mobile game.


Personally I think CW is very lite as well. Personally.



I'd be more interested to know how many copies did Falcon: Allied Force sell. Far as I consider that was the last "full blown" hardcore flight sim to ever go on the shelves. But IIRC the devs never made the figure public, only stating it did very well. But I coulda forgotten.

Sorry if I implied that, it was not my point at all


But why? Why make a middle ground? What exactly is wrong with high fidelity sims? Genuine question here.... I'm really confused by the "need" for this.

Let me expound on this --- DCS A10C and Falcon BMS are regarded as high fidelity sims, right? But the majority of the systems are not needed in order to navigate, drop bombs, and return home... these are backup systems or background systems that you can access if you need to.... but are not necessary for flight enjoyment. For example, you could make a whole new route with several waypoints in the A10C cockpit via that computer (I forget the name) on the pilot's right console. In the F-16C, you could add new waypoints or adjust waypoint location via one of the many ICP sub-modes. Do you need this? Maybe in 1 out of 1,000 flights.

"Not too hard to learn, but difficult to master." CCIP is CCIP. CCRP is CCRP. What's too hard to learn about that? It doesn't matter if you're dropping dumb bombs on CCRP or CCIP, or if you're dropping LGBs or GBUs in CCRP, or if you're dropping a LGB in CCIP as your friend buddy-lases. The basic principle of dropping the bomb is the same. How you actually get into those bombing parameters in a safe and quick manner is what is difficult to master. Delivering straight-and-level at 25,000 feet is ho-hum, but it's a whole different story when you're dropping after and off-set pop-up attack.... but the delivery mode is always going to be either CCIP or CCRP.

I think what people stumble on is that they think they need to know everything in the cockpit before they can fly and enjoy the sim, which is TOTALLY FALSE. This is also why I used to take new pilots up in the A10C and talk them through a few training missions.... this is also why I ended up writing a very basic guide that's still in the DCS sub-forum. The "high fidelity sim" is a big, big meal and you will not consume it all in one sitting, so tackle the obstacle one bite-sized chunk at a time and before you know it, you're proficient at the basics and you're looking at the advanced stuff looking at how much further you can hone your skills and what else the sim has to offer.



Like I said above, if you look at the game in it's entirety, then I agree it is daunting... but here's the trick: Do you plunk down the whole game manual in front of the newbie and tell him he needs to read and understand the whole thing for him to enjoy the game? Or do you put him in an air-start, 10nm from target, CCIP bomb run instead? People learn differently and so the sim can be taught in different ways. People also don't learn addition and subtraction today and theoretical physics at the end of the week; even the most hard-core math nerd would tell you that's silly.

So get him into the cockpit in free flight and get him to grips with the HOTAS... joystick and throttle only as luckily the F-16 doesn't need any rudder input when flying. Once he's got that, put him in an air-start, 10nm from the KOTAR range, and tell him he needs to drop one of his bombs in the general vicinity of the parked aircraft in the range. Pause the sim during key moments when something needs to be explained, then let him do his thing. Once he's got that, challenge him to drop a bomb on one of the target circles.... and so on and so forth until they can fly the game for a good part without the "training wheels" of your assistance.

Sounds like "sim lite"... you want accurate flight models and accurate avionics and accurate weapons, but you want them all on a one-button setup. I fail to see why, at this point, do you want a simulation? Does it even matter if YOU are the one pushing the buttons or if it's some AI in the cockpit? We're going from simulating a fighter pilot in a fighter plane to... something else. Not an RTS, really, but I'm not sure I'd call this a simulation.

Put it this way.... if you had a high fidelity racing simulation --- tyre physics, temps, wear-and-tear, clutch wear, realistic impact simulation, realistic race lengths, practice laps, qualifying, and so on and played it on a PC with three screens, TrackIR, Fanatec wheel and pedals, shifter, etc... then yeah, I'd call that a "proper" simulation. Now port that over into a mobile game... high fidelity is still there for tyres, clutch, collisions, etc. but now the race lengths are shorter (say, 10 laps), tyre and clutch wear is 2x faster to compensate, and you "drive" by tilting the iPad. Is that still "simulation"?

Note that none of the options presented in your screenshots deal with the switchology of often awkward control elements, yet that was one of the two major points of criticism (the other one being the sterility of the environment, something that's largely addressed by F4's dynamic campaign but not by other titles). Of course I have no constructive solution to offer how a simulation could contain both accurate switchology for those who want it, and a simplified UI for everybody else when you can't mutate the instruments in the cockpit. Then again, maybe that's the answer.

That's not what he wrote. You say that it has to have accurate avionics, he called for simple ones.
Let's face it, the UI in the Falcon was designed around 1980s computer technology and UI design. That definitely is awkward today. It may be somewhat functional, and I'm not saying that touchscreens are the answer in combat aircraft, but still - if you want to understand what people in this debate are calling for, start by reading comments carefully rather than shooting from the hip.

Thank you.

It seems Ice' response to everything is to twist it to his liking. No sense in even replying to his posts when he starts with "why do you even want a flight sim" type comments.

Careful now, or it'll be death by a thousand quotes fior you!

Nate

Can you be specific as to what the "awkward control elements" are? I've addressed the startup issues and even the time issues, so what am I missing?


My mistake there... I assumed he still wanted accurate avionics, ie, radar ranges, but simple to use, one-button affairs... as opposed to the magic 360-degree radar As for the UI... are you talking about the 2D UI aka the menu? Or are you talking about the cockpit as being a "user interface"? Not sure where you're going here.



So let me try this again... it is one button to go from A-A to A-G... it's right there on the ICP! The beauty of DCS-level and BMS-level full function cockpit is that it doesn't matter if the button is mapped to CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+O or whatever, there is no need to memorize that keystroke. If you know where the A-A or A-G button is on the ICP, you're good. That's all you need to press.

Then there's also the override modes which is mapped to the DGFT/MSL Override switch on the HOTAS. Again, it doesn't matter if it's mapped to some awkward key combination... if you know where the switch is on the HOTAS, that's all you need to press. Going between sub-modes is usually TMS UP.

So... the avionics are not simple, they are as realistic as the BMS team can make it. But it's still only a few button presses to access the appropriate mode and sub-modes. Is that acceptable? If not, what's wrong with that setup?



Seems like people's response to me is to take sniping comments rather than actually clarifying their position. I'm all up for a debate, but I can't do it when you'd rather go personal instead. I have no issues with admitting I am wrong when I am wrong, but just you saying so isn't the way to do it.



Nice and mature, Nate, thanks!
Now back under the bridge, you naught boy!

eh..
A Falcon level commercial sim would be good. Maybe not to the liking of the SHQ crowd nowadays but I'm sure it'll have its place. Then again back in the day the Falcon4 forum here was pretty hot, 'twas the first site I came to before migrating to Frugalsworld.
A Strike Fighters level commercial sim would be also good. Probably more to the SHQ preference.

Personally I don't mind neither and have spent long hours playing and modding both. It's all good stuff. However atm neither is happening. Lots of switchology or little switchology should be the question after that. Or better there won't be, for each would have a choice of his own. Furthermore if flight sims should have a renaissance, can they still be categorized as heavy or lite, I dunno.

No need to clarify anything, my comments were very clear. Paul Rix understood them, Panzermeyer and Schwalbe did too. It was you who first sniped with your "Then why do flight sims at all?" comment.

So the logic here is that if 3 (or more) people understand something, then it's very clear and nobody will ever misunderstand them??


You saw THAT as a snipe? That was a genuine question! You were talking about tactics and battlefield and while there is **some** tactics to stuff like A-A engagements in flying-as-a-pilot flight sims, there's nothing better than some sort of "God's eye view" of the battlefield like Wargame or Combat Mission or Steel Division. If you look at my next response to you, I was even asking if we can call such games "simulations"... but going back to "God's eye view," that is why stuff like ACMI reviews of flights do so much for a pilot's LEARNING and if you had a chance to change events knowing what you can see from that vantage point where there's obviously a lot more SA, then you're in a much better way to apply tactics and use the battlefield to your advantage.

The simple point I was trying to make was that if you wanted tactics and smart utilization of battlefield features, then there are other games (can we consider them simulations? No? RTS?) that can scratch that itch better than flight sims can.

Maybe read a little more before letting your ego get bruised, eh?

To those that have an issue with switchology in high fidelity sims, I'm really curious what EXACTLY is the issue regarding switches? I've said before, there are a lot of stuff implemented in the simulation but you don't have to bother with the vast majority of them if you don't want to.

edit: deleted above. Simply put, not everyone is as bothered. You can spin it whichever way, but to some it is still a bother. Most of times, they really CAN'T be bothered. They can be to write wall of texts on forums, but not the actual stuff. So over the years I've learned not to read too much into them. It really is simple as that!...

Indeed! I can see the point if the complaint is regarding having to do the full startup all the time. I can see the point if you had to manually input your waypoints into the aircraft's computer. I can see the point if you had to program each weapon's delivery profile every time. But this is not the case. For a high fidelity sim like BMS, having to flip the gear lever up on takeoff, flip Master Arm on at fence in, and pressing the pickle button at the appropriate time, well, there's just no way around that. How else can it be minimized? Take out the Master Arm switch? But then is that really the complaint now? Having to flip three switches (well, two, plus one button) instead of two (well, one, plus one button)?

If the argument is "can't be bothered," then there really is no counter to that. Can't be bothered to learn startup. Can't be bothered to learn ordnance delivery. Can't be bothered to flick a switch...

As I am not a flight sim player I cannot go into the specific details of how the switchology in jet simulations could be simplified (and yes, I'm talking about the cockpit as "the user interface", not the simulation programs themselves). Maybe, if you select the weapon, the radar mode could auto-switch to a suitable mode as well (just a very, very small example that I do not wish to discuss in detail because that would be missing the point entirely, see below).

Now, you could easily dismiss my opinion here as largely based on ignorance. You could just as well ask why someone who threw away a perfectly good 486DX-33 processor when upgrading to a DX/2-66 for more than 1100 Deutschmarks in 1993 for the sole reason to play the San Francisco missions in Strike Commander, why such a person lost the interest in the subject matter. I probably met the demographics of simulation game players very well back then - technophile, with an interest in the military (including jets), owning a relatively powerful computer for the time. A few years later I had bought Flight Unlimited and dabbled around a bit in attempts to do some precision flying with basic aerobatics maneuvers. My flight sim career culminated in one hour inside the Transall simulator at a local airbase and not crashing the landing (yay!).
There's of course the usual excuses - life and job got in the way, I found my life in the Luftwaffe frustrating and requested transfer to the Panzercorps (which was eventually granted, though with great reluctance ("Nobody leaves the airforce for the army!" "Well, Sir, then I'll be the first.")

But those excuses wouldn't really count - I wasted a part of my life playing more computer games than I probably should have while at university (I still managed to get my degree in Industrial Engineering, but it was bumpy -- not "needlessly" bumpy, as I eventually ended up in the simulation game industry, but that step was more luck than an actual "plan"). Anyway, what is it that drove me away from flight simulations? Frankly, the topic of "flying" didn't fascinate me enough to motivate long hours of learning with little "gaming" involved (but I observed friends who did). Strike Commander was about right for me in the balance of avionics complexity vs entertainment value, and pretty much every single simulation game that came afterwards was worse in that category. Also, developers like Microprose made it very hard at times to even get a game to the point where it would actually run well. Seriously, eight or nine patches to be installed in a very specific sequence, or else it won't work? And they wondered why fewer and fewer people bothered to even look at the products that they offered. Falson 4 may now be considered an "eternal gem" among jet simulations - but I very well remember that it was anything but for years after it had been released; had it not been for the community and the leaking of the source code, memories of Falcon 4 would be way less favorable.

No, other pastures were greener, and I moved to them.

I still occasionally watch jet simulations on YouTube (like those 1970s Swedish bombers a few months ago) and I still see some of the game virtues when you're flying low over the landscape, dodging missiles left and right, trying to get a damaged bird back home, etc. At the same time too often I see a landscape devoid of life, no mix of targets and non-targets to force the player to also bother about target discrimination. If you can navigate and know how to drop a bomb on target, it is like the primitive "quests" in Fallout 4 - "Go to X, kill everybody there, pick item Y and bring it back."
I'm sorry, that's not what I came for when developing an interest in simulation games. It may appeal to others, and I'm not blasting anyone for liking flight simulations and playing them. But the explicit premise of the whole discussion thread is that there is a decline in the market (it's in the thread's title), and why that may be. If you disagree with the "decline thing" itself - fine, offer your view on why that's a bogus claim. But saying that there is no problem with flight simulations because you like things the way they are (or because you can't imagine that there could be a different approach to flight sims) will only derail the attempt to identify what could be made better, Ice.

I'm not here to troll flight simmers. PanzerMeyer asked for an opinion, and he got mine. I'm trying to bring the perspective of a game developer to the discussion because I suspect that it is somewhat unique. Too often discussions are not revolving about the factual, like market sizes, revenues, and how the lack of profitability dictates certain design decisions. Like, to focus on switchology because that's easier to do and will find the approval of a certain group of flight simmers which I tend to call the "elitists". I will not speculate about their motives; whether they like to project the aura that they mastered a gazillion of switches and radar modes which they very well know intimidates most other players or whether they just don't recognize that this actually is a barrier, at the end of the day it doesn't matter, and it cannot be overcome by otherwise laudable efforts to introduce other players to the genre with personal tutelage. It's the products themselves that are at fault. What motivates people to spend eight hours on a simulated flight of a commercial airliner from Paris to Boston or some such will forever escape me. It's like a really complicated bus driving simulation except that for seven of the eight hours there are no bus stops with all the excitement that they might bring. So, for all the merits that civilian aviation simulators may bring to the table, as entertainment products I wouldn't even poke them with the longest pole that I could lift. But the developers today even managed to suck the joy out of military flight simulations for me. I say this without much regret because I moved on to tanks and find them infinitely more challenging in the tactics department than the dodging of a few stationary SAM sites and launching AMRAAMs at long distances. It may be "realistic", but realism does not necessarily equal fun for most.

^ well explained.. developers should consider this !

Which is why i tend to play simulations of older birds, they are already challenging enough for me. Starting a Nieuport in RoF is enough switchology, you then have to adjust the mixture according to altitude, but that's it. And this kind of managing is FUN. What is not so much fun is the empty landscape and an absolutely even and glossy no-man's land, devoid of anything life or military action, or even trenches (they are just painted on and you roll over them).
If you want more action to make you believe you really are in a war, try WOFF. Much more "dense", but the flight model is imho not as good as it is in RoF.

Regarding realism, how far should this go? "Switchology", yes, should be there to a certain degree. A barracks prefligth briefing? Yes. A major shouting you down in a way that you really feel like that rookie recruit? Military life simulated? Would be interesting lol, but how to do that? And that and days of boring service would probably turn away a lot of people. Obviously a balance has to be found, to make a sim a success.

I appreciate the reply, Ssnake and if I miss the mark, do point it out and I'll try again.

First off, I've stated here in the thread about my thoughts of the "decline"... I've offered my thoughts about the number of simmers vs. the number of gamers and also the general gaming market's current offering vs. the "barrier to entry" of flight sims. I've also stated that this "barrier" is mostly just an impression but since it's a very visible "barrier," well, people think that's that and don't bother.


I know you said you don't wish to discuss this, but let me just tackle this to give you a little more info... In BMS at least, when you select the radar mode, you also auto-switch to the appropriate weapon, so it's the other way from what you've said. If you go to A-A master mode, you'll be on your AIM-120s if you have them or your Sidewinders. If you got to A-G master mode, you'll be on your Mk-82s or -84s. Press another button and you switch to the next weapon. But there are many different radar modes, each aimed at more specific uses. Does the simmer need to know them all? No. Just maybe another 1 or 2 and that's it. It's even simpler in A-G modes. The OPTIONS are there but it doesn't mean you'll have to recite them in your sleep.


It was only a few years, I'm told, but yeah, there were teething pains with Falcon 4.0 and without "mods," well, I shudder to think what the combat flight sim options would be like now.


There are times when you just bomb your target from 20,000 feet and go home and call it a day. There are times when a 500ft AGL ingress to the target area is "too high!!" and you need to go down to 200ft AGL. There are times when the only target for miles are the bad guys... or there are no targets for miles since the bad guys have moved. There are times when you bomb the bad guys only to come home to find you fired on Blue as the FLOT has moved while you were in-flight. There are times when you don't drop bombs at all for fear of Blue-on-Blue. Sometimes, it's not the bomb-dropping that's the challenge but rather how to get there in the first place You get some bandits under 20nm as you ingress... do you drop your bombs (and fail your mission) to engage? Do you call in your Escorts and hope they take them out? What aircraft are the bandits, anyway? Do they even see YOUR flight? It's not exactly a walk in the park, find the target, pull the trigger (or press the pickle), and go home affair. You can be tasked to find and take out a convoy and you're like "meh, whatever" or be tasked to take out an airfield and you're like "you want me to do WHAT??!?!!??!!!?"

A-A engagements gets more interesting. More chances of Blue kills if you don't ID your targets properly. The AI will usually call Buddy Spike when you lock on to them but there are many, many instances of the pilot not hearing that call and firing a missile causing Blue-on-Blue. Practicing 2v2 all-human pilots dogfighting and focusing on dogfighting while keeping SA up using brevity is so much fun that honing your skills in this arena alone can take a good amount of time.


I like the way things are (BMS) and I don't like the way things are (DCS) and for both sims, things could be made better for the simulation itself.... but what exactly is the "problem with flight simulations" then?

Switchology gets mentioned a lot and unless specific instances are cited, this seems like a non-issue... one of those "barriers" that people think are there because of the "reputation" of high fidelity flight sims. Time is another issue which is more valid, but then it isn't really a problem with the hobby but more of a problem with RL obligations. So what are the other "problems" then? Or what is the specific issue with certain "problems"?


Totally agree with you there. What we need is a billionaire benefactor who doesn't mind making a few million $$$ loss in making the ultimate combat flight simulation


As for the motives of the devs, more switchology means more RL systems are implemented and therefore more "authenticity" and closer to being a true simulation. After all, a switch is uselesss if it doesn't do anything. Also, depending on the system implemented, it also means more options for the pilot in certain situations... they are implemented in RL for certain reasons and if those replicate themselves in the sim, then the pilot has the same options that the RL pilot has. Does every flight simmer, down to the last man, need to know, master, and recite these options in his sleep? Nope.

If a Person A has taken the time to study the gazillion of switches and Person B is intimidated by Person A's knowledge, explain to me how that is Person A's fault? I will not deny that there are high-and-mighty know-it-alls out there that like to get their self-worth from showing up other people, but that is now a small majority.... at least from what I see in the BMS forums. More often than not, people who know more **SHARE** their knowledge and expertise which results in the hobby and the hobbyists all coming out better for the experience.


I think that if a new simmer "cannot" overcome a barrier even with personal tutelage, the problem really isn't the material being taught.


And again, I invite you to cite the specific faults of the product?


It's the same thing that motivates people to actually spend an insane amount of money to do a REAL flight of a commercial airliner from Paris to Boston. Some people get to live their dream... whether it be a commercial jet pilot, a bushpilot, a fighter pilot, a heavy-haul truck driver, etc. and others just get to have a taste of that life via simulations. I will never understand why people will stare at a chessboard for hours and study chess moves, or people that go straight for the crossword on the daily paper.... but that does not mean what they do is not "fun." It is for them... and for all I know, they'd rather watch paint dry than study the ingress route to the target area.


Just because you've found armored simulations more up your alley does not mean a fault exists elsewhere. I love driving in the real world but I would not play Euro Truck Simulator....

I draw the line at having to bring piddle packs...

Good luck with that. Maybe you should send an email to either Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or Elon Musk and bring up the suggestion?

Some years ago in the heat of yet another "full real" or you are not doing it right "discussion" I read a SimHq classic response on the old IL2 forum.

Something along the lines of "you want full real? Then sit on a leaky gas can while playing and drop a lit match when you get shot up!"

Sure! Give me their email addresses and I will!

You keep pointing out that a lot of the switchology is optional, and it may be true, but there's the rub - every option that a developer offers is a rotten compromise in the attempt to appease both the "elitists" and those who aren't looking for the full complexity. The decision to offer an "option" is essentially a non-decision. This lack of decisiveness is, I think, a result of not having a clear vision of what they actually want to do. "More options" is a symptom of the lack of proper guidance that usually is the death for every piece of art (and entertainment is a specific form of art). When you compose music, you don't make certain notes optional. When you paint, you don't compromise between cubism and pointillism.

Which other games offer several menu pages to "options"?
A few, I can understand. And mind you, "options" aren't an evil in and of themselves, they are the symptom. I don't want to name specific developer names - you probably know better than I do who's guilty of which sin - but in my opinion they are all rather terrible as game developers, to a varying degree (eSim Games is just as guilty, but at least we don't advertise our product as a game and claim it to be prime entertainment material). I'm not disputing their talent, knowledge, or skill as flight simulation experts - but they don't know how to fill their worlds with life. Dynamic Campaigns - and they are a rare sight to begin with - are at least some Methadone to the Heroin of a proper story with actual characters. As crazy as it may sound, they are the cheap compromise to add so that you don't have to embed your simulation in a proper, story-driven context. (Flight) simulation developers have lost the skillset to develop actual games; rather, we see the equivalent of gonzo porn where you take off, drop your bomb, and land again. WHY you're doing all this, the developers have given up all pretense that this story frame is necessary, and today's audience apparently has little objection to it, as long as the flight model itself is accurate and the clouds, sunsets, and afterburner flames look nice. Combat Ace is then, of course, not the equivalent to a gonzo porn flick but just a compilation clip (but hey, it has a story...)

Creating good content is hard work, and expensive. You need more people for that - authors, voice actors, more artists, etc.; each of these costs you at least 50,000.- USD per year, so there's at least half a million dollars on top of the two million that I mentioned on the previous page that you probably need to invest, a whopping 25% cost increase. So, there's the second factor - economy. I suspect that even if there were sim developers who wanted to be good entertainers they quickly realize that it is a proposal to lose a lot of money because of the market size and the amount of money that you can reasonably charge for a game (remember, of $40.- sold through Steam, the developer gets only $28.-). AAA entertainment quality costs AAA dollars, there isn't much you can do about it. And if you can't earn AAA profits with a flight simulation game, well, there are no AAA titles; it's that simple.
I suspect that those developers who like jet-like contraptions and who still want to retain some story have moved on to space simulation games; you can make up a lot of stuff in that genre - it's essentially fantasy land. But even there we're seeing the decline in storytelling. SpaceEngine doesn't have a story, in Elite Dangerous you basically have to make up your own narration (but then at least there's an open galaxy to explore). So, I suppose the flight sim developers aren't more guilty than other sim developers. Not exactly an uplifting conclusion, however. :/

Great post Ssnake. For me personally, that is why I love playing RPG's so much because they are so story and character driven.

Flight sims don't have to be story-driven for me to feel immersed but they do need to have a dynamic campaign where your actions in one mission will affect the situation in future missions. I like to have both the "small picture" and the "large picture" in flight sims.

Hey Mark. It's been a while. I hope you got over your crisis. You make very good points. Im just too damn old to spend so much time sitting in front of a computer. Gave up Simming and now spend more time with my family. The free time that I do have I spend outdoors...hiking, bicycling and listening and watching the birds sing. Interesting how we change. BTW..guys, awesome topic and I hope all you guys are doing well.

FWIW I don't think the fundamental issue preventing BMS gaining wider recognition is switchology per se. The A-10C module is at the same complexity level and has become the flagship product. Well.. Ice I'm sure you know what I think on this. More to the subject at hand, an attractive yet easy to get into lite sim, yet still remaining a sim, would probably be better for the genre at this point. But I do admit PC based sims are nowadayz at an embarrassing position. The mobile based games can easily reach the depth of a 90s era flight sim or game and can easily attract whole lot more audiences.

I was just thinking about Crimson Skies and Airfix Dogfighter and those were quite fun (edit: OK perhaps both are on the simpler side, even for phones). Phones nowadayz can easily do them. So going back to what I thought few pages early, PC sims would go the premium route. A lot more complexity but a lot more expensive. If the users have a hard demand for a complete feature set the only way to go is raising prices to the point of price skimming. The mass market ones will be on phones.

Sorry, but having an "option" is an indecision? What about graphics options then? Is that a rotten compromise in the attempt to appease both the "elitists" who have serious gaming rigs and those who are on older PCs? What about shooters with sniper rifles, MGs, shotguns, etc? Is that a rotten compromise in the attempt to appease the "elitists" who do one-shot-one-kill and those who can't aim properly? What about RPGs with easy/medium/difficult/hell options? Is that a rotten compromise... blah, blah, blah? No, having "options" is about catering to wider gaming audiences.

As for comparing games to music and painting, the difference is that gaming is an INTERACTIVE form of entertainment where the gamer is an active participant in the experience.


The reason there is no story in a DC is because of the DC. Anyone who plays tabletop RPGs knows that no story survives the initial player contact. Tabletop RPG players should not feel railroaded and a good Games Master (or Dungeon Master) can steer the players along the story without the players even seeing the rails, but even so, the story is always, ALWAYS adjusted based on player performance. Even with the best story and the best story-adjustment by the GM, however, the story can only really be played through once.

The advantage of a DC is replayability... you can start the same campaign and fly out of the same airbase but it's unlikely you'll experience the same campaign as before. Injecting a proper story into the mix limits the replayability, the degree of limitation will depend on how much story you shove in. General broad-strokes stuff can get by, but anything more and it becomes harder and harder to make a storyline that will cover everything that could happen in a dynamic, open campaign.

I didn't write that every option is a rotten compromise. Graphics and sound options certainly are a necessity because there is no standardized PC, therefore software needs to compensate for the wide variety of hardware configurations. I'm talking of options that change the gameplay experience. Even here, to a degree, I'm tolerant of options. If you don't want to micromanage in a strategy game and the game offers some automatization, that's okay. I'm beginning to have a problem when there are several pages of options to choose from, sub-obtions for some options, and if you need to study the manual or be an experienced (sim) aviator already to understand what these options might actually mean. An airplane dashboard may in a way be highly functional to give control over a very complex piece of machinery; at the same time that cockpit view says "don't touch me if you have no idea what you're doing". You get the same reaction from people who have never worked with a computer; some just freeze and are afraid to touch anything. Even if yoiu can teach them to accomplish certain tasks, they never feel comfortable and start exploring what else they could do with a computer. And you get a similar effect with the average player, even if he falls into the classic demopgraphic of a flight simmer: Multi-page menus of more or less cryptic options send a subconscious message: "You are not meant to play with me."

That's why I am not a big friend of too many options. By the way, I don't like supermarkets either that offer more than three or four variants of essentially the same stuff (it's different of course with groceries, cheese, wine, etc., here variety is a good thing). But if you want to make a quick choice, if you are looking for simplicity, the golden rule for a small shop is to have a premium variant, and a basic variant of the same product, and maybe something in between, but that should be it. As a rule of thumb, games profit from simplicity. As with all heuristics, exceptions apply, but they are ... exceptions.


Yes, Cpt. Obvious: I am very well aware that games are a different art form than paintings and music, and that an analogy carries only so far. I'm not sure if you want to turn this into a rhetorics battle with these attempts to sidetrack the discussion?
My statement was about something else entirely, that compromise because of indecision pretty much always results in inferior art. And I'm writing "pretty much always" just in case that you can actually come up with an obscure example where compromise made a piece of art better. I have so far never heard of any such case.

Form follows function:
As soon as you have clarity of the function of what you're trying to do - and that is actually the hard part, to be rigorous in the description of what type of game you want it to be - most of the design decision can be answered rather easily, just by asking yourself the question: Which of the alternatives from which I can choose here are best suited to support the end goal in my mission statement?
I see this almost on a daily basis with customers for whom eSim Games is working. As soon as they have a precise idea for which purposes they want to use our software in their training, which specific tasks it should teach, where in the training continuum it is supposed to play a role, the functional requirements for the modeling and simulation part can be chosen very quickly. The trouble almost always has its roots in the desire of people to avoid making decisions to which they need to stick. That's understandable if you are working under uncertainty, but whenever the task can be defined with clarity, it should be. Apply simple rules in the design process, and more often than not you have a winner product - whether it's a game, or a training software, or something else entirely like a knife for cutting bread. The problem of many jet simulations is that they want to be both - pieces of entertainment, and being suitable for training (like the A-10C module in DCS, which was developed for a training purpose). But for most users "training" isn't on the agenda. They will never get the chance to actually fly an F-16 or an A-10. Making a training application in this context is a wasted effort, particularly if you are sacrificing accessibility and entertainment value for the sake of better training value when you actually have no training case, but rather you want to entertain 99.95% of your buyers.

The problem in this debate is that a sizable portion of the current flight sim audience seems to like to mistake "work" for "entertainment". But this excludes a potentially much larger group of non-consumers who stay away from flight sims because they are seen as intimidating and boring at the same time. This has resulted in a feedback loop that has almost severed the flight simulation genre from the computer game market. The thread title is a perfect example of that feedback: "There's nothing wrong with the message, the audience is just too dumb to get it."
That's not an invitation for an open and honest debate (well, okay, this is the internet and we're choosing provocative headlines to bait clicks and spark some reactions). But the unspoken proposition of the thread title is that the decline of the youth today is at fault; I vehemently reject that statement, as we are the same people that our parents were worried about, back in the day, and they weren't any better in the eyes of their previous generation. No, flight simulations mistaking themselves as entertainment products are the problem because they aren't as entertaining as they could be. That's the cold, hard truth.

And no. I have no constructive suggestion how to make it better. And it's just my opinion, and mine alone.

Okay, I'll grant you that for graphics and sound options. But what about games that offer easy/medium/hard/hell options? Mostly RPGs and the different options or difficultylevels change the gameplay experience.... like in the Witcher 3 where on the easiest level you can finish the story without breaking a sweat and with little-to-no use of potions but on the most difficult level, well, the combat gameplay is a totally different beast. Is that a sign of indecision on the part of the devs?


You do know that these options and sub-options are there because they exist in the real aircraft, right? And you do know that because these sims simulate these aircraft, then if the real pilots have to study a manual, it kinda follows that people who want to simulate this activity might have to crack open a book too? What about that bit where I said that most of these options can be safely ignored by the new pilot?


So what if that's the message? The challenge there is to step up and learn the darn thing and then get to play with it. If you are the type of person who freezes and doesn't touch anything on a new bit of hardware, then a simulation regarding a complex bit of hardware may not be the hobby for you. There is Candy Crush and Angry Birds.


You're the one that tried to make that analogy, not me. So explain how indecision in RPG difficulty levels results in inferior art?


I think you are confusing hobby simmers with commercial or professional consumers. If your clients have trouble specifying their requirements, how much clarity do you think you'll get from a hobby simmer that has a few hours to spare? The answer: Clear as mud. If you can see the logic for graphics and sound options as a necessity due to a myriad of hardware combinations resulting in who-knows-how-many levels of performance, why can you not see the logic for gameplay options as a neccessity due to a myriad of consumer expectations, level of commitment, and level of skill?

Oh, and while we may never have a chance to fly an F-16, it doesn't mean we'll stop wanting to or stop dreaming about it.


Therein lies the fault. You think that this "training application" does not have entertainment value, but "entertainment value" is subjective. You think that high fidelity simulation is a wasted effort because we'll never fly an F-16 anyway or we're not properly training anyway, but that's because you're judging it by YOUR metrics. 100% of people who play Falcon do so because they find it entertaining. 100% of people who do NOT play Falcon do so because they do NOT find it entertaining. Why dumb down the product in hopes of attracting those that did not like the product in the first place? You'll only end up alienating those who like the product AS IS.


If they see the hobby as intimidating, then there is hope for them. It means they want to try it, they're just not sure how to proceed. Those that see the hobby as boring, well, that's a different group of people and even if they had the brain power to digest every nuance, even if they had a photographic memory and only needed 20 minutes to read, memorize, and understand all the options and sub-options, even if they have the fine motor control to connect to a tanker while in a turn in a raging thunderstorm, if they find all of that boring, then really, the hobby is not for them. Plain and simple.


The thread title is not a statement, it's a question. I do agree with you that the youth today is in a "decline," there are many more factors in play and I think it was you that mentioned "low hanging fruit."


And again, I say your "truth" is wrong. If chess failed to get newer, younger players to play chess, is the problem because chess isn't as entertaining as it could be? If there is a decline in people playing crossword puzzles, will a crossword puzzle using todays buzzwords and hashtags remedy the problem?

No. Flight simulation is fine as it is. The interest of the market is simply elsewhere. Back in the day, people wanted to grow up and be a policeman or a fireman or an astronaut or a pilot. Now, kids want to be singers or footballers or models. Does that mean there's something wrong with being a policemand or a fireman or an astronaut or a pilot? No. The interest is simply elsewhere.



Sadly, nor do I I do not advocate "dumbing down".... there was a time when the passing rate for doctors took a plunge and some idiot in the governing body actually thought it would be a good idea to lower the passing mark in order to "fix" the issue. Thankfully, his idea was shot down without mercy.