Of course Knights Over Europe, has probably got a strict development plan, with what is, and is not going to appear in it, all carefully mapped out, so how valid my comments here are is anyone’s guess, but I figured I’d start a thread on what you think makes a good sim besides the flying bit. Here’s a few thoughts…
One thing which I think helps the immersion factor considerably, is the feeling that you are flying with real people in your squadron, even in the offline single player parts of a sim. One or two sims from the past stand out to me as having managed this better than others.
Lucasart’s Battle of Britain (now there’s an old sim) had a particularly effective part where you could make characters and assign them to the flights, it was simple but at the time quite innovative and added to the feeling that you were with comrades on the mission. Jane’s F/A-18 also has a good go at this as does B-17. With the ability in WW1 sims to identify planes in the air so readily from their paint schemes, having a solid ‘who’s in what plane and how good are they?’ element to a sim can really add a lot, as can messing around with the paint schemes.
Knights of the Sky – yet another WW1 blast from the past, had a really entertaining interface which added much to the immersion factor, and it had that other vital element for immersion, a really good campaign structure, where more capable aeroplanes became available in a convincing manner, that managed to convey a sense of them being a new development at that time.
Within the campaign structure in a WW1 flying sim, it would be nice to be able to go for lone patrols at will, or perhaps air tests after having messed around with gun harmonisation or some other modification. I can’t imagine it would be too difficult to put a graphical in-game interface into a sim giving you the ability to tweak the trim and dihedral etc on your plane, to affects the ‘air’ file, actually as part of the ‘reality’ of the game, rather than on an options screen in the set up. Perhaps adding elements of the ground crew.
The few sims that have steered away from a campaign structure, or touches such as these don’t seem to have any soul in my opinion, it always seems as though something is missing, which indeed it is.
It’s long been a wish expressed by many that the ability to ‘get out of’ your sim plane and walk around it, perhaps having to fight your way or sneak back across the lines after a crash would add much. Whether this is true or not, no-one really knows, since it’s never really been tried, although the ability to utilise aerial vehicles in FPS games such as Operation Flashpoint and BF1942 hints that it would indeed be fun, certainly more fun than a digital roll of the dice after you’ve successfully pulled of a forced landing.
Just a few ideas, I’m sure you’ve all got pet wants that you’d like to see too.
