Sigh - yes, I'm "making the mistake of thinking only of what makes a sim good for you", whereas you have a glimpse into the mind of every potential entrant into flight sims out there. Faced with such a handicap it seems foolish of me to have the temerity to diagree with you, but what the hell.

How do you imagine your newbie gets a feel for how realistically a plane flies? Let alone a WWI plane flown in a combat manner? He probably hasn't flown a plane; he all but certainly hasn't flown a plane to the edge of the envelope (I think getting your pilots license you don't bank beyond 30 degrees?); the chances of him having flown a plane comparable to a WWI plane are vanishingly small. Every mainstream review of a sim I've read has had a paragraph saying something along the lines of "of course I've no idea how realistic the flight models are, but they say they are very realistic and it feels OK". Never read one complain about the flight model. That's because they are being written by people you would call newbies.

And if we're seriously talking about really expanding the community then I'm also assuming that our newbie isn't a WWI aviation nut. He's familiar with Snoopy, maybe; seen the Blue Max, perhaps read some Biggles. Heard of the Red Baron and knows he flew a triplane. Made the odd Aerofix model as a child if he's over 25. Fancies pretending to be one of those Knights of the Sky in a game. So he just doesn't know if the rate of fire is accurate, or whether the guage is in the right place, or when such and such a plane entered service.

However, there is a form of realism that everyone, newbie or not, is in a position to understand. If I shoot at my own side, I don't need to know much to understand the realistic consequences. If I fly at 50 feet deep into enemy territory, I have a pretty good idea that I ought to be in trouble. If I bomb a stone bridge I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be rebuilt tomorrow. If I die I probably shouldn't be able to resurrect myself and try again; and if I start a new career it seems unlikely that on flying the first mission exactly the same enemy should appear from exactly the same spot at exactly the same point in the mission, and boring if they keep on doing it.

You have a point about difficulty, but here we have a major issue - because frankly if you have a realistic sim the learning curve is going to be too steep for a newbie. Even in WWI they got a significant training period and 15 hours solo before being chucked out there. You think your newbie is going to sit there through anything like that? Realism is a huge barrier to uptake in flight sims.

So once you've made it unrealistic in order to keep your newbie enjoying himself, it's going to be all about his experience in the game - how far it allows him to immerse himself in pretending to be a WWI pilot given his ignorance. Because that's why most people play games - to pretend they are something they aren't.

I'm inclined to agree with Dart - hated that aspect of Jane's Longbow, you can immerse me in a game without making me remember a deeply unintuitive interface.

[quote=Mahoney]

How do you imagine your newbie gets a feel for how realistically a plane flies? Let alone a WWI plane flown in a combat manner?


About as much as you or I and every other simmer here gets a feel for how realistically
a WW1 plane flies, no? ( Or are you really THAT old? lol)

Because that's why most people play games - to pretend they are something they aren't.

Yes, I agree completely with that part. We just think that different aspects of a sim are the most important, the relevant factor being -for attracting newbies

And, BTW, in no way am i saying that disagreeing with your opinion means that you are not entitled to it. I merely made a guess as to how you came to your opinion, that's all.:)

What is good is that we agree that we want more newbies into flight sims.

Well, so what does this mean then " Attention not to go into that debate" -if not trying to prevent discussion on my point. ?

And why cannot this point be discussed as a possible way of boosting ROF sales, which is what this thread is about?

As for pointing out something I should already know etc - Huh! I find that not good.
I am totally against the attaempts by some in this forum to "remove" or "transfer" or limit to another thread ( hidden from the casual lurker,btw ) comments, which although relevant, are not liked by the out and out fanboys of this sim and how they like it to be marketed.

Can't you see how what you advocate, is plain and simple censorship of a POV that you don't like?

I want to play this sim. I want Neogb to market it in a way that I can buy it and play it offline, in a way which is acceptable to me and many others. I think I am entitled to make a POV which they may see as not being alone, and possibly in sufficient numbers, to persuade them change their policy?

Why should I not be able to do that - In a thread which specifically asks for ways which may boost sales?

Why don't you repeat Frey's entire quote:

(emphasis added)

Why can't you debate CP and DRM in this thread? Because we asked you not to. Read the sticky. We made this decision so as to keep game topics separate from the gnashing of teeth about copy protection and DRM. Because pretty soon that's what all game threads become about. I encourage you to use the forum dedicated to these topics, not just ROF, but Black Shark, etc.

Hey, Cas obviously has an easier time arguing against me when he misrepresents my point of view, don't ruin his day...

I would like to thank everyone for contributing ideas. Many of you spent a decade or more virtually flying. Some of you actually spent a decade or more flying real planes. You all have strong and well reasoned contributions to make, certainly this discussion of growing the community is no different. I am glad to see arguments made on any aspect of ROF growth, including CP and DRM, if the argument addresses growth in the community. I would hope that this thread can serve for more than just an exclusive discussion of general CP matters since the SimHQ team provided a dedicated place for that particular issue.
-MJ

I was thinking about this on a long drive this evening/morning, and got to thinking about why I got into flight sims, and more importantly why WWI flight sims really interested me.

The answer: simplicity.

While I'd always daydreamed of being a pilot, I actually daydreamed about being a UH-1 or AH-1 pilot. As a kid I got more than a couple chances to sit in UH-1's and be boggled by all the switches and dials.

First flight sims I encountered were Red Baron and MicroProse's Stealth Fighter.

One had radar profiles, missiles, avionics, flight maps, lights, gauges, beepings, and a zillion things to learn.

The other had two instruments, a stick, rudder, throttle, and a wing that warped with wires. One flew close to the other guy, as close as one could get, and pulled the trigger. Tracers went out and one got immediate feedback. Sometimes the gun would jam and one would have to pound a key to clear it.

One read about basic flight theory (which I already knew), and the rest was just history. No real prior knowledge about stuff needed. Fly close. No, stupid, closer. Now, then, get just a little bit more close and then you can shoot.

Of course it was a big fat lie. WWI flying demands every bit as much acumen and attention to systems as the Cold War Ka-50; it's just that the focus is on flying the plane more than working systems on the plane. The weapon platform required five percent of one's attentions, and 95% was keeping the thing in the air properly and looking around.

The perception was that it would be easier and a little more brutal. And that sold me.

Imagine a "Mac vs. PC" sort of commercial, with the modern fighter pilot in his spacesuit nomex and the helmet (with mask hanging off the side), with a guy in a woolen sweater, silk scarf wrapped and tucked in around his neck, and leather coat held by one arm over a shoulder. No helmet, just goggles propped up on his forehead.

The jet pilot has his hands on his hips, chin high, and a silk scarf wrapped with one end hanging freely.

"Whatcha doin'?"
"Waiting for a breeze to make my silk scarf fly dramatically."
"Oh, I tuck mine in so it keeps my neck protected from chafing while I look around. It might get frayed if it's loose like that."
"Doesn't look very dashing. And why are you looking around all the time?"
"To see the enemy."
"I have a powerful radar that is linked to AWACS with an integrated computerized system that allows me to shoot missiles and shoot down planes so far away I will never be close enough to see them."
"What's the fun in that?"

Or the jet pilot is standing there with one foot up on a big stack of manuals, in the Captain Morgan pose.

"Hey, jet sim guy, what's that?"
"Hey World War One, it's just a tiny fraction of the technical manuals and procedures needed to fly and fight in my aircraft."
"Wow, that's a lot."
"Absolutely - us jet fighter types need to do a lot of reading and learning of complex procedures and systems manangement."
"Oh."
"Where's yours?"
(WWI guy pulls out a quarter inch thick pamphlet from his back pocket)
"Right here - the whole library."
"Wait a minute - where do you learn how to fly?"
"In the sky," he says with a big duh voice.

I agree. i want my actions to have meaning. One of my favourites was Pacific Air War 1942, with its career campaigns, and especially the mini fleet battles. you tip over on a jap carrier in that and you really do make a difference if you hit or miss. Same with blasting Zeroes of the tail of an avenger squad and watching them put fish into the side of a carrier. it all had meaning and was more than a scoreboard stat.

Check out the Crecy RAF Flight manuals.
I have one for the DH9 and it's a pamphlet full of rigging and set up info with about 4 pages if that on actually flying type stuff.
And most of that is standard 'turn fuel on else engine won't run' kind of advice.

It really was a different age of simplicity but skill. The Human factor dots on radar screens lack so much.

I am wondering if the "puritanism" Dart and others propagate isn't one of the reasons why flight sims (apart from the interest hurdle, the hardware hurdle and the learning curve) have taken the back-seat in comparison to other genres. I fully a gree with what Mahoney said - to an interested but uninformed newbie the deviation of FM parameters on the Nieuport 17 from data collection XYZ or the Spandau's 0.0002% too low ROF according to ABC is irrelevant. He doesn't know (and quite frankly doesn't care) about such intricacies. However deep down a flight sim is still supposed to be a game, a device to waste time for entertainment. If we take a look at other genres don't we judge their products according to their entertainment value? Aren't we all all too prepared to overlook the historical and technical mistakes of the latest CoD-version because it manages to capture the stress and frightening atmosphere of a WW2 battlefield in perfection, because it manages to tell the story of WW2 seen from a certain perspective?

I fully agree that specific storytelling (in the way of telling an individual pilot's story) is something done best in static missions, but do dynamic campaigns have to be the monotonous, technocratic and boring affairs they've been in the past years? Absolutely not! Because these also have to tell a story - history! There is enough stuff a developer can incorporate which raises immersion but doesn't limit scope. Lothar von Richthofen has received the Pour le Merite? Grand! That's stuff for the newspapers (and I suspect such things could be found on the front, too). The King visits the front? Stuff for a little vidclip! There have been sightings of a new enemy aircraft type? Stuff for intelligence reports. Such little things do a lot to create immersion - to make the player believe there's a living, breathing world around him instead of a bunch of algorithms. Each and every historical flight sim lives from its historical protagonists, but it must live within a believable world as it was back then. Just having perfectly modeled aircraft in a sterile and lifeless environment is pointless in my eyes and not what a flight sim developer should try to achieve. These aircraft have myths attached to them, but these myths are a combination of environmental factors and the time they were used in. Technical excellence is not a guarantee for a great product, but part of the equation.

I think flights sims remain a niche mainly because most players do not feel like bothering with learning the intricacies of flying. The answer would be to dumb down the model, but that would leave us with an arcade game and not a flight sim.

With huge resources behind them, flight sim developers could add as many bells and whistles as mainstream players would want, but no fat cash cows have so far been willing to finance flight sims.
How great would it be if just one Hollywood actor would splurge 20 million $ on Oleg or Neoqb's work? - Alas, it hasn't happened... I'm still hoping that flight sims will be discovered by Paul Allen (who financed Rutans SpaceShip One) or Jeff Bezos (financing another space attempt), but so far no luck.

Quite frankly, Frey, what you call "Bells & Whistles" is in my book an integral part of any good computer game. I really can't see the sense in reducing its importance to commercial success for flight sims just because these things don't have anything to do with FM/DM algorithms. This is a little bit "puritanist" in my eyes and hurts our genre more than the short-sighted beancounters in the publishers' upper echelons.

Why is it so hard to accept that to be successful a good flight sim also has to be a good game? Where does that "bite reflex" come from whenever one mentions the gameplay part? Is game suddenly a dirty word among simmers? Aren't there enough threads about the "good old times" or the "Golden Age of Simming" around? What made those sims so great in our minds? It was gameplay - not FM accuracy. I think we simmers and the developers have to re-learn the values of decent gameplay as opposed to the salivating at ever more precise 3D models and more detailed FM calculations if we want to preserve our genre and get an influx of fresh blood.

Did I express myself aggressively in any way?

Hit. Nail. Head.


In the end i think it's a question of how long we're willing to wait for a new title that has both the necessary realism in physics and visuals, plus the assorted gameplay elements that make it a trully great experience. I read Oleg's interview and i'm very glad to see that the man is a visionary. He's trying to combine these two factors but to do so with today's next gen graphics and a highly realistic FM/DM is causing a massive delay in the release of his next sim. Nevertheless, i guess that if one such innovative game engine is released to allow a combination of those two important factors, then we will be seeing a steady influx of new titles based on it.

The future is in modular designs, but not in the sense of railroaded choices and partitioned content updates with a price tag. I don't judge that one in a negative fashion (i mean, they have to pay their bills to keep bringing us new sims), but i will still call it as it is, a method to increase the retail value of the end product by partitioning it into smaller sections.

What modular, expandable designs is all about is the game engine's provision for anyone to create new content, freeware or payware, through assorted development kits and the provision to control which one is allowed and which not in a competitive online environment. Mod/content settings just like difficulty settings, use your own when you're flying single player but the server settings overrides them when going online.

No, Frey, most certainly not. And if my second reply came across as aggressive I apologize. This was not my intention. It's just that your reply is something I have read countless times from countless simmers over the years, something that sounds like an automatism, a defensive mechanism installed to "keep core of flight simming pure" from whatever tendencies one can think of. One mentions gameplay shortcomings and, like the notorious dogs in Pavlov's experiments, someone else posts a text containing the keywords niche, learning curve, development resources telling us how it is impossible to increase the customer base for sims. I never meant to cater sims to the general audience by dumbing down aspects of FM/DM, but by making them better games by giving the gameplay and the entertainment factor the attention they deserve and sadly lacked in the products of the last few years.

Well, I don't think of my own informed opinion as the dribbling reaction of a dog, but if that is what you see...

I on the other hand have very often seen your opinon as well, and I feel it is not grounded in reality. You do not want to recognise the fact of limited resources. You say you want BOTH. Both the gaming aspects AND the perfect DM/FM. Well, the development teams of flight sims have limited resources, and even though most people don't see a big external difference between the way planes behave in Red Baron and in Il-2, there is a HUGE difference in the amount of coding that goes into the flight model. The real-life pilots who have tried RoF so far certainly do notice it, but for most casual users it will go over their head.

You want both the cinematic extras and the correct FM/DM, and we all want all of that, but in the real world there are limited resources and we can't always get all we want. So, I have to choose and then I definitely choose the good FM/DM, because there are a whole lot of arcade sims out there and they don't interest me. Wish I didn't have to choose though.

Limited resources are a fact none of us can argue away. And I don't think anyone tries to do that. However if resources are limited why don't developers limit the scope of a project instead? What keeps them from concentrating on a certain operation and a certain timeframe instead of trying to cover all the bases?

For me both parts, FM/DM fidelity and gameplay, are equal variables in the equation and none of them can be demoted to second-rate importance.

For me, there's a big difference between the two, not in "importance" for the gamer, but in timing.
- FM/DM fidelity, as other aspects which are part of physic modelling and graphic engine, ask for a lot of hardware ressouces and so a lot of optimization to get the max in their domain. If the dev don't do them right at start, there will have limited opportunity to improve them later during the game life (except for some "cosmetic" aspects).
- Gameplay, storytelling, population of the game world with new objects, missions, campaigns, role-playing elements, etc.... are certainly important (and very important for the player), but if the dev ressources don't allow to give it all the deserved attention before game release, it's allways possible to improve them later, either by coding extra features, modelling new objetcs, etc... or by giving to third parties the possibility to do so.

Of course, if not enough players think the second part will most probably happen, they won't purchase the game, and the game life will be short.... but if they have sufficient confidence it's possible and probable, the game life may be long and all what the players want will gradually be made, either by the dev, or by third parties.

So yes, for the player, the gameplay is certainly of the same (and maybe more) importance than the physic and graphic "core" of the game... but it's easy to understand that there's a difference between a part which can be improved over time, and a part that can't be.
We have to face the reality, in a Niche market like for aerial combat sim, with teh increased complexity of the games, in the absence of established companies with financial reserves that can invest massivelly on the long term (except maybe 1C that can partly ressort to this category), there's a very low probability a new game will be developped with both aspects deeply worked on.
So either gamers stick to an utopia that will make them unsatisfied with any new product (with the corrolative only "satisfaction" to whine on forum)... or they accept to give a little faith to the new companies and to be patient, with the risk of also not beiing satisfied at the end (but in this case, it's only a risk, in the other case, the lack of satisfaction is a sure thing).

So we've come to this. Games get finished only if people believe in them... I hope this won't stick around, otherwise we might get sucked into development credit crunch.