Some nice morsels to chew on... What were your thoughts on the interview?

Some interesting comments but its obviously not far enough along to present any new terrain screenshots. Luckily ROF will be out soon to help forget about SOW until its release date draws closer.

Howdy All,

Been away for ages. What's ROF exactly?

Cheers,
Slug

RoF is an acronym for "Rise of Flight: 1917"

There is a forum on SimHQ dedicated to it here.

Additionally there is an "official" interview feedback thread here, which has been the case for every article put up on the SimHQ front page.

For me this interview has put a lot of uneasy questions to rest, i don't mind waiting anymore (not that i did before, but we all get impatient from time to time).

I was worried about the continued development of this title, but there was one little thought at the back of my head. The thought that these guys are not building so much a simulator, but sort of an "operating system" for running and, more importantly, designing and developing new simulations. Well, that thought is pretty much confirmed after reading the interview.

Another thing i liked is that they seemed to actually wade through all the nagging and whining and read the meaningful suggestions on their company forums, ever since the first questions/suggestions thread opened. A lot of people talked about how modding would be easier to control if it was supported from the get go. Or how you might be able to mod whatever you like, but have the server run a list of allowed mods. Much like the CRT=2 solution but maybe without the need for multiple installs or version switchers, just an on/off menu for mods that the server settings can override. Well, they have taken this into account and went one step ahead, recruiting modders to help with the new title.

This also verifies my initial suspicion that they weren't really after the people that added content to IL2 via the mods, but the potential consequences for online play of it being done through hacking the IL2 code, as there was no other way to do it really. And i'm very glad they decided to add a method to not only support mods, but control their use. If people who want to add new content are given the tools, they won't need to hack anything, so you know that if someone does resort to hacking they probably have malicious intent. No more of the mess and split in the community that we saw with the initial release of mods for IL2.

As for copy protection and DRM, the man is also right. He knows how not to choke his own potential influx of initial impulse buyers by impossing ridiculours requirements on them. He said that good games and an honest player base are what sell games and keep companies in the job and i agree 250% with him, maybe more Let's face it, if copy protection alone was what paid their wages then companies like Stardock Games would be out of a job. They had a space strategy game a while ago that had no protection whatsoever and still managed to sell well, because they simply cattered to the needs of their target demographic. You know, the people who'll go "man, i wouldn't mind getting this for free, but i like such games so much that i want to keep them in business to make more". Just like the vast majority of the flight sim community thinks. He does mention online authentication as the future of copy protection, but doesn't fail to recognise the impact it will have on sales and the availability of his product if this is the only method used. Plus, he mentions it will not be through forced connection requirements but through a recurring authentication at set intervals. You know, connect to the company servers once per month to keep your copy validated. Simple, not too restrictive and works with a simple dial up connection.

Finally, i like his attention to detail. The man seems to have realised that setting the proper backdrop for the whole affair is half the job. All the pretty aircraft skins, flight and damage models in the world are useless if they don't blend together with other elements to give you a feeling of being there for real. This hobby is more than a simple scientific study in aeronautics, it's the recreation of history on our monitors.

Sure, all this takes loads of time, but i'm pretty sure that after getting the groundwork out of the way we'll see a load of independent parties using the new engine to create their own content. If they have map authoring tools, flight model tools and so on, what's to stop for example the YAP developers from making a full fledged Vietnam sim on their own? I'm guessing that after the initial release and allowing some time for people to become familiar with the new engine's capabilities we'll see a very welcome influx of titles. Imagine how cool it will be to have BoB and know that Korea is almost done, while another team tackles Vietnam, WWI or the Falklands.

I can fully understand why it takes them so much time. There are sims that ship in an acceptable level of "completeness" to recreate their target theater/time period and sims that ship with less than complete features and with the intent to grow. But there are few sims that truly strive to combine both. That's like trying to achieve the accuracy and fidelity of a study sim in regards to physics/simulation with the inclusion of sufficient flyables done to the same standard upon release, plus the expandability for a talented end user to make for example the cockpits clickable. It's a have your cake and eat it affair, that's why it's taking so long and it seems they might just pull it off

The only thing i'm disappointed about is the lack of some fresh eye candy. If only just to shut up the people who'll miss the big picture and say "i knew we'd just get a couple of work in progress shots in the object viewer with that blue background"

Well put Blackdog. My feelings exactly, but better written. I was never worried about BoB. I was anxious to see it released NOW, but hey, aren't we all? The waiting will be worth it. I like his business model for sucess which in turn will make a lot of simmers very happy.


Thanks Doug. Well done.

While I think appropriate questions were asked in the interview, I am not sure that we have anything new here. "Progress is being made". Yawn.

The fact is that we have not seen one single officially released within-game-engine screenshot or video from this project. While I can appreciate that the project expanded in its scope over time and also contracted apparently in other areas, the fact that more of everything (i.e. content) will be included than was previously stated is not encouraging. If the engine is finished and they are waiting on content, how is it that we have not seen a single example of what content they do have from within the actual game engine?

While I am sure the remark that there will be 17 planes and not 11 is thought by most to be exceedingly positive, it sounds like a pacifying excuse to me. "We're giving you more planes. You can wait another year, right?"

By their own admission, they underestimated the complexity and the effort to needed to address that complexity in creating the new game engine. What's to say that they have a handle on things now considering we have never seen any in-game screenshots or video?

Like Ilya said, "The proof is in the pudding". I've seen the recipe, been told someone's cooking it, and been shown the pretty box it came in, but until I can smell it being made or get a taste, I have no more confidence in this project than I did before this interview.

Hnmmm, again nothing really new, Oleg has given indications about release dates before 'September this year was one'. Every year we seem to add another 18 months. Still at least we one or two new pictures.

Will read it again, but I'm not sure I got any new information here.
General talking about 3rd party add-ons (we knew about it), that work is in progress (we knew about it), it will be a very good sim (lol, of course we knew about it!!!), etc.
Besides the "17 planes" (i.o. 11), I don't think we got anything at all, and to be honest, though this is good, I expected a bit more.

All in all, Guod tried his best (and I THANK HIM for this) but Oleg and Ilya still could not offer anything at this stage.
I don't have any problem with it - they know better when they will release really important information.

S!

PS. I hope people will calm a bit, knowing that we still have at least another 16 months till game's release.

What I especially like here...

http://www.simhq.com/_air11/images/air_341a_013L.jpg

... it is the green.

No more the "ukrainian green" shades, no the green of a countryside grass poured with rain the most of the year. Great.

Btw, about the tanks...

http://www.simhq.com/_air11/images/air_341a_007L.jpg

... the little Renaults were sometimes used to guard the Luftwaffe airfields on some spots.

thanks guod for the interview ...im sure you did your best.

as for what we got...1 new pic of a fort and a couple of pics of some men that are from another game...yes he said this and that about what we might, could or will get.
as for SOW we are at LEAST a year away i think.

dissapointed with oleg but cheers guod.

I wonder if Oleg is modelling the lawn mowers that gave the tartan effect to the grass around that fort? After all this time, I do hope we don't get yet more checkerboard scenery; something Rise of Flight seems to have largely overcome very effectively.

Huh, what was that about never seen any in-game video? I've seen lots and a long time ago!

No new screenies? Well they look new to me, for one I never saw the Wellington before. Or did I previously overlook that one?



Dolph, could you mention 17 plane types that took part in the BoB, and then tell me which other essential types we need beyond those?

Well, when I saw the increase in planes (assuming these are flyable he’s talking about), my first thought was feature creep. Honestly, I was under the impression that we were going to see around 5 or 6 aircraft in the initial release, so while it’s a pleasant surprise, it also means more delay.

I really wish they would give us some taste of how the engine is running in their test environment and what that test environment consists of. I keep getting the impression that the SoW team is skillfully stalling release until the average system needed to run the engine at medium settings is a reality. Oleg has stated time and again that he intends to release something that current systems aren’t able to run at full settings. I can’t think of a better way to stall a release than to add features.

Besides, you can bet your bottom dollar that Oleg has a copy of ROF and is watching the pending western release very closely. It’d be foolish not to. It also wouldn’t make much sense to release SoW so close to the ROF release.

The article was good and there were a few new things, but beyond a couple new model shots, I didn’t find anything to boost my interest. I don’t blame Oleg for keeping a tight wrap on what he’s doing. He intends to release something that will blow everything else away and I believe he and his team will do just that. It really doesn’t matter as I’m already sold. I’ll be here… ready to buy when it's done and hopefully I'll be enjoying ROF until that day.


Edit: I did want to point out that, based on the model of the bicycle, that it's apparently possible to rotate placeable objects along all 3 axis. That's new and exciting to me! Also, oh my, the beautiful Stuka! Gorgeous!

Thanks for the interview !
The most important information given by Oleg, in my opinion, is the fact that they have done most of the important work, and they only are tuning and adding features to their engine, and adding content for the first title. The big part of the work is behind them, and the release dates might be more accurate now (big technical issues can happen during the build of the engine, less likely during creation of content).

Boy, how can you be surprised by that? We have seen all these planes already:

1. Spitfire Mark I
2. Hurricane Mark I
3. Blenheim IV
4. Gladiator II
5. Tiger Moth
6. Bf109E-3
7. Bf110C
8. Ju-88A-1
9. He-111H-2
10. Cr. 42
11. G. 50
12. Br. 20
13. Bonus Su-26 aerobatics plane
14. Ju87B

AI planes

RAF

Vickers Wellington
Short Sunderland
Westland Lysander
Bristol Beaufighter
Supermarine Walrus
Avro Autogiro
Boulton Paul Defiant
Avro Anson
Bristol Blenheim IF

Luftwaffe

Do17Z
Do215
Ju52
Ju52 seaplane
Fw200C-1
He59
He115
Bf108B

That is 31 planes. Plus, his 3D guys didn't sit on their hands while he added feature after feature to the engine, so they had plenty of time to build cockpits for previous AI only planes.

The whole interview did unfortunately not have one piece of info in it that I was hoping for. Most if not all we clued together by ourselves already. But a big thanks to the SimHQ team, nonetheless.

You can add the Autogiro to the flyables

From screens alone, I knew there would be far more than 17 AI aircraft, but honestly, I thought we'd see maybe 1-2 variants of the spit, hurricane and 109 at the most in the initial release. I also knew about the modern aerobatics aircraft, but considered that "bonus". Honestly, I just haven't been following SoW closely over the last year or so, but the impression I got earlier was that the others on your list were works in progress for expansion.

Regardless, the point is that it's great that he intends to include more flyable aircraft, but it's clear that either the engine is still underway or it's not ready for mainstream consumption because, simply put, it'd be foolish to delay the game for the reason of adding planes alone and each plane, especially flyable, is a significant mountain of work.



If he's enlisting the help of 3rd party modelers, I'm guessing his internal 3D guys have a full plate. Anyway, I don't know exactly how much time goes into modeling an aircraft, but it's my understanding that the 3d model is a smaller part of the whole.

It's not that clear. The main things to add seem to be features to the 3D engine and work on ships, campaigns, animations, and, of course, tests...
We already saw a lot of cockpit videos, and they are 2 or 3 years old.

I also think that the 3d model is maybe the tip of the iceberg, even with the new ones for BoB using increased polygon counts. It's probably the flight, damage and systems modelling that's taking up the bulk of the work for each flyable.

lol, I thought I could make my self clear in english, but most probably not

I put the 17 planes in brackets cause I actually quote (brackets do this among other things) the information.
I mean that besides the information that there will be 17 planes instead of 11 there is no other significant information in this interview.
When I say "...got anything" I mean got anything from the interview - not from the game.

I hope I made my self clear now- I'd hate to have to add a "me no anglais - forgiv mi lunguage" signature!!!

PS. No hard feelings - I understand that you got confused and misinterpret my post.

I'm not so sure about that, Oleg said that the increased quality of their models made them very long to complete. Though I suppose that they finished most of the work on the planes.

This comment I heartily agree with. If you are a regular visitor to sites like 1C's own forums or to http://www.freewebs.com/heinkill/ you will have found almost nothing of interest in the SimHQ article.

A lost opportunity.

For you... maybe
Even if the interview don't give much information about the game that we don't allready know (apart some confirmations and some precisions), there's much to read behind the lines, especially in the parts not dealing with SoW.... I understood a lot of stuff with this interview.

For me the most important statement is that it is 80%done. After 60% beginning of this year. Makes me a tiny bit more confident that the release date in roughly one year can be met this time. Fingers crossed.

Thanks SimHQ, Oleg and Ilya!

None of the screenshots that we have ever seen have been from within the game engine. All the screenshots have been within an asset viewer which may or may not represent the final quality of the graphics in the game engine. Be that as it may, we have no screenshots from within the game engine.

As to the video, we have video from years ago showing what I think you best be characterized as something pre-alpha. Heck, I think we had supposed SOW video included with the IL2-1946 DVD which was at least 2 years ago. More recent video we have seen of cockpit interiors with controls moving is also not within the game engine.

So we have effectively have no in-game video as the engine must have changed substantially in the intervening time, and we have had no in-game screenshots. These are the facts as I know them to be. If you have other information, please provide it as I would love to see actual in-game media associated with this game.

Maybe Oleg doesn't want to show anything not finished, to deal with the fact that some people can't understand that an alpha screenshot doesn't represent the final quality of the sim...

Foucault, in this interview are two screenshots which seem to be from within the engine. Not spectacular though.

http://spread-wings.ru/content/view/156/1/

2 Weeks~!~!~~~~~

I agree Krasno....with SOW 14 months or so from completion, there is no way we will be seeing any ingame screenshots or videos for quite sometime.

A. I don't see any sense about releasing the game that late. The community will buy it as soon as it is released. You don't need to wait for the anniversary.

B. What about the requirements specs?. I planned to build a new machine by January ... about 4 months after this game was released (so I tought). Now that computer will be several months old. With 80% finished, it is time to know what requires to run.

Thanks. First ones I have ever seen and I have to say that they are not encouraging. Given that they are both ground level and not from the air, this suggests that haven't figured out or don't want to display what the landscape will look like, how they are handling drawing distances, and/or don't have any completed maps. That's a worst case interpretation.

Oleg's previous predictions of game release have been years off, we have had 'November 2007' recently 'September 2009' with system specs in May, now we have October 2010, personally i dont see anything in that interview that convinces me that Oleg has finally got an understanding of time.

...and Oleg responds:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2728131/Re_Interview_Oleg_Discusses_Wh.html#Post2728131

Assuming the sim has been in development for 2+years prior to the beginning of this year and given this new, accelerated rate of progress, I calculate 100% completion to be reached within approximately 3 months.

your wrong on all counts there


but dont let that stop your complaining, you might actually be somebody that enjoys living in the negative little cloud of reality they create

I am wrong, then show me.

Where you are wrong Tree is not cutting the developer a little slack. He is trying to develop a new benchmark combat sim that YOU will probably enjoy thousands of hours of entertainmet. We both want it now, but developments this complicated take time. Oleg is probably guilty of being overly optimiistic, but even he could never predict all the possible roadblocks. We are lucky he is optimistic otherwise the project would have been shelved permanently years ago.

Seconded.

And that we haven't seen ONE ingame image or video is very very telling.

Very telling of what?

Do re-read why he's not released in-game screenshots yet.

Fear mongering is a common human trait, people always worry over the unknown. Why in the world would you not take him at his word?

For me Oleg's method of "wait tills it's done and it will be complete right out of the box" is preferable to RoF's method of "slim release that will grow over time".

I think it's a matter of personal preference. Some people would prefer to have it here and now in a less than complete state and see it grow as time goes by, others would prefer a sim that will have enough content and features right from the initial installation. Nothing wtong with either one of them and nothing wrong with voicing an opinion or disagreement with the method the developer chooses.

The biggest thing for me was THE LITTLE MEN. That's my biggest wishlist item.

As others have said, nice interview. Walked the fine line between fanboyism and nagging.

Well, it got me a bit more excited that I had been. At least it was something. I have not been thinking about this sim (other than to needle the fanbois) for a long time.

I just hope it gets here before I have to go into the rest home (not sure if they have high speed internet there).

I forgot: why no question about 4.09?

needle the fanbois

Go away

Ming

And you're not?!

We definitely need the little guys, seconded. Makes things much more immersive

They could all be geometry instances, nothing too fancy we only fly over them mostly. In 250mph gunnery-passes who said that

Ming

My take of the interview is simple. Oleg is in a legal battle with ubisoft over the game name etc...
Until that is sorted we will see nothing. I would even hazard a guess and say the game is further along than even he admits but until he extracts himself from Ubisoft for what ever reason we will see nothing.
As far as I understand from other forums Ubisoft own rights to the name.
One thing I am sure of and even Oleg hints at it, Storm of war will never see the light of day. The game previously known as SOW will almost surely get a new name.
What that will be is the important question?

What a thumb to the nose toward UBI if Oleg would actually name the game engine 'The SOW Engine" like he kidded around a few days ago.