Oleg Discusses What's Next
Interview by Doug "guod" Atkinson

SimHQ is fortunate to once again have an opportunity to talk about our flight simulation hobby with Oleg Maddox and his longtime friend and colleague Ilya Shevchecko.

http://www.simhq.com/_air11/air_341a.html

Interesting article! Thanks Doug/SimHQites !

It's good to see that Oleg's English is getting to the stage where he could give my lexicon a run for it's money!

I'm still practicing my cyrillic so that one day I'll be picked up by 1C:Maddox games to design something for them

It's so good to hear something from the man himself after such a long gap.

Great interview!

For me, this one article has done more to pique my interest in SoW:BoB than any previously. There are a lot of very interesting points made in this interview ... 1C switching from *everything* locked (as in IL-2) to openly embracing and developing tools for third party additions to the SoW series really got my attention.

What also got my attention is that Oleg openly admitted that there is *no* time being spent on the IL-2 series. Looks like 4.09 final simply won't happen. (sigh) No surprise, of course, but somewhat disappointing anyway.

I also liked that Oleg admitted some of the work being done in the mod community filled areas he and his team simply didn't have time to work on. And also that some folks from the IL-2 mod community are now part of the SoW team. How cool is that?

Lots of other good information in this interview too. It's not a fluff piece, but it also isn't some callous expose' type thing either. A good read for any combat flight sim pilot looking for information on the next generation of sim.

Well thought out line of questioning guod, all in all a very informative read...Sept 2010 counting

Awesome read; I love the new quality of detail of the airframe's. looks like well have actual real-time damage sequences. And to have control over flack and tanks is this going to be a an actual combined arms Sim? With that level of detail and dynamics might have to wait until 7/2010 to upgrade the system specs for this Simulator.

Great interview.
Oleg often takes a lot of flak from the community but in the end some of the choices he makes are really the best. No mandatory internet connection, building up the core product to a respectable size before starting to sell additional content, free aditional content from the developpers... Wish everyone would see things his way.

I'm a little bit worried about the Third Party involvment in expanding SoW as envisionned by 1C at this point though. Sounded to me like he was really talking about payware add-ons and providing the tools to professional studios only. Then again with the level of complexity they're aiming at, I doubt individuals could have continued making addons on their spare time.

Anyway, this was a great read ! BTW, I'm pretty sure that wasn't Oleg answering the questions, at least not directly. You just can't go from OlegTalk to such flaweless English in such a short amount of time

Cheers

Nico

Thanks Doug and SimHQ!!!

With that detail and amount of objects in the game, and also considering a late 2010 release, I'd like to know if it'll be 64-bit? I assume there was no word on this since it wasn't in the interview?

Thanks Doug (and Oleg).

Good read, surprisingly he's opened up a bit, I've read Oleg interviews where he speaks at length without actually saying or revealing anything Some good info on ground objects particularly the troops detail, the ground stuff in the present IL-2 is one of my pet hates modded or not, more info on Korea would have been nice. I think Russia IS sim central though and not only flight sims, the mentality just seems to be geared to making sims rather than games.

Thx Guys.

I was getting worried about the lack of news about Storm of war. Good timing.
Your question are right on the money. Good work.

Modding will be a part of PC games in the future. It is nice to hear Ilya telling how they intent to do it. I am glad that they have allowed it, but it brings me even more joy to know that they have made it possible to lock against players having unwanted mods.
Mods have been tearing European Airforce (www.europeanaf.org) for a while and they had to establish an official baseline for playing. SOW will not bring an end to it, but it will be easier than the way it is right now. At least we won't have to have more than one version of the game on the harddrive :-)

Thanks Doug and thanks Ilya.
My best wishes to Oleg and the rest of his teams ;-)

Great interview!

Thanks Sim HQ!

Awesome interview! So good to read the thoughts of our old friend Oleg.

Thanks a lot Dougguod! Also for going through Oleg's English, very nice and a good pr move.

Now just one thing: the STORM OF WAR name for the engine will have to go. You cannot have civilian sim 3rd party planes built for a "Storm of War" engine, that's just a no-go. They have to find a more generic name for the engine, and now that Microsoft has obliged them by shutting down the Flight Simulator franchise, I think it should be possible.

The flight engine

Aviation sim

Flying simulation

...the list is almost endless...

Really thanks, guod.
This interview was really needed to calm down some guys here.
BTW, I believe that Oleg has made no mention to projected system specs at this point of development to you?

good interview, some general questions about main issues, and some specific questions about issues that had raised concerns in the il2 fan base.

looks like we'll be on for a late 2009 release if all goes well

Hi Nico,

It was very important to me that Oleg's thoughts and plans be communicated as he intended since he was releasing some new information and this was the first update in a while.

He would write it, have IIya look it over, then ask me to further adjust the text to English. Then I would send it back to him, he would come back with "yes, correct" or "no, no that is not what I meant". That cycle continued through several email exchanges. My thanks to him for being receptive to exchanging so many emails to get it right.

When I was referring to "proof reading" in the SoW: BoB forum, that is what I meant.

But rest assured what was said in the interview is from Oleg.

BTW, he is getting better and better at English. I'm working on it too since Texan is my first language.

A big thanks to Dart, Uther, WKLINK and Stormtrooper for helping with the questions. It wasn't just my input.

Geez, I on the other hand see it as no releas until 1Q 2010 at least hehehhe.
But I guess I am the Glass half empty king of guy he?...

Like everyone else I have been waiting for this interview a while.
Thanks for taking the time to do it right.


Wheelsup