I agree that flying over nomans land will get you killed very quickly. I do fly with Labels OFF and have no desire to turn the immersion killers on. I'm sure you find the sim a gold stardard and have no probem with that, but from my perspective its substandard. I feel no immersion flying over the terrain. The dogfighting FM is decent, but the damage model leaves me cold.

I do turn on Labels momentarily once in awhile to see whats around.

Edit...After some thought I stand corrected. There is some ground and air activity, but I find very little of it immersive and believable. I suppose if the sim was a work of art and the gold standard, this community would be filling the OFF3 SimHQ forums with chatter but there is far more interest in ROF here.

Funny!

Exactly the kind of answer i was expecting and the kind of counter i was going to deliver

Suppose i have the knowledge to code FM and DM that stand 99.9% close to what the real thing is and i can also simulate a real human brain for each AI pilot. Of course the strain on a high end PC from all those calculations, not to mention the time needed to actually code such a masterpiece, would be so high that i wouldn't be able to include much more. The real question. Would you still fly it knowing it has real life FM/DM and AI characteristics if the only options on the menu were "fly" and "quit" and it looked like this?






I thought so

What i'm trying to say is that eye candy is needed in flight sims, but not to create an impression. It's needed to create immersion. If i had a sci-fi setting shooter in mind, i could have the main character shoot blue neon beams and call them plasma weapons, or shoot fireballs from his nostrils. In sims, graphics exist to immerse and not to impress. And since immersion is the real goal, things get complicated. It's not only FM/DM, AI, sound or graphics. This is a mere part of the effort to create a believable rendition of a living world in conflict under scale, while at the same time juggling to compromise everything in equal portions so that our PCs can take it.

Blackdog,
hehe, I still remember flying sims that looked like your picture. Worse, in fact (anyone remember MS Flight Simulator II with the Sopwith Camel?)

Immersion for me is not just how pretty things are, but the feel as if you were there, and adrenaline kicks you get because for some time your brain doesn't realize that it's just a game. For me, ROF, so far, delivers. I get bodily feedback (IE. scared) when one wing begins to stall, I get a rush in air combat. That's something I haven't had before in any flight sim. I find that I'm holding my breath when I open fire! I have a good perception of speed and height due to dynamic wind speed sound and realistic depiction of altitude and ground (I am an active skydiver/parachutist, so I know well how things look from 1000, 2000, 4000 meters). I hardly need to look at the instruments because of this inherent awareness. Also I'm beginning to know my engine by the sound it makes. So adjustment of mixture for example, or throttle setting, even climbing and descending I'm beginning to be able to tell by the sound of things.

Yesterday I did a mission and I was above the front line. I then began to hear those low sounding booms. I scanned the sky for archie fire, but there was none. I then spotted shell impacts on the ground, so there was an artillery barrage going on (beautiful impacts). I went low to investigate. I didn't see any ground units involved, though. There aren't any individual ground soldiers modeled, but I find that's beside the point. Usually soldiers dug into bunkers or or retreated to rearward trenches in artillery barrages, and I don't see the need to kill my frame rate with thousands of units that will not matter to me. But there are a lot of tree stumps near the trenches . It may well be that the artillery explosions are just scripted to happen from time to time, but then this adds to immersion, not lessens it. The net effect was that I was up there, I heard explosions and first was worried (another slight kick) about AAA shells, only to realize it was the PBI (poor bloody infantry) getting pounded.

Oh, and with the patch dogfights are different (also the N17 is much more flyable). I had my first pilot kill, the enemy just started to tumble towards the ground, apparently out of control. F2 (ok, cheating) confirmed that the pilot was slumped in the cockpit while the plane was still quite ok). And burning planes look much better, too (more smoke and such), I can tell from my own plane that was shot down in flames, *again*.

Cheers
Dobby

^^ Thats exactly what I expect from RoF, Dobby. I`ve preordered it today from fspilotshop.com.

This is exactly what Neoqb concentrated on delivering with the initial release of ROF.

More content, more play features, more missions, etc., will be added as Neoqb plans.

Furthermore, these future plans have been presented here for months so forum readers could understand the process.

Work on additional content in the form of add-on aircraft, features, and ground objects has been on-going. As we learned today river vessels are being researched now for inclusion into the sim.

Again, ROF is a sim expanding process (and most readers here understand this now).

That's exactly what i was hinting at Dobby. A good simulator is not about an isolated focus on any number of characteristics, it's about a well thought out compromise between all of them. We can have the best FM/DM and AI in the world, or the best graphics up till now, or the best dynamic campaign generator, but each of these things alone won't make a decent flight sim and all of them at the highest quality will be impossible to do in a timely fashion and run on a normal PC. So the aim should be to slightly tone each feature down so as to be able to include another one.

What you say you've seen is actually pretty encouraging. In my mind, the perfect WWI flight sim would be OFF's campaigns with their wealth of historical research combined with RoF's FM/DM, AI, graphics and sounds. And since i know that this would probably be impossible to do right off the bat, i'd be willing to have a toned down version of OFF's campaign options with a slightly reduced quality of RoF graphics.

Immersion is something subjective, but for a lot of people including me it's got more to do with the underlying feel of the game world than individual aircraft accuracy in visuals and flight characteristics. I'd rather have 10 well done aircraft to choose from in a campaign with ground battles, air traffic and random factors on each mission, than two excellent models that fly around in an sky filled with the same aircraft over an empty frontline. I guess it's important to enough people, otherwise neoqb wouldn't be taking it into account. In any case, it's looking like things have started heading to a point where this sim will be a more or less complete offering in a few months, that's good.

This sim has been heading in the right directions for years, it's just that you're beginning to see, hear, and understand its design plans coming to fruition.

A number of us have been with this project from the beginning, supporting it in any way possible. Perhaps we understand it a bit more because of this, but then we've tried to convey the sim's design philosophy, business approach, and add-on process going on years now.

It's good to see some are now thinking it just might be ok afterall.

You cannot first make content and then later make the sim engine. The sim engine necessarily comes first, then content can be added to that one later.

Neoqb wants a sim with a superior engine, and we all do, because that represents progress and is about using today's computers at their full capability. So, the premise is that a kick-butt engine is wanted.

You can't have economic and programmer resources for BOTH a kick-butt engine and a huge amount of content. Well, only if you have the pocket book of Bill Gates and unlimited time. But this is a small Russian firm working on a limited budget. They have chosen to focus on their strong sides - great mathematicians and programmers and graphics people - and having the content come along the way, as their revenue stream gets up, and as USERS start making content. This has been the business model from the very start. Back when this forum didn't even exist and we were only a few people following this project.

There are obvious quality differences between the engine of this sim and that of other sims who have chosen to revamp an old engine instead of making a new one. Yes, that's OFF where the developers chose to focus on a heap of content using a revamped old engine.

These are two different approaches and you can't ask for both sims to have everything, super content and a super engine, right off the bat. The world doesn't work like this.

Some people get that but quite a few others don't. Like those that refuse to see that quality in flight modeling, dynamic modeling, damage modeling, atmospheric modeling etc. takes resources. They just want all and they want it now and by the way, the company is not allowed to enforce copy protection as they see fit either. Well, hard to discuss with such points of view....

Some users choose to say "ho haw, 50 bucks, hum, I won't pay that, maybe down the road when it is a full-fledged sim...". - Fair enough, but there might not be a "down the road" if all take that approach, that is just the simple truth. Neoqb has gambled on wowing us with the obvious potential and beauty of their initial offering, hoping that it will pay off and they get the ball rolling. Some don't want to contribute to that, you included, and that is their hallowed rights as customers. I personally think the initial offering is a LOT to get for 50 bucks, but you obviously disagree.

I sure hope so and you can also see that i was not negative for the sake of it. I think it's got more to do with they way their PR was set up. It left too many things open to assumption and the people in the know couldn't really give any important information due to NDAs and what not, simply saying "take my word for it" wasn't really going to cut it. The whole thing could be summarized as "the return of the iron curtain"

I fully agree with what you say. As i said before, it's a gamble on the developer's part. It can still be steered to a course with higher probability of success though, i said again that IL2 didn't really have more than a dozen aircraft in its initial form either.

As far as i am concerned, i would probably shut up and go buy it if they simply included a few more aircraft in the initial release (i believe they have a couple sitting around ready and waiting for release, no need to code new ones) and used a less restrictive copy protection method, maybe something like DCS Black Shark...disk in drive and an online check once a month is good enough and less dependent on random net failures.

Yes Blackdog, but that's the way it is now, so YOU have a decision to make.

You buy when it's released, or you buy it later, or you don't.

That's the facts you have to work with (there's no ifs, or ands, or buts), that's what is on the table. If you can't make an immediate decision and need more time, by all means wait.

Thinking back over these past three years, this sim has had more screenshots & videos previewed, convention appearances covered, designer blogging provided, forum responses by designers given, magazine articles previewed, interview articles written, forum responses by contributors provided, forum responses from recent players posted, and we get an assertion there's been no effort to PR ROF....hello.

No one should have a problem with consumers that want to make careful choices, but I think it's rediculous the number of times we have to listen to a few say they won't buy ROF, but then maybe yes, no they're definitely not buying it now, well, maybe it'll be ok afterall.

(definition: shuck & jive)

That's exactly my point and chosen course of action. I'm just waiting in the sidelines for now and watching how it all unfolds

It is ok, you are choosing not to support RoF and you are of course more than free to do so. Hope you won't feel bad about it if it goes under. I am just saying this to you and not casual simmers because you obviously care about simming.

as my current computer will not cut it off for ROF, I'm very happy to wait to upgrade. Then I will know what is needed for ROF, and ROF will hopefully have more content. The best of both worlds.
But for this you need a quality that seems to be sorely lacking in this neck of the woods: patience...

It's obvious Neoqb are pretty sure about their success despite all the people raising concerns. Let's take the usual suspect here as an example, connectivity requirements. In almost every sim related forum i've seen there's at least a few posts per page stating the usual "would buy if it worked offline", but we have no word on whether they intend to change it into something more manageable. Simply comparing the number of those posts to the number of the "will buy" posts gives me a rough back-of-cigarrete-pack calculation that they could up their sales by a 20% value (conservative estimate) if they changed that, but it seems they don't want to. If they feel so sure about their success, why should i worry? It's not like i have any inside information like many of you do, is it now? Nah, i'll just have to go by what their actions speak of, they don't seem worried in the least.

You make it sound like we're obliged to give our unconditional support, while in reality it's the quality of the product and the effort to appeal to a suitable audience that is the deciding factor on whether a software title floats or sinks. I will be sorry to see a promising effort go to waste, but i will also be sorry if i support a title that ends up being a promising effort and nothing more. So i just wait for a suitable indication that it will amount to something more, plus it's also a subjective judgement process (some like it as it is, some don't). In layman's terms, if RoF goes under it won't be my fault, it will be theirs for not judging correctly what the majority of the targeted gamer audience considers important features for a WWI flight sim.

As it stands now however i'm not worried about such a possibility, at least not as much as i was initially. It seems there's enough people who will overlook the negative points, people that will beta test it for the rest of us and fund the initial development process, so we can pick it up at a later date when it's something more to our liking. They get to play it first and squeeze in a few more hours, we get a better product, everyone should be happy

Short answer, spare me the guilt trip because it's not working

rise of flights website looks to be turning to the english side

just an FYI

True to some extent, and it works always counterproductive.

Dirk.

Hi all,

Been lurking a bit and have been drawn in enough to ask if someone who has the game (or knows) could go into detail about the campaign mode and the random missions since this is a selling point for me.

Thanks,
-Atheris

It is not, so far. But I'm sure the new physics and GFX engine of this game will keep you busy and excited even if just only dogfighting for a while till better patches, missions and campaigns come out. I'm definitely not sorry for buying it.

Dirk.