We are at a crossroads at YAP (and Rising Sun). TK has killed refueling in SF2. While he failed to get rid of helicopter flight, he can whenever he wants and we expect that is next. Without helicopters, the need to take on fuel, ground targets that die, collateral damage, realistic night missions, lighting, real AAA, busy carrier decks, cluttered airfields it's silly to us and an insult to a historian. (No, I wouldn't call that a My Humble Opinion.) Possibly, seeing our success, has acceded to developing helicopter flight and refueling himself...finally.

So going to SF2 is unlikely for YAP. Rising Sun is already SF2-capable but recent patches have caused unrealistic changes. So, we think our tenure as an uninvited guest in a fantasy world may be drawing to a close. We may provide models for a time because we have an awful lot as yet unrevealed that may be of interest.

Therefore we want to have a discussion with you...the players. A shopping list? Okay. An opportunity to vent the politics of the denizens of the forums? No way. Things are happening and they will effect you, your investments in entertainment and your future choices. We might be able to do something about it but only if the rewards exceed the sacrifice.

We will do it with pics, if you don't mind.



This first is cut from an ad you have seen running. Their major contribution is that they have an ad budget and they are reaching out beyond those of us here to bring in more "players". You can fly with a mouse or a finger in 5-minutes. Some will enter our world and discover or demand better things. In that respect, they are certainly more important than we are and are doing us a service.

As you can see, this sim is not the best at anything really. This is not to condemn their attempt but to point out that nobody can do it all since WE are playing with YOUR computer. And maybe we are also pointing out that what people are demanding are possibly the wrong things.

Saigon with a moonscape in the background.



Dogpatch: our standard village.



Plei Mei Special Forces Camp using trees and a special tile to subtract un-reality.



IL-2 does terrific cockpits. Jet Thunder was doing good seas. We think we use whatever tricks we have to do better villages (ie. covering the crappy ground tiles with enough trees and houses to make it look real at high speed.) Check Paris in their ad. They are doing the same thing and, like us, are very carefully posing the shot.

Thirdwire does good shadows...now.



We know more about what really goes on and it shows. For instance, that F-16 being towed by an M-35!...and not a shadow to complicate the scene with realism. You have to wonder if they were drawing a horse race if the horses would have jockeys. That's why YAP developed all we did. We know what is missing from the picture even if all the players don't.

What follows are some pictures from real life.



The above is a picture of the last bombs I dropped. That's what you see on downwind. You see a lot more on final but you see it at 450 knots and you are not looking for songbirds on the wires. You look for what you need to see and your mind blurs the rest. Game designers do not know that. They are busy drawing shoes on rudder pedals. You do not look at all your instruments. You look for flashes and those little gray zip lines made by rounds passing by. What you KNOW is that all those little tin roofs are homes and people and you just missed the target by half a football field and that was good enough. We think it is important in a war simulation to know you are killing people and breaking things. It is both exciting and horrible...but it's real.





The water pictures. The blue one is at about 8000 or 9000 feet. I am looking for Lead, not waves. The gray one was taken as a passenger (hitch-hiking home to Danang after some aviation misadventure) in a C-123 grinding up the coast at a zippy 140 knots. Even as a passenger, you see a lot more in a photograph viewed afterward than you do in flight.



And for you rivet counters. You can see detail on the belly of the T-38's in this photo but the pilot of the airplane that was out of position taking this shot did not. If you stop long enough to see them, you will again be out of position. They are pulling about 5 G's, at about 12000 feet at around 300 knots. No time to be criticizing the art work.

Bonus: This is the landing of the last flight of Deuces in Southeast Asia. They didn't do much but they were sure pretty.



YAP's angle was to provide realism through situation. The player knew we were leveling with them and that we had placed them as accurately as we could in the moment...same for Rising Sun. IL-2 leans on computer memory to provide great artwork. X-Plane touts being able to make that plastic stick and LED screen behave like an airplane...certainly they do it better than we do. But aerial warfare is becoming..."different"...now.

Now we have to ask: What do you want? Where do you want the genre to go? What experiences do you want to simulate? Do you like to look at landing gear detail? Or do you want to wander around on the ground looking at tire treads? Do you want repetition and reward? Or do you want to have something to lose if you do not perform? Do you want to fly...I mean have to control the simulation...at the level of a pilot as in YAP or do you want to roll the mouse and look out the window?

The great joy of flying as a passenger is looking around and seeing little things. The pilot is not doing that. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?

Have you thought of switching to Flaming Cliffs 2 or maybe FSX (with TacPack once released)?

For my sims, I don't know if I've met a perfect engine. The SF engine is good enough, for me. I don't know if there's any engine to switch over to that will be comparable or as easily modded.

The big thing I'd like to avoid is buttonology. Which is why I'm a fan of the SF series and probably consider myself more of a gamer than a simmer now.

I would love to see the YAP/RS team develop a 1950-1953 KOREA Air War (KAW) sim based on the current YAP2 data or other companies program. I would guess with the current compilation of whats available for RS and YAP there would be plenty of objects and such available. Only thing missing is the aircraft, carriers, etc. There are plenty of modders out there with them 'good ol' steeds, objects etc. already available or in the making. Even though I'm a die hard for air refueling in YAP and other sims, it wouldn't be a concern during this era of air warfare since it was in its infancy with the KB-29 and only used in some ferry operations....I think? Hot pit refueling and weapon reload would be a great part/addition to YAP and this era of air combat simming. Anyway.....maybee easier said than done.

Thanks a million for the great efforts & accomplishments of the YAP/RS team..........BRAVO!

I hope the series (?) continues

Vr NIELS

I've always been interested in warships, and by extension, naval aviation. If carriers are involved, well, I think the environment should merit their inclusion. Sufficient escorts that actually 'escort' would be nice, but some form of meaningful flight deck operations is a must.

I really like the Vietnam missions I flew in YAP1. Great attention to detail and storytelling, the immersion is a lot of what I look for in a sim.

But in the end, it was the Thirdwire engine that killed it for me, just couldn't deal with the flight model (or what there is of it)- like CFS3 and MS FS, feels like I'm driving a monitor around the sky.
MiG Alley, Il-2, Black Shark and RoF all make me feel like I'm part of the plane, and that creates its own immersion.

I'm sorry that you didn't develop Rising Sun for modded Il-2, I'd buy that in a heartbeat.

There's still life in Falcon, see BMS. If there was any possibility of converting the campaign engine to a missing scenario, such as Korean War, or even an alternate universe conflict (F-20s vs Mig 28s!), that'd be a winner.

I also vote for a Korean war sim. It would have the best of everything. Carrier ops. High performance piston aircraft and jets.

As for the engine - I want as much realism as possible. Hell - if a sim could model walking up to the aircraft getting in and buckling up I'd take it.

What engine gives that? I have no idea.

I'm a big fan of the A-6's and that era of Naval Aviation having worked on them. Really enjoy carrier ops, but I would likely buy anything you built for its detailed storyline


What about the engine Bohemia is using for their new helicopter sim (Take on Helicopters)? Maybe the world isn't big enough in their model though.

I would die (rethorical) for a Vietnam era helicopter sim/modification. I much liked the helicopter missions in YAP. Though, I don`t know a engine were we have many (collidable) trees and forests. Yes, BI (Arma, ToH) have a very capable/moddable engine but it lacks proper physics. ToH could not convince me yet. 777 studios engine (Digital Nature?) have great physics and ground detail and trees are good. I guess if they would minimize terrain (for a helicopter game/sim) more objects are possible then, i.e. for human models.
Though, I think YAP/RS crew need a basic, finished game/sim to modify.

From my own personal view having played roughly 40 or so missions in Yap 2 so far,I have found every mission immersive and unique in its own way whether flying from a carrier from land or flying a helicopter,I hope that in any future releases from the YAP team this would continue.I think from my own point of view that the individual missions are actual combat pilots stories told through YAP sets it apart from many flight sims I have played,for me anyway its not about grapical qualities its about realism,maybe better flight models are needed but I would'nt like to choose just one that brings the realism out,also one that I have'nt got to spend 1,000's buying a new P.C.
It would be nice to see something from the Korean War as has already been mentioned but the Vietnam War must still have more to tell.But I think the pilots personal stories must be told.

I will buy almost any flight sim.... Just make it awesome and not an arcade shooter then Iam good.

wondering why the team couldn't go cross platform meaning not every mission is a shooter/bomb mission you might be able to do part with MS flight sim engine FSX, FS-9 CFS 2&3 (i dont know if you have ever messed with CFS2 but other then guided missile flight it does a great job still for a ten year old game, and look at what the "OFF" guys did with CFS3), some with the SF engine and other sims that i don't own so couldn't comment on

Reading your initial post, I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Are you looking for alternate sim suggestions to base a future YAP?
While not a flight sim, have you guys considered the ARMA2 / upcoming ARMA3 engine? I suppose players may demand more realistic flight models, but it seems ARMA has potential to add any activity found in a war setting. I hear it's very mod friendly, which is a plus.

Are you asking what I want in a flight sim?
I look for immersion, but not so much in the technical side of flight (I prefer the simplified approach of SF2 over the completely realistic switch flippin flight sims of DCS). I want to feel I'm a part of something. I want my actions to affect the game world. I want to care about my AI friendlies and fear AI enemies. I want things to happen whether I make it to my objective or not. I want to see something new every time I fly the same mission.
And, I'm a fan of the YAP design of specific missions. I like having missions, with back stories that add to the immersion, knowing what you're doing and why. The fact that they are real pilots' stories add to that, but are not as important to me as they are to your design team. Yet I still admire your mission to "keep it real".
These aren't demands. This is what I look for in a flight sim. A generalized "ideal" sim.

I'm not sure if any of that helps. And note, I am not a current customer of YAP. I was hoping to see it ported to the SF2 engine and disappointed to see that's not happening. From what I've seen, you guys are doing great work and I hope you can continue in whatever way you decide best.

What about a korean war senario using the rise of flight engine?

Here Here with Dr Meltdown

NIELS

We decided to skip SF2/SF2V because Thirdwire has (finally) designed a cohesive marketing plan. They wish to sell their games "as is" and sell additional objects for extra money. For them to get $5 for an A-4, they cannot have YAP lurking around with considerably better models and textures for considerably less money. (We can put the entire Nimitz Class into the game in a week's time, accurately differentiated, highly detailed with deck clutter and any array of aircraft for less than anyone else. Better and cheaper is not what you want lurking around if you are trying to sell DLC models.)

We have always been a pain in their a**, devising solutions said to be impossible because we had to. One example is figuring out how to drop something and have it appear on the ground. We wanted to let a player see what it was like to deliver cargo under fire to Khe Sanh via a LAPES operation in a C-130. If we didn't figure it out, it was not going to happen.

Thus, they have hard coded things previously open for modification. The engine allowed modification to allow the players to do what really happened instead of the fantasy that is presented in all their iterations. (And many of the needed pieces were resident in the game to begin with in various levels of detail.)

Because of these developments, we have another couple of ideas...influenced by your statements.

Hi Zerocinco
For me YAP and Rising Sun have always been about the stories but also the new toys to add to my existing installs. If you feel that the next YAP will have to move away from the SF1 or 2 engine so be it, you will have left a lot of good missions. If Rising Sun ends now or after a one or two more sets I will probably feel a bit let down and disappointed by your decision, I bought into the fact we would have stories covering the whole war.
I know from experience IL2 is not for the lightweight simmer in me. As for any other games not sure if there is enough in them to want me to buy it just to run your stories, because if they had, I would have probably bought them by now.
While SF has its faults it also has so many toys and campaigns from 1914 to 2030 and beyond to try. And one of the things I am hoping for in the new SF2NA is that in campaigns we will have carriers with escorts around them, and a few new goodies on top of that. So for those reasons I will probably not move to a new sim.
Those are just my thoughts; you are the one putting your time and money into it, so ultimately it’s your decision.

Cheers
Steve
Snapper 21

Zerocino. One final thought. I promise.

If you were interested in a Korean war senario, and i don't know that you are, perhaps you could make an approach to 1c to use the Cliffs of Dover engine.

Ok - I hear a lot of you smothering laughs out there, but hear me out.

The CLoD engine is buggy as hell. But I think it could be fixed sometime in the near future and I think some of the fundamentals of that engine are good. The lighting is well done. The physics are there.

Also - A couple of years back Ilya of 1c posted a whole bunch of wonderful work in progress screens of Korean war aircraft he was working on. From memory there was a Mig-15, a skyraider, a F-51 and twin mustang. Those models have now been shelved while Ilya tries to fix Clod and put out a new sim based on the battle of Moscow.

Perhaps you could cut a deal. I would think 1c would be very keen to have others show interest in the CloD engine at the moment, let's face it, his game is at a low ebb. But you would have leverage at this moment to drive a hard bargain.

Perhaps as part of that deal you could take over Ilya's korean war models. It would give you a running start.

As I say, just a thought.

P.s. : I'd love to see more of your pics from Vietnam.

I have to call BS on this.

The SF2 series is almost as open to modding as the original SF1/WoX series. The only changes TK has made to intentionally interfere with the ability to mod the game engine are locking down the lods in the CAT files and restricting/locking some of the environmental variables. The lod lockdown has almost no impact on modding, but slows down pirates who were reverse engineering and stealing his 3d models. People were complaining excessively about the sorting issues with clouds... so he made it so clouds can't be low enough to interact with terrain. The new fade system provides two functions: help minimize sorting issues and lower the load on the cpu to support more detailed terrain (which is coming up in the next release). Since the fade system destroys the immersion of the game, TK even put in a switch to disable the new code and use the old code everyone used to complain about due to the sorting issues. So, pick your poison.

The $5 packages from Third Wire do not affect the mods in any way shape of form. TK's DLCs are merely ways to easily and cheaply upgrade content he already had in the game as non-flyables to try make some quick cash in rough economic times. Completely free mod aircraft with more detail and better textures have been and continue to be released. So how has TK made the game to only be played "as is" or even competed in any way shape or form with YAP's business model? The last time I checked, none of the DLCs released flew in Vietnam or WW2.

YAP exploited bugs in the game engine to add functionality that was not intended or supported such as refueling. Modders were finding/exploiting bugs long before YAP and continue to do so to this day. In fact, like most of the content in YAP1, most of the bugs that allowed the extra features in YAP were discovered and published by the SF community. Why would Third Wire feel that finding bugs and exploiting them to improve gameplay is being a "pain in their a**"? The fact that later iterations of the game would squash bugs like a jet engine with negative fuel flow is a sign that the realism of the game engine is improving, not a conspiracy against hacks of the original code. Of course, such a change is a "pain in their a**" for someone whose business model is based on offering unique "features" that exploited the squashed bugs.

The "stories" the SF engine was designed to tell were ones involving 60's jets having close-in air-to-air combat and basic air-to-ground strikes, not cargo, recon, or helo sorties. TK isn't going to restrict development of his game engine to support YAP's business plan. The fact that SF2 is in a state of continuous change does make it a poor choice for YAP. The SF2 series is so much better than SF1/WoX series that the main reason for anyone to go back to the original series in terms of functionality is for multiplayer. As the number of people who enjoyed SFP1/WoX multiplayer never numbered more than 20 at any one time, that is not a very large market. YAP would seem to be in a precarious situation: most people don't like and won't continue to play the obsolete SF1/WoX series no matter how good your models look. At the same time, YAP gimmicks won't migrate to SF2 very well if at all.

If you want an engine whose code base is stable and will let you override/script just about anything you want, MS FSX is the place to be. As for me, I fly the SF2 series. I am more than capable of researching and writing the missions I want to fly. I just can't provide 3d models. So, my only use for having YAP/YAP2 installed is to drag over the things I wanted in the first place: the 3d models. So that leaves open the idea that YAP should be providing 3d content with some missions that let you try them out in a historically correct way... which is all YAP ever really did anyway aside from throwing in some gimmicks to cover some missions the game engine was never designed to support. Its not like most of the missions relied on the gimmicks anyway. The refueling gimmick is cute, but I never found that it made the "story" any more realistic, educational, or entertaining. Of course, if you had written all your missions within the intended limits of the game, the only thing that would have been broken in the SF2 series would be some environmental parameters such as cloud altitude. Aside from the scaled down terrain (1nm =1km) and the inability to perform aerial refueling, what else is inherently "fantasy" in the game engine? The flight models are open to editing and can be made quite realistic. The stock ones are tailored to TK's target market, which is the same crowd that enjoyed Jane's Figthers Anthology, not the hard core Falcon 4 crowd.