No problem, JayPee.
There's more, in making a game, than just meeting deadlines or dishing out content.
Specially when you're just a person and not a software house.

All in all I really think these are good news.

Thanks komemiute! Good to hear he still want to make a 90s style combat simulation. Though I have little fate in a successfully kickstarter campaign if he make one eventually.

What do you ppl mean by 90ies style? What is so specific about it?

Since no one have answered yet I will try to answer with my worse english. For me the charm of the 90 sims is:
- I´m a pilot within a storyline (i.e.Strike Commander) and/or I´m part of a strategic game where my actions have influence and are part of the whole thing (i.e. Falcon) with a persistent world
- a more appealing menue "screen" with i.e. a army/airforce base (Janes Apache/Apache Longbow) with different rooms, a weapon loadout screen with youre craft in the background and then you can equip youre weapons
In Gunship2000 you would be welcomed with the words: "Welcome back [youre name], we need you!".
- the world around you would be active (i.e. other flights would do their task and so on)(and that automatically because YOU are only a part of an active/persistent world)

Nowadays the sims are more like a technical demonstrations without a soul.
Was Flexman original planed with CH was that you were part of a strategic game. Youre actions would have had influence on the local population(for example). It´s like a game in a game. And Falcon again as an example: It´s a flight sim within a tactical game. Another example would be Enemy Engaged Apache vs. Hokum.
Hopefully you understand what I wanted to describe.

I do, thanks for the explanation.

I'd love to give a take to to what the nineties meant for me in the simulation world...

Most of the simulations born in the early '90 where characterised by the idea of immersion.
It HAD to be so as computational power was lacking in many fronts.
Only few lucky PC owners had both a Sound Card and proper HOTAS.
Some lacked even a colour monitor.

Some of the best Simulations simply HAD to have more than just precise simulation routines.
That came in the form of thick manuals, comprehensive guides and fast reference cards.
Some of the best Dynamix products even had a good chuck of history written up in the manual in a pretty engaging way. (I speak for myself as I found so much interest in reading about the second world war in Europe with Aces over Europe or the bits and pieces of global politics in Falcon 3.0 manual...)

But most of everything was as EagleEYe writes.
Every menu was a condensed experience. Maybe not all of them were easy to navigate.
As an italian boy of 14 the main screen of Falcon 3.0 proved to be a match. It took me hours to finally reach the first campaign mission... :P

The main point was to give the player the believable impression of presence in the simulated world.
Again Falcon 3.0 I think represent the perfect example.

Or Strike Eagle III.

Or any of the Dynamix products. (Red Baron and any of the Aces Over... series)

One more notable example as well is the imperfect but Oh so Cool Rowan - Operation Overlord.
If you died as a pilot you would have NOT to repeat the mission... You would step into the Flying-suit of the next green recruit of the Squadron. But you had a limited number of tries. I always found that to give a sense of purpose in each flight. It really gave me some thoughts.

Simulation per se were... optimistic, but with such a container it was enough.
You stared the suspense of disbelief way before pressing the "Fly" button.

Even the (by now) archaic F19 Stealth Fighter...
Even if you where in this impressive futuristic hardware, and you knew you were invisible, watching the passive radar sensor rising slowly while skimming russian terrain looking for your photographic target was... Well.
It really was tense, and after the mission the sense of relief was truly physical.

The late '90ies saw the rise of the graphic cards. From an user point of view it was hair-rising to say the least.
Many different producers, roughly no standards and the most different solutions meant that it was hard to make the "right" choice.
Nevertheless GPU meant that more power could be allotted to simulations rather than graphics.
So with more sophisticated products you had more and more systems to handle, and networking and study reached new peaks.

And maybe flight sim communities started feeling a bit pampered and became somewhat picky and poshy.
But that's beyond the scope of this post.

That's because only Russians are still making them. Roberts said he doesn't plan for a strike commander sequel, that was a bummer. So unlike space sims, there's no AAA dev studio to do a proper "Western" flight sim anymore. Only mods and tiny groups like Combat Helo or Seven-g.

Oh that`s really sad that no SC sequel is planed...
I find that Rise of Flight`s Career Mode (with it`s newspaper news from the front, squadron members dying and new one would arrive, encountering an ace and so on) is a piece of what we had back then(i.e. Red Baron 2).

I removed the CH site from my bookmarks hoping I could come back to it a couple months later and see some good updates...four months later and not a single update?

I just want a damn Apache sim!

Maybe there is hope ,I do not know what it is, and whether it will be released, but I prefer to wait for it, than at ch

I believe that's just Enemy Engaged Comanche vs Hokum with a payware apache cockpit installed. I think the cockpit is like 28$ or something, I got hyped about a similar video and bought EECH and was furious when I realized the cockpit seen in the video was some ridiculous 30$ thing I had to buy.

Ok, after reading this whole thread, I STILL have no clue where Combat Helo stands. Maybe it's the several different languages being translated here, but I'm completely lost.

Are we going to see a dedicated AH-64 simulator in the near future or not? Is it still being worked on?

And that isn't Aeyes' payware pit in EECH by the way (I do have it, and it's good, but this is a different animal)...it's some mystery EECH modder that's been posting vids of his own mods. Still kind of a mystery in the EECH boards.

That's not because the people here post vague information. That's because Flex' info is vague, incomplete, and "subject to change". IOW: I wouldn't get my hopes up anymore.

And ED making a 100% accurate DCS: AH-64D blk 2/AH-64E isn't going to happen either because of their contracts with the defense industry/governments. (Read ED forums for official confirmation on that.)

Still want to say thank you to those who reported the updates here!

You've summarized my feelings very well! And I would say, most of really 'touching' sims were developed from Microprose in the 80's...I think the key of their success was that they had all dynamic, generated campaigns, some even role-playing elements - concerning the crew quality.

Also the cold war theme is a perfect fit for simulations...ranging from (hidden)reconnaissance/spy missions to full-blown war situations.

For this reason, I've started my own Project and taking Microprose's RedStormRising as a guidance.

FWIW, I think that Richard selling his rights to DCS would be the quickest way for CH to fly into sim obscurity. DCS is sure not going to release any mod that has a decent non-scripted campaign like Jane's Longbow did. That would too radically conflict with their marketing plan and all mods released to date.

glad to see its still alive n kicking. Awesome pics of the hellfire.

Yay. Great work so far. Can't wait.

new blog post up

http://combathelo.blogspot.com/

Uploaded a couple of days ago