I just saw this link in a discussion over at the Il-2 Battle of Stalingrad forums and thought it was really poignant:

http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB3w/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9420&p=59528#p59528

It really puts into perspective all of the uninformed vitriol I've been reading on these forums recently:

"Flight sim developers are just trying to gouge us with their nickel and diming business models."

"I want everything, but I'm not paying $50. That's outrageous."

"I'm not buying if it hasn't got a cutting edge graphics engine, dynamic campaign, dedicated servers, historically accurate flight model and clickable cockpit."

It seems abundantly clear that our hobby - a hobby that's kept me entertained for over 30 of my 41 years is close to being done and dusted. Eagle Dynamics and 777 seem like pretty much our last hope, but there are still far too many of us that are taking the "I demand features A, B, C all the way through to Z, but I'm not buying until it goes on sale for less than $20" attitude.

I don't expect this post to have much of an impact, but I do hope it inspires some people to take a more considered view of where our hobby is really at and what the stakes are. If we genuinely care about this pastime, we need to be supporting it. I, for one, don't want to see this genre vanish forever.

Just my 2 cents.

Completely agree Pizzicato and while I think certain events like the state of Cliffs of Dover on release day were completely unacceptable, I also have no problem paying $80 or more for a flight sim that delivers what it promises.

I like the sentiment there, but personally I'm not going to keep forking over money to companies who make sims I don't want to play. (Eagle Dynamics for example) Not going to buy everything they release just to support them on the off chance one day they'll make something that appeals more to me.

Similar to what PanzerMeyer said, if someone releases a flight sim that is actually enjoyable for me to play, I'll happily pay top dollar for it, and be more likely to purchase expansions, DLC etc. 777 got a lot of my money because Rise of Flight is the best thing going when it comes to flight sims at the moment. If IL2: BoS is the same way, they can expect a good bit more of my money in the future. If it turns out more like CLOD, they shouldn't expect ANY of it.

I'm probably a bit more picky in what sims I like to play than most people here though. In my opinion flight sim developers became amazing at the technical aspects of the sims, but lacked the creativity for making them fun to play.

Yep. I 100% agree. I'm absolutely NOT advocating forking over money for substandard products. I guess I'm more hoping that:

1. People will give new sims (and their developers) the benefit of the doubt until their new product is released.

2. People will consider the ridiculously limited budgets that flight sim developers work with before castigating them for "missing" features, having the temerity to charge $50 - $90 for a new sim and/or charging for additional content.

I totally agree, however, that people should only spend money on products that have value to them.

I don't much care when I see 777 waste a couple months developing a revamped leaderboard system while ignoring the things that actually make the game unenjoyable to both simmers and newcomers.

I think DCS is fine because it's so complex and convoluted that people will try it just for that, but if you want to talk about making flight sims more accessible to other people or the "call of duty crowd" as many around here like to put it, how about adding things like quick start to career modes so you can skip the boring 15 minutes of flying and get straight to the 5 minutes of excitement? Orrr maybe you add in integrated controller support so people don't have to own 300$ in flight sim gear to enjoy your game? But nobody seems interested in doing that so far, maybe with BOS they will figure it out but I doubt it still.

But I'd happily pay 100$ for any flight sim if they put in a real dynamic campaign and program some AI that has some variety and smarts to it, people regularly say it's impossible but a number of games say otherwise.

Stop it here. I do not want to talk about how companies are having a walk to the dark side, BUT:


I am not a new guy to flight sims, i have played them since FS2 with almost all that followed.
When you bought a flight sim or any simulation back in the early 90ies, does anyone remember what that was like ? I mean, apart from - compared to today - lacking high-end graphics ?

There was usually a story, the sim came with a big printed colourful manual, sometimes providing good information on the theme be it technical, historical or geographical details, on the background or theater of operations the simulation dealt with.
Maybe even the flying itself was explained, with examples, lessons, and good theoretical background, as small as it may have been.

And it was a somehow complete experience -
What i mean with that is that there were several planes, there was a big theater of operations, and it often covered a whole war, from the beginning to the end.

What do you get now ?
One plane or helo, highly sophisticated ok.
But you demand all the knowledge YOU already have after 30 years of virtual flying, from a 17-year-old newcomer, who has no idea of flying, or let alone historical background, and it is all NOT explained anywhere in a manual.
Without all that you get a simulation where you can fly say up to 4 planes, within a few months of history, geographically downsized to the channel with the Cliffs of Dover, or the battle of Stalingrad alone ?


Buffs like me still buy that, because i am also interested in history and technical details and get it as 'real' as possible. But i have had my fair share of 'general' flight sims for decades learning the ropes, allowing me to learn and get to the details, not being forced to program an F-16's computer before i can even start the engines, again taking 15 minutes with checks and warm-up, at the age of 15.

What about new guys and girls, that enter this market for the first time.
Do you really think some newcomer liking to sniff a bit and having no idea at all about history and technical details will buy something DCS Black Shark ? Some nerds will of course. Is that your targeted customer ?


It is of course the new attitude of getting it all now, and not paying much for it. But this is what industry now also demands, everywhere.

So who do think is to blame for that ?
The same industry that now bemoans sinking income. You gave them instant-'apps' and iTunes, WII, XBox and PS/x, you made downloadable games and the new browser games, demand being always-online while that demands paying a hefty sum to the telecom greeds, you installed DRMs that are more stalinist than the wildest soviet dreams have been. So now live with it or change, and goddam stop whining.

Cheers.

Quite an old thread linked to in the first post - but that says it all really - there is little to no money to made from PC flight sims

Thirdwire are being funded now by a cut down very successful mobile game and Eagle Dynamics (correct me if wrong) seems to get funded by contracts for real simulators.

I think the bottom line is any one thinking they can demand this that or the other is out of luck - you have to pay a lot of money for a niche product and either lump it - or go without. (or start your own flight sim business )

On the subject of youngsters getting into these games - well they start with Ace Combat, and if they have an interest might move on Strike Fighters (Falcon 1 level) for example. When I started learning the Guitar I didn't start with Santana then start moaning that it was too difficult!

Falcon 4 AF had a 700 page manual that was more of a quick start guide - you still needed to spend years learning. If you are not prepared to put the time into learn whats required then its simply not for you and you should stick with Ace combat. Most of the sims do already have scalability in settings - what else can you do......................

The problem really was that the hardcore simmers got their wish--the devs concentrated on the realism of the planes. What they failed to realize is that meant less time would be spent on the rest of the product so we get these "narrow" sims that model certain things in exacting detail but then just breeze over or leave out the other things.
Old sims were "broad" but "shallow". Now they're "narrow" and "deep"...so if you like the thing in that narrow focus, it's very deep and you're thrilled. If learning the startup procedures and switchology of a cockpit is just the means to an end for you, ie to fly your plane and fight missions, you may not care how deep that part is and instead dwell on the lack of attention to other areas.

Every time one of these DCS diehards bemoans how HORRIBLE it is that ED is WASTING their time on FC3, I just want to shove their faces into a business and economics textbook. Unless they want to spend $1000 for a sim, there aren't enough of them to pay the bills. The insistence that if it's not A-10C level it's just "air quake" (their favorite epithet that proves not their superiority but rather their stupidity) is what is killing our hobby.

Thirdwire's stuff is SIMPLER than Flaming Cliffs by a good amount, and THAT is having sales problems! With ONE programmer! Granted he could use some serious help with marketing his stuff, TW has the market penetration of a paper knife into a steel drum, but really none of these sims have it much better.

The simming faithful know who and what the players are (even if they don't buy most of it), but the rest of the gaming world doesn't.



Here's another issue: I constantly see simmers saying "I don't go for ROF because I don't care for WWI, only jets" or "I have no interest in DCS because I hate button-pushing, I stick with Il-2 and CloD". When was the last time you saw people in other forums saying "I love CoD, but I can't stand modern guns, so I stick with CoD 1, 2, and WaW" or "I have zero interest in an RTS unless it's about the N African theater in WWII" or "I love racing, but only open-wheeled cars that raced worldwide in the 1970s"?

Flight simmers seem to think it perfectly natural that they not only are in a niche but a niche of a niche and spend all their days ONLY flying Spits and 109s or ONLY flying an A-10.

Again, no one is telling you "you HAVE to like and buy everything". What you ARE being told is "if someone who loves sim X so much isn't going to buy sim Y, which is very similar but a different era of air combat, why would you think either sim is going to survive?" YOU are the target audience. If it doesn't appeal to YOU, why would it appeal to anyone else? I'm sure some DCS supporters wouldn't mind if ROF and Il-2 vanished and all the developers just made DCS-type stuff, and some Il-2 lovers wouldn't mind if DCS collapsed and ED switched to making WWII sims, but if the entire market became JUST what THEY wanted and ignored what everyone else wanted, what kind of market is that?

Oh, and don't say "but sim X and Y are NOT very similar!!" and then list a bunch of minor little things that, contrary to your protestations, ARE minor. If two sims are attempting to model flight, damage, combat, and other aspects of the air war as realistically as possible, even if one is WWI and one is WWIII, that makes them similar when it comes to a marketing standpoint.




The Jedi Master

Jedi makes a good point about older sims being "wider and more shallow" and new sims often being more "narrow and deep". I could never understand when IL_2 cma e out how people could get SO UPSET that the colour and spacing of the wind rivets was not up to spec or such things as that. My favourite sim of all time was EAW. I never even bought Cliffs of Dover because of all teh horror stories...I have ZERO desire to have to memorize the startup procedure for a BF109 or Tempest or , God forbid, my favourite plane , the Mosquito. "Press X to start" is fine for me

one thing that's particularly troubling is that some of the things that have ballooned the costs of flight sim production are the least important in terms of gameplay. textures, terrain, licensing fees...

while I really like the DCS stuff, FC and BS2 in particular, the gameplay depth is lacking sometimes, mainly in the single player arena.

while not every sim can have Falcon 4.0 level active campaigns, there is much room for improvement.

One old sim I really thought had a cool campaign was Eidos' JSF - basically you fight a limited war.. pick targets & missions to get to the final objective. Simple, fun.

Immersion is not just about rivet counting and cloud modeling.

Heh! I was actually thinking about JSF when I was out walking yesterday. The was reminiscing about my personal history with flight sims and remembered JSF as the only well-regarded flight sim I never got around to playing. Still not sure why I missed out on that one.

In terms of Jedi's comments, I'm very much in agreement. I do, however, find myself in a slightly weird space in terms of the "narrow and deep" versus "broad and shallow discussion".

I've always gravitated towards the more hardcore side of the hobby. The contemporary sims I've spent the most time with have been Falcon 4.0 and Black Shark 2. I used to think that this was down to the "switchology" and realism, but I actually now think it was more a product of immersion. Falcon 4.0's campaign did a wonderful job of making me feel like I was part of a much larger, more dynamic and unpredictable war. Black Shark's "Deployment" campaign had character, personality, atmosphere, narrative and, quite frankly, gameplay which made it a fantastically immersive experience. This kind of brought home the point that the realism and switch-flipping of Black Shark was really only the entry point to the real experience, i.e. immersion in a compelling world.

I thought that DCS: A-10 was going to be my Holy Grail. I love the aircraft in real life and I was a huge fan of the Black Shark, but the A-10's campaign was painfully repetitive, dull and unengaging. Without any narrative hook (note: narrative, not story) to immerse me into a compelling world, the whole experience felt dry and lifeless to me.

To Jedi's point, much of this is driven by the frankly ridiculous and ultimately counterproductive "perfection or nothing" attitude of this community's most vocal members. I was looking at the excellent Battle of Stalingrad pre-Alpha Me-109 sound test video on Youtube the other day. The audio was simply fantastic - by far the best I've ever heard in a sim - and yet one of the first comments was "There were 7 different variants of the Me-109 in WWII, but none of them sounded like this. Clearly, you've only ever heard a replica aircraft. Check your facts and try again".

Seriously.

With all of this in mind, I'm quietly optimistic about Il-2: BoS. Loft, the project's senior producer, has said that they can only really afford to focus on one aspect of the sim and the aspect that they've chosen is "immersion". I guess that can be interpreted a number of ways and their short schedule suggests that I/we probably shouldn't expect much more than what RoF already delivers, but I'm really hopeful that 777 can deliver an experience that has some soul, spirit and character as opposed to simply being a dry, technically-focused training simulator.

Fingers crossed...

I'm still hoping for an updated version of Jane's WWII Fighters complete with the inset target view camera.

Seriously.

I agree with Skycat in that I'd love to have options like target view camera boxes available. That sort of thing takes me back to the day when processor speeds were so slow that that was the only way to actually see a target. I still remember F-19 with great fondness because of features like that. And I'd pay a considerable amount of money to be able to run Jane's F-15 on my present system. In its time F-15 was the absolute bomb!

I absolutely hate it when people quote huge texts like this to make a simple statement, but I'm going to do it anyway. This is one of the best posts I've ever read on SimHQ. Thank you for taking the time to write this, Jedi Master.

In particular, your comparison of aviation simmers compared to racing simmers I thought was brilliant.

The consistent thread between these posts seems to be the loss of gameplay/immersion at the expense of feature-creep in flight sims. I hope somebody that has the means to make a difference is listening and taking notes.

I'm pretty sure my interest in flight sims has been on a steady downturn since the closure of Microprose.

Yeah I did play IL2 and a few others since but none have captured that feeling I had back in the 80's and 90's.
That was my heyday back then and it's never coming back.

Similar threads have poped up from time to time but this one is somehow different. Maybe that's just because I completely agree with the posts that have preceded this one. I don't have much to add for risk of dumbing it down. But I fully agree with the comments about narrative and immersion. The sims I have loved most are those that gave me that really satisfied feeling after I landed. That feeling may have been from a nice windy rooftop landing in xplane, shooting down one of the mad Russians in RoF multiplayer or fighting off the SA-10s and watching a stick of 12 bombs take out a runway in Falcon. But none of those things would have mattered on landing had there not been a sense of mission on my part. In my opinion no sim has come close to Falcon in this regard. I've practically stopped playing everything else. I did hop into the P-51 last night in a populated server. I had a marvelous time plinking anything killable with machine guns while the jets threw sticks at each other above me. Why this was meaningful I don't know. I wasn't playing with or against any humans. But somehow knowing humans were there made it special.

If we are talking about pricing, I agree that our sims are cheap! I paid �20 to get a copy of Falcon 4.0 Squadron Edition binder (plus a few other sims) shipped to me from the USA, but BMS is free and I don't even want to count how many hours I spend playing this sim. I paid for DCS A10C when it was in Beta 2 or Beta 3, and have played that for a good 2+ years as well. Because of these sims, I have a TM WH, Saitek rudders, a touchscreen monitor, and a TIR 5. I've also upgraded my PC with two SSDs and a 6970 GPU. The cost of the sim itself is miniscule compared to the hardward that is running it!

Steel Beasts is a very expensive sim at $100, but if I were into tank battles, this $100 is good for at least 4 years of playing which makes it very good value.

Just like a few people, I thought DCS A10C was going to be The End for me --- I even ignored BMS for a good while after its release. However, I have slowly come to realize that what I want (immersion) isn't going to be in DCS. Pretty graphics, correct rivet spacing, correct modelling of aircraft systems, and a kick-ass gun are all fine and dandy, but there was still a void that DCS could not fill very well. I find it funny that a very old sim with outdated graphics can provide better immersion, even when we do not even bother with aircraft startup or shutdown. The first few flights we had in BMS, with jets all over the place doing their own thing, I remember one time we had a flight of F-15s go past us (they were RTB) and one of the guys said "you don't see that in DCS!"

Once I get the startup sequence done, once I know how to work the controls and dish out hurt, once I know a bit of tactics on how to fight, I look out to the "bigger world" for my immersion. I want to be a fighter pilot that does combat with the enemy. I want to put aside being a family man, being a father of two kids, and pretend to be the only hope to stopping fighters launching out of an enemy airbase, the ingress route well defended by both air and ground targets. DCS can do this, but struggles to do so. BMS is simply chuckling in the corner leaving me wondering what surprises it has up its sleeve.

While I am happy to pay ED for its work with DCS A10C and BS2, I see no obligation on my part to pay for its work with CA or P51 simply to ensure ED stays afloat. It is the job of the company to see the market and fill the need; simply putting out products isn't the same thing. A lot of people say that ED is releasing stuff with a bigger picture in mind, but it's no fun waiting when all you have are 4 or 5 different sections of the puzzle, none of which connect with each other (ie, P-51, A10C, BS2). Had they concentrated more on one section of the puzzle and provided ups with 4 or 5 sections that provided a clearer picture or a bigger section of the puzzle, it would be more fun playing with toys that actually interact with each other.


As for Jedi's post, I must say I am one of those guys he describes. I've never touched IL2 and I only know of RoF because they have a free demo (that I've yet to crack open!). However, all I require from any developer is immersion. Make me believe that I am flying the real aircraft -- so proper switchology is important. I'd like to imagine that if I were somehow fortunate enough to be put in the real cockpit of that aircraft, I could start it up and fly it. After that, make me believe that I am flying in a real world. My fanboi-ism of BMS is because of this. The theatre is alive. Aircraft are stationed at different airbases and if I wander into their territory, I am in for trouble. Airbases also launch patrol aircraft, and I just might stumble onto one of them in my ingress, causing me to abort my mission, drop my A-G ordnance, and fight for my survival (or try to run away). If they have that, I'm willing to fork over my cash. After I post this message, I will continue trying RoF to see if it has what I am looking for. If it does, that's going to be at least two copies sold.

Pitch-perfect engine sounds, proper rivet spacing, and all the other "I know this is true and you've not done it so your attempt at realism is FAIL" complaints are just immature.

I just read my above post and even I got lost.

Let me just put my point in fewer words:
1. Whether the market is viable or not, whether the dev is losing or making money is not the fault of the consumer. If there is no money, then don't do it. If we lose flight sims because of that, I guess that's how things go.

2. "If you build it, they will come." Once a group had decided they are going to make a flight sim, it is their obligation to set out their target audience and define their goals. Are they making a "sim" for consoles? Are they making one for PC? Will it cater to hardcore simmers? Once that is done, they need to make it the best they can make it. Simply hoping to attract customers by releasing one bit of the final product and promising "the rest" for later may work, but continued success is hinging on proper delivery of "the rest".

3. I do agree that some posters are simply trolls. If engine sounds do not match, it's fine to say so, but it's even better when you provide sources or examples to help the devs.

4. While I agree that pricing on sims are ridiculously cheap (compared to other AAA titles with less gameplay hours), devs still have to justify the cost of their product. If someone were to bring out BMS with a modern graphics engine (even more eye candy or visual immersion), keep or tweak the dynamic campaign (world immersion), provide different theatres (Korea, Balkans, Israel, etc.), stable MP, and the possibility to add in other aircraft (F-18, for example), I'd be happy to put down $100. Or $200 so my son can play with me.

What's interesting in the link in the OP's post (if you haven't clicked it, you should) is what TK says about the profit/feasibility of developing additions to the Strike Fighters franchise. The gist is that even though SF:NA outsold all others by a significant margin it lost money because it was so much more expensive to develop. I think the quote was that an SF:NA aircraft was 4x more expensive to develop compared to SF1.

We're running into the problem where we have the hardware capability and the expertise to develop very high quality simulations, with exceptional graphics as well, but to actually create that software is so expensive that it's not profitable to do. Again, the post by TK really explains the dilemma of what is possible, what we want, and what is feasible given a realistic budget.

Honestly, the future does not look promising. I remain hopeful, but on the other hand I've started to come to the acceptance that BMS Falcon is likely to be the highlight of my simming life.

I would love to see something like Janes Fighters Anthology, but with updated graphics. Sure, it wasn't very hardcore, but it had some hints to realism. Additionally, for being static campaigns, I thought they were top notch with some great variety. I would love to get into the DCS games, because they model aircraft I love, but I just don't have the time for the ultra-realism anymore.