Given that 1C had to have known what Team Fusion had already achieved with Cliffs of Dover, why on earth did they choose to go with an engine they had to know was hugely inferior and incapable of giving sufficient functionality? What was the rationale behind such an incomprehensible decision?

I would imagine money was the rationale. Development costs will have wanted to be kept to a minimum so an already available engine along with the development team who made it was a no-brainer for 1C.

SD

also had they used the cliffs engine it would have placed an obligation on them to continue support for cliffs too.

1c just has to wait until BoS finally has failed, then they could divide, lets say 50.000$, between the TF Members to buy their developement work.
The real IL2 successor could then rise from the ashes with BoM and other, already started, maps.
With TF as freelancer support (with access to the source code) the sky would be the limit.
just dreaming.

But I want 1C to have nothing to do with the next flight sim.

SD

I had really hoped that one day 777 could have found funding to start their own WWII franchise but then BoS was announced.

I don't think 1C knew about TF at the time of decision to contact 777.
I was hoping they would put the dover code in their hands and just fix it all up but to my surprise they went for this RoF:BoS that really turned out way worse than I imagined those days.

Can I send a suggestion to Head Office of Internet and ask people to stop calling it IL2:BoS and use RoF:BoS instead?
3 carbon-copies, yellow pink and white - right?

Some people are already calling it IL2:PoS

But it is correct, that game has nothing in common with its alleged predecessor except some featured planes.

Just guessing here but it must have be a closer and more complex decision than we realise from the outside.

You get access to two decent flightsim engines (plus members of team) - which one do you use for your next-gen sim?

Certainly there is the argument for 'stick with what you know' and play it safe with Digital Nature that you know inside out.

But IF the CloD engine is so superior (and you have members of the team that developed it joining you) why not switch to that? Finish CLoD, move on to BoM, and the rest of WW2 and maybe even use it for a Rise of Flight 2 at some point.

Or did they take a look at the Cliffs engine and consider the difficulties that Luther and Co had of patching their own sim and think 'how far down the rabbit hole do these bugs go?' and thus conclude 'its not worth the bother'.

If they HAD decided to go with the Cliffs engine - would we now be still waiting and waiting another 5 years for a finished BoS/BoM that when it did arrive, still had major bugs like the AI flight commands & non-collidable trees?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Team Fusion have answered that question without even having access to the code.

Its funny that a product 1c made and left behind is one now a thorn in the side of BoS.

Its bad because if TF had the source code they could do more, and in faster time, and 1c/777 know this. That would hurt their business. I am hoping a disgruntled Russian would leak that code to help TF. Ahhh one can only dream. Could you imagine if the TF team had access to the whole game?

The decision to go with DN seems to be a strait quick money one. It gives them this whole we made it in 18 months boost even though some models and of course the engine were already there. It seems more evident the way they pushed it out the door ASAP for "us" in order to have us not to have wait for a new sim. Personal opinion, I would rather wait for a few more years (if even that) to move to a different engine and not use DN. The shelf life of the DN engine seems short. In the long run it will hurt BoS.

Why did they not continue with the original plan and go CLoD then Battle of Moscow? Too much time? Maybe not the right talent? Already a bad taste from the release CLoD? Maybe a bit of all?

Either way I think 1c/777 handicapped BoS before it was even worked on.

Certainly, speaking as a developer, developing BoS on an engine you know would take a fraction of the time for the 777 team. It's no wonder they chose this path and were able to release something within 18 months.

Whether that makes it a better product is debatable, but I'm certain it makes it a much more reliable product.

Reliable? Not sure. I still dont hear sounds to bullets my plane, yet can hear the gunner of a bomber shooting at me.

As far as the game running, sure? Its reliable. Then again a Volvo is reliable as well, but hardly as much fun to drive as a Ferrari.

There will always be bugs, that's inevitable with any new release. But compared to the initial release of CoD and even RoF, Stalingrad is a much more stable product.

No wonder, they took a long established engine and stripped it of some features so there is even less to go wrong (graphic customisation)

Wonder if ideal solution to have done (to do?) would have been for 1C to have licensed the Cliffs source code to TF and maybe draw up some sort of geographical/era agreement. (Or without lump-sum from TF modders for code - maybe a cut/royalties for any future TF sim produced/sold with the Cliffs engine?)

Eg:

TF (or a commercial spin off) gets Battle of Britain/France 1940, Western Desert/D-Day/Western Front

777/1C gets Eastern Front/Pacific/Korea

then finally two sim series meet on the Elbe in 1945...

Bit of healthy competition in the marketplace to each improve the respective engines, simmers get more choice/theatres, TF gets source code + freedom for follow-on commercial products and 1C gets to recoup a bit of its investment from CloD.

Just daydreaming here...!

Here is the answer



I believe that the major problems with BoS have less to do with the engine and more to do with the way it is being utilised.

Given how long they worked on it, how many features were started and then abandoned, and how much trouble they were having with it at the end, I'm willing to be the CLOD codebase is seriously ugly and poorly documented.

That is 777's own marketing spin, hardly an objective view on it.

Did you expect anything else?