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#4366371 - 06/27/17 08:15 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: - Ice]  
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Originally Posted by - Ice
Originally Posted by F4UDash4
I am fine with flight sims having hardcore modes, so long as it isn't the only mode. The most fun I've had in a jet combat flight sim in recent years has been with Third Wire products. Those may not have everything modeled in exacting, excruciating, detail but they're fun and you can sit down and be flying in a minute or less.

And again, you've missed me stating numerous times that DCS A10C and Falcon 4 BMS do not have "hardcore modes" only. Here's a shot of BMS' EASY (Recruit) and ACE realism settings. Note that you can adjust for anywhere in between, these are just the two extremes.

Note that none of the options presented in your screenshots deal with the switchology of often awkward control elements, yet that was one of the two major points of criticism (the other one being the sterility of the environment, something that's largely addressed by F4's dynamic campaign but not by other titles). Of course I have no constructive solution to offer how a simulation could contain both accurate switchology for those who want it, and a simplified UI for everybody else when you can't mutate the instruments in the cockpit. Then again, maybe that's the answer.

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#4366372 - 06/27/17 08:20 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: - Ice]  
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Originally Posted by - Ice
Originally Posted by F4UDash4
Here is what I want in a combat flight sim:

1 - ...

2 - Accurate flight models. ...

3 - Simple flight controls. ...

4 - Simple avionics for modern aircraft. ...

5 - Accurate weapons modeling. ...

6 - Modability. ...

Sounds like "sim lite"... you want accurate flight models and accurate avionics and accurate weapons, but you want them all on a one-button setup.


That's not what he wrote. You say that it has to have accurate avionics, he called for simple ones.
Let's face it, the UI in the Falcon was designed around 1980s computer technology and UI design. That definitely is awkward today. It may be somewhat functional, and I'm not saying that touchscreens are the answer in combat aircraft, but still - if you want to understand what people in this debate are calling for, start by reading comments carefully rather than shooting from the hip.

#4366375 - 06/27/17 08:34 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: Ssnake]  
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Originally Posted by Ssnake
Originally Posted by - Ice
Originally Posted by F4UDash4
Here is what I want in a combat flight sim:

1 - ...

2 - Accurate flight models. ...

3 - Simple flight controls. ...

4 - Simple avionics for modern aircraft. ...

5 - Accurate weapons modeling. ...

6 - Modability. ...

Sounds like "sim lite"... you want accurate flight models and accurate avionics and accurate weapons, but you want them all on a one-button setup.


That's not what he wrote.


Thank you.

It seems Ice' response to everything is to twist it to his liking. No sense in even replying to his posts when he starts with "why do you even want a flight sim" type comments.


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#4366382 - 06/27/17 08:53 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Originally Posted by F4UDash4

Thank you.

It seems Ice' response to everything is to twist it to his liking. No sense in even replying to his posts when he starts with "why do you even want a flight sim" type comments.


Careful now, or it'll be death by a thousand quotes fior you! biggrin

Nate

#4366386 - 06/27/17 09:12 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Originally Posted by Ssnake
Note that none of the options presented in your screenshots deal with the switchology of often awkward control elements, yet that was one of the two major points of criticism (the other one being the sterility of the environment, something that's largely addressed by F4's dynamic campaign but not by other titles). Of course I have no constructive solution to offer how a simulation could contain both accurate switchology for those who want it, and a simplified UI for everybody else when you can't mutate the instruments in the cockpit. Then again, maybe that's the answer.

Can you be specific as to what the "awkward control elements" are? I've addressed the startup issues and even the time issues, so what am I missing?

Originally Posted by Ssnake
That's not what he wrote. You say that it has to have accurate avionics, he called for simple ones.
Let's face it, the UI in the Falcon was designed around 1980s computer technology and UI design. That definitely is awkward today. It may be somewhat functional, and I'm not saying that touchscreens are the answer in combat aircraft, but still - if you want to understand what people in this debate are calling for, start by reading comments carefully rather than shooting from the hip.

My mistake there... I assumed he still wanted accurate avionics, ie, radar ranges, but simple to use, one-button affairs... as opposed to the magic 360-degree radar smile As for the UI... are you talking about the 2D UI aka the menu? Or are you talking about the cockpit as being a "user interface"? Not sure where you're going here.


Originally Posted by F4UDash4
4 - Simple avionics for modern aircraft. Simple keystroke for air/ground mode. Another simple keystroke for maybe 2 (3 at most) sub modes of each. Then pickle the weapon.

So let me try this again... it is one button to go from A-A to A-G... it's right there on the ICP! The beauty of DCS-level and BMS-level full function cockpit is that it doesn't matter if the button is mapped to CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+O or whatever, there is no need to memorize that keystroke. If you know where the A-A or A-G button is on the ICP, you're good. That's all you need to press.

Then there's also the override modes which is mapped to the DGFT/MSL Override switch on the HOTAS. Again, it doesn't matter if it's mapped to some awkward key combination... if you know where the switch is on the HOTAS, that's all you need to press. Going between sub-modes is usually TMS UP.

So... the avionics are not simple, they are as realistic as the BMS team can make it. But it's still only a few button presses to access the appropriate mode and sub-modes. Is that acceptable? If not, what's wrong with that setup?


Originally Posted by F4UDash4
It seems Ice' response to everything is to twist it to his liking. No sense in even replying to his posts when he starts with "why do you even want a flight sim" type comments.

Seems like people's response to me is to take sniping comments rather than actually clarifying their position. I'm all up for a debate, but I can't do it when you'd rather go personal instead. I have no issues with admitting I am wrong when I am wrong, but just you saying so isn't the way to do it.


Originally Posted by Nate
Careful now, or it'll be death by a thousand quotes fior you! biggrin

Nice and mature, Nate, thanks! biggrin
Now back under the bridge, you naught boy!


- Ice
#4366392 - 06/27/17 09:56 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: VF9_Longbow]  
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eh..
A Falcon level commercial sim would be good. Maybe not to the liking of the SHQ crowd nowadays but I'm sure it'll have its place. Then again back in the day the Falcon4 forum here was pretty hot, 'twas the first site I came to before migrating to Frugalsworld.
A Strike Fighters level commercial sim would be also good. Probably more to the SHQ preference.

Personally I don't mind neither and have spent long hours playing and modding both. It's all good stuff. However atm neither is happening. Lots of switchology or little switchology should be the question after that. Or better there won't be, for each would have a choice of his own. Furthermore if flight sims should have a renaissance, can they still be categorized as heavy or lite, I dunno.

Last edited by Schwalbe; 06/27/17 10:02 PM.
#4366397 - 06/27/17 10:11 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: - Ice]  
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Originally Posted by - Ice

Originally Posted by F4UDash4
It seems Ice' response to everything is to twist it to his liking. No sense in even replying to his posts when he starts with "why do you even want a flight sim" type comments.


Seems like people's response to me is to take sniping comments rather than actually clarifying their position. I'm all up for a debate, but I can't do it when you'd rather go personal instead. I have no issues with admitting I am wrong when I am wrong, but just you saying so isn't the way to do it.


No need to clarify anything, my comments were very clear. Paul Rix understood them, Panzermeyer and Schwalbe did too. It was you who first sniped with your "Then why do flight sims at all?" comment.


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#4366406 - 06/27/17 10:45 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Originally Posted by F4UDash4
No need to clarify anything, my comments were very clear. Paul Rix understood them, Panzermeyer and Schwalbe did too.

So the logic here is that if 3 (or more) people understand something, then it's very clear and nobody will ever misunderstand them?? duh

Originally Posted by F4UDash4
It was you who first sniped with your "Then why do flight sims at all?" comment.

You saw THAT as a snipe? That was a genuine question! You were talking about tactics and battlefield and while there is **some** tactics to stuff like A-A engagements in flying-as-a-pilot flight sims, there's nothing better than some sort of "God's eye view" of the battlefield like Wargame or Combat Mission or Steel Division. If you look at my next response to you, I was even asking if we can call such games "simulations"... but going back to "God's eye view," that is why stuff like ACMI reviews of flights do so much for a pilot's LEARNING and if you had a chance to change events knowing what you can see from that vantage point where there's obviously a lot more SA, then you're in a much better way to apply tactics and use the battlefield to your advantage.

The simple point I was trying to make was that if you wanted tactics and smart utilization of battlefield features, then there are other games (can we consider them simulations? No? RTS?) that can scratch that itch better than flight sims can.

Maybe read a little more before letting your ego get bruised, eh?
biggrin biggrin biggrin


- Ice
#4366409 - 06/27/17 10:55 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: Schwalbe]  
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Originally Posted by Schwalbe
Lots of switchology or little switchology should be the question after that. Or better there won't be, for each would have a choice of his own. Furthermore if flight sims should have a renaissance, can they still be categorized as heavy or lite, I dunno.

To those that have an issue with switchology in high fidelity sims, I'm really curious what EXACTLY is the issue regarding switches? I've said before, there are a lot of stuff implemented in the simulation but you don't have to bother with the vast majority of them if you don't want to.


- Ice
#4366448 - 06/28/17 01:18 AM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: - Ice]  
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Originally Posted by - Ice

To those that have an issue with switchology in high fidelity sims, I'm really curious what EXACTLY is the issue regarding switches? I've said before, there are a lot of stuff implemented in the simulation but you don't have to bother with the vast majority of them if you don't want to.


edit: deleted above. Simply put, not everyone is as bothered. You can spin it whichever way, but to some it is still a bother. Most of times, they really CAN'T be bothered. They can be to write wall of texts on forums, but not the actual stuff. So over the years I've learned not to read too much into them. It really is simple as that!...

Last edited by Schwalbe; 06/28/17 01:35 AM.
#4366506 - 06/28/17 08:40 AM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: VF9_Longbow]  
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Indeed! I can see the point if the complaint is regarding having to do the full startup all the time. I can see the point if you had to manually input your waypoints into the aircraft's computer. I can see the point if you had to program each weapon's delivery profile every time. But this is not the case. For a high fidelity sim like BMS, having to flip the gear lever up on takeoff, flip Master Arm on at fence in, and pressing the pickle button at the appropriate time, well, there's just no way around that. How else can it be minimized? Take out the Master Arm switch? But then is that really the complaint now? Having to flip three switches (well, two, plus one button) instead of two (well, one, plus one button)?

If the argument is "can't be bothered," then there really is no counter to that. Can't be bothered to learn startup. Can't be bothered to learn ordnance delivery. Can't be bothered to flick a switch...


- Ice
#4366507 - 06/28/17 08:40 AM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: VF9_Longbow]  
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As I am not a flight sim player I cannot go into the specific details of how the switchology in jet simulations could be simplified (and yes, I'm talking about the cockpit as "the user interface", not the simulation programs themselves). Maybe, if you select the weapon, the radar mode could auto-switch to a suitable mode as well (just a very, very small example that I do not wish to discuss in detail because that would be missing the point entirely, see below).

Now, you could easily dismiss my opinion here as largely based on ignorance. You could just as well ask why someone who threw away a perfectly good 486DX-33 processor when upgrading to a DX/2-66 for more than 1100 Deutschmarks in 1993 for the sole reason to play the San Francisco missions in Strike Commander, why such a person lost the interest in the subject matter. I probably met the demographics of simulation game players very well back then - technophile, with an interest in the military (including jets), owning a relatively powerful computer for the time. A few years later I had bought Flight Unlimited and dabbled around a bit in attempts to do some precision flying with basic aerobatics maneuvers. My flight sim career culminated in one hour inside the Transall simulator at a local airbase and not crashing the landing (yay!).
There's of course the usual excuses - life and job got in the way, I found my life in the Luftwaffe frustrating and requested transfer to the Panzercorps (which was eventually granted, though with great reluctance ("Nobody leaves the airforce for the army!" "Well, Sir, then I'll be the first.")

But those excuses wouldn't really count - I wasted a part of my life playing more computer games than I probably should have while at university (I still managed to get my degree in Industrial Engineering, but it was bumpy -- not "needlessly" bumpy, as I eventually ended up in the simulation game industry, but that step was more luck than an actual "plan"). Anyway, what is it that drove me away from flight simulations? Frankly, the topic of "flying" didn't fascinate me enough to motivate long hours of learning with little "gaming" involved (but I observed friends who did). Strike Commander was about right for me in the balance of avionics complexity vs entertainment value, and pretty much every single simulation game that came afterwards was worse in that category. Also, developers like Microprose made it very hard at times to even get a game to the point where it would actually run well. Seriously, eight or nine patches to be installed in a very specific sequence, or else it won't work? And they wondered why fewer and fewer people bothered to even look at the products that they offered. Falson 4 may now be considered an "eternal gem" among jet simulations - but I very well remember that it was anything but for years after it had been released; had it not been for the community and the leaking of the source code, memories of Falcon 4 would be way less favorable.

No, other pastures were greener, and I moved to them.

I still occasionally watch jet simulations on YouTube (like those 1970s Swedish bombers a few months ago) and I still see some of the game virtues when you're flying low over the landscape, dodging missiles left and right, trying to get a damaged bird back home, etc. At the same time too often I see a landscape devoid of life, no mix of targets and non-targets to force the player to also bother about target discrimination. If you can navigate and know how to drop a bomb on target, it is like the primitive "quests" in Fallout 4 - "Go to X, kill everybody there, pick item Y and bring it back."
I'm sorry, that's not what I came for when developing an interest in simulation games. It may appeal to others, and I'm not blasting anyone for liking flight simulations and playing them. But the explicit premise of the whole discussion thread is that there is a decline in the market (it's in the thread's title), and why that may be. If you disagree with the "decline thing" itself - fine, offer your view on why that's a bogus claim. But saying that there is no problem with flight simulations because you like things the way they are (or because you can't imagine that there could be a different approach to flight sims) will only derail the attempt to identify what could be made better, Ice.

I'm not here to troll flight simmers. PanzerMeyer asked for an opinion, and he got mine. I'm trying to bring the perspective of a game developer to the discussion because I suspect that it is somewhat unique. Too often discussions are not revolving about the factual, like market sizes, revenues, and how the lack of profitability dictates certain design decisions. Like, to focus on switchology because that's easier to do and will find the approval of a certain group of flight simmers which I tend to call the "elitists". I will not speculate about their motives; whether they like to project the aura that they mastered a gazillion of switches and radar modes which they very well know intimidates most other players or whether they just don't recognize that this actually is a barrier, at the end of the day it doesn't matter, and it cannot be overcome by otherwise laudable efforts to introduce other players to the genre with personal tutelage. It's the products themselves that are at fault. What motivates people to spend eight hours on a simulated flight of a commercial airliner from Paris to Boston or some such will forever escape me. It's like a really complicated bus driving simulation except that for seven of the eight hours there are no bus stops with all the excitement that they might bring. So, for all the merits that civilian aviation simulators may bring to the table, as entertainment products I wouldn't even poke them with the longest pole that I could lift. But the developers today even managed to suck the joy out of military flight simulations for me. I say this without much regret because I moved on to tanks and find them infinitely more challenging in the tactics department than the dodging of a few stationary SAM sites and launching AMRAAMs at long distances. It may be "realistic", but realism does not necessarily equal fun for most.


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#4366522 - 06/28/17 10:21 AM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: VF9_Longbow]  
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^ well explained.. developers should consider this !

Which is why i tend to play simulations of older birds, they are already challenging enough for me. Starting a Nieuport in RoF is enough switchology, you then have to adjust the mixture according to altitude, but that's it. And this kind of managing is FUN. What is not so much fun is the empty landscape and an absolutely even and glossy no-man's land, devoid of anything life or military action, or even trenches (they are just painted on and you roll over them).
If you want more action to make you believe you really are in a war, try WOFF. Much more "dense", but the flight model is imho not as good as it is in RoF.

Regarding realism, how far should this go? "Switchology", yes, should be there to a certain degree. A barracks prefligth briefing? Yes. A major shouting you down in a way that you really feel like that rookie recruit? Military life simulated? Would be interesting lol, but how to do that? And that and days of boring service would probably turn away a lot of people. Obviously a balance has to be found, to make a sim a success.

Last edited by Catfish; 06/28/17 10:23 AM.
#4366523 - 06/28/17 10:47 AM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: Ssnake]  
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I appreciate the reply, Ssnake and if I miss the mark, do point it out and I'll try again.

First off, I've stated here in the thread about my thoughts of the "decline"... I've offered my thoughts about the number of simmers vs. the number of gamers and also the general gaming market's current offering vs. the "barrier to entry" of flight sims. I've also stated that this "barrier" is mostly just an impression but since it's a very visible "barrier," well, people think that's that and don't bother.

Originally Posted by Ssnake
Maybe, if you select the weapon, the radar mode could auto-switch to a suitable mode as well (just a very, very small example that I do not wish to discuss in detail because that would be missing the point entirely, see below).

I know you said you don't wish to discuss this, but let me just tackle this to give you a little more info... In BMS at least, when you select the radar mode, you also auto-switch to the appropriate weapon, so it's the other way from what you've said. If you go to A-A master mode, you'll be on your AIM-120s if you have them or your Sidewinders. If you got to A-G master mode, you'll be on your Mk-82s or -84s. Press another button and you switch to the next weapon. But there are many different radar modes, each aimed at more specific uses. Does the simmer need to know them all? No. Just maybe another 1 or 2 and that's it. It's even simpler in A-G modes. The OPTIONS are there but it doesn't mean you'll have to recite them in your sleep.

Originally Posted by Ssnake
Falson 4 may now be considered an "eternal gem" among jet simulations - but I very well remember that it was anything but for years after it had been released; had it not been for the community and the leaking of the source code, memories of Falcon 4 would be way less favorable.

It was only a few years, I'm told, but yeah, there were teething pains with Falcon 4.0 and without "mods," well, I shudder to think what the combat flight sim options would be like now.

Originally Posted by Ssnake
I still see some of the game virtues when you're flying low over the landscape, dodging missiles left and right, trying to get a damaged bird back home, etc. At the same time too often I see a landscape devoid of life, no mix of targets and non-targets to force the player to also bother about target discrimination. If you can navigate and know how to drop a bomb on target, it is like the primitive "quests" in Fallout 4 - "Go to X, kill everybody there, pick item Y and bring it back."

There are times when you just bomb your target from 20,000 feet and go home and call it a day. There are times when a 500ft AGL ingress to the target area is "too high!!" and you need to go down to 200ft AGL. There are times when the only target for miles are the bad guys... or there are no targets for miles since the bad guys have moved. There are times when you bomb the bad guys only to come home to find you fired on Blue as the FLOT has moved while you were in-flight. There are times when you don't drop bombs at all for fear of Blue-on-Blue. Sometimes, it's not the bomb-dropping that's the challenge but rather how to get there in the first place smile You get some bandits under 20nm as you ingress... do you drop your bombs (and fail your mission) to engage? Do you call in your Escorts and hope they take them out? What aircraft are the bandits, anyway? Do they even see YOUR flight? It's not exactly a walk in the park, find the target, pull the trigger (or press the pickle), and go home affair. You can be tasked to find and take out a convoy and you're like "meh, whatever" or be tasked to take out an airfield and you're like "you want me to do WHAT??!?!!??!!!?"

A-A engagements gets more interesting. More chances of Blue kills if you don't ID your targets properly. The AI will usually call Buddy Spike when you lock on to them but there are many, many instances of the pilot not hearing that call and firing a missile causing Blue-on-Blue. Practicing 2v2 all-human pilots dogfighting and focusing on dogfighting while keeping SA up using brevity is so much fun that honing your skills in this arena alone can take a good amount of time.

Originally Posted by Ssnake
But the explicit premise of the whole discussion thread is that there is a decline in the market (it's in the thread's title), and why that may be. If you disagree with the "decline thing" itself - fine, offer your view on why that's a bogus claim. But saying that there is no problem with flight simulations because you like things the way they are (or because you can't imagine that there could be a different approach to flight sims) will only derail the attempt to identify what could be made better, Ice.

I like the way things are (BMS) and I don't like the way things are (DCS) and for both sims, things could be made better for the simulation itself.... but what exactly is the "problem with flight simulations" then?

Switchology gets mentioned a lot and unless specific instances are cited, this seems like a non-issue... one of those "barriers" that people think are there because of the "reputation" of high fidelity flight sims. Time is another issue which is more valid, but then it isn't really a problem with the hobby but more of a problem with RL obligations. So what are the other "problems" then? Or what is the specific issue with certain "problems"?

Originally Posted by Ssnake
Too often discussions are not revolving about the factual, like market sizes, revenues, and how the lack of profitability dictates certain design decisions.

Totally agree with you there. What we need is a billionaire benefactor who doesn't mind making a few million $$$ loss in making the ultimate combat flight simulation smile

Originally Posted by Ssnake
Like, to focus on switchology because that's easier to do and will find the approval of a certain group of flight simmers which I tend to call the "elitists". I will not speculate about their motives; whether they like to project the aura that they mastered a gazillion of switches and radar modes which they very well know intimidates most other players

As for the motives of the devs, more switchology means more RL systems are implemented and therefore more "authenticity" and closer to being a true simulation. After all, a switch is uselesss if it doesn't do anything. Also, depending on the system implemented, it also means more options for the pilot in certain situations... they are implemented in RL for certain reasons and if those replicate themselves in the sim, then the pilot has the same options that the RL pilot has. Does every flight simmer, down to the last man, need to know, master, and recite these options in his sleep? Nope.

If a Person A has taken the time to study the gazillion of switches and Person B is intimidated by Person A's knowledge, explain to me how that is Person A's fault? I will not deny that there are high-and-mighty know-it-alls out there that like to get their self-worth from showing up other people, but that is now a small majority.... at least from what I see in the BMS forums. More often than not, people who know more **SHARE** their knowledge and expertise which results in the hobby and the hobbyists all coming out better for the experience.

Originally Posted by Ssnake
they just don't recognize that this actually is a barrier, at the end of the day it doesn't matter, and it cannot be overcome by otherwise laudable efforts to introduce other players to the genre with personal tutelage.

I think that if a new simmer "cannot" overcome a barrier even with personal tutelage, the problem really isn't the material being taught. wink

Originally Posted by Ssnake
It's the products themselves that are at fault.

And again, I invite you to cite the specific faults of the product?

Originally Posted by Ssnake
What motivates people to spend eight hours on a simulated flight of a commercial airliner from Paris to Boston or some such will forever escape me. It's like a really complicated bus driving simulation except that for seven of the eight hours there are no bus stops with all the excitement that they might bring.

It's the same thing that motivates people to actually spend an insane amount of money to do a REAL flight of a commercial airliner from Paris to Boston. Some people get to live their dream... whether it be a commercial jet pilot, a bushpilot, a fighter pilot, a heavy-haul truck driver, etc. and others just get to have a taste of that life via simulations. I will never understand why people will stare at a chessboard for hours and study chess moves, or people that go straight for the crossword on the daily paper.... but that does not mean what they do is not "fun." It is for them... and for all I know, they'd rather watch paint dry than study the ingress route to the target area.

Originally Posted by Ssnake
So, for all the merits that civilian aviation simulators may bring to the table, as entertainment products I wouldn't even poke them with the longest pole that I could lift. But the developers today even managed to suck the joy out of military flight simulations for me. I say this without much regret because I moved on to tanks and find them infinitely more challenging in the tactics department than the dodging of a few stationary SAM sites and launching AMRAAMs at long distances. It may be "realistic", but realism does not necessarily equal fun for most.

Just because you've found armored simulations more up your alley does not mean a fault exists elsewhere. I love driving in the real world but I would not play Euro Truck Simulator....


- Ice
#4366524 - 06/28/17 10:49 AM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: Catfish]  
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Originally Posted by Catfish
Regarding realism, how far should this go?

I draw the line at having to bring piddle packs... wink


- Ice
#4366528 - 06/28/17 11:07 AM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: - Ice]  
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Originally Posted by - Ice







Totally agree with you there. What we need is a billionaire benefactor who doesn't mind making a few million $$$ loss in making the ultimate combat flight simulation smile

.



Good luck with that. Maybe you should send an email to either Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or Elon Musk and bring up the suggestion?


“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
#4366540 - 06/28/17 11:39 AM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: VF9_Longbow]  
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Some years ago in the heat of yet another "full real" or you are not doing it right "discussion" I read a SimHQ classic response on the old IL2 forum.

Something along the lines of "you want full real? Then sit on a leaky gas can while playing and drop a lit match when you get shot up!"


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#4366543 - 06/28/17 12:13 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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Originally Posted by PanzerMeyer
Good luck with that. Maybe you should send an email to either Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or Elon Musk and bring up the suggestion?

Sure! Give me their email addresses and I will! smile


- Ice
#4366547 - 06/28/17 12:20 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: VF9_Longbow]  
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Germoney
You keep pointing out that a lot of the switchology is optional, and it may be true, but there's the rub - every option that a developer offers is a rotten compromise in the attempt to appease both the "elitists" and those who aren't looking for the full complexity. The decision to offer an "option" is essentially a non-decision. This lack of decisiveness is, I think, a result of not having a clear vision of what they actually want to do. "More options" is a symptom of the lack of proper guidance that usually is the death for every piece of art (and entertainment is a specific form of art). When you compose music, you don't make certain notes optional. When you paint, you don't compromise between cubism and pointillism.

Which other games offer several menu pages to "options"?
A few, I can understand. And mind you, "options" aren't an evil in and of themselves, they are the symptom. I don't want to name specific developer names - you probably know better than I do who's guilty of which sin - but in my opinion they are all rather terrible as game developers, to a varying degree (eSim Games is just as guilty, but at least we don't advertise our product as a game and claim it to be prime entertainment material). I'm not disputing their talent, knowledge, or skill as flight simulation experts - but they don't know how to fill their worlds with life. Dynamic Campaigns - and they are a rare sight to begin with - are at least some Methadone to the Heroin of a proper story with actual characters. As crazy as it may sound, they are the cheap compromise to add so that you don't have to embed your simulation in a proper, story-driven context. (Flight) simulation developers have lost the skillset to develop actual games; rather, we see the equivalent of gonzo porn where you take off, drop your bomb, and land again. WHY you're doing all this, the developers have given up all pretense that this story frame is necessary, and today's audience apparently has little objection to it, as long as the flight model itself is accurate and the clouds, sunsets, and afterburner flames look nice. Combat Ace is then, of course, not the equivalent to a gonzo porn flick but just a compilation clip (but hey, it has a story...)

Creating good content is hard work, and expensive. You need more people for that - authors, voice actors, more artists, etc.; each of these costs you at least 50,000.- USD per year, so there's at least half a million dollars on top of the two million that I mentioned on the previous page that you probably need to invest, a whopping 25% cost increase. So, there's the second factor - economy. I suspect that even if there were sim developers who wanted to be good entertainers they quickly realize that it is a proposal to lose a lot of money because of the market size and the amount of money that you can reasonably charge for a game (remember, of $40.- sold through Steam, the developer gets only $28.-). AAA entertainment quality costs AAA dollars, there isn't much you can do about it. And if you can't earn AAA profits with a flight simulation game, well, there are no AAA titles; it's that simple.
I suspect that those developers who like jet-like contraptions and who still want to retain some story have moved on to space simulation games; you can make up a lot of stuff in that genre - it's essentially fantasy land. But even there we're seeing the decline in storytelling. SpaceEngine doesn't have a story, in Elite Dangerous you basically have to make up your own narration (but then at least there's an open galaxy to explore). So, I suppose the flight sim developers aren't more guilty than other sim developers. Not exactly an uplifting conclusion, however. :/


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#4366549 - 06/28/17 12:41 PM Re: Is the decline of simulations because people are getting dumber? [Re: VF9_Longbow]  
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Great post Ssnake. For me personally, that is why I love playing RPG's so much because they are so story and character driven.

Flight sims don't have to be story-driven for me to feel immersed but they do need to have a dynamic campaign where your actions in one mission will affect the situation in future missions. I like to have both the "small picture" and the "large picture" in flight sims.


“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
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