I don't want to start another "OBD should move from CFS3 to (insert favorite) game engine" discussion. We already know that the work involved would be monumental. But, maybe there's another option ... ask MS for CFS3.

Microsoft open-sourced the code for 1995’s 3D Movie Maker because someone asked

ducks and runs away before the lads at OBD see this.

open sourcing it may actually prevent the OBD team from SELLING the game based on it..

However there are other options to consider in a game engine, and although i am against the company, one should consider using the game engine from Rise of Flight.

Interesting points gents - have seen many such threads popping up from time to time over the years. Keep in mind that while a rose by any other name may smell as sweet - a flight sim by any other game engine would then be that other flight sim, complete with warts and all that come with ... that other game engine.

Personally I like the modified CFS3 code; it gives the WoFF series that right proper picturesque quality and best looking clouds in the business.

Although, if WM is feeling magical, perhaps he can look into harnessing some "core and a quarter" or "core and a half" processing power from the CFS3 code - to offset some of the work that happens in WoFF and to future-proof for maintenance of healthy FPS.

A similar move happened between the ThirdWire FE1 and FE2 series. FE1 was single processor core only (as is/was the WoFF series) - FE2 on the other hand harnesses the power of two processor cores - nothing fancy but helps and is friendly to lower-GHz processors that way too.

Cheers all and happy fantasizing about alternate game engines,
Von S

I would submit that, while licensing may be an issue...it is not the issue.

I like it just the way it is. It has this other worldly look and feel like it's a hundred years old.

Problem with other engines is the environments are too sterile. There's a lack of activity in the general theater, both on the ground and in the air. Other ones might technically look better in some regards, or have better flight or weather models, but WOFF and WOTR are the only ones these days that give me the feeling of being in a world war.

@wormfood, I totally agree. WOFF makes it feel like there's a war going on.

Catch, I totally agree, there is no need for new engines. Except in-game ones, powering some new aircraft in the future maybe.

WOFF looks great and has the best atmosphere of any sim out there.

The recent FREE add-on and the constant updates, often only straightening the most tiniest of kinks, make WOFF a living, breathing sim, totally unique in today's 'let's take as much money from them as we can' market.

I'm currently flying a Home Defence campaign and here are a couple of screenies, showing WOFF in all its glory.

If OBD ever announces that they have found a way to switch to a new engine and it makes sense to do so, that will be wonderful. In the meantime, my wish list for WOFF continues to get chiseled away at by OBD to the point where what other stuff I'd like to see is way less than all the great features we already have and are enjoying. Personally, I'd simply like to see 4 things. 64 bit, DX11 or DX12 support, 3d clouds and an Italian front. Of those, an Italian front is probably the most likely. The others may well never happen. Not bad considering they are down to 2 full time developers and not exactly rolling in money from the project.

Right, when I said I hoped they would have gone with a different engine over doing WOtR, it wasn't for the different engine per se, but mostly for the (presumed) ease of getting the other things that you mentioned, Hellshade. At least DX11 I think is critical to get effects like tracers and doping glare from the sun to work appropriately and assist in tracking and hitting planes. I don't know if the current engine is able to handle differential anti aircraft fire around balloons, which I think is sorely missing. And, you know... COOP. CAN YOU IMAGINE A RICK RAWLINGS CHALLENGE OR DiD CAMPAIGN WITH COOP???? AAAAAAARRRRRgggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

Interesting posts gents - as far as I know WoFF/WoTR, while not 64-bit from the ground up, has been patched to be 64-bit registry capable (i.e., 32-bit program that can use more than the 4 GB or so RAM limit of a typical 32-bit program; there was a thread or two on that, somewhere here under the WoFF forums, a couple of yrs. ago - but I can't find the link now). In terms of DX11 -- it might be the case that DX10 would also allow for tracer effects, doping glare, etc. -- don't quote me on that -- but perhaps someone (Gecko/AnKor?), time-permitting, could look into the feasibility of implementing DX10 instead of DX11/12 in the WoFF series (also WoTR). We occasional FE2-ers (First Eagles 2) fliers have DX10 and it works just fine, also good for volumetric clouds (for those who like volumetric clouds).

Cheers all and happy flying,
Von S

I know very little about shaders actually. My only contribution to Ankor's work has been as a tester, and submitted some ideas over the years. Here is a thread about DX11 shaders that is the most up to date information out there:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php/119398-Another-DirectX-11-demo

I second the idea that enabling CFS3 to use more than one processor would do great things for what can be done. No idea how that might be accomplished, but I'd be thrilled to see it happen.




What are you referring to here? I'd submit there might be some improvements that could be realized within our existing framework in DX9. Honestly, Ankor's DX9 shaders are good enough that you can often get a view that is as immersive or more than more modern sims even now. It's mainly a matter of doing a good job taking advantage of what we do have. Carefully made textures, that take advantage of specular maps and normal maps, not over-doing effects, etc.

Last thing AnKor says on the thread is that he got burned out and he doubts he will ever get back to it. I'm not aware of anyone else who has the skills and wants to put the time and effort into it, so I think that's probably the end of the road for 3d clouds for WOFF / WOTR. I'm not saying it can't happen in the future, but for now, I'm unaware of anyone who is working to make it happen.

That was largely a reference to Rick's initial comment that tracer effects and doping reflections, etc., possibly require DX11 - my comment was with reference to the possibility that DX10 would probably be "good enough" for such things - since First Eagles 2 demonstrates DX10 effects quite acceptably.

Although, personally, and here I echo your thoughts - DX9 to me (specifically, the DX8-to-9 converter that AnKor worked on) - is just fine. For easier tracking of targets, enemy aircraft, etc., especially at lower altitudes, it is always easy enough to load a custom ReShade profile, for example, for greater color contrast or sharper graphics (no need to tinker extensively with DX for that).

Cheers all and happy WoFFing,
Von S

Maybe at best someone could ask AnKor if he would be willing to release the work he has already done towards DX11 into the wild so others who might be motivated can look into the next steps. AnKor has already done so much for the CFS3 and WOFF / WOTR community that nobody can fault him for wanting to move on. His contributions are legendary and I as well as many others will always be grateful. But if he really has decided he isn't coming back to it, perhaps he'd be willing to hand over whatever the latest versions he had. If he is willing, and that's not to be taken for granted that he would, it would be then be a matter of seeing who else is skilled enough to make another go at it.

HEre is an evil thought, a plain question and very logical. SO dong get bunched up by it.


In the hsitory of the internet, the flight game Rise of Flight is STILL making the top 20 and even top 10 flight simulator "best of" from ACTUAL computer magazine magazines and internet sites.

As a result have ANY of you actually looked at the game and compared it with Wings? The ROF is wonderful on a decent system, even an outdated win 7 with 4 gb of shared ram for the onboard gpu

I havent had the time to get wings, yes i know bad me but im working on it. Who would have thought deciding to drop internet forums and start model airplaning would be so time consuming.

Has anyone actually considered purchasing the Rise of Flight game from 1C?

They have no interest in the game, have not done ANYTHING for the game since maybe 2015 was to update the privacy policy in january 2018 on their website.

The benefits would be instrumental, and if you examine the game the only MAIN things to actually be worried about is

1. a strange bug that has a tendency to undo key bindings when you leave the game,
1.a a bug that also will force you to redo the key bindings inflight for each plane you fly as you fly it

2. the game has TWO flight models. 1 for MOUSE control and 1 for joy stick
The mouse control version is far more stable than the joy stick version. The stick version is a non stop fight to stay level

3. Graphics
ROF graphics are wonderful, and oddly BETTER on modern, post 2017 AMD video cards then the NEWEST 20GB update for graphics for the much lamented IL2 sturmovik Great Battles series that came out a few months ago.

terrain is better, trees are FAR superior, WATER is superior, smoke effect tracers, good glare engine on wing surface and glass

4. Large enough plane set to keep everyone happy.
Plane damage is wonderful. Ran a nieuport 11 into the ground this morning, and when i hit the plane split in half and i could actually see a basic metal tube structure inside the canvas shell in the tail section as it went spinning into a tree.

5. Customer Base
Everyone who has the game RoF already will be a customer
People arent hapy with the planned demise of the master server,
People want newer planes for the game to the point they have been reskinning existing planes and making "new planes". Most famous is/was the guy
that reskinned the Gotha as a Zeppelin

The main cons of RoF

1. the game is set up for initial verification by pinging a master server that then creates an user file that the game can use to play in offline mode..
2. online game play
3. no idea how hard it would be to port existing WOFF or WOTR plane models into the engine


But the BIGGEST thing is that just before they stopped development of Rise of Flight and just went to selling the plane models in perpetuity,

They altered the control listings to include a set of engine controls for 4 engines, minus factory set keybindings. So in essence the game engine may be capable as is of a 4 engine bomber for WOTR

A feat that Great Battles CANT do

I’d guess that most people on here already own/fly ROF @MasterKamera. I bought it a few years ago and added a few extras, also flew a bit using Pats CG (Wonderful job he’s done).

Anyway my personal opinion..I wouldn’t have any of WOFF/WOTR in the ROF engine, I found ROF to be incredibly stale I just can’t get into the ground textures etc, down low looks great but imo at altitude the scenery for me just doesn’t look/feel right I believe there’s also DM issues.? What I do like is some of the flight models in ROF.

I’m not here to bash ROF, I also own some of the Great battles aircraft and theatres but I will not spend another penny until the team over there start looking after the SP crowd especially the woeful Ai there’s other issues but here’s not the place for me too rant.

What I am appreciative of is..the devs of both OBD and 1C,S commitment to keep WW1 sim aviation alive, it’s a small niche market and it’ll be a sad day when WW1 aviation sims cease to be developed.
I personally love the look and feel of OBDS sims they look more organic if that’s the correct word? I wouldn’t want them on another engine, if they could find a way to get it running on a few more cores or better still DX11 then that’d be perfect. Have a pleasant day.

Regards Adger

Every DX upgrade comes at a cost. Nothing is for free. I suspect even if DX11 were possible in WOFF, it would be too taxing on the gpu/cpu. I believe those with mid to low end PCs would need to lower visual settings to maintain playable frame rates. You would probably need a high end system to run WOFF in DX11 with its visual settings maxed. DX11 includes extra visual effects which counteract the advantage and usually ends up lowering frame rates.

I like WOFF for what it is. It's fun and re-playable. I think those are the most important ingredients for longevity. The improvement in visuals would be welcome, but I suspect it would not be worth it for many if you would need to purchase high end hardware to run it. As long as the Devs focus on introducing new content or fix bugs in the current engine, I would be happy with that.

+1

Anything above clean DX9, or above the DX8-to-9 converter currently used in the WoFF series - is performance-wise likely a no-go unless two-core (or core-and-a-half min.) capability is implemented (if possible) in the CFS3 code. As far as I know, RoF is clean DX9 and multi-core capable; FE2 is DX10 and multi-core capable (FPS are healthy in both sims.); FE1 and FE Gold might have been clean DX9 - never owned those first-gen sims - but they are single-core and performance-wise are much worse than FE2 and RoF.

The WoFF series in its current state (single-core) is still fine FPS-wise because it uses AnKor's DX8-to-9 converter. The max. upper limit - I am theorizing here - of what might be possible with CFS3 code is maybe clean DX9, possibly DX10, plus at least core-and-a-half implementation - this would be the best of/top of combo in terms of features and still healthy FPS.

I think that may be one of the reasons why AnKor abandoned the DX11/12 project for the WoFF/WoTR series - since it makes no sense (other than as an academic exercise) to go in that direction without multi-core capability - it would be disastrous to performance.

Cheers all and happy flying in WoFF as is,
Von S

Vons

The engine used to build Rise of Flight is superior to that being used to build the current il2 great battles series.

When you hit the external view, Rise of Flight has better graphics then what you get in Flying Circus.. or anything great battles

In great battles they had to implement a "radius of graphics quality" that is permanently set at a maximum of 300 meters radius on your aircraft when your fly it. Anything outside of that radius , like say trees or grass, is a two color smudge bur. but once it hits that radius, it becomes identifiable as a tree or grass, and suddenly what you thought was a side road is now just a streak of white grass

That may indeed be the case - I own both RoF and the BoM theater in IL2 and prefer the graphics in RoF, although I prefer the picturesque look of the WoFF series to both.

In terms of graphics, overall, I can only speak from the perspective of a Mac-user who is on a Xeon/AMD vid. rig (crude rankings list follows below for any Mac users following these threads and running AMD vid., and interested in various flight sims):

Simple Rankings List for Mac/AMD-vid Friendliness of Flight Sims, from Most to Least Friendly

No. 1 spot: First Eagles 2

No. 2 spot: newer iterations of the WoFF series (UE/PE/BH&H2)

No. 3 spot: RoF (pesky cloud flickering and blocky clouds noticeable at times, minimized by running an FPS-monitor-overlay program while flying, but impossible fully to resolve)

No. 4 spot: IL2 series/addons, such as FC (needs to have an FPS-monitor-overlay program running while flying, otherwise a horrible-looking checkerboard terrain is present, and general flickering of skies, etc. - running the overlay program solves the problem, but caution is suggested before investing in the franchise, and no guarantees what future updates might do on Mac/AMD vid. combos)

NOTE: PC/nVidia-users feel free to disregard the crude rankings list above.

Further info.: I am using the ver. 17.x.x. Bootcamp AMD DLLs by the way, on my rig; worth experimenting with may also be the generation 19.x.x and 20.x.x drivers; the 18.x.x drivers I did test but found lacking and have stuck with 17.x.x; also keep in mind that the generation of AMD DLLs that can be installed may be limited by the ver. of Win10/11 that you have installed; I have a locked-down ver. 1809 of Win10 with 17.x.x AMD DLLs running for good simming - ver. 1809 is by the way the ver. on which the long-term edition of Win10 is based - Mac users feeling brave enough to attempt shoehorning Win11 onto their rigs are urged to see this post, instead.

Cheers all and good investment choices in your flight sims (especially if on a Mac where your choices may be further limited),
Von S

Everyone's entitled to think whatever engine they wish is best. Personally, I'd have to sacrifice too many features of WOFF, such as the huge dynamic campaign, way more aircraft, better AI, far more squadrons, a crap ton of sim options to make it fly the way you want, etc. Yup, I'd love 3d clouds, Dx11/12 support and 64 bit multicore support, but because I don't want to lose all the other features, I stick with WOFF. Thats just my personal choice.

What he said.

Unreal Engine 5 looks and sounds amazing. If OBD was a significantly larger team, I'm sure WOFF: BHaH II would look and play incredible in it...but then we'd probably still be delayed 5 to 10 years at least while they converted everything over.
That said, the Nanite, Lumen and World Partition technologies of Unreal Engine 5 seem like they would have a lot to offer any game or sim that needed very large, detailed open worlds....like say the Wester Front of France.