At least you got across the bridge! I barely made it to the little pier next to fast flowing river.
Crawling mind you in wet fatigues
That HD mission just reeked dampness and danger.

Actually, it's the atmosphere issue which has always ruined the IL-2 series for me. In my mind the Russian campaign was a dark and terrifying affair. Oleg makes it seem like a ride at Disneyland, somehow. Not that it isn't very pretty to look at and all that. Well, actually, it's much TOO pretty to look at, I think.

SF:P1's future will be like EAW's, I think. It's a plane modder's paradise. But with EAW you can play around with the campaigns and make new worlds. There isn't quite enough to SF for that, as it stands. But we'll see what clever things the fans get up to...

Ursus- I just got Strike fighters .runs OK on my ATI.
See you over the SF P1 forum. I'll be between these two now

How many of you are flying online with hyperlobby everynight?

Just curious, I counted 300+ playing FB, no one playing BoB?

I think if there was more online interest it would be more popular?

Or is this primarily an offline game?

Does the demo work with XP?

Recon S!
This is primarily an offline game. Unfortunately, Rowan never did get a sim which played well or satisfactorily online.
FCG-MigAlley - BOB - . All the same, which was a pity.
But as an offline sim it is very good.
The demo may be iffy, I wouldn't go on that.
You ought to be able to get it UK for a few pounds, then one patch (0973)and away you go.
Go on, let your curiosity get the better of you

Thanks for response.

I hope 1C Maddox BoB provides the level of immersion you all speak of here.

Well, before that comes out there will definately be some more versions by us and maybe we will even be able to up the online experience ? Ah, the joys of legally having the source !

It's due to the "Uber plane" debate, after the five thousandths post people got sick of it and there was cultural backlash.

As for BOB, you guys can compete with the new sim! Is Oleg planning night combat?

In any case you guys don't have to combet with the new sim. In some areas the BDG's work will be better in others worse. Diversity is a good thing and there is a big difference between a commercial team and a community team.

My both sims live long and prosper!

To 609IAP_Recon:

There is a newer demo available that was made by the BDG mod group. It has the features that were added by modders and all in all gives a much better impression of the game.

You can find it at http://www.netwings.org in the Downloads section

I've always found the AI in BoB to be head and shoulders above that in IL2 and FB. The same for BoB's padlock over IL2's or FB's btw.

Pity that BoB's more geared towards offline play. Then again offline play in BoB is absolutely tops.

Imo overall, BoB, as per the BDG, has a lot of intelligent features that are unfortunately absent (overlooked?) in FB.

Recon wrote:

"How many of you are flying online with hyperlobby everynight?

Just curious, I counted 300+ playing FB, no one playing BoB?

I think if there was more online interest it would be more popular?

Or is this primarily an offline game?"

My hyperlobby client has never shown an entry for BoB. As far as I know it isn't supported on HL. I'd love to try BoB online, but I'm chronologically (chronographically?) challenged by about 8 hours from most onliners.

Yes, AFAIK, BoB is not supported by Hyperlobby. All the online games I participated in where done without an external tool.

I know that Jiri (Hyper-) is on the one hand interested to make BoB compatible and work on the network code, but on the other hand he has a lot of things to do and says that it would be no small job.

I could imagine that Jiri would be more motivated if he sees there is a big demand for BoB on HL .

Well I'd play it on HL and I'd be pretty damn good at it too.

No doubt that the AI is very good in BOB, at times it even seems a little devious. Numerous times the enemy AC i've been following through evasive manuevers finally straightens its flight path out, I line him up in my sites, just to see tracers flying past my cockpit from his wingman. I've started to wonder if the AI has deliberately set me up. Anyway, could the AI be made even better at some point?

Redband

AI set you up?

Never. Keeps you on your toes, doesn't it? It's as if they have radio communications.

I respect and admire Mr. Maddox's creations. The looks, the damage models, the detailed physics of almost everything. But the AI is not the forte of his two simulations. IL-2/FB is an sterile, almost empty scripted virtual world. Even the dynamic campaigns are not inmersive. They feel artificial, like a limited world created around you. Fly 20 Km out of your waypoint and you will be alone.
In BoB, MIG Alley and in Falcon 4 you feel like there is something big happening, and that you are almost insignificant. Go anywhere and you will find somebody doing something that is not related to your mission. 100% immersion.
I am not a programmer (not a professional one actually), but how it comes that nowadays phylosophy for creating a virtual world is to initialize and track to the minimum detail all the objects of the virtual world for each mission? Will ever the "player bubble" concept be exploited again? Will somebody someday realize the potential of the tricks that Rowan used in his simulators? Is this a kind of "CPUs and memory are cheap, my programming hour is expensive" phylosophy?

You can only hope so. I was amazed to learn recently that some flightsims (admittedly not combat ones) don't even use reduced level of Detail models for far distance (or very little). So it appears that too many developers just don't take this sort of thing into consideration.

I do always wonder about the race for 10,000 polygon objects. Sure they look great close up.. but that's not what this is about. Or is it?

I need a new eyeglass prescription, so I probably would not notice.
How does it feel?

Count me in on the on-line petition!

Totally agree with the observations in this thread regarding the importance of immersion, and the Il-2 series fails to immerse me.

For me it falls into the category where the limited maps are a major put off. I basically want to be able to roam the whole theatre, off-line and on-line. One of the joys of BoB is that fredom to go whereever I like, fuel and CO permitting!