Combat Flight Sim Preference Poll

The "hot garbage flight sims" thread made me think of this dichotomy in the flight sim community.


Just a simple question, don't make it more complicated than it is, just assume these two choices came available at the same time, for the same price and nothing was on the horizon to compete with them

Your simplicity makes it own complexity. I have to assume that only "hardcore" sims have no dynamic campaign and that non "hardcore" sims have one.

Here's a hardcore vote.

One can always use difficulty settings if he wants to fly less hardcore, plus 3rd party dynamic campaign is always a possibility, think patw for rof and box, dcg or dgen for 46, mbot for dcs.

Best dynamic campaign out there (falcon 4) belongs to a hardcore sim, too.

I'd have a more difficult choice in "hardcore sim with dumb AI and little interaction with player (dcs, box, clodo)" vs "midcore sim with plausible AI and great interaction with player (46,BoB2)", but anyway falcon will remain the goal and benchmark, probably for decades.

I voted for lite, although I'd really prefer something in the middle like Flaming Cliffs.

Of course lite like EECH.I have no pleasure and time to learn a week how to turn on the light.I have no patience, I'm too old for hardcore.I want FUN, not frustration.

I know of Thirdwire but never really played it, so I just assumed the choice was something like Flaming Cliffs level of fidelity and a dynamic campaign.

Thirdwire is lighter than FC, but not by much with full difficulty switches on. Anyway, much can be simplified in dcs (as in many sims)for those who want "lite", just use the difficulty menus, keyboard shortcuts and so on. MBOT's dyn campaign kinda works too, but AI is to be perfected before it can be a real fun solo experience.

EECH ain't "lite" either, not much clicking around but one needs more than a few commands to make full use of the helo as a potent weapon, it's "mid", and has a great dyn campaign. "lite" helo flying/fighting is arma.

Preferred the lite version with added content rather than the sterile hard-core sims. Hard core sterile feels like I need a $60000 salary to have fun with it.

All that switchology isn't fun if you're just flipping the switches just for the sake of flipping switches.

Lite Flight Sim (think Thirdwire) with Dynamic Campaign

Definitely lite sim with DC.

I knew some would still try to overcomplicate the poll. Yes I know there are hardcore sims with DC. Yes I know there are difficulty levels in most Sims.


The POINT was to find out which attribute is MOST important, IE if you can ONLY have one or the other which do you choose.

So far the result shows (to me) that whereas sim makers seem to think that everyone mostly want switchology, modes, sensors of interest, rivets in their proper place etc. ad nauseum what people really want MOST (not necessarily to the exclusion of the aforementioned, just most) is a dynamic campaign.

Can we choose neither? Cause I'd rather not give money to wanks making bad sims and wait for someone to get it right!

it's simple - dynamic campaign = every mission different.even the same mission in eech running many times gives quite different results.who once played the game with dc already never wants boring missions like in dcs.

Yes, that would be called not voting.


Or think of it this way: someone is giving these away, no money goes to either developer as they're "promotional copies", but only one to a person. Which one would you take?

Didn't over-complicate it. I observed the poll precluded my wants, and abstained from voting

I'd either take none of the above. Or i'd take both and throw them both in the garbage!

But I voted based on the type of sim in each choice, not the campaign choice. You're drawing a conclusion that you can't draw based on the data you're getting.

The only conclusion I am drawing is that given the choices presented the lite* sim with a dynamic campaign wins. 83% to 17% at present


*and don't think of "lite" as arcade. Thirdwire is not arcade and it was only an example, I could just as easily have said Flaming Cliffs, which while a bit "harder" than Thirdwire is still considered (by most I imagine) "lite"

How about a third choice:

Hardcore flight complexity like Falcon 4.0 with a dynamic campaign like Falcon's or EECH.

Because I wanted a "us" vs "them" comparison.

"Us" being the desire for a dynamic campaign (even if it's in a less than hardcore study sim) and "them" being a hardcore study / switchology sim that exists in a dead, lifeless, dare I say "boring" world.

It seems that (given the lack of dynamic campaigns in new sims) the sim makers have assumed that everyone's priority is pretty jets with lots of switches to flip instead of all the other things people (like you Blastman) stated they wanted over in the "hot garbage" thread.

That seems to be what everyone wants. The poll was to see which aspect people prioritized or wanted the most, I think.

Ok. My misunderstanding then.

BINGO

Sticking with Falcon4.0/BMS and EECH. No reason to switch to something of lesser quality.

The 2nd option is ahead by far, but the obvious issue is, simhq being a small sample and IMO biased in this regard.

Voted lite with DC myself ofc. Otherwise I wouldn't hang around simhq!

True.

Well, I'd rather have the feel of flight, the beauty, the "rightness" of Rise of Flight over the great-for-its-time Red Baron 3D, which is often pointed to as having a great campaign - but that's nostalgia talking most of the time. It was well scripted with some random triggers plugged in at certain places on the map that became completely predictable.

Red Baron 3D had a weaker campaign system than the original. But that was canned, too. And after about the third time I saw a cut scene I was hitting the skip button.

Oh, I'm at the point in the campaign where they're going to invite me to a squadron....next mission...yep, there it is. Let's overfly that aerodrome. Wow, that is really neat - a siren and two scouts scrambling. Again.

I can't recall a single mission from the campaigns of the Golden Age of Flight Sims. Stealth Fighter? Cool, but no one mission standing out. Aces of The Pacific/Aces Over Europe? I don't remember anything about their campaigns. Hind did have a couple, though, where one dropped off the troops. Chuck Yeager's Air Combat? Did that even have a campaign?

The campaign in RoF is "gooder enough" for me. Is it somewhat repetitive? Yep. Can it be boring? Yep. Can one get total milk runs where the enemy is serving itself up? Yep. Can one find the things stacked up to where one can't accomplish the mission? Yep. Feel like you're doing all of this stuff and it just doesn't seem to matter in the least on how the actual war is progressing? Absolutely.

That's actually really realistic.

Know what's not realistic?

A single pilot flying a set of sorties that changes the course of an entire war. There are maybe 5 or 6 individual missions flown by pilots that actually impacted the course of a war - one was a navigation error (German bomber crew letting loose on London) and two of them carried nukes at the tail end of WWII.

It's also completely unrealistic for a flight leader to choose and manage his flight members. You get what you get. Gotta beef? Take it to the Squadron Commander via the XO, and good luck with that.

Promotions and awards are terribly inflated in flight simulations, in the main.

So is putting an untrained individual who probably spent the last 30 minutes skimming over the manual in charge of a flight or making that indvidual plan the flight route and weapons ordnance.

We have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise we'd be flying trainers first and then moving up and we'd be showing up to flights 2 hours early.

Excellent point Schwalbe. I think sometimes we at SimHQ forget just how much of a niche group we are and how we are NOT representative of the mainstream population when it comes to many things.

But my question was directed at the niche group, not the general public

I think Schwalbe was saying that we at SimHQ are a small representative sample of the niche group. If this question was posed to other flight sim forums, still part of the niche, then the answer might be different.

Ok that make sense. Thanks for clearing that up F4U!

Well, I hope I was interpreting Schwalbe right


But, let's consider the general public for a minute. How do we draw more new people into our niche?

Would they be more attracted to a sim that is easy to get started in or something hardcore? I think the answer to that is obvious. So not only does a "less than hardcore sim" (lite sim has a bad connotation... what is a better term? something that doesn't suggest "arcade"?) with a dynamic campaign (or at least a well written scripted campaign that has that "feel" we all miss) better fit what we present niche members want it also could help grow the niche.

My honest answer to that is to make lite arcade-type flying games for the tablet and smartphone. I think those might sell pretty decently with the general public.

Playing any kind of flight sim regardless of how "Lite" it is on the PC will never attract a mainstream audience in my opinion.

No it will never be mainstream, but it could grow and it could also die out. My interest is that we see it grow some or at least not die out.

I voted "Lite".

From where I am now, by far I'd prefer a title that is built to provide well designed gameplay, straight out of the box.

I’m waiting for a switchology sim in which the flight surgeon randomly fails you on a post-ejection flight physical and you become the squadron ops officer, life support systems officer, maintenance officer, etc, and have to do paperwork while your former fellow pilots are out flying. Pushing buttons and flipping switches can be a good thing but can also be taken too far. Why not go all out and have your crew chief hand you all the “remove before flight” safety pins so you can count them and know he didn’t forget to arm your ejection seat?

Don't give anyone any ideas! If this happens now I'm blaming YOU!

I've been an avid hardcore PC flight simmer since 1989 but even I think that some online squadrons/clans go a bit overboard with the realism aspect. I've known of some groups where they go through the complete 30+ point pre-flight check, then fly an hour or more to the target area and then fly an hour or more to get back to base to land. That's too much for me!

Ah... I used to enjoy that!

Microprose was almost single-handedly responsible for combat flight sims taking off back in the day, and none of their sims were what we would call "hardcore" these days. But they had atmosphere, were accessible, easy to get into(keyboard overlays anyone?), and a heck of a lot of fun--but it was the atmosphere I think that contributed the most towards their appeal, and this is something the Russian(especially the Russian) sim developers don't seem to understand or care about.

When I was a kid I wanted to feel like Tom Cruise or Clint Eastwood or Roy Schneider in Top Gun, Firefox and Blue Thunder, and their "sims" delivered.

They had enough atmosphere and fun to pull it off, while distinctly not being "arcade ace combat" by having rich underpinnings based on reality with fantastic manuals.

So I think for a modern developer to have a chance at bringing back the genre, they need to remember what helped it succeed in the first place--how the old games captured the imagination of our youth.

I completely agree with you that it was the immersion factor that made the Microprose games so popular in the 80's and 90's.


However, the PC game business and consumers have changed a lot since that time. So much in fact that I think even a flight sim with lots of immersion built into it would still only have niche appeal. Does anyone remember Secret Weapons over Normandy? Apparently that flight sim was very story-driven and had a lot of immersion and it followed exactly the same formula of the original game that was so popular back in the early 1990's.


The sim was a commercial flop.

Because before all they are Russian, and so hear Russian players - whose majority just want an MP "cyber sport" and not an "immersive historic recreation", the successful War Thunder was created for fulfill this players wishes.

But one can hope, is just need that War Thunder developers learn develop SP Dynamic Campaigns - the "Lite Flight Sim" part is already done - with modern visuals and "Hollywood" effects.

Sokol brings up a great point.


How many people on SimHQ play "War Thunder"? Would it be considered to be TOO far on the "Lite" side for most SimHQ members?

I tried it when I first got my Oculus Rift simply because it supported OR very well. It is a very "pretty" sim but the online flying that I took part in, which was admittedly very little, was a free for all with little if any cooperation etc. The flight models were decent but not hardcore, if War Thunder were a single player sim with a good historical or dynamic campaign I would buy it. But the online "grind" for upgrading aircraft etc. is just not for me. I much prefer the "Aces High" online model even though AH doesn't have the visuals of WT.

I would if it were not for the mouse flyers... Mouse gives them a ridiculous advantage over joystick pilots, and last time I tried War Thunder several years ago, the hardcore joystick only servers were dead.

I had heard that, how does that work??

Move mouse, plane automatically flys itself. Apparently War Thunder models damage to control surfaces, etc., but if you use mouse, the mouse autopilot compensates for it making flying silly easy, and to top things off, the crosshair doesn't shake or become unsteady and the external view allows them to follow and track their targets with ease.

I tend to come along in all of these threads to heap a healthy helping of rain on the nostalgia parade. These sorts of threads pop up every two months like clockwork, and right now there are a few on the board. You have to consider how you'd react to any of these games if they were released as new titles today. I bet in most cases, you wouldn't view it in nearly the same light as you do now.

People gush about how immersive these titles were, as if immersion isn't mostly the end-product of your own imagination. PM is spot on, that we've changed, What we accepted as amazingly immersive 15 years ago won't fly today. Think about those Jane's titles. So immersive ! Right? Why? Opening cutscene? The little base like in Longbow 2? Cheesy briefing videos? Was EAW immersive because it had a screen that showed a few period snapshots and maybe an old pocketwatch, a few shell casings and pilot's scarf?

I'd argue that we found these things immersive because we allowed it to be. But as time has marched on we have become more jaded and sophisticated and no longer allow ourselves to be immersed by such trinkets and shiny baubles. It's not that the games have gotten so much different, but we have.

I could go on, but I will mention something from popular culture that would illustrate the phenomena, If you're around my age you might remember a TV show called Welcome Back Kotter. Great theme song yeah.

Anyway, everyone loved the show. It's was very popular. Have you watched it lately? It sucks. If you haven't seen it in modern times you might even say how great the show was. You'd be wrong. And me too

For me, the window dressing elements didn't create a sense of "immersion" as much as the connection to my save. I remember when I'd finally face a critical situation, forced to eject or bail, and wonder whether that was the end of my career. Sure, I could always click "Revive" or "Re-fly" or something, but it was a fun bit of sweaty palms trying to NEVER click that button, as each new mission unfolded. The choice of pushing for mission success, or keeping my pilot alive to fight tomorrow.

A memorable situation with this was flying a bomber campaign in IL2FB. Several missions into my save, I'd come upon a target area with heavy flak fire. That was really a cold feeling, trying to keep cool amid those bursting clouds on all sides. Sometimes, those little metallic plinking noises would hint a possible damage.. fuel or oil leaks threatening my successful return home, in addition to fighters harassment.

^This i know what you mean I also have unforgettable memories of the eech missions.when my base was attacked from three different sides.everything around it exploded, most helicopters destroyed.
I started after a dozen or so fruitless attempts.
two Hinds and one ka52 at the same time were destroying the earth all around.Until the end of life, i do not forget this adrenaline and adventure

Before DCS World killed all my missions, I built both a campaign and a companion multiplayer map with triggers for dialog in Black Shark.

If one arrived late to rescue a downed pilot, he would say to tell his wife the love was truly gone, as he knows the child he has been raising is not his own, and his only regret in dying is that he won't be able to divorce her.

Hearing a squaddie laugh as he read it while we tried to get to him in our Ka-50's was golden.

Nothing wrong with a scripted campaign if it's done well.

And you do it well
But while I agree with what you're saying I think, using DCS as an example, the over-detailed modelling from A-10C and forwards killed the usability (is that even a word?) of said simgame and I want to believe that FC3 level planes in large numbers/eras along with a DC, be it a semi well done first attempt at a DC, would have made a bigger success and made the entry point much lower and as such far more accessable to new players.

Expanded FC3 would have been closer to the old fun games.

DCS really has become a Digital Cockpit Simulator (but thats OT here).

I tend to get glassy-eyed when moving past WWII in flight sims, as aircraft become "weapons platforms" more than the weapons themselves. Switchology leaves me cold.

Will always be one of my favorites...










Strategic Command add-on:

Yes, I agree. The main value of a campaign generator is replay value, with different paths and outcomes. But a well done scripted campaign can be excellent, especially in a lighter weight sim where I'll not be playing it for the next 11 years.

And regarding your comments on more modern aircraft being a platform... a good point. Coming from a WW2 background, the biggest issue I had moving into LockOn and jet sims was trying to learn how the battlefield works. Advances in weapons and technology seriously change how aircraft operate, compared to WW2 days. And when a sim includes minimal (or essentially zero) prepared play content, I'm left alone to build missions if I want to enjoy actually playing.

I did spend many hours researching the fundamentals, trying to learn what enemy units were included, how they would be realistically deployed on a battlefield. But mostly, this served to pull me away from the sim, and my interest fell off pretty fast. And I did download some player made missions when able, but they were sort of a grab-bag mix of experiences. Was a bad experience due to a poorly made mission? Was it my poor play?

So I kinda left air combat sims at that point, cold turkey. They just didn't present me enough interesting to play. I invested my mission making time into FS2004 and later Arma. Both also games where I always had to make 100% of my own missions to have any solid gameplay. But in FS2004, recreating airline or commuter air routes was easy and quick. And in Arma, the great players I met here at SimHQ helped and coached me on crafting virtual infantry battlefields for my missions. No way to even count the hundreds or even 1000+ missions I've made for those game series in the last 10 to 15 years.

Which is kinda why I'd prefer quality gameplay presented right from the box. All that time in study, learning editors, and how to craft decently realistic scenarios, and making missions isn't really gameplay. Repeating all that stuff is not what I'd be wanting to get into when I imagine buying a new sim, and sitting down to play.

True, but it severely limits replayability. For a new player, the "on the rails" nature of a scripted campaign can actually be a plus as he tries out different tactics or approaches to different scenarios and work out which ones succeed and which ones fail and why.

I don't remember there being much talk about the cut scenes for either JF-15 or JF/A-18 and I believe our briefings were all text and a map showing your mission (you might get some sort of video montage between some missions and at the end of a campaign). Fleet Defender had even less than that.

I think there are a few reasons why people remember them being immersive. First was that we were transitioning from a "you against the world" mindset to one where there were other groups doing their own missions on both sides. In F-15 SE III I don't think you could have more than 10 planes in existence at any one time. There were 1 or two doing touch and goes, you, another F-15 if you were doing co-op and the 4 other planes that would be spawned as needed. I don't think any would respawn until the whole group was taken care though I think they could respawn eventually. For Fleet Defender I could have up to 80 planes active and all aircraft would be allocated at the start of the mission.

Add onto that where machines were getting powerful enough and we had enough memory/HD space that you could hear the radio chatter going on. For JF/A-18 we actually had so much I had to put in the option so you could limit what you were hearing. That made it a lot more evident that you were part of something bigger.

Also it sounds like these days it's more important to accurately simulate something. I think it would be correct to say that while we wanted to try to be as accurate as we could be I think there was more interest in trying to create a fun game and craft an experience. For example getting blow out of the sky by a ZSU-23-4 without warning would be accurate but frustrating. Instead we tried to have them put their first few shots in front of your nose to give you an "Oh ____!" moment and a chance to react but after that the fire hose was heading right towards you. This was something TK showed me they did for Longbow which I really liked so I did something similar. You still had to use proper procedures to accomplish your mission.

I definitely won't deny that there could be a lot of rose colored glasses or people being more used to filling in the details with their imagination but I still can find people talking about how they still enjoy playing these games, even "Fleet Defender" on Steam which completely surprised me (and I hope it makes it to GOG someday), so I think we must have done something right.

Elf

That's how I remember playing Falcon 4.0 with an online squadron.

We did have to go through basic training with BFM then navigation and had to learn all the aspects of the sim before we got let loose on a mission with the rest of the experienced squadron. Which lead to going on that first strike mission with 7 other pilots, we all had our tasks to do be it SEAD or CAP or be the bomb truck, that first mission was really quite memorable and I miss being able to do that now.

I love the switchology but also crave that single player dynamic campaign (or co-operative). With how things are now, playing online with friends is not really possible due to the compromises I've had to make to be able to use my PC, I tried it for a while with Steelbeasts but voice comms is not possible from where I am sitting and it led to frustration on my part and complaints about my audio from others.

Would kill for a 2018 rebooted version of TAW, EF2000 & JSF.

Update with latest graphics and satellite imagery, VR , leave the gameplay (mostly) alone. Maybe update the ORBATs too to get rid of stuff no-longer in service (Comanche. X-32) and add a couple of new/near future platforms (PAK-FA, UCAVs) and Bob is your first cousin twice removed.

If you are feeling ambitious add coop online.

There is a one-min band beavering away at an old-skool type sim with a dynamic campaign - CAP2 . Slow progress so far but the VTOL handling/FM is fun and the devs I think deserve a bit more support from the flight sim community if threads like this do truly reflect want we really want.

It's good to see Scott in here and it's nice to have his perspective from so many years ago.

JF-15 was my first ever "hardcore" simulation and I flew it on simplified settings because it was just that cool of an experience. I didn't want to flip every switch. I wanted to feel like a combat pilot over Iraq during Desert Storm. That was it.

JF-18 was an ever better experience for me because it involved carrier aviation, which holds a special place in my heart as my dad was in naval aviation during Vietnam. Both games have never been duplicated (in my mind) since. Nobody was able to do it quite as well, and if they could ever be updated to run on modern hardware and operating systems, I think they'd be among the best-selling titles on GOG.

I still fly Strike Fighters 2 because no one has yet to make a 'middle-ground' simulator that has just enough realism to be challenging, but not so much that I need a degree from MIT to simply click the .exe file. CAP2 shows promise and I've been testing the crap out of it, and if you haven't picked it up yet, you should. Ed Scio is going a great job bringing back the mechanics of EF2K, TAW, etc.

Whoa! Nice to see you are still around PFunk. I haven't seen a post from you in ages. I hope you are doing well!

LOL. I'm fine, PM, thanks for asking. Everyone is happy and healthy for the moment and I hope the same is for you.

That's good news PFunk, also wondering about LB4LB (recovering from cancer) who hasn't posted yet this year.

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, Wings of Glory, Dawn Patrol, Strike Commander and any of the Dynamix sims - which I played the most campaigns in - were all "sim-lite" and fantastic games!

I enjoyed those as well. I wonder if gamers back during the 1990's were even labeling these games as "sim-lite"? I don't recall that being the case. I think the perception of what is a casual sim and what is a hardcore sim has changed over the years.

don't really even have time for lite, but if I was to install one again, it would be light sims

Before I got into Falcon 3.0 and Tornado, F15SEIII was my favorite sim. Its only real drawback (that I didn’t really care about at the time) was the lack of an AI wingman. None of my friends were into flight sims like I was so flying co-op really wasn’t an option. I put so many hours into that thing it wasn’t even funny! I bought the TM FCS2 & WCS at the Kaiserslautern PX because Baumholder didn’t have them, and that really took things to a whole new level. I can still remember speeding across the desert or twisting through mountain passes in Korea, low enough to keep the TEWS quiet, and never flying directly toward my targets for any length of time to avoid giving the enemy any idea of what they were. Turn 30 degrees or so off-axis, pop up just high enough and just long enough to make an RBM, then kill the radar and make a large heading change while diving for the deck. Do this 2 or 3 more times as necessary, trying to find an easily-recognizable IP to line up on because sometimes it was the only way to find a smaller target. Nail the target and do the same procedure for the secondary (or miss the primary and come around again when possible), then clean up as much as possible and head for home low enough that there was a real danger of sucking a camel into the intakes. Obviously the TEWS would go crazy when you popped up or hit the target but SAMs weren't too bad at low altitude and high speed. Those damn fighters, though! If I shot them down or avoided them I’d fly a little higher, using GM radar to search the waste for telltale dots indicating SCUDs. Those I usually nailed with 20mm, but sometimes when my target was a SAM site I had some CBUs left for them. Then back to the base, where I’d end the mission without landing because I COULD NOT land that thing at first! Once I learned that during landing the throttle controls altitude and stick controls speed, though, landings became pretty routine and I’d keep the FPM on the numbers all the way till my wheels hit the skid marks.

A lot of what I learned in that sim translated into all others, such as radar scan volume, antenna steering, and weapons envelopes. I was always more of a mud mover than a dogfighter. It was the first sim I flew that had a useful padlock view, there were no “cheats” like in Falcon 3.0 so sometimes I’d get disoriented and briefly have to return to cockpit view. It was a great feeling the first time I stayed in padlock all the way until I saw my lock-on lights flashing.

This really struck me playing through my first campaign missions in Fleet Defender. Working the RIO, the high number of contacts coming up was intense during some of the escort missions.

Even only ever visually seeing most of the contacts as radar blips, the battlefield airspace seemed surprisingly comprehensible.

Well, as a flight sim zealot I wanted everything. Switchology and standard procedures - but also flexibility. I think we solidly gained the former but failed to advance to the latter. As a hobby, despite going all out, real life(TM) and the way the sim worked capped our efforts. Therefore in retrospect, I realized you can only have one or the other.

But nowadays yes, it's time to move on from small worlds.