New Microprose game, Tiny Combat Arena

Scheduled for Sept. 2021. This might appeal to some here.
Steam Link

Will this have Track IR support? I have always wanted classic sims such as F-15 Strike Eagle 3 or F-19/F-117 to have Track IR support. They're still great sims! But without head tracking, they're very hard to go back and visit now, despite them being solid. If support is included, I could see this being fun, as I love the retro art style.

Yeah man. That brought back US Marine Fighters and no mistake. I like what I see there. Track IR and I might be in. Thanks for the heads up.

Looks like fun. I'll purchase this as soon as an online-detached version is available (assuming GOG).

I doubt it'll have anything close to the stealth gameplay of F-19/F-117 though: mainly staying heads down in the pit sensors trying to reach your target without being detected, then escaping the angry hornets after kicking over their nest. And all at night, when you usually can't see jack looking out of the canopy. Hope this has nukes.

stylized ? they are just using the engine from f18 korea lol.
i hate these minimalist games.

Oh no Blade thinks something else sucks.

Looks like the kind of game you can just jump in and have some fun for a while. Nice and easy, the way I like things lately. I thought I saw an F-5 in the video, so I'm sold.

F-18 Korea OpenGL was pretty cool, IMO (plus a little added Pretzel modding)...

Some of the better non-3D accelerated graphics, IMO (although there were a couple of 3D accelerated versions under DOS)...

That is not the original korea, it had no textures, maybe only the symbol flags, i loved that game because it had a nuke

this is the one i played, aparently there were other versions

And finally, my favorite retro graphics: early 3dfx/Voodoo: 640x480 (vs. 800x600) / 256x256 max. tex (I forget triangle limit) / 16-bit color (32-bit for modern hardware compatibility). It's the perfect graphics to me for a retro-style 3D game, although 640x480 is borderline high for pixel art (giving it that old-school look).

If I remember correctly, there was a nuke mod for Strike Fighters. Can't remember who did it.

Blade_RJ, technically you're correct. What I posted was "F/A-18 Precision Strike Fighter" which was a bargain bin rehash of F-18 Korea with Open GL support (but still called "F-18 Korea"), otherwise the exact same game (I have them all). This sim is what originally brought me to SimHQ.

But I get what you're saying, you like textures.

im not old as the majority here but i did acompany most of the major breakthrough in games while playing them, from simple models to textured, from software render to glide,from a texture in the sky dome to puff clouds to volumetric coulds, blob shadows, to cast shadow to dynamic shadows,self shadow or oclusion, face expressions, etc etc.
and now people want to go back to THAT ? NO ! NO ! HELL NO ! if you want to include such mode in most games as a low equalizer so people can run in any machine, hell yeah do that, like capcom did with SF IV, im one hundred percent with you.
But me ?yeah i like my textures,

Nice, looks like a fun time. They should make some effort to make it VR compatible, it looks like a shoe-in for some quick & easy VR flight sim fun

This looks fun! Reminds me some of A-10 Cuba or Apache/Hind.

Only for Win 10, pfft I can already play old school looking games in 7

I checked out the Steam page. I think my wife's 13 year old nephew might enjoy it.

We need sims like this that are accessible and easy to approach. Imagine a kid who's never flown a combat or civilian sim ever trying to jump into BMS/DCS/IL-2 BOS/Rise of Flight...

I can't speak for BMS but if you turn off all of the realism options in IL-2 BOS and DCS (Flaming Cliffs planes only) you basically have an arcade level flight sim.

My only concern about this one in that regard is the graphics - I don't think a modern kid would be very interested in it. Making it simple but with good graphics seems like it would be a better way to get young people interested.

Back when I played, very little, "sims" with graphics like that, all I really remember is wishing for better graphics.

I'm not so sure about that. Looking at the screenshots my first thought was "Roblox" and that is immensely popular among 12 year olds.

Throw in some Dire Straits on the next commercial and they'll have a hit! The game will sell itself with those retro vibes. Kids will love it.

80s is hip again.

I always thought Strike Fighters 2 was a sim-lite and had so much fun in it. Sometimes I don't want to load into the sim to do a cold dark start, just load take off, Alt-N and fight!

In my opinion the Strike Fighters series was the perfect "middle ground" between hardcore sims and arcade sims. The fact that the Strike Fighters sims never became mainstream hits speaks volumes though about what the mainstream gaming community wants and doesn't want.

Reflecting on the history of flight sims, I think that in the '80s and '90s, computers in general were still very technical, and appealed to a technical crowd, and I think flight simulators were similar, so many computer owners enjoyed the technical aspect of flight simulators. I think the 3D graphics were also an appeal, because it is what many thought of when they thought of cool stuff to do with a computer. Adding in the additional hardware you could get, like a good joystick, and it's something tinkerers would really get into, which, again, was a large percentage of early computer users.

Computers at the time were only capable of so much processing, so the controls and functions had to be scaled down, but they were still complex enough for most to feel like they really mastered something, and it satisfied their connection to feeling like they flew an aircraft, and possibly on a combat mission, without requiring hours of study and prep.

As time went by, more and more people got computers, many less technical, so the demand wasn't as great of a percentage of the market. Along with that, as computers became more capable, simulators got more complex, which, while appealing to some, also alienated many who didn't want to put the extra time and effort into learning something they did for fun.

I also think flight simulators got a bit of a boost from Top Gun and then later, the first Gulf War. Since then, interest in aircraft and the military seems to have waned, along with an interest in history, so there's just not that many out there who feel a desire to get into that area anymore.