Question for the community

I was just wondering if the community would feel comfortable if maddox passed on the buck to say a group of people like the grennadich team or a well respected group to be put in charge of the game since it seems they are no doing the job. New aircraft, map meshes, ground items etc being submitted to them to be put in the game and let them decide as far as quality. Maybe it could be a little less then tempest cockpit quality to get some of the important ac that seen service into the game. Just a thought what everyone felt. Maybe some 4 engine flyables, carrier based torpedo planes, floats, french, aussie and polish flyables. Some of the things missing from this game and would add to more countless hours of fun.

This game has the potential to go on for many more years. I dunno about you but dont really give a crap about storms of war just not enough content to make it enjoyable. To me graphics just dont make a game. Of course i will still buy it to support 1c, and looking forward to knights of the sky etc and a korean addon, but all that stuff could be added to this same one game kept in one place to make it even greater.

I asked myself the same question, but OM has very recently answered a spate of questions on sukhoi.ru where most of the answers where "no", and unfortunately, this question was there.

I think it is probably not to be understood as "never" as it would be ridiculous, but "not in any near- or say 3 or 4 years-future". I doubt a commercial outfit would take full responsibility even if it happens one day, because I do not think any serious money is to be had there anymore. It would be more a work for a dedicated group of inviduals, I think...

Now why do I think this way? Because it is would be very bad for SoW-BoB business to open now IL2 for community add-ons and consequently to seriously rekindle the Il2 fires...It would probably slow down considerably the transition from Il2 to SoW, and that could very well mean a botched start with dire financial consequences...
We can just hope that SoW-BoB will be a lot more open to third party add-ons, and possibly open enough for projects almost finished but not inserted in Il2 to be upgraded to SoW-BoB level...Now if OM at so very long least was accepting to give some technical guidelines to at least begin 3D modeling work in full...Who knows if would-be great artists are not lurking in the shadows, bidding their time?

JV

for instance..like this hurri cockpit? http://www.simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2453416#Post2453416

a fully open and moddable IL2 will in no way stop me from getting BoB,it is still my most anticipated game.

A Freudian slip perhaps?

Well given that a certain part of the community decided to hack and mod the original and go public with it and then fell out with themselves it all seems a little moot. Had Il2 remained secure then perhaps there was some hope for exactly what you propose Leadspitter. In fact that was I believe the very plan. For now I think sadly the Horse has bolted !

lol

yes its bolted, and for my money its a good job the horse got pissed off waiting for Oleg to come and feed him, nuture him and train him.. and if you visit his new yard, you can see that the guys that stole him from the Maddox stable are looking after him too!..

The truth is,
Offline I am flying with beautiful startup and real DB605 inside and outside sound, incredible flap and gear rotation sound, better specular lighting,no silly dustbowl on takeoffs,great tire and brake sounds on landing,better gunsights, the FW cockpit fix that folks swore couldn't be done,aircraft that I couldnt fly before including the Typhoon. New Maps with the British coastline rather than a silly little Disney piece of turf off Normandy,beautiffully re colored default maps new winter maps on the way with partial snow for the late winter and spring, better dll's than were shipped with the latest patch which virtually illiminate wavy river banks and expand my view by at least a mile or so,and much more.

IvanK, I have read your past posts here and I can tell you as many others who have been long time members here and have recently seen and are quietly enjoying this new breath of fresh air will tell you that you are completely misinformed. My suggestion to you would be to head on over to that other unnamed site and see for yourself what is really happening. I'm sure you wont be disappointed.
All of these wonderful addons are happening without any changes to the FM whatsoever.
Lastly,as far as that happening, you tell me of a 7 year old sim that this has not happened to.

The folks over at that un named site have been very careful not to allow any mods out the door until they have been examined and tested out thoroughly.Those modes are also tested in Beta as well so as not to screw up anyones downloaded game,plus their working on more stable exe zips for those that are not computer wizards.
"The times are a changin",and for IL2 it's all been for the best.

Plus, well on the way to 6000 members, so something MUST be going drasticaly right!!

I haven't personally used any of the mods myself, but have been to the un-named site, and it's really great to see all the results from the hard work that's been put in by the modders. My only problem with rampant modding is that it fractures the community. I've seen what it's done to Falcon 4.0, and I only hope that the modding community here can stick together like the Falcon modding community could not.

"Fell out with themselves". This is something I had'nt heard about... what do you mean?
I have two words for you all; The "Slot". Coming soon to a sim near you.

I have to concur.. it looks bloody fantastic!

What Trooper and RDDR said. IL2 is now under new management.

Can't be @rsed to touch any modded stuff with a ten foot force pike.

TrackIR 6DOF.

'Nuff said.

WB.

Early rudder MkIXs, Erla hood 109G-6s, Flat canopy 190A-8s, no silly little wheel covers on the 190D-9, skinnable ships, tanks, drop tanks and gun pods and the ability to pick your own Default skins...Whats not to love.

Whats not to love ? ... abortions like this, from the "other" mod site:




It is supposed to be a Seafang !! And this from the breakaway group of original modders who state they can and will mod anything.... nothing sacred and no regulation

There is some beautiful stuff there.... but the game will only survive if good mods are authorised, nobody is going to authorise mods without getting paid for it.

Oleg is a victim of his generosity over past free patches containing 3rd party work. If he'd charged a modest amount for authorising them we might not be in this mess!

smoker

Hey Whiskey : 6DOF



Nuff said

You are just being silly now to try and prove a point.. I don't even have to have 6dof enabled or any type of mod, just the standard game to get screenshots like that. There are half a dozen if not more aircraft in the standard sim with those kind of graphical problems.. you know it, I know it, and so do many more who own this flippin game..

I think the exact same thing will happen that happens with all Modded sims, the groups will implode on themselves and become as you said " fractured"

How do you get these viewpoints in an unmodded game ?

Ivan,your right. Those pics are horrible.
All I was looking to do was improve my game.I shouldn't have ever suggested you go over there.
I was out of line.
Thinking of perhaps doing a complete reinstall and coming back to the fold.
Peace

There's a lot of ways to think of what a "fractured" community means.

My experience comes from Red Baron 3D, where the exact same thing happened to that sim that has happened to IL-2 (although not online yet): the code was broken and tinkered with.

Now, then, even with the Darwinian process that weeds out biased FM/DM sets (and I tend to think the prohibition on FM/DM tinkering is unenforceable and in some cases even silly on the part of formally AI-only planes), there will still be two or three very good sets of mods/hacks that stand firm.

In RB3D very decent teams of folks meaning only the best produced well researched plane and FM/DM sets. Two really wound up co-equals at the end of the day, and though they were slightly different they were in many ways similar.

But only similar.

So on any given week I would find myself hopping from one FM/DM/Plane set to another and then to stock, making it all pretty confusing and miserable by the time Sunday came around.

For the hack/mod community to say that they alone control modification to the source code (and therefore will prevent FM/DM modification) when the decompiling tools are freely available is so pretentious as to be laughable.

More to their credit, they're looking into cheat protection for online play (or were last time I lurked) to ensure folks are playing by the same rules. That's applaudable.

On sounds: I'm just not impressed by what I've seen displayed on youtube with the sounds. They all sound like they're taken externally from a lawn chair propped up at an airshow. Planes 400 meters away sound like they're 400 meters away - from the ground. It's unrealistic! Overdone doppler effects and no difference between in cockpit and externals? I'll pass.

The "mod" seems to have made the exact same mistake in sound that is in the IL-2 series, just in reverse. The sim as we know it has the sound right from within the cockpit; it's externally that it falls down - the exact opposite from what I've observed from the videos touting the sound "mod."

Since I spend 99.9% of my sim time inside the cockpit, I want that sound correct and the externals weak, rather than the other way around.

The 6 DOF stuff has horrible clipping; I'll stick with what I have and wait on SoW: BoB for 6DOF.

When the simulation becomes "abandonware" there might be a place for it, but it's still too soon to be picking the pockets of the corpse, since there are still medical procedures being performed on it.

Just for the record.It is everyones right to agree or disagree with others.
I am totally against jamming my point home adnauseum.That was the reason I posted with the wink and Grin.One allows themself to get into a power struggle,one is going to lose.

I am very happy with the new mods I have. I feel that they have really improved the immersion all around for me.Dart I disagree with your opinion of the sounds.Some are much better than others but every day someone has improved one engine sound or another.Hey,they are a lot of different aircraft.It cant be done all at once.
I might add that none of those mods look anywhere close to the pics that were posted on this thread.
I was not aware that another site existed.
The site I belong to has strict rules that are being inforced from what I can see against tampering with the FM.
I dont have a bleak outlook for IL2's future. I wont go there.
It's the law of attraction.If you think about crap,sure enough your wish will be granted.
Peace Again with no wink and a grin. Just good feelings,for the fatalists as well.

can someone pm me the new stable ? i´ve been out of the loop since the first "not alowed to say" improvement

another lol

on youtube its like 0.80 version imho, you should hear my version

the GREAT thing in soundmod that you can use your OWN samples if you dont like the originals

btw soundmod is still in wip by its original author, SFX is new versions name

Ivank is sensibly commenting on a downside Troop, with the additional downside of online compatibility problems highlighted by Dart nearby

Engine sounds can be very much improved to my ears by mods but beta mods are going to have less useful aspects and cockpit clipping is going to be one of them. If Oleg could have implemented 6DOF then of course he would have I should imagine, seems reasonable. His freedoms were constrained in er, a few ways back then

No one from the mod team is crowing in any way from what I've seen, properly respectful to Oleg's vision mostly. They will not want to hear people talking about Il-2 under new management, that's very disrespectful. Saying that in a non head-up-my-arris way I mean, bit of fun in here of course but we must try to remember that Oleg and his team are people like us and we don't strictly need to publicly say hurtful things, we need to keep our sim developers happy warm and well-fed. Keywords: eggs, golden, goose.

It's still Oleg's Amazing Sim with a couple of peripheral tweaks for gameplay: engine sounds, shiny surfaces etc. Small things but they make the flying experience that much more immersive

We all know what's going to happen. BoB will arrive and it won't need any mods out of the box. Not for five years anyway. By which time we'll be in silver suits and dreaming of piloting the Mars Lander "There's something moving on the horizon. It's moving fast"

People are always saying "What the..." in movies what's that all about. It's a planet coming at you.

Ming

I certainly meant no disrespect to Oleg personally. As far as I'm aware this coming patch is the last "support" we'll see for the series is it not? While I am very much in favour of keeping to the original dream Oleg had with the series in terms of quality I am also excited about what the mod community is doing and able to do going forward. Will there be problems? yes of course and I'm very wary about poor quality aircraft models and hearing that FM changes are coming down the pike doesn't immediately thrill me but i guess we'll see.

As for BoB, the saving grace for me is the expansion into other theatres otherwise I wouldn't be too interested but I do hope Oleg will be more open to what the community is asking for in regard to game sounds and immersion. Ultimately it's a matter of opinion, I don't like the unmodded game sounds but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that it's graphically the best game in town!

Ogs.

I don't like the unmodded game current sounds

Same here they are hopeless compared to the modded wave sounds, no real cockpit presence

but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that it's graphically the best game in town!

Same here no question.

I meant that from Oleg's point of view it might be upsetting to have the great unwashed (as the victim may see things) picking at his work Oggie, I've heard people talking as if Oleg owes them a living or something, the Microsoft "What did Bill Gates ever do for us?" Complex. Of course I don't think you're anything but grateful for anything we can get, mods or not, same here mate.

Ming

The problem with the pictures posted above is that like all the mod haters out there they are only keen to show the WiP pics or any they deem to be undesirable..
What they don't show is the hundreds of pics of the outstanding efforts that have been produced by many talented individuals on the site.
But that is their nature I guess.. They are confirmed haters, and can't bring themselves to acknowledge fantastic efforts of many well known personalities on this and other forums.
But thats no problem.. It's just life, and they are entitled to their opinions.. But so are we.

"There are none so blind as those who will not see."

“One who walks in anothers tracks leaves no footprints”

oh got a better one:

"When the winds of change are blowing some people build shelters, some windmills"

You are aware that you're downplaying those who have no use for the hacks, Istvan? There are players here who have had bad experiences with "mods" and see no need to repeat that experience. And some of the self-righteousness "over there" ... Ah, well. Better not.

Can anyone explain to me what purpose discussions like this serve? Whom do you hope to influence? etc etc..



signed,

-Just Wondering.

That's a great quote. Regardless of the discussion about mods (of which I'm a great fan and erstwhile contributor) I think it's a wonderfully descriptive and creative saying.

Oh, great, it's the start of the beginning of the end of the thread.

"Mod haters," indeed.

This is simply as bad as the "dirty hacker" label; shall we throw in "criminals" and "Oleg worshipers" for good measure.

Somebody ask me again why we don't really discuss the mod/hack on SimHQ. Shall I take a stab at rudimentary Minglish?

Keywords: Immaturity, mud slinging, over emotional reaction.

While the IL-2 series isn't perfect, neither are the hack/mod efforts. One simply cannot advocate criticism of the simulation as produced without allowing for the same criticism of the mod/hacks being produced. Replacing one sacred cow with another is counter productive.

I'm officially a "stock" guy, a regular Company Man when it comes to the simulation. I'm also that way in practice. In a year it might be different, but not if the mod/hack crowd take an air of superiority and try to adopt a veneer of infallibility.

The Canon will be 4.09m final. The mod/hacks won't be ex cathedra within the house of IL-2. They may become like the stations of the cross on the walls - expected but not required fixtures - but shooting for anything past that is pressing matters too far.

I urge you to seek a priest Dart if not a psychiatrist

Ming

As a former Catholic, methinks the religious metaphor as employed here isn't exactly accurate. The Stations of the Cross is an actual ceremony (done around Eastertime, IIRC), so unless we're going to have an official mod/hack celebration once a year...



In all seriousness, this reminds me of the aftermath of the "hacking" of Jane's WWII Fighters - it was controversial at first (and how!), but things eventually settled down and the mods gave the sim some more face time than it otherwise would have had. Shoot, there's still a somewhat active community producing mods for that game, and in the past it's seen some of the best doing their thing. If we're fortunate, than the same thing can happen for the IL-2 series; I would contend that this would garner even more longevity than what WWII Fighters enjoyed, due to the much more expansive possibilities.

However, you're right about one thing, this "holier than thou" attitude, no matter from which side it comes, is decidedly counterproductive at best.

"Tho friendship isn't quick to burn,it can become explosive stuff.
When the edge of awareness is Oh so keen,sometimes one word is enough.
So with that in mind, lets all chill and get back to flying

Hi guys, Well, someone said Mods would make more dificult the transition from Il-2 to BoB. Well, Sorry I really diagree with this statement. That whos rig cna handle BoB will switch. No doub about it. If Bob is what Il-2 was when in came out, it will be unavoidable for anyone with a capable rig. And that who´s rig won´t cut it, will not switch even if Il-2 is banned from this earth, becouse his/her rig, er.. won´t cut it.

I´ve seen it with EAW when Il-2 came out. I was a die hard fan of EAW, it took me two days not to be able to fly EAW aggain ever. When in Il-2 we had Il-2´s, 109´s, some Laggs, and a couple more planes and yes all eastern front maps and not many either... Still Il-2 was unsurpasble and EAW thanks to modding had every theater imaginable, every plane out there, ever skin you can think off... Still I prefered Il-2.

Besides this, I belive that without the Mods, many regular flyers would have jumped geneers. I am an adult, have a familly, and don´t have time for several games at the same time. I either fly twice a week or play Arma twice a week. I was about to drop WWII plane sims, for Arma. Yes you read well I have been flying Il-2 for 7 years now almost exclusivelly. But ArmA is a grate sim too, and I was thinking, what the heck Oleg will take one more year or so to finish or be able to publish Bob.. I´ll play Arma the serious way, not just Evo a on weekends...But along came the Modding comunity and in a flash I had every argentinian plane that tha Argentinian Air Force used historiclly (save for the Gloster Metheor), and now the chance to have my own country moded in.. plus infinate new maps to do what if scenarios.. (after all, its been 10 or more years of wwII (EAW+Il2) for me, and quite franklly Im a bit tired of it..). And to have to wait on Bob .. nah... I was switching.

Last time I switched was 10 years ago from Jets to porp.. never went back even thow I love jet sims, and I have them all.(I still fly one or two Falcon 4, or LOMAC missions a year -Full harddcore missions, not dogies). But I just don´t have the time to play everything and I am forced to choose. I was not going to choose Bob, becouse I was switching genneres. Now I´ll stay a bit longuer and see what the new sim brings...And I am sure I am not the onlly one thinking on gettin sometihing new. The wait has been too long and to sterile..

I firmlly belive that the Mods did a grate favor to BOB, by retaining the atention on Prop sims..
Hell they´re moddin a Spectacular BoB map. Still, you realy think that all those playing Modded Bob will not jump to SOW:Bob the minute it comes out? becouse they have a modded Il-2? If you really think that, then you don´t know, at all, how a hardcore simmer thinks...

If it wasn´t for the mods, half the people in this forum would be flying something else Or playing some other geneere, like race sims, or infantery sims...And don´t be fooled that they would be coming baclk any time soon, it takes time to enter or create a close community, and after investin time in one its hard to witch back... better not to loose them in the first place.

But Hey its just my oppinion too, and I respect the othe rpoints of view. I am sorry that we can´t get along and tolerate the needs of "the other side".

Cheers!

thx Joe!

honestly I feel here like I'd try sell the idea of fire to the caveman...

yes it can burn you but in general its a good thing

Since when did you get the authority to decide what is good and what not? Sorry, Istvan, but everyone decides what he deems as good and bad - and I (= my perspective)certainly would not use "mods" and "good" in the same sentence. Do not give me that high-and-mighty attitude buddy as it doesn't suit you.

Very accurate analysis Baco. We're definitely feeling we're ready for a new challenge. Those of us feeling we're ready for a new challenge I mean.

Mass Effect out soon, I'm finishing Crysis (excellent) and finished Witcher (wow!) lately. I never used to play anything but flight-sims but games are becoming more immersive and more beautiful by the minute. Competition for sticktime nowadays.

Does the sim sell more copies and do the people flying it enjoy it more

Should be the over-riding thing. It's all very well online Aces muttering that there may be cheating if modded versions are flown by their opponents, but what really matters is that Oleg sells more copies of the sim and that we all have a good time. Online gamers excepted yes- if they become too possessive/obsessive about their gaming

"If someone knows that the sim can now be modded they may buy a copy or return to fly again"

"Yes but should we sell them a copy if they might encounter the Unclean Online?"

Oleg's a businessman. We are not a Church. Nothing good ever came from a Crusade. Apart from roads and civil government, plumbing and medicine obviously

Ming

You better check where are those dll's coming from

"The only software that doesn't change is the software that nobody uses anymore."

So goes this maxim from the software development industry. You can quibble over whether the change occurs to core code or comes via extensions, but the fact is that any software that seeks to be relevant (until that day we have holodecks in all our homes) will undergo a process of continual change meant to improve.

The modders are doing what Oleg has said he will no longer do. The modders are adding value to the base engine and if anything are driving some late sales of the product, keeping "buzz" going on the product --- would Sim HQ publish a graph of posts relating to IL2 over the course of its life here and point out on that graph where product updates were? I bet you would see a lot of traffic around new releases. Good for the simulation, good for Sim HQ.

And as a previous poster has noted, that unmentionable site now has 6000 registered users. People go where the action is, and there is plenty of new product coming out of there (without benefit of a proper SDK and tools) to keep interest in the combat flight simulation genre alive while we wait for SoW. Maybe the quality is not always perfect, but in a few months of that site being in existence we have had far more content come out (and some of it is excellent!) then over any similar period from the developer.

Moreover, we are now many years into the Web 2.0 model where your customers are collaborators with you on product development. For the purist, and it seems that there still are a few out there, the days of shrink wrap software which is "closed" and not designed to be built upon by customers "modded", where updates (with Oleg's past performance an exception) are infrequent --- think Microsoft and their Flight Simulation franchise)...well those days are coming to an end.

Developers can't afford to do it all in house. Whether it be art work or technical research. Leveraging your customers talents as contributors to extending the base product beyond the original feature set is the business model of software development today on the Internet. Think of simulation or game engine as operating system and customers as application developers collaborating over the Internet.

And Dart.....I now get down on one knee to genuflect and make the sign of the cross at your various "how to" videos and what I regard as your very moderate and even handed approach to controversies on this forum.

But now I also rise and give you a good Zen buddhist crack on the head to wake you up regarding your statements on sound quality from mod YouTube postings you have seen.

With documented high frequency hearing loss from 22 1/2 years in the mofo US Army, even my impaired ears can tell there are worlds of difference between the stock sounds and the modded ones. You can even get difference by the sound card you use. I just recently swapped out a Auzentech for a Creative X-fi and now using Alchemy (on Vista64) I am hearing tonal and pitch nuances correlated with RPM's within the cockpit of the 109 with the new DB605 sounds which I never heard before. Amazing! a real engine!

Every once in a while something might go wrong with the install of a new mod and I get the default stock sounds back ....like the P-39 as an example.....and I am reminded of my days in grade school back in the 60's with big rotating room fans!

So Dart if your going to weigh in with some holy comparisons you need do yourself a favor, take a short pilgrimage and get dirty like the rest of us have; actually try the new sound mods with a decent sound card.

SB

take a short pilgrimage

On theme, nice. To Jerusalem who's with me! Three blokes claiming royal descent and one camel between four

I am hearing tonal and pitch nuances correlated with RPM's

Same here sir. There's so much information packed into a real audio recording it's hopeless trying to create a complex engine note from FFT synthesis the richness just isn't there. Helmet notwithstanding, I can wear a virtual helmet for radio calls and enjoy. Enjoy now there's a novelty. Enjoy hearing the sounds of the cockpit as if I wear no helmet. Technology, imagination: this is the richest synthesis

What about approaching Oleg with a commercial proposition to mod the sounds have the TripleA ranch sounds like chaps done that I wonder. I'd buy it.

If it had the Imprimatur of Maddox (theme)

Ming

Its not ment to change a damn thing for me or influence anyone, I was just wondering what the community thought about whats happening with the game for me havent flown much at all anymore because of it, being a online only person, I still enjoy the coops with good people and thats about it.

For me it would be nice if all the good stuff can be added by a reputable team such as grennadich for example just so everyone has the same stuff and evens the playing field.

Just my 2 cents anyways, Remember some of the sow discussions in orr, SOW was suppost to have addon ac by 3rd party devs but the hardcoded data of stock stuff was suppost to be untouchable. Maybe its all a type of beta test for SOW.

I suspect that they have had a hand in this . The door has been left wide open by Microsoft's decision not to develop a combat flight sim based upon FSX. Therefore, 1C only has to walk through that door with a SoW which permits both payed for and free third party material and they will own the combat flight simulation genre. We can only hope that they have the good sense to recognize the opportunity that is before them and seize it before either Microsoft wakes up or a 3rd party comes along and licenses the FSX engine and does a derivative combat flight simulation.

SB

Actually, the [current] idea is for SoW: BoB to really be in two parts of software - the offline part that is open for modding and a secure online part.

Since the offline stuff will be user generated, 1C: Maddox will pick and chose the best of the mods and fit it into the online version. If I read the Oglish right, that is.

Maybe I saw early versions, but they sounded like crap to me. Certainly not worth taking whatever else is in a "modded" version for download. No, silly, not viruses and evil things like that, but adjustments to FM and DM or weapons.

That said, the screens I've seen of the Hurricane cockpit are very interesting.

My point of religious analogy was caught correctly - NONE of this is religion, or even Faith.

So, where does this place the likes of myself, Lowengrin, Aces etc?

Good guys or bad guys because we tried to improve the game???

You guys are the pioneers....the trail blazers....the original mod squad The Mod Squad

Or the rat bastages that illegally hacked the code in clear violation of the EULA.

Something something no good deed something something.

The truth is that the timing of the hack was just as bad as it could be.

Six months to a year after the developer says "No more support" there would be less eyebrows raised.

The hallmark of the IL-2 series was that it was what it was - no more, no less. Everyone had the same simulation. Missions, campaigns, skins, and voice packs could be customized, but the sim was the same.

No conflicts with mods, as there were no mods. This isn't just an online thing. Download the right mixture of mods for ARMA and you'll get BSOD or CTD for single player, for example. Or have your performance take a killer hit.

The developer had to stay involved because the option of just shovelling it out of the door and relying on the users to fix things that were broken or add features they simply didn't want to include in order to save money wasn't there.

"We'll take it from here" was preempted by "it's AFU, we're cracking this baby and making it right!" by the tools coming out before 4.09m final.

Throw in some comments that the sim is crap unless it's modded and trash talking about 1C: Maddox in general and Oleg Maddox in particular and it's a PR machine working in reverse.

I'm of the opinion there will be White Hat hackers and Black Hat hackers, and a whole bunch of guys that think they're White Hat when they've got a plaid baseball cap on sideways and are generally f***** things up.

The proper loadouts for Version X of Year Y Plane is a good thing. New maps, upgraded cockpit graphics, and default skins is a great thing.

Increasing .50 cal damage to 30mm cannon strength for "historical representation of damage effects" is not a good thing. The intention might be fine, but it's hardly adding anything to the simulation. Learn about the art of convergence and gunnery before turning eight fifty caliber machineguns into eight howitzers. Offliners can use the easy gunnery difficulty option if they want insta-kill effects with machineguns - no need to rip into the guts of the code.

Applying the FM of the FW-190 to the Emil is a very, very bad thing, and would probably only be used online. Or rendering one's plane invisible. This, naturally, is the smallest group of hackers; they bore easily anyway, so they don't last long.

Hi chaps,

[quote=matttm]So, where does this place the likes of myself, Lowengrin, Aces etc?
[quote]

Well just to clarify one thing, I've got a sort of cream-coloured baseball hat that I bought a few years ago when the missus and I were on holiday to keep the scorching sun from beating down on my bonce.I wanted one of those Aussie hats with the corks but the missus wasn't too keep on the idea, ah, the sacrifices one makes for love

Good to hook up again with you m8.

Cheers

Leigh (Aces)

Careful Dart...

LOL Skull_Biscuit

If that's the case and using the order given in mattm's posting from left to right clockwise then that must make me the curvy one with the "come-hither" eyes at the front



Cheers

Aces

Increasing .50 cal damage to 30mm cannon strength for "historical representation of damage effects" is not a good thing

Dart as you are one of our SimHQ moderators and your replies may be taken literally or at least seriously, may I please ask

Do you have direct knowledge of this hack running in an Il-2 mission?

Bit worrying and hoping to separate out the FUD from the facts

I thought we were talking about things like plane-shine and better (smoke etc) effects and the engine sounds

Bit like corruption to a file. The file may be an image, in which case no real harm is done to the image, a pixel changes colour.

Or the file may be assembler, machine code. One byte corrupted and the application crashes

The corruption I see is to the image of Il-2/1946, not to the more important parts of a flight-sim. The FM and weaponry and so on

Sorting image-type corruption into the same bin as corruption to Oleg's dream may be dividing people into camps who throw glass

Any word on any real hacks (FM, weaponry) should of course be relayed to Oleg and not entertained. This I would call reverse-engineering with malice and expect Oleg to consult his legal team

Anyway I'd like to have more information on this weapon hack please so that I can report the details to Oleg for following up if he ever has a minute

Ming

That to me looks like the best of both worlds. In essence, we have that at the moment anyway, minus the "pick and choose" part. BTW, the modders are introducing some real improvements, we could all profit from that if Oleg introduced the "pick and choose" strategy now. I mean, the hack is there, little can be done to uproot it, so he might as well use a little (very little) of his precious time to give his blessing to some mods that are worthwhile.

Aces......glad ya liked it...and took the time to check it out.....guess I'm tipping my hand as to my age


SB

In my view there is a huge difference between the work that Aces, mattm, Lowengrin, Demon and the likes have done and what is being done by the modders at AAA. If we can’t see that and are prone to shuffle it up on one pile we can’t be more impertinent and imo ungrateful. I don’t want to be patronizing, but let’s not try to see every improvement that has been done other then the by the works or approval of C1 Maddox as evil. In that respect the comparison with church and religion is a good reminder of what good can come from that!

What can be wrong with the fact that people are seizing the opportunity and use their talents to improve things in their eyes? If you don’t agree that it an improvement, then just don’t use it. I’d rather have them sharing it with us all then have them keeping it for themselves because their work is ill perceived. Is it just the fact that they use tools that can be used by others for less honorable meanings that makes their work bad? Apart from braking the EULA of course. Allow me to use this example: there are those that look at erotic drawings as pornography that is braking all the rules and that it should be banned because it brings out the evil in people. There are also those that see it as art which allows us to see the beauty of a body as it is perceived by others; shining in its integrity and purest form. I look at the works of, forgive the term, artist at AAA as the latter; as a tribute to the game and the beauty its environment can contain in their eyes.

I have enough faith in the self regulation of the main core die hard flight sim fans to know that the outmost will be done to keep the integrity intact. I only have to shout “Enemy Coast Ahead” to state my point.

Hope I did not come over as presumptuous . I just wanted to give my opinion in this matter and for all intents and purposes give credit where credit is due imo.

Here Dart...since you apparently did not like the Mod Squad allusion

Now if you bothered to spend anytime over at that site you would note that they have bent over backwards to keep their hands off the FM/DM. The .50 cal modifications (which I have not seen) come from somewhere else. But besides, it must again be pointed out that this hack has been around for years, and used by the "black hats" as you call them to cheat online. This other group has taken the hack and given us all sorts of corrections or improvements. To name a few:

1. No lower bar obstructing gun site on 190 series
2. A fantastic! (with version 2) 6Dof mod for TIR
3. New maps or refined existing maps which correct previous deficiencies or address glaring ommisions (think Pacific Fighters as an unfinished work and now go look at what they are doing on The Slot map)
4. Better engine and in some cases weapon's sounds
5. Specularity --- now more natural reflections off of metal surfaces
6. New QMB which allows you to use ALL the maps which are in the simulation.
7. New smoke and other effects.
8. New FMB objects.
9. New cockpit skins
10. K14 gunsite now on P-47 and late Spits along with German equivalent on late German a/c

And I could go on. But that's the short list.

This is the future. There is an open source flight simulation project here Flight Gear Open Source Flight Simulation

So the future is opening up the model. MS has done it for years with a host of 3rd party add-ons. Some of it has been good and some poor. But if you look at the trajectory of flight simulations since the 90's they are in retreat compared to the rest of the simulation market. If for no other reason than survival; the model of an open platform for simulations is a necessity. You can rail against the wind like old King Lear, or as another poster put it....you can build a windmill.

SB

Not at all presumptuous Tachyon, heartily agree. Eye of the beholder. Keyboard of the beholden.

Yes artists, friends of Il-2 players they appear to be at AAA

Not to mix them up with 'hacker' morons (50cal/30mm) who only do their thing to be disruptive and have no self-respect much less respect for our highly valued sim developers

Ming

Hi chaps,

That made me laugh Skull_Biscuit m8, I'm showing my age now

Johan, my friend, I sent you something by e-mail I hope you still have the same e-mail address else please e-mail me so that I can send it again if neccessary.

Cheers

Leigh

i thought the point was, at least for me, that the AAA hackers and the 'moron' hackers are using the same "tool".........................

and that online play is not secure, ar perhaps better, is not alwasy played with the same type of game anymore

using a 6DOF hack online is for me personally already a cheat !

what a player is doing offline with its game, i couldn't care less!

but i guess, it was already discussed countless times.

@ Skull_Biscuit

I disagree on the necessity for open architecture. That works for civil sims where the "competition effect" is not there. If this "open model" and everything goes is the future then I guess my flightsimming days will be over. I happen to be a cynic who had his trust in the ability of the players to police themselves taken away a long time ago.

Here is the commercial and software security realities.

1. Flight Simulations are dying as part of the overall market. Note the number of new titles over the past few years vs. the number of titles in the late 90's up until 2003. Microsoft's decision to not do a combat flight simulation reflects a commercial judgement as to economics of combat flight simulations.

2. All software is hackable. The IL2 hack was confined to a few (the Russians are the first users of this exploit) for years before it became widely known that their was a hack. The best thing you can do is make it difficult to hack or as MS has chosen to do just open up the model and allow user input values. You can't change this dynamic. What Oleg appears to be doing is reconciling this reality with two versions for SoW. But even his online version will be hacked by those who seek to cheat. That is the nature of the game. A perpetual duel between black hat hackers and software security proponents.

Implications for community. There will be no monolithic community for the SoW. For that matter there never was for Il2 either. The concerns over perpetual fragmentation are valid but ultimately communities will coalesce around shared values (what those are within Flight Simulation dynamics are subject to debate). Needless to say since SoW does not look like it will have any competition we can predict that the various refugees from CFS3 and other flight simulations which compete with IL2 for market share will gravitate to SoW (lacking alternatives) and whatever fragmentation within the SoW community occurs over online vs offline versions will be made up for by the fact that this (SoW) is the only show in town now.

Not a satisfactory answer for what you might say is the "console like crowd" Console simulations give a predictable and uniform experience for all who have them...and on the other hand don't really get feature updates like PC's do. Console play predictability vs ever evolving PC play.

But if you are still going to stick with the PC as a simulations platform in the age of the Internet and Web 2.0 model then you are going to have to reconcile yourself to a fluid and competitive community landscape. People will go where their needs are met. We hope that the majority of people will come to a rough agreement over modeling and "experience" ....and don't forget that the purpose of the modeling is ultimately to render a "rich experience".....and chose to share their experiences here......at Sim HQ

How's that Dart?

SB

I think Il-2 was hacked to correct its errors not to cheat, its like break into a house to clean up

Surely no man-made software is hack-proof, but in my opinion the community as a whole lacks focus on what is central to development - that is an inherent feature of the various individual interests (not a bug, but a feature ) from various countries. However, being a player who values history and relevance and who despises the "KeWl factor", I do not see some kind of understanding of what is bringing the sim ahead and what is simply catering to the whims of a a certain group (dogfighters, arcade-shooter-fans etc etc pp). Let alone deciding on what is an improvement and what is not. I mean we cannot even agree on a campaign style. Have you seen the long discussion thread about dynamic campaigns, static campaigns and the various forms of dynamic campaigns over at the Zoo? Enlighting, so to speak.

In my book the development and progressing work on a good combat flight simulation is an exercise in balance between gameplay, realism and development time/ressources. To be frank balance is the very last thing that comes to my mind when I think of "community modding". But as I said maybe I'm a dinosaur and destined to die out. That's life ...

Istvan - Keep dreaming, buddy.

How???
What if the guy flying against you in the same server doesn't have a basic trackir and just relies on his hat switch? Is he going to shout 'not fair.. Cheat! They have trackir and I don't'..

Sometimes I really despair...

For the record we are of one mind on this issue. I play this simulation (as an offliner) because I am interested in getting to "the as real as it gets" and am not interested in the adolescent "kewl" factor.

However, there is no "community", to be precise there is no monolithic community. There are communities that have grown up around this flight simulation. I don't think it necessary to get into a discussion of their various attributes or strengths and weaknesses, they are debatable, and they are dynamic. The very word community implies shifting values within it.

I believe that considering the realities of the market and the current state of PC Flight Simulations, that though it is yet to become a "beggars can't be choosers" market, the niche genres are going to have to learn to live with the quality variability of user/3rd party contributed content on an open model, or make due with dwindling title releases with only marginal feature set improvements over preceding titles. Developers are not going to throw huge resources at developing closed niche titles. They'd go broke.

In the end I think you will find your happy place within a community of the SoW/IL2 communities. If you are looking for a monolithic title based community that provides a uniform experience for all then you are left with consoles.

SB

I think the difference between you and me is that you throw in external (3rd Party) development with modding while I keep these two separated. 3rd Party development under supervision (developer or publisher) is not only worthwhile but essential. Where we disagree is unsupervised modding - you approve of it, while I regard it as little else than meddling.

youre missing the point buddy

if person A makes a mod which isnt perfect, person B and C can correct it together and maybe person D makes a new skin for it, sooner or later the end result is always the perfect one, this is the future model of community cooperation on the internet Skull_Biscuit was talking about...this is my dream...
obliviously bigger companies (MS was mentioned) recognized this (open arhitecture) and dont want to go against the stream

The result of your example is incompatibility and/or a glut of different versions and ultimately bad blood because according to experience there's at least one ego-gasbag among the people involved. Parallel development and parellel releases doesn't help players but makes it hard for them to find the "right path". One version and coordinated development would be a way to incorporate the talents of the people. However I know of ONE example of such a centralized coordination - the BDG. All other cases of user modding brought down the number of players and ultimately the game itself.

I would oppose any development policy that stated "sanctioned only" modifications. Microsoft Flight Simulation supports both free and paid for add ons. Both can co-exist. Anytime you set it up for an "only approved" route you set up the conditions for gatekeepers whose motives may not align with delivering the best representations that the simulation engine can provide for.

I see nothing wrong with the formation of groups to sanction modifications like the BDG or the CFS 1%; along with the developer providing a runtime check to make sure (for the online crowd) that all are on the same page.

So I think a development ecosystem of sponsored, or approved addons and free addons helps to keep it competitive and deliver the most choices for the consumer.

SB

Which goes to the heart of my point - there will be three sets of "modders;" it's the norm for any open source software:

The well meaning and proficient. This will be the "core" modders that represent 10%.

The well meaning and woefully wrong. 80% of everybody.

The ne'er do wells. The bottom 10% that will always be with us.

Actually, the reference to .50 cal damage comes from a thread at the modder site, where it is debated. And, fairly enough, discouraged. On that site.

Ask a US prone pilot what is the number one gripe in the IL-2 series and it will be a close tie between two issues: fuel weight and distribution in the Mustang and the strength of the .50 caliber machinegun. My concern isn't really that they're turned into 30mm cannon - that's obvious and easily seen; rather that they be changed to .80 caliber with 100 m/sec increase in muzzle velocity and a third higher rate of fire. All done to replicate the results of the few Aces that were noteworthy enough to be quoted or write a book about rather than to establish realistic simulation.

On 6DOF being a cheat: it is.

http://www.simhq.com/_air7/air_256a.html



and



(Emphasis mine; in fact, I'm quoting myself )

Artificially adding 6DOF when others are unable to use the same feature fails the "cheating test" by modifying the software.

So using a TIR4 with a TrackClip Pro against a hat user isn't cheating - it's hardware only, and anyone with the means and the will can obtain it - but modifying the software to exploit it in an exclusive manner is.

The primary concerns I have are twofold:

1) The inability to recognize the use of "mods" online.

2) The Wild West of mods that have the potential for conflicts that cause the sim to run in a sub-prime manner.

Granted, #1 is primarily of interest to the online community; however, it does apply to the offline crowd, as new folks to the simulation will invariably apply "must have" mods before finding out what the stock sim has to offer and make judgements on the sim based on the merits of mods and not the base code.

#2 applies to my last point in #1. I run a stock version of ARMA - except for the official SimHQ mods which are minor, but required - simply because the folks with the fancy sound and other mods seem to have a lot of CTD issues. Rather than re-install and avoid the mods, one can find statements about the unstability of the simulation. That's incorrect. The sim is fine - it's the mods that are unstable.

There will be a clearing house of sorts for mods; it's already been established for the IL-2 hack, just as it invariably gets established for other sims (Wings of Valor and Flybert's for RB3D, for example), which will make things simpler.

I've just been down the multiple FM/DM set road and don't want to endure the wearing trouble it becomes.

I'm definately lurking with the largest interest in server validation of mods. Flying over a detailed, correct Malta in a perfected Hurricane cockpit has great appeal; still, I'd like to be able to do so with stock FM/DM to ensure that everyone on the server is on the same sheet of music and aren't causing conflicts with the server or other players.

What disturbs me most is the holier-than-thou attitude of both sides of the issue. The decision to download the hacks - or to not - is personal and has no bearing on the worthiness of an individual.

Nor is the stock simulation or the mods perfect; each is worthy of critical evaluation.

I know that I'm new to this whole discussion, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents...I believe modding should not only be allowed, but embraced by Oleg. If he fights it, it'll only drive it underground and create hacks and cheats for online play, whereas if he embraces it, he can develop anti-cheat software for online gameplay, and allow the sim to keep going for a long time with continual upgrades. For instance, I'm looking at the AAA mod group for IL-2 now (easily locatable via a Google search), and some of the stuff they're putting out looks fantastic. Translucent smoke, a fully crewed B-17G, new clouds, better sound, a better interface, a huge amount of fully simulated planes - it's basically all we've wanted from Oleg but couldn't get because he was too busy. And we can have it for free. If the modding community was accepted and measures were taken to curb cheating (or even not, just have alert server admins), then IL-2 could really become the prop sim of choice for a very long time.

I come from a heavily modding-centric community, centered around Freespace 2. Modding has kept that game alive for many years past it's sell date, even more so since the source code was released to the public. It could do the same for IL-2, and allow even more people to get into the series with the promise of an open architecture. Yes, you'll get some people who cheat, but the far greater majority will want to download quality mods - people like winning online, sure, but people also like quality software, and cheats ruin the experience for most people.

Want an example? Look at the FPS market. Unreal Tournament, Counterstrike: Source, etc, all have problems with cheaters indeed, but the far greater majority don't cheat, and still use many, many different mods that keep the game going for a long time. With anti-cheating software and a global ban capability for getting rid of cheaters permanently, mods can be an immense boon to the game.

Sorry if the post doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I'm a tad tired at the moment Cheers!

lol.. Dart, that takes the biscuit!! Quoting yourself.

I can't even pretend to be that self important! However, thats still only your point of view, it doesn't mean you are right.. (He's making it up as he goes along guv'nor!)..

Oh, and as a side note - Dart, all it takes to spot mods online is alert players and server admins, and a votekick feature to be implemented. A player is acting up? Votekick him, or have a server admin ban him. If other players don't have the mod that a player has installed, have a "default" aircraft that would be displayed on their screens, like in FPS games (although in IL-2 it would probably be best to have a generic aircraft shape with a big question mark painted on the side, as aircraft ID is integral, so you at the very least don't want to mis-ID one aircraft for another because you didn't have the file).

Another possibility is that which is used by two other modding communities - the Homeworld and Bridge Commander communities. They have such an acceptance of modding, and it's so well organized, that the fans have created "official" patches that everyone downloads, and runs their games off of them instead. Something like that could also be done for IL-2.

Hi Leigh, yes I still have the same e-mail, address, buddy and received your package. The link does not work I'm afraid. I have seen some of what you are doing and you have taken quite a challenge uppon you!! I take it that it means your life has regained its normal course? Hope everything is fine with your mother the Misses and the cats.

Cheers

And this is the operation of the free market....we'll sort it out...as you said a clearing house whether that be BDG, 1%, or hosts for particular servers. It is incumbent upon the developer (and this applies to the ARMA mods as it does any other title) to develop an engine which can be extended. The quality of that engine will be decided as much by the ease with which it is extended as well as the integrity of select aspects of the core engine...to include runtime checks for cheating.

And regarding .50 cals....I am with you!....personally I would like to see this changed in order to more realistically portray the effects/results they achieved. Nothing irks me more than to be in wing gunned .50 cal aircraft, park on the 6 position of some enemy A/C near convergence and hammer away to wildly varying results --- a wing sawed off on one occasion, nothing the next --- it has always struck me that something was wrong with the way massed wing guns were modeled.

However, for the sake of keeping other related demons in the box, I have publicly opposed changing the flight and damage models to existing aircraft in the simulation. If and when new modder provided aircraft enter the simulation (like the Spit XIV under development) then this issue of FM/DM tweaking will have to be revisited, because new aircraft by their nature will require a FM/DM which Oleg has not provided.

SB

I'd like to see this one, directed toward Dart, answered in full.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfcTncXzWHk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHwFnGi1-5c

I can!





Geez, haven't you been reading? Answered in full, with details. In more than one addition to the thread.



Yikes! You read it backwards - I don't want a change to the .50's. Not everyone is Chuck Yeager or Bud Anderson and most US fighter pilots didn't score a single kill; I definately do not want to see the .50 caliber "enhanced" to make everyone equipped with killer lasers simply to match romantic propaganda - you know, the story where any and every German or Japanese plane that was unfortunate enough to get in front of a Mustang or P-47 instantly shredded and fell to the ground in flames?

But thanks for proving my point.

I have been reading...maybe you thought you had answered the question but perhaps it got lost in all that "stuff" you called additions? Either way I think it deserves a straight answer.

I hope this one doesn't get locked just cos a mod is discussing mods/hacks..if you get my meaning?!

Ya sounds OK and an natural development.

Nice one....hitting your air brakes and me overshooting

Now here comes my lag pursuit roll...

190 bar removed, new maps, 6DOF....my three round burst from a previous post

SB

Ogdens, for the record I personally place them in the first category - The well meaning and proficient.

If I were to ever grab a "mod" of the simulation, I'd look for them as authors.



Actually, it's up for staff review at my request.

As y'all know, the staff is diverse, and each member of the staff is free to make judgement calls on their own - which at times is over-ridden or reversed after conversation about the matter. By no means are we monolithic in opinion, apart from wanting the site to be the best it can be.

The discussions on the hack have been verboten for a lot of reasons, which I've outlined and have been explained in other places.

I'm quite happy there has been a reasonable, mature discussion of this subject here. No too much name calling or confrontational wrangling.

And that is where I have my greatest doubts. In fact I see this as a load of romantic nonsense, as a self-delusion. You said yourself that "the community" is not a monolitic entity (and never was, never will be) so expecting a "world-wide self-policing" of the players seems much more hopeful than realistic.

Unknown Target

Oleg will certainly not "embrace" modding of Il-2. First and foremost he'd sanction the questionable act of hacking protected files but secondly it's even more important to understand that Maddox Games does not do any work on Il-2 (apart from finishing patch 4.09) anymore. He'll probably just ignore what goes on and certainly any pleas for official sanctioning. Nuff said.

I did not mean that the free market is not messy. It is, but at the end of the day it will give us far more in the way of choice and innovation then a "sanctioned" only route will give us. So I say go ahead and have 1C sponsored or sanctioned mods and have other mods which are developed to engine API's or are merely derivative. The MS Flight Simulation franchise has a large ecosystem of both paid for and free add ons. The choices are vast and seemingly limitless. 1C would do itself an economic favor and we as players an experience favor if they imitated the best practices which this model has embodied to give the civil flight simulation community an almost limitless supply of choices.

And regarding Oleg sanctioning the current efforts....I agree with you for his public position by virtue of the EULA and his contractual responsibilities with Ubisoft would preclude him endorsing them. However , I think it naive to believe that he is not watching with great interest exactly what comes out of that site with a mind to refine or modify whatever open aspects he has developed for SoW.

SB

Trust me when I say that Oleg has a lot of work to do and certainly has no time to lurk on a modding website on the Net
And I still think the comparison of M$'s civil flight sims and a combat flight sim as Il-2 is not valid IMO. They lack the "competetive factor" when playing online so the real competitor would have been the CFS line. The victor in this contest should be obvious to anyone for reasons well known. Combat flight sims and boundless modding do not mix in my opinion, at least as long as the sim developer has any interest in an online community. My 0,02€ ...

Then 'nuff said!

CFS3 became an also ran largely because it was out of the box an unwieldy and buggy mess, and though modifiable clearly had an engine which in some vital respects was perceived as inferior to the IL2 series. Whereas OTH the IL2 series has offered stability and after everything is taken into account a superior experience.

And of course its superiority in online experience is well known. And we should also note that their is likely a very high correlation between online fliers and regular online posters. It is a natural that online forums provide a lobby for which online players can gather in order to share experience. But this belies that there are a lot of unknown or rarely posting offline players who are probably numerically more than onliners but do not have the reason to post in forums to the degree that onliners do. And developers sell to both and they have to go to where the money is.


But the essence of your argument is that competitive open architecture flight simulations cannot be created which can offer a high degree (if not absolute) consistency in experience for those who wish to compete against each other in an online environment.

I don't think that is the case. However, if you are correct then combat flight simulations will continue the retreat that they have been in within the overall simulations and "video game" market --- and we must acknowledge that they compete in this market; and we can look to see longer periods between releases, fewer titles and like offerings, and eventually a shrunk niche within the niche (a small combat flight simulation community within a small Flight Simulation community)

Let us hope that 1C puts the requisite development effort into SoW so that we can have our open architecture cake and eat it too.

SB

Sim Hq's version of the Supreme Court

Can we have a picture of all you gathered in a somber classical setting? We need not have the Greco-Roman columns as a backdrop. But it would be nice to see you all in powdered wigs....I think they still wear them in the UK.

SB

LOL,

Don't believe all you read m8, I've never worn a syrup (wig) in my life, powdered or otherwise, but then again I'm not a barrister so I suppose that would explain it.

Cheers

Aces

That, Leigh, is a mental picture none of us really needed.

What is 6DOF?

6 degrees of freedom, it's a function of Track IR allowing you to move your head left, right, up, down, side to side and zoom in and out.

I'm a fidgetty SOB so I find the "limitation" in IL2 perfect for me!

I´ve been following point´s of view regarding the "sorting of MODS", and the problem of free will and all for grabs, And yes you guys are right there will be no common ground, But that is true in every factor of life. You will have to get toguether with like minded chaps to fly the sim the way You want it. The beauty of Mods is that you now really CAN fly the siim the way YOU want it.

It also happens with what sims you purchase. To ask to ban mods becosue you don´t like them is like asking stores not to sell the sims you don´t like so your buddies have to play whatever you like onlly. Whatever reason is that makes you not like them, being no the quality you expect, or not the orientation you want or whatever.

I mean no offense onlly a trying to show a certain point of view of what you are saying.

And the other thing about non official mods is that they are not mandatory.
Have you ever disagreed with changes Oleg did in the several patches? I have, and more than once.
But I had no choice. This time I can have whatever mods I want, and Not have the ones I dont want.
All I have to do is reach an agreement with my budies on whitch ones most of us want and don´t want. And if the whole community does not agree with us, well so be it!

If the problem is not finding like minded buddies, well, then I gess you are going to have to make some concesions...Instead of forcing everybody to acept one point of view.

But then aggain the same happnes with sims, Communities embrace one sim and dicth others, Not wanting 3d party add ons is like not wanting Il-2 to come out becouse people will not fly with me EAW any more...

The community will recomend or embrace certain mods and ditch others. Natural selection is called ;). Good work will stand out and particular mods will still be there for those who might find them apealing.

I see. Thanks.

I don't use Track IR anyway - so a non concern. Hat switch on the Saitek works for me.

Probably also why I find a discussion of the finer points an overly detailed if not useless exercise.

I thought about linking this with the Meaningless Speculation post over in the SoW forum, to kind of illustrate the appearance of this thread. In any case, the way I see it:

1) A stated policy on the current state of affairs exists. Why those with the 'for' agenda continue to post arguments here, I'm not sure, if only to hone debating skills.

2) The 'for' camp has their own forums with which to post ideas etc. Why push them here?

3) The Oleg collective has expressed wishes to not allow modification for the time being. Why some think they know better and want to prescribe medicine for it, I can't say. (Richard Stallman comes to mind)

4) The time for full modificaton is coming. In the meantime, I'm happy and patient enough to ride it out.


Signed,

Stick in the Mud.

False analogy. Not wanting mods in Il-2 is to prevent experiences with EAW to repeat. And those experiences weren't pretty.

Again - I have been burned twice by uncoordinated and unsupervised modding so I have zero (nada, null, niente) interest in getting burned again. This is my POV. All I'm doing here is stating this opinion. I have no influence on anyone or anything but I certainly do not like chorusses of Yay-Sayers chanting the same old mantra again and again without different opinions being voiced. Or - even worse - when these different opinions are being belittled (and I certainly felt this way in this very thread!).
I'm a cynic. I've been told that before and I know it. I do not suffer from the illusions I've seen posted in this thread because I've seen "the community" (EAW, Panzer Elite, Il-2, lurking in boards of Falcon 4 and other sims) for the better part of almost ten years. I've seen the mechanisms and the results ... I happen to have no faith in humans left not to expect the worst possible outcome.

Thor, a distinction in "modding" has to be made between tweaking and substantially changing any game or simulation.

The folks at the mod site are really working hard on the former while trying to dissuade the latter.

How successful they will be will only be proven with time.

Some parts of IL-2: 1946 are open to tweaking already - skins, pilots, radio calls, music, menu background screens and missions.

Would that sound, internal paint schemes, and maps had been opened I think the debate would be much different.

Changing textures of the internals of a cockpit isn't, IMHO, altering the simulation substantially - it's purely cosmetic and tweaking. Not that I have any serious issues with the stock cockpits, but if one could seamlessly plug in a skin that has better artwork, why not?

The problem arises in that the access to the cockpit textures also allows access to FM/DM changes. And for all the best intentions of the skilled few, it's simply too much to resist by the ham-handed.

So when one grabs the Hurricane cockpit skin, one also picks up other changes. Or not. The typical user has no idea if it is the only change or not in the case of the IL-2: 1946 hack. And since FM/DM stuff is by plane as well as in global parameters, one might not spot it for quite some time.

"Whoa, the little 50 pounders the I-16 carries are nukes!"
"Neat, the LaGG doesn't overheat now!"
"Prop pitch on the TB-3....too funny!"

The potential for "Easter eggs" in a simple modification is disturbing - and since it's an all-or-nothing proposition for the hack, one would never know unless they possessed the knowledge of how to not only decompile but compare everything.

Except modders don't generally put undocumented changes in their mods, to my experience. Out of the thousands of mods I've seen and hundreds I've downloaded for several games, I've never once seen that.

Reading these posts (and ones on the IL-2 forums), I keep getting this sense that as a whole, the flight sim community doesn't seem to be familiar with the conventions followed by modders and mod communities. I'm not saying that in an inflammatory way, I'm just saying that as a perspective from someone who's main bread and butter when he buys most games is their moddability, and who's spent most of their time in mod-centric communities. Most of the stuff I'm seeing that people are afraid of having happen to IL-2 is stuff that is generally not widespread/just doesn't happen, at least in my experience.

But I don't think many of the members here have a say in the matter as it currently stands.

Perhaps a petition to the Oleg collective - (I use that term loosely because I deem that's the party responsible. I'm not well read on what has transpired with regards to 1c/Ubi etc.) - would be the correct way. To wrangle about it in forums doesn't serve any purpose.

"Question for the community", you can download the mods, or you can play the sim as is. Online play should be able to be controlled from the server end, as to versions, etc. Offline, this sim has been upgraded by the mods that "I" choose to install. I guess that in itself is a form of quality contol, in additon to the site that I frequent which also oversees uploads. I don't knock anyone for staying with the sim as it is, and to tell you the truth, if I could play online, (satellite connection here) Id probably stay with the stock version, with the exception of sounds.

There are countless people out there that have spent hours and hours working on these modifications, some of them even asking for actors to redo voices within well thought out missions. The sound mods have been excellent, but then again, Im just a simmer and have never really flown a 109, or a mustang or been in combat. The mods Ive selected have really enhanced the sim for me, and personally, I'd like to say thanks.

Personally I can't wait to get modded-up. As someone who has a bit of experience in the "legitimate" mod scene, it seems almost silly to think that any team of modders dedicated to improving the game would insert little "undocumented features" -- they'd be right up front with details on everything they've changed. It goes with the territory, you do the work, naturally you want to tell everyone about it.

Of course, I only fly offline, and usually to test skins only. Though I have got FlatSpinMan's Hurri campaign and once I manage to d/l the beta patch and new default skins, there'll be a little hunt going on for that retextured Hurri cockpit, be sure...

Unfortunately, it can't be.

The one hurdle of checksum=2 has been circumvented, and there is no way to prevent an "improved" version on the client's software from entering a server.

Not to say the modders* won't come up with a kind of PunkBuster version checker to ensure everyone is flying the same version - and I'm confident they will, if only to ensure that modded servers run smoothly.



Unfortunately, it is precisely my experience. It made my first flight sim love a subject of estrangement. And it was done by those who loved the simulation as much (possibly more) than I did.

What you're hearing is a great fear that a simulation that is as good as the IL-2 series is going to get screwed up beyond recognition. There's fixing things and repairing things. I think a lot of us are afraid there's going to be a lot more fixing than repairing.

Those who ever had to have a professional come to repair an appliance they attempted to fix themselves know what I am talking about.

* One is free to note that I switch between "hacker" and "modder" depending on whether or not I think the particular thing they're monkeying with is a bad thing or a good thing.

Hi folks,

That's why I love the Silent Hunter III & IV modding communities some really talented and original modding and modders going on over at SubSim like Mikhayl, Privateer, Boris et. al. new "Playable S-boot mod." and this video example of the new animated torpedo doors and that's just the start as they're working on an entirely new 3d s-boot model which, given the speed this mod. is developing, the talent involved in its creation, exchange of ideas and enthusiasm amongst those involved, will not be long in coming.



http://s108.photobucket.com/albums/n12/privateer_2006/?action=view¤t=Animated_Doors.flv

as well as the other modders working on the 3d model, skins, GUI additions etc. etc.

Or another example would be Diving Duck, Urfisch et. al. "Open hatch in command room" mod. and all the work that went into it. One might be forgiven for thinking that it's a small mod. just the opening of a hatch, not so, not only is it a masterpiece of modding but it adds to the immersion as one spends a lot of time underwater in a submarine sim, just like one spends a lot of time in a cockpit in an aviation sim, the parallels are plain to see.



as well as many, many other astounding mods. like Raceboy's animated U-boat flags, pennants and exhaust smoke.

To me that's what modding is about, I know it's a different genre but there's some absolutely fantastic stuff going on over there and that's where I spend most of my free time these days, not playing the game (or any other) because I have too many commitments on my limited time, but to revel in their activities and productivity. I also very much enjoy the "spirit" and co-operation over there amongst the modding community, IMO a great pity that IL-2 has for so long been deprived of the opportunity for such a vibrant and talented modding community. With a poperly organised and officially sanctioned programme of modding then such things could and I sincerely believe would happen in IL-2. Of one thing I'm 110% sure, the talent to do such things is out there.

Best Regards

Leigh (Aces)

Edit : PS. Imagine someone with their 3D modelling/animation talents applying their skills as demonstrated in the torpedo door animation to, say, cockpit opening/closing animations and suchlike :D.

In some cases I may agree..still I hate censorship in all its forms...and since you cant stop anybody from doing anything my advice is reconsider your communication tactics for the future Fart

Morning Istvan, some of your excellent skins included in my movie

Cheers

Leigh

Careful Vpmedia the D and F keys are close together

Perhaps he's using a modded keyboard?

WB.

LOL



Cheers

Leigh

Reading the new posts in this thread over morning coffee and coming across this gem

Just made my morning

SB

And an excellent way to wrap this whole thing up, that's a gem of a typo!!

There's always one pattern I see where I know a person is slipping and sliding on the facets of an argument. That's where they resort to juvy name calling.

I enjoyed reading this so far- I hope it can stay civil (unlocked).

Typo.. Work it out, it's not difficult.

Whatever you say..

Talk about reading too much into it...

Where's my blasted Hurricane cockpit?!?

Evidently, I'm not the only one.

lol

That is quite interesting: a year or two ago Oleg said that he would be willing to consider allowing another firm to take over support for Il-2 if they could make a reasonable offer.

Hey, Vpmedia, pull my finger!

My communication methods aren't derogatory, they're critical - in the true sense.

FM/DM Easter eggs in a cockpit upgrade are a very real concern, as one "modder" takes his current modded files and adds the cockpit. But he forgot he was using the "Fifty Cal Improvement" mod when he compiled.

He posts it up, and doesn't include someone else's changes in the documentation. Not out of malice, but oversight.

One has no idea what one is getting on a "simple" mod in IL-2. And since there is no way to checksum or find out what exactly has been changed, one is at the mercy of the fellow with his hands in the guts of the code.

This happens all the time in the CFS series mods, and even within IL-2 with skins. "So-and-so included the-other-guy's work without crediting him, he's a rip-off artist," so please don't say I'm talking theoretically.

As an on-line guy, I actually don't mind folks flying offline with modded FM/DM's and "improved" bullets. They'll be used to using all sorts of crutches - provided there becomes a way to keep hacked code off my server - and I'll be at an advantage.

Dart,

I guess Im a bit naive to all the cheaters out there, since I havent played online in a couple of years now. I had the misguided notion that altered sims would be booted from the host site. I can see how online players could be concerned about the mods then. But I have to agree with you, offline players can tailor their own likes and dislikes into something with a bit more longevity.

I would think that the "community" at least many of the guys who know each other well enough now, could muster online and that squadron level missions will still be fought honorably, and maybe a BOB will actually be fought over something that looks like the Channel.

I know that many of us have grown tired of the same old same old and have gone months without firing up IL2. The new mods have put some spark back into IL=2 for me and I find myself again flying my beloved 109 with it's distinct engine sounds. I used to be hardcore, but I sure love external views and those delicious flybye sounds after Ive just mixed it up over the front somewhere.