homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Rise of Flight - The First Great Air War Why KNIGHTS could be the most successful Flight Sim ever

Ah, we are of an accord if you let me have an option for a "sterile" GUI!

Given limited resources, I'd much rather prefer the developers put little touches while inside the game engine itself rather than before I get there.

Mini-game of darts in the wardroom vs. man riding bicycle down a country lane - easy choice.
Detailed pilot log for AI squadmates vs. men jumping out of balloons and parachuting down - easy choice.

I remember the first time I saw the little men charge across the front in Red Baron II - it's burned into hard memory (sadly, they were lost in RB3D); I don't think I can describe more than two of the cutscene newsreel things.

Things I saw from the aircraft sucked me into the world the simulation presented, not the setups before I got there.

I like the reference to ambient noises in regards to what 1st-person shooters have done well for ramping up immersion.

Of course you gotta put priorities on wanted design features (and don't we want it all anyway).

A system for ambient/interactive sounds can do so much for layering on immersion with probably minor design time invested. Other wants obviously take more time to bring along.

It's all about getting the most bang for the buck (and not our buck either, but the designer's dollar).

Still about the GUI: i see it in reverse: don't want a heavy GUI myself too, but! a simple thing such as a wrong font can screw the immersion, in the GUI, or in the game. No Times New Roman, and no Gothic, both extremes are wrong. Something that belongs to that era, such as typewriting font, or Bookman Old Style. If you put the first font you find there, it doesn't look like a GUI, it looks like a bad PowerPoint presentation.

Of course this is not about the fonts only, everything should be functional but somehow will have to 'keep you there'. Just my opinion, i know for some this means nothing. And i do agree the immersion should come from inside the playing features.

Oh come on - you don't remember the cut-scene medal presentation movies - just awesome - as were the gravestone movie w/ your pilots name on it when you bought the farm. I also liked the way the medal box would enlarge when you received more medals - and it would start in a sepia tone and go to full color as it opened up. And the interactive victory boards? And the dead Aces getting an obit in the paper? I love that stuff.

Come to think of it - the level of GUI in RBII/3D was just about perfect - enough "stuff" to give you a nice level of immersion - but not too much that it became obtrusive. (Except for maybe the intelligence reports that just repeated in the same order w/ those bad accents).

I always thought the splash art and maps for Flying Corps Gold were nice (speaking of GUI looks):



I hope GT puts most of its Knights of the Sky resource priorites towards in-flight functions.


To me those are easy choices also, but I do like darts too Dart......

I think they should try to use only period graphical elements, posters, flags, photos, etc. No modern CG recreations in the GUI. And then keep it tight and functional. It is a small team, they can't spend endless time on this...

Regarding old games: I think everybody has a tendency to improve and magnify the good sides, when just thinking back on them. I remember being disappointed with almost all the games I went back and had a look at, just because they had become much better in my recollections than they were in reality.

Totally agree with that Freycinet.

Many of us were happy just being able to game on a PC back then.

(because things would move on their own, rather than having to do it by ourselves)



Things have changed from a decade or so ago when flight sims were all the rage.

(our expectations were lower then, and our point of reference was different)

"Wow, check this out, it's called a 3DFX graphics card."

Hey Freycinet, you might have liked the GUI artwork I did for the WWI mod to Fighter Squadron (FS-WWI).

Here's a few sample screens (I used period artifacts to try and convey it from an airmen's point of view):



Shoot, Dart might even like the look too (but then he's always on me for posting linked images here).

Very nice artwork FR

Look mate I've had this thing bugging me overnight, you've made an impression on me in some way so I feel the need for closure, let me explain. We've got a couple of cats and I tell Mrs Ming that they are livestock. Not entirely serious but there's usually an element of truth in what I pontificate

The French horses. I'd seen another documentary the other day about Stalingrad (Peter and Dan Snow, very good) and I read Armageddon not long ago so horses are fast food in war (43mph under the whip) and an extra resonance as some French people eat horse flesh in peacetime

We like horses over here that's well known but if people want to eat them here or in another country it would be very hypocritical of me to criticise or take the mickey when I eat livestock too, beef and lamb, chicken etc. So my French lunch was meant to be amusing in a friendly way not to be having a bash at the French. We've got snails for that

I follow a Buddhist-with-a-deadly-weapon path (letting flies out of the window, all that hippie stuff) but I'd eat you if it was wartime and I was starving, pray harder for peace amigo

Fighter Squadron is SDOE isn't it? WW1 mod? I missed that one... small active area slow planes hmmm

Ming

Salute Fly

What were the restrictions on the use of those old photographs?

Were they still under copyright, or has that lapsed?

Cheers Buzzsaw

I don't know about the photos Buzz, I did the GUI graphics and artifacts.

Ming, SDOE used the OpenPlane physics engine, which gave one of the best feels of flying I've experienced for simulated WWI-era aircraft. Fighter Squadron (Activision) truncated the engine's full capability of delivering violent stalls and spins, but for modded aircraft to a WW2 sim, the FMs could be very convincing despite SDOE's inherent limitations.

I once flew an experimental Camel FM for FS-WWI that was prepared by a member of the Wings With Wires design team, that exhibited that plane's razor-sharp instability, and it was a revelation to fly. The aircraft was so sensitive that SDOE's WW2-AI couldn't handle it though. It's often been thought that flight modeling has been dumbed-down in sims usually for increasing popular appeal, but in the case of FS-WWI (and maybe even for SDOE too), the FMs had to be adjusted so the dumb AI could fly them without stalling all the time.

WWI has always deserved a dedicated sim platform that can greater deal with the realities of early aviation flight dynamics (mods can only go so far).

Actually, I like it!

It's a clean interface. There's a nice button that's clearly labeled to press, and the squadron info is a drop down box with an info box with text in it.

Um, what I don't like is the Call of Duty/Medal of Honor "click on the radio for audio settings" GUI. Drives me nuts!

Oh, and those pics are okay - read the TOS, screenies are a-okay!



I remember when WWI dogfighting with my brother-in-law started out with "turn to page 170..."

"Screenie"

Yeppers! Golden, ain't it?

To this day Lance and I have only to look at each other and say "Booja booja booja" to get a laugh.

Not realistic sounds, I know, but hey...

Salute

My flight Simming started in around 1968 with this old boardgame chestnut...

Beautiful GUI FlyRetired, I like it a lot. I'm sure the gifted Gennadich artists can make something like that.

Just would like some more buttons per screen, so it can all be done from one screen.

Buzz, here's another favorite classic:



Hey Freycinet, in a recent sim I tested you clicked to start a mission, which was followed by the usual wait for the game to load up the data, but then it presented another screen with button options to abort or contiunue the action. This was ok, but when you clicked to continue, you had to wait again as if the mission had never completely loaded in the first place.

This is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy, I mean present me the in-game options for configuring the mission, and then lets get into it!

(having two lengthy waits for the sim to load up mission data is just plain clunky IMO)

I've posted regularly in the IL2 forum that I find photo GUI's frustrating. The sort of thing where the main setup screen is a picture of a ward room with no labels. To enter the gfx options for instance you have to mouse over to the window which opens a tab labeled gfx options, what's the point? I don't have a problem with IL2's GUI, apart from the fact that is changed little and lacks options.

As far as GUI's go I'd rather have something streamlined and efficient, nice picutures are a must but simplicity needs to be the first thing.

For me what a new sim will have to have is as little lag as possible when flying online AND be able to see planes (as dots or even stick figures) as far away as 41,000 feet. Proper stall and spin will be needed and ground starts. Then it would be nice if the ground objects were big enough for a dogfight that included 'dodge the trees and building'. Right now CFS3/OFF have to much lag for me and IL2+ could have much better mid and long distance view of aircraft.