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

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.

Gotta jump in here. Red Baron 3D is still my favorite flight sim of all time, and I've been PC gaming since the days when a 143K floppy drive for my Apple II costs $545.

I've formally interviewed the developer of RBII/RB3D and talked over beers with him several times. One thing that he confided that they did with that sim, which he said would probably not be done by anyone again because of the programming nightmare, was make it truly dynamic. All manner of sorties, flights, events, etc. were going on and being run by the computer even if you were nowhere near the event. They simulated dogfights hundreds of miles away, that would have no impact in any way on your experience. But what this meant was that you could toodle off on your own, into an area far from your assigned mission, and run into any number of unexpected events. One of my favorite flight sim memories was deciding to take a scenic route back to base after a mission and seeing a speck of activity in the distance. I flew over, and there was a friendly observer being attacked by two German fighters. I flew over and quickly hit one of them, who was fixated on the observer, and the other pulled away in apparent surprise. He tried to come after me, but I had the advantage of surprise and altitude and downed him. However, he did hit me, and I was now reduced to limping back to base. I decided I needed to find an alternate place to set down, and then, dammit, out of the blue another German coming back from some mission saw me, and turned towards me. I was turning, trying to get low and escape, trying everything I could and then suddenly he goes down in flames. I turned and looked, and there were two friendlies that had seen my predicament and come to my aid. I made it back, landed, and then marveled at what happened.

Contrast that with static, scripted missions. Fly outside of your "assigned" region in many sims, such as an Oleg sim, and you might as well have flown into outer space.

I assume it all depends upon what you want in a sim. If you want simply a detailed and realistic simulation of flying and fighting in a certain set of aircraft, a good sim like Oleg's stuff is great. And a static campaign will work very well.

If, on the other hand, you're looking for a role playing experience of actually participating as a pilot in a campaign or war, with the inherent mix of surprise, sometimes boredom, caring about the other pilots you fight and fly with, etc. its very difficult to accept less than a well done dynamic campaign.

FWIW, IMO, etc.

It's something I like to call "soul" and it's ssadly lacking in many games today. It's the reason I gave up pretty quickly with First Eagles and booted up RB3D again. Sure it looked pretty but it absolutely bored me to tears. The style over substance games just don't do it for me!

So now the definition of "soul" in a sim is eating up processing cycles on things that 99.9997% of players will never see? Then maps in RB3D are tiny compared to modern sims - let's not over romanticize things.

"Random" flights and ground activity is actually replicated in some of the campaign engines for IL-2, but I don't use them.

I try to fly realistically, though, and stick to the mission plan rather than just blindly fly around the front. Granted, WWI sims should have more leeway as with enough rank one can go lone wolfing (early in the war; towards the end it was greatly discouraged), but it's not necessary to have planes flying over the Italian sector when one is up in Calais!

I'd rather they have some triggers and a few random flights in the general vicinity. Throw in some ground movement and the atmosphere will be set - and that's the key to immersion, IMHO.

I'm looking forward to both Knights and SOW BOB with a preference for WW2 combat aircraft. I will fly both but lean more toward the one that provides the most overall immersive combat flight experience. I give equal credence too FM, DM, AI, and quality terrain graphics. FSX type terrain graphics where the buildings and trees are so obviously pasted on photo realistic landscape leaves me cold.

"I'd rather they have some triggers and a few random flights in the general vicinity. Throw in some ground movement and the atmosphere will be set - and that's the key to immersion, IMHO." posted by Dart

Totally agree

Along with smoke effects seen from a long distance.

That's a very flippant remark but I guess if that's the thing that draws me back to the game day after day then my answer is yes.

It was flippant; my apologies.

However, there's a point in there - the designers have to decide where to put their efforts.

In RB3D, the maps were sufficiently small that random flights could be generated at mission start to give the illusion of a 'dynamic' environment. However, those random flights had no impact on the campaign itself; it wasn't truly dynamic in the sense that air actions mattered to game play.

I'm in full agreement with that, btw. It's silly to have the player change the course of the war, unless one is flying the Enola Gay.

There's some basic environmental designs that RB3D incorporated that can be a nuisance to put into a sim but in the balance are really great investments. IIRC, types of planes were associated with aerodromes using a historical template. If there was a squadron with scouts assigned to it, it would spawn scouts if one overflew it. That's a trigger effect, and one that was fantastic. Similarly, bombers came out of other aerodromes.

Overfly Hawker's airfield and a DH-2 would come up. Further south and it was Moranes.

Since we won't be going much above 10,000 feet, what will be a real atmospheric enhancement will be ambient sound from the ground and objects. Troops in trenches, even if 90% of them aren't moving most of the time (but flaking out on the sides of the trenches). Throw in some vehicles and horses to and from the front on the roads, stretcher bearers (which were ever present), artillery fire, and the occasional charge or firefight and we're home.

Restrict the AI to where they can't see through clouds, give us real weather concerns, and throw in some random flights that make sense (artillery spotting planes over the front, which were largely unescorted and bombers, which usually were) and we're in heaven.

The question will be how far out from the aerodrome the "bubble" of activity will be. In RB3D it was pretty much the whole of the map because one could fly to any point of it on one tank of petrol.

At least we're in a quibbling argument about how to best put together the in-game enviroment rather than slagging on about the damned menu GUI!

Salute

With all due respect to the designers of KotS, I think that RED BARON had a better idea as far as Map size is concerned.

WWI aircraft are not fast, and there is really no nessesity to have the single huge map they are proposing. Better to have a series of smaller maps.

Performance would be better, with less objects to deal with, and the type of random events we see in RB would be a better option.

Perhaps after they create this large map, they might consider splitting it into smaller pieces which could be used online.

Mostly agree with you here Dart, but WWI fighters routinely patrolled at altitudes between 10,000-17,000 feet in 1917-18. German high-altitude photo reconnaissance missions were typically conducted above 20,000 feet (and often by using oxygen).

The stacking of British fighter flights/squadrons at various altitude levels, to take advantage of their particular performance advantages (Camels, Biffs, SE5As, Dolphins) was practiced in the last half of 1918.

As far as GT's map(s), and what the designers are planning, there's not too many here who have knowledge of these details (except maybe Rama), and to assume anything in this regards is just speculation.

Caveman got roasted for liking WWII aircraft over WWI biplanes.

Why not try both in the same sim?
You can.

Try the Spanish Air War, where biplanes battled it out with Me-109's, "Rats and Flies" and the Condor Legion in the hot warm-up to World War Two.

Just released by chief developer Brian Egan "Pobs" at European Air War Forum.
http://www.simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2226899&page=1#Post2226899

While you are at it, check EAW's own WIP development of a World War One flight sim here (go at least halfway down the posts to start):
http://www.simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2150875&page=1#Post2150875




Red Baron is a great classic. EAW's own version promises to be a crossover that runs great on "lesser" machines as well as Vista.
It may satisfy some hungers until the new Knights of the Sky releases are out--and maybe afterward.

Don't forget Dogfight by Milton Bradley.

I posted somewhere around here that I had played Rictoffen's War with my brother and also the turn the page book , game .

We've come a long way. Never would of believed this 20 years ago.

Pretty? You got to be joking.! I thought it was awful looking, for a modern sim. OFF is the best looking sim there is out there, with FMs etc to match. That's why I'm looking forward to KOTS.
If it matches OFF's looks and other attributes, it will be great.
And then, according to FlyRetired, it will have better AI (I hope ) cos it's a retail sim built from the ground up.
Hope so.

OFF is 1st-class, and runs well on most current systems too.

(if you're interested in "dynanmic-like" campaigning and WWI, it ought to be something you try)

First Eagles and the modified SF engine it uses has been coined a "light sim" by TK (which apparently is above arcade but not up to full-sim fidelity).

I think First Eagles looks pretty drab too, but the included aircraft are nicely modeled, however the fighting environment made me feel like I was constantly flying in overcast (despite the flashing "sun spot" effect).

I think we're all expecting (and hoping) Knights of the Sky to be "next-generation".

In the context of the whole sim (package) I have to agree although to clarify I was really on about the planes themselves. To my eye they looked great and the best thing was that it played well on my machine. Too bad the FM and DM let it down. The only thing that could have saved that particular game for me was MP as that was a lot of fun but unfortunately it was damn near impossible to get it up and running.

I don't think you have to go as far as RB2 for an immersive, unpredictible world in which to fly and fight. For example, about the time RB1 came out (which was VERY scripted) Microprose had a WWI sim that is largely forgotten these days, named Knights of the Skies. It was no RB23D, but it was a lot of fun for its time. You had to earn your way up to better planes, and it was populated with a good number of other missions going on that were independent of yours, so you had the same general types of potential interactions and decisions presented, e.g. do you fly on home after a successful mission or risk yourself to fly over and help in that dogfight you see off in the distance? You would encounter flights coming and going from sorties all over the map, long before RB2 or Falcon 3 did that.

It was a quite small map, but it worked well for the simulation.

Just give me a sim where my squad mates are not faceless fodder that I couldn't care less about (amazing what simply allowing the player to name the other pilots can do to help that) and where they also advance and get transferred, etc; where I have a "realistic" career (realistic in quotes on purpose;) where it feels as if there is an entire world/war going on around me; where I can see other sorties flying around the sky and interact with them (and they may decide to interact with me;) where I never know what's going to happen; where I don't have to "win" a mission to progress; with good FM with some options; good graphics (but for me, they don't have to be best of the best if it has everything else;) and make it easily mod-able.

I don't ask much.

I wonder if KotS will allow Paul Lowengrin to create a Flanders DCG campaign. Bit worried because KotS is no longer a prequel to 1946 apparently and everything might be hush-hush on the modifications front

The DCG has those named pilots I mean so there could be photos and personal histories, backstories. Much smaller but more intensive war I think for airmen. Twenty-mile hop to the enemy airfield for livening-up purposes then back in time for muffins

Mington

It might. But I might be too busy flying on-line with JG1 again.

Well I hope at some point you are able to Lo, and as well with BoB.
DCG is the Shiznit

[DCG]
DriftingBattlefieldSmoke=1

That reminds me, Oleg has drifting clouds in SoW not just the static-over-terrain clouds so drifting er, other atmospheric things might be on...

Gypsy Minginello