So whats up with WW2?

[Taipan 30]

I prefer WW1 as you can tell from my Avatar and my 1500 hours logged in rise of flight multiplayer.

 

It's just more "fun" as a game, very little instruments, very stick and rudder skill, more diverse unique flight models (every plane is a new innovation with quirks), and the best dogfighting sim is available.

 

Unfortunately for WW2 all the new sims are not very good. Whereas ROF is excellent, that is if you turn up at the right time for the events and historic missions.

 

But civ simming is still more popular, the number of online Vatsim and Ivao flights online is more than that of IL-2 for instance.

[WR269 367]

I used to fly IL 2 for many years, even joined a squadron and took part in many a battle in which 2 allied and 2 German squadrons would face each other, with targets to defend and destroy. For its time, IL2 was at the top of WW2 sims, in full realism mode, the torque, stall and aerodynamic simulation were certainly sweat inducing stuff! Rise of Flight I believe is comparable, but what really made the sims enjoyable for me was the ability to fly with and against many other players in the world.

 

[Taipan 30]

That's it exactly, the multiplayer.. dogfighting against a computer is not a challenge but bring in the human element and we rise to competition. Combat sims combine simming with competitive gaming really. Gun fighting especially.

 

When you move up to say the era of DCS and missiles it moves more towards procedures and simming again because of complexity.

 

But the more basic level Gunfight sims allow them to market also to gamers - a bigger market. Which didn't turn out so well for some developers

 

 

[HiFlyer 9,374]

I prefer WW1 as you can tell from my Avatar and my 1500 hours logged in rise of flight multiplayer.

 

It's just more "fun" as a game, very little instruments, very stick and rudder skill, more diverse unique flight models (every plane is a new innovation with quirks), and the best dogfighting sim is available.

 

Unfortunately for WW2 all the new sims are not very good. Whereas ROF is excellent, that is if you turn up at the right time for the events and historic missions.

 

But civ simming is still more popular, the number of online Vatsim and Ivao flights online is more than that of IL-2 for instance.

 

How many would you say are online as an average. When I play War Thunder for instance, its not uncommon to see about 6k people online spread throughout the various difficulty levels, and they boast on their site that "During the Beta Test more then 500,000 players have participated in more then 60 million fly-outs, spending tens of millions of hours in the game." That seems like a high number, but I have no idea what a Vatsim average is.

 

Also, I was wondering if the licensing fees for WW2 fighters are lower than for a civilian or more modern plane. If so, that might be an attraction for developers as well.

[Taipan 30]

How many would you say are online as an average. When I play War Thunder for instance, its not uncommon to see about 6k people online spread throughout the various difficulty levels, and they boast on their site that "During the Beta Test more then 500,000 players have participated in more then 60 million fly-outs, spending tens of millions of hours in the game." That seems like a high number, but I have no idea what a Vatsim average is.

 

Also, I was wondering if the licensing fees for WW2 fighters are lower than for a civilian or more modern plane. If so, that might be an attraction for developers as well.

 

War Thunder is new to me, it looks similar to world of tanks like an experience points and tech-tree based game? I do have a couple of tanks in world of tanks and I see similar numbers online there like 5k-10k players online.

 

When I referred to WW2 sims though in my mind I was thinking of IL-2 and CLOD. Typically there's a maximum number quite low to each server, each server is player run, and quite a few servers are there but nothing like you mentioned in war thunder. Probably something like only 5-6 servers busy and 5-30 players in each server. War thunder being that busy it must really have something going for it. I understand the game aspect being fun having played WOT, but how is the "sim" aspect? I can enjoy WOT occasionally because I know it's a game and never played a tank sim fully, but coming from sims I'd probably have trouble going backwards to a plane game. With 100 models available, it would be hard to pulloff a high level of simulation detail considering CLOD was almost a failure with a fraction of that number. If they can pull it off though, you'll see me online in game soon

 

The numbers I see on VATSIM are about 500 flights at any one time. IVAO I'm not sure of but probably slightly less, as VATSIM I would guess is more popular. I don't really play the gamespy multiplayer FSX so I'm not sure how busy that part is.

[pilottj 198]

Just flying these warbirds for the sake of flying without the combat is quite fun. There is a real excitement of having a big accusimmed V-12 or radial up front, you can sense that kind of power at your fingertips, even if it is simulated. Even without the combat these birds can be challenging, such as managing the P-47's Turbocharger, or trying to keep the Spitfire cool on a hot day. These types of challenges earn even more respect for the pilots who flew them into combat, having to control these machines, and fight. IMHO, A2A's Civil P-51 is the perfect marriage, you have the warbird power and speed, combined with civil navigation equipment really turn it into a one helluva ride. For fun, I like to take these planes and try to put them into other roles, for instance, I like to fly my P-40 like a bush plane...inspired by Wild Bill Kelso I guess lol. It's ruggedness make it it a pretty decent bush plane actually...as it should have been, since it had to operate from jungle and desert strips.

 

Cheers

TJ

[jcomm 6,004]

Devon, only now did I notice this very interesting thread :-)

 

In my case, the only times I invested on ww2 or combat flight simulation games are allways connected with my insatisfaction with what the other, so called civilian sims, offer.

 

I bought the 1st version of IL-2, and had bought before other combat series like CFS, CYAC, even Falcon4 (almost never played it), etc...

 

This turn around I settled for DCS World (I had also bought FC and LOMAC before, but my PC back then was not able to run it properly...).

 

Since I installed DCS World, and bought my 1st module - the mighty p51d! - I have never entered a single online server, or fought an air combat in the sim, using one of the default missions or creating one. I have to learn how to create a mission, and I am a lot more busy and interested in learning about the correct aircraft operations, etc... I also ended up buying the BS2 and A10c modules. They are calmly waiting for thir chance to get a slot of my simmer time... I flight tested both to confirm what I thought had to be true - these guys really know how to design / implement an add-on for an already almost perfect flight simulation platform... I just wish we had this in the civil flightsim world, but all the sims I tried along 2012 on my return to flight simulation were, somehow, a deception for me - MS FLIGHT, then back FSX Gold, then XP10, then AeroflyFS.

 

I also re-installed Silent Wings (the soaring sim), and I still have ELITE installed too, but I haven't started both more than a couple of times in 2 months (as opposed to an almost daily play). And since I had FSX Gold, I bought the A2A p51d - I'd say that add-on aircraft for MSFS are A2A's, the rest being... well... But! Even this bird, perfectly designed given the limitations of the underlaying platform (old and stagnated in it's core...) falls short from the performance provided by the DCS p51d...

 

I will eventually dream about having additional ww2 modules in DCS World because, honestly, I feel I am too old to learn all of those sophisticated modern air war avionics, and, I believe I would rather get involved in direct 1x1 air combat à.lá ww1/ww2...

 

The only reason I haven't yet tried the variants of CoD or RoF, and now recently WT (which tempts me everytime I watch the videos...) is that I know, for many sources, that the flight/systems/environment physic models I will find there are simply not up to the level of quality/sophistication of DCS World, so, I decided to invest seriously on this platform, but, the fact is that here I am, a civil flight simmer, totaly devoted to a combat flightsim simply because I find no joy in the civil alternatives ...

[japascoe 98]

Also, I was wondering if the licensing fees for WW2 fighters are lower than for a civilian or more modern plane. If so, that might be an attraction for developers as well.

 

They probably are, assuming the need for the fees hasn't expired (not an IP lawyer, so no idea how long that would take). In addition, especially on the axis side, many of the rights holders may not even realise they hold the rights. E.g. who would you have to pay license fees to for an Me-109? EADS I guess? I certainly can't ever recall seeing an 'officially licensed Lockheed Martin product' label on any game featuring a P-38 either. I have no idea if the licensing fees are a significant portion of the cost of developing a game though.

 

As for why WWII is so popular: it's the last conflict featuring up-close-and-personal dogfighting that people have heard about. There have been conflicts featuring lots of dogfighting later (Korea, Vietnam, various Arab-Israel wars), but those are less well known and fewer people have a personal connection to them, especially outside the US. Don't forget that Germany and Russia are very large markets for the sim genre.

 

Up close and personal dogfighting is also a lot easier to sell than more modern warfare: point plane at target, pull trigger, see cool explosion vs. select correct radar mode, acquire target, pull trigger, see blip disappear from screen.

[Mickel 42]

I think the other reason for WW-II over later is that it's much more simple. No data-links/AWACs, no ECM, radar cross section is pretty irrelevant, no issues with ground clutter and weather degrading sensor performance, dodgy missile reliability. The list goes on. Little of that was modelled the last time I looked at a modern game, so it all seem a bit too clinical. The ESM was too good, the radar too effective, the missiles always worked... But that was more than 10 years ago.

[HiFlyer 9,374]

 

 

War Thunder is new to me, it looks similar to world of tanks like an experience points and tech-tree based game? I do have a couple of tanks in world of tanks and I see similar numbers online there like 5k-10k players online.

 

When I referred to WW2 sims though in my mind I was thinking of IL-2 and CLOD. Typically there's a maximum number quite low to each server, each server is player run, and quite a few servers are there but nothing like you mentioned in war thunder. Probably something like only 5-6 servers busy and 5-30 players in each server. War thunder being that busy it must really have something going for it. I understand the game aspect being fun having played WOT, but how is the "sim" aspect? I can enjoy WOT occasionally because I know it's a game and never played a tank sim fully, but coming from sims I'd probably have trouble going backwards to a plane game. With 100 models available, it would be hard to pulloff a high level of simulation detail considering CLOD was almost a failure with a fraction of that number. If they can pull it off though, you'll see me online in game soon

 

The numbers I see on VATSIM are about 500 flights at any one time. IVAO I'm not sure of but probably slightly less, as VATSIM I would guess is more popular. I don't really play the gamespy multiplayer FSX so I'm not sure how busy that part is.

 

Yes, very similar to world of tanks, but they are attempting to make a friendly nod to simmers as well with their higher difficulty levels. Thanks for the vatsim numbers, it was probably about the same for gamespy FSX multiplayer, but I never really noticed the numbers before and now its gone.

 

It certainly true that having real people in there with you enhances the experience a lot!