Where have all of the amazing, light-weight flight sims gone with dynamic campaigns?
My buddy is interested in flight sims but has no interest in learning Falcon/DCS - fair enough.
Does anyone know of a sim-lite flight sim with a multiplayer dynamic campaign? WoFF would be awesome but it’s SP only…
Can’t Apache or Hind be played in the same cockpit during the campaigns?
Welcome to the board, czar3.
And nice job leading with a question that the various sim-heads here have kicked around for years.
The shortest answer is “They died in 1999, when Falcon 4 proved to the world that flight sims were a niche market becoming ever more niche, and spending the money and brain power needed for a good dynamic campaign would return nothing but pennies on the dollar spent.”
Funny you mentioned Hind, I played that for the first time ever a few months ago and I’ve been hooked. The MP could be fun but afaik the campaign isn’t truly dynamic which is a shame. Could be fun linking up Apache and Hind for some 1 v 1 action though.
I was afraid of that answer - the 90s truly were the golden ages of flight sims. I wish I realized it back then, I would have cherished it a bit more!
If you wanna split hairs - which we do here on this subject lots - F4 was truly the only flight-sim wargame-driven dynamic campaign. All the rest were cleverly-diguised branching missions (Longbow 2) or random scenario generators with a moving front line (EAW).
I think Enemy Engaged was almost at F4 levels, but I’m not sure.
Edit: pk and maybe Rowan’s BoB and DiD’s EF2000 and TAW. None like F4, tho
Oh wait you can do EF2000 in multiplayer through the campaigns!
Wasn’t TK working on an update to the Strike Fighter games recently? Oh, MP that would take out the Strike Fighter games.
AFAIK all of the DI campaigns since F-16 Combat Pilot were dynamic. At least dynamic enough. :P
"Dear [scharmers]
Third Wire Productions, Inc thanks you for your contribution of $50 for Help Fund Strike Fighters 2 Windows 10 update! on Sep 7, 2019. Your support is very much appreciated."
Strike Fighters 2 is as dead as it gets, with only a small crew of modders keeping it alive during the last decade. One day real soon now a Windows update is gonna kill the sim even deader.
God I hope not, I still load it up pretty regularly.
IL-2 Sturmovik had a dynamic campaign i believe.
it s got many, but i wouldnt call IL-2 games “lightweight”!
You can dumb down IL2:BoX as much as you like, almost to Wings of Prey/War Thunder levels, even. No real (F4/TAW/EE) dynamic campaigns though.
(Note: you cannot dumb down DCS. The “game mode” in DCS is an exercise in futility.)
I still want to recapture the fun I had in the dynamic campaigns of Red Baron and Knights of the Sky.
Ahem, Falcon MC has missions you need to do depending on the strategic layout of the map: the factory produces tanks, that roll over the bridge (if it’s intact), that eventually overrun your base.
It’s funny how cartoonishly simple this looks, now, but I remember child-me thinking ‘this is a 100% accurate depiction of reality’. Lining up those AGM-65s was an apex moment. I also have an ineffable relationship with “Top Hat”.
I learned how to land in this game.
Ah, Mac, no wonder I never heard of it.
I really miss those non-shaded polygonal graphics many flight sims had back in the day. Simple and clean, they just looked sharp to me and let the gameplay shine.
Shots fired! ;)
It seems like DCS is the only flight sim right now that is specifically catering to online multiplayer. There are a lot of groups of people running PvE campaigns and dynamic servers etc.
But, that involves a lot of learning. I don’t think it is as steep as a lot of people think. There are certainly some planes that are easy to pick up (but difficult to master) that can be fun in maybe 5 hours of learning.
IL2 is a good shout, and I think that maybe IL 1946 had stuff too (and is a bit cheaper) and I know you can really dumb down the simulation in those games.