That’s where I heard of it. Upsides: the aeronautics modeling is actually pretty great. It isn’t full-on grognard flight-sim level, but I’d say that the flight models it comes up with are believable and plenty realistic for what the game is trying to do. Although the building system does require some cheating for some things (the coaxial props on the Kestrel in my link above are two engines clipped together, and a lot of people use fuselage blocks to do cosmetic cockpits, with the real cockpit blocks clipped inside), it doesn’t prevent you from doing that cheating, and figures that the added weight and balance issues are penalty enough. It’s a very powerful editor. It’s still being updated, and per the dev’s roadmap, will have ongoing updates for some time to come.
Downsides: outside of building and testing, there’s very little to do. There are two small islands to explore, with some interesting terrain to fly through, and one bridge for barnstorming. Nothing like the awesome air race mission from Crimson Skies, say. There’s a small selection of challenges, but most are weighted toward fast jets. Prop planes tend to be too slow for a lot of them.
If you like the idea of a plane-building sandbox, with some limited facilities to pit them against each other in races and in very simple combat, then you’ll probably get your money’s worth. If you want more than that, you may want to wait and see. (If there were a way to edit terrains and missions, I think I’d recommend it unreservedly, but that hasn’t happened yet.)
Thanks for reminding me CS has multiplayer! Time to try and get it working!
The Flare Path has a good deal of flight sim news today:
[ul]
[li]Battle of Britain 2 releases its 2.13 update, which allegedly fixes a bug which shot down my first AAR attempt, some time ago. That’s something I might start up again, or perhaps restart as a streaming series.[/li][li]DCS World announces modules for the Nimitz and Kuznetsov carriers—not just improved models, but fully functioning interiors, so you can start in the hangar, taxi over to the elevator, get pulled onto the catapult, and go, say. That’s intriguing. Along with that, they announced (not too long ago) that the fancy-flight-model treatment is coming to the only carrier-based fighter available at the moment, the Su-33. (The Hornet is still in progress, and Leatherneck Sims of MiG-21 fame is in the process of building a Tomcat.)[/li][li]Combat Air Patrol 2 announces that they’ve finished the DirectX-11-ification of their engine. Mr. Stone at the Flare Path thinks we might see a release in late spring.[/li][/ul]
Exciting stuff! If I decide to pick up BoB2 again, I’ll certainly let the forum know.
I saw BOB2 got a new update! It looks great!
spiffy
2025
Wow, it’s still going. I’ve just installed IL2:CoD again since I bought it back on release a few years ago (where it immediately choked and atrophied on my old system), and am enjoying just how much more pretty the landscapes and cockpits are over my memories of BOB2. That said, there was nothing like flying into a cloud of bombers set up by the (unintelligible, mysterious, overwhelming) strategic campaign layer. I haven’t dipped in to actual mission flying in CoD, but I can’t imagine it’ll hold a candle to that immersion.
Yeah, few sims can really.
Wow. That’s impressive. I should reinstall it some day!
Link for the update: http://www.a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=51298
DCS World confuses me. Can anyone bring me up to speed? I understand it’s a free platform with downloadable aircraft, but what do you do with those planes? Are there campaigns? Canned missions? Do you just putter around ala FSX? I’ve also heard it’s pretty switchology-focused. Are there planes that are still sim-like but not quite as spend-an-hour-going-through-startup-procedures intense?
I need a new plane sim like a need a hole in my aileron, but the quote above gave me the vapors and I needed to go sit on the porch with some cool lemonade.
It’d be my pleasure.
I understand it’s a free platform with downloadable aircraft, but what do you do with those planes? Are there campaigns?
Most aircraft come with a simple campaign or two. They’ve started doing payware campaigns now, too.
Canned missions?
Users make a good number of these, but many of them are multiplayer-focused. BMS is a much better single-player game.
Do you just putter around ala FSX?
Personally, this is what it usually ends up as, when I play with friends of mine. We have a multiplayer practice range mission that lets us do most of what we’d do in real missions, except without the high stress levels. <.<
I’ve also heard it’s pretty switchology-focused. Are there planes that are still sim-like but not quite as spend-an-hour-going-through-startup-procedures intense?
Indeed there are: everything that used to have the Flaming Cliffs logo is middleweight-sim level—no clickable-cockpit switchology and simplified systems, but flight modeling to the same standard as everything else. These are the MiG-29s, the Su-27, F-15C, Su-33, Su-25 and -25T, and A-10A.
I need a new plane sim like a need a hole in my aileron, but the quote above gave me the vapors and I needed to go sit on the porch with some cool lemonade.
I understand. :P DCS World is a great simulator with a poor support structure. The mission editor is obtuse, and the quality of missions is very much a work in progress, in my opinion. There’s been some work on a scripting-engine-based dynamic campaign, and if that gets off the ground, I’ll probably end up giving it more than the occasional look.
Thanks, Fish. I think I’ll try to avoid that siren call for now.
schurem
2031
It’s a very fine and mostly free sim. Why not for up steam and give it a whirl. If you like it but the F-15 or the flanker.
DCS is the direct descendant of the Flanker series of sims. It even has the same map.
DCS is one of the few flight games that has good VR support. I flew the F-15 in a DK2 some time ago and that take off was a fucking RUSH.
So yeah. Not much of a game tho but more like a big old toybox of virtual planes and things.
DCS is still on my radar. I’d love to fly around or do some dogfighting for about 10 hours.
But they keep improving it, so there’s no rush. Maybe in 2019.
But that’s when Star Citizen is finally coming out, so you’ll have enough on your plate.
schurem
2034
Bah! Humbug!
DCS is free on steam. FREE. No reason at all for it not to hold a place on any wingnutter’s drive. Get it, drive the Su-25 for a bit. Putz around with the mission editor a bit ( i like setting up big ass strikes against defended airfields and just watch thru the the F2 view) and if you like it, get one or more planes. Like the man said, the “Flaming Cliffs” planes are not that switchology-centered and even the ones that are do not need to be rampstarted every time. Heck you can get the A-10A as a FC level plane for like a tenner and if you feel like you’ve outgrown it, get the A-10C and go fucking hog wild on the level of detail in its systems.
The FC planes are the Su-25 Frogfoot, the Su-27 Flanker, the Su-33 naval Flanker, The MiG-29, The A-10A and the F-15 Eagle. There’s a bunch more planes and even a new map for sale as DLC. Choppers too.
DCS can be a classic study sim. Learn what every switch does and how to fly a MiG-21 well and tactically. The learning curve is the game.
This is one way to play with it. The other way is what I hinted earlier; use it as a toybox full of nicely detailed toys that you can program to do either very realistic and/or very wild shit. Wanna see a brace of Tu-22M’s get intercepted by a couple of tomcats? not that hard to set up. Wanna see a couple of A-10’s and AH-64’s lay waste to a rebel base? fiddle away. It’s not easy but nothing worthwhile ever is. I have seen far worse mission(scenario?) editors. The fun thing is that you don’t even need to put in a player piloted craft. You can just watch.
Are the flight models really equivalent between the two versions? In other words, everything I do with the joystick shaft (heh) and rudder pedals is the same?
schurem
2036
you mean the two versions of the hog? ummm… not really. Afaik the C model has a more detailed flight model. You may want to fiddle some with the input settings to set them just so. The free and paid versions of the Su-25 are quite different but thats because the planes themselves are quite different. On the other hand the paid mustang just adds guns iirc.
Why the fuck am i selling you a free bit of software anyway? sheesh lol. your next post better be some of your personal impressions, like how you murdered yourself and a small dreary russian village fucking up the pullout from a looping in your mustang :P
That’s no longer true-- the flight models ate equally detailed now. The only low-fi FMs left are the MiG-29 and the Su-33.
Il-2* Battle of Stalingrad impressions:
[ul]
[li] It’s pretty, as you might expect from a newer version of the Rise of Flight engine. Performs well for me, too. (Other people have reported problems.) Seems to work pretty seamlessly with Crossfire, too.
[/li][li] The flight modeling is also pretty good. I was a little concerned in my last dogfight last night, because it started with my flight (in Yak-1s) catching up to a pair of Bf-109Fs. On inspection of some speed-altitude curves, though, the Yak is indeed slightly faster at low altitudes (up to about 3000 meters).
[/li][li] It hits the right level of simness for WWII games, as far as I’m concerned. The airplanes are modeled in exceptional systems depth, but you don’t have to worry about any of that—there is no switchology, but your plane can still fail in all the interesting ways enabled by deep modeling. (This is probably why they’re pricier than ROF planes.)
[/li][li] The campaign structure is as typically meh as it was in ROF; maybe even a little more so. Rather than a randomly-generated dynamic-ish campaign, you have randomly-generated missions from several airfields on the map, with no continuity whatsoever. I could fly an Il-2 one mission and a Ju-87 the next. There are a few story missions built in, too, but I haven’t gotten around to trying one of those yet. Since the campaign is tied into the unlock system, you can’t pick your difficulty precisely, either—you have to go either normal, with all its aids, or expert, with everything turned off. Fortunately, there’s a version of the Pat Wilson Campaign Generator available already, so it has that going for it.
[/li][li] Speaking of the unlock system, it’s dumb, and I don’t understand why they did it. Time-gating paint schemes is fine. Time-gating loading options makes me angry.
[/li][li] Maybe it’s just lack of practice in WW2 games lately, but I find spotting enemy aircraft to be hard to very hard, even at ranges I should be able to pick them up (say, inside of 3-4km), and spotting of ground units basically impossible unless I’m using icons. I’m not sure if ROF was better, or if the speeds and distances in WWI combat just make it seem better.
[/li][li] The AI is decent in combat, but the wingman AI can be a little infuriating. They happily charge off to engage, leaving you uncovered, and their formation keeping leaves something to be desired. (There may be a wingman command option to make this work better, but I haven’t gotten to that page of the controls mapping yet.)
[/li][/ul]
All that said, I’m enjoying it. I may give it a few more nights, but I also have a Battle of Britain 2 campaign under way, and although that also has some problems, I really love the depth to its dynamic campaign, and the scale of its aerial battles. Now that some of the bugs with jumping in and out of the 3D world have been fixed, it’s much higher up my list of best all-time sims.
- I can’t bring myself to write IL-2, even if that’s how they style it in English, because it’s properly the syllable ‘il’ for Ilyushin planes, consarn it!
After three nights of wrangling, I’m going to call it (temporarily) on Battle of Britain 2. Large-scale battles crash it almost as soon as I enter the 3D mode, and nothing I’ve tried has fixed it.
Which is a real shame: BoB2 is one of my all-time favorite flight sims, and an amazing achievement in the dynamic campaign pantheon. I hope I can get it to work next time I give it a try.
That’s really sad man, it’s a great game. What have you got in your rig?
