Which one? Old guy needs help pls

[gterl]

Hello fellow gentlemen flyers,

I’m currently looking for a worthy successor to my still beloved FE Gold (believe it or not).

A bit of context on where I’m coming from:

• I’ve been a long-time student and enthusiastic reader of everything related to WW1, especially the aviation side of it.
• I play exclusively offline these days — perhaps I’m getting too old for overly complex and time-consuming setups.
• I don’t have much patience anymore for building campaigns, missions, or spending hours configuring things.
• Visual immersion is very important to me — I struggle a bit going back to the older FE-era models and visuals.
• What I’m really looking for is: jump into a mission, read the objective, get into the cockpit, enjoy the atmosphere and visuals, and have fun — even if my average life expectancy is measured in minutes, as I’m a rather poor (virtual) pilot.

With that in mind, I’m currently torn between WOFF: BH&H and IL-2: Flying Circus. From a budget perspective, I’ll most likely stay with the basic versions of either option.

A few questions for those with experience:

• How good is the offline experience in IL-2? I understand separate campaigns are available — but how enjoyable and seamless is the overall experience?
• How demanding is WOFF performance-wise? I’d prefer to avoid slideshow performance or micro-stutters.
• AI flying sophistication is honestly not my highest priority — I’m usually the weakest pilot in the sky anyway.
• How is ground activity represented in both titles? Which one better captures that authentic “flying over the trenches in WW1” atmosphere?

At the moment I’m leaning slightly towards WOFF, but after watching plenty of IL-2 videos and learning more about the available campaigns, I’m becoming less certain.

My setup:
Intel i7-6700K @ 4GHz
GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB)
32 GB RAM
Windows 10 64-bit

Many thanks in advance for any thoughts, recommendations or experiences you’re willing to share.

Much appreciated!

[Goob113870]

do yourself a favor and ditch the flying circus as for single player it lacks in all departments. The A.I. aircraft are about the dumbest thing i've ever seen, they literally let you shoot them down.  There is only scripted career mode or scripted campaign. At least on multiplayer ypu can fly against human opponents.

Wings over flanders fields is a beautiful recreation of fighting the First World War from the air. its a true singleplayer dynamic campaign. I think the graphics are amazing especially with the Over The Top DLC & The Last Hurrah. DLC #3 just hit Dawn Skies. The A.I. Aircraft are some of the toughest opponents ive seen yet in a flight sim. They dont hang around to let you pick them off. You enlist in The axis or allied air corps and try to stay alive at the front. Tommorow is not guarenteed. In Short I would play WOFF before i fire up FC. 

[redwood]

My experience with WOFF is that it is quite good and immersive. The log book and player experience for single player is great and adds a lot to each mission - you really feel that you earn whatever scores you get and survival becomes a major objective. In terms of CPU usage - the game is adjustable and you can find your own sweat spot. 

Having said that I've not tried the IL-2 version but I did find the earlier Rise of Flight quite canned - although lovely to look at.

Just my 2 (Canadian) cents

[VonS]

Will comment in point form vis-à-vis the supplied questions and concerns - and hello to you too legendary terrain builder of the FE universe. 

Original qsts.:

"[...] Visual immersion is very important to me — I struggle a bit going back to the older FE-era models and visuals. What I’m really looking for is: jump into a mission, read the objective, get into the cockpit, enjoy the atmosphere and visuals, and have fun — even if my average life expectancy is measured in minutes, as I’m a rather poor (virtual) pilot. With that in mind, I’m currently torn between WOFF: BH&H and IL-2: Flying Circus. From a budget perspective, I’ll most likely stay with the basic versions of either option. A few questions for those with experience:

How good is the offline experience in IL-2? I understand separate campaigns are available — but how enjoyable and seamless is the overall experience? How demanding is WOFF performance-wise? I’d prefer to avoid slideshow performance or micro-stutters. AI flying sophistication is honestly not my highest priority — I’m usually the weakest pilot in the sky anyway. How is ground activity represented in both titles? Which one better captures that authentic “flying over the trenches in WW1” atmosphere? [...]"

My thoughts:

- for mostly modern visual immersion, choose either RoF modded or the FC series

- to jump into a cockpit quickly and go at it, I'd wager that RoF and/or FC are more geared towards that than the WoFF series (the WoFF series has a quick dogfight option, but WoFF centers around and excels at full-blown campaigning instead)

- in terms of the offline FC experience, can't speak for FC (since I was never interested in it), but the offline experience in RoF (with mods installed) is satisfactory/passable/good enough if you want fairly modern visual immersion

- the WoFF series is demanding of hardware, particularly CPUs (limited to single-core processing); depending on your hardware, WoFF requires a decent amount of time devoted to settings toggling, to dial in a decent and fairly smooth frame-rate (keep in mind that WoFF may require medium visual quality settings to run smoothly; while max visual settings are desirable, double-check your hardware specs)

- if AI flying sophistication is not your priority*, but instead modern or semi-modern visual immersion and with less demand on your hardware, the RoF/FC world is the slightly more logical (easier) choice I'd say

- the WoFF series is a bit better on atmosphere in terms of flying over trenches, random ground activity, etc., in my opinion, when compared to RoF and FC

- I am tempted to comment on FM and AI fidelity (i.e., the real worthy successor of FE Gold is FE2 fully-modded), with (I think) better FMs than RoF/FC, and AI of similar quality to the WoFF world; as I often like to mention, the FE world excels at "rolling single missions" (an interesting middle ground that is not really to be found in the other sims)

- having said that, if you prefer something with more modern visuals but that is not taxing on hardware, the most logical choice is RoF modded and/or FC; WoFF would be a lateral move in that context, and perhaps a slightly downward move (since it is more demanding of hardware than FE/FEgold/FE2)

- for fully-modded FE2 "at work," see representative clips on my FE2 on a Mac channel

Cheers to you & good luck with your flight sim choices.

 

* NOTE: have responded to your thoughts in the context in which they were presented; if you become interested in AI flying sophistication, I would then recommend, instead of RoF (or especially instead of FC) the base BH&H2 version of WoFF - it's a handsomely spent dollar and will give you the same AI quality of the later DLC packs - in case you don't care to extend your wallet to the DLC packs.

---

As you look

for new flight sims,

 

Further away

from the FE world,

 

And its quaint vintage

hangar, a tinkerer's

dream,

 

Do keep in mind

that visual immersion

is not always

as it seems,

 

For what may be

a fine explosion

or high fidelity

wings a' flutter,

 

It all turns quickly

into an FPS drop,

a CTD, and oftentimes

 

- a hardware stutter.

 

Edited 10 hours ago by VonS
Added note/info.