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 June 20 by VonS
Added note/info.

[gterl]

Quote

- and hello to you too legendary terrain builder of the FE universe. 

Thank you, way too much praise 

Thank you all for your feedback - highly appreciated!!

For the moment I've installed RoF (the free-to-play version), just to get the feeling. However, and this might sound stupid, I'm already running out of patience configuring the input, graphics,, etc. etc. - THIS is one of the aspects I ALWAYS forget: getting the game running till your satisfied with all that stuff -> Great poem there VonS!! To the point

 

cheers

[vegaslas]

@VonS how do you define good/bad FM? Does better mean more realistic, capturing all details of particular aircraft behaviour? Or something else?

[VonS]

10 hours ago, vegaslas said:

@VonS how do you define good/bad FM? Does better mean more realistic, capturing all details of particular aircraft behaviour? Or something else?

Yes, by "better FM" I am referring to a more thorough and authentic representation, within the sim environment, of historical flight characteristics per early aircraft type, such as for WWI.

While generally it's the case that the RoF/FC flight models are highly praised, I find turbulence effects over-done in that franchise (speaking from experience with RoF). Also strange to me are some of the spin recovery techniques required in RoF (perhaps also in FC; don't care to own FC so can't comment on it). And last, recommended is, for those interested in studying RoF/FC flight behavior - to check over the difficulties in properly landing/flaring the Nieuport 17, and to some extent the Fokk. Dr.I. Most troublesome is the Nieup. 17 that usually requires a slight incline (on a field) to be plopped down while still in control of the aircraft.

I think it was AnKor, of DX8-to-DX9 conversion fame for the WoFF series who remarked on one of the now abandoned and dismantled RoF forums (the initial one that was taken down sometime around 2023) -- that aileron and rudder control may be "subtly" linked in RoF. This would account for some of the landing oddities as seen with the RoF Nieup. 17 -- a situation which doesn't allow for full cross-control to avoid wing tip damage or spin-outs upon landing. If I had to guess based on sim flight feeling, I'd say there's approximately a 10 to 20% "Ercoupe Lite"* rudder/aileron coupling present in RoF -- subtle enough not to be spotted by the novice flier but still present.

At any rate, First Eagles 2 is free of such things and provides the full FM spectrum of historical possibilities, and also allows for more (semi)-conventional spin recovery. The feeling of flight (to me) is most organic in FE2 -- on par with a properly-tuned YASim** FDM in FlightGear. Recommended is to check over some of the FE2 and FG (FlightGear) vids on FE2 on a Mac for visual demonstration of high-fidelity sim flight behavior. See also the RoF vs. FE2 video over here.

NOTES:

* The Ercoupe series of aircraft of the circa 1940s had rudder-aileron control fully coupled via the control/steering stick (no rudder bar was present). Rudder pedals and/or bars began to be installed as an option by the 1950s and particularly by the 1960s/70s, for those who were interested in getting rid of the rudder-aileron coupling.

** YASim is a flight model solver based mostly on aircraft geometry and shape. FE2 uses extensive data ini (initialization) tables that allow for thorough tweaking of several hundreds of lines of code. Both work realistically when properly tuned. RoF/FC doesn't allow for user tweaking of flight model parameters, etc.

Cheers to you,

Edited Sunday at 05:39 AM by VonS
Fixed typos.

[vegaslas]

Thank you for a thorough and interesting response.

I noticed that in FC you are able to make manoeuvres in horizontal plane to some extent using only a single control - either rudder or aileron. I think that would confirm what you wrote about coupling. I need to go back to RoF to check for such behaviour. But for FC my feeling is that the FM has been simplified compared to RoF.

I also noticed that in RoF some of the aircraft (mostly other than fighters) are sensitive to engine management to the point that taking off may be impossible if don't do things precisely as they should be done. Maybe that's the way these aircraft actually behaved...

I'll check over the videos. I'm curious about FMs in WoFF and FE2. I'll be testing when time allows.

Cheers

[VonS]

Hello,

Glad you found the info. interesting. For even more context, I recommend the following three posts that are found on p.1 of the "New in FE2" thread:

Engine Management Across Some Flight Sims (see bottom half of that particular post)

Thoughts on Rudder Effectiveness in FE2 and RoF

Spin Recovery Techniques in FE2

In terms of WoFF FMs, mostly solid since about the WoFF UE (Ultimate Ed.) era circa 2016/17, and user-accessible since at least then via xfm files. In stock form, the WoFF FMs are spin-averse. Currently working on a spin-friendly upgrade for myself, with a few representative vids available on FE2 on a Mac (look for "FrankenWoFF" videos while there). Other thoughts relevant to WoFF -- from what I have been able to observe, turbulence is more subtle now (frequent micro-bursts) since about the base BH&H2 era (circa 2021 or so); previously, up to the PE add-on period (Platinum Ed.), circa 2019, turbulence would occur in broader and more noticeable waves, more obviously changing in frequency per season (one of the reasons I stuck with an older exe for WoFF, etc.). I no longer provide my FM packs for WoFF publicly, however, since my WoFF install is too hybridized and doesn't function as a baseline test-bed anymore. For more info. on the WoFF state of things, regarding FM tweaks -- I recommend checking over the following post on the SimHQ threads (that entire thread is on the SPAD 7 in WoFF, by the way, and is worth a look).

Good flying to you,

[vegaslas]

Hello,

Thanks for even more details, links and useful information!

So do I get it right that WoFF utilises quite simple engine management compared to RoF?

I tried to find the historical versions of OFF patches for CFS3 (Phase 1, Phase 2), but found nothing. Is there some way to get them? I thought they were free patches from a community project and expected them to be still available for download and tinkering with.

The same question for the historical commercial releases of WoFF/UE/PE/BH&H - is it still possible to get them somehow? I can see they are not available for purchase on the official WoFF website anymore. I find experiments like your FrankenWoFF interesting and it would be nice to be able to play with all those versions/releases myself.

[VonS]

Hello,

Generally speaking, WoFF engine management is much simpler than what is available in RoF. In terms of older WoFF versions, I think that OBD Software only ever sells the current/latest version of WoFF - recommended, however, is to contact them directly regarding availability of older patches, if interested in those.

Cheers,

[vegaslas]

Understood, will do.

Thanks!