Does Anyone Mind LONG Distances In This Sim?

[kct 5]

Didn't Lexx worked on a HUGE map at one time? Something along the lines of flying from Japan, to Russia, bomb, and back.

[Wrench 9,846]

Stiglr:

sigh....

Actually, THAT comment was unnecessary. You've been playing pretty nice, so just be cool.

 

If you actually played the game, or payed attention to what's been discussed over the last 5 years, you'd find all the

stock, and many of the 3rd party maps, are 60-63% of Real Life ™.

 

It's the difference between a mile and kilometer; since the game engine is calibrated in Metric.

 

Remember, "Sim Lite"????

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[Lt. James Cater 62]

To tell you the truth i actually like things as they are in this series.

 

Can you imagine trying do fly as long as they did in real life? For most pilots, flying out of Thailand meant 8-10 hour trips with multiple re-fuelings.

Just how do you expect to do the same at home? my idead of long is having to swing around Yen Bai to go down Thud ridge in order to hit targets in Hanoi without having endless SAMS and god awful annoying AAA to deal with. Not to mention the distance back to the hills. Lord knows how many times i nursed a shot up plane just long enough to be able to bailout safely.

 

As it is is good enough!

[Wrench 9,846]

Been there, done that, got the bullet holes to prove it!!!

 

One of the first sims I ever played was "Megafortress", based on the Dale Brown books. You HAD to fly the entire mission from take off to landing ... they could run several hours, even with +Time engaged. It can be a little boring at times, especially those long over water flights

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[Guest 531_Ghost]

Real Life, ever been to a FARP? From a FARP to the FEBA could infact = minutes.

[Guest Stiglr]

Stiglr:

sigh....

Actually, THAT comment was unnecessary. You've been playing pretty nice, so just be cool.

 

If you actually played the game, or payed attention to what's been discussed over the last 5 years, you'd find all the

stock, and many of the 3rd party maps, are 60-63% of Real Life .

 

It's the difference between a mile and kilometer; since the game engine is calibrated in Metric.

 

Remember, "Sim Lite"????

 

Wrench

kevin stein

 

 

Well, once again, I don't think that's out of line as a criticism. Given the importance of fuel in this particular era of aircraft, a "mini map" really lowers the simulation quality. Also, when you consider the effects of the lateral scale being lowered, but altitude staying the same.... you completely destroy the ability to examine things like how 109s had range problems in the Battle of Britain... big missions involving Allied fighter escort for B-17s and B-24s... Ploesti.... not to mention Route Pack 6 missions from Thailand.

 

Actually, what I really don't understand is why sim devs would EVER even create a "half scale" or other map.

 

Targetware has 100%, full scale maps, some of them huge, and there aren't any performance issues associated with it. And yes, we HAVE had "dozens" of people online at one time to load test them. I think some of it has to do with some of the things Targetware has in its core code to accomodate real-life map scale; meanwhile, Warbirds, IL-2 and this sim (not sure about Aces High) continue to hobble their realism with "miniature maps".

[bucklehead101 29]

We dont have tankers in the game. If we had a 1:1 scale map of Vietnam, we would have to divert to DaNang every mission upon our return.

 

This game isnt Targetware, so stop comparing it to it. PLEASE

[Guest Stiglr]

To tell you the truth i actually like things as they are in this series.

 

Can you imagine trying do fly as long as they did in real life? For most pilots, flying out of Thailand meant 8-10 hour trips with multiple re-fuelings.

Just how do you expect to do the same at home? my idead of long is having to swing around Yen Bai to go down Thud ridge in order to hit targets in Hanoi without having endless SAMS and god awful annoying AAA to deal with. Not to mention the distance back to the hills. Lord knows how many times i nursed a shot up plane just long enough to be able to bailout safely.

 

As it is is good enough!

 

 

Well, in Targetware, we have the neat little combo concept of the Airstart and the Disengage circle. This comes in very handy for Target:Rabaul, for example, when you're in '42 at Guadalcanal and Zeros have to negotiate the ENTIRE Slot for 300 miles EACH way from Rabaul!!! Yikes, not even a grognard like me wants to make that trip in real time.

 

But... with the airstart and the disengage in Targetware, the fuel is calculated and drained from the drop tanks before you hit the "Launch" button, and the scenario's disengage circle is set so that, you launch a few miles outside the circle; once you enter that circle (which contains the target or mission area) if you later leave it, your fuel is recalculated to determine whether you'd make it back home. Yes, the presence of damage and leaks is taken into effect. And, you won't disengage if a pursuing enemy is within a certain distance even if you leave the circle; that enemy has to have enough separation before you "auto-disengage." That keeps the circle from being a chicken exit in many cases.

 

Different sides can have different disengage circles, or in the case of a scenario like Guadalcanal, the USN/MC doesn't need one; the action revolves around Henderson, and they have to both take off and land when they strap on a Wildcat or an SBD.

 

This is how Target:Hanoi would handle missions from Thailand. Wouldn't it be nice if something similar were added to this sim system? The "home base setting" could be used to assume a tanker is present at a certain location; this'd work real well in lieu of actually writing code and such to make you have to jump on the KC-135 yourself in-game... although, I'm sure we'd all like to try our hand at it in some kind of training mission, wouldn't we?

Edited August 14, 2008 by Stiglr

[+Baltika 85]

The creation of full-scale maps for Thirdwire has been covered by Gepard in his terrain building tutorials in the KB. Quite a number of the third party maps are built as full-scale, so you always have the option of going down that path. Certainly Edward's recent WW2 terrains are full-scale (eg new guinea 2, here at combatace), and the stuff I am working on, including the Iceland 2015 Beta release, is full-scale.

 

And Gepard built his BoB map as full scale specifically because he wanted to have to watch the fuel guage when a flying a 109 over old blighty.

 

Sure, TK made a design decision you may not agree with - but as modders we have the option of going down the 100% scale path, the flexibility is there.

[Guest Stiglr]

The creation of full-scale maps for Thirdwire has been covered by Gepard in his terrain building tutorials in the KB. Quite a number of the third party maps are built as full-scale, so you always have the option of going down that path. Certainly Edward's recent WW2 terrains are full-scale (eg new guinea 2, here at combatace), and the stuff I am working on, including the Iceland 2015 Beta release, is full-scale.

 

And Gepard built his BoB map as full scale specifically because he wanted to have to watch the fuel guage when a flying a 109 over old blighty.

 

Sure, TK made a design decision you may not agree with - but as modders we have the option of going down the 100% scale path, the flexibility is there.

 

Good to know. Proper scale is important.

[Jeremiah Weed 0]

One of the first sims I ever played was "Megafortress", based on the Dale Brown books. You HAD to fly the entire mission from take off to landing ... they could run several hours, even with +Time engaged. It can be a little boring at times, especially those long over water flights

 

This was a really fun game. I was living at Loring AFB, Maine at the time it was released right after ODS, my dad was a B-52 pilot and had actually read Flight of the Old Dog from cover to cover on a flight from Diego Garcia to Iraq. When the game came out pretty much everyone in the 69th Bomb Squadron had a bootleg copy of this game with a print out of the "IFF Code" copy protection. In the Persian Gulf missions on that game you took of from Saudi Arabia, and even missions hitting targets in the KTO took forever, I'm glad they didn't put you at Diego Garcia. I remember that the Tacit Rainbow was pretty much the greatest SEAD weapon ever invented.

 

As for the topic of this thread, I don't mind long distances when I am flying bombers. I'm pretty nostalgic for long range bombing seeings how my grandfather was on B-36 and B-47s and my father spent a career on B-52s and I grew up on Cold War SAC bases. If given the oppurtunity I would fly a bomber on a Global Power mission, taking off from Minot and hitting targets in Egypt, or even fly the mission from Barksdale to Iraq to launch CALCMs. I'm a nerd like that.

 

But when I am flying fighters I tend to care less about the flight and more about the fight and want to get right to the combat. I guess it is just the mindset I have.

[mppd 16]

The long distance flights would be more interesting if a working TACAN/ILS system was built into the simulation - as in Falcon 4.0, plus air-to-air refueling (come on YAP2...). Too bad it's a "lite" sim. The long hauls would then become more of a navigational/timing exercise, especially when over North Vietnam when the TACAN line-of-sight stations were out of range, and the old fashioned dead-reckoning method was employed, along with good maps and a watch.

 

Mike D.

[ezlead 42]

As everyone can see,we have a very diverse mindset in our members.

I'm sure TK took all of this into the thought process when he made the sim.

 

As for me,I'm like Typhoid,I Alt-n almost every mission to simulate hitting a tanker.

Yes,and sometimes I hit Cumulus Granite instead of a tanker.

I wear stereo headphones,so the ensuing explosion scares the he-- out of me when it happens.

You just refly and change waypoints to avoid the ground contact. Or you edit the lower altitudes,so you don't hit the ground.

 

As for long distances,I use modded terrains for most of my terrains anyway.

 

All in all,It's still a terrific sim!! The people in this community are terrific for what they contribute!!

Edited August 31, 2008 by ezlead

[mppd 16]

I concur with that, this sim is the only one (well, all of them I mean) on my computer. I am as wrapped up in it all as I could be. I think about modding projects while at work, I work on them when I get home...got to spend some time FLYING it soon. I supported Yankee Air Pirate all the way as the greatest thing since sliced bread, and look forward to the same with YAP2 and anything else John comes out with for the sim. Have only actually flown a few of the 100 mission set so far though...shame on me! I'd be the first to stand in line to shake TK's hand personally. As a long time USAF Vietnam historian, the WOV sim is the sim I would have designed myself, if I had the talent and ability that I of course, lack!! And hats off to all of you modders who got me motivated to start contributing myself.

 

Mike D.

[deep 5]

No sim can have it all - that is forbidden.

 

If you want to navigate for fun (I also do) - then fly FSX. I think TK's sims are more naturally suited to shorter distances.

 

But as many here have pointed out, there is such a wealth of flexibility in this design that the talents of the modding community can keep a lot of people happy.

[kct 5]

No sim can have it all - that is forbidden.

 

That sounds like a pretty depressing statement, no matte how true it is.

[+ST0RM 145]

Yeah, unless you're getting us some Tanker assets to gas up on the way in and out.

 

This brings up a question I've got. Can an anchor point be used by an aircraft? Specifically can a mission be created where the tanker orbits in a race track continuously and is in line with your waypoints? I've seen some of the sample A/R missions, but these stretch out prety far. Our legs are roughly 30-40 miles long and 20 miles wide if using a racetrack style of orbit. Enroute rendezvous are also used where we just fly a long track.

 

As far as realism goes, long missions are a must, with A/R somewhere in between. I would like to see more of them.

 

Storm

[Guest Stiglr]

No sim can have it all - that is forbidden.

 

That is a terrible, defeatist way to look at it.

 

If we all take that stance, we'll never get the sims we want.

 

Over the years there are lots of features we never thought would be possible in a sim. If we stopped requesting them, many developers would take the easy road and not even bother to explore new possibilities. We'd still be playing wireframe display games with 2D cockpit graphics.

 

You have to DEMAND from the developers what you want, and vote with your wallet, instead of fawning at "whatever" they provide for you and just say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

[kct 5]

And the developer can choose not to listen to the particular group of customers, and everyone loses.

 

That is one. Secondly, most businesses care about making profits more than giving the right product (thankfully TW isn't like this). Hence the appearance of more flying games for the console generation compared to the PC market.

Edited September 4, 2008 by kct

[Guest Stiglr]

And the developer can choose not to listen to the particular group of customers, and everyone loses.

 

That is one. Secondly, most businesses care about making profits more than giving the right product (thankfully TW isn't like this). Hence the appearance of more flying games for the console generation compared to the PC market.

 

Right you are, partially. :yes: First off, "everyone" does NOT lose, even if the developer ignores input. Some other developer looking to build their player base might give the "complainers" what they want. And then everybody WINS, because the bar gets higher for all sims.

 

Also, the players can also choose not to buy the developer's wares in the future, if the developer is so hardheaded as to ignore his player base. So, what kind of picture is that for profit?

 

In the end, the consumer DOES have some power. We can choose to "take what they give us" or we can be more proactive and set higher standards for what we'll accept (and what we'll pay for) from the developers. Many DO listen.

 

Others... well, at Targetware we take matters into our own hands and create what WE want to see. And, still we have to tug socks with the core developer to make sure we have all the tools we need to be able to create what we want. It's a process... but it's also a labor of love.

Edited September 4, 2008 by Stiglr

[MAKO69 186]

Hey I got 2 Kids I won't lie I speed up the time from wheels up to feet dry.