Rise of Flight review on SimHQ Forum

[themightysrc 5]

"It will have many more flyables, certainly AI. There must be 30 or so models, many with cockpits that have been seen over time."

 

Hi Peter,

 

I'm afriad that this begs the obvious question: if there are so many potentially available, then why not release RoF with them in the sim, even if they are only AI? I know there's the revenue stream question, but given that so many people seem to have doubts or are holding back on potential purchase partly on account of the lack of aircraft, it would surely make sense for Neoqb to release the game with the maximum inpact, and, frankly, from my POV, a paucity to aircraft is a major disincentive to buy, even before consideration of the vexed issue of the online business.

 

I can't imagine that I'm alone in that.

[JediMaster 451]

Oh, RB2 most certainly was a mess when it came out, but you could see what they attempted to get done. It took till the mega patch/rerelease as RB3D to make it the classic by fixing everything, yes, but all the pieces were there.

 

My issue with RoF is that in the interest of generating a continual revenue stream they seem to have underdeveloped the initial release. I doubt Quake 3 would've been a mega hit if it had released with 1 player model carrying either a pistol or shotgun and 2 maps!

 

I think a game should be complete on release, and if they want to release more stuff later in the form of extra planes, theaters/terrains, etc, that's fine. It shouldn't look like it needs it, though, and that's what the case is here. I think 4 flyable planes is the minimum number a WWI sim should have, 2 per side. This seems to me more like an attempt to be the iRacing of the flight sim world, and I neither want nor need such a thing and I know many others who feel the same way.

 

I'm reminded of a bit they did on Mystery Science Theater 3000 back in the day, with the Mad Scientist's invention of "Johnny Long Torso--the action figure that is himself sold separately!" You start with the Action Torso, then you get the Action Head and Left and Right Arm and Left and Right Leg expansion packs (only $9.99 each). Then you get the Action Hands (left and right) and Action Feet (left and right) accessories (just $4.99 each!), the Ears Combo pack, the Action Eyes expansion... "Sold in one piece, this toy would go for $15, but sold this way he can cost up to hundreds of dollars!!"

[BigJim 0]

Oh, RB2 most certainly was a mess when it came out, but you could see what they attempted to get done. It took till the mega patch/rerelease as RB3D to make it the classic by fixing everything, yes, but all the pieces were there.

 

My issue with RoF is that in the interest of generating a continual revenue stream they seem to have underdeveloped the initial release. I doubt Quake 3 would've been a mega hit if it had released with 1 player model carrying either a pistol or shotgun and 2 maps!

 

I think a game should be complete on release, and if they want to release more stuff later in the form of extra planes, theaters/terrains, etc, that's fine. It shouldn't look like it needs it, though, and that's what the case is here. I think 4 flyable planes is the minimum number a WWI sim should have, 2 per side. This seems to me more like an attempt to be the iRacing of the flight sim world, and I neither want nor need such a thing and I know many others who feel the same way.

 

I'm reminded of a bit they did on Mystery Science Theater 3000 back in the day, with the Mad Scientist's invention of "Johnny Long Torso--the action figure that is himself sold separately!" You start with the Action Torso, then you get the Action Head and Left and Right Arm and Left and Right Leg expansion packs (only $9.99 each). Then you get the Action Hands (left and right) and Action Feet (left and right) accessories (just $4.99 each!), the Ears Combo pack, the Action Eyes expansion... "Sold in one piece, this toy would go for $15, but sold this way he can cost up to hundreds of dollars!!"

 

I have just ordered RoF, as a primary online flyer I have no problems with the required internet connection (since I am always connected anyway). I do wish they would have included more flyables in the original release, the worries over cost of expansions is ENTIRELY in my hands, if I don't want em I don't buy em (the way they did it with the best planes first you will hardly be handy capped by not getting the belerio).

 

The forty bucks is worth spending if just to show US game producers there is a market for this gendre, since most say no.

Edited June 25, 2009 by BigJim

[+peter01 2]

Don't really know themightysrc. But 6 months ago there weren't any 2-seaters (now 2), 2 flyables (N17 was added for Russian market), they didn't have a mission builder (community at SimHQ were insistent they should, it was developed for release and included). Many other things too. So with limited time and many things to do (content isn't just campaigns, ai, flyables, there is a lot more), I guess they wanted to focus on getting it released as a quality product with as few bugs as possible. Sure, extra AI would be good, more campaigns would be good, extra flyables as part of the package would be good, extra flyables available to download for payment immediately would be good, AND far more. Extra AI is probably one of many "could have" included. IMHO, it wouldn't have changed much.

 

My guess is content, in the broad sense of the word, will be the dominant theme in initial feedback on release.

 

First report from a player on the US version at simHQ .... and more further on in thread ..... http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topi...US_version.html

 

"I'm jumping out of the cockpit to relay some quick observations after less than an hour of play. I've been into flight sims since the wireframe TRS-80 days.

 

I upgraded a 2.5 y/o core2 duo system to an i7 920/6 Gb/2x 8800 GTX rig with TIR5 specifically to play this and DCSBS.

 

I installed to XP x64 and logged on without difficulty. No update from Neoqb required.

 

I am astounded by the immersion factor of ROF. Graphics/level of detail/atmospheric elements are even better than YT videos indicated. Sense of flight and altitude are fantastic.

 

Very clean , attractive interfaces. I initially went into training missions (animation and voice acting not too good) in the SPAD. TIR5 not turned on. I had some sound difficulties (silence when firing gun and in external views). Otherwise running great on my rig at 1920x1200 with high settings. Silky smooth framerate. Eventually crashed...even better visual damage modeling than I've seen on YT.

 

Restarted with TIR5 running and went right into a balloon busting mission in the D.VII. WOW! Dumped right over the front at high altitude with flak everywhere. TIR5 works great - a must have for the sim, imo.

 

Animated in-cockpit pilot is very cool - I had not seen videos of him before. He looks around naturally, and the arm gestures are great. I judge him to be proper scale relative to the plane, btw.

 

Dived too eagerly on a balloon and engine stopped. Tried to glide to a landing but flipped over - plane badly damaged - wings bent - fuselage torn up - one wheel spinning off-axis - too cool!

 

I will be flying this and adding planes/content for years - as the neoqb servers allow

 

Hope you are all in the air soon-

 

Regards"

[Davy TASB 0]

Don't really know themightysrc. But 6 months ago there weren't any 2-seaters (now 2), 2 flyables (N17 was added for Russian market), they didn't have a mission builder (community at SimHQ were insistent they should, it was developed for release and included). Many other things too. So with limited time and many things to do (content isn't just campaigns, ai, flyables, there is a lot more), I guess they wanted to focus on getting it released as a quality product with as few bugs as possible. Sure, extra AI would be good, more campaigns would be good, extra flyables as part of the package would be good, extra flyables available to download for payment immediately would be good, AND far more. Extra AI is probably one of many "could have" included. IMHO, it wouldn't have changed much.

 

My guess is content, in the broad sense of the word, will be the dominant theme in initial feedback on release.

 

First report from a player on the US version at simHQ .... and more further on in thread ..... http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topi...US_version.html

 

"I'm jumping out of the cockpit to relay some quick observations after less than an hour of play. I've been into flight sims since the wireframe TRS-80 days.

 

I upgraded a 2.5 y/o core2 duo system to an i7 920/6 Gb/2x 8800 GTX rig with TIR5 specifically to play this and DCSBS.

 

I installed to XP x64 and logged on without difficulty. No update from Neoqb required.

 

I am astounded by the immersion factor of ROF. Graphics/level of detail/atmospheric elements are even better than YT videos indicated. Sense of flight and altitude are fantastic.

 

Very clean , attractive interfaces. I initially went into training missions (animation and voice acting not too good) in the SPAD. TIR5 not turned on. I had some sound difficulties (silence when firing gun and in external views). Otherwise running great on my rig at 1920x1200 with high settings. Silky smooth framerate. Eventually crashed...even better visual damage modeling than I've seen on YT.

 

Restarted with TIR5 running and went right into a balloon busting mission in the D.VII. WOW! Dumped right over the front at high altitude with flak everywhere. TIR5 works great - a must have for the sim, imo.

 

Animated in-cockpit pilot is very cool - I had not seen videos of him before. He looks around naturally, and the arm gestures are great. I judge him to be proper scale relative to the plane, btw.

 

Dived too eagerly on a balloon and engine stopped. Tried to glide to a landing but flipped over - plane badly damaged - wings bent - fuselage torn up - one wheel spinning off-axis - too cool!

 

I will be flying this and adding planes/content for years - as the neoqb servers allow

 

Hope you are all in the air soon-

 

Regards"

 

I will probably (not definitely) buy this sim in the future but only if and when more content is added to it.

For me, the internet connection thing doesn't bother me too much but the lack of British planes and the general lack of content is stopping me from buying this.

As it stands it doesn't really seem to be a WW1 sim as much as a Spad v Fokker dogfight game.

 

(I also want to know how much the extra planes would cost to buy before I committed myself to paying for RoF because us Brits often get the piss taken out of us with the prices we are charged for things.)

 

Still, great oaks from little acorns and all that!

[Cameljockey 3]

The graphics do look good, but they could be a lot better if they get the AA/AF thing worked out. I've got the sim maxed out in the graphics dept and am still getting bad jaggies. That's to be expected when the AF maxes out at 4x. Going into Nvidia control panel and setting it to override application settings did nothing to help. The distant terrain is constantly "swimming" and there doesn't seem to be any way to fix it. My machine seems to hold it's own quite well on high settings, but when I lowered them to try to get rid of the swimming terrain it didn't help. I'll probably put it on a shelf and fly OFF until such a time as they get the major problems worked out and add some content. Cutting edge physics and damage modeling aside, as it stands now, IMHO it isn't a pimple on OFF's ass.

 

CJ

Edited June 29, 2009 by Cameljockey

[+peter01 2]

"IMHO it isn't a pimple on OFF's ass"

 

LOL cameljockey. Since you raised it, combining OFF and ass is maybe a good analogy

 

I've been playing the last day or so as well.

 

My advice is if you don't have a very good PC, if your after content, if you don't want to fiddle around setting things up, give it a miss ... for a while.

 

It has issues and failings, and some things have got worse from beta two months ago, and not much has improved for some odd reason .

 

Nevertheless its fantastic . The FM-physics-feel of flight are great (FokkerD7 is too pitch sensitive, but its a minor change I expect). The AI are fabulous in dogfight and generally, and best I have seen in any prop game by far. Damage modelling is superb, not just crashing, but damage sustained when hit. Graphics generally are superb, but some have issues apparently (seem great to me in the sense they are better then anything else). Sounds are superb. Immersion is superb, even with such treadbare content ... everything seems just right, some very nice little touches.

 

Somehow, the more you play, the more you like, despite the minimum content. A good sign.

 

So potentially a truly great game with more content, and more easily used or looking interfaces (especially single mission screen and keyboard assignment methods). Well see what neoqb do the next few months ...

Edited June 29, 2009 by peter01

[Maxiku 0]

I think Peter01 has summed ROF up nicely. It's a good game engine but with no real content...and I personally feel the menus feel like they have been coded by amateurs.

However....it is strangely addictive and has lots of very nice features.

 

I live in the UK so ordered the game from the US last week. It arrived in good shape.

 

Lots of people have had issues but I had no problems (after realising that my license key MUST be entered in capital letters) with the online registration process.

Unlike many on this CombatAce (and also the SimHQ) forum - I have no aversion to the "must be connected to the internet even to play the offline mode" copy protection systems used by this game.

 

 

 

My machine is a Q6600 based rig (not overclocked and I am using budget memory) with 4GB ram. It's running Win7 RC (64bit) and has a Radeon HD4870x2 graphics card.

That graphics card really helps transform my mundane rig into something fairly hot and games such as Over Flanders Field run at maximum quality on 1920x1080 on my monitor.

 

I needed to make some tweaks to get it installed on Win7 (happy to detail those for anyone but not on an OFF forum) but it does run fine once it's installed.

 

--So - how does it feel?

 

First impressions of ROF were not very good. The menus offer you the chance to fly several planes (and gives you a default of the Fokker DV5a)...but only after you select the plane, and the mission - do you then find out that the Fokker DV5a is not available. The same applies to several other planes.

That is a big annoyance. I understand (and knew in advance) that the game only offers you two flyable models - but why offer these other planes on the menu?

 

I'd be happier if they were removed or (if they are planning to add them as future content) grayed out so that you don't waste any time.

 

 

 

Loading times are also very slow. You can wait 45+ seconds to get into the action.

 

Once in there the flight model feels very good. The clouds are beautiful. Wind is a real concern (finally a game that models wind) and makes aiming extremely difficult when you're anything further than spitting distance.

I actually found it harder to shoot down anything in this game than I did using OFF's hardcore damage model.

 

Although the game only offers 2 flyable models - you do get a chance in the single player mode to shoot down 2 seater bombers and I found that a lot of fun.

 

However (and I'm using that word a lot with ROF) whether you choose to fly a head to head in your allied plane or your axis plane...your opponent is always in an allied plane. Slight bug there I think....

 

Graphics are very good but apart from the fantastic cockpit graphics - I don't think they were a huge leap better than Over Flanders Fields, but the airplanes do deform on damage - so better than Over Flanders Fields in that respect.

 

 

 

Landing is quite a challenge and you're likely to have a couple of minor prangs on your first attempts. However - it is the taking off bit that I found the hardest. You need to nudge the nose DOWN for a few seconds (so that your tail skid isn't slowing you down) before you can pull up.

 

You may need to re-map your joystick to get the controls to work properly. I'm using a Microsoft Force Feedback 2 joystick but found that the ROF defaults reversed my throttle. Easily corrected by ticking one "invert axis" box but an annoyance.

 

To summarise it very briefly (after just one day of ownership)

 

 

 

ROF has better graphics and a better flight model than OFF. However it gives you just TWO (yep - one allied and one axis) planes and a tiny bit of content.

Despite that - I don't think it's overpriced. A a lot of love has gone into it and I've seen add-ons for Microsofts FSX cost more than this entire game.

Multi-player works on Win7.

 

OFF has hundreds more planes for you to fly, more variety, a hugely impressive campaign mode, highly tweakable and new aircraft appearing (for free) all the time.

OFF is clearly much better value for money will work on much lower specced machines. It also has a big long running fan base and lots of new skins/mods/missions appearing almost daily.

OFF runs fine on Win7 but I can't get the Multiplayer to work.

 

Which should you buy??

Both! They are both incredible and a dream for a WW1 nut like myself. If you have to make a choice though - I would go for OFF every time.

 

 

Note - This is all just a matter of my own opinion. I'm sure everyone will have slightly different (and equally valid) views.

[Cameljockey 3]

I smell an ass around here but I don't think it's OFF. My machine is perfectly capable of running RoF.

 

APEVIA X-CRUISER-BK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower-

ABIT IN9 32X-MAX - motherboard - ATX - nForce 680i SLI - LGA775 Socket-

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz 6MB L2 Cache-

OCZ Platinum Revision 2 4GB (4 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)-

EVGANvidiaGeForce8800GTX768MbGDDR3-

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s-

SAMSUNG Black2MB Cache SATA 22X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe-

LITE-ON Black 20X 2MB Cache E-IDE/ATAPI 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card

Antec EA650 650W ATX12VSLI CertifiedPower Supply

 

It was a little jerky at first so I set the terrain to medium instead of high. It ran a lot better but the graphics still had boocoo jaggies. I found the fix on SimHQ for that. You turn off all of the post effects and force the AF/AA in Nvidia control panel. IOW check "Override any application settings" and turn Vsync force on. I got rid of 95% of the jagged edges.

I went for a flight in the SPAD last night just to check it out and actually had a really good time. I agree that the FM is superb (the DVII is a little more skittish than it should be IMO, it has always been referred to as very stable and easy to fly) as well as the DM, which are better than OFF, however, IMO, the AI in OFF is much better.

I have to agree about RoF growing on you. Once I got past the substandard menus, pain in the butt control config, and graphics performance (mainly lack of enough AA/AF) and got it straightened out it is really a joy to fly, and looks superb.

I never said RoF is crap or a POS, I was just comparing it to OFF as it stands now. There are a lot of disappointed sim lovers who agree with me.

I am looking forward to what Neoqb is going to release next for it, hopefully they'll turn the DrI and Camel loose. I'm not a boom and zoomer by trade. I love a good joust! That's why the DrI is my favorite.

BTW Peter have you flown BH&H?

 

CJ

Edited June 30, 2009 by Cameljockey

[JediMaster 451]

FYI this is not the OFF forum, this is the forum for all WWI sims that do not have forums elsewhere. First Eagles and OFF have them.

 

So any tweaks or tips for RoF you may have, feel free to post them in this forum (although I would recommend starting a new thread for it).

[PinkPanther 0]

A Ferrari with no engine is not much use to me.

[Cameljockey 3]

Whatever.