Phase 4

[Dej 17]

Transfers have also been mentioned, but what I would like to see is getting offered a chance to join one of the elite squadrons when my pilot has achieved enough success in his career, so that I could start a campaign game in some less well-known squadron and finally, if the pilot stays alive and gets enough kills to become famous, he has the opportunity to transfer to the best units possible. I think this would be quite fun and rewarding and would add to the already considerable role-playing element we have in OFF. Now we must spend the whole war in the same squadron (not that any of my pilots are in danger of living through the war - maybe if I started a campaign in late October 1918!).

 

 

Speaking of suffering some penalty after losing a pilot because of recklessness in DiD mode, I think nothing more is needed than the painful feeling you get when you know you just lost a promising pilot thanks to your own stupidity. Forcing players to watch films or preventing them from playing the campaign would be really unnecessary. Nobody has to play OFF unrealistically and too aggressively if they don't want to do it. It's up to the player to decide whether he or she really wants to attack everything that moves no matter how disadvantageous the situation is.

 

Nice idea. Although if we were truly role-playing I suspect some of my longest-living characters' caution would be interpreted as LMF by some Red Tab who'd have them shot for cowardice!

 

I'm with Cameljockey, too, but suspect it's an impossible dream. Though if the devs could implement a replay camera say, nearly as good as IL2, well, I'd pay twice... and I mean that.

 

Some really creative stuff coming from this thread. Very few grumbles too, and even those few are in a spirit of constructive criticism. Gosh, how mature we are when we want to be I don't expect any of them necessarily to appear in Phase n but I'm sure the devs are picking up ideas.

Edited June 18, 2009 by Dej

[Blackdogkt 0]

Transfers have also been mentioned, but what I would like to see is getting offered a chance to join one of the elite squadrons when my pilot has achieved enough success in his career, so that I could start a campaign game in some less well-known squadron and finally, if the pilot stays alive and gets enough kills to become famous, he has the opportunity to transfer to the best units possible. I think this would be quite fun and rewarding and would add to the already considerable role-playing element we have in OFF. Now we must spend the whole war in the same squadron (not that any of my pilots are in danger of living through the war - maybe if I started a campaign in late October 1918!).

 

I like that one too. I think this was in the original Red Baron, not sure about Red Baron II/3D though.

[Rickitycrate 10]

Just some things, most are silly. People. Ground crew. Mechanics. Some ability to move around the aerodrome in first person and enter various buildings and have things to see and do in there. A bunkhouse with some personal effects you took as trophies from downed planes. A journal by your bed where you can make entries or view your record. Flesh out the hangars with paraphenalia. Have a canteen/mess where we can meetup like an online waiting room. I always thought that if I could design a WWI flying game I would include the aspect of breaking out of prison and making your way back to friendly territory. That would include being brought down in enemy territory or noman's land. All in first person perspective. Trench and shell hole jumping. Things like funerals and award cerimonies. I quess you might tell that I like first person roleplaying games. Imagine a marriage of OFF and Oblivion. Imagine the years of high paid developement team and million dollar budget too I suppose.

[Hellshade 110]

Small as it may seem, I think this would add to the immersion quite a bit. Once you get enough confirmed kills to make "Ace", your name gets mentioned in the newspaper reports that pop up saying that you are your countries newest Ace for having shot down X number of planes. Each time you win a new medal (depending on how the medals have been re-done) you get your name in the paper again for earning your Victoria Cross or whatever you earned. Kind of adds the feeling of fame that the Ace pilots recieved back then.

 

Hellshade

[Test Pilot 0]

Just some things, most are silly. People. Ground crew. Mechanics. Some ability to move around the aerodrome in first person and enter various buildings and have things to see and do in there. A bunkhouse with some personal effects you took as trophies from downed planes. A journal by your bed where you can make entries or view your record. Flesh out the hangars with paraphenalia. Have a canteen/mess where we can meetup like an online waiting room. I always thought that if I could design a WWI flying game I would include the aspect of breaking out of prison and making your way back to friendly territory. That would include being brought down in enemy territory or noman's land. All in first person perspective. Trench and shell hole jumping. Things like funerals and award cerimonies. I quess you might tell that I like first person roleplaying games. Imagine a marriage of OFF and Oblivion. Imagine the years of high paid developement team and million dollar budget too I suppose.

 

I like those ideas. Probably could do away with the 1st person walking around (not that I wouldnt like that anyways), but having a 2D bunkhouse/barracks as suggested where you view your medals, or pickup the paper to read, or write in your journal. Maybe a map or two you can look at, and some old timey record is playing in the background. Or even sort of just like the pilot dossier allows now, but if it's integrated into the actual campaign screens and specific to that particular pilot/campaign, that'd really add to the immersion. And the idea of allowing for a chat is interesting. How about just having an option to click for mess and it opens your web browser and takes you to this forum. Just exit out of there or just click back into OFF.

 

Good idea too about getting your own name in the paper.

 

And perhaps above all else, opening up the air war to a wider expanse. The Eastern front is certainly large, but far far simpler than the Western front. Even if it just included Germany for simplicity's sake. Perhaps spend part of the early days of the war assigned to the east as flying an observer, or just flying along as an observer, before being transfered to the west. Nothing too complicated, but would give the game a far wider scope to it with needing (well relatively anyways to the west....) not much effort into creating. And an Italian front as well of course :)

Now that would really be special!

Edited June 19, 2009 by Test Pilot

[Dej 17]

Just some things, most are silly. People. Ground crew. Mechanics. Some ability to move around the aerodrome in first person and enter various buildings and have things to see and do in there. A bunkhouse with some personal effects you took as trophies from downed planes. A journal by your bed where you can make entries or view your record. Flesh out the hangars with paraphenalia. Have a canteen/mess where we can meetup like an online waiting room. I always thought that if I could design a WWI flying game I would include the aspect of breaking out of prison and making your way back to friendly territory. That would include being brought down in enemy territory or noman's land. All in first person perspective. Trench and shell hole jumping. Things like funerals and award cerimonies. I quess you might tell that I like first person roleplaying games. Imagine a marriage of OFF and Oblivion. Imagine the years of high paid developement team and million dollar budget too I suppose.

 

Anyone remember a flight sim called Overlord? I seem to remember it did the between missions thing rather well with a diary by your bed; old songs on your gramophone; the intelligence officer telling you stuff and being able to click your way around the aerodrome. All in 2D, not avatar-based but it worked and was very immersive as I recall... long time ago so memory might be somewhat rosy

[Bigfish2 0]

I'm quite happy with OFF as it is, and I still haven't really scratched the surface. But, thinking about features in other flight sims which I've enjoyed/found useful, they would be: (1) some development of the "Quick Combat" system to enable you to build rather more complex scenarios - eg fly against bombers with fighter top cover - as the CFS3 mission builder is beyond me. I seem to remember IL2 did this; (2) a "video recorder" type of facility so you can replay a dogfight afterwards, from different angles (cf Falcon 4), which helps you learn from mistakes. But whatever you guys do will be cool, and I'll have a copy please!

[Pips 5]

Some great idea's have been covered. Transfers would definitely add to the immersion level. Two that have been mentioned that I really like though are an improved flight map (take a leaf out of Red Baron and just provide a sectional map for the in-game flight) and more aggressive two-seaters - even the clumsiest types in real life attempted avoiding action.

 

My pet hate is the long load time and multiple screens. If they could be cut down to just one from briefing I'd be a very happy chappy. :)

[themightysrc 5]

I think I'm pretty much in accord with the stuff that other people have mentioned - certainly transfers would be nice, but filling out the aircraft rosters must come well before that.

 

Seeing as we're now in musing/wishlist mode, how about proper spotter/photographic operations for two seaters? Yes, it's fun to blast about in a Deef or Brisfit doing what comes naturally (in my case dying rather frequently), but it would certainly be fun to have missions for the poor old BE2 drivers where they could bob into the front seat and start relaying artillery spotting instructions to the RA or similar, or else take those precious exposures of the latest pile of mud that needs to be captured. Of course, you wouldn't know until days after (with the photo missions) whether you'd had a successful mission, but the artillery support could be scored directly after a mission: either you spotted well, and the Hun batteries are under the cosh or else you've got to go back tomorrow (gulp!).

 

No idea how doable those are, but they would certainly add real meaning to life as a two seater player.

[Duce Lewis 3]

Can the Graphics be updated to include a variable FOV?

Currently cfs3 only allows a zoom function that is just not up to the task

 

WS Monitors are becoming the norm and could certainly handle the job

TH2G is expensive and a Large Monitor/HD TV expands vertically as well as horizontally

[GPSpector 0]

Just some things, most are silly. People. Ground crew. Mechanics. Some ability to move around the aerodrome in first person and enter various buildings and have things to see and do in there. A bunkhouse with some personal effects you took as trophies from downed planes. A journal by your bed where you can make entries or view your record. Flesh out the hangars with paraphenalia. Have a canteen/mess where we can meetup like an online waiting room. I always thought that if I could design a WWI flying game I would include the aspect of breaking out of prison and making your way back to friendly territory. That would include being brought down in enemy territory or noman's land. All in first person perspective. Trench and shell hole jumping. Things like funerals and award cerimonies. I quess you might tell that I like first person roleplaying games. Imagine a marriage of OFF and Oblivion. Imagine the years of high paid developement team and million dollar budget too I suppose.

 

 

If you have not tried B-17 2: The Mighty Eighth, I think you would have really liked it. You actually get to go from room to room on base. Each room had a purpose, such as in the Briefing Room, you get to watch footage of the area you are about to bomb. If the Office, you could review the 10 profile's of you Crewmen or the profiles of the 120 Crewmen in your Group (if you selected to play with all 12 aircraft). The only downside was that YOU were not a single Crewman, but you can watch or control any of the crewmen and they earned kills based on what they did on their own or if you controlled them. It truly was the most immersive Sim I ever played and graphics were pretty good.

 

The worst part was that it was Microprose's last flight sim and it was taken over by InfoGrames and rushed out before being finished. since then, Infograms changed their name to ATARI (I guess hoping to get new fans based on name recognition).

[GPSpector 0]

Small as it may seem, I think this would add to the immersion quite a bit. Once you get enough confirmed kills to make "Ace", your name gets mentioned in the newspaper reports that pop up saying that you are your countries newest Ace for having shot down X number of planes. Each time you win a new medal (depending on how the medals have been re-done) you get your name in the paper again for earning your Victoria Cross or whatever you earned. Kind of adds the feeling of fame that the Ace pilots recieved back then.

 

Hellshade

 

 

I like that idea too. I think Red Barron 3D allowed you to Paint your Aircraft as soon as you reached the rank of Captain and I think it too had newspaper articles listing new Aces.

[+Polovski 414]

Can the Graphics be updated to include a variable FOV?

Currently cfs3 only allows a zoom function that is just not up to the task

 

WS Monitors are becoming the norm and could certainly handle the job

TH2G is expensive and a Large Monitor/HD TV expands vertically as well as horizontally

 

If you use a proper Wide Screen monitor the FOV width does expand to see more left/right (i.e. does not distort).

 

Not sure we can alter CFS3 to have a different in sim variable FOV other than zoom in/out views. I guess you mean a smooth zoom in/out.

Views are built into the aircraft xdp and in game they are controlled by CFS3 graphics code.

[GPSpector 0]

The funniest thing I ever saw was in F-14 Tomcat (IBM DOS - 1988, Activision). I actually tried to see what would happen if I actually tried to attack my own guys. The Sim actually gave me a Medal for the kills (obvious bug) but I also saw a short 3 frame animation of my nice Gold Navy Wings getting ripped off my Uniform and I was demoted.

Edited June 20, 2009 by GPSpector

[GPSpector 0]

Is there any new news on Phase 4?

[Womenfly2 0]

Is there any new news on Phase 4?

 

.... ya, like the release date?

 

LOL!

WF2

[Hasse Wind 46]

Some new screenshots would be VERY nice. :yes:

[Mr. Lucky 0]

I know it's supposed to be as historically accurate as possible, but I thought it'd be fun to put the characters from The Blue Max in their squadron.

It'd be interesting to fly with von Kluegermann or Hpt. Heidemann or even Fabian.

 

"I'll fly with Staackel"

 

Just a fun thought.

[shredward 12]

.... ya, like the release date?

 

LOL!

WF2

 

You already know the answer to that one!

 

[Duce Lewis 3]

If you use a proper Wide Screen monitor the FOV width does expand to see more left/right (i.e. does not distort).

 

Not sure we can alter CFS3 to have a different in sim variable FOV other than zoom in/out views. I guess you mean a smooth zoom in/out.

Views are built into the aircraft xdp and in game they are controlled by CFS3 graphics code.

Pol, I have a 24" WS now and like you say, it does give more viewable area

It just seems that with the advent of all the really big video, the future of sims is a larger FOV

 

I knew it was a biggie but you Devs have kcocked off a lot of big accomplishments, so I thought I'd ask

[GPSpector 0]

You already know the answer to that one!

 

 

Yep, it will be released when it's done.

It will be done when they are finished.

They will be finished when they say they are.

[Rickitycrate 10]

P4 will be released before I feel I am finished with BH&H.

Edited June 21, 2009 by Rickitycrate

[Olham 164]

Now, I am just back at the front, and didn't read all this yet.

But I don't feel, that I had even explored a quarter of "Between Heaven and Hell" yet.

Which I would really like to do, before another version comes out.

[GPSpector 0]

Me, I'm just always curious about any new news about any new Sim in the works. I am never in favor of rushing any Sim to the shelves before they are done. I've seen that happen too many times and the fans never benefit from it.

[Duce Lewis 3]

I am never in favor of rushing any Sim to the shelves before they are done.

No worries, that just never happens here