May 11 updates out now!

[+ST0RM 145]

...anyone who tries to run a flight sim with out a quality graphics card is a fool.

 

I ran TW Series 1 for years on my laptop without a dedicated vid card with very good results. Even SF2 ran decent enough until the last years graphics patches. So that makes me a fool?

 

I can see big problems ahead if the game automatically seeks out and patches itself.

 

You are not understanding the process. I don't think it will patch itself, but instead go out and tell you that a newer version is available and ask permission to install, just like most programs now.

 

Thanks to the good patch testers here, I'll hold off and wait for the next patch release.

 

-S

[+PureBlue 71]

Good decision by TK to implement an option

[+Stary 2,426]

300km for TOMCAT sim, hmm... If I read it correctly, given the new format, the terrain itself will span this distance, but then there will be that repeating ocean spanning much more..?

 

And Icarus, I think that it won't be full autopatching ROF style, just sort of popup (or fading? ) message informing you that the next patch is available and can be downloaded.

 

the only thing bit off is the "and have shorter horizon/clip distance so we can have much more detailed terrain up close" -that's why there was a thing called level of detail invented loong time ago

 

only time will tell

[+Julhelm 266]

I can live with shorter horizon distance if everything else looks better. I always run the game with "near" horizon distance anyway. It's not as if the higher settings do anything other than steal performance for what is very little visual gain. Remember than Wings of Prey and HAWX2 have far lower horizon distances than SF due to their smaller terrains but everything looks so good so we don't care about it.

[+Stary 2,426]

yes, but I'd cant stand near horizont fog from late 90s, long range terrain rendering is something quite important for jet title... BUT ok, I'd trade view distance for something more 2000+ in terms of ground detail or mesh complexity

[+Julhelm 266]

Well like I said I always run the low horizon setting and it has never bothered me. I don't think F-14 game will sport Strike Commander-like haze a mile out but you never know.

[+Stary 2,426]

single WIP tech screenie I beg for months from TK would explain much

 

anyway, everytime there's progress or change, some things WILL be broken, but some new possibilities should be there. From what TK stated, I don't think we'd be able to use current tech terrains in it, I hope I'm wrong here. Or, more propably, series will split into two categories -SF2 with DLC content from time to time and F-14 with whatever The Guy is planning. And as with TK, you never know what he's up to

[Gr.Viper 131]

And as with TK, you never know what he's up to

In that regard he's a bit like Sony. Only without all that losing personal data, demanding $150 for basic repairs and regular massive cockups (mostly small ones).

[+malibu43 142]

I ran TW Series 1 for years on my laptop without a dedicated vid card with very good results. Even SF2 ran decent enough until the last years graphics patches. So that makes me a fool?

 

...

 

-S

 

+1.

 

I've said over and over again in this thread that I ran WoX and SF2 just fine on a laptop with an integrated card. But I guess I'm a fool as well.

[+Stary 2,426]

guys, guys, easy, no one's fool here!

[Gr.Viper 131]

Am I the only one so far who had his engine die due to overheat after keeping P-51D in WEP mode for too long? Engine dies, no visible damage, smoke trail behind the plane. Oops

[+Stary 2,426]

if so, that's nice small undocumented feat for us propheads

[+Julhelm 266]

pc game dev is still very much alive, especially with indie devs. its always going to be that way as long as the price of entry is zero. everyone who has a pc can develop games for it. but its also very competitive. not many survive long enough to get their first game out. many of them will move to mobile market. mobile market is "the next hottest thing" right now. everyone wants next angry birds on their phone/os/carrier/brand. all the money in the world is flowing to that market, so mobile app studios have plenty of external revenue opportunities available.

Mobile market which is out and out casual games only has much more up-front cost and because you generally doesn't have any community that means you have to funnel tons of budget into marketing, marketing, marketing and marketing. Whereas the flightsim niche on pc is so small pretty much every single little indie project that pours little or no money at all into PR/marketing still has excellent exposure within the community. Getting featured on the SimHQ frontpage is certainly cheaper than paying off Gamespot or IGN and probably more effective, too.

 

its relatively easy for mobile studios to survive and thrive even when their games flop. not so with pc dev, you have to sink of swim based on the game alone.

 

as for various additional ways to generate revenue, you said it yourself, none of them existed 10 years ago when tw started. and tw is slowly starting add them in. but many of those opportunities go against games being so easily modded. putting their games on steam? requires steam drm and forced auto-patching that may mess up all the heavily modded installs as evident here. in-app billboard ads? nope, doesn't work if you can mod the game to remove the textures or play on maps that don't have advertising built-in. their dlc? going to compete against freely available mods. how many of you did not buy all 4 of tw games and instead choose to fill up the planes list with free mods?

For someone who has supposedly worked many years with the big game devs, you certainly have no clue what you're talking about. Let's see here:

 

putting their games on steam? requires steam drm and forced auto-patching that may mess up all the heavily modded installs as evident here.

Absolutely ridiculous. First of all Steam's drm is the most transparent one there is. So transparent, in fact, that certain publishers commonly add their own (intrusive) DRM schemes on top just to be sure. Also there is no such thing as forced auto-patching on Steam. First of all not even all games use the feature, and secondly for those that do you, the user, can always have the option of turning it off if you want to. Again, no issue there.

 

in-app billboard ads? nope, doesn't work if you can mod the game to remove the textures or play on maps that don't have advertising built-in.

Except that in-app ads would be handled by the Steam app itself via in-game overlay, which cannot be modded. Try again.

 

their dlc? going to compete against freely available mods. how many of you did not buy all 4 of tw games and instead choose to fill up the planes list with free mods?

Again, this seems to be no problem for the games that do feature ingame DLC yet support user-generated content at the same time, such as Killing Floor or TF2. If Valve and Tripwire see no problem, why is it all of a sudden a problem for TW? People tend to buy DLC because it lets them use unique content unavailable elsewhere.

 

You seem to think steam makes it so easy for every pc dev, you do know that steam is very selective about which games to put on their store and which ones they don't? its not like iphone app store where anyone can sell their crap. your game has to be selected by them. i hear their acceptance rate for indie title is 4% of the games submitted. better chance than going to a regular publisher, sure, but still not very good. and their selection process is kept secret. they call it "not wanting to flood the market." ive heard of an indie game that sold over million copies elsewhere but still got rejected by steam. if tw games are not on steam, they're probably among the 96% majority who got rejected.

Yet a quick glance at the Steam store reveals such incredibly narrow, niched titles like:

Farming Simulator 2011

Dive To The Titanic

 

as well as really simple Pipeline-clones:

SpaceChem

 

which is far more impressive than unpolished, 3/10 IGN score titles like:

Top Gun

 

Which in its original release didn't support anything other than a 360 controller and Alt+F4. Surely they cannot be THAT selective? I mean, even Apple requires your app to be reasonably polished and free of bugs. And don't get me started on the amazing anal-retentiveness of Samsung. Turns out the only place where everybody can sell their crap is Android Market, because it is completely unregulated. Well except for the PC download market, then. I mean, there ARE alternatives to Steam after all.

 

tw has plenty of competition, everything from ace combat, hawx, il-2, wings of prey, lomac, dcs a-10, rise of flight, ms fsx, x-plane, and even many fps with airplane and helos. they all compete for the same customer dollars.

No, they don't. Apples do not compete against oranges, even though both are fruit. If I want an apple I'm going to buy an apple. Just like pickup trucks do not compete against compacts. If I want a car that can haul a lot of stuff, I'm going to get a pickup. Conversely if I want just a small car for transporting myself, I'll go for a compact.

 

This claim that TW somehow competes even with the likes of Battlefield because Battlefield has planes and helos in it is patently ridiculous. They don't even compete in the same market. Nor is Ace Combat or Hawx any competition because they are out and out arcade games with little to no simulation value and everybody knows it, and someone who's out for a sim won't be buying those. Likewise MSFS is a civilian sim that doesn't feature combat at all. LOMAC and DCS are milspec study sims that focus on a single aircraft in excruciating detail. If I want a game where I can dogfight over 'nam, surely I'm not going to pick up DCS:A-10C just because it has a plane in it? Likewise noone interested in a cold-war flight sim is going to pick up Wings of Prey or Rise of Flight because one is a WW2 and the other a WW1 game.

 

Again, turns out that if you're interested in cold-war air combat Strike Fighters is the only game in town for the past decade. If there was such strong competition, TW would never have survived cranking out what is essentially the same basic game with a little different planeset and a new graphics feature every 6-8 months.

 

you don't notice many of the mods here are "hypermodern or WW2"? and even if there are no competition, not having competition doesn't guarantee huge sales number, it depends on the market size. they niche market by definition has small market size. flight sim is a niche market. cold-war sim is a niche market within a niche market. so regardless of competition, their sales is going to be limited.

Free mods do not compete with the stock game. How many people do you think bought this game because it lets them dogfight in an F-14? TW as developer has the advantage of being able to offer new gameplay features or tech features and that is their selling point. Your argument that free mods offer competition is only valid if each new iteration of the game didn't offer any new features at all. But they do which is why the mods compliment it. The strength of the series has always been its ease of modding and sandbox-like qualities of "do what you want". Yes, not having competition doesn't guarantee huge sales numbers, but if I were concerned about huge sales numbers I certainly would stay away from the sim market.

 

have you even worked in the pc game market? try working with pc game dev studio and you'll see how they're struggling. or at least read a few indie pc game dev blogs and see how little most of them make before you proclaim "i worked in in the industry and i know how it is: mobile market is so hard, therefore pc market must be so easy."

I never said any of the sort. What I did say is that the mobile casual games market (where I worked) is more competitive than the PC flight sim market. I also said that on mobile market you are quite literally invisible if you are not at least top 25 grossing on US itunes. Not so in PC flight sims where games like Strike Fighters, which I have never ever seen an ad for, can boast substantial fanbases that are loyal bordering on the fanatic.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

OddCast::

:

:

...fFlight sim is a niche market. cold-war sim is a niche market within a niche market. sSo regardless of competition, their sales is going to be limited.

:

:

Yes!

 

But, I've always said, if done *right* a game with B-70 or Draken on the box cover will outsell all those F-22 Rapper or Su-27 Flaker games.

 

Somebody mentioned that air combat flight TheSims don't compete with the ground shooter games.

 

They do. As Metallica would sing, its a fight they can-not win.

 

Ever since SF2, the stock HorizonDistance='s have been getting shorter and shorter every Patch or so, and now, TK said its going to get even shorter in F-14 game, to allow more "terrain detail" or something like that. Going for "terrain detail" is entering into direct competition with the ground shooter games. The air warfare terrain or battlefield is the sky and atmosphere -- where airplanes fly. We may read our air combat accounts to see this. Sky/Atmosphere has always been superficially modeled, if at all, in air combat TheSims, yet sky and atmosphere are among the best visually appealing images, as well as defining the air combat arena, with some exception in the all weather mission role. When the Devs wake up to this, customers will love it. Perhaps someday.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Terrain detail is Good. But this should come before "terrain detail"...

 

:

:

Looking back toward Hanoi, I could still see the smoke column over 150 miles away. The GCI controller found us a KC-135 tanker; we refueled over the Mekong, and headed for home.

:

:

The Hanoi Pol Strike, Col. James Kasler ~> http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1974/nov-dec/kasler.html

The air refueling, even if only "abstract" of simplified for mission simulation, not actually flying a refueling procedure, would be nice too.

 

In air games, the player should see things 150 miles away, and can cover that distance, in game, in a few minutes. The ground shooter player can cover that distance in maybe 3 days if carrying a rifle and humping like the Romans, or perhaps 1 day given a reliable tank and smooth ground I suppose. That's why 150 mile distant grafix is not useful for ground shooter games, but is essential for (overall) customer immersion in air games. We've not seen it yet. Perhaps, someday.

[Icarus999 70]

I ran TW Series 1 for years on my laptop without a dedicated vid card with very good results. Even SF2 ran decent enough until the last years graphics patches. So that makes me a fool?

 

 

 

You are not understanding the process. I don't think it will patch itself, but instead go out and tell you that a newer version is available and ask permission to install, just like most programs now.

 

Thanks to the good patch testers here, I'll hold off and wait for the next patch release.

 

-S

 

No insult intended storm, but flight sims are the most strenuous test of any given graphics solution. You are running a flight sim on a very weak rig, and that is by definition asking for trouble. It sounds like we are coming at it from two different levels, you are playing on your travel rig.... I am playing on a full blown enthusiast system with top of the line cards / chipset/ ch pro rudders/ throttle/ stick and trackir.

 

Surly you can see that I have made a huge investment because I know that flight sims kill weak computers and I want the best performance I can get. Do you really want the games to be "design limited " to run on low end machines.... or would you rather them be capable of stunning performance on a powerful desktop yet be able to dial them back and run low graphics settings on a laptop

 

The stock terrains look horribly dated and if we want modern graphics ,we have to pay for strong computers, there is no getting around that fact.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

I guess TK's game is pretty scale~able.

 

I like to think that some guy in Iraq with a laptop in the sand can run The SF, and TK *knows* this, so he plans and shoots for that at least, but gives other options for those having higher spec desktops. Overall a pretty good game design.

 

I have a moderate rig I suppose, desktop. I won't spend much money on a first line system, but buy good parts and slap them together. And I do mean good. I never have hardware problems, although I do have learning experiences that never repeat, as figure out the better products, and am willing to pay more for them, but a year or two old (brand new, older design), and so pay 1/2 price for only maybe 1/4 less performance.

[stingray77 4]

Hummmm after some 5 weeks of being on vacation first and then on a line of business trips, I am coming back and see this discussion.

 

I always used to apply TWs updates to my SF2V and Vietnam Expansion Pack almost immediately. This time I'm puzzled (and wasn't able to get the necessary information whether to update or not from this thread's previous discussion)...

 

Can someone please answer me the following:

- possible to get the Expansion Pack's trees back into the game (without them poking through the clouds)?

- does the update give some eye candy?

- does it improve on fps?

 

If only one of these three checks out "yes", I guess I will save my current version as "Apr 11" and do the update and apply the Expansion Pack once again....

[+Stary 2,426]

1 no

2 no

3 yes, a LOT

[stingray77 4]

Thanks Stary, I'll give it a try......

[Bossco82 11]

To back up some comments made by Julhelm about TK and SF having no competition.

 

I couldn't agree with this more, I enjoy games involving all aspects of air war spanning WW1 to present day. I like to fly planes from P51 Mustangs upto F14 tomcats. TK can give you all of this around one game engine, that simply doesn't exists anywhere else. I own Il2, Rise of flight, Lomac and other titles and they are not as enjoyable as SF for one simple reason, I get bored of them! I don't get bored of TK sims because every other week someone in the mod community makes something new to try and it revive's my interest. Also if I start to feel i'm getting bored I can make changes myself because of the current ease of modability and an open game engine.

 

Now to further this point more. My brother is a pilot with obviously lots of pilot friends. He's searched for years for a flight sim and then I introduced him to SF and all the mods. He almost instantly bought all the titles and a high spec gaming desktop. He felt other titles were not worth the investment as he would quickly get bored of playing them on my computer. His favourite version of the game to play is the 1948 War for Independance mod and the Falklands mod from here. Now I will admit he enjoys playing IL2 and when he bought his computer he installed it modding it with UP2.0 but he doesn't play it as much as SF because he can't tweek it to his liking ie flight models, weapons etc.

 

My final point to make about TK and SF not really having competition is that what other title can a mod community effectivly make a whole other game for. Which is also the reason why I find it so strange that TK makes changes to the games engine without asking the mod community that supports him what they think, it seems illogical to me. The mod community here have effectively made whole other games that people will buy the SF titles to play,

 

1948 War for Indepenance

Falklands

Korea hopefully

Desert Storm hopefully

War for Africa when its tweeked to SF2

Nato Fighters 4

Vietnam flying for the reds

 

Il2 covers WW2, Rise of Flight WW1, Hawx unrealistic modern combat, Lomac modern combat. SF covers the entire history of air combat. This is thanks to the work TK has done but you can't ignore its also thanks to the mod community expanding on TK's origional titles.

 

SF is just so diverse and easy to expand which is why in my opinion it does not have any competition and that is solely due to its modability. I do find it strange that TK does realease updates and patches that sometimes conflict and cause problems with what the mod community is doing. My sole concern about the future of the TW titles is them losing there modability which will in turn mean I lose interest. I'm sure i'm not the only person who thinks this. If however TK makes his changes while preserving an open game engine and modability I will continue to buy his titles as long as he makes them and they will continue to have no equal.

 

One final thing I forgot to add, there has been mention of TK not having money to make certain changes. I was recently getting a few pc components from a big shop here in the UK. While waiting for them got chatting to a few guys. They asked what games I play and what I use my pc for. I said I only play SF, they replied "whats that?". These were people who were big pc gaming enthusiasts and they didn't know SF existed. When I told them about it they wanted to know a lot more. They were mostly interested in the fact that there was a game about air combat they could do whatever they wanted and was very modable. It would seem some sales for TK are being lost due to people not knowing its out there.

Edited May 30, 2011 by Boostjunky

[+ST0RM 145]

No insult intended storm, but flight sims are the most strenuous test of any given graphics solution. You are running a flight sim on a very weak rig, and that is by definition asking for trouble. It sounds like we are coming at it from two different levels, you are playing on your travel rig.... I am playing on a full blown enthusiast system with top of the line cards / chipset/ ch pro rudders/ throttle/ stick and trackir.

 

Surly you can see that I have made a huge investment because I know that flight sims kill weak computers and I want the best performance I can get. Do you really want the games to be "design limited " to run on low end machines.... or would you rather them be capable of stunning performance on a powerful desktop yet be able to dial them back and run low graphics settings on a laptop

 

The stock terrains look horribly dated and if we want modern graphics ,we have to pay for strong computers, there is no getting around that fact.

 

I eventually went the same route as you. My laptop could not run the sim after the last year of patches, and my home desktop was slowed to a crawl as well. So I too went out and invested in a fully loaded ASUS G73. It has replaced my desktop and other laptop. And yes, just to run the TW sims.

 

If TK doesn't believe he has a hard-core following, then he's missing a lot. It's this group that has kept his sims alive.

 

-S

[MigBuster 2,861]

When I told them about it they wanted to know a lot more. They were mostly interested in the fact that there was a game about air combat they could do whatever they wanted and was very modable. It would seem some sales for TK are being lost due to people not knowing its out there.

 

 

Yes this is an obvious problem - a website despite giving worldwide reach still needs a degree of marketing so that people actually know its there. I have suggested to TK that he releases one of the SF2 games on CD for shops around the world to sell - although he didn't like this idea he must realise that he needs to get more advertising out there.

[+SkateZilla 49]

So, the terrains are going to be smaller so more detail can be rendered...wonder what that does to 'The Wall'...

 

The Iceland Terrain is gonna be small, that doesnt say that the 3rd party terrains are restricted to 300KM

[+SkateZilla 49]

300km for TOMCAT sim, hmm... If I read it correctly, given the new format, the terrain itself will span this distance, but then there will be that repeating ocean spanning much more..?

 

 

The Terrain is 1000KM^2, only about 300KM^2 is actual modeled terrain (the size of Iceland's Land mass which is about 375x300km). the rest is repeated ocean, most likely the region of the atlantic southeast of the island.